XXIV

There was no difficulty, after all, in discovering a Mr. Ah Loi. The hotel people knew of him. Even a rickshaw man, when challenged, made almost satisfactory signs of intelligence. Colet viewed him suspiciously, speculating whether this was the genie of the night before, still hanging about in the hope of improved bewitchery. But Penang, on his first morning in Malaya, was superior to all the trickery of mortals. It was as fair as though this were the original daylight of the earth. The morning was certainly heated by a sun with pristine strength, but the air was perfumed, and it sparkled. He thought the sapphire between them and the island of Sumatra was younger, after all, than the tales of Marco Polo and the ancient voyagers. One junk was suspended in it, the first to explore that blue. As he rode through the bazaars and by the shrubberies beyond he was joyously confident that he was equal to the wiles of any Chinaman.

His man, this time, knew where to go, and turned in at a gateway flanked by a pair of porcelain beasts that were not dragons and ought not to have been dogs. Beyond a garden was a large pinkish house, not unlike a temple.

Its door was open, but the house, he was afraid, was deserted. Its interior smelt of teak, or some unusual wood. There was not a sound, except that of an insect making a dry whispering in the garden. The hall subdued its English visitor with its severe integrity, for its sombre panels receded in almost a bare perspective. It was relieved by only a few white silk hangings bearing delicate images of Buddha, water fowl, bamboos, and flowers. The tiled floor was muted with old rugs which made Colet forget, as he looked at them, why he had called. And he had called with the unthinking courage of a fellow bringing a bill of exchange. The fine texture and quiet of this interior began to reduce his confidence with the challenge of another order of things. There was no bell; should he clap his hands?

Apparently his thought had been heard, for a genie in a blue tunic approached him, and kowtowed in perfect gravity though it did not speak. It led him to an inner room and left him.

What at once was seen there, and nothing else, was a bowl of pale jade that appeared to give the silence a faint light, as though it were a lamp. It was honourably isolated and elevated, as though it were the significance of a poet. It was then that Colet noticed that the backs of his hands were not only moist with sweat, but a little hairy. He did not care to approach that luminous fragility; he looked about and saw by his side some shelves of books. They were as unusual as the bowl; perhaps they were even stranger, in that place. They were of European mathematics, philosophy, and theology, and though a chance collection of books on such subjects is placed, usually, where it will not be in the way, the names on the backs of those volumes betrayed a knowledge of the latest mental enterprises of the Occident which shook Colet’s confidence in the range of his own reading.

“You are interested in philosophy, Mr. Colet?”

How had that voice got there? Mr. Ah Loi was behind him. Interested in philosophy! Ah Loi had a friendly smile. He was a smile, but not much more than that; an interrogatory appraisement, tolerant and cheerful. His face was rather like his bowl of jade, delicate, pale, and bright. Colet would have preferred to wipe his hot large hands before taking the one which his host offered to him. This was confusing.

“It interested me to see those books here.”

“Why, Mr. Colet? Are they out of place?”

There it was. Colet knew his first words had been as hairy as his hands.

Ah Loi was not old. He was not young. His years were merely a clarity of the spirit. He spoke English as though his home overlooked an Oxford precinct. Behind him, no doubt the portière through which he had entered the room, were crimson silk hangings; they dropped in heavy folds from the high ceiling and were waved on the floor. They were lettered in gold with Chinese characters, and embroidered figures of men and dragons were ambushed in their coils. The slight figure of Ah Loi, in his western suit of linen, cool and friendly, with that draping of old China for his background, was as noticeable as a gentle word. Of course, Colet thought, this blessed Chinaman had those European books here to learn what the rude children were doing, when out of sight.

“The truth is, Mr. Ah Loi, I only looked at these books because I had not the courage to go closer to your fine bowl there.”

“That? That bowl? Come and handle it. Such things are made to be touched, as well as looked at. The touch should know as much as the eye.”

Colet nerved himself and turned the bowl about. He realised that its frailty was but simplicity and strength, which were unctuous and cool. Ah Loi took it, and replaced it.

“Sometimes,” said the Chinaman, “I have wondered whether Western culture turned into chimney smoke because of a neglected sense of touch. You see, you must pause and weigh it, when you handle an object. You have time to change your mind.”

The man in the blue tunic was there again, and Ah Loi spoke to him. The servant brought in bottles, ice, and a syphon.

“You will have a stengah, Mr. Colet?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Then you are certainly new to this country. It is a small whisky and soda, the half of a tonic, as you say. A Malay word. It means ‘half.’ But you English use it, besides for whisky, for a person of mixed blood.”

“Thank you. But no stengah for me, if you please. Not now.”

“You have been in Penang only five minutes.” Ah Loi was amused. “Wait till Norrie comes,” he added. “At one time we Chinamen, who find it not easy to understand, kept champagne for our English guests. We heard so much about champagne that we thought it must be the same as your happiness. But now it is whisky. Well, let us talk about Norrie. He is our friend. You know him very well?”

