Anna Doesn't Live Here

John Crane, manager of the East Asiatic Timber and Mining Co., does not feel as if he is carrying the white man's burden. He is fond of the indolent Siamese town of Luang Nakon, where he makes his headquarters. He likes the routine of his work and the evening drinks at the run-down sahibs' club. He enjoys his friendship with the only non-white member of the club, Major Chai Wut, the police chief. But in 1953, John Crane faces upheaval, knows it and resents it. "Why are they telling us to go?" he asks Major Chai. "I don't only mean us, the English, but white men everywhere?"

The major's answer sets the underlying mood of Briton Norman Lewis' knowledgeable novel about one sahib's last stand in the Far East. Framing his reply as "what others are saying," Major Chai says: "The white man by his teaching created a demand for justice, and as soon as the demand was existing, removed this product from the market."

"And is it too late for anything to be done?" asks Crane.

"I believe it is too late, Mr. Crane."

Tightening up his too-late theme, Author Lewis turns the vise of his plot until poor Crane is crushed. Trouble begins with some petty thieving of company lumber. Then a company truck is am bushed and the driver killed. The major investigates for Crane, tangles with the local opium-smuggling ring and is blown up with a hand grenade. In the meantime, Crane receives more bad news: the com pany's teak contract has not been renewed; everyone must go home in 21 months. Home for Crane means a dreary London suburb arid a nagging, neurotic wife. Rather than face that, he takes on a risky assignment in Indo-China: to drag out a French company's teak supply just ahead of the advancing Viet Minh. The Communists move faster than Crane ; they settle his case with bullets.

Author Lewis is an old hand at describing Southeast Asia to stay-at-homes (A Dragon Apparent, Golden Earth). His novel is not just the somber story of a so-so sahib, but a report on a theater of change and conflict. Moreover, in sharp vignettes, Author Lewis shows that the crackle of change in Southeast Asia comes not only from firebrand nationalists and Red fanatics but also from the intellectual bubble gum that the East borrows from the West. At Luang Nakon's leading cabaret, the local version of the Radio City Rockettes wear drum-majorette boots, hussars' hats and nothing else. At the town's boxing matches, the style if not the wording of the billboards is familiar: "Famous, flashy and crashing kid possesses a resolute punch." When a jukebox with colored lights and boogie-woogie records arrives in Luang Nakon's brothel and the girls take to nylon blouses imprinted with headlines from a New York tabloid (GIN-CRAZED, SLAYS THREE), it becomes clear that a lot has happened since Anna met the King of Siam.

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