by Peter Jaggs
From my vantage point in the yard outside I could see that the three English lads had left the first bar and were now walking up the hill towards me. From the way they were drunkenly singing football songs and by the T-shirt extolling the virtues of the ‘Nice and Sleazy’ gogo bar that one of them was wearing, I guessed I was not the only Pattaya resident on a visa run in town that day. Halfway up the track two of the revellers dodged into another bar, but Nice and Sleazy man was obviously making his way up to where I was sitting. Never one to bear a grudge, I gave him a cheery wave as he entered the bar (I couldn’t speak English, remember) but he flashed me his best hard man stare and then ignored me completely. That suited me just fine.
Nice and Sleazy man had obviously been to the bar before. The girl in the soiled krama greeted him like a slightly barmy long lost love and the pair of them sat together on the tiny sofa that was just inside the doorway. The girl was an extremely quick worker and she got down to giving him a blow-job right there in the bar. Nice and Sleazy man leaned back drunkenly on the sofa, his hairy legs stretched out in front of him and his shorts and boxers crumpled around his grubby trainers. He had a faded, lop-sided Chelsea tattoo inked into his fat calf. The girl’s head bobbed rhythmically in response to his loud encouragement. I had witnessed far worse behaviour over the years in Soi Six and I recognised the type immediately. He was one of those guys who just love to have an audience.
I concentrated on watching the cattle grazing in the field over the road. The girl really was as fast as I had first suspected and less than a minute later there was a series of loud grunts as Nice and Sleazy man’s lust and money were quickly and obviously spent. He didn’t hang around for a moment, but pulled up his shorts and flung some notes on the table in front of the girl—who was still wiping something away from the side of her mouth—and stalked off down the hill. He was in such a hurry he hadn’t even stopped for a beer.
It wasn’t two minutes later that Nice and Sleazy man’s two mates turned up. The arsehole who had shouted after me as I left the first bar purposefully jogged my table as he walked by in an attempt to knock my beer over. Neither him or his pal looked like much to worry about and I considered punching his already mis-shapen nose, but it was too nice a day to hurt my fist so I decided not to sink to his level. As it turned out, I had the last laugh, anyway.
The girl in the dirty krama—who hadn’t budged an inch from the sofa since Nice and Sleazy man had left—also seemed to know her last customer’s buddies quite well. When they walked through the gateway into the tiny yard where I sat she jumped to her feet and threw her arms around the guy who had knocked against my table.
Considering what the girl had so recently done with Nice and Sleazy man I winced when she treated his friend to a deep, open-mouthed kiss that lasted for several long seconds. During this touching embrace I suspect that several liquid ounces of body fluids were swapped; not all of which were his and hers.
I had seen enough. I paid Iron Butterfly for my beer and left. As I did so, I attempted to slip the young boy sitting by the doorway a dollar. I needn’t have bothered. Iron Butterfly’s sharp eyes saw everything and she had the note off the little lad before I had even walked out of the gateway.
The girl in the krama’s latest sweetheart shouted something at me in a pseudo-Nazi voice about me being a German cocksucker as I walked away down the hill, but as I had previously deliberately misled him on the first part of his accusation and his second misconception was plainly a case of the pot calling the kettle black, I let the matter rest and walked off down the hill, smiling to myself.
Before I left I had showed Ron’s photograph to Iron Butterfly just in case Psorng-Preng had been unfortunate enough to take up employment in one of the bars on the hill. The Mamasan barely glanced at it and simply gave me a blank look and shook her head. It was now nearly five p.m. and I’d had enough of the search for one day. I made my way back to the tiny, open-fronted store where I had arranged for Narith to pick me up. The little shop doubled up as a general store and pharmacy and I thought I would buy the ingredients for my tried and trusted Pattaya hangover kit (paracetamol, antacid tablets and electrolyte powders) because the one small shop on The Hill didn’t stock medication of any kind.
