“Never fear!” shouted her sixth-ranked suitor—who just happened to be riding by—to her aged father who stood wringing his hands on a nearby balcony. “I’ll rescue her!” and he rode off to the west.
Coming into the valley where Rosalind stood backed into a rocky cleft, guarded by the fuming beast of gold and green, George couched his lance.
“Release that maiden and face your doom!” he cried.
Dart bellowed, George rushed. The lance fell from his hands and the dragon rolled upon the ground, spewing gouts of fire into the air. A red substance dribbled from beneath the thundering creature’s left wing. Before Rosalind’s wide eyes, George advanced and swung his blade several times.
“… and that!” he cried, as the monster stumbled to its feet and sprang into the air, dripping more red.
It circled once and beat its way off toward the top of the mountain, then over it and away.
“Oh George!” Rosalind cried, and she was in his arms. “Oh, George…”
He pressed her to him for a moment.
“I’ll take you home now,” he said.
That evening as he was counting his gold, Dart heard the sound of two horses approaching his cave. He rushed up the tunnel and peered out.
George, now mounted on a proud white stallion and leading the gray, wore a matched suit of bright armor. He was not smiling, however.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Good evening. What brings you back so soon?”
“Things didn’t turn out exactly as I’d anticipated.”
“You seem far better accoutered. I’d say your fortunes had taken a turn.”
“Oh, I recovered my expenses and came out a bit ahead. But that’s all. I’m on my way out of town. Thought I’d stop by and tell you the end of the story.—Good show you put on, by the way. It probably would have done the trick—”
“But—?”
“She was married to one of the brawny barbarians this morning, in their family chapel. They were just getting ready for a wedding trip when you happened by.”
“I’m awfully sorry.”
“Well, it’s the breaks. To add insult, though, her father dropped dead during your performance. My former competitor is now the new baron. He rewarded me with a new horse and armor, a gratuity and a scroll from the local scribe lauding me as a dragon slayer. Then he hinted rather strongly that the horse and my new reputation could take me far. Didn’t like the way Rosalind was looking at me now I’m a hero.”
“That is a shame. Well, we tried.”
“Yes. So I just stopped by to thank you and let you know how it all turned out. It would have been a good idea—if it had worked.”
“You could hardly have foreseen such abrupt nuptials.—You know, I’ve spent the entire day thinking about the affair. We did manage it awfully well.”
“Oh, no doubt about that. It went beautifully.”
“I was thinking… How’d you like a chance to get your money back?”
“What have you got in mind?”
“Uh—When I was advising you earlier that you might not be happy with the lady, I was trying to think about the situation in human terms. Your desire was entirely understandable to me otherwise. In fact, you think quite a bit like a dragon.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It’s rather amazing, actually. Now—realizing that it only failed because of a fluke, your idea still has considerable merit.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”
“There is—ah—a lovely lady of my own species whom I have been singularly unsuccessful in impressing for a long while now. Actually, there are an unusual number of parallels in our situations.”
“She has a large hoard, huh?”
“Extremely so.”
“Older woman?”
“Among dragons, a few centuries this way or that are not so important. But she, too, has other admirers and seems attracted by the more brash variety.”
“Uh-huh. I begin to get the drift. You gave me some advice once. I’ll return the favor. Some things are more important than hoards.”
“Name one.”
“My life. If I were to threaten her she might do me in all by herself, before you could come to her rescue.”
“No, she’s a demure little thing. Anyway, it’s all a matter of timing. I’ll perch on a hilltop nearby—I’ll show you where—and signal you when to begin your approach. Now, this time I have to win, of course. Here’s how we’ll work it….”
George sat on the white charger and divided his attention between the distant cave mouth and the crest of a high hill off to his left.
After a time, a shining winged form flashed through the air and settled upon the hill. Moments later, it raised one bright wing.
He lowered his visor, couched his lance and started forward. When he came within hailing distance of the cave he cried out:
“I know you’re in there, Megtag! I’ve come to destroy you and make off with your hoard! You godless beast! Eater of children! This is your last day on earth!”
