The Orientalist and the Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page B

one hand and a bottle of Cif cleanser in the other , and was scrubbing month-old frying-pan splatters from around the cooker hob.
    ‘There’s no need for that, Maddy,’ I said.
    ‘Oh, yes, there is!’ replied my domineering lovely, scrubbing vigorously. ‘If you cleaned up your messes you wouldn’t have this impossible build-up of grease. Scrub-a-dub-dub, Christopher, every day! And did you know there’s a legion of fossilized peas under the fridge? Disgraceful!’
    Then she vanished, leaving the kitchen suffused with a lovely lemony fragrance.
    Due to the infrequency of their spectral visits Madeleine and Josie are the most difficult of my Malaya-era acquaintances to remember. I can only conjure up the creamy essence of them: the warm biscuity perfume of their sun-freckled limbs, the tawny wisps loosened from their efficient nurses’ buns, the rubber-band twang of their Aussie accents. I went to see them in my very first week in The Village of Everlasting Peace, to get ointment for my mosquito bites (I had twenty-seven itchy bumps the size of tuppenny bits). As I pointed out the worst of them, the nurses’ lips twitched with mirth. (
Jeez, Maddy! Check out the Pom and his mozzie bites! There, there, now. We’ll put a little calamine on them for you. Hold still and be a big boy!
) As Nurse Josie bent over to remove the calamine from the medical case, the hem of her pinafore lifted to show off her plump calves, the freshly laundered cotton hugging her ample behind. A memory flashed in my mind, of Marion Forte-Cannon flaunting herself in a similar manner over the chaise-longue, but
sans
nurses’ uniform (or any kind of meaningful attire), a radiant
you-have-my-consent-to-ravish-me
smile tossed over her shoulder. In the later, unhappier stages of our relationship the smile deteriorated into an
oh-for-God’ssake-be-a-man-and-ravish-me
scowl, but romantic nostalgia inspired me none the less to politely clear my throat and say: ‘You know, you two girls really ought to have someone to translate Cantonese for you. Help you understand the villagers’ symptoms.’
    I nodded to a dour Chinese lady, whom I assumed was waiting to be seen. Nurse Josie also gestured to the old crab-apple.
    ‘Awww … that’s sweet of you, Christopher,’ she said, ‘but we’ve already got the best interpreter in the village, haven’t we, Evangeline?’
    I gave the Chinese lady a puzzled glance, without the faintest intuition she was to be my future beloved and the source of fifty years of mental anguish. Evangeline was no beauty, and certainly not the stuff of erotic daydreams. Cupid’s desire-tipped arrow did not prick my heart.
    In 1951 Evangeline Lim was thirty-eight years old, though the hardships endured during the Occupation had aged her by a decade. Her eyes were wrinkle-shrouded, her nose battered out of shape, and her lips miserly and thin. And as if further to ruin her looks, her hair was cropped like a man’s. Evangeline did possess one exquisite feature, though. Her eyes, I was to discover, were the colour of smoke (a sure sign of misbehaving colonial forefathers) and as one gazed into them the irises gently spiralled and evanesced. On the afternoon we first met, however, her eyes performed none of their magic. They were cold and suspicious and dark as stones.
    ‘How do you do, Evangeline,’ I said. ‘You speak English, do you? Terrific. Perhaps we could translate together.’
    That solemn creature did not smile back. She responded in a queer-rhythmed English; strangled, with none of the usual Malay-accented warmth.
    ‘Thank you, but your assistance is not necessary. I taught English for eight years at Kajang High School, so I am more than proficient. Also I don’t think the villagers will want you here. They are very shy of their diseases, and it is hard enough already for them to come here without some white man staring at them too.’
    It hadn’t occurred to me that the Chinese peasants might be ‘shy of their