Black Tiger (17 page)

‘Are you in disgrace, too?’

She smiled, a dizzying smile, eyes disappearing behind their black-kohled lids, her cheeks blushing like a dark double dahlia. ‘The Chinese are permanently in disgrace,’ she said. ‘Surely you noted how ecstatic His Highness was to make my acquaintance? Don’t worry, my family are equally racist! This is an extremely complex society, despite its accommodating outward face!’ Intrigued, on an impulse I set my drink down on a low table and escorted her to the exit. Laila stood, delaying the guests’ departure with her laughter and vivacity, while her husband puffed on his pipe and managed to convey an impression both patient and congenial. As they passed the buffet tables, I stopped to stare. A little square woman was stuffing crab rolls into a crumpled brown paper bag held by a respectful servant boy. The crone peered at Chee Laan through bloodshot eyes behind pebble-thick glasses; her brow wrinkled like a Shar Pei puppy.

‘Huh!’ she grunted. ‘Sunii Lee’s First Granddaughter. So this is how you spend your time, with these social butterflies? Nothing like your grandmother to look at. Remarkably handsome woman, your grandmother…still, if you’ve an ounce of her brains, you’ll do.’ She rattled the bag. ‘For my children.’

‘You must have a lot of children,’ I said, for something to say.

The old woman grunted again. ‘Eighty-seven, at last count. Varies. Rapid falloff. Riddled with syph. Can’t always save ‘em, poor little brutes. Come and see my new clinic, if you’ve the stomach, Dr Raven. You might find it of interest. Change from gadding about at cocktail parties. Regards to honourable grandmother, daughter. Remarkably sound mind, for an old woman. Come on, useless boy, fresh fruit, that’s what we need next. Over there.’ She waddled off.

‘Dr Pien. Our first woman doctor. Social reformer, professional pain in the side of the authorities,’ Chee Laan said to me. ‘She works with prostitutes.’ She looked at me sideways, assessing my reaction.

‘I’ll bet she keeps pretty busy,’ I said.

Chee Laan nodded. ‘There are a hundred thousand prostitutes in this city, but no science museum.’

‘I guess we all have our priorities.’

‘Oh, they did intend to have a science museum. Under Pibul Songgram, the then-Minister of Education, General Luang Mangkornpromyothi collected five million ticals a year to build one. But then the general decided Thailand could not afford the luxury of a science museum. So he spent the money setting up a dance hall in Lumpini Park. He explained that the dance hall was, in fact, the projected museum. It was an interim arrangement to top up funding for the museum.’

‘When was this?’

‘Oh, about fifteen years ago. There’s still no museum, but the dance hall’s going strong.’ Chee Laan smiled. Laila’s Chinese servant was hovering nearby. Chee Laan placed her empty glass on the girl’s tray. ‘Honourable Nee,’ she said courteously, ‘I should like one more glass of
nam manaw
. Please make it yourself—you know so well how I like it.’ The girl glided away obediently.

‘I’d like to see that clinic,’ I said. ‘Would you show me?’

Chee Laan tilted her head, considering. ‘Maybe. National mourning for the king ends tomorrow. People are still paying respects to his embalmed body in the temple, of course. That will go on for some time yet. But they haven’t cancelled the Songkran procession.’

‘Miss Lee,’ I said impulsively, ‘I couldn’t help overhearing. Why did you warn the princess not to mention Colonel Sya?’

Her eyes were suddenly opaque as adamite.

‘You know him, don’t you?’ I persisted. She nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘Could you introduce me to him?’ I was fully alert now, powered by the old urgency.

She stepped very close to me and smiled her secret smile into my face. ‘No promises,’ she said softly. But I felt some contract had been sealed between us.

‘I’ll see you to your car,’ I said, reluctant to let her out of my sight. She nodded. I waited while she thanked her hosts. A white Mercedes, summoned by the attendant to the steps of the mansion, was purring in the driveway.

‘I will send the car for you,’ she said. ‘At ten. I will show you the Songkran festival. Many foreigners find it picturesque. Goodnight.’

Genty van Hooten sprawled on the steps, displaying her bare brown legs. The attendants looked at her curiously from time to time but she ignored them, snorting with private mirth. A spliff glowed in her hand, and the scent of new-mown hay drifted upward against the colonnades. Seeing Chee Laan, she giggled. ‘Hi, Missee Lee! Give my love to your bro. Sweet Pow-pow!’