An enormous burnished head with cold green eyes emerged from the cave. Twenty feet of flame shot from its huge mouth and scorched the rock before it. George halted hastily. The beast looked twice the size of Dart and did not seem in the least retiring. Its scales rattled like metal as it began to move forward.
“Perhaps I exaggerated….” George began, and he heard the frantic flapping of giant vanes overhead.
As the creature advanced, he felt himself seized by the shoulders. He was borne aloft so rapidly that the scene below dwindled to toy size in a matter of moments. He saw his new steed bolt and flee rapidly back along the route they had followed.
“What the hell happened?” he cried.
“I hadn’t been around for a while,” Dart replied. “Didn’t know one of the others had moved in with her. You’re lucky I’m fast. That’s Pelladon. He’s a mean one.”
“Great. Don’t you think you should have checked first?”
“Sorry. I thought she’d take decades to make up her mind—without prompting. Oh, what a hoard! You should have seen it!”
“Follow that horse. I want him back.”
They sat before Dart’s cave, drinking.
“Where’d you ever get a whole barrel of wine?”
“Lifted it from a barge, up the river. I do that every now and then. I keep a pretty good cellar, if I do say so.”
“Indeed. Well, we’re none the poorer, really. We can drink to that.”
“True, but I’ve been thinking again. You know, you’re a very good actor.”
“Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself.”
“Now supposing—just supposing—you were to travel about. Good distances from here each time. Scout out villages, on the continent and in the isles. Find out which ones are well off and lacking in local heroes….”
“Yes?”
“… And let them see that dragon-slaying certificate of yours. Brag a bit. Then come back with a list of towns. Maps, too.”
“Go ahead.”
“Find the best spots for a little harmless predation and choose a good battle site—”
“Refill?”
“Please.”
“Here.”
“Thanks. Then you show up, and for a fee—”
“Sixty-forty.”
“That’s what I was thinking, but I’ll bet you’ve got the figures transposed.”
“Maybe fifty-five and forty-five then.”
“Down the middle, and let’s drink on it.”
“Fair enough. Why haggle?”
“Now I know why I dreamed of fighting a great number of knights, all of them looking like you. You’re going to make a name for yourself, George.”
Dragon’s Fin Soup
S.P. Somtow
Described by the International Herald Tribune as “the most well-known expatriate Thai in the world,” Somtow Sucharitkul (S. P. Somtow) was born in Thailand in 1952. He attended Eton, then Cambridge Universi
ty, where he received a B.A. and M.A. An avant-garde composer and conductor, he directed the Bangkok Opera Society in 1977–78, led the Asian Composer’s Conference-Festival in Bangkok in 1978, and wrote a number of works, including “Gongula 3” and “Star Maker — An Anthology of Universes’’.
He moved to the US in the late 1970s, and began to publish science fiction as Somtow Sucharitkul and dark fantasy as S. P. Somtow. Between 1991 and 2003 he has published more than fifty novels, four short story collections, and more than fifty short stories. These include the Mallworld, Inquestor and Aquila series of SF novels and the Valentine series of vampire novels. He has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award four times, and won in 2001 for his novella “The Bird Catcher”. His most recent book is novel Do Comets Dream?
At the heart of Bangkok’s Chinatown, in the district known as Yaowaraj, there is a restaurant called the Rainbow Cafe which, every Wednesday, features a blue plate special they call dragon’s fin soup. Though little known through most of its hundred-year existence, the cafe enjoyed a brief flirtation with fame during the early 1990s because of an article in the Bangkok Post extolling the virtues of the specialite de la maison. The article was written by the enigmatic Ueng-Ang Thalay, whose true identity few had ever guessed. It was only I and a few close friends who knew that Ueng-Ang was actually a Chestertonian American named Bob Halliday, ex-concert pianist and Washington Post book critic, who had fled the mundane madness of the western world for the more fantastical, cutting-edge madness of the Orient. It was only in Bangkok, the bastard daughter of feudalism and futurism, that Bob had finally been able to be himself, though what himself was, he alone seemed to know.
But we were speaking of the dragon’s fin soup.
