A Woman of Bangkok

by Jack Reynolds

  ‘What wrong with you these days? All the time you—moping—like you love-sick.’

  ‘Perhaps I am.’

  ‘What?’ Of all admissions it was the one most likely to catch a Thailander’s interest. ‘You have a girl?’

  ‘Sure I have a girl’ (What a relief it was to let the secret out at last—to share my pride and joy—even with—)

  ‘What she like? She Siamese?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Is she beautiful?’

  ‘Of course. All Siamese girls are beautiful.’

  ‘How old she?’

  ‘Twenty … seven, I believe.’ Stupid to tell the truth. ‘My age.’

  ‘Tcha! She too old. Too old for young boy like you, too old for any man. Old girl never any good. Must have young. Only young girl fresh, eager … Where you meet her?’

  ‘In Bangkok.’

  ‘She prostitute?’

  ‘No—never!’

  ‘What is she then? How you meet her?’

  ‘She’s a dancing-girl. The number one dancing-girl at the Bolero.’

  ‘The Bolero—tcha! You not want fall in love with that sort girl. She just want your money. What her name?’

  ‘Oh, never mind.’

  He wasn’t offended. After a while he said, ‘Dancing-girl, prostitute, all the same. All bad. You must not trust. You must just poke once, or twice if very good, then on to the next …’

  I sighed. I’d heard the argument before. It was the doctrine of Somboon and Frost. They also condemned all prostitutes out of hand as bad, advising me to have only my fun with them, then leave them to their badness. To me that was an outrageous proposition. There was not much of the conventional Christian in me but, for some reason that seemed almost instinctive, I had an indestructible belief in the essential goodness of human beings, especially the female sort; and an impulse to ‘save’ those who according to my judgment had temporarily strayed from the right path would flare up in me quite as fiercely as in a missionary, though of course fewer people seemed ‘lost’ to me than to a missionary. And since I’d discovered the Siamese brothel this impulse had been continuously burning in me. The Korat Venus—I knew she was a good girl—just unfortunate, that’s all. How could I have been so attracted by her if she’d been—evil? All she’d needed, I’d been convinced, was to be shown the way out of the hell she’d got into and she’d take it. Of course our ideas of the way out had differed somewhat. Mine had all included myself in a highly romantic role; whereas she had based her hope of redemption on a Singer. (That is the generic name for sewing machines in the Far East, and what she meant was that if only I’d give her a couple of thousand tics she could set up as a dressmaker.) These recollections, coming back to me then, made me slightly uncomfortable; just how far had I committed myself, discussing them with the girl in pre-Vilai days? Hadn’t I more or less promised …?

  Windmill was saying, ‘You better come for walk with me tonight. I find new place. Very charming girls. All young—no hair. There’s one—her name is Yupin—I think maybe she is only fifteen, and she cho-ker-li only three month. She like angel—out of this world—and only fifty tic. If you like I fix for her to come to hotel tonight.’ He saw my boredom and tried one more throw. ‘Her bubs—’ He whistled his admiration. ‘Just like she have two pomelo in her shirt—’

  I listened with disdain. I wasn’t to be tempted. Vilai was still too real.

  I thought then, there in Chiengmai, that the one thing needed to make me happy was to return to Bangkok, which meant to Vilai. But the reunion gave me quite as much pain as joy …

  The train reached Bangkok at eight in the morning. I went to the hotel for bath and breakfast, then strolled through the streets to the office. Many stalls along the New Road where our office was were selling cards that were festive with robins, holly, snow-scapes, tinsel bells, sleighs—all most anomalous, since even a learned man like Windmill was puzzled about the difference between snow and ice. With a shock I realized that it was only a few days to Christmas. The temperature was about ninety in the shade—my shirt was glued to my shoulder-blades—and I was quite unable to work up the proper feeling. However, when I found a few relatively restrained cards with coloured photographs of Thai architecture I bought them. Reaching the office I directed them to the old folks at home, to Lena, Slither, the Samjohns, Frost and Drummond, Windmill and the office girls. When I’d remembered everyone worthy of remembrance there was still one card left over. I wrestled with myself for a long time, at last scribbled on it, ‘To Andy and Shee. From R.’ I hesitated about sending it, but when Verchai came to empty my OUT tray I threw it in along with the rest. After all, it was the season of goodwill. And the perfidy that had blighted my life for three long years seemed less heinous now, since it had driven me into Vilai’s arms …

