Black Tiger (18 page)

‘Oh, he just said you must be a poor man, with little face, if all you could afford was a Chinese mud turtle.’ She laughed bitterly, and, as if that had released some poison, her features relaxed and she was, once more, dazzlingly beautiful. ‘You’d think I’d be used to it by now, wouldn’t you? After all, I’ve lived here forever.’ She gave a wry, lopsided smile. ‘These loveable Thais, with their funny little ways!’

She turned on her heel and set off along the road beside the water. I followed her. She hailed a prowling water taxi, and it swooped toward the bank, a slim craft dwarfed by its huge outboard motor. After a brief discussion between Chee Laan and the piratical boatman, we stepped aboard. Electric dragonflies hovered and flashed over the water. From the jetties of villas, servants fished for lunch. The scene shimmered in the heat, exotic yet tranquil. Here I was, going boating with a beautiful girl, yet I felt hot, irritated, and a rising anxiety arose within me, for which I had no good reason. But I soon found myself lost in fascinated contemplation of the scenes that unrolled before my eyes as we chugged up the waterway.

That boat trip up Khlong Bangkok Noi was an anthropological excursion. Colonies of khlong-dwellers lived their lives in full view of the busy canal. Handsome, fiery-eyed Persian Muslims challenged our scrutiny; Malay Muslims were too busy stuffing mattresses; Cambodians squatted among their fishhooks. The boat headed into a smaller tributary; from mud huts, flat-faced Central Plains Thais peered at us suspiciously. The Chinese villages hummed with activity: paler gold people, wiry as whipcord, were building boats, hawking sides of beef from sampans, twisting cord from banana fibre, and from wharf booths and chophouses the click of the abacus bounced clearly over the brown water. On the jetties trousered grandmothers batted resentfully at the torpid air with rattan fans.

We swept past temples, each one forming the hub of a community, their parking posts crowded with sampans. From the glassless windows of the temple schoolrooms young voices rose in chorus, chanting their lessons like mantras.

But not all the children were in school.

The first dishful of warm, brackish water, smelling of earth and rotten vegetation and universal putrefaction, took me full in the face, robbing me of breath. A shoal of riverside urchins mobbed the boat, some grabbing the tailboard, skinny arms inches away from the churning knives of the propellers. The toffee-coloured water streamed over their naked bodies. Many clutched a makeshift utensil—bowl, buffalo horn, hat, balloon, plastic bag—anything that could be made to squirt water with satisfying force at the big
farang
and the Jek girl in the boat. They swam, wriggling through the tawny water like tadpoles, and shrieked with hyena laughter and there wasn’t a thing to do about it except join in, especially when Chee Laan stowed her handbag under the thwart and the boatman lashed the tiller, and both retaliated with the baler and an empty petrol tin. At one point we almost overbalanced and we fell against each other, wet, helpless with laughter. I wondered if she felt the electric charge. She disengaged herself quickly, without meeting my eyes.

As we left the boat, steam arose in clouds from the soaking clothes drying on our backs. I felt I had taken some kind of test. I was unsure whether or not I’d passed, but following the girl’s small figure down the dusty lane, I sincerely hoped I had.

We turned a corner and were plunged instantly into bedlam. Terrifying cacophony made our eardrums ring. Shouts, whistles, drums and tam-bourines—we were swallowed up in a heaving throng of people who jumped, shrieked, whirled, danced, and ran on the spot, clapping their hands, waving, jeering, cheering. A full-blown procession was in progress.

The central figure was an enormous painted tiger created from plywood and papier-mâché, with dripping blood-red jaws. Perched on the creature’s back, glorious in glitter and sequins, her head thrown back to balance her massy gold crown and her blue-black mane rippling to her waist, the queen waved in acknowledgement of the crowd’s frenetic acclamation. I’d have known her anywhere.

‘Salikaa!’ Chee Laan exclaimed. She spat a single monosyllable. I did not need to understand Chinese to know it for an expletive. She turned and stalked away to the street corner. The big Mercedes was waiting. Looking at the seething mass of humanity that blocked the thoroughfare, I felt respect for the driver’s skill in reaching the rendezvous on time. We got into the vehicle without attempting to speak against the din. As the driver eased in the gear lever, curiosity got the better of me.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘The Queen of Songkran is usually chosen well in advance.’ Despite her smooth, even tone, I could see she was angry. Her fingers drummed a beat on the upholstery. She kept her face averted, staring fixedly at the stragglers who frolicked in the procession’s wake. ‘Until last week, we were all in France.’

