Black Tiger (5 page)

Vichai never asked his wives about the gender of the baby. It was too beautiful to be anything but a girl.

By the time Salikaa reached puberty, Vichai’s jealousy had grown intense. If a man ventured to speak to her, Vichai had him flogged. ‘You’re going to be a fine lady, Salikaa, little swallow. You’re going to be Miss Thailand and marry a handsome prince!’ he would say, dandling the giggling child.

‘He wants Salikaa for himself,’ some of the concubines whispered.

Others, more astute, ridiculed the notion. Salikaa, they argued, was an investment, a marketable asset. When the time came, Vichai would barter her to the highest bidder.

Still, some remained convinced. ‘She is being groomed to sweeten his declining years.’ Later, when Salikaa heard this, she said, ‘He’s going to be surprised, in that case. I want more from life than some fat old boar, stinking of whisky.’

But in her heart Salikaa felt Vichai, her adoptive father, was almost certainly the greatest man in the world, the only person who loved her, and under his protection, she grew up arrogant in her beauty.

Little Miss Chee Laan Lee danced along the pavement, swinging her Dior-pirated mini handbag and scuffing her scarlet sandals in the dust of Lumpini Park. Ah Lee, her
amah
or nurse, descended from Hakka fisherfolk, wrinkled and tough as smoke-cured buffalo hide, hissed irritably through betel-stained teeth. She was forced into an ungainly huddled posture as she struggled to keep the pink paper parasol over her little charge’s sleek black head.

If any of the Thai kite sellers or the watermelon or noodle vendors lining the pathway thought, ‘Jumped-up little Chink brat!’ they kept such opinions to themselves. Little Chee Laan, exuding pampered wealth from every pore, clearly offered opportunities for enrichment.

One enterprising kite seller dashed forward, smiling and nodding, and thrust the string of a kite into the child’s pudgy fist. Ah Lee pursed her lips and closed her eyes; she clicked her disapproval like a cross old owl. Then, grumbling, she set down the parasol on its spoked edge in the dusty grass and dug about in the folds of her voluminous black pants for the leather wallet. Manners now demanded that she pay the wretched kite seller twice the kite’s worth, since it had come in the guise of an unsolicited gift.

This was Ah Lee’s favourite route, past the towering edifices that testified to the aspirations and success of her millionaire employers and distant relatives, the Lee Family. But for once she failed to find solace in the reflected grandeur of the Lee Building and the nearly completed, already palatial Rachanee Hotel. Ah Lee waited until they were out of earshot; then, as soon as they turned the corner, she scolded: ‘Wind no blow, kites no good!’

As though to spite her, a breeze arose, whirling the kite aloft. The child, eyes narrowed with laughter, gazed up in wonder. She gave a skip of triumph. The kite had painted eyes and wings. It bobbed along above Chee Laan like an obedient celestial bird, a tamed Garuda.

At the corner by the great building site that represented the Lee family’s latest, most stupendous project, the road deteriorated into a series of craters. The Rachanee Hotel was being thrown up floor by floor to catch the flood tide of Bangkok’s increasing waves of tourists. Every rainy season carved out again the same ravines and pits that had been laboriously repaired during the cool season. Chee Laan, eyes turned skyward, neglected her feet, and she tripped. The kite shot up and out of her hand, snagging its string on the scaffolding. Chee Laan started to yell, then closed her mouth again, staring up in surprise. One of the work gang, a colt-legged girl with a man’s discarded trilby perched jauntily on her head, grinned a gap-toothed grin.

‘
Mai pen ‘rai
, little miss! Never mind. Nit get kite.’

Many Thai girls were nicknamed Nit: ‘Tiny’, ‘Midge’, ‘Titch’. But this girl wasn’t small, only skinny from years of malnutrition and hard labour. Ah Lee’s sharp eyes had noted her swollen abdomen and wondered how the girl had managed to conceal her condition from the foreman. Doubtless the brat she carried was his own get, she thought—that would explain why he generously permitted the girl to risk her life for eight baht a day, scrambling up the bamboo scaffolding, lugging the yoked buckets brimming with liquid cement.