  My reception at the office had been nothing like our previous triumph—I’d just made a routine reappearance and in five minutes was addressing the cards. I tried to make this disappointment—for such it was—the keynote of the day. Even returning to the hotel in the Riley at four I still refused to let myself hope. But—blessed are the poor in spirit. Arun, meeting me in the lobby, was one joyous grin. ‘De fat lady come!’ he announced. ‘I give key like you say. She in your room, way-it for you.’

  I went up the stairs three at a time.

  Before going to Chiengmai I’d told her the date we expected to be back but I’d never dared to hope she’d remember it. All the time up North I’d been talking to myself like a Dutch uncle: ‘Don’t forget, my lad, you’re only one pebble on a very shingly beach. Can’t expect to catch that eye twice …’ But I saw now that my caution had been unnecessary. All the time I was up North I could have basked in the certainty that the moment I got back to Bangkok she’d come to me. This was no one-sided affair as the Sheila one had been: Vilai returned my own feelings. The most sought-after woman in Bangkok—a woman who could pick and choose between generals and filmstars (she’d slept with them all in her time)—had selected me for her lover. It was a personal triumph—the biggest of my life … And she seemed to share my joy too, at least that first afternoon; but of course she wasn’t so demonstrative as I was.

  She stayed until long after she ought to have gone to get ready for ‘work’. I think the time passed as quickly for her as for me. We arranged the financial side of our proposed trip to Chiengmai to her great advantage. She questioned me closely about my travels, especially about the number of girls I’d had. She flatly refused to believe I’d been celibate. ‘No man can go two week wissout slip wiss girl,’ she said: ‘imposs-bull.’ But she was broad-minded on the subject. ‘I not mind you slip wiss usser girl. You must, when you go country so long. But be careful. Mind you not sick. You sick, cannot slip wiss me …’ She returned to the subject more than once. ‘Must watss your step upcountry. Not want giff girl too mutss money. Every girl want you money, I sink, ’cause you farang, she sink you must haff plenty money. But you must kip you money for me. Country girl very dirty, maybe she haff huss-band too. You not want luff her: you luff me. You must just pass her, one time, then quick quick forget …’ It was the Somboon-Frost-Windmill doctrine again. But this was no time for controversy. I let her lecture me as long as she liked, happy just to hear her voice, though of course she was wasting her breath; I had dedicated myself to her; she need fear no rivals.

  She’d unpacked my bag for me before I came back and while putting my clothes away had noticed their bachelor state. ‘Tomollow I bling—you know, somesing make good,’ she promised, making the motions of sewing, and she kept her word. When I returned from work next afternoon there she was, stretched on my bed, in brassiere and navy-blue slacks, with my torn clothes all around her and needle and cotton and scissors to hand. She finished the needlework while I had a shower and subsequently almost frightened me by the violence of her love-making. Up to that point everything was perfect but then the question of money came up and with it the question of did we trust and love each other. The ans
wer was of course no, not entirely. I had given her three hundred tics the day before on the understanding that it was to cover two visits. Now she said it wasn’t enough. I accused her of breaking her word and she accused me of trying to welsh on her.

  ‘Of course you not giff me money yesterday for today! You sink t’ree hunderd enough for two day? Huh: I White Leopard. I very high girl. I neffer slip wiss man for less than two hunderd—’

  ‘OK. Here’s another hundred. That makes four for two days.’

  ‘So! Now you try to make me look low. Next sing you want me slip wiss you for nussing. Before you go Chiengmai you make me very high, pay me four, five hunderd. But now you haff usser girl in Chiengmai, I sink, you like her more zan me—’

  ‘She’s wonderful. She’s very small and dainty—’

  ‘There you are! Before you say you no haff Chiengmai girl—’

  ‘And she costs me only twenty tics per game. And she’s much younger and—and eagerer—than you are. And I like her far, far better than I like you—’

  ‘Huh. She cat. I leopard—’

  ‘She loves me and she wants to marry me.’

