A Woman of Bangkok (20 page)

Only the Buddha knew how much she loved this boy, only the Buddha and herself. Sometimes she loved him so much that she almost gave the game away. Like two nights ago, when that handsome fair-haired English boy who’d been so free with his money had left unexpectedly early, about two or three o’clock. Instead of returning to her own room she had crept first into her son’s, next to the maids’, downstairs. She had parted the mosquito net and stared down at him, her heart, expanded by numerous peppermints and the thought of good money easily earned, suddenly filled with an almost intolerable love for this child who was hers, unquestionably hers, the one good thing remaining to her from her three marriages. How handsome he was! Exactly like his father, except that he had unfortunately inherited her own flat nose. He was lying sprawled on his back with his mouth open, breathing noisily, because his tonsils were bad and one day he’d have to have them out. Sometimes he could hardly speak or breathe. But she was always putting off the operation, always thinking up fresh excuses for delaying it; it would interfere with his schooling, he was frightened of the doctor, she couldn’t afford to spend two weeks looking after him at the hospital, she couldn’t spare Bochang to go with him either, that would mean the house would be left unguarded whilst she was at the Bolero and out and about, and as for Siput, who would wash and clean at home if
she
went to the hospital?—and anyway Udom was too thick with her as it was. Right now it was winter, and too cold for an operation on the throat—yet here he was lying almost naked with his blanket kicked off. She could hardly resist the desire to draw the blanket over him again. But if she had done so she might have awakened him, and if he had awakened and seen what she was doing he would have guessed her secret, that she loved him, and that would have been fatal. For then he would have lost his fear of her. He would have thought, ‘She’s weak after all, she’s weak enough to love me as other silly weak women love their sons’ and then he would have begun to take advantage of her, as other sons do of their mothers; his natural male badness would have asserted itself, and never again would she have had any control over him. But while he was frightened of her she could exercise authority and that discipline was good for him. But every day he was getting harder to hold down—more ‘nerty’, as she expressed it to herself using another of her original contributions to the English language, this one consisting of ‘naughty’ and ‘dirty’—and more resentful of her continual nagging. He didn’t realize that she had only his own good at heart, that she was doing her best to fit him for a world which only too well she knew to be cruel and unhappy …

She could see that he had picked up a women’s magazine and was flicking through its pages without hope of finding anything of interest in them. And as he stood there with his thin eyebrows drawn down over the huge dark eyes which were so like his father’s she felt her love for him come over her again in another dangerous tidal surge such as that night’s. She had a sudden insane desire to hurl herself across the room and sweep him into her arms and hug him till he broke free. But that would have been madness: he was fourteen years old: both he and she would have been deeply disgraced by such a scene of weakness …

‘Udom.’

‘What?’

‘Come here.’

He put down the magazine and approached on his bare brown feet. ‘What do you want, Mama?’

She was intent on her work with her head jutted toward the mirror and did not immediately answer.

Suddenly he blurted, ‘Mama, why don’t you cover yourself up?’

She was astounded. ‘What you mean?’

He made a gesture towards the slipped sarong. ‘You are not an old countrywoman,’ he muttered sullenly.

She glanced down at herself in surprise, as if she hadn’t realized that there was anything there that could be offensive to anyone’s sight, and made a move as if to lift and fasten the cloth. But her hand stopped and she laughed instead. It was not a laugh of amusement. ‘What is matter?’ she enquired, returning her attention to the mirror and putting the finishing touches to her hair. ‘Why you not want look my—’ she couldn’t remember the English word—’my
num?
Maybe you sink not pewty, eh? You big man now, you know all ’bout
num
, you know some girl have
num
pewty more than me, yes?’

‘It isn’t that.’ He was deeply abashed. He knew he shouldn’t have said anything.

