A Woman of Bangkok

by Jack Reynolds

  ‘Truly, Mem, it is not I that am slow. It is that pig of a Chinese in the shop. If I were still young and beautiful like Mem he would doubtless serve me in my proper turn, for what man can be discourteous to one who is young and beautiful like Mem? But because I am somewhat past my best—’

  ‘Somewhat? Your backside has been less wrinkled than your brow these twenty years, I think.’

  Bochang realized that the words had no cruel intent: her Mem knew only too well that in a few years now her own face would start to crack all over like an old vase too: for the Buddha was like all men in this one particular; he was very hard on women. She placed the coffee on the table by the bed and stood looking down at her mistress through the mosquito-net, an affectionate smile on her brown homely face. ‘Is my Mem suggesting that next time I go to the coffee-shop I show the Chinese pig not my face but my—?’ and she slapped her behind.

  The Leopard threw down her tweezers and laughed and laughed. Together they enlarged on the joke with shrieks of merriment. But servants have to be kept up to scratch so in the end she went back to her grievance again. ‘Are you not a good customer of that shop?’

  ‘Truly, yes, Mem. Twelve times a day I go at least, ten times for coffee for my Mem and once for coffee for myself.’

  ‘And every time you go to the shop you give the Chinese my money, don’t you?’

  ‘Truly, truly, Mem. One tic for every glass.’

  ‘And be sure he wants my money. Everybody wants my money. Money is everything and no man will be slow to serve you once he has seen it in your hand. No, Bochang: it is not your ugliness which is to blame for your slowness with my coffee. Rather it is the remains of your beauty. How long did you pause to pass the time of day with the seller of dried squid who is even now frying his squid on the pavement outside my door and it stinks like hell? I think you are a little sweet on that seller of dried squid and that is why it always takes you so long to fetch my coffee.’

  ‘The seller of dried squid is old and I think probably his own personal squid is as shrivelled as those he sells.’

  Again the Leopard had to laugh for this was the humour of the older women attached to her father’s house and she’d learned to appreciate it while her chest was still flat as a boy’s.

  Bochang saw that her Mem was feeling good because of the jokes so she ventured, ‘Mem was very drunk when she came home last night. She quarrelled very long and loudly with the American. The Python and the Black Mamba were made angry. They said they can no longer get any sleep in this house because every night the White Leopard fights with her men.’

  ‘What do I care what the Python and the Black Mamba say? I pay the rent for this room. When I am old or sick and have no money to pay my rent, then it will be time for those snakes to hiss and try to sting me.’

  Bochang nodded her tousled head. ‘Today is the last day of November. Tomorrow Mem must pay her rent again.’

  The White Leopard laughed, her tee-hee-hee laugh, full of mockery and delight. ‘And tomorrow I must pay you too, eh, Bochang? That’s what’s really worrying you, eh? Are you getting anxious, you poor old girl?’ And she laughed again, so much so that she shook the bed and the compact-lid fell forward with a flash of gold.

  ‘I fear nothing. Since her last monthly sickness Mem has been lucky and had a man almost every night. And last night the American who came was an old friend of Mem’s and doubtless paid exceedingly well as always before.’

  ‘That is where you are wrong.’ She set up the compact-lid with a vicious movement as it all came back to her. Her face was dark with anger. ‘Last night that American was not good to me. He said that he had been with me many times before and had always paid me well, which was true. But this time, he said, he had no money and he wished to sleep with me for love. That is why we quarrelled.’

  ‘But in the end he must have paid Mem, for Mem slept with him, and my Mem does not sleep with a man until he has paid her.’

  ‘He said he will pay me when he sees me next week.’

  ‘All the same—’

  ‘And I was drunk.’

  But this excuse carried no weight with Bochang. ‘But my Mem never gets so drunk that she omits to collect what is due before she lies with a man. Only when the money is safely locked away in the top-left-hand-drawer of the dressing-table—’

  The Leopard suddenly sat up. ‘You talk too much,’ she snarled. ‘Go back to the kitchen, where your silly chatter will annoy only Siput.’ She reached over for the coffee and sucked lustily at the straw. Then she returned to her work again, once more alone.