Chee Laan stopped on the step, staring. ‘You know my brother?’

Genty arched her back against the colonnade and rubbed her shoulders sensuously like a cat. ‘Your brother, your dad…I know
everyone
!’ She giggled. ‘And everyone knows little Genty!’

Chee Laan Lee gave a tight little smile and walked to the car with her chin up. She moved with the dignity of a queen, but I had noticed the flash of anger and contempt in her eyes before the serene mask dropped once more.

Thoughts rattled round in my brain as I watched the big car glide away between the lighted flares and the ghostly palm trees. I felt something had broken loose inside my head. Despite her obvious intelligence, and maturity beyond her years, Chee Laan was a child. It was not merely a question of age. Her wealth and cultural background placed her in a different orbit. Besides, my life held enough complications as it was; this was one more I could certainly do without. But I rationalized swiftly: she could prove an invaluable contact. She knew Colonel Sya Dam, and she clearly suspected something of his ambitions. She spoke Thai and Chinese, and she had offered to take me out and about. It was an opportunity too good to miss. I could only guess at her motives. While I longed to impart to them a flattering interpretation, such as a dawning interest in me, the realist in me sternly rejected this. The girl must have some other agenda. Even so, the thought that I should see her again in less than a dozen hours’ time filled me with an unreasoning and quite unreasonable happiness.

I breakfasted alone on the veranda, on fresh pineapple and good coffee. My host had already left for his office, after a friendly exchange of greetings. Laila was, I assumed, still enjoying her beauty sleep. After the guests had left, she and Siegfried had made a night of it, fetching out the chessboard and another bottle of champagne, squabbling animatedly into the small hours. The servant brought me a couple of English-language newspapers. I picked up the
Bangkok Herald
and began to read:

Traditional Festival Presages Year of Bloodshed and Strife

Despite the recent tragedy, which plunged the nation into sorrow, the Land of the Free this week celebrates the Annual Rains Festival of Songkran with the traditional Queen of Songkran’s procession. Even the current official disapproval of beauty contests exempts the Queen of Songkran. She is not a luxury, but a necessity to ensure the nation’s continued prosperity. This year, Songkran is even more significant than usual. For not only is this the dreaded Year of the Tiger, but all the omens are inauspicious, and Brahmins predict a stormy year of trouble and unrest.

Today in Parliament, Field Marshal Praphan declared that the relationship between omens and events was all a matter of interpretation. He went on to say…

I heard the creak of the compound gates and the stealthy crunch of wheels on the drive. I folded the
Bangkok Herald
neatly, leaving it on the teak table, and went out to the car. Chee Laan Lee had been as good as her word; it was a few minutes before ten. As I eased myself into the cream leather seat next to her, she flashed a brief smile and uttered a brief staccato command. The chauffeur nodded and swung the big car out into the traffic.

‘Happy Year of the Tiger,’ I said. ‘Do you believe in omens?’

She frowned. Instead of replying, she tapped her index finger on the smoked glass window. I realised that this deflection of attention would henceforth be her method of dealing with questions she had no intention of answering.

‘We are now passing the Ministry of Industry. See that seal? It represents the god Vishnu. You will note that he has four arms. They chose him because he is more grasping than any other god.’ Outside the Ministry, street vendors had encamped with portable kitchens.

‘One half of the city lives by selling food to the other half.’ Chee Laan glanced quickly through the rear window, then looked at me with her head on one side, a gesture at once innocent and provocative. ‘It’s a Thai thing. You can be hungry for noodles even after a five-course dinner.’

She addressed the driver in rapid Chinese, and he swerved violently into the kerb, ignoring the hoots and shrieks of other road users. For a brief second his eyes met Chee Laan’s in the rearview mirror. I could not read the expression, but felt the manoeuvre had more to it than a sudden whim.

People crowded around the charcoal braziers: a couple of kids on their way to school, smart in their blue and white uniforms, servants in black sarongs and white blouses, samlor drivers, coolies, and housewives were all there to eat. The other customers stepped aside for Chee Laan. She jumped the queue as by right, haggled, handed over satang coins, and plied me with delicacies. Banana fritters in fried rice jackets, sizzling paper-thin wafers of pork, sweetmeats in palm-leaf platters held together by paper clips. There was pink coconut jelly with lotus seeds, coconut ice cream, and sweet rice cakes, fluffy globes that melted in the mouth. We washed it all down with cold black tea out of a triangular plastic bag, from which a drinking straw protruded rakishly. I tasted every delicacy, telling myself it was in the interests of research, and thanking my stars my breakfast had been frugal. While I was thus occupied, she spoke briefly and urgently to the noodles vendor, and I saw her slip him a high-denomination note. He was a jovially cackling ogygian, gnarled and toothless, with ragged khaki Bermudas clothing his knobbly legs; upon his misshapen feet flapped green rubber flip-flops.

