A Woman of Bangkok

by Jack Reynolds

  The Leopard of course was aware that she was being watched, but she feigned not to notice.

  She knew what was going on in Siput’s mind. Udom was a growing boy. He had the normal growing boy’s concern to be in at the very beginning of a meal. With that idea in view he had come up to his Mama’s room while she was still dressing, before Bochang had even brought the plates up. But at the present moment, when he ought to have been stuffing himself with good fare, he was sulking downstairs, pretending to read a magazine. It was obvious to Siput that mother and son had had words. But what about? And could she make any capital out of it?

  That, the Leopard was quite sure, was the gist of Siput’s thoughts.

  There was no love lost between her and this rotund maidservant of hers. Besides being revoltingly fat, Siput was sulky, quarrelsome and expensive. It pained the Leopard that she had to pay a hundred tics a month to such an unlovable creature when Bochang who was good fun and loyal and industrious in her slow muddling way was available for half that amount. The trouble with Siput was that she wasn’t beaten by life yet. She believed that if she lost this job she could get another. She was always threatening to leave. She even sometimes started looking round for a new place. But not very diligently. For, when all was said and done, she was well off in the Leopard’s service. The work was not hard, just washing and ironing for the four of them, keeping their quarters clean, and helping Bochang prepare the food, but that was not the point: she could have got an equally easy job elsewhere for just as good pay if not better. What kept her clinging to this place was the vicarious thrill she got out of serving in a house which contained three such women as the White Leopard, the Black Mamba and the Python. In a dim way the Leopard understood how Siput’s mind worked. All her life had been blameless because her husband had cherished her and supported her until so much of her beauty had gone that she’d lost all chance of going into a brothel, and when he’d finally taken up with someone younger and prettier, someone who wouldn’t presume so much upon old acquaintance as an old wife did, it had been too late for her to take up anything but sewing or washing. Yet she’d always been a woman of normal instincts and she naturally thought she’d missed a lot of the fun in life and now she tried to make up for years of dullness as best she could by living, continuously mildly scandalized, in this house where women were indubitably women …

  In addition there was the matter of Udom. As the boy had become more nerty, and his Mama consequently harsher, he had veered away from her to other things—to more nertiness, like smoking, and going on prolonged fishing expeditions, and coming home very late from school and refusing to say where he’d been. She hadn’t realized that he’d veered away in search of sympathy too, and found it. When he pointedly refused to eat with her for a few days and took all his meals downstairs she’d thought his motive was disgust with her, not love of Siput. It was the eels that finally opened her eyes. That day the squabble was particularly violent. It was a Sunday and he’d been out all day from before she was up until when she was getting ready to go to the Bolero. When he’d come in there’d been a great commotion downstairs and she’d found him proudly exhibiting an enormous eel and some smaller ones. His face was shining with pride and joy and Bochang and Siput were making as much fuss of him as if he’d just won first prize in the lottery.

  ‘Look, Mama, a great big eel. I caught it myself.’

  ‘I’ll cook it tomorrow,’ Bochang was saying. ‘It will be wonderful curried.’

  Without a word to any of them the Leopard had taken the eels from his hand, gone to the door and hurled them into the lane. Returning to the trio she’d burst into a storm of fury. ‘Do you want to bring shame on your Mama?’ she’d yelled at the boy. ‘Do you want all the people in the street to think that your Mama is poor, so poor that she has to send out her little son to fish for eels for her to eat? When I am sick, when I can no longer eff eff eff to keep you clothed and fed and at school, then it will be time for you to go out fishing for eels. Then maybe I shall not be ashamed to see you come home laden with eels, for a hungry belly knows no shame …’

  ‘Everything I do is wrong,’ he stormed back. ‘I wish I was dead.’And then suddenly he’d started to cry and had buried his head in Siput’s dirty sarong.

  Even then the Leopard hadn’t wholly grasped the fact that that dirty sarong was comfort. She’d continued to shout, ‘Never go fishing again, and if you do, give everything you catch to your friends, not to me. Their mothers are not high girls like the White Leopard: doubtless they will accept your gifts without shame.’

