Bangkok Knights (29 page)

Sunantha told me I shouldn’t use bad language, which
comment elicited from me a colorful oath in French, one I hadn’t thought to
utter in years.

Sunantha stood on the hull as well, tugging futilely at a
bit of the rigging, trying to assist. “We need help,” she suggested finally,
without specifying exactly where this help was to come from.

About then I suddenly felt some give. Definitely, the mast
and sails were lifting. A wave caught us just right, and I heard Sunantha give
an exuberant cheer as we fell backwards into the water; the starboard hull came
down with a crash and the mast snapped upright, sails flapping wildly in the
wind.

Then the wind caught us and capsized the boat again. The
mainsail slapped down to cover us both, and I felt Sunantha kick against me as
she swam out from under. When I popped up beside her I heard her ask me
why,
and did I really know what I was doing? I could tell she was annoyed.
Annoyed but under control; let down but willing to be fair. Fair enough, I
supposed. I felt a little deflated myself. I told her how we needed to get the
bows pointing into the wind this time, or the same thing would happen when we
got the boat righted again.

“Why didn’t we do this before?” she asked, reasonably
enough, but I didn’t have a good answer.

So we both kicked and pushed and managed to swing the
catamaran around into the wind. I told Sunantha to stay in the water kicking,
while I got up on the hull again and had another go at sawing myself in half
with the rope trick. In the course of time we did get it righted again, and
this time it stayed up.

I took it easier going back in to the beach. Still, I
could see Sunantha was getting back into the spirit of things. She gave me the
idea she wouldn’t have argued too much if I had suggested we do one more hour
before going in again. I was a bit worn out, however. Anyway, we were paying by
the hour, and we had already been out a good long time. I hadn’ t brought very
much money with me, as I’d told her.

What a lady, though. When a windsurfer went whizzing past
us, once, the guy hanging in his harness, one with the elements, Sunantha told
me she wanted to learn to do that; could I teach her? She meant it,too.
Extraordinary.

I could see Sunantha was getting sunburned. I’d told her
to put on the sunblock cream. She also had raised welts running across her
tummy and her thighs from where the jellyfish tentacles had lashed her. She
told me it didn’t hurt very much anymore, though. Mine were just red tracks, by
now.

“It was like fire,” she said. “I thought it was yaw.”

“Joss?” I asked. “Karma?”

“No, no —
joss.
You know: big fish, like in the movies.
Joss.”

“A
shark,
you mean?
Jaws?”

“Yeah, yeah. Sharks.” She put her arms around me, then,
and squeezed hard. “I thought sharks were eating us.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. ‘There aren’t any sharks around here.”

“Really?”

Well, really there were, but why think about it? I’d done
some diving here and there in the Gulf of Thailand, and I hadn’ t seen all that
many sharks. In fact, a few friends and I had spent some time trying
unsuccessfully to get close enough to photograph them underwater. So if we
couldn’t find them even when we wanted to... Of course, there was the old
wisdom, it occurred to me, about there never being a taxi around when you
wanted one, but when you didn’t... “No,” I told her again. “You won’t find any
sharks around here. Don’t worry.”

Back on the beach, we enjoyed the happy relief of all
shipwreck survivors. We’d neither been eaten by sharks nor been required to
spend the night floating around the Gulf of Thailand waiting to be picked up,
preferably not by pirates. The noodles were delicious; we had two bowls each.

Sunantha was bubbling. She was full of plans to come back
to the beach. She was going to learn to windsurf. She was even going to go
sailing again. She kept asking me how I liked her suntan, and I kept telling
her she was burning, put some sunblock on.

One thing led to another, and before you knew it she was
looking at me in that way — as though she wanted to climb in through my eyes
and take up residence. In fact, taking up residence turned out to be the very
next thing on the agenda — an old issue, well-worn over the past several
months.

“But
why?”
Sunantha asked.
“Why
don’t we get
a house together? Why should I spend money on my apartment? I stay with you all
the time.”

This was true, she did. Almost all the time, anyway. But I
kept trying to find an opportunity to tell her that she couldn’t go on staying
with me all the time. Not all the time. I didn’t
want
to share a house
with her. This situation, the way things stood, had just kind of crept up on
me; by no means was it something I’d planned. But as long as she had her own
place, and kept at least some of her gear there, then we each had our own
independence. That’s what I wanted to think.

