A Woman of Bangkok (34 page)

‘What’s the matter with you, darling?’

‘Nussing matter.’

‘Yes there is.’ I made another attempt to get my arms round her and this time she didn’t repulse me, though she sighed impatiently. ‘You’re in some sort of trouble. Tell me about it. I might be able to help you.’

‘I not want halp. Haff very strong heart. Can look after mysalf.’

‘All right, if you want to be independent.’ I got up, offended, and went and lay on the bed. I was still full of sentimental notions about people in love, and one of them was that the female, when properly constituted, instinctively sobbed out her troubles on the staunch male shirt-front. And the fact that Vilai never would do this seemed to me to be just one more proof that she didn’t regard me as her man. I was failing with her just as I’d failed with Sheila before her.

After a gloomy minute she came and stretched out beside me. I rolled towards her but she shook me off. ‘No, slip now.’ She turned her back on me. And then I realized she was crying.

I think if snow had started falling out of the Bangkok sky I couldn’t have been more surprised.

For while, like most introspective people, I never fail to magnify my own woes, I very easily underrate other people’s. And because, since that first week, Vilai had never mentioned Udom again—because, every time I’d seen her since, she’d seemed as gay or tigerish, as buoyant, self-assured, money-mad and libidinous as before—I’d comfortably assumed that she’d forgotten the tragedy or at least taken it in her stride. I’d even found arguments to justify her apparent heartlessness. It was wrong to call it that, I’d told myself: Siamese mothers don’t dote on their offspring any less than others do; it was simply that her religion meant more to her than it does to most women. She fully believed that life was hell and death heaven; that Udom was now translated to a state of total nescience and therefore of complete happiness; that he had received his reward for his virtue—utter extinction—while she must remain on earth to suffer, through his death and her aloneness, for her sins. So I had come to admire her for her self-control, and when this broke down I felt I had been personally let down by her.

Yet at the same time I was relieved to see her weeping because according to my understanding this was how a woman ought naturally to behave in the circumstances. I tried to get her to turn over and do her crying in my arms but she kept her back resolutely towards me. After a few minutes she got up abruptly. ‘Must bass. Not haff bass today. Smell bad. I not go home since yesterday night.’

‘Why, where’ve you been?’

‘I come from sip.’

‘Sip?’

‘Yes, darling. Big American sip. At Klong Toey.’

‘Ship? You mean you’ve been down to the docks? But what for?’

‘I often go sip, darling. Haff fun. Make good money.’

‘But damn and blast it, don’t you make enough money at the Bolero? And out of me?’

‘I not go Bolero for t’ree, four day,’ she said indifferently, going into the bathroom and tweaking the towel off.

I lay across the bed on my belly glaring at her. I was seething with rage at yet another insult. She knew she could come to me for money at any time, but she preferred to earn it by being promiscuous in the most degrading ways … She didn’t use the shower: she threw water over herself with the dipper. She looked superb standing there, moving so gracefully, her skin golden against the blinding snow of the sunlit tiled walls.

‘You sink pewty?’ she asked, seeing the admiration in my eyes (for I couldn’t hide it). ‘Last night American say very pewty. He say my face not so good, but my ass number one ass in the world. He say any girl haff face good like my ass, she must be most pewty girl ever liff—Miss Uni-worse.’

She laughed gaily. I groaned aloud. I was shaking. At last I managed to grate, ‘And how much did
he
give you? Fifty tics? Or fifty-five?’

‘Oh, mutss more than that. He very good boy. Like me very mutss.’

‘I hope to God I never meet him. I’d kill him.’

‘Why you say that? He good to me, darling. If you luff me you must like anyone who good to me.’

I leapt off the bed and started pulling on my clothes. Coming out of the bathroom, dabbing herself with the towel, she sighed. ‘Now you want fight again. What for this time, for God sake?’

