A Woman of Bangkok (44 page)

‘I neffer spick you that. Can not.’

‘And I know very well why you can’t, too. I’ve been rooked by you too many times already. You aren’t in trouble at all. It’s all a yarn. You think I’ve got money now, and you’re just trying to—’

My voice trailed off, because she was crying.

Whenever she did that she put me in a quandary. Cynicism about woman flourishes in vicarages and I’d known since childhood that all women except a few outstandingly good ones like your own mother can cry to order and often do when they want to gain a point. On the other hand all women good and bad can be made to weep real tears too—tears of distress that well out of their eyes involuntarily. And the problem for a man is to distinguish between the genuine article and the false. Which was worse, to be made a fool of or to act ungenerously? There wasn’t any doubt in my mind: if I let her down I’d have to live with the memory for the rest of my life. I was going to help her—but I’d be gruff with her to save face …

‘For God’s sake stop that sniffling. What in hell have you got to blubber about? You sent for me and here I damn’ well am. You know quite well I’ll do anything,
anything
, you ask, to help you.

‘What can you do? You spick me you not haff ten t’ou—’

‘I can do plenty. At least I can do something besides continually ramming my hand into my hip-pocket. I can use my brains, for a start.’ I brushed against her experimentally but she jerked away with a scornful exclamation, still weeping. So I said, ‘Look around you, Vilai. This room’s crammed with money. There’s a radio for one thing that’s worth a lot more than sixpence. There’s clothes—stacks of them. And somewhere there’s all your jewels—’

She spoke with a sort of incredulous fury. ‘What you mean? You want I sell my gold?’

‘Of course. Why not? You’re rich, Vilai. If you really want to raise ten thousand—’

‘Ugh!’ I’d seldom heard so much disgust in a voice before. ‘Once I sink Wretch good—I sink no man in world good more batter than he. I sink he say he luff me, he spick truce. But now I know Wretch
mai dee
—
mai dee mark
. He bad, like usser man. He spick me sell my sings—’

‘And why in blazes not, if it’ll keep you out of trouble?’

‘Sick, seffen, eight year I work work work. No pipple giff me nussing. I dancing-girl, everysing I haff I get my-self—’

‘I know, I know. Nobody could call you lazy, whatever else they might say … But surely this is why you’ve worked so hard, Vilai? So you’d have money for a rainy day—’

‘Wretch.’ Her voice was peremptory. ‘You giff me ten t’ou-zand—you haff in pocket now?’

‘No.’

‘You can get for me, giff me tomollow?’

‘No.’

‘Why you no can get?’

I sighed. ‘Because I’m a poor man. Use your crumpet, Vilai. Where do you think a chap like me—’

‘You could sell jip.’

‘What!’

‘Sell jip
, darling. Many pipple want jip. Cowboy too—I sink cowboy giff mutss money for jip, then he look like soldier or plissman, can fright pipple very mutss, make them giff he money—’

‘My jeep happens to be upside down on a mountain two hundred kilos from here. Also it’s not my jeep. It’s the firm’s—’

‘What matter that? They not know what you do. You sell, giff me ten t’ou-zand, maybe twenty—’

‘You’re incorrigible, Vilai. Don’t you realize that if I did what you say I’d be finished? I’d be bundled off back home in disgrace. I’d never be here to help you in the next crisis—’

‘I not want you halp me nusser time. I want you halp me
now
. When you go back America, I halp my-self.’

‘England, darling. God damn it, I’ve been crazy about you for months—I’m calmly discussing going into crime for your sake—and you still can’t get my nationality straight …’

I was so exasperated with her I wheeled away towards a corner. She went to the bed and lay down. After a moment I mastered my feelings and seated myself beside her. She’d stopped crying but there was still a glitter of tears amongst her lashes. I couldn’t help noticing that her face was pinched and drawn as I’d only seen it once before, that day just after she’d lost her job. The skin in the eye-sockets seemed swollen and brown, as if it had been bruised and then treated with iodine. The lines from nose to mouth were carved deeper than before … She seemed to me very pitiable, and infinitely more appealing in this moment of defeat than when she was full of confidence and fight … When she turned and looked at me at last her eyes were beseeching.

‘Wretch, you very good boy, I know. Sometime you make me angly to you, then I spick you bad like usser man, but I not spick truce, darling. All the time I know you number one good frand for me—’

‘Yeah? And what about—?’