And she was deeply abashed too. For she knew he was right. Nursing mothers could be excused, for it was too much trouble to be particular when the body had to be exposed every ten minutes or so, every time the baby cried. And really old women with grey cropped hair and betel-stained mouths and their sarongs put on in the old-fashioned way could be excused too for they had earned any comfort they could obtain. But she wasn’t a nursing mother—hadn’t been these twelve years—and wasn’t old yet and probably never would be. She was just coarse. She was becoming so coarsened by this almost nightly ritual of undressing to total strangers that she forgot the proprieties even before this son whom she wished to honour her.

She was in the wrong but she couldn’t, she mustn’t, admit it. That would have looked weak, too. That was why she had begun to flog herself into a tantrum.

He began to move away but she halted him sharply in Thai. He stopped because he still dare not disobey. He stood as though he were manacled by the feet, staring at the floor. He couldn’t conceal his shame and misery. ‘Udom, look me.’ Obstinately he kept his eyes downturned. ‘U-dom—’ There was still something in that tone which he couldn’t oppose. He raised his eyes. She was winning once more. Perhaps for the last time. She said, less steelily, ‘Look me here.’ She turned towards him and opened the sarong wide before securing it firmly. ‘Man see me at Bolero, he say, “That girl must have body very good, I sink I must have.” He come zis house, he want kiss, he want play. I say, “No, no: you cannot: must giff me money first.” Zen he giff me money.’ It was an old line: she never let any of them, Udom, Bochang, or Siput, forget for a single day that it was she by the labours of her body that kept them fed and clothed and sheltered. ‘I sink you not want hate anysing in your Mama’s body,’ she concluded. ‘If your Mama die, I sink you die too very quick … Now look my hair, see if you can see white.’

He came nearer reluctantly. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that he was trembling. Fear—or some other emotion? A boy was not like a man: he was much harder to understand.

He gave her head a cursory inspection. ‘There’s none.’

‘Again look.’ And as he still hung back she said in Thai: ‘Udom, please examine your Mama’s hair thoroughly, as she asks you.’

It was only an excuse to have him stand close to her, of course. To feel his hands, however clumsy and indifferent they might be, laid on some part of her body. But there was a practical justification for the self-indulgence too (in case anyone should think she was yielding to sentiment). There
were
two white hairs, two which sprouted perennially, defying constant plucking, and in two weeks they could achieve almost an inch of growth. Dozens of times before he’d tracked them down, sometimes cheerily, chattering of school or the movies or his latest fishing expedition, sometimes surlily, deeply resentful of being forced into such an unmanly occupation, women’s work, a job Bochang should have done (and would have done) if only she hadn’t been half-blind …

It was like life, she thought, that these two white hairs, which augured what she feared most of all, the loss of her power to attract and fleece men, should be the means of bringing her into this close communion with her son. She never felt nearer to him except on those rare occasions when he could be induced to pluck her armpits (and she could endure the pain of his clumsy efforts). But they had to be in love with each other for there to be any real warming satisfaction in such passages, and today they were put out with each other. She looked down sideways at his thin wiry brown legs sprouting out of his khaki shorts, at his broad flat feet with their spread toes—she felt his fingers amongst the roots of her hair, making temporary partings this way and that—but they could have been anybody’s legs, feet, ringers: they were as ugly, as unlovable, as those of the night …

Bochang came in with the rice in a big white enamel tureen and a handful of plates and cutlery. She stooped with an exaggerated groan to place them on the floor. As she set out the three plates at the three corners of a triangle with a fork and spoon on each she said in her jocular way, ‘So! Now we have a new lady’s maid. And a very pretty little lass she is too.’

She was of course joking and anyway Udom was too slow in the uptake or too absorbed in his quest to realize that he’d been insulted. But his mother was promptly ablaze.

‘Take care what you say, you old hag, or very soon we may have a new cook too.’

She shook her head violently to free it from Udom’s hands. He looked down at her blankly: ‘But Mama—’ He’d only just started to pry. He’d thought that by searching diligently he would do his share towards restoring peace. But here was Mama apparently angrier than ever.

She understood his bewilderment but it only increased her fury. She pushed him roughly away. One should be quick to take offence, to realize that one was being debased. Otherwise folk would think one was soft, would despise one. He should have sprung at Bochang with a maddened snarl.

