A Woman of Bangkok

by Jack Reynolds

  And what was going to be the end of it all? I had put a ring in my own snout: was I to be led around by it for the rest of my days? I had a stupid outlook on life, different from other men’s—but instead of making me happier than they were it made me even more frustrated. And so there was never anything but bitterness. Sheila had been wondrous for a time, then that was that. Vilai had been taken as an antidote, and now I’d become an addict—but she was faithless. All her talk about if I’d marry her tomorrow she’d drop everyone else—if I’d take her to Chiengmai she’d forget the other two thousand—but she was now a dancing-girl and she must smile at and be nice to the other men—so go home darling and go to sleep and later maybe I will knock at your door—‘Oh, hell,’ I groaned, leaping out of the chair …

  I was still ordering beers in the small hours and the boys were out of sorts with me too.

  That was Saturday and the next day I was due to leave with Windmill for Chiengmai. I had a busy morning at the office getting everything squared up before my departure and afterwards lunched with Windmill at the Sports Club. It was around four when he dropped me at the hotel. (It was his weekend to have the Riley. He was the only Thai on the staff that ever did get it.)

  We’d had quite a few drinks and I was feeling cheerier than at any time since about midnight Thursday—at which hour I hadn’t yet lost hope that she’d come that night. But I was cheery now for the opposite reason—because I’d convinced myself I’d never see her again. And in daylight, and after a few beers, and knowing I’d be getting out of Bangkok on the morrow anyway, that prospect seemed easily supportable. Her word wasn’t to be trusted. And she had jilted me, after robbing me of almost every penny I possessed. Good riddance then, I thought. For a few more nights I’d yearn, no doubt almost unbearably, for her body, but that yearning could be side-stepped, and probably would be in Chiengmai.

  I even sang under the shower. I sang ‘I wonder who’s kissing her now.’ The theme wasn’t uncomfortably poignant, not in mid-afternoon. I sang con bravado. In all probability nobody was kissing her just at that moment …

  While I was towelling myself Arun came in. He was the boy I’d sent to the Bolero the previous Saturday with the note. He was grinning all over his handsome face. ‘Dis morning dat woman from Bolero come. De fat one. She say last night she come look for dis hotel, cannot find. She say tonight she go see khon at Silapakorn Theatre, after dat she come here see you—’

  I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. Even on normal weeknights she’d been unable to pass up ‘business’ in favour of ‘love.’ It seemed unlikely therefore that she’d throw away a Saturday—usually the most lucrative night—to visit the theatre and me … At that moment I was not expecting ever to see her again. For pride would prevent me from going to the Bolero to fetch her—like a wife hauling her husband home from the local. And by the time I returned from the North I’d be cured, by the grace of God, of my infatuation, for what the eye doesn’t see …

  From five till six I slept and ten minutes later she came. I recognized her feet, red-nailed, in flashy white sandals, under the half-door with an incredible upheaval in my bowels. It was like the instant after a terrific flash of lightning in one of these tropical storms, when you’re getting yourself all keyed up for the thunder clap in five seconds but it comes instantly and shatteringly; you knew there would be thunder, but you never guessed it would come to promptly, so overpoweringly, as this …

  She was in a pretty green frock which she immediately took off. She had on a petticoat for the first time, and I didn’t like that much; it was too occidental: it carried me right back to Weldon’s Fashions, of which my mother had stacks and stacks. She wrapped herself in a towel and thus accoutred called for oliang yen, giving the boy a gratuitous thrill.

  She wanted three hundred at first, later asked for five, and this was the madness, I gave it to her. Why? I could hardly explain it myself. It had taken me three days to earn that much. She got it in two hours. Her excuse for asking for more was that I was going away for a while. ‘You not like usser man. You not giff me money just for slip wiss you. You giff me money ’cause you luff me. And soon I must pay for room—sick hundred—and if you not giff, maybe I not haff, then I must go wiss very bad low man—’ It was the right line to take with me.

  She told me something about her life but I don’t know how much of it was true—certainly this version didn’t tally altogether with some later ones. She said for instance that she came from Songkhla in the South, but in all later reports her birthplace was Korat. The same number of husbands figured in the story—three—but this time there was a gap of several years between numbers one and two, whereas in later editions number two was the elder brother of number one and she’d joined his household pretty soon after number one’s body had been reduced to ashes. I forget what number two’s shortcomings were in this first account (number one never had any) but the trouble with number three was that he was a drunk.

  ‘You’ve never had any more husbands since?’

  ‘No. Not want Thai man. Not good.’

  ‘You could marry a farang.’

  ‘Huh. What farang want marry wiss Siamese dancing-girl?’

  My kiss was intended to show her there was one. She accepted it calmly.

  ‘You see all the girls take notice to you when you come in Bolero last night?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. They did seem to goggle a bit.’

  ‘They always take notice to my man. If I go wiss man more than one time they know he must be good.’

  ‘I wish to hell you could leave that hole.’

  ‘How I do then? Can not liff on nussing.’

  ‘Live with me. I’d give you everything I earn.’

  ‘How mutss that? Four t’ou-zand every munss? Five t’ou-zand? I can make ten t’ou-zand by my-self. And just for my-self.’

