He refused praise. I would say, “A very nice rendition of ‘Roses from the South.’”
“Hopeless. But what to do? Ratnam can’t read music.”
“It was very bouncy. I’ve never heard it played bouncy before.”
“Fast tempo — I think it suits your house. But Pillay was dragging his feet. We need much practice.” And pinching the waxy tails of his mustache, he’d add, “We shall have umple of trouble with more tricky numbers.”
Weerakoon persuaded me to redecorate the front lounge and turn it into a music room. He had me print a concert card with the selections and intervals listed on it, menu fashion: he propped this on a music stand at the door. The orchestra had the effect Mr. Sim obtained by swallowing live mice — it fixed restless seamen into postures of calm, and later they told me Dunroamin had class. I could see them from the bar, where I stood to greet fellers arriving: a row of rough-looking men with sunburned arms, sitting and listening attentively on the folding chairs. And all night the scree-scree from the music room took the curse off the banging bedroom doors and the noisy plumbing, the creaky bedsprings and quacking fans, and that loud way the girls had of washing, sluicing themselves with dippers and gargling at the same time.
The Singapore residents, clubbable ones especially, flattered themselves that the Palm Court orchestra was for them, though some complained, calling Weerakoon and the others “greasy babu fiddlers.” Some said I should sack them and get a couple of girls to put on a show. But I resisted these suggestions — sex exhibitions saddened me nearly as much as blue movies: this panicky nakedness was desire’s dead end. The Palm Court orchestra, central to what I came to think of as my little mission station — a necessary comfortable house on the island outpost — was for the seamen. I had discovered something about them that I had been too obtuse or distracted to grasp on the Allegro: most men who go to sea are quiet and conservative by nature, an attitude that is fostered by the small protected community on a ship where the slightest disorder can be fatal; even the youngest have elderly cautious tastes — pipe-smoking and hobbies — and few read newspapers; most are anxious in the company of women and very shy on land, natural drunkards and rather unsociable. It was for them that Mr. Weerakoon practiced the waltz from Swan Lake, and he encouraged them to make requests after he finished the selections listed on the concert card. Then, a seaman with a ruined face would lean over, making his wooden chair squawk, and in a gravelly voice ask for “Brightly Shines Our Wedding Day” or “Time on My Hands.”
My girls passed out cold towels from trays or leaned against the walls with their thin pale arms folded, or scuffed back and forth in the flapping broken slippers they always wore. In many ways, though it was not my wish — I was still groping to understand my job — Dunroamin was a traditional establishment, with cold towels, hot towels, glasses of tea, offering a massage at five dollars extra and all drinks more expensive than in a downtown bar; the oldest and frailest amahs did the heaviest work — yoked themselves to buckets of water and tottered upstairs to fill the huge stone shower jars, scrubbed sheets on the washboards out back, or boiled linen, which they stirred with wooden paddles, in frothy basins of hot evil-smelling water on the kitchen stove. In those same basins, after a quick rinse, they made mee-hoon soup and ladeled it out to the customers who demanded “real Chinese food.”
Dunroamin worked smoothly, but it was older than my devising: the system of payment — the chit pads in the bar, the shakedown in the bedroom — the jaga at the front gate (Ganapaty, who said, “I am a dog, only here to bark”), the thickly waxed oxblood-colored floors in the graceful white house, camouflaged by vast Angsana trees that dripped tiny yellow blossoms, flanked by servants’ quarters and a carriage shed; sloping rattan chairs with leg rests on the top floor verandah, the light knock on my back room and (though I insisted they call me Jack) the soft cry of “Tuan” with the morning tea, the skill of the Indian musicians and Weerakoon’s habit of saying “Blast” when he played a wrong note — it was all a colonial inheritance, and it had fallen to me. But if my whorehouse was a scale model of the imperial dream, I justified my exploitation by adding to it humor and generous charity, and by making everyone welcome.
What Chinese fellers visited, mostly embarrassed businessmen with names like Elliot Ching and Larry Woo, did so for the same reason the rest of the Chinese stayed away — because my girls made love to redheads. I watched from my corner of the long bar, near the telephone and Ganapaty’s emergency buzzer, greeting arrivals with, “Glad you could make it — what can I do you for?” and later watched them go down the gravel drive, each one depleted, rumpled from having dressed hurriedly — their ties and sometimes their socks stuffed in their back pockets — and wearing the pink face people associate with outrage but which I knew to be the meekness that comes after spending energy in a harmless way. It was pleasant to see them leave with new faces and I was flattered and reassured by their promises of generosity: “If there’s ever anything I can do for you, Jack—”
But I was the host. “Just settle your bar bill at the end of the month, thank you, and a very good night to you all.”
I got up early. In my pajamas at a sunny desk I totaled the previous night’s receipts and checked to see that the bar was well stocked and the rooms were clean — in each room a girl would be brushing her hair before a mirror, a houseful of girls brushing: it cheered me. It was a strenuous round of ordering and overseeing, making sure the laundry was done, the pilferage recorded, the grass cut, the house presentable; then, I took my shower, cut across the cemetery to Lower Bukit Timah Road and caught the number 4 Green Line bus to Beach Road, and climbed onto the stool in my little cubicle and took orders from Hing.
In the days when I had hustled on the street and in bars, saying “Kinda hot” to likely strangers, I was glad of the safety of Hing’s. I knew my job as a water clerk well enough to be able to do it easily. And though the money was nothing (any of my girls earned more in a week), the stool where I hooked my heels and pored over the shipping pages of the Straits Times was important. It was the basis for my visa, a perfect alibi, and a place to roost. But the success of Dunroamin made me consider quitting Hing’s.
I continued to get friendly promises of attention from the fellers who came to Dunroamin, yet my relationship with them remained a hustler-client one. I was a regular visitor to the clubs and knew most of the members; in the shipping offices of the Asia Insurance Building and in the Maritime Building, fellers called me by my first name and said how nice it was to see me. But they never stopped to pass the time of day. The talks I had with them took place at prearranged times and for a specific purpose; and I was seldom introduced to their friends. I was careful not to remind them that I knew more about them than their wives — and seeing them with their wives, by chance after a movie or at a cricket match at the Padang, it amazed me that the fellers came to Dunroamin: their wives were beautiful smiling girls (it was about this time that I had my fling with the Tanglin Club wife whom I reported as being “ever so nice”). My quickness might have disturbed the fellers. My attention to detail in arranging for girls to be sent out to ships or for club members to make a discreet visit in a trishaw for a tumble at Dunroamin could have been interpreted as somewhat suspicious, a kind of criminal promptitude, I think, the blackmailer’s dogged precision. Still, most of the fellers insisted I should get in touch if I ever had a problem.