Perhaps I should quote the relevant section of Ueng-Ang’s article:
Succulent! Aromatic! Subtle! Profound! Transcendental! These are but a few of the adjectives your skeptical food columnist has been hearing from the clients of the Rainbow Cafe in Yaowaraj as they rhapsodize about the mysterious dish known as Dragon’s Fin Soup, served only on Wednesdays. Last Wednesday your humble columnist was forced to try it out. The restaurant is exceedingly hard to find, being on the third floor of the only building still extant from before the Chinatown riots of 1945. There is no sign, either in English or Thai, and as I cannot read Chinese, I cannot say whether there is one in that language either. On Wednesday afternoons, however, there are a large number of official-looking Mercedes and BMWs double-parked all the way down the narrow soi, and dozens of uniformed chauffeurs leaning warily against their cars; so, unable to figure out the restaurant’s location from the hastily scrawled fax I had received from a friend of mine who works at the Ministry of Education, I decided to follow the luxury cars… and my nose… instead. The alley became narrower and shabbier. Then, all of a sudden, I turned a corner, and found myself joining a line of people, all dressed to the teeth, snaking single-file up the rickety wooden steps into the small, unairconditioned, and decidedly unassuming restaurant. It was a kind of time-travel. This was not the Bangkok we all know, the Bangkok of insane traffic jams, of smörgåsbord sexuality, of iridescent skyscrapers and stagnant canals. The people in line all waited patiently; when I was finally ushered inside, I found the restaurant to be as quiet and as numinous as a Buddhist temple. Old men with floor-length beards played mah jongg; a woman in a cheongsam directed me to a table beneath the solitary ceiling fan; the menu contained not a word of Thai or English. Nevertheless, without my having to ask, a steaming bowl of the notorious soup was soon served to me, along with a cup of piping-hot chrysanthemum tea.
At first I was conscious only of the dish’s bitterness, and I wondered whether its fame was a hoax or I, as the only palefaced rube in the room, was actually being proffered a bowl full of microwaved Robitussin. Then, suddenly, it seemed to me that the bitterness of the soup was a kind of veil or filter through which its true taste, too overwhelming to be perceived directly, might be enjoyed… rather as the dark glasses one must wear in order to gaze directly at the sun. But as for the taste itself, it cannot truly be described at all. At first I thought it must be a variant of the familiar shark’s fin, perhaps marinated in some geriatric wine. But it also seemed to partake somewhat of the subtle tang of bird’s nest soup, which draws its flavor from the coagulated saliva of cave-dwelling swallows. I also felt a kind of coldness in my joints and extremities, the tingling sensation familiar to those who have tasted fugu, the elusive and expensive Japanese puffer fish, which, improperly prepared, causes paralysis and death within minutes. The dish tasted like all these things and none of them, and I found, for the first time in my life, my jaundiced tongue confounded and bewildered. I asked the beautiful longhaired waitress in the cheongsam whether she could answer a few questions about the dish; she said, “Certainly, as long as I don’t have to divulge any of the ingredients, for they are an ancient family secret.” She spoke an antique and grammatically quaint sort of Thai, as though she had never watched television, listened to pop songs, or hung out in the myriad coffee shops of the city. She saw my surprise and went on in English, “It’s not my first language, you see; I’m a lot more comfortable in English.”
“Berkeley?” I asked her, suspecting a hint of Northern California in her speech.
She smiled broadly then, and said, “Santa Cruz, actually. It’s a relief to meet another American around here; they don’t let me out much since I came home from college.”
“American?”
“Well, I’m a dual national. But my great-grandparents were forty-niners. Gold rush chinks. My name’s Janice Lim. Or Lam or Lin, take your pick.”
“Tell me then,” I inquired, “since you can’t tell me what’s in the soup… why is it that you only serve it on Wednesdays?”
“Wednesday, in Thai, is Wan Phutth… the day of Buddha. My parents feel that dragon’s flesh should only be served on that day of the week that is sacred to the Lord Buddha, when we can reflect on the transitory nature of our existence.”