  ‘Money isn’t everything—’

  ‘Besides, I not work, what I do? Slip all day? Then I get fat. No good, I sink. Not want get fat. Not pewty.’

  ‘You really mean to tell me you’d rather live this hellish life you lead now than be decent with me, just because you’re afraid of getting a bit tubby?’

  She answered, ‘Maybe I marry wiss you one day. But not now. Now many men want me. Can haff good time, make mutss money—’

  ‘And finally, when you’re old and poxed and ugly and nobody else’ll look at you, I can have you for my very own?’

  She laughed. ‘Now you angly again. I neffer know boy angly all the time like you. I not like. You must be good to me, darling, ’cause I tell you more than I tell usser man. You know how unhappy my story, you must be sorry to me.’

  I took that rebuke to heart. I could never forget Udom. But it seemed as though she herself sometimes did. And I would resent that. I mistook her courage for callousness.

  That afternoon we achieved wonderful accord. She babbled away as Lena used to do after a bottle of stout. She had been to the matinée at the theatre—Arun had got mixed up between ‘afternoon’ and ‘evening’—and the classical dance drama had been ‘pewty, pewty, darling; sometime I want us go see togesser; oh very very pewty. And they dance—’ She wasn’t able to find words to express the beauty of the dancing, but she reproduced some of it with stately arms. ‘It all fighting, like Iverhoe—’

  ‘You went to see that movie?’

  ‘Yes, I go one day. It good movie, I sink. You haff see?’

  ‘Yes, in England. I liked it too. In fact I was just going to see it again last Saturday when—’ I stopped.

  She said, ‘I going then, too. But we go ron-piya-ban instead … That last movie Udom see, Wretch. I sink he must like very mutss. Horses, fighting. All the time he want to be cowboy when he big. Sometimes I sink very good you run over him wiss car—’

  ‘What! Me?’

  She corrected her English. ‘I mean, good sing he die. If he big—he man—I sink he bad man, he cowboy, very bad. I not want that for my son. I bad myself, I Number One Bad G
irl in Bangkok, but I sink bad Mama, neffer mind, she always must want good for her son. When he big, I want he Number One Good Man in Bangkok, but maybe—’

  ‘Don’t think about it, darling.’

  ‘Wretch, you good boy to me. I like very mutss. I sink no one good more batter than you. Sometime I sink you like the God. I sink I want you go wiss me to country, see my Mama. I sink, if Udom had liff, I want he like you in everysing—’

  No woman had ever talked to me like that before. My mother had always laughed at my ‘cack-handedness’ and called me a ‘dreamy Daniel.’ Sheila had only said, ‘If you tried you could do something worthwhile. You’ve got the brains and the personality. But all you do is ride round and round dirt-tracks and write poetry that nobody will ever read.’ Even Lena, who’d never missed a meeting I rode at in London, and who’d saved me from trouble with the police when I’d tried to kill myself in her back bedroom, had been disappointed in me, I knew: and her vast delight over some trivial success—a poem in the local weekly or a raise of five bob—had discomforted more than silence would have done; the very over-emphasis of the praise had underlined how rare were the occasions for any praise at all … Yet some men must have the adulation of the women they love and be convinced they deserve it … Vilai could make my heart swell with pride.

  ‘I tell you secret,’ she said. ‘Vilai not my truce name. Every dancing-girl must haff two name—her truce name and usser one. My truce name—Jamnien.’

  ‘Jamnien? That’s a lovely name.’

  ‘My truce name, darling. And you only man in Bangkok know.’

  Too soon she said she’d have to go. We dressed and I took her out the back way because coming in by the front door she’d recognized a fellow worker in the foyer and it had upset her: ‘This hotel haff girls?’ she’d asked, and she’d sounded so indignant I’d had to laugh. Going down the stairs she said, ‘Don’t forget what I tell you, Wretch. You want I go to Chiengmai wiss you next time, must giff me money before. I sink ten day before, so can make dress for day. Now I night-girl. I not come out when birds sing. Not haff any dress for day. If I go Chiengmai wiss you, must haff t’ree for here—blue—’ touching skirt-region—‘four or five for here’—touching bosom. ‘Not more. I sink four hundred tic enough. You giff me, darling?’

  ‘You aren’t exactly stark naked at this moment, and you say you earn ten thousand a month—’

  ‘What you mean? You not giff?’

  ‘I’ll give you, sweetheart, I want you to look the smartest you’ve ever looked when we go on our honeymoon—’

  ‘What mean moneymoon?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  We said goodbye with clinging hands. ‘Goodbye, Wretch. Take care you-self.’ She brushed her eyes and staggered almost onto the flowerbed as she turned away.

  ‘Vilai! Vilai! Don’t go!’

  ‘I must. I very late for Bolero—’

  ‘God blast that place to all eternity.’ I almost shouted. The sky was red with sunset. I wished it had been the reflection of that building going up in flames.

  That night there was a bit of a breeze and it was from the wrong quarter. Every now and again I could hear the music from the Bolero wafted across the house-tops. I went to bed early but I couldn’t sleep. I thought of her dancing, dancing, sick as she was, broken-hearted as she must be. How in the name of Heaven could she actually prefer this fearful life she led to life with me as my mistress or my wife?