‘Your friend must have made some speedy moves,’

Chee Laan shrugged, but her body was rigid with disapproval, and with the need to prevent any part of herself from touching any part of me as we shared the soft leather seat. She tucked herself into the corner, taking up no more room than a child.

‘Salikaa’s bandit cronies have powerful friends and much money. Beauty contest judges all have price tags in their eyes. Well, Salikaa’s on her way.’ She paused. ‘Queen of Songkran is only the first step in Salikaa’s battle plan. Power through beauty.’ She shook herself, closing her eyes, then smiled, turning to face me again. ‘Well, Bangkok is famous for its pretty girls. Now we visit the flipside. We call on the good doctor. I hope you are not easily upset by not-so-nice sights.’ She looked at me, sizing me up.

‘I’ll endeavour not to faint,’ I countered dryly, meeting her quizzical gaze.

‘This car,’ Chee Laan stated, ‘it belongs to my grandmother. We must take it, because Asian girls who go about alone with a
farang
lose much face. But because it is Grandmother’s car, for certain places it is not suitable. The driver has orders to wait two blocks away from the clinic.’

‘Why?’

She shrugged. ‘Dr Pien is a controversial figure. Some call her a saint, but by others she is shunned. All her life it was so. She had to tell lies to her family and run away to Europe and live by scrubbing steps in order to study medicine.’

‘Yet now she has an official position?’

‘When she came back, qualified, she waved her degrees in their faces and demanded a job. So they offered her only what no decent woman would accept. The VD clinics. Nine dollars a week. If she’d turned it down they’d have triumphed. She accepted.’

‘A woman of rare courage! And the official reaction?’

‘What you’d expect. Denounced as a national disgrace—obscene, unwomanly, a freak.’

‘Women doctors encountered hostility in Britain, too, you know,’ I suggested.

She shrugged again. ‘Perhaps so. But long ago.’

The doctor’s clinic looked like an ordinary house. The doctor, that diminutive bulldog, met us and led the way up a flight of wooden stairs to her surgery, which was painted bright turquoise and smelled strongly of powerful industrial disinfectant. ‘Make like at home.’ She nodded at chairs. Obediently, we sat, and awaited developments.

There was a knock at the door. A uniformed policeman entered, prodding before him three teenage girls, giggling with embarrassment. They squeaked and hid their faces when they saw Chee Laan and me. The policeman pulled a card from his pocket, cleared his throat and read aloud. Chee Laan translated: ‘Charged with soliciting.’ The doctor clapped her hands briskly and gestured to the girls, barking staccato commands. In turn, with bovine docility, they climbed onto the table and rolled their skirts up about their hips, uninhibited by notions of false modesty. Dr Pien performed her examinations with dispassionate brutality, as if drawing and stuffing chickens for the oven. ‘Come, see!’ She invited us to view the overt symptoms of disease for ourselves. We had to pretend to comply, but avoided looking, either at the organs displayed or at each other. The policeman rolled his eyes and slipped quietly out of the room. The doctor snorted. She positioned the three girls on low stools in front of her desk like kindergarten miscreants. From behind the desk she produced her educational graphics, large charts featuring pictures of deformed babies, middle-aged cripples, demented old people. No lurid detail had been omitted.

‘Progress and effects of syphilis,’ Chee Laan whispered helpfully. The girls giggled and hid their eyes, peeping at each other through their fingers.

‘They do not believe me,’ sighed the doctor. Leaning forward, she snatched the youngest girl’s hands away from her face, a pretty, heavy face with dull brown eyes. ‘Why do you do it, you silly girl?’

‘Please, Honourable Doctor, Mama-san is good to us, and lying on our backs is easier than planting rice,’ the girl bleated.

The doctor grunted. She said to me: ‘These are young. Sixteen, fifteen maybe. They may have a chance. So long as the arresting officer stands by his testimony.’ She clapped her hands twice. ‘Now I ask the policeman to prefer formal charges. Then I can have them officially transferred to the rehab centre, I can cure them, they can learn a trade…’

The door opened. But instead of the policeman, a mountainous woman waddled into the room, beaming sociably. The girls flung themselves on her, clinging to her beefy arms, stroking her hands and face with small glad cries like pet gibbons.

The policeman sidled in. The Mama-san spread her hands. ‘This policeman was mistaken. He never saw these girls before. He was on duty in quite another part of town.’