At this point it should be pointed out that I, your narrator, am the woman with the long hair and the cheongsam, and that Bob Halliday has, in his article, somewhat exaggerated my personal charms. I shall not exaggerate his. Bob is a large man; his girth has earned him the sobriquet of “Elephant” among his Thai friends. He is an intellectual; he speaks such languages as Hungarian and Cambodian as well as he does Thai, and he listens to Lulu and Wozzeck before breakfast. For relaxation, he curls up with Umberto Eco, and I don’t mean Eco’s novels, I mean his academic papers on semiotics. Bob is a rabid agoraphobe, and flees as soon as there are more than about ten people at a party. His friends speculate endlessly about his sex life, but in fact he seems to have none at all.
Because he was the only American to have found his way to the Rainbow Cafe since I returned to Thailand from California, and because he seemed to my father (my mother having passed away in childbirth) to be somehow unthreatening, I found myself spending a great deal of time with him when I wasn’t working at the restaurant. My aunt Ling-ling, who doesn’t speak a word of Thai or English, was the official chaperone; if we went for a quiet cup of coffee at the Regent, for example, she was to be found a couple of tables away, sipping a glass of chrysanthemum tea.
It was Bob who taught me what kind of a place Bangkok really was. You see, I had lived until the age of eighteen without ever setting foot outside our family compound. I had had a tutor to help me with my English. We had one hour of television a day, the news; that was how I had learned Thai. My father was obsessed with our family’s purity; he never used our dearly bought, royally granted Thai surname of Suntharapornsunthornpanich, but insisted on signing all documents Sae Lim, as though the Great Integration of the Chinese had never occurred and our people were still a nation within a nation, still loyal to the vast and distant Middle Kingdom. My brave new world had been California, and it remained for Bob to show me that an even braver one had lain at my doorstep all my life.
Bangkoks within Bangk
oks. Yes, that charmingly hackneyed metaphor of the Chinese boxes comes to mind. Quiet palaces with pavilions that overlooked reflecting ponds. Galleries hung with postmodern art. Japanese-style coffee houses with melon-flavored ice cream floats and individual shrimp pizzas. Grungy noodle stands beneath flimsy awnings over open sewers; stratospherically upscale French patisseries and Italian gelaterias. Bob knew where they all were, and he was willing to share all his secrets, even though Aunt Ling-ling was always along for the ride. After a time, it seemed to me that perhaps it was my turn to reveal some secret, and so one Sunday afternoon, in one of the coffee lounges overlooking the atrium of the Sogo shopping mall, I decided to tell him the biggest of all secrets. “Do you really want to know,” I said, “why we only serve the dragon fin soup on Wednesdays?”
“Yes,” he said, “and I promise I won’t print it.”
“Well you see,” I said, “it takes about a week for the tissue to regenerate.”
That was about as much as I could safely say without spilling the whole can of soup. The dragon had been in our family since the late Ming Dynasty, when a multi-multi-great-uncle of mine, a eunuch who was the Emperor’s trade representative between Peking and the Siamese Kingdom of Ayuthaya, had tricked him into following his junk all the way down the Chao Phraya River, had imprisoned him beneath the canals of the little village that was later to become Bangkok, City of Angels, Dwelling Place of Vishnu, Residence of the Nine Jewels, and so on so forth (read the Guinness Book of World Records to obtain the full name of the city) known affectionately to its residents as City of Angels Etc. This was because the dragon had revealed to my multi-great-uncle that the seemingly invincible Kingdom of Ayuthaya would one day be sacked by the King of Pegu and that the capital of Siam would be moved down to this unpretentious village in the Chao Phraya delta. The dragon had told him this because, as everyone knows, a mortally wounded dragon, when properly constrained, is obliged to answer three questions truthfully. Multi-great-uncle wasted his other questions on trying to find out whether he would ever regain his manhood and be able to experience an orgasm; the dragon had merely laughed at this, and his laughter had caused a minor earthquake which destroyed the summer palace of Lord Kuykendaal, a Dutchman who had married into the lowest echelon of the Siamese aristocracy, which earthquake in turn precipitated the Opium War of 1677, which, as it is not in the history books, remains alive only in our family tradition.
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