“We can save money if we get a house together. I can give
you the money I spend for my apartment. I want to be with you all the time,”
she said.

I had been bitching about money. What I really meant, but
didn’t say, was that there wasn’t enough for me to lead the life of a
thirty-six-year-old arrested adolescent
and
to undertake fully the
responsibilities of a household. I was still trying to find myself— I was only
thirty-six years old, after all—and I wasn’ t ready to have my horizons
narrowed unnecessarily. I’d chosen to live in Thailand for a while, trying to
make it as a free-lance writer, and I’d been doing pretty well by local
standards. Still, most months I didn’t earn the housing allowance of many
Westerners woriring in Bangkok, the oilmen and engineers and suchlike.

“I
do
like you, Sunantha. I like you a lot. But we
live in two different worlds, when it comes right down to it. We’d never get
along if we were married.”

“I didn’t say we should get married. I don’t want to get
married to you. I hate you.”

I wonder how much I´d have to give her. Probably 500
baht a day. And I´d have to give some more to the mamasan back at her bar, I
don t know how much. Say 750 baht total for her and the bar. Ridiculous,
really. You can buy fifty red roses— the ones Sunantha likes —for only twenty
baht, back at that market by the river in Bangkok. For one measly dollar. How
many would 750 baht buy, then? 3,000 roses? More. Christ. I wonder how old she
is; nineteen or twenty would be okay but who can tell with these girls, she
could be sixteen years old. Look, she’s running her hand under her bikini top,
easing the lime-green cloth away from her flesh; I can feel her erect nipple by
telepathy, she’s looking right at me. I wonder how much English she speaks. I
should go down there and swim. I can say something to her maybe that’s a nice
bathing suit you’ve got there.

“But I can’t stay here tonight; I must
work
tomorrow!”

“Right; but I
don t
have to be in Bangkok
tomorrow,” I told her. “Why shouldn’t I stay another day or two? I haven’t been
windsurfing in months.”

Listening to myself, it occurred to me I was almost
whining. I put more authority into my voice: “I’m staying.
Finished.
Understand?”

“I can’t go back alone.”

“Why not?”

“I am your woman: I came with you, I should go back with you.”

If this was syllogistic logic, I couldn’t follow it Or maybe
—most likely—it was another case of East meets West. Whatever it was, I was
getting annoyed. Why the hell couldn’t I stay at the beach if I wanted to? We
weren’t married, after all. If we were married, come to that, there’d probably
be no problem — this was worse than being married.

But what I said was: “Listen, I’m not married. If I want
to spend a couple of days at the beach, I’ll spend a couple of days at the
beach. Understand? Now, have you got enough money? Good.”

It was getting on towards late afternoon and, as luck
would have it, a detachment of bargirls chose that moment to troop down past us
and bivouac on the sand in front of a klatch of ursine German men. The girls
were very young and each was more beautiful than the one before and they were wearing
little ‘Baby Gogo Bar’ half T-shirts and string bikini bottoms. Of course I
looked at them as they went by. I didn’t ogle or anything; I just looked at
them. You couldn’t help it, really. Anyway, you would have thought Sunantha
would’ve learned trust in all our months together.

“You come back to Bangkok now,” she said.

I said I wouldn’t.

She said I’d screw around.

I said I’d windsurf.

She said I’d drink too much.

I said it was none of her business if I did, but I
wouldn’t; I’d go to bed early that night and windsurf the next day.

And so it went, until finally we exchanged hot words. Her
last sally was “So. Then. You won’t come back with me?” This was delivered in
tones of hurt accusation, with distinct undertones of ultimatum.

I had managed to accomplish what neither ‘jerryfish’ nor
sharks nor shipwreck had done — Sunantha was in tears when she left. I felt
like hell, actually; and I felt a dull resentment, at the same time, that she
had led me to act like such a prick. I almost went after her.

But now Sunantha was gone and all I was left with were the
aches and pains from my nautical adventures and a nagging feeling of guilt.
Guilt compounded and confused by irritation. Irritation that Sunantha should
feel she had this kind of claim on me, and irritation that I should feel guilty
for simply having established my basic rights as a person.