‘Sometime I mad because you so good. I sink if you bad more worse—if you cowboy—batter for me. If you so bad you not care what you do, you get money tonight—’

‘But I’ve just told you—’

‘I not mean sell jip. Batter way.’

‘Then spill the beans, sister. My morals seem to be getting more and more flexible. Maybe the crime won’t seem so heinous to me now as it would have done a few—’

‘Wretch, where that old girl liff?’

‘What old girl?’

‘The one that like you. The one that come your hotel see you, ask you go her home slip wiss her—’

‘You mean Mrs. Samjohn? I didn’t go home to sleep with her, darling. How many more times have I got to tell you she just wanted me to go to dinner—’

‘I ask you where she liff.’

‘Bankapi. Why?’

‘She haff—gold—very mutss—here, here, here.’ She touched herself in the usual places. ‘I sink she haff mutss mutss money. And she like you too, ’cause she old and ugly, you nice young—’

‘Are you suggesting I touch my boss’s wife for ten thousand? Let me tell you—’

‘What is tutss? I not unnerstand. But I know that old girl like you. I see her face when she look me, look you. I sink you go her house, she very happy to let you in. Then you spick her nice, she ask you go her bad room—’

‘And then I hit her over the head and rip off her jewels. Is that what you’re suggesting?’

‘I sink no need hit her head, darling. Can giff her somesing make her slip—’

‘Christ, you’ve really got it all worked out, haven’t you!’ I stood up and walked across the room to get away from her. ‘If only you used your brains for something else—’ Then I asked the question which had been uppermost in my mind all along. ‘Where’s Dan? Why can’t you ask him to do your dirty work for you?’

‘Dan? I not see him long time. He go to souse part of country.’

‘South? What for?’

‘Oh, I not know. He sink pipple sick there, more than Chiengmai … Wretch.’ She spoke rather sharply, and I turned round to look at her. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, Thai-style. She had a gun in her hand—I suppose it must have been hidden under the pillow. She wasn’t pointing it at me—it just lay on her palm, as if she were weighing it. She raised her eyes from the gun to me. ‘Wretch, I not haff ten t’ou-zand by twelve o’c’ock tomollow—’ She turned the muzzle towards herself and pressed it deep into her left breast.

‘Ah—Cleopatra, now, eh? With a tin asp.’ It was a cheap, stagey gambit. It only irritated me. ‘You’re a good Buddhist,’ I pointed out, coldly. ‘You can’t take life. You can’t kill yourself.’

She said, ‘If I s’oot wiss gun, I not kill my-salf. The gun kill me …’

Suddenly she started to laugh. I thought she was off her head and when she saw my expression she laughed even more. She threw the gun away and rolled over on her side and held a pillow to her face, laughing into it with her smooth brown shoulders shaking.

‘What in hell is the joke?’

It was a minute before she could answer, then she said, ‘I sink somesing very joking, darling, but it not good joking, it very bad joking for me. I sink I Number One Bad Girl in Bangkok—I still that—and I know mutss mutss bad pipples—oh, I sink maybe one t’ou-zand more—but now I want cowboy do somesing, I not know one cowboy who do for me. Only Wretch want to do what I ask him, but he not cowboy, he haff too good heart; he not know how to do …’

At about eight-thirty that night I asked one of the hotel-boys to call a
samlor
to take me to the Chalerm Krung cinema. I gave this boy a hefty tip in the hope that it would fix my destination in his mind, and so help me to establish an alibi if necessary later on. At the cinema I bought a ticket for the nine o’clock show: I thus threw away fifteen tics in case the
samlor
-boy was watching what I did. The current show still had twenty minutes to run, so there was nothing odd in my wandering off for an iced coffee. I wandered and wandered until I was in the comparatively dark and unfrequented square where the Giant Swing, on which the loyalty of the royal courtiers used to be tested (if they fell off it proved they’d had treachery in their hearts), reared up like a ghostly guillotine against the black, star-studded sky. Here I took another
samlor
as far as the National Stadium. Then I walked Bankapi-wards until I was overtaken by an almost empty tram. On that I went as far as the highly respectable crossing where the British Embassy stands. From there I decided it would be wisest to walk. Foreigners inhabit Bankapi by the thousands, and the sight of one walking is not all that unusual, for sometimes their cars break down. I had about a mile to go before I reached the house—main road choked with cars all in a hurry, and practically free of pedestrians. I calculated I would reach the house about nine-thirty, anonymous and unobserved.

