And now on the dusky green-curtained stage came Sir Moksa himself, in white sharkskin, greeted by resolute applause from a corner of the hall, who sat down and then got up again to call for a cloth to wipe the dusty chairs. Mr Poh Cho-yee and a few other bespectacled and rotund businessmen of the local Chamber of Commerce filed in, also wiped their chairs, and sat, framing Sir Moksa and a table covered with pale blue linoleum on which stood six bottles of Green Spot, a local orangeade, uncorked, with straws emergent ready to be sipped.

The manager of the cinema and his thin son, the local photographer, weighed down with three cameras and trailed by a small boy with lighting apparatus, now adjusted the microphone; two nieces of Sir Moksa, in apple-green organdie, with fresh perma-nents and rouged cheeks, garlanded him with flowers, a wreath enveloped with glittering translucent paper letting out frangipani perfume through tiny holes.

‘All set?’ asked Sir Moksa, when the last photograph of Mr Poh Cho-yee shaking hands with him (Mr Poh owned the cinema) had been taken. ‘Now we can begin, yes?’

But he couldn’t, for up and down the middle aisle like a bustling collector at church went Mr Bee, squat and strenuous and steaming, whose function in life was to belong to committees and to organize inauguration ceremonies. Mr Bee’s energy was tremendous (‘I belong to forty-one committees, man, forty-one, lah’), and perhaps what pleased him most about his displays of vitality and public spirit was that none of his efforts ever came to anything. He never prognosticated less than total failure, and was invariably right.

‘You know,’ he said happily, shaking his head at me as he seated two or three government officials recruited within the last half-hour to fill the seats, ‘I don’t think pip will last more than three months, maybe six, if they’ve got funds.’ He rushed down to throw out a hawker edging his food-stall in, came back, signalled to Mr Poh and pointed at his watch to signify more wait-ing, and added: ‘You know, man, we aren’t as foolish or as stupid as Government thinks. We’re even getting cleverer, I’m telling you. We have got eyes in our heads. We don’t want anything that’s got too much of Government’s hands behind it, pushing … lah,’ and glared away from the overhanging rows of police officials, presenting the square back of his grizzly head at them. And suddenly blew out his cheeks, again seized with agitation, and stalked round shushing more people into chairs and ordering young boys on incomprehensible errands.