  Back in her room, trying to get on with her making up, she’d been bothered by tears obscuring her sight. He was so young, he just did what he wanted to do without considering how his pranks would be construed. He’d brought shame on his mother but instead of being repentant … She’d heard the door opened and slammed and her heart had gone cold: perhaps he’d run away for ever … When Bochang had brought up that night’s dress, freshly ironed by Siput, she’d asked, far too soon, far too obviously anxious, where he’d gone …

  ‘He’s gone nowhere. He’s downstairs with his Mama.’

  ‘What do you mean, idiot? I am his Mama.’

  ‘I think that is not so any longer. Once my Mem had a son who loved her very much but she did nothing but scold him. But Siput has borne and lost three sons and her heart is soft.’

  ‘It is your head that is soft, not her heart, you old buffalo. Your head is so soft today I can’t understand what you say.’

  ‘I am soft in the head, as Mem says, and moreover I am half-blind, but this much I can see with my poor eyes and understand with my soft head. My Mem is losing a son while her washerwoman gains one.’

  She’d screamed at the old fool until her throat could scream no more but all the screaming hadn’t been enough to frighten the terror from her heart.

  Why hadn’t she sacked Siput on the spot? The immediate reason had been that there wasn’t time, she was late for the Bolero already. Then there she’d met an old friend and fallen into a mellow mood. Over her third whisky she’d had a brainwave about the door slamming. Of course, Udom or Bochang retrieving the eels! She’d laughed so much that her friend had thought she was drunk already. And very sincerely she’d hoped that no one had forestalled them, for it would have been a pity to waste good food, a bigger pity still to make a gift of it to a complete stranger …

  Well, she’d never seen any signs of their feast, but she knew they’d had it. And Siput had stayed on. Stayed on to annoy her on a good many subsequent occasions such as now. Why hadn’t she thrown her out? She was a snake, a fat snake, coiling herself around the innocent heart of a boy …

  They were a mixed lot of reasons. Paramount was the knowledge that Siput was good at her work. Those square hands with their hard heels and short fingers worked wonders with the tears and stains to which a dancing-girl’s clothes are subject: it would have been stupid to get rid of their owner except over something vital. Then there was an obscure but comforting feeling she had that blood was thicker than water; no son of hers, she thought, could really, if it came to a showdown, prefer so common a creature as Siput to herself. But there was always the danger that he might, and that was the third most important reason. She could never resist playing with fire. Just because Siput was a threat to her peace of mind it was a pleasure to keep her in the house. To expel her—to obliterate her—would have been easy, but it was better to have her there to fight, a constant challenge, an enemy she must grapple with and defeat at every opportunity.

  And here was another crisis in the long-drawn battle.

  What to do? Ignore Siput? Then she might go to Udom and he in his childish inexperience might not be able to lie effectively, might even blurt out the true story—‘the sarong was undone; my Mama is not an old country woman; why—?’ No, she must not just let the matter drift; that wouldn’t do.

  Tell Siput to call Udom? But he might not come. That would be a victory for Siput. That wouldn’t do
either.

  Go and fetch him herself? But again he might refuse to come. That would be not only a victory for Siput, but an additional loss of face for herself.

  What to do? Dear Buddha, what to do?

  Udom solved the difficulty by appearing in the doorway.

  She felt a queer little halt, then a speeding of blood through her heart; her whole chest seemed to swell up with a pleasurable pain.

  ‘Eh, Udom, you silly boy, where have you been? The food is getting cold. Sit down and eat before Bochang gobbles it all up.’ And she wriggled a little to one side as if to make more room for him before his plate.

  But he just stood in the doorway, first on one foot, then on the other, his head hanging. With Siput dark in the background.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ she said in English, which was a private language between them and excluded Siput. ‘Why you waiting for?’ She blew on her tongue to show how much she was enjoying the food, then leaned forward to pick up a whole stalk of mint.