“No. Only a little.”

“A little of him is good.”

“I met him on the voyage out.”

“He is going to Pahang?”

“I don’t know quite what he intends to do.”

Ah Loi looked at his bowl.

“Nobody knows that. But he is going round to the other side of the peninsula, and he will know why. I like Norrie. He would have been the same as a Cantonese. Yet he is a Londoner.”

“He has no place, then?”

“Yes. It is all his place. It is all one. He knows.”

“Well, Mr. Ah Loi, I should like to know. What is it one has to know?”

“I think perhaps you know too. But the best things have no name.”

“Not even such as that bowl? What about that?”

“Of course not. That is but a sign.”

“Then we cannot talk about them.”

“Oh yes. We do little else, when we are together, but they are not named. What shall we say, shall we say they are the communion? Come and see my porcelain. You will stay to tiffin?”

Colet, for an hour, received glimpses into a past which heartened him with a confirmation of his nebulous and shifting faith. Even a glaze for porcelain could persist, like the thought of an anonymous benevolence. Once he expressed a poignant concern for the safety of these lovely shapes and colours. Ah Loi did not altogether sympathise with him.

“They may all go, some day. There are accidental fires, and men riot. The world is rough, and it is careless. The world is abundant. But you see, Mr. Colet, these things have been done, and so they cannot be lost. They have been added, and they cannot be taken out of the sum. Tell me why it was your Shakespeare did not think it worth the trouble to preserve his poetry? I think that is the strangest thing about Shakespeare. That is why he is the most significant poet. Perhaps that indifference is his greatest gift to us.”

The Englishman supposed that they were alone in the house, but Mrs. Ah Loi met them at tiffin, and Colet’s memory of precious rarities went in a new confusion. She was not a Malay, though slender in a green sarong and a white muslin tunic. The gold buttons of her tunic were her only adornment. She was hardly Chinese, and certainly not English, even with that abundance of brown hair. The simple cordiality and assurance of her greeting meant that she was well used to visitors. She accepted Colet as though he were a frequent guest, but that made her fastidious hand no easier to grasp. She spoke to her husband with a droll mimicry of indifference. Where had he been all the morning? There had been stengahs, of course, and before midday, too. Colet saw that her banter disclosed a glint of serious intent. Ah Loi assured her that not a cork had been disturbed. She then gave Colet an innocent glance, not of disbelief, but of surprise. Ah Loi convinced her.

“Mr. Colet has not been long in Penang. He got here only last night. Give him a little more time, my love.”

“Yes, but is he not a friend of Mr. Norrie?” She pronounced the vowels of the name with a comically slow precision. Ah Loi avoided a mention of Norrie.

“We have been talking of Kuan-yin and much else.”

“It is pleasant to talk of her; but Mr. Colet, he does not know her.”

“Oh, but he does.”

“He is a collector?” There was a shade of anticipated disappointment in her voice.

“Oh no. He admires.”

“Then I shall like you, Mr. Colet.”

The more attractive a woman is, the more the resolution needed to look at her; their laughter was freedom to Colet for a candid glance at beauty that was unusual and debateable. Others might not like it. Beauty may cause a little fear. Her dark eyes were large for so small a face, and their soft uncritical light gave Colet a suspicion that she could penetrate to the thoughts at the back of his head. Her eyes, which only seemed slow because their lids were a trifle sleepy, did not rest on one’s face, though they looked at it. She listened, but not so much to what you said as to your reservations; or else she pondered childishly, finding it difficult to understand. (Don’t deceive yourself, Colet thought; she understands very well.) Her face was wide for that delicate chin. But then, of course, her brow had to find room for those eyes. Only the rather high cheekbones were faintly tinctured with colour. She would have been a rarity in the court of Kubla. The nose was the more diminished by the bold curves of her lips, which really looked like the Orient.

Colet began to speak of Norrie, but Mr. Ah Loi smiled uneasily, moving an object or two about the table.

“My wife does not like him. Norrie is a little different for each of us.”

“A little? Mr. Norrie is evil,” she said.

Her husband protested ardently.

“No, no. He is not that. I know what you mean. He is naughty, but he is not evil.”

“Yet you tell me he understands.”

“Yes, and for me, that saves him. He is a sad man, for he knows too much, but he had accepted so very little. He is a little amused by all the gods. I am sorry for Norrie.”

“I like him, too, when I am talking to him,” she confessed. “But not after. Then I remember that he knows, yet smiles. He is only polite to you,” she advised her husband, “but he smiles when he goes away.”

“I know he does.” Ah Loi admitted it. “I know him. Yes. There is no ultimate value, for him. Think of that. It has been killed by his science, which is⁠—what is it?⁠—the formulation of dirt. He must pay for that, of course. But he does not understand the penalty.”

“Then he doesn’t understand after all,” she challenged.

“Well, no, not the last things. We must lose all the first good things if we do not understand the last. It is sad not to have ears to hear, especially if one hears so well as Norrie.”