‘Go away!’ Ah Lee muttered fiercely to the wall. She would not address the creature directly—she would not lower herself. Laughing, the girl slammed down her buckets. Cement slurped over the sides. She sprinted over to a ladder leaning against the scaffolding and started to climb, agile as a gibbon. The other women labourers paused to stare; some called to her in anxious fluted tones, like alarmed marsh birds, urging her to take care, but the girl just grinned and went on climbing. Chee Laan watched, forgetting, as always when excited, to draw breath. The old
amah
reached out for the child’s hand and gripped it tight. More than any rage, the unexpected gesture struck a cold terror in the child. Although Ah Lee played a more central role in her young life than her own mother, a shadowy figure in the background, Ah Lee had never before taken her hand. Even when crossing a busy street, Ah Lee just gripped the neck of her frock, like a policeman arresting a felon.

Nearing the kite, the labour girl leaned out, almost at a right angle to the ladder, stretching, grasping. The ladder shuddered like a live thing waking, and started to slither sideways. The dancing kite imparted a festival air—an acrobat performing a trick for a gasping audience. The girl’s body detached itself from the ladder slowly, like a raindrop dislodged from a palm leaf.

She was still smiling when she hit the ground, as though she didn’t realise what was happening. She fell heavily, landing on her shoulders and the back of her skull, the ladder bouncing on top of her. She lay still. Some of the younger women started running, then, swooping and shrieking, cement slopping everywhere. The older ones, wary of disaster and its attendant
lambaak
—trouble—turned away silently.

All of Ah Lee’s instincts screamed to her to follow suit, but the child broke free from her grip. When Ah Lee caught up with her, Chee Laan was already beside the girl, staring down.

‘Come!’ Ah Lee commanded, taking the child by the shoulders. At that moment a big Mercedes, driven hard and fast, screamed around the corner, bucketing and keeling over on two wheels. Ah Lee only just dragged the child out of its path. The driver never even hit the brakes. Both wheels on the left side of the car flybucked as they banked the labour girl’s body: so slight was she, and the car’s suspension such a triumph of German technology, that the passengers must have felt but the slightest jolt, scarcely more than striking a rock or mowing down some diseased pye-dog. Nonetheless, intrigued by the flustered little knot of people, the passengers peered through the tinted bulletproof glass to discover the source of the commotion. Those on the street glimpsed a slack-jowled, aging Chinese face, and a younger face, impassive behind its mask of make-up, glossy coils of blue-black hair. The younger face seemed too heavy for its pale, wiry ostrich neck. There was something ostrich-like, too, about the huge, cold eyes that glittered beneath green-painted lids, dominating the arrogant, sensual face. The two faces lurched close and were gone; the car powered away, bucketing through potholes, shrouded in choking dust clouds. But the child’s eyes were sharp.

‘Khun Paw,’
Chee Laan shouted hoarsely. She started to run after the car. Ah Lee, chattering like a monkey, seized a handful of her skirt. ‘That was father, in that car! Ah Lee, why didn’t he order the chauffeur to stop?’

‘Imagination and foolishness!’ scolded Ah Lee. ‘What use to stop? Girl dead, why stop?’

‘She wasn’t
all
dead! Not till
Khun Paw
’s car hit her. I heard her groan. Before. Just like a ghost. “Oohh!”—like that. She
wasn’t
all dead!’

‘Girl dead. Maybe Little Miss hear ghost, maybe not. Hearing ghosts, seeing things, not good! Kites and low people, bringing
lambaak
. Forget about!’ Ah Lee pawed fretfully at the dust on the child’s clothing, shook out her flouncy underskirts.

Chee Laan pulled herself free. She stamped. ‘I’m going to tell Grandmother!’ She set off purposefully on her fat little legs.

‘Little Miss! Honourable Old Lady busy! Not disturb!’

The child had inherited all her grandmother’s determination, and, Ah Lee thought, a rash wild streak like her worthless father. Muttering and shaking her head, she followed her charge down the busy road toward the glass and chrome skyscraper that housed the headquarters of the family firm.

Chee Laan trotted briskly up the marble steps. The entrance was emblazoned with square
farang
letters, elegant ideograms and ornamental Thai, all proclaiming one identical message: THE LEE BUILDING.

Chee Laan darted past the uniformed guard and the white-robed watch-man, ignoring their salutes, and dived like a questing terrier through the heavy carved teak door that led to her grandmother’s private apartments. She did not even pause to remove her dusty sandals. Ah Lee, outraged and outmanoeuvred, glared at the dumbfounded attendants and shook her head.

