A NIGHT IN MALAYA

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 32, 8 February 1939, Page 21

A NIGHT IN MALAYA

By H. C. WALTON

Short Story

IT wa* a hot night, oven for Malaya. Above tlic newsroom de»k an electric fan chugged lazily round, hut it ili<l little more than stir dead nil", heavy and stifling-. So I went to the open window, to seek what coolness misfit be coini;icr in from iht." .sea. 1 had time thus to slniiil tliere, for, surely unique auuii.u- the newspapers of the world, our-; d-d mil matter, to an hour or two, what time it went to press. Our only concern was to ca'ch a ferry boat that promptly at cm.»l it each morning steamed to the mainland n few miles away, where, sot unproiui>iiigly in what was once a mangrove swamp, began a railway that linked with all the Coloured Countries. So there was I, luxuriously idling, with tlu> clock well past in id nil; lit. the pages still unimide, and copy >t;ll unsubbed, when tllf'V camp a t;ip :it the oHiee door, and Abdul, the Malay hoy. was at my side, with a ivlii-perod. urgent "Tuan." • * • • ITe had news, big ne\w. to tell, which he did, in a torrent of .Malay. So 1 called Keng-pn, the Chinese office boy. who know both KnglWi and Malay. He passed on Abdul's story — "He says, sir, that an oning piiteh I has been murdered, *ir, by his wife, Abdul thinks, sir, and the plcecu have gone there, sir." , An orang puteh ... a white nian, a Kiiropoaii, perhaps even an Englishman, liad been murdered. (!<>e, a story! "Where' , " I interrupted Keii'j;. "Abdul says along the beach. -Ir, at Kampong Kuala, sir, on the oilier r-ido of the inland, eir, and his cousin told him, air." "Come on," I said to Keng. "Let's g°-" Wo got out the office ear and soon were sweeping along deserted ma U. to the sea, by little white houses M't in proves of palms, once by a t liinpsc ! temple whose protoeque roof* hung for a moment silhouetted agailHt tlie I moonlit sky. Murder? It seemed instead that here was high adventure. Suddenly Keng spoke. '"Kampong Kuala, sir, it is very near now. sir." I knew, vaguely, this village they called Kampong Kuala ... a huddle I of Malay huts, straddled on slius, by the banks of a briickixh stream jiwt where, in a inees of malaria-infesled mud, it joined the sea.

A strange place, purely, for a European to live, I thought. We slowed down, creaked over a trestle bridge, and <o into what, juswd for the main street of Kampong Kuala. Xot a soul was in «ight. The little Chineso stores were shuttered and silent. So Keng and I walked th- 1-ngth of the street, and into the palm grove beyond. And it nas then that we hoard that strange, eerie music that 1 «hall remember to the ond of my days. For, borne on the »oft airs tluit came drifting through the palms, came the notes of a piano. Someone, somewhere, wa« playing the Liebestraum. Even Keng was moved. "A piano, eir, why, sir?" Why. indeed! Why. against such an oxotic background, a piano'/ And why at two in the morning? And .v'iy the Li«*bestrtuirn ? We moved on in search of this strange player. But lirst we found a European police inspector. He must have heard us coming, tor suddenly his ehadow was upon us and a voice burst, "What in hec are you doing here?" "And what are you?" I countered, innocently. "Trying to stop that damn row." He waved vaguely in the direction of the Liebestraum. "A bad job, it is, too," he added. Then he went on, ''But it's not murder." "But " "Then you got it wrong, like I did. A Malay runner's mistake." Then, to Keng, he uttered a curt. "Stay here," and to me "Come alnand I found myself padding behind ; inspector, towards the sea. We must have walked a quarter of a mile before we came to the bungalow. It lay almost on the edge of the beach, low and squat, little better, in fact. than a Malay hut. But a light burned within and through the open door there poured the strains of the Liebestraum. The inspector motioned me inside. I saw the woman first —at the piano. Her back wae towards us, but elie did not turn. Passionately her fingers , strummed the keys. And her fingers. II noticed, were brown, and her hair was dark.

'•A half-caste girl," the inspector whi-pered. Ik- touched his forehead, sifjiiiiii-uiitly, and added: "Mad. Mad as a ' hatter." * He walked toward* hor. and stood for il iiioiiiunt liv tlic piano, where I joined him. For tlic first time I saw her eye?. They were the eye* of a wild thing, dark and ffleaniinjr. but unseeing. | The inspivtnr touehcil, very gently, her ; arm. "ll's ail riglit," he said. ""We will | loi>k aft it you. Wα are friends."' But thn girl brushed him away and wcni. on with her playing. The inspector turned to me. "Better .-(•c the wor.-t.' , he said. I went with him into an adjoining room. TIiPR! on (lie flfKir lay a middle-aged man, dead, with a bullet wound in his temple. Near him was, a revolver. "Miici<re." whispered the inspector. "Left a note." -XamcV '■(Irirdcm Williams. Ltv<yl with her—"' the in.-|ierlor corked his thumb towards the next ruuui. "Eurasian girl—the old story."' • • • • So this was Oordon Williams. I ha<l heard the men <liscu.-s him, discreetly, in the mess. "(Jone native,"' they said. And flu; the. j>ool , demented thing now playing in the next room, I had heard tiiem talk of her. "She's a beauty," and polite sniggers. J did not stay long in that room of death. A doctor was expected, and the inspector, glad. I think, of the excuse, sugge.-tcd waiting outside for him. And then the inspector told me the ctorv.

Williams, ex-publie schoolboy, exofficer, came East because the West got too hot to hold him. But he had one living grace—his passion for music. This pulsion had given him, for a time, a place in tlic little orchestra that played in our loval hotel. It had almost seemed then that he might become a man again.

But tlie kink in his brain that had harried him half across tlic world would not let him rest. He came on the job drunk, not once, but many times. And then lie hud met, tlic half-caste girl. ■

Some kindly streak in his nature had made him t»tick by her. And when his job at tlie hotel'fell through he had taken her, and bio. piano (lxnight, cheap, :it a Chinese junk store) to that lonely bungalow on the edge of the sea. away from his kind, breaking the last threads that held him to the Western world.

There lie had taught her to play, to | !>linr« will) him the one remaining passion of his life. Slowly, haltingly, she must have learned from him the Lie--1 lent ran m. j And now Williams lay with a bullet j in his brain because his mind had gone. Years of tropic heat, drink, drugs and recurrent bouts of malaria had at last brought their inevitable retribution. Ami the distraught girl, strumming away on the piano, was toppling on the. abyss. I looked at my watch. After three, and the moon was westering. But it didn't matt or. For I knew the tragedy of Cordon Williams would never get into the paper. The story had 'fallen down."' There wore some things—in that faroff outpost of Empire—that the newspapers would not print. And I knew that tho story of this illicit liaison of fiordon Williams was one. For what would the natives think? So, ruminating thus, I walked back to my car, picked up tho wondering Kong, and drove back to town.