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

gaiety of bunting. I saw a post office and went in, thinking the clerk would speak English; but when I asked him about rooms he shook his head and said, “No, sorry. No sell.”
    â€œI don’t want to buy anything,” I said. “I’m just looking for a room.”
    â€œSorry. Only sell stamp.”
    I crossed Hennessy Road, with its clattering trams and its two huge modernesque cinemas showing American films, and came out on the water front by the Mission to Seamen. Next to the Mission was a big hotel called the Luk Kwok, famous for Chinese wedding receptions and obviously too expensive for me even to try. Further along the quay shirtless, barefoot coolies were unloading junks, filing back and forth along the gangplanks like trails of ants. Sampans tied up among the junks tossed sickeningly in the wash of passing boats. Across the road from the quay were narrow open-fronted shops, between which dark staircases led up to crowded tenement rooms; and along the pavement children played hopscotch while shoveling rice into their mouths from bowls, for all Chinese children seemed to eat on the move.
    I sat at the top of a flight of steps leading down to the water. A month gone, I thought. A whole month gone, and I’ve done nothing. I must take myself in hand. I must bully myself.
    But no, that’s no use, I thought. I’ve already been bullying myself and it doesn’t work. You can’t bully yourself to paint. It’s like bullying yourself not to hear a ticking clock. The harder you try, the more the sound fastens itself into your ears.
    Sometimes will power is its own enemy, I thought. You can’t paint by will power.
    Yes, relax, I thought. It’s only when you relax, when you’re not trying to grab what you want, that you suddenly find it’s there. . . . I leaned on the sun-warmed stone. A rickshaw went by, the coolie’s broad grimy feet making a slapping sound on the road. Then my eyes fell on an illuminated sign among the shops. The blue neon tubes were twisted into the complicated, decorative shapes of Chinese characters. I recognized the last two. They meant hotel.
    Well, that’s more my cup of tea, I thought. And right on the water front. Of course, it would be perfect. So perfect that there must be a snag. Still, there’s no harm in trying.
    I got up and crossed the quay, and turned into the entrance under the blue neon. And still not a suspicion passed my mind. Indeed the hall gave the impression of such solid respectability, with the middle-aged clerk behind the reception counter, the old-fashioned rope-operated lift, the potted palms at the foot of the stairs, that I was reminded of some old family hotel in Bloomsbury, and felt discouraged. It was all wrong for the water front of Wanchai—and anyhow would probably be too expensive after all.
    I approached the desk and asked the clerk, “How much are rooms by the month?”
    â€œMonth?”
    The clerk’s fingers paused over the beads of his abacus: he had been making calculations from figures in his ledger, as though playing some musical instrument from a score. His Chinese gown, like a gray priest’s cassock, gave him an old-fashioned appearance in keeping with the potted palms, the antiquated lift. His head was shaven, and he had several silver teeth.
    â€œMonth?” he repeated.
    â€œYes, don’t you have monthly terms?”
    â€œHow long you want to stay?”
    â€œWell, it would be a month at least. . . .”
    He gave me an odd look, then dubiously began a new calculation on the abacus. The beads clicked up and down under his finger tips.
    â€œTwo hundred and seventy dollars,” he announced at last. “A month?”
    â€œYes—month.”
    The Hong Kong dollar was worth one shilling and threepence, so that was about seventeen pounds—a little dearer than Sunset Lodge, but with cheap meals I could just afford it. I asked to