This morning he was leaving with Norrie for the other side of the peninsula. What was to come of that was as speculative as being born, for Malaya was to him what the latencies are about a child playing hopscotch, and Norrie was as debatable as poker or immortality. It was as good as just coming into the world. The liveliness of Penang that morning was the celebration of nativity, the perennial birthday, old earth a cherub again and having another cut at it. Their rickshaws had to stop to allow a Chinese wedding to pass. That was the way to do it. No bare certificate of legitimacy, with a registrar’s stamp, for these people, not even for the additional third wife. The regiment of forerunners of the joy were in scarlet, hats and all, as exceptional as the oncoming of an Olympian circus. They cleared the way for musicians in pale blue robes, with stringed instruments wailing bliss. The bride, if it was the bride, was a large doll with dark hypnotic eyes in a face of porcelain, a capricious crown holding her head firm on her neck, and her turquoise silk dress a call to extravagance for the poor in spirit and the homespun.
Norrie was damning his coolie for pausing to watch the procession. He wanted to get aboard; but it was unfair to expect a man to dodge a bit of luck like that. It isn’t a Malay morning every day of the year. Now if all cities were as Penang, then there would be no reason to regret Ithaca and the young days of Ulysses. Our birthright would be as plain as a sign given by the gods. To think this coast had been here always, waiting for whoever doubted the earth was planned for asphalt and regrets, while there he used to be, clanking his chains west of Aldgate Pump, dutiful as an old soldier grateful for the workhouse and skilly. Colet went up the gangway, and saw the leisurely smoke from the funnel of his small coasting steamer as though it were the beckoning of the original Argo.
XXVI
Norrie was taciturn. He had hardly spoken that morning. It was noticeable, too, to his companion, that he was very generous in the confined space of that cabin for two with the broad of his back, which was in no hurry to get out of the way. He was a little testy over the refractory angles of events. Sometimes it was an angle of Colet’s. His white jacket was showing the damp smutch of the heat. He peeled it off and flung it down, and then the cabin became mordant with an alien smell. Colet was aware of a distinct and opposite being, weighty and offensively otherwise, to which all his sympathy did not naturally flow.
Not all, but some, for the leisurely presence of Norrie was a warrant of literal meaning. Norrie was a cunning centre of gravity, never overset in the drift of light chances. You could hold on to him. He accepted and named events, often not vouchsafing them a glance, with melancholy understanding, as though he had known them before Homer. He dismissed occasions which perplexed Colet with droll epithets, though sadly tolerant and broody. All the same, then he was in the way.
They continued to stow their properties for the voyage. Neither spoke. Back to back, they kept impeding each other, forgetfully. Colet wondered whether men were not better apart; might not admire each other more if they were not in contact. Ought to have separate cubicles. Each man had a different aura. What did Norrie think of his? The aura was worse on a close morning. Better to be alone.
They bumped again, and Norrie put out a hand to steady himself. Colet felt aggrieved; it was all Norrie’s fault.
“Don’t mind me, Colet. And don’t hit me. I’m simply intolerable most mornings. I couldn’t be civil to the sweetest young thing in the morning.”
He stretched, wiped his face, looked round.
“Now, where’s that blessed bag with my maps? Where is it?”
“What’s it like? If it’s maps, we must find it.”
“I should just think we must. It’s got some whisky in it, and I simply can’t drink trade poison. I wouldn’t change it for all the commercial substitutes in the ship.”
“This it?”
“That’s right. Put it in my bunk. We shall want it. No other way to shorten this voyage.”
“Need we shorten it? But you’ve done it before.”
“And before that. In and out of the mangrove swamps. When I die, I shall be shoved into a mangrove swamp with an empty bottle, to sweat forever, and nobody to talk to but the sort of people you meet at a ship’s saloon table. You just think of that. It would make a man virtuous, even if he had a long time to live.”
Norrie reclined on the settee.
“I wonder whether Ah Loi telegraphed for berths on the Singapore steamer. We shall have to change there. But of course he did.”
“He certainly did, if he said he would. I like your friend the Chinaman.”
“That shows your good taste. That Chink reduces most Europeans to the texture of clay pots. He’s rather too rare, for my taste. Strictly speaking, he oughtn’t to have a body. He’s only a subtle appreciation of refinements. Yet he seems to enjoy life. Did you see his wife?”
“She was at table.”
“She was? Then you really were honoured. She won’t always eat before me. I’m too coarse. You’ve never seen anything like her, so don’t say you have. I mean alive, and walking about.”
“No. Not in great numbers. I felt large and cumbersome.”
“She doesn’t know it, but I’d go without food just to look at her. I’d be as good as gold. She doesn’t know I’ve got the heart of a poet under a most unlikely outside.”
“What is she?”
“I should call her a masterpiece. But the best people out here, they say she is a
