State of Siege Read Online Free PDF Page B

when you could pipe it up another four feet to a sprinkler—it’s crazy! Besides, you have to be a bloody contortionist to rinse the soap off all over. The can’s okay though—ordinary civilised type. Last place I had, it was practically the old pole-over-the-pit.”
    “How long have you been here, Roy?”
    “In this country? Four years. Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot I like about it besides the fat salary they pay me. But they’re a funny lot. For instance, all thesethings they’re getting now, like cars and fridges and radios, they don’t look on them just as things to use. They
wear
them like lucky charms. Doesn’t matter if the thing’s any use to them or not, or even if it works. They’ve got to have it to feel all right. Abdul saw an American wearing a gold wrist-watch in a movie, so
he
had to have a gold wrist-watch. He starved himself for three months to pay for it. Why? He never looks at the time, he doesn’t wind the bloody thing, he’s not even particularly proud of it. It’s just
his
. They’re mostly like that, and that’s what fools you. You think they’re simply a lot of show-off kids trying to ape western civilisation.”
    “Until one day you find out that they’re not simple at all, and that you haven’t ever begun to understand them.”
    “Too right. You know, when I was new here, I once asked a bunch of them at the airport what they thought was the most serious crime a man could commit. Know what they said?”
    “Not murder anyway. They think we’re too fussy about that.”
    “No, not murder. To steal another man’s wife, that was the worst, they thought.”
    “I’ve never heard that one before.”
    “Neither had I. I didn’t know then that it’s no use asking questions in this country. You only get the answer they think you want to hear. During the war mywife went off with another man. I’d just divorced her. Those jokers happened to have found out, that’s all.” He grinned. “You married, Steve?”
    “Not any more. Same story.”
    He nodded. “Mina’ll fix you up all right.”
    “Who’s she?”
    “The girl-friend. Tell you what. You have the shower first. I’ll go and call her up now and tell her to bring a friend along.”
    It was dark when we went down into the square again and the whole place had come to life. There were people everywhere. The casuarina trees and travellers’ palms which ringed the gardens in the centre were festooned with lights, and market stalls had been set up beneath them. Chinese food-sellers surrounded by little groups of eaters squatted in the dust. A boy of about ten sat on his haunches playing a bamboo xylophone, while another beside him beat a drum. The road which ran round the square was jammed with crawling cars, and the
betjak
drivers rang their bells incessantly as they manoeuvred their brightly painted tricycles through the gaps. It was a tribute to the wealth and influence of the Selampang black-market operators that, in a city where the cheapest American car cost three times as much as it cost in Detroit, there should be a modern traffic problem.
    There was a line of empty
betjak
by the Air House entrance and, as soon as he saw Jebb, one of the driversswung out of the line and pedalled up to us, smiling eagerly.
    “We need two this evening, Mahmud.”
    “I can take both,
tuan
.”
    “Maybe you can, sport, but we want to be comfortable. Where’s your friend?”
    Another driver was summoned and we set off.
    Once you have learned to disregard the laboured breathing of the driver pedalling behind you and have overcome the feeling that you are the sitting target for every approaching car, the
betjak
is an agreeable form of transport, especially on a hot night. You are carried along just fast enough for the air to seem cool, but not so fast that the sweat chills on your body. You can lean back comfortably and look up at the trees and the stars without being bitten by insects; and, providing the driver does not insist on