Saint Jack by Paul Theroux Read Free Book Online

front of my suit.
    â€œThat steward,” said Gunstone, shaking his head. “The most intelligent thing I ever heard him say was, ‘If you move your lump of ice cream a bit to the right,
Tuan
, you will find a strawberry.’ God help us.”
    I laughed and brushed my jacket. “Still,” I said, “I wouldn’t mind joining this club.”
    â€œYou don’t want to join this club,” said Gunstone.
    â€œI do,” I said, and saw myself lying in the sun, by the pool, and one of those tanned long-legged women whispering urgently, “Jack, where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere for you.
It’s all set.
”
    â€œWhy, whatever for?”
    â€œA place to go, I suppose,” I said. The Bandung’s only publicity was the matchboxes Wallace Thumboo had printed with the slogan,
There’s Always Someone You Know at the Bandung!
    Gunstone chuckled. “If they can pronounce your name you can join.”
    â€œFlowers is pretty easy.”
    â€œI should say so!”
    But Fiori isn’t, I thought. And Fiori was my name, Flowers an approximation and a mask.
    â€œNow,” said Gunstone, looking at his watch, “how about dessert?”
    Gunstone’s joke: it was time to fetch Djamila.
    The old-timers, I found, tended to prefer Malays, while the newcomers went for the Chinese, and the Malays preferred each other. The Chinese clients, of whom I had several, liked the big-boned Australian girls; Germans were fond of Tamils, and the English fellers liked anything young, but preferred their girls boyish and their women mannish. British sailors from H.M.S.
Terror
enjoyed fighting each other in the presence of transvestites. Americans liked clean sporty ones, to whom they would give nicknames, like “Skeezix” and “Pussycat” (the English made an effort to learn the girl’s real name), and would spend a whole afternoon trying to teach one of my girls how to swim in a hotel pool, although it was costing them fifteen dollars an hour to do it. Americans also went in for a lot of hugging in the taxi, smooching and kidding around, and sort of stumbling down the sidewalk, gripping the girl hard and saying, “Aw, honey, whoddle ah do?” Later they wrote them letters, and the girls pestered me to help them reply.
    Djamila—“Jampot,” an American feller used to call her, and it suited her—was very reliable and easy to contact. She was waiting by the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank with my trusty suitcase as we pulled up in the taxi. I hopped out and opened the door for her, then got into the front seat and put the suitcase between my knees. Djamila climbed in with Gunstone and sat smiling, rocking her handbag in her lap.
    Smiling is something girls with buck teeth seldom do with any pleasure; Djamila showed hers happily, charming things, very white in her broad mouth. She had small ears, a narrow moonlit face, large darting eyes, and heavy eyebrows. A slight girl, even skinny, but having said that one would have to add that her breasts were large and full, her bum high and handsome as a pumpkin. Her breasts were her virtue, the virtue of most of my Malay girls; unlike the Chinese bulbs that disappeared in a frock fold, these were a pair of substantial jugs, something extra that moved and made a rolling wobble of her walk. That was the measure of acceptable size, that bobbing, one a second later than the other, each responding to the step of Djamila’s small feet. Her bottom moved on the same prompting, but in a different rhythm, a wonderful agitation in the willowy body, a glorious heaving to and fro, the breasts nodding above the black lace of the tight-waisted blouse, the packed-in bum lifting, one buttock pumping against the other, creeping around her sarong as she shuffled, showing her big teeth.
    â€œJack, you looking very smart,” said Djamila. “New suit and what not.”
    â€œI put it on for you,