  The first armpit was soon finished. She rubbed it with her fingertips. The skin, a little browner than on the rest of her body, and now slightly reddened, was rough like a plucked chicken’s (but warm, not clammily cold in death, like a chicken’s). The hair follicles stood up like minute white volcanoes with minute black craters to them, but shortly these would disappear, as they always did, along with the inflammation. Just below the armpit proper, where her side began, on the finer-textured skin which covered most of her body, a few long silky-soft hairs remained. She hated them but she couldn’t pull them out, for they stolidly resisted efforts to remove them. Sometimes she shaved them off, as twice a week she shaved off the coarse black hairs that these days disfigured her shins. For she hated all hair on the face or body, considering it ugly and a source of bad odours, and she was perturbed because the more she made war on it the more widely it spread on her person. She would gladly have shaved herself all over, apart from her pate, except that to do so would have been unbusiness-like: most men preferred there to be at least some hair, and what men preferred it was her rice and jewellery to provide. Yet maybe too, when the time came—when men no longer wanted her and her son too had deserted her to live with some other woman—she might shave off even this hair on her head, of which she was so proud, and go about in a white gown, a nun. She considered the possibility for a moment, as she frequently did, but only for a moment; for she gave little heed to the morrow: time enough to worry about that when it arrived.

  Sitting up she swept the little cluster of quarter-inch-long hairs off the sheet on to the floor, re-arranged the pillows and the compact and lay down on her other side to deal with her other armpit.

  Last night had been a mess and she knew it. It had been a mess from the start and she wasn’t quite sure why. Perhaps the Buddha thought he’d been giving her more than her fair share of good luck of late and had decided it was time to teach her a lesson. The odd thing was that she’d been wearing her yellow dress—the lucky one. All her clothes had definite personalities for her: they were much realer than most people; for if that nice English boy had been right the other night and she had actually slept with more than two thousand men she’d completely forgotten one thousand nine hundred of them, but she’d never forgotten a single blouse, sarong or dress she’d had since she was a schoolgirl, no, not one. And this yellow one was one of the most important. She marvelled now that she could ever have hesitated about buying it. But she’d never worn yellow before, and she’d been troubled about whether the colour would suit her, at night, at the Bolero, under the dusty lanterns. On the other hand yellow was her colour—for she’d been born on a Monday—and also it was the colour the priests wore, so she’s taken the plunge, though still with misgivings.

  The first time she’d worn the dress was almost two years ago, at Clissmuss, that festival which Americans and Europeans seemed to consider so important. She had entered the Bolero with her usual confidence, prepared for a big night. But something had gone wrong. She didn’t like thinking about that night but quite often her mind would revert to it in spite of herself because she’d never been able to puzzle out just why things had fallen out as they did. The Bolero had been reasonably full—that is to say, plenty of foreign men—but incredibly, astoundingly, she hadn’t been able to get one for herself. Not any man at all. Usually she could pick and choose, playing off one candidate against another until she had decided which
was the best proposition—and then she distributed the also-rans amongst her best friends. But that night of all nights she’d had to sit at her desk and watch the other girls, all thirty of them, the plain ones as well as the pretty ones, the foolish no less than the experienced, one after another fixed up with men who could pay good money but herself neglected, almost reduced to buying a drink for herself, a nadir she had never reached before. And when the Black Leopard had walked off with an old regular customer of her own the nadir of nadirs had been reached. Nor had the Black Leopard missed the opportunity, of course. She had come up to the desk, her dark face, still very beautiful, filled with infuriatingly kindly concern.

  ‘Dear Vilai, you seem so quiet tonight. Are you sick?’

  She hadn’t fallen into that trap, of course. All the girls watched each other like lynxes and none of them would have missed the significance of the fact that the previous week she had gone home three nights running unaccompanied.

  ‘Not sick.’ What excuse could she make? ‘I don’t much like to work at holiday times. I just like to show myself everywhere and have a good time.’

