On Java Road by Lawrence Osborne

Author:Lawrence Osborne [Osborne, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2022-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

We ordered three Peking ducks because the Australian insisted, and extra bulletins of the heavy, doughy pancakes for which Spring Deer is known. Moyers had also ordered sea cucumbers and steamed ham.

“So you came from the hospital?” Moyers said to Cunningham directly, his eyes narrowing on a target inside the other man’s emotions.

“Editor’s orders.”

“I told Sonny here it wasn’t worth going—it served that ankle biter right and everyone knows it. It’s time we stopped glorifying protesters with coverage. I know Gyle here will disagree but I’ve seen the footage. That kid was throwing bricks, for Christ’s sake.”

“Bricks versus bullets,” I said. “A fine contest.”

“No, a brick can kill a man. Easy.”

Cunningham shook Bawa’s hand. “How are you, Sonny? I haven’t seen you much on the street.”

The Sri Lankan was cool and feline in his way, and a faint smile came to the lips.

“Oh, they’re all the same after a while, those events. I got bored of them. I have problematic lungs, too. Enough is enough.”

“I hear you. I haven’t been out much myself,” Cunningham said.

“What about you?” Bawa said to me.

“I’ve been laying low.”

“Myself,” Moyers said, continuing his own train of thought, “I think they should bring in the tanks.”

Cunningham took off his jacket and slung it over his chair and I saw that his shirt was rotten with accumulated sweat.

“Tanks,” he muttered, “always the solution.”

Moyers turned to Bawa:

“Cunny here has seen a lot of tanks. But he’s better known for his sexual practices with ladies of the night. I say of the night, but in fact he doesn’t mind ladies of the day as well.”

“He’s calling me a musketeer,” Cunningham said to me. “But my musketeering days are long over. I sit by the radio now.”

“That’s where you belong. Gyle, looks like you just got a dose of the old pepper. You want me to pour a bottle over your head?”

“I think that would be unpleasant.”

“Is that right? So did you get to see the weasel in his hospital bed?”

“Not even close.”

“I thought not. You wasted your time, then.”

Bawa said, “All the same. I hope they arrest him when he’s patched up.”

Moyers was done up in a poplin suit with wide lapels, his stomach bursting forth in a riot of mother-of-pearl buttons. Before the troubles he hadn’t been a bad sort, but civil unrest was always bad for business and his accounts had suffered. Like many expats, the indigenous youth irritated him with their tendency to demolish Chinese banks and branches of Starbucks licensed to Maxim’s Caterers. The latter were reviled for their sympathies with Beijing. I imagined he hadn’t been so vehement a few months earlier but crisis had drawn out the inner man, as it always does. After a few minutes his initial vehemence subsided and I asked him what he had been doing with himself during the days of riot and abandon.

“Me? Nothing different. But Sonny here had an interesting day. Didn’t you, Sonny?”

Sonny had not gone to the hospital, it was true, but he had gone to a morgue all the same.

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