A Woman of Bangkok (16 page)

‘Hey. You. Han-sum.’

I look up. There is a reddish blur as if a blood-vessel had burst in my eyeball. Gradually it resolves itself into—Frost’s girl, the plump one in pink.

‘What in hell do you want?’

‘Why you sit alone?’

I shrug.

She comes nearer. ‘That girl’—with a toss of her head—‘she no good. She leave you. She have ’nother frand, old frand, give her much money. You not want trust her, darling. I know her long time. She very bad girl.’ She seats herself on the arm of my chair. I shrink away from her. I don’t want anything to do with her. She is just clay whereas the Mongol is fire. Her chest and shoulders are as opulent as the Mongol’s, she has two double chins as against one, her breasts are huge but not unsightly, as well I know, for have I not seen her stripped to her bra and knickers, dancing with Frost?—but—

I put out my hand to push her away. She grabs it and holds it.

‘Honey—dream boy—’ Her voice is thick with simulated passion.

But suddenly there is a swirl and flash of cloth and the Mongol is back. Her voice is like a lash whistling through the air. Daisy gets up hastily off the arm of my chair and shouts back, her voice fraught with a different sort of passion from a few seconds ago and this sort genuine. From being a couple of magnificent oriental beauties, fit for a sultan’s palace you would think, they are suddenly a couple of fishwives brawling outside a pub.

The Mongol is the accuser, speaking evenly in a low voice, in English. ‘Why you must steal my man? Every time you must try steal my man from me. Why you not find man for you-self? Plenty men in Bangkok will go with very low cheap girl like you I sink.’

The answer is shouted in Thai.

The Mongol says, ‘So, you want fight, eh? OK, I very fighting girl. You want fight, I fight you anywhere, any time. But not here, in Bolero. Too many pipple look what we do. Make manager angly to us. Only silly girl fight here, maybe lose job.’ She looks at her watch. ‘Now we go back work, make money. Twalf o’c’ock, when we finiss work, we go fight, OK?’

More shouted Thai, not quite so choleric.

‘So you not want fight, eh? You only want fight wiss mouse.’ I presume she means mouth. She laughs. ‘You lemember last time, eh? And many times before.’ Laughing. ‘I very good fighting girl, I sink. I fighting good more zan you.’

It occurs to me that for the first time in my life women are quarrelling over me and that makes
me
laugh.

The Mongol turns on me with eyes blazing. ‘Why you talk this girl? You like her, I sink. You like her more zan me.’

I answer sullenly,
‘Mai chob.’
I don’t like her at all. ‘I told you before, she’s
na-gliet
. She’s
na-gliet
as sin.’

At that the Mongol laughs. She turns on Daisy again. ‘You hear what my frand say? He speak Thai very good. He say you
mai suei
, you
na-gliet
.’ She turns to the handful of girls who have gathered round. ‘My boy not like Black Leopard. He say she
na-gliet.’

The girls titter. Daisy gives me a furious look and fills her lungs for another blast. But just at that moment a boy appears and speaks to her urgently. Her face goes black with rage but she shrugs her shoulders and stalks away. The Mongol calls after her, ‘You see? What I tell you? All the time you make tlouble. Manager no like girl who make tlouble. Maybe he make you stop work three day.’

She slumps into a chair. It is the one nearest to me but she doesn’t look at all happy.

‘What a cow—’ I begin but she snaps my head off:

‘Don’t speak me.’

She sits frowning darkly for a few more moments until I venture to reach for my drink, then she bursts out: ‘She very bad girl. All the time try to steal my man. If she can steal my man from me, she sink very good, she sink she make her face very big. But I know she low girl, very low. If she take my man, if he go with her, I no want speak him again. She very low, she make him low too.’

‘
I
didn’t speak to her, she—’

‘You very low man, too, I sink. I leave you here short time, straight way you make eye to Black Leopard.’

The injustice of that!

‘I not like man who make eye to other girl when I go ex-cuse.’

‘You didn’t go excuse. You went to talk to some other man. You’ve got no right—’

‘I only like man who good to me.’

‘Sweetheart!’—trying to capture her hand. But she snatches it away.

I feel miserable. For a start things went badly between us but then they picked up and everything seemed to be going swimmingly; but now it’s all a mess again; probably everything is ruined. Any other man, I feel, would be able to do something decisive or at least say something decisive at this juncture. He would have the courage to show his feelings—‘aw, go to hell’—stake everything on the chance of her reacting the right way, nor care very much if she didn’t. But I as always am utterly under the dominion of the girl’s mood: because she is angry I can’t be anything but submissive and wary, dumbly, miserably hoping that my sympathy will touch her, uneasily waiting to see which way her rage will flare out next.

