Read Online Island of Demons by Nigel Barley - Free Book Online

took a machete and chopped up all the sea slugs he could find around his boat. When he came back the next day, the pieces had all joined up again, healed and bore no scars. So, people realised the oil from the slug made the body heal itself.” He daily rubbed generous amounts into my wounds in a curiously maternal way. It stank like rotten fish. “What a monkey hurts, a sea slug heals.” For him, it was all part of the neatness and balance of life, a divine design that worked. For me, it was his gentle fingers that healed.
    For the rest of the ship I had ceased to exist, bearing my albatross of shame around my neck. Van Gennep evaded me, seemingly always at the elbow of paterfamilias Niemeyer and complicit in his looks of contempt. From the troubled and guilty eyes of the eldest daughter, I suspected his pursuit might be progressing nicely.
    At Singapore, Miss Timms left us with a clutter of old bags and umbrellas, being met by a choir of Chinese children on the quayside who sang Christmas carols in the hot sun in incomprehensible English. “Ha car hear all anger sing, Gory toad a nude porking.”
    She expressed her thanks by throwing down handfuls of boiled sweets rather as Cleopatra must have cast down rubies from her scented barge. “I have not quite forgiven you for your conduct in Colombo, Mr Bonnet. At a time when I was in need of your help as a good Samaritan you chose, instead, to go off and become drunk as the Prodigal Son.”
    I thought of the many complexities of the story of the monkey and decided that the strength of her compassion greatly exceeded that of her comprehension.
    â€œI sincerely apologise Miss Timms.”
    She softened at once. “Well, that being the case, no great harm was done.” She looked down and clasped her handkerchief to her nose. “Do you know, Mr Bonnet, I am suddenly aware of the most appalling smell. I do believe they have stored my luggage next to some fish that was not at all fresh and it has become permanently tainted.”
    I had arranged to meet Hamid just beyond the dock gates of the new terminal building and far from the prying eyes of Van Gennep and other Pharisees. It was my first time in a large Southeast Asian city and I was alive to sights, sounds and sensations crowding in on me, the sheer number of people, the density of the throng, the mix of Chinese, Indian and Malay under a European flag. Only later would I learn that what I saw as Malays shivered into a dozen other identities: Buginese, Boyar, Madurese, Dayak and so on.
    We spent a happy day visiting the landmarks of the city, crushed side by side in a rickshaw, myself only too aware of the sweat where his thigh pressed against mine. I knew better than to take him to the Raffles Hotel or some other Western haunt where he would feel uncomfortable and eyebrows would be raised against us. The Islamic restaurant in Arab Street met our needs, my first and best mutton biryani, with Hamid soothed by the big halal signs in green tiles and being able to eat with his hands, not inconvenient forks and spoons. Then, back to the rickshaw, Hamid with shining eyes and shaking drips of water from his fingers …
    â€œWe cannot go to the animal garden, kakak , to find monkeys for you to fight with. They do not have one here. Instead we must look for cocks. A friend on the ship gave me an address.”
    Ah no. I know what you are thinking but you must remember that I was taking my first halting steps in Malay, a sensible tongue, where Hamid’s term, ayam , has no hidden undertones or sordid double entendres , being merely an innocent thing of beak and feathers. I can be quite sure of that since I had not mastered the word and Hamid had to mime it with elaborate beating of elbows and cock-a-doodle-doing so that the rickshaw-puller, pounding between the shafts, stared round in wonder, stumbled and nearly needed the application of sea slugs.
    That afternoon was my introduction to the Malay