  I still couldn’t bring myself to believe that she was ‘bad,’ in the sense that Jezebel was bad to my father, and all actresses, especially Hollywood ones, to my mother. At every visit she paid me she gave fresh evidence of virtues which I had been taught were possessed by the ‘good’ alone. For instance, she was courageous and independent and forthright and realist as I would have liked to be myself but was not; she faced up to life with a clear eye; she seemed indomitable. The worst I could say of her was that she was rather a gold-digger. But how serious a sin was that? What could you expect of any woman deprived of legal support in a society like this—or indeed in any society? Probably her education was insufficient anyway to enable her to secure what we call a decent job. So she’d become a dance-hostess. And that’s a job in which the basic rate of pay is low and the labourer has to make up on incidentals. It’s a job too at which the worker can make a respectable income only while she’s young … Life is telescoped for a woman, I told myself. All her red-letter days come at the start; she can’t look forward to increasing honours in old age, as men do; she makes her mark early or never. No wonder women often seem feverish, greedy, and unreasonable to men, for whom the sands run out at only half the speed …

  ‘Yes,’ I said to myself. ‘Vilai’s got guts. Even that shocking business a week ago hasn’t got her down. She’s facing up to the worst calamity in her life much more bravely than I faced up to mine three years ago. She’s going to come out on top of this tragedy, triumphant. And I pray God that I may help her, so that her hour of triumph will be mine, too.’

  Nine

  Windmill and I spent two weeks in Chiengmai. They should have been most enjoyable—a foretaste of the delights to come when Vilai would be my companion. For Chiengmai turned out to be an enchanting place. Here was no featureless, steamy-hot plain such as that which surrounds Bangkok; no jungle like that I had seen in the Northeast, as parched and stunted as the people who inhabited it. Chiengmai, I found, was a clean prosperous city set amidst green fertile fields. The horizon was a ring of wild blue mountains, the nearest and highest of which, Doi Sutep, cast its shadow clear across the city at sunset. From morning to night the sky was an ineffable clear sparkling blue in which pearly cloud formations, astounding in their scale and variety and grandeur, majestically deployed themselves, being subtly and silently re-moulded and re-grouped almost minute by minute. I never tired of watching that enormous stealthy drama in the sky. Yet there was much to admire at ground-level too: numerous temples blazing like jewels in their settings of palms and bo-trees; daily religious parades, with a long wooden drum shaped like a vase carried on a pole in front, girls in traditional garb, one shoulder bare, holding flower-brimmed silver urns against their breasts, troops of older women under sunshades brilliant with painted flowers and birds, and then the cart, burdened with flowers and trees made of paper money, towed by the laughing men; shops full of fantastic silverware, lacquer-work, red and black pottery, handwoven fabrics, and the like; the processions of bullock-carts, each with its own gay geometrical design in front and carved elephants at the rear, drawn creakingly through the streets by pairs of sleepy, amber-sided beasts; the Meping rippling idly between its far-flung, willowy banks … Several times we went into the surrounding countryside and it was like making trips to fairyland. Baby mountains covered with deliriously jungly jungle. Brown streams flowing blandly through the forest or breaking white over hidden rocks. Flowers as big as birds and birds like flying flowers. Once I saw elephants. There were three of them, bright yellow from a mudbath. They stood chest-high in the undergrowth, with a semi-circle of trees behind them, and above and beyond the tree-tops, a wavy line of mountains. They watched our car go by with those kindly, tolerant smiles which give their species such charming expressions. And the sunlight drowning us all in gold and greens and blues. And every leaf a mirror flashing back the light …

  It is incredible that I could have been disconsolate in such surroundings. Windmill was enjoying himself tremendously. Commercially the trip was a success too. And there were numerous outings, for our Northern clients proved no less hospitable than their counterparts in other regions. (We went amongst other places to the temple high up on Doi Sutep, to a waterfall at its foot, to an agricultural school where (to my untutored eye—Andy might not have agreed)—the fields seemed less well-cultivated than the surrounding farms, and to some hot springs near the Burma border.) Eagerly I took in all the details of these places, but not because I was getting any pleasure out of them then. I had only one thought in my head—that soon I wo
uld be bringing Vilai to see them. I wanted to be an efficient guide when the time came.

  Vilai … She was like an unseen presence throughout those two weeks. Never was she out of my thoughts for more than a few consecutive minutes. For hours on end, as we were travelling to Lamphang or Fang or Tha Chom Pu, I’d be gazing out of the window of the bus or train or car, as the case might be, blind to the blur of brilliant foliage riding by, living only in fantasies in which my feats of single-handed valour and endurance redounded always to the glory of her name. Sometimes I would come out of my dreams with a jerk and blush at their futility, at the sheer impossibility of them. I would try to fix my thoughts on worthier subjects—or just try to use my eyes and absorb as much as I could of the passing pageant of hill and jungle—but it was hopeless; in a few moments I would be back in dreamland again. This made me tedious company for Windmill, and one day he remarked on it.