I was in the mood to explain. ‘I’ll tell you, you strumpet, and then you can go, for good. I’m a decent chap, see? I’m not the whoring, drunken, blasphemous, hell-bent sort you’re used to. But for some reason I’ve fallen in love with you. I’m crazy about you, Vilai, crazy. And I’ve tried to do the right thing by you. Your life is bad—you admit that yourself. All right—I offered to take you out of it. Oh, I know I’m no great shakes compared with your other—friends. I don’t earn much, I’m not very cheerful company, I probably don’t make love as well as they do. But which of them would give you every bloody penny he has in the world, the same as I’ve done? Which of them would offer to marry you? And that’s what I’m doing now, Vilai—again—for the last time. I
want
to marry you, darling. I want to take you out of your present hell. I can give you enough to clothe and feed you and you can live with me here in this hotel. And you can get tight every damn’ night if it makes you any happier. But at least give up your old life while the going’s good. Now you’re still the number one girl at the Bolero, you’re like a queen there, almost every man that sees you wants you. But how much longer can it last? Soon you’ll begin to show signs of cracking up. You’ll begin to lose your looks. Men won’t want you so much. They’ll only be willing to pay a few tics for your favours. You’ll have to sell your jewels. You’ll have to take more and more men—any man that’ll give you a little money—whether they’re sick or not. One day you’ll get sick yourself … Can’t you see it, Vilai? You must have seen it happen to dozens of girls at the Bolero.’ I threw myself on my knees beside the bed, on which she was lying, and clasped her hand. ‘Vilai, grab your chance while it’s here. Marry me—and live happy ever after.’ The last words were said jocularly—I was self-conscious about having been so earnest and eloquent.

She didn’t make any answer at all but just lay with her hand inert in mine and in the end I realized there wasn’t going to be any answer. With a sigh I got up and lay down on my back behind her.

After about ten minutes I knew by the regularity of her breathing that she’d gone to sleep.

She slept for two hours without moving. At first I lay there admiring the lines and planes that had called forth such high praise the night before. But during the second hour I began to grow restive. The impudence of this tart! Coming to see me and then spending the whole afternoon in sleep. Ignoring my ultimatum, my declaration of love, my proposal of marriage! How much more could she slight and hurt me? Instead of lying still as a stone, as up till then, I began to move around when I wanted to, and in the end more than necessary. At last I disturbed her. She awoke with a violent start, lay rigid for a moment, then rolled on her back and looked at me.

‘Wretch, what the time now?’

‘Never mind the time.’ Throwing an arm across her.

‘No, no.’ She tried to struggle free. ‘What the time? Must go four o’clock.’

‘Four? You always stay till seven. That gives you plenty of time to get ready for the Bolero.’

She clicked her tongue impatiently. ‘I
ask
you I not go Bolero.’

‘Why not? You lost your job?’

She said, ‘No, oh, no,’ but there was so much surprised vehemence in the denial that I was sure it was false. I stopped wrestling with her and got up and looked at her watch—(she’d taken all her jewellery off when she bathed). ‘It’s nearly five.’ I walked back to the bed.

‘Goddam!’ She leapt off the other side and ran to the towel rack on which she’d draped her clothes. She began rapidly putting them on.

‘Are you going without—?’ I was choking with rage.

‘Half no time, darling. I late now. You let me slip too long—’

‘Who is it? That damned Yank?’

‘Oh, Wretch! Why you worry so mutss to him? He nussink to me.’

‘Yet you’d rather go to him than stay with me.’

‘Of course, darling. He only here two, t’ree day. But you here all the time. Can see you any time you want.’

She’d got herself dressed and gone to the mirror and was pulling out hairclips. ‘He like me too mutss, darling. Pay very well. Must get he money while he here.’

‘You haven’t forgotten of course but I’m going to Ubol tomorrow?’

‘Tomollow?’ It was clear she had forgotten. ‘I sink you say
wan-ti yip-kao
—’

‘That’s right. Tomorrow’s the twenty-ninth.’

‘Goddam.’ She was combing her hair with long fierce strokes. Then she parted it, and began picking up hairclips, opening them with her teeth, and shoving them home above her ears. ‘How long you go country this time?’

‘Three weeks at least.’

‘Goddam, goddam.’ She dropped her comb in her bag and started forcing her bracelets over her hands. ‘What time you go tomollow?’

‘After lunch. We’re going by jeep this time, not train.’

‘You here in morning?’

‘No, I must go to the office.’ I knew the sensible thing would have been to leave it at that. But I was too weak. ‘I
could
come back, of course. About twelve. For an hour.’

Ready except for her shoes she came and sat on the edge of the bed beside me. When she bent to force her feet into the shoes the yellow blouse slipped off one shoulder. I put my arm round her with a groan. She suffered the embrace for a full minute, kneading my thigh with her knuckles. But as soon as I tried to get a better purchase on her she broke away. She stood up, sliding a hand inside her blouse to straighten her brassiere. ‘You giff me money today?’