  ‘But you aren’t even drinking.’ Then she’d become confidential and even more offensive. ‘My friend, who is very nice’ (as of course you know, her voice implied, since until tonight he was your friend, but now he has tired of the old favourite as men will and seen who can really give him a good time)—‘my friend has a friend who is rather nice too, and he told me to ask you—’

  But she’d shaken her head furiously. She didn’t need the helping hand yet, never would, she’d die first. With an effort she’d controlled her temper. For she’d had to deposit a thousand tics with the manager—so had the Black Leopard for that matter—and all those tics they would forfeit if they fought on the floor again. She said, ‘No thanks. I don’t particularly want a man tonight. One gets so tired, night after night.’ (That blow told: for the Black Leopard had drawn a few blanks recently.) ‘And anyway I am half-expecting a friend—’

  ‘American?’ The Black Leopard pounced. It was already ten o’clock. The Bolero closed at twelve. There were only two hours left in which this rescuer, in whom she didn’t believe, could materialize to save her enemy’s face. But the White Leopard had been too wily to commit herself.

  ‘A very old friend, but nobody you know, I think,’ she had said, praying, ‘Buddha, dear Buddha, send somebody, please, oh, please. Do not let me down before this low woman.’ And she had gone on praying for almost two humiliating hours, praying for an unknown angel to appear.

  And at the last possible moment he had come, a Chinese angel, monstrously fat, appallingly drunk, ugly and old. It was part of her code never to go with Chinese men and in fact she never did so except once in a blue moon with one that was very rich, rather nice, and obviously infatuated. For the Chinese exploited her own people and moreover they weren’t so afraid of catching things as white men were and so they were less likely to be clean, and she had never been sick yet and had no desire to be so and have to go to the doctor and pay him good money for injections and possibly have to stop sleeping with men for ten days or two weeks and lose all that money too. But that night she’d had to swallow her scruples, and the fat old man (and she hated fat men of any nationality) had made her look cheap there in front of all the western men, they out of whom it was legitimate to make money, they who normally clamoured for her favours …

  Remembering that fiasco she caught skin as well as hair in the tweezers and hurt herself, goddam.

  She licked her finger and applied saliva to the sore spot. After that Clissmuss she had hated that dress. She had put all the blame for the disaster on it, for what else could have been responsible? For six months it had hung behind luckier garments, unworn and despised. But then, having been unable to sell it to any of the other girls or even give it away to her sister, she had decided to give it one more chance. After all it had cost a lot of money. And on this second outing it had done exceedingly well—four hundred tics for nothing—just a ‘short time’ at the Cottages with a charming American airman. And every time she’d worn it since it had done well, never less than two hundred tics, sometimes double that, and once sixty American dollars, at a time when the exchange rate was much better than it was now, too. She had come to trust in that dress, wearing it every month twice, on the two nights before her rent fell due, relying on it to pay her rent. And up till last night it had never again failed. But last night—

  ‘It’s because I wore it a day too soon,’ she reasoned. ‘The Buddha must have thought I was being overeager. If I’d left it till tonight, the proper night to wear it, the night before I have to pay for my room—But I wanted to get good money a day early to make sure of it. And the Buddha thought I didn’t trust my luck and punished me.

  ‘I ought to have got up this morning to make an offering to the priests,’ she thought guiltily. ‘But alas I was asleep when they came round with their begging bowls.’

  Her thoughts had become unpleasant so she did with them what she did with all unpleasant thoughts, she banished them from her mind. For the next five minutes her brain dwelt in her armpit. Then all at once the job was finished and her mind could wander again.

  She was always tidy in her habits and the first thing she did after sitting up was to sweep the new collection of little crescentic fibrils over the edge of the bed. Then she finished the coffee. Her clothes had come undone and for a short time she sat on the bed naked with her legs angled under her in the Siamese style. With one hand in her pubic hair pulling upwards and backwards she gave herself a quick inspection. There was a tiny pimple on the inner aspect of one thigh which she attempted to burst with her almond-shaped nails but it wasn’t ripe. Two hairs growing in her opinion too close to her groin she plucked out with her fingers: a sharp gasp accompanied each successful tug. Then she gave herself the sort of friendly pat-pat-pat which a man will bestow on his son’s shoulder when the boy has given him reason to feel pleased and proud. She inspected her nipples and brushed them swiftly and lightly with a rapid up and down motion of fingers. And then a plane roared over the house, low and fast, and she jumped up and went to the window to see if she could see it. Cautiously parting the white curtains which were drawn across the lower half of the window and assuring herself that no men were getting a free treat she looked up at the dazzling strip of sky, very narrow, which was all that the high wall of the houses opposite allowed her. The plane had vanished but she continued to stare at the sky, smiling. Americans, perhaps. And flyers, the best sort of Americans in her opinion.