There was a very young beggar sitting in the dust by the doorway in front of the wall of the small store. He was around ten years old and had a marvellously good-looking face that would break female hearts in ten years time. Strangely, the hump on his back and his badly crippled leg only seemed to accentuate the young male beauty of his features even more.
Although the beggar had the ubiquitous plastic cup in front of him he didn’t appear to be trying too hard to fill it. He seemed far more interested in bouncing a little rubber ball up against the wall and catching it in one hand. He was totally immersed in his game and in his own world. As I walked past him into the store he tired of the ball game and began adding to the drawings he had scratched in the dust with a stick in front of him. The youngster was not merely doodling; he screwed up his almost pretty face in concentration and poked a pink tongue out of one corner of his mouth like any kid trying hard not to go over the lines in a colouring book back home.
When I had made my purchases I walked out of the store and put my change into the beggar’s cup. Still being a bit of a big kid at heart myself and having always fancied I am pretty good with children, I bent to pick up the rubber ball beside the boy, intending to have an impromptu game of catch with him. This was a big mistake. As yet, nobody had told me about the Cambodian kids’ determination and ferocity when taking care of what little they possessed. Later I learned that the Khmer children didn’t have much—but by Christ, they were going to fight for the very few things they had managed to accumulate. The young beggar thought I was after his toy and he went for me like a savage puppy.
The boy snatched at the ball furiously and our heads collided with a jarring thud. He then backed up against the wall with what was very likely the only toy he possessed clutched tightly against his chest. His black eyes were blazing venomously and his lips were pulled back in a snarl. Shocked, I backed off a few paces with my palms held up in front of me to show I had meant no harm.
The Cambodian store owner noticed the disturbance and came out of his doorway quickly. He began to yell at the poor kid. I calmed the man down and told him what had happened and how it had all been my fault. The boy was crying now and he watched us mistrustfully as we spoke, his large, liquid eyes wide with fright in his angelic brown face. I felt very bad at upsetting the kid. He plainly had enough difficulties in his life without some stupid farang poking his nose in and making problems for him. To try to rectify the situation—and to make myself feel better—I asked the store owner to tell the kid it was all a mistake and I hadn’t been after his ball at all.
“Tell the boy to come into your shop with me,” I said. “And I’ll buy him anything he wants.” Delighted at making yet another sale the owner of the store did as I asked and spoke rapidly to the young beggar in Khmer. I was astonished when as quickly as he had become angry, the little lad grabbed a wooden crutch that lay nearby and pulled himself to his feet. Then he looked up at me with a wide smile and slipped his small hand trustingly into mine and began pulling me into the shop with surprising strength.
The shelves all along one wall of the small store were lined with an assortment of biscuits, sweets, candies and cakes. There was also a large fridge near the door with a glass cover that contained an array of ice creams and lollipops. The boy began searching the shelves and I wondered what he would choose. Chocolate, perhaps—or one of those ice-cream cornets to cool down with at the end of a hot day. Imagine my surprise when the young beggar joined me where I was standing by the till holding nothing more edible than a large tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush and a bar of soap. When I paid for the items I bought a couple of ice creams anyway, and we both sat at the little stone table outside the store and enjoyed them whilst I waited for Narith to turn up as arranged.
The owner of the store sat down with us and I asked him a few questions about the lad. He spoke to him for several minutes, then translated what the boy had said.
“My name is Rath, which although is a type of flower, also means ‘orphan’. I am eight years old. I have no brothers and sisters and I never knew my mother or father or any of my family at all. Ever since I can remember I have stayed with Papa Eng, the man many people in Sihanoukville call ‘The Father Of The Beggars’. Papa Eng has a large house on the outskirts of town and he allows any crippled or orphaned children to stay there so long as they work for him. At the moment there are around twenty of us living with him. He is kind to us and feeds us well and it is good to have friends who are the same as myself—and as long as we all work hard Papa Eng is very good to us.