‘Here you go, friend.’ I handed over a pocketful of small change. The old man laid his crooked hands to his nose in salutation.

‘That man’s kerbside business,’ Chee Laan remarked, ‘has put his two sons through medical school in Australia. In the East, things are not always what they seem.’

‘You seemed to be paying over the odds for a bowl of noodles,’ I suggested, reflecting that I had in my Western arrogance patronisingly tipped someone I mistook for a pauper, and who could certainly buy me out. Chee Laan smiled.

‘He hears everything.’ Without warning, inexplicably to me, her eyes flashed black anger, before the smile was pinned in place. ‘Now, this festival.’ She launched into her professional voice, a smooth, fluent purr. ‘In Thailand we celebrate many festivals. Festivals to mark the birth, enlightenment, and ascension of the Buddha. Festivals to mark the donning or putting away of the Buddha’s seasonal robes, festivals of kites and of ploughing, festival of the giant swing. Now it is April; the rains are due, and we celebrate Songkran, which is today. Tuesday. Most inauspicious day.’

‘What happens?’

She looked at me coolly, and replied, in her normal voice, ‘If the day is auspicious, the Queen of Songkran dines on butterfat. But Tuesday means she gets to drink blood. She has to ride on a tiger. Also, the appearance of the god was ill-omened’

I was puzzled.

‘At Songkran, the god appears in a form revealed only to the priests,’ she explained. ‘If he comes as a bowl of water, he comes in peace. There will be good rain and good harvests.’

‘But he didn’t come as a bowl of water?’

She shook her head. ‘No. He came as a lighted lamp.’

‘So that means?’

‘Bloodshed.’

‘Whose blood?’

She met my eyes impassively. ‘Who knows? Gods are not required to be specific.’

She rubbed the corners of her lips with a fingernail to rid them of coconut crumbs. ‘In the old days, they would ask the priest’s blessing on jasmine flowers floating on water in a silver bowl; then the holy water was sprinkled on the hands and faces of the people you loved, to bring luck. Nowadays things tend to get a little livelier.’

The driver, who had eaten his own noodles squatting on the kerb a few discreet paces away, began polishing the wing mirror of the Mercedes to indicate his readiness to drive. A gaggle of giggling massage parlour girls clattered out of the red horseshoe door of a Chinese nightclub, then vanished again, carrying steaming bowls. The driver watched them speculatively.

‘Good. Now we take a boat.’

Bangkok’s canals were the arteries and the alimentary canal of the city’s millions of inhabitants. Throughout history, the Thais would relocate their capital city to foil their traditional enemies, the Burmese and the Khmers. When the French made a bid for Ayudhaya in the seventeenth century, the Thais shifted their power centre to the swamplands of the central plain. Despite the lack of a proper port, this straggle of huts crouched on the tidal mud banks of the mighty Chao Phraya River grew into Bangkok, Village of the Olives, later nicknamed Krungtheep, City of Angels. Bangkok’s network of khlongs comprised both arterial waterways, pulsating with every variety of river craft, and narrow capillaries that faded into lotus ponds and stagnant backyard pools. To the riverside dwellers, the khlongs were livelihood and leisure centre, drinking fountain, toothmug, washing machine, bathtub, garbage disposal, and lavatory pan.

As we alighted from the car, the helmsman of a wallowing tourist tub, sighting my foreign face, yelled excitedly: ‘Heh heh Sirmadame! You like Floating Market Tour, Sirmadame? Khlong tour, number-one good price?’

Chee Laan signalled our lack of interest. The man spat contemptuously and shouted something I didn’t catch but judged to be insulting. Chee Laan’s face was closed and tight with anger as she led the way over a crumbling wooden bridge.

‘What did he say?’ I asked. ‘You seem upset.’

She shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t be. Or at least I should not show it. I am sorry.’

‘Well, what was it?’