  By and large she preferred American to all the rest. The English were too sentimental: they always fell a little bit in love with even a dancing-girl, even though they were going to be in town only the one night and never see her again; they were terribly possessive, would show signs of wanting to fight all the other men she had to smile at (for business reasons) even though she was temporarily attached, by a small fee, to them. As for the Dutch, they were always fat and quarrelsome about money. The French paid too little and never gave a girl any peace all night and also they always wanted to do things that the Buddha doesn’t approve of. But the Americans knew how to treat a girl like her. They had plenty of money and were free with it when out to enjoy themselves. They never fell in love: they hated personal involvements like that. They took their women as they took their drinks and cigarettes: women were just one more pleasure to which they were addicted but which they didn’t get emotional about. The world was scattered with girls they’d had as it was with the bottles and cigarette packets they’d emptied. And often, in fact usually, they were drunker than the English or the French (but not the Dutch), so they soon rolled over to snore. Sometimes in fact the snores began before the game had been played, but never before it had been paid for. And whether they had been cheated or not they seldom cut up rough in the morning, for with them getting drunk was always more important than the other thing. Sometimes the cheated ones had been too drunk to remember that nothing h
ad happened, and they’d be grateful to her in the morning for the good time they thought she’d given them. These she would see off the premises with her little charming giggles and when the door was bolted behind them she and Bochang would laugh till they cried almost. But at other times, if the man was especially nice, she might relent in the morning, for although as a general rule she was indifferent to the sexual act, regarding it as just a way to make money, sometimes around dawn, warm and blurry with sleep, she would feel the need for it; she would crave for it then, as waking some Stifling night she might crave a drink of water; and having drunk she would sleep more soundly, more refreshingly, than if her thirst had not been slaked.

  Well, if it was Friday she’d got a lot to do.

  But even as she turned from the window she realized it wasn’t Friday, it couldn’t be. For the man who had cheated her last night was Dick, and Dick came, when he did come, invariably on a Friday, for it was on Fridays that his plane did a one-night stopover in Bangkok. Possibly that plane which had just gone over had been Dick’s plane making a delayed start for Tokyo. If so, good riddance to it. She must see Dick once again, to get the money he owed her, but after that she didn’t care. He’d slept with her eight or nine times, she supposed, during the last few months, and been very nice, but eight or nine times was the most you could expect even with the nicest of men, then some other girl would catch their eyes, or something else would happen to end the affair. Fortunately the supply of new men never dwindled, nor would it for the next two or three years, or possibly even five with luck; for her Mama was still very beautiful at fifty—oh, it must be more than that now—and with luck her daughter too could hope to be desirable to men for a long while yet.

  She stood in the middle of the room twisting her hair into a knot on top of her head. She was disappointed in Dick. Sooner or later he would have been bound to let her down, of course: every man let you down sooner or later, not one of them was to be trusted, and that was the first thing a dancing-girl learned if she had any brains at all. But Dick ought to have lasted a little longer: after all she had been exceptionally good to him, giving him a fine time, invariably dropping other prospects, however promising they were, however much trouble it caused, whenever he had come lounging into the Bolero. And then he had rewarded her with this insult. Asking her to sleep with him for nothing. As if she were a very low girl with no self-respect at all. Only the lowest girls slept with men for nothing—for love, as the foreigners said—but she was a very high girl, she had a price, and if a man liked her he would show his respect by paying that price. Even Bochang, old and dried-up as she was, doubtless had her price: she’d demand her five tics of the seller of dried squid, and if he balked at the sum he could take his dried squid elsewhere as far as Bochang was concerned.