‘Certainly not. Get it off Uncle Sam.’

‘I come tomollow at twelve, how mutss you giff me?’

‘Hell, Vilai, you’re a moneymaniac. Don’t you ever think about anything else at all?’

‘How mutss you giff me?’

‘I’ll give you nothing. It’s time you gave
me
something.’

‘But soon I must pay for room. And you go away for t’ree, four week—’

The worried look on that changed tragic face broke my heart. And my body was yearning for hers which was poised sturdy yet somehow forlorn before me. I pulled her between my knees and encircled her hips with my arms. Very lightly she clasped my head to herself. I knew I was being managed. But I was powerless to control my desires.

‘How mutss you giff me if I come tomollow?’

‘How much d’you want? I’ll give you half perhaps.’

She stated her requirements with great exactitude. ‘I want one t’ou-zand four hunderd. Four hunderd for make dress for go Chiengmai. One t’ou-zand ’cause I not see you so long … Not very mutss money for me, darling. Must pay four hunderd for clo’es, sick hunderd for room—’

‘Your room’s three hundred.’

‘Yes, but must pay two time if you go country for t’ree week.’ I began to get rough with her again and she pulled herself away. I let her go, sitting on the edge of the bed with my arms dangling.

‘Vilai, why did you lose your job?’

‘Oh—I ask you tomollow. Must go now.’ She gave her hair a final toss, peering into the mirror, and picked up her handbag. I accompanied her to the stairs. She went down very cautiously, mincingly, sideways, as her habit was. At the bottom she stopped to wave and throw me the usual dazzling smile. But that was the trouble. Today it wasn’t dazzling. It was a deathly grin that failed to mask the tragedy behind it.

Of course when I got back from the hotel during the lunch-hour the next day there she was and of course I gave her the money. I don’t think she’d expected the whole fourteen hundred but that didn’t prevent her from asking for an extra hundred to make it a round figure. ‘Then I can haff fife hunderd for my-self.’ An extra hundred seemed hardly worth squabbling about so I handed it over. I didn’t tell her that that morning I’d had to borrow a thousand from Frost, giving unexpected Christmas presents as my excuse. Or that Frost had been most sceptical about this excuse, saying, ‘I hope to God I’m not loaning you this so you can just chuck it away on a lot of whores upcountry. I’m short myself, and giving you this’ll just about break me. I want it back early in the New Year—you understand?—or I’ll be sunk …’

She returned my watch, mended. We ate a large meal and shared a bottle of beer. All the time she was picking titbits out of the dishes and placing them invitingly on my plate. I tried to find out why she’d been fired from the Bolero, but she was evasive. ‘I ask you before, when d’unk I fighting girl’.

I clicked my tongue. ‘Oh, Vilai, all the time you make life harder for yourself. Why d’you have to get drunk? It’s dangerous for a girl in your line. When you’re drunk you don’t fully realize what’s going on. One of these days some rotter’ll get you tight and do you serious harm—’

‘What mean ham?’

‘Make you sick. Or hurt you. Maybe even kill you—’

‘Huh. What I care that? I not care how I die, when I die. I sink haff man kill me I very happy. I sink when he—peep!’—she mimed firing a revolver—‘I say, “sank you, sank you.”’

‘Vilai, don’t be so self-centred. Maybe
you
don’t care what happens to you. But what about those who love you?’

‘Who? Who you sink luff Vilai now?’

‘Your mother. Me. Perhaps some other silly ass you’ve never told me about—’

She laughed. She was transformed from the preceding day—and not just because she was made-up—her spirits had revived, and she was bewitching in her laughter. ‘I sink my Mama very happy haff me die now,’ she argued. ‘Now I still Number One Bad Girl in Bangkok. I sink my Mama not want me number one t’ou-zand and one. I sink I want to dancing for t’ree, four more year. Then I not pewty, man not want, I lost my shob. Batter I die before—’

‘But you’ve lost your job already.’

‘Neffer mind. Now can get new. Every man know White Leopard. Every man want her to dancing. I sink every boy go Bolero now, he ask manager, ‘Goddam, where White Leopard tonight? Why I want come Bolero if no haff White Leopard? I must go where haff White Leopard, ’cause she number one dancing-girl in Bangkok—’