  ‘Tee-hee! You belief that? What Siamese girl want to marry wiss farang? She just want money from you.’

  And so on. In the scrimmaging I dropped my watch and broke the glass. She stopped quarrelling at once. ‘You know where you can buy new?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I take. I bring back next time I come see you.’

  So she wasn’t so mad at me that she intended to drop me … ‘You’ll have to hurry up,’ I said. ‘Straight after Christmas I’m off to the Northeast again.’

  ‘Oh, Wretch. All the time you go away. Why you not stay in Bangkok? I not want you go country all the time, giff you money to cats. I want you stay here, wiss me.’

  ‘So I can give all my money to you, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’ She never made any bones about it. ‘Why you want? You no haff house, no haff wife, no haff nussing. But I must pay for many sing. You no giff me money, what I do?’

  ‘What you did before you met me. What you do now. Lie with any man that’ll slip you a hundred tics—’

  ‘Not hunderd, darling. I Leopard. I—’

  ‘Don’t tell me lies. I know Bangkok as well as anyone. Any Bolero girl will sleep with a man for a hundred—’

  ‘Usser girl, maybe. But not Vilai—’

  ‘—whether he’s poxed, or scrofulous, or stinking, or depraved—’

  ‘Stop, stop, Wretch. You not want say any more. Only say bad sing. Hurt me. Hurt you-salf …’

  So it went on. There was anything but the serene domesticity I longed for in our relationship. Together, we were always in a fury of love or violently quarrelling. Apart—well, of course, I don’t know how much she thought about me. I can only speak for myself. Alone, I was always racked with longing for her or marching up and down my room calling on Heaven to expunge her from my life—depending on how we’d parted last time. I could never take a middle line and just like her. It was always the extreme of love or hatred with me.

  Actually we didn’t see much of each other for some time. I got thoroughly involved in Christmas festivities. There were cocktail parties all over and the Samjohns invited me to spend the day with them. They were really extremely nice to me. Mrs. S. gave me the latest Hemingway. There was fresh turkey and plum pudding out of a tin. Drinks were unlimited. In the afternoon we called on neighbours of theirs for yet more drinks. I should have enjoyed myself. But my last session with Vilai had been stormy. She’d flatly refused to see me during the holidays. ‘It big day for American; I must dress up, show myself around.’ The fact that I was having the day off and could have spent several hours with her made no difference. ‘I not want you come wiss me. You good boy. I not want you go Champagne Bucket, all those places; they not nice for you. Better I come hotel, see you Saturday …’ I hated being kept hidden as if I were a guilty secret. I’d cut up rough and, I feared, offended her unforgivably. So I was desperate and miserable … When Saturday afternoon came, and she with it, I was overcome with remorse because of my doubts of her and with gratitude and affection. Every time she turned up again it was like a miracle: I could never convince myself, when she was absent, that she’d ever return to me …

  The next day, Sunday, she came too; and this was the first occasion she let me see that all was not well with her. I think I sensed it the moment she flounced in. She was in gaudy red slacks and an off-the-shoulder yellow blouse that almost shouted ‘Here’s a harlot’ to the startled eye, but she had on scarcely any make-up and her hair was wildly dishevelled. As usual I attempted to kiss her but she eeled out of my arms and ripped off her clothes. She’d ordered a coffee for herself and the boy brought it while she was doing herself up in a towel.

  As she brooded over her coffee I was horrified by the alteration in her appearance. It was not just that the skin of her face looked so much coarser than usual, the eye-sockets puffy, the lines from nose to mouth more marked, but her whole expression had changed. Her eyes were wells of pain, almost black, and her mouth was pushed forward in grim twisted lines of discontent. I knelt in front of her and tried to encircle her in my arms as my habit was but she snarled ‘Not want,’ swerved her knees in my way and sucked at her coffee savagely.

  ‘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.