When I was very small Papa Eng used to have one of the older children carry me around and we would beg money from the tourists who first started to come to Sihanoukville around ten years ago. All I had to do was look sad and that wasn’t very hard to do. The big boys and girls would carry me around the beaches, the market and the bus station—anywhere the farang tourists might be found. Sometimes I was very sick because I was only a baby and it was very hard work to be out in the sun all day. But we couldn’t go home until we had reached the target Papa Eng had set us, and that usually took all day long.
I don’t know what happened to my leg—it has been this way ever since I can remember. Sometimes I dream it is fine and straight but when I wake in the morning it is still crooked and useless. I have been a beggar all my life and I don’t mind the work at all—after all, what else could I possibly do? But I do wish I could run, jump and kick a football with the normal children sometimes when I see them playing in the streets and schoolyards.
When I grew older and too heavy to carry around Papa Eng started to send me out begging on my own. I like this much better because now I am an experienced beggar I know the places where I can soon earn the amount that Papa Eng has set me without any trouble at all, usually within a few hours. There is no reason for me to continue begging after I reach my target because I give everything to Papa Eng at the end of the day, anyway. Of course, no child would ever dream of keeping money from Papa Eng. He would know at once by the look on your face and that would be the end. So now when I have reached my target I find a shady spot to get out of the sun and the rest of the day is my own.
I have never been to school and I cannot read or write. I suppose it is my destiny to be a beggar forever; like so many of the older men and women you see begging around Cambodia who were hurt in the war or by the mines that were never cleared. This worries me a great deal, because I will be on my own then and as every beggar knows the older you become, the less appealing you are—and the less money the farangs will give you.
If my life could change by magic and I could be anything at all in this world I would choose to be just like David Beckham. I would love to score a goal in an important football match in a huge stadium filled with people shouting and cheering me. Then, I would run back to my friends very fast with my arms in the air and all the other players would hug me and slap my back. I would pull my football shirt over my head to show my strong chest and tummy and dive and slide across the wet grass, laughing like I was crazy, just like I’ve seen on TV!”
Presently, Narith pulled up on his motorcycle and I got up to leave. Rath regarded me solemly, still licking his ice and making it last. He extended his small hand out to me, which still contained his rubber ball. I took the ball gently from him and we threw it to each other for five minutes before I left. When I finally climbed onto Narith’s pillion I noticed the pictures the young beggar had scratched in the dust in front of the shop again and I took a closer look. Rath had drawn the crude outline of a pair of goalposts surrounded by a team of stick men playing football. Perhaps not quite a Lowry but the drawings in the dirt certainly did bring a tightness to my throat, just the same.
When Narith found out how I had lost my way he asked me if I would like him to take me to ‘The Strip’, but I’d had enough of the downtown area for one day and I told him I would try again another time. So, after bidding my new young friend goodbye, I climbed onto the back of Nariths’s motodop and we rattled on up Ekereach Street and back to Victory Hill. As we drove off, I craned my neck around to look behind me and the figure sitting in the dust waved a small hand at me until he became no more than a blur in the distance.
CHAPTER NINE
Despite that first meeting with The Professor when he had attempted to scare me back to Pattaya, I was beginning to like him. For his part, the intense naturalist seemed to have decided that, in spite of my tattoos and admittedly rough appearance—and the fact I chose to live in that hell-hole of a city called Pattaya—perhaps I wasn’t such a bad bloke after all. This was mainly due to the fact that I have always loved all animals and wildlife and I was genuinely interested in The Professor’s daily expeditions to the muddy streams, puddles and ditches he would visit every day and I would always be fascinated to see how he had got on. The Professor was obviously touched by my curiosity about his work and we would spend hours together poring over his large collection of natural history books trying to identify the latest water snail or aquatic insect he had captured. He was also very fond of baffling me with the scientific names of various creatures and he told me that Stumpy was really a Common House Gecko or “Hemidactylus Frenatus,” but although I had to admit my diminutive friend’s correct moniker was undeniably impressive, the little reptile would always be Stumpy the lizard to me. The Professor had installed a truly magnificent aquarium in the television room complete with a gravel bed and a pump that looked powerful enough to run an oil rig—in preparation for the day when he would return from one of his safaris with something really exciting to record. To date, sadly it was uninhabited.
