World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) Read Online Free PDF Page A

live.”
    I broke my news to George Wheeler as soon as I got back. He was not at all pleased, for he had paid me well to learn the job and had expected me to stay longer; but when he saw that I could not be shaken he put a good face on it, smiling grimly and saying, “Well, I suppose if you’re going to be famous one day, I’d better be nice to you. Have a stengah?”
    And when I was relaxed with the whisky, and he was as relaxed as his chronic inner tautness allowed, I laughed and said, “Anyhow, you’ve only yourself to blame. If it hadn’t been for you I might never have started painting.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œThat ban on miscegenation.”
    He looked puzzled for a minute, trying to work out the connection, and then said, “Oh, nonsense. You’d never have gone with a native girl. You’re not that sort.”
    â€œWell, actually—” I had been going to tell him about the girl with the laughing eyes and provocative hips who had walked past my bungalow, but he interrupted.
    â€œOf course you’re not—you’re too clean-minded. I’d know that just from your Everest picture. That’s a beautiful piece of work. Only a decent clean-minded chap could have painted a picture like that.”
    And then, since it would have ruined the picture for him to know the truth, I held my tongue after all, and just said, “Well, I’m glad you liked it.”
    â€œIt’s a work of art.”
    A new assistant was engaged locally. His name was Hewitt-Begg, and after his initial interview with Wheeler he told me, “This girl business doesn’t really worry me, old man. I dabble in yoga.” And so he did, squatting cross-legged in a loincloth, his pink and white English torso stiff as a ramrod, his finger pressed to his nose, making the most alarming noises as he breathed in through one nostril and out through the other, timing each respiration by a watch placed in front of him on the floor.
    I remained a couple of weeks to show him the ropes, then Wheeler ran me in his car to Port Swettenham, where I embarked on a tramp. It was called the
Nigger Minstrel,
and was bound for Malacca, Singapore, Manila—and Hong Kong.

Chapter Three
    I had no idea, when I first discovered it, that there was anything odd about the Nam Kok.
    It was my fifth week in Hong Kong, and I had been to call at a house on the escarpment behind Wanchai, following up an advertisement for a room to let. The advertiser had been a Mrs. Ma, and I had found her flat on the second floor; but the moment she had opened the door, and I had glimpsed behind her, in the small living room, the usual abundance of children, grandparents, cousins, aunts—they must have numbered nearly a dozen souls—I had known that it would be no use, that there would be no privacy for me to paint; and I had been relieved when Mrs. Ma had told me that the room had already been taken by a Chinese. She had been sorry: she had wished she had known I was coming, for she would have liked an English guest so that she and her husband could have improved their English. She had insisted, anyhow, on rewarding my wasted journey with a cup of tea, which I had drunk while sitting stiffly on a hard, straight-backed chair, my presence scarcely noticed by the relatives seated about the room.
    â€œWell, perhaps I can get something down in Wanchai,” I said. “It’s one of the few districts I haven’t tried yet.”
    Mrs. Ma, who was very neat and bird-like, tittered with merriment as if I had made a joke. “You wouldn’t like Wanchai,” she said.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œIt’s very noisy. . . . No Europeans live in Wanchai—only Chinese.”
    â€œThat’s what I want,” I said. “The trouble with my present place is that there are only English.” I told her about Sunset Lodge, which was at the lowest contour of the Peak at which a