  ‘Mama, I do not want to eat. I want—’

  ‘Don’t be foolish, Udom. Sit down and eat. I have spent my money so that there shall be food for you too.’

  It came out with a rush. ‘Mama, give me five tics. I want to go to the movie.’

  She could hardly prevent herself from laughing. How guileless children were! He had handcuffed himself before he started to box with her. She said, ‘Eat first. Then I will give you the money. Perhaps.’

  ‘But I don’t want anything to eat.’

  ‘If you don’t eat I won’t give you any money, that’s certain.’ To show that she was not just being tyrannical she added, ‘You are a growing boy, Udom, and already today you have been up for many hours and gone to school and worked there very hard, or so I hope. If you do not eat you will not be strong. And I want my son to be strong, so that when I am old—’

  She saw him look round over his shoulder in misery at Siput and she knew the thought was in his mind to refuse the food and the money with it. But the stakes were too high for him. He was furious enough to forego his food but he couldn’t forego that and his movie too, that was too big a price to pay for his pride. Unwillingly he came across the room and awkwardly squatted in front of his plate.

  Siput sniffed and tossed her head and went heavily downstairs.

  With a sigh he picked up his spoon and fork and began turning the rice over and over. Soon he couldn’t resist putting a little in his mouth, just to taste it. In another instant he had started eating voraciously.

  The Leopard laughed. She was aglow with chilli and triumph. She was a match for all of them. Nothing could defeat her; her heart was so strong.

  She passed her plate across to Bochang for another helping of rice. ‘Give my son a fresh helping: what he has is not hot and flies may have walked on it,’ she said, but when Bochang offered to take his plate he motioned her away, he couldn’t even wait that long …

  The first almost unbearable pangs of her own hunger were now dulled. But she still had a long way to go before she was replete.

  Eating, like sleeping, whisky, tending her beauty, talking, quarrelling, fooling men, and getting their money from them, was one of the major pleasures of life. But like all those others—there had been an example with whisky only last night—it had its drawbacks. Food was bad for you because it made you fat. It hastened the day when you would no longer be able to inflame men with desire. Yet on the other hand it was a necessity: it had to be taken, and in large quantities, in order to keep your strength up. The only solution to this quandary was in control. She had a theory that if you ate only once a day, like the priests, you weren’t so liable to get fat—for whoever saw a fat priest? But at this one meal you must eat enormously to give yourself energy for the next twenty-four hours. And she had stuck to this regimen with strict self-discipline for two years, ever since she had begun to put on weight. The cakes she liked to eat at the Singsong Lounge in the afternoons, the occasional bowl of noodles she would have after a visit to the hairdresser’s or a movie, the various little delicacies Bochang would bring her in the small hours when work was done—these were only snacks, not meals. They were too small to have an enlarging effect on the figure. But at this one meal of the day the risk must be taken. She must eat hugely now, to prevent herself from wanting to eat hugely between now and this time tomorrow …

  ‘Is not the food good?’ she asked Udom.

  His mouth was so full the reply was unintelligible.

  Bochang, who never ate a big meal because she was preparing herself little treats all day long, got up to fill the silver dipper with drinking water and fetch the toothpicks off the toilet-table.

  ‘Which movie do you wish to see, Udom?’

  Again his words were indistinct but she gathered that the film was called Iverhoe and that it was showing at the Chalerm Krung theatre.

  She made delighted noises. ‘Iverhoe? That is good. As it happens I wish to see that movie too. Lobber Taylor is in it, and I like Lobber Taylor very much.’

  Bochang, running a toothpick in and out between her betel-blackened teeth, paused to spit noisily into the brass spittoon. ‘What is the difference between one man and another?’ she asked with the tone of a child that has outgrown the habit of playing with dolls. ‘Personally I wouldn’t go ten yards in a taxi to see any man on Earth.’

  ‘But Lobber Taylor is an exceptional man. Many many men look like men but they do not act like men. Lobber Taylor—he looks like a man and he acts like a man too.’ She accepted the silver dipper she had used at her bath and took a long gulping drink. ‘I think if Lobber Taylor came to Bangkok,’ she said when she’d finished, ‘I should have to try to pass him once.’