Dr Pien flashed a laser-sharp glare at the policemen. He seemed to shrivel, shuffling, then bent his head almost to the desk in salutation and shot out the door like a scared jackrabbit.

‘I shall remember this,’ the doctor said icily. The Mama-san bowed, as if complimented. She heaved her bulk out of the chair. The girls made graceful reverences to the doctor. She caught the youngest girl’s wrist. ‘What’s your name, child?’

‘Pawn, honourable doctor!’ She scuttled out of the room, tittering shrilly.

‘Fifteen years old,’ Dr Pien sighed. ‘Riddled with syph.’

We witnessed other things at the clinic: teenagers wearing the blazers of an expensive school, carrying their textbooks in leather straps, each boy holding a sheaf of yellow admission cards bound together with a thick brown elastic band. Each card represented a course of treatment for venereal disease. The doctor rapped their knuckles with a ruler and harangued them in Taechew. ‘Sixteen years old! A disgrace! I don’t want to see you here again!’

One boy whined, ‘But if I miss my Friday night at the brothel, Honourable Father teases me—he tells the whole family I’m a sissy!’

‘Huh!’ scoffed another. ‘I’m going to stop shagging Thai girls. They’re all poxed; it’s the GIs’ fault. I’m going to get me one of their women instead. A yellow-haired round-eye. A real young fresh one. They’re expensive, but they’re worth it. I’m going to ask my dad where he gets them.’

On the way out we passed through the women-only waiting room. One lone old man sat there beside a dignified old lady, hiding her shame, her head enveloped in a shawl. The old man stared fixedly at his feet as though he expected them to disappear. Dr Pien clapped him on the shoulder and shouted in Thai: ‘Why is Grandfather among the ladies? Has he not seen enough of ladies?’

There was a ripple of ribald tittering. The old lady, shrinking within her shroud, peered out with the sad eyes of a caged monkey.

‘The old pig has been on the razzle and infected his poor wife. Now his grandson has ordered him to bring Granny to be cured. I can cure the poor old girl, but him, with his sick head, only the gods can cure!’

Another patient, a young girl, also hid her head in a green scarf, with an oddly incongruous design of horses’ heads. A blonde lock sneaked out and she hooked it back behind an ear. She glanced up and then quickly turned away. Startled to see a Caucasian child in such surroundings, I stared at the familiar wide, unfocused grey eyes.

‘My God, that’s…’

Chee Laan nodded me to silence.

The little doctor shouted jovially, ‘Well, my friends, I hope you enjoyed your sightseeing in our City of Angels!’ She bustled off, harrying the ranks of the diseased.

We walked in silence to Chee Laan’s Mercedes. With exaggerated nonchalance, the driver lolled in his buff uniform against the wing, polishing a headlamp with his handkerchief. Then I saw someone was sitting in the car. As we approached, a slim girl in the sober uniform of a house servant slid from the seat and saluted us. I recognized the hard narrow eyes, the mulish jaw. Chee Laan issued a spate of instructions in rapid Taechew, a language of which I knew nothing. Listening intently, I managed to pick up the Thai expression
Rachanee Songkran
, the Queen of Songkran; and a name, Salikaa.

Having observed Chee Laan’s disgust at her friend Salikaa’s antics, I was surprised that she should discuss the matter with a servant. All of a sudden the recollection came to me, and I knew where I had seen this girl before. She was the stroppy one who had defied Laila Drinkwater—she who suspected the social bigwigs of coveting their hostess’s silver.

The girl nodded, saluted, and slipped away in the crowded street. Questions plagued me again. I risked a asking a few, those most likely to receive an answer.

‘Those girls—Pawn, there’s a name to conjure with! Young Genty! They’re just kids. What will happen to them?’

Chee Laan shrugged. ‘Carry on, of course. Until too old, too sick, too pockmarked. Maybe die of disease, maybe the abortionist kills them.’ She looked up at me reprovingly. ‘It is not worthwhile to learn the names of such people.’

The callousness was chilling. I swallowed hard before trying another tack.

‘Those young lads…so the father was actively encouraging them to visit brothels?’

She laughed at my innocence. ‘Naturally. Who do you imagine gave them the money?’ She regarded me coolly. These things happen in the best of families. In my own, for instance.’

‘What about young Genty van Hooten?’ Seeing the young American girl in such circumstances had filled me with an astonished helplessness. It seemed both incongruous and profoundly sad. But why should her plight affect me more than the plight of the other sufferers who sought the doctor’s help? I bit my lip. Was my response innately racist?