Finally, the silence becoming unbearable, I whisper, ‘Sweetheart—Vilai—’ She makes an impatient gesture but says nothing. Encouraged I continue, ‘Dearest, let’s get out of this dump. Let’s pay the bill and clear off to your home. I want to go with you, darling, I really do.’

She looks at her watch. ‘If we go now, you must give me sixty tic more.’

‘Why?’ Always that wounded yelp.

‘Because not twalf o’c’ock, darling. I not finiss work. Any girl go out of Bolero before twalf, her boy must pay manager sixty tic.’

I toss over another hundred. At the same time I say, ‘Call the boy.’ I too can be a man of action.

As it happens the boy is already at my elbow with two or three bills on his tray. I pick them up and look at them stupidly. He tells me the total and I almost faint.

‘How much?’

He repeats the same figure. It is over three hundred tics.

‘That’s impossible!’ I exclaim. I propose to go through the bills item by item, but then I notice that the Mongol is looking at me critically. At all costs I must prevent her from getting the idea that I am miserly: even at a cost of three hundred tics I want to avoid that. I peel off four more notes. The wad is a lot slimmer than it was.

‘I sink you not have mutss money,’ she says.

‘Why?’

‘’Cause tears come your eye every time you must pay.’

‘I’ve got plenty of dough. You’ve seen it.’

‘Maybe you have plenty money, not like spand, then. I not like man who want to keep he money for he-self. Man truly like me, he not care how mutss money he spand when he sit wiss me.’

‘Have I complained yet?’ Of course I have, but an oratorical question doesn’t have to be founded on fact to sound good to the orator. ‘Come on. Less go.’ Shades of Boswell.

‘Must wait your change, darling.’

‘Why?
You
haven’t given me any change.’

‘What you mean?’

‘Seventy five tics from the hundred I gave you to sit with me. Forty from the second one to take you out early.’ Hazily I am aware that everybody is getting up and that the band is romping through the shorter of the two Siamese national anthems. ‘Why’d you make me pay sixty tics to take you out anyway? It’s midnight now.’

‘When you want go it still ten to twalf. You take long long time pay your bill, darling, ’cause you d’unk.’

The fact that I could have saved myself that sixty by just looking at my watch doesn’t make me feel any happier. ‘Come on. Less go. Less go. Damn the change.’

‘Boy coming now, darling. Wait. Must get your money back from him. Money you give me differnunt. You give me money ’cause you love me. You not love boy, do you?’ Tee-hee, tee-hee. ‘Here boy now, darling. Take your change quick.’

I have no recollection of getting to the door, or through it, or getting into the
samlor
. The next thing I remember is riding in the
samlor
down the windy stretches of Rajadamnoen Avenue. A
samlor
is about the same size and shape as one of those double seats in the back rows of some cinemas which incidentally I have never occupied. I am aware that I am attacking her from all angles and that she is repulsing me with skill and that the
samlor
boy is pedalling like mad and it is all a great joke under the blazing stars and the streetlamps that go by like long yellow streaks. I haven’t the faintest idea where we are going and I don’t care. I wish I knew some of the arts of love-making instead of only being able to paw her about like a farm-boy at home getting rid of his first pay-packet after leaving school. I am crazy about this girl tonight, crazy as I have never been about any girl before, not even Sheila, and I wish that I could express the overwhelming feelings within me … Then abruptly we are squealing to a halt.

‘Hey, Joycey!’

I imagine we have arrived and start trying to get out of the
samlor
but then I realize that the girl isn’t moving but is looking across me and upwards at an angle. I turn and there is Frost standing in the road.

‘Hey, Joycey, what the hell d’you think you’re doing?’

‘Hey.’ I’m quite bewildered. ‘Hey, Frosty.’

‘What are you up to, chum?’

I wink.

‘You’ve been to the Bolero,’ he says accusingly.

‘That’s right. Where you been?’

‘Oh, around. I’m just going home. D’you know what you’ve got in that
samlor
with you?’

‘She’s my girl.’

‘She’s the one they call the White Leopard. She’s the worst of the lot.’

‘Goddam,’ the Mongol screams, ‘you talk too mutss.’