Vilai didn’t know I was acting on her plan. Shortly after she’d had that fit of laughing, there’ come a pounding on the gate and she’d jumped up and rushed to the window. I thought she’d turned pale; certainly she’d looked scared and worried. I’d tried to squint down obliquely through the curtain myself but she’d turned on me in a rage. ‘What you do? You want every pipple see you in my house?’ Then she’d thrown on a blouse and gone out, first shouting questions and instructions at the old woman from the landing, then, after the gate had opened, going downstairs to join in a lengthy and apparently urgent conversation with some men who’d come in. I’d tried to open the door and get a glimpse of them but of course I was locked in. My first impulse had been to burst the lock, but I’d calmed down, helped myself to some mekong I found behind the bed, and turned over the pages of a movie magazine. Soon the men’s voices had quietened down and moved away; it seemed, whoever the visitors were, they’d been conducted to a backroom; and shortly afterwards Vilai had come upstairs and released me. She’d been very curt. ‘Go, quick quick go. Not want usser man see you. I spick you many many time before, I not want you come my house, but you neffer do what I ask—’

‘Who are those guys anyway?’

‘Goddam, Wretch, go—go!’ She’d given me a hearty push in my damaged ribs, not knowing they were damaged, of course.

So I’d gone to the usual hotel and told them I’d broken down just outside Bangkok—hence my filthy clothes—and left the jeep at a garage to be repaired. Then I’d tried to sleep, but it was impossible. The pain in my side was intense and my mind nearly unhinged.

Even at that stage I’d known what I was going to do. I’d known that all the mentors of my youth no longer counted for anything: Vilai called the tune …

And so here I was walking like a common thief towards the house I proposed to burgle. But I knew I was worse than a common thief, for I was going to steal from people who had befriended me.

I couldn’t understand my own motives. It seemed to me that all my life I had been swimming aimlessly this way and that in an ocean without any horizon, unable to see any object to strike out for, conscious only of my aloneness, and of the immeasurable cold expectant depths beneath me. More than once my strength had given out, and I’d gone under; and now I was going down again, perhaps for the last time.

Why did I keep walking towards the House when there was nothing to stop me from turning tail, returning to the hotel and the right side of the law? Vilai was not relying on me to carry the thing through. She’d said I couldn’t do it—I wasn’t the type. She’s probably dismissed me from her thoughts altogether—was searching for help in other quarters, or had given up all hope of succour, and was placidly awaiting whatever was coming to her.

And what could that be? If only she’d told me! Perhaps I could have laughed the whole thing off. But there was just a possibility that she was truly threatened by something ghastly. In my saner moments I adjudged that pretty unlikely too, yet I have always been able to imagine unspeakable horrors more vividly than the odds against their happening, and that night my mind teemed with tragic possibilities … And suppose I
didn’t
get her the money, and shortly afterwards I heard that something dreadful had happened to her, something that could have been averted if only I’d done my bit? That would be the end of my sanity: I couldn’t fail
her
too … Oh, she was worthless if you looked at her from the angle of your father’s pulpit or your mother’s kitchen, she was worthless for that matter if you looked at her critically from under this lamppost on the Paknam Road—for what had she ever given you but the pangs of jealousy and unrequited love? Yet she was the very core of your being, and must be guarded with all your powers; whatever harm befell her would fall a thousand-fold on yourself …

I suppose it didn’t take more than ten minutes to walk that mile, but it seemed like an hour. When at last I turned into the lane where the House was I was gasping, as if I had actually been walking full speed for an hour.

I hadn’t the faintest idea how I was going to do the job. I didn’t even know whether the Samjohns were in or out. Only one thing I was decided on: I must succeed. I’d got to get Mrs. Samjohn’s baubles. I’d got to see Vilai’s face light up as I poured them into her lap. Whatever happened after that was beside the point. Nothing mattered except to make Vilai safe—and perhaps fleetingly grateful …

The House was the third on the right. Long before I reached it I could see it. A long unilluminated fence stretched between us. Above this the House floated like a cloud lit up from within. Every window seemed to be ablaze and I regretted that the one thing that is really cheap in Bangkok is electric power. I felt like a cat caught in a car’s headlight beams: you know how the cat is paralysed …