‘Get out, both of you. I want to dress.’ To Udom she added venomously, ‘Or do you want to stay and see you Mama naked again?’

He flushed with anger and defied her by taking his time about leaving. She took no notice of him, busying herself searching for underwear in a drawer, but in her heart of hearts she was pleased. If he had scuttled out cravenly like Bochang she would have been disappointed. But he had stopped to pick up the magazine, then sauntered across to the door, his face still angry. He had obeyed her, but not meekly. Her tyranny was harsh but it wasn’t breaking his spirit. When the time came he would throw off her yoke. But he wouldn’t just slip it and disappear by night. He would metaphorically beat her brains out with it. And in that moment he would become a man.

She was being a good Mama to him. She was bringing him up the right way, so that he could face life and triumph over it …

These would do for today … The panties were very brief, pink, with T
UESDAY
embroidered on them in silk. She put them on in the Thai style, before removing the sarong.

After the sarong was off, she put on the brassiere. She put it on back to front round her waist, fastened it, then twisted it round and hoisted it into position. She squirmed like an eel to get her arms through the shoulder-straps and then spent a long time pinching her breasts and adjusting them inside the cups until they were settled to her satisfaction. Posing before the glass she turned this way and that, admiring the smooth fit of the pink cloth over her hips and bottom and the way the golden-brown flesh swelled out of the white cloth of the brassiere. Both garments were well-worn, but what did that matter? It was the outer trappings that caught the male eye. It was they that inveigled him into your room and once he was there a few holes in your pants didn’t worry him much. As long as they were clean he couldn’t care less, and hers were always scrupulously clean. Her daytime underclothes she wore only two days before Siput washed them, the evening ones were fresh every night.

She took out a clean sarong, red, with a traditional design in silver thread worked all over it. It was the sort of thing she had worn at home, when she was still a young girl, still good, still full of ignorant dreams that included one man, a big house, plenty of servants, one son and one daughter, jewels, good food, everlasting beauty, endless glorious leisure and no troubles from year to year until seventy years were spent. She fastened it nostalgically around her waist and squatted on the floor before one of the places to await her meal.

Every day she gave Bochang fifteen tics to buy food. This was for fish, meat, vegetables, eggs, and sauces only: the rice she bought separately twice a month by the sackful. Fifteen tics a day came to about four hundred and fifty tics a month or more than most people in Thailand earned in that time, but she could afford to spend that much on food because she could earn it in one night with a bit of luck: certainly it seldom took her more than three nights to net that much …

The economics of her life seemed to her simple. One source of her income was the Bolero. Every time a man paid ten tics to dance with her she got five of them. Every time he paid twenty-five to sit with her she got twelve of them. Every time he purchased a drink in her company she got five tics’ commission on it, no matter what it was. And if he paid sixty tics to take her out of the Bolero before midnight she got twenty of them. These were her wages, handed over every week by the cashier at the Bolero. In a good month they amounted to two thousand tics, for she was very famous and in great demand.

The rest of her income came from sleeping with men. The amount of money you made this way varied a great deal from man to man. In her early days at the Bolero, when she had been so beautiful that almost every man who saw her had wanted her, she hadn’t known how to worm money out of them: she’d been content with fifty tics for a short time or a hundred tics for all night like any other high-class girl. Thinking of all the thousands she could have made if she hadn’t been so green she wanted to cry. Nowadays she never dreamed of sleeping with a man for less than two hundred (except on the rare occasions when he was a pewty pewty men but impecunious or when it was a matter of face to win him off some other girl), and usually she stuck out for, and got, three. The price, all other things being equal, went up in inverse proportion to the attractiveness of the man. Fat ones had to pay more than thin ones, and the bald had to fork out quite exorbitant sums. And if the intended victim proved recalcitrant what did she care? He was never any match for her in a quarrel; he paid her price, or he went. Too many men were bad for a girl, anyway. Twenty a month was enough, about half of them short time; that would net her another four thousand or so these days.