I really should’ve ended the affair long ago, I reflected.
It wasn’t fair to Sunantha, and it wasn’t fair to me. After all, there was no
future in it. There was no way we were going to get married; I knew better than
that No matter how attractive, no matter how sweet the lady was, our
backgrounds were too different. Our basic interests and objectives in life were
worlds apart And so on and so forth.

Down the beach, where the German bears were at play, I
watched as one of the Baby Gogo girls stepped high into the water. A portly
graybeard strutted along purposefully behind her, as if to say I´m a busy man,
but now I’m on vacation and enjoying myself so let’s get on with it.” As he
closed in on the statuesque arse ahead of him, his head swung this way and
that, probably looking for ways to make a buck.

That’s not the way to have a good time, I thought.

She says her name is Oi, which means ‘sugarcane’. She
smells of coconut oil but I am too inhibited to lick and nuzzle her oily warm
brown skin right here on the beach. I can’t believe V m doing this. But I’m
only talking, we don’t have to go to my hotel. Do we? Actually we do. I want to
say we do have to go, this is bigger than the both of us. I should be in
vaudeville. She speaks very little English, and my Thai is not so good. What
have we got to talk about anyway? She says she is seventeen years old. I could
almost be her father. I am glad I am not. She’s smiling at me at point blank
range now and I see her teeth are brilliantly white and she is slightly
buck-toothed which makes her even more desirable, I don t know why. Would she
like to sit and have a drink with me here on the beach? Yes, she would and she
screams at the vendor up by the road. She has the kind of voice that makes
fishwives look up in amazement. She screams once more leaving this sunny day in
shards all around my beach chair, and I am relieved to see the vendor finally
coming down to see what’s happening. Oi asks for a cold coconut and a bowl of
noodles and I think about having a beer but I have a coconut instead, the
coconut water sweet and strengthening, the flesh young and soft so you can
scoop it with a spoon. Oi wants to know how I got all scraped up, and I tell
her, although I don´t think she understands completely. Where is my fen, my
girlfriend, she asks, and I tell her back in Bangkok. We don´t  have much to
talk about, we only joke a little and Oi eats her noodles and I go for a little
swim.

The salt water stings in my scrapes and cuts. The
rope-burns around my waist hurt like hell. Oi tells me to lie down on my towel
and she will rub oil on me. She is so gentle and nice I can’t believe these
hands belong to that voice. After she rubs oil on me I rub oil on her, and this
feels even better. I wonder how Sunantha’ s sunburn is; I told her she should
be more careful, she’d been a long time away from the beach.

The sun is almost down and Oi says she has to go to
work now. When I say nothing, but only wait for Fate to make me an offer I
can’t refuse, she says again, more loudly, 7 go work now.’ In case I haven’t
yet got the message she adds ‘You pay bar, I no go work now; I go with you.’ So
that’s the way it has to be, I tell myself I pay for the food and a route-bus
we take into Pattaya where we go to the Hot Licks Go go Bar and I give Oi 200
baht which she gives to the cashier who says you want a beer, but I say I
don’t, I don t know why. Now Oi belongs to me for twenty-four hours or so. She
goes into a back room of the bar to change into her street togs, which turn out
to be a shocking pink cotton halter-top worn together with leopard-skin tights
with cutouts either side to show the skin of her haunches. An ornate silver
belt holds the tights up. Oh, yeah, and green high-heeled pumps. Holy Jesus, I
think. There’s no rhinestone in her navel, though.

We walk along the beach in Pattaya to see the sky turn
red and orange and violet and to see the lights on the boats and along the
shore in North Pattaya. She buys a bag of fresh mussels with hot pepper sauce
and a baked crab from vendors on the beach and we eat as we go. She won t let
me feed myself; she pops morsels into my mouth saying ‘Aroi, delicious!’ each
time; we are still short of conversation. One of the mussels is gray, I see by
the light of a lamp-standard, and I say V ve heard gray mussels are bad. But
she just says’ Aroi’ andl eat it anyway. It tastes exactly like all the others,
with the pepper sauce on it. She gives me another mussel and tells me it’s called
hoi in Thai. She corrects my tone when I say hoi, and then takes my hand and
rubs it over her crotch. ‘Hoi douay” she giggles. This is hoi, too.