I have never been one to poke my nose into anyone’s business and I never felt the need to ask the intense Anglo-Indian naturalist where he had been born or educated. I did guess it was not in the Western world though, because despite his obvious intelligence and his admirable conscientiousness in the pursuit of his research, his speech was littered with fantastic faux pas and misquotations—particularly when he was excited—which made conversation with him even more of a pleasure.When I had been on The Hill for a week The Professor loosened up enough to tell me how he wasn’t interested in women anymore. He said he had been concentrating on his naturalism since his long-time girlfriend had disappeared with a muscular Australian surfer with flowing dreadlocks they had met in Hua Hin. Apparently, the amorous pair had done a runner whilst The Professor had been busy crouching in a flooded bog in the nearby Khao Sam Roi Yot national park in an attempt to spot the elusive purple swamp hen.
“It was like a dagger in the knife,” The Professor sighed ambigously, shaking his head sadly, before bending back down to continue the undeniably much less heartbreaking pursuit of examining a giant dung beetle under his colossal magnifying glass.
When I told The Professor about my quest for Psorng-Preng he shook his head dismissively.
“If I was to put my hand on my head, I don’t think you stand much chance,” he said, sagely. “It will be like looking for a camel in a haystack.”
The Professor used to disappear every day on his pride and joy, a battered old motorcycle he had been conned into buying by one of the motodop boys who had realized the machine was on its last legs and that he needed to offload it on some sucker before it gave out completely. The Professor had scraped off most of the rust and lovingly repainted the bike and it now retained a reasonable appearance although the engine still sounded like someone had emptied a bag of nails into the cylinder head.
Before setting out every day The Professor would hang a gigantic pair of binoculars around his neck. He would load up a rucksack—the size of which the veterans of Desert Storm would have been proud of—full of the required books and guides for the day’s expedition. He would hang his catching nets and specimen buckets on
an ingenious Heath Robinson-style rack he had made and disappear off up the track in a cloud of dust and a rattle of dodgy engine components. Despite his meticulous preparation and diligence The Professor usually returned from his forays with nothing more exciting than bad sunburn, muddy legs and the occasional dead insect which he would examine for hours with the aid of his monstrous magnifying glass.
One day however, it seemed that the intrepid naturalist had finally struck gold. I was taking advantage of The Professor’s absence to watch an old Mr. Bean re-run in the television room. This would normally have been impossible as the TV was constantly tuned to the National Geographic channel whenever my room-mate was present. Suddenly, the side door burst open and a mud-spattered Professor burst into the communal room—he used to call it the communist room—in a state of delight which bordered on panic. He emptied the contents of the small plastic bucket he was carrying proudly into the palacial aquarium and rushed for a gigantic book on fish he had in his room.
“I think I might have discovered a previously unrecorded Cambodian specimen!” He yelled at me excitedly, and began frantically flicking through the pages of his guide with shaking hands.
Previously unrecorded specimens or not, the two little fishes that had unwittingly swum into The Professor’s net were undeniably beautiful and they darted around their new luxury home happily. The fishes were both around an inch long and had golden spots and bright, waving fins that glowed black and orange in the soft light from the fluorescent tube The Professor had fixed up above the tank. We both stared into the clear water at the tiny fish and the delighted naturalist babbled on unintelligibly about Galaxy Rasboras and “Celestichthys Marginatus” in a loud, excited voice. Drawn by the commotion, Srey Leak’s two pretty daughters Chantavy and Chavy turned up to see what all the fuss was about. The two sisters also seemed to be impressed by the delightful little fish and we all gazed into the clear water. The teenaged girls pointed their slim brown fingers at the aquarium and jabbered away happily in Khmer to each other.