  She got up, filled her mouth with drinking water again, worked it around her teeth, and then ejected it in a long well-aimed stream into the spittoon. Coming back to the dishes and stooping to pick up half a dozen toothpicks she said, ‘I even think, if he hadn’t any money, I would let him come here for nothing.’ Bochang snorted. ‘I wonder if he’d buy me a new bed. This one is old and it creaks in a tell-tale manner and I am afraid one of these nights when someone is too rough and clumsy—’ She sank onto it and began picking her teeth thoughtfully. ‘Maybe he would take me back to America,’ she added at length. Her dreams were often very rosy when she’d just finished her meal.

  She looked down at Udom sitting alone on the linoleum with his thin brown legs tidied away under him and the soles of his feet pointing upwards in the proper Buddha style. He was tucking in with gusto, all his late huff forgotten.

  ‘Udom.’ He cocked an eyebrow but didn’t stop eating. ‘How about we go together to see the movie this afternoon? And I will buy you ice-cream and Cola afterwards.’

  It was as if she had said, ‘Tomorrow at dawn you will be taken out into the lane and shot dead.’ He dropped his spoon and fork with a clatter. ‘No, Mama, no.’

  She was amazed at his vehemence. When an idea seemed good to her she always expected it to look equally good to others. ‘What is the matter with you now?’

  He picked up his spoon and began to toy with the food again but the boyhood had gone out of his appetite. He didn’t answer.

  She said, ‘So. You do not want to go to the movie with your Mama. I suppose you would rather go with your friends. When you go to the movie with your friends, you can smoke cigarettes like a big man. But if you go with me you have to behave yourself. Is that why you don’t want to go with me?’

  ‘No. Not that.’

  ‘Why then?’

  Sullen silence.

  She began to work herself into a passion for it was in her rages that she conquered and ruled. ‘I work like hell to make your life good. I feed you. I buy you clothes. I give you money so that you can go to school and learn. I am a very good Mama to you. Yet when I ask you to do one little thing for me—’

  ‘Give me five tics and let me go.’ He had got to his feet and he wouldn’t look at her.

  ‘If you were a good boy—if you
were grateful to your Mama—’ She began to cry. For the Buddha in his kindly provision for her had given her this power to weep at the right moments and sometimes as a matter of fact she did it when she had no intention of so doing. On the other hand there were times when it would have been expedient to cry and she tried very hard to do so but she couldn’t squeeze out a single tear. And right now she might have been dry-eyed for all the effect her weeping had on the boy. Seeing that tears would not melt his heart she wiped them away and said evenly, ‘Tell me why you do not wish to go to the movie with your Mama. If your reason is good, I will let you go by yourself.’

  ‘You know the reason. I have told you before.’

  So that was it. ‘Tell me again. I forgot.’

  She was foolish to press the point, of course, for by shutting up she could save them both pain. But there was this urge in herself continually to hurt not only herself but this son whom she loved too. And she couldn’t resist it. The pain was there all the time anyway. Words only brought it to the surface, like tearing the bandages from a raw wound.

  ‘Well?’

  He refused to say anything.

  ‘U-dom—’

  He burst out passionately, ‘Why must you make me tell you over and over again? You know very well why I don’t want to be seen in the street with you. Maybe we would meet some of my friends. I don’t want them to know who my Mama is.’

  Each syllable was like a dagger entering her heart. Her son was ashamed of her. He didn’t regard her as a fine independent woman struggling to support him by the labours of her own body. He took the conventional view of dancing-girls, that they were bad. She said, mildly, ‘I think your friends would not know me.’

  ‘Of course they would. Everyone knows the White Leopard.’

  It was the first time she’d ever heard him use that term. It sounded ghastly on his lips. ‘Don’t call me that,’ she cried sharply, and it was a plea, not a command.

  He went on, ‘So far I think nobody knows my Mama is a dancing-girl. I have told them many lies—’