swooped upon the audience, for the home guard were enjoying the Cantonese-dubbed film as much as everyone else. They dealt with the matter severely, seizing the culprits by the ear and slinging them under the tulang trees.
After Tarzan had conquered the African tribe and brought the film to its exciting climax, Charles requested that everyone remain sitting. The thousand-headed monster groaned. It was half past eight – bedtime for most, and bladders needed emptying. In this climate of discontent the documentary flickered into being. Whether it was any good or not, I don’t know. I was busy rereading my speech and jittering with nerves. I’d read the speech in English translation to Charles that afternoon, pacing back and forth in the sauna heat of the bungalow as he sat flaccid in his wicker chair. Charles shut his eyes as I read aloud, and when I paused between sentences my gaze would stray to the open lower buttons of his shirt and the pale blancmange of his paunch.
‘Forgive me, old chap,’ he said with a yawn, when I’d asked for his verdict, ‘it’s too damn sticky to applaud.’
Encouraged thus, I climbed upon the wooden crate podium at the end of the documentary.
Hey, there’s that big-nosed devil Christopher
, villagers called.
Hey, Christopher! Can we go home now? We’ve got to go to work in the morning
. The night was humid as ever and the underarms of my shirt patched with damp. The projector lamp illuminated the screen still and my pupils flinched in the glare, the audience diminishing to an impenetrable mass of darkness and eyes. In the expectant hush, my speech began. I described the importance of the village council, and the process by which it was to be established. I declared it a momentous day for The Village of Everlasting Peace.
‘We need twelve nominations,’ I said. ‘Those who wish to nominate, please raise your hands. When we have twelve candidates you may go home.’
I hadn’t used a loudhailer (believing such contraptions to distance the speaker from the audience) and with an aching throat I shaded my eyes and squinted into the darkness for a hand held aloft. The shadow-masked masses also peered to see who’d defy the People Inside and support the hare-brained Foreign Devil scheme. One brave and solitary hand went up as a villager called Timmy Lo made a self-nomination. I knew Timmy Lo well, for he was a good man – a stalwart digger of ditches and builder of huts, pulling the weight of two and a half men. Timmy and I were good chums and it always cheered me to see his affable, round-as-a-cantaloupe face. As Special Constable Tahir jotted down Timmy’s name there was a hissing in the audience, like air let stealthily out of a tyre, but to my relief no more objection after that.
But I’d underestimated the ominous threat of that hiss. Timmy Lo was not the scree preceding the avalanche of nominations. He was the one and only candidate of the night. For another twenty minutes I paced before the villagers, calling for nominees and arguing the hypothetical good of democracy. And with the tick-tock of every minute my humiliation deepened. I felt as though I were pleading with a lover who wanted nothing more to do with me, a lover whom I repulsed (oh, bitter taste of things to come!). The villagers became bolder in their mutterings and curses. They may have been in the square against their will, but they still had the freedom to move their tongues.
‘Who is this impostor?’ a woman cried. ‘Where is Mr Christopher, our friend?’
‘Hah! That’ll teach you to befriend an Imperialist whore!’ heckled an unseen man.
‘My boy will piddle his pants in a minute!’ another voice piped up.
Cheeks aflame, I searched the crowd for a lifted hand, desperate as a sailor lost at sea scanning the horizon for land. Who were my allies? Not the yawning home guard. Not Vorpal the projectionist, impatient to pack up his equipment and leave. Not Resettlement Officer Dulwich, flipping open his
After Tarzan had conquered the African tribe and brought the film to its exciting climax, Charles requested that everyone remain sitting. The thousand-headed monster groaned. It was half past eight – bedtime for most, and bladders needed emptying. In this climate of discontent the documentary flickered into being. Whether it was any good or not, I don’t know. I was busy rereading my speech and jittering with nerves. I’d read the speech in English translation to Charles that afternoon, pacing back and forth in the sauna heat of the bungalow as he sat flaccid in his wicker chair. Charles shut his eyes as I read aloud, and when I paused between sentences my gaze would stray to the open lower buttons of his shirt and the pale blancmange of his paunch.
‘Forgive me, old chap,’ he said with a yawn, when I’d asked for his verdict, ‘it’s too damn sticky to applaud.’
Encouraged thus, I climbed upon the wooden crate podium at the end of the documentary.
Hey, there’s that big-nosed devil Christopher
, villagers called.
Hey, Christopher! Can we go home now? We’ve got to go to work in the morning
. The night was humid as ever and the underarms of my shirt patched with damp. The projector lamp illuminated the screen still and my pupils flinched in the glare, the audience diminishing to an impenetrable mass of darkness and eyes. In the expectant hush, my speech began. I described the importance of the village council, and the process by which it was to be established. I declared it a momentous day for The Village of Everlasting Peace.
‘We need twelve nominations,’ I said. ‘Those who wish to nominate, please raise your hands. When we have twelve candidates you may go home.’
I hadn’t used a loudhailer (believing such contraptions to distance the speaker from the audience) and with an aching throat I shaded my eyes and squinted into the darkness for a hand held aloft. The shadow-masked masses also peered to see who’d defy the People Inside and support the hare-brained Foreign Devil scheme. One brave and solitary hand went up as a villager called Timmy Lo made a self-nomination. I knew Timmy Lo well, for he was a good man – a stalwart digger of ditches and builder of huts, pulling the weight of two and a half men. Timmy and I were good chums and it always cheered me to see his affable, round-as-a-cantaloupe face. As Special Constable Tahir jotted down Timmy’s name there was a hissing in the audience, like air let stealthily out of a tyre, but to my relief no more objection after that.
But I’d underestimated the ominous threat of that hiss. Timmy Lo was not the scree preceding the avalanche of nominations. He was the one and only candidate of the night. For another twenty minutes I paced before the villagers, calling for nominees and arguing the hypothetical good of democracy. And with the tick-tock of every minute my humiliation deepened. I felt as though I were pleading with a lover who wanted nothing more to do with me, a lover whom I repulsed (oh, bitter taste of things to come!). The villagers became bolder in their mutterings and curses. They may have been in the square against their will, but they still had the freedom to move their tongues.
‘Who is this impostor?’ a woman cried. ‘Where is Mr Christopher, our friend?’
‘Hah! That’ll teach you to befriend an Imperialist whore!’ heckled an unseen man.
‘My boy will piddle his pants in a minute!’ another voice piped up.
Cheeks aflame, I searched the crowd for a lifted hand, desperate as a sailor lost at sea scanning the horizon for land. Who were my allies? Not the yawning home guard. Not Vorpal the projectionist, impatient to pack up his equipment and leave. Not Resettlement Officer Dulwich, flipping open his
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