‘I think she’s the best of the lot,’ I say. ‘There wasn’t another one there that I’d touch with Ivanhoe’s bargepole.’

‘Bai
,’ says the Mongol to the
samlor-
man.

We begin to move. ‘You be careful,’ Frost calls after us. ‘I’m warning you, you silly sod. She’s—’

I turn round and try to speak to him with severity, with dignity. ‘I think I can look after myself. Seventeen bloody women you know, old man.’

‘He very bad boy,’ the Mongol says, as the cool air begins to pour round our faces again. ‘All the time he talk too mutss.’

‘He’s a friend of the Black Leopard, if that’s what you mean,’ I say, with remarkable penetration for one so near drunk as I am, and then I put my arm round her again. ‘What do I care if they call you the White Leopard or the White Elephant for that matter? I love you, sweetheart, love you, love you, do you understand, and the sooner we get to your home where I can show you how much I love you …’

Part Two

THE LEOPARD

‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven’
Satan, as reported by John Milton

‘What we call “morals” is simply blind obedience
to words of command’
Havelock Ellis

‘Do you think that Nature gave women nipples
as beauty spots, rather than for the purpose of
nourishing their children?’
Ancient Roman Author

Five

There was a wild tattoo of ladle on stove and a jubilant yell; it could have been the start of another
coup d’état;
but she recognized it for what it was; the cook in the Chinese shop beneath her window proclaiming to all the world the emergence of a new wonder from his smoke-blackened
kuo
. And the rattle bong boom, and then the falsetto recitative, and then the bong rattlerattle bongbong boom of Chinese opera, competing as it alone could not only with a prodigious amount of static, but with the breathless descending xylophone runs of several different Siamese operas all being simultaneously purveyed by half a dozen radios within earshot. And the sweet, clear, inhibited voices of Siamese girl singers experimenting (as it always seemed to her when she was too sleepy to unravel the tune) first with this half-note and then with that, but never quite able to break free into a recognizable melody.

And the sound of ice being pounded up in wooden troughs, and of motor
samlors
poppeting down the lane, and of a dog fracas dying out in prolonged heartfelt snarls and hysterical yappings, and of boys shouting ‘Lotter-lee, lotter-lee’ on behalf of their chronically insolvent government, and of Bochang the cook, screaming amicably at Siput the maid, and of somewhere a child bawling—bawling persistently but without conviction, as if he’d been bawling so long he’d forgotten the cause of his woe, but knew the wrong had yet to be righted. And over and under and round and through all else, as pervasive as the roar of a not-so-far-off waterfall, the continuous, low-pitched thunder of the traffic in the New Road.

It was all as familiar as the face she examined twenty times a day in her mirrors. It was so familiar that by now she ought to have grown used to it, as one does to the beating of one’s own heart. And most of the time she
was
quite unconscious of it: it was just a cradle of noise in which she lay swaddled and unaware like a newborn baby. Yet once every day what was familiar became alien; once every day the cradle exploded upon her like a bursting bomb. And that was in the moment of her awaking.

Somehow, although she had lived in this room for years—almost since she had first become a dancing-girl—she had never learned the art of waking up in it. But always she must start up with this violent jerk, and then lie tense and rigid, all ears, her breath held in. Only for a moment would the terror last, then something—perhaps the feel of the same old bed, or perhaps nothing physical at all, but just memory waking up a few moments after her body and reidentifying her to herself, would send reassurance in a great wave through her limbs. She would relax with a sob and collapse into the bed again, yearningly, as if the bed were sleep and sleep heaven, and all her desire to be merged and smothered in them forevermore.

Today, perhaps for the two thousandth time (for that was a stupefying calculation the fair-haired English boy had done the night before last) the pattern had repeated itself, and she was now lying as she best liked to lie when alone, diagonally across the bed, face down, with limbs flung all ways. But of course there was no pleasure in the posture now, nor for that matter in the aloneness, for alas, she was no longer asleep. And, being awake, she was becoming aware of annoyances that only sleep had the power to blot out. Her hair had got under her face and a hairclip was biting into her cheek. Her brassiere was too tight and constricting her painfully. Her head was aching, her mouth foul, her stomach raw and unsettled, as so often after she’d drunk too much. Naturally, she wanted to go to the
hongnam
. And wasn’t today Friday, and therefore one of her shampoo and movie days, one of the two days in the week when she had to be up betimes? In a minute she’d have to open her eyes and look at her watch, and then, irreparably, the day would have begun.