‘Worthless fellows, have you nothing better to do than stare?’

‘
Tsu mu!
Grandmother!’ Chee Laan stopped on the threshold and peered into the dark room. Her eyes were unaccustomed to the gloom after the bright glare of the street outside, and at first she thought the room was empty. But then she saw the slim figure before the shrine. Her grandmother, Sunii Lee, knelt, holding a lighted incense stick between her outstretched fingers. After the bustle of the street, the room was still and quiet. Sunii Lee, matriarch of the powerful Lee clan, was, as usual at this hour, at her devotions.

In Bangkok, Sunii Lee’s piety and charity were famous. In Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore, her business acumen and her ruthlessness in the high-finance marketplace had won her respect bordering on reverence. In appearance slight, in conduct modest, she possessed ageless beauty according to the Chinese ideal, and had through careful study attained timeless elegance. But these were adventitious attributes. Sunii’s greatest assets were her entrepreneurial daring and her phenomenal skill with figures. Sunii habitually beat male competitors at their own game, while still affecting the retiring demeanour and soft voice of a traditional Oriental lady of good family. Yet she was not of good family, and there was nothing hide-bound about her approach to commerce. She was, in effect, a fragrant cutthroat. Many people hated Sunii Lee, and many more feared her; even her beloved granddaughter Chee Laan was a little afraid.

The child hesitated in the doorway, watching her grandmother, fascinated by the tiny lit incense stick that glowed like a firefly in the darkness of the shuttered room. She hardly dared to move until she heard behind her the tramp of the guard’s heavy boots, and the rattle of chains and keys against his gun. At his side, breathless with outrage, Ah Lee huffed and clucked. With a howl, the excited child plunged into the room and threw herself to the ground beside her grandmother, who started and almost dropped her joss stick. Puffing, Ah Lee fell to her knees and squirmed forward as fast as she could, the knees of her chino pants squeaking on the wooden floor. The burly security guard hovered uncertainly in the doorway.

Sunii Lee took in the scene at a glance, and unhurriedly saluted the shrine. Then she turned, her delicate eyebrows arched in query and irritation.

‘Worthless cement-girl steal Little Miss’s kite!’ panted Ah Lee swiftly, so as to establish matters. Chee Laan gasped in indignation at this barefaced lie. ‘By Rachanee new building place. Coolie snatched kite. Ran away. Fell down, then car—
pam
!’ Ah Lee struck her palm with her fist in illustration. ‘Driver never stop. Foreigner,
farang
. Foreign devil, all time hurry hurry…’ Ah Lee shrugged expressively, as if to say what more could one expect.

Chee Laan leapt to her feet and shouted, ‘It isn’t fair! She wasn’t a thief—she was trying to help! And there were no foreign devils, it was
Khun Paw
, honourable father. I saw him!’

Sunii Lee’s voice was cool as the dusk breeze. ‘Granddaughter! Have you eaten rice yet?’

Deflated, the child hung her head. She muttered the traditional answer, ‘Unworthy!’ meaning that she had by her greed deprived her grandmother of her own meal.

Sunii rose in one fluid movement. ‘The stupidity and ignorance of the labouring class can only be counteracted by education,’ she said. Young as she was, Chee Laan recognised an official explanation when she heard one, and knew it to be immutable thereafter. But like a terrier, she persisted.

‘But, Honourable
Tsu mu
, why didn’t
Khun Paw
order the driver to stop? And who was that lady in the car,
Tsu mu
?’

Sunii’s fine winged brows contracted as if in pain. She made an almost imperceptible gesture with her right hand. Ah Lee withdrew, reluctantly.

Sunii Lee turned to the black-and-gold lacquer writing desk; she withdrew a wickerwork basket lined with red silk and full of sweetmeats. With her long-nailed fingers she stuffed sweets into Chee Laan’s mouth until the child, purple-faced, choking, felt the tears run from her eyes into the crevices of her jutting lips. The taste of the sweets mixed with the salt. Unable to speak, she gulped painfully. The sweets seemed huge as boulders. The pieces she managed to swallow bruised her gullet.

Sunii regarded her granddaughter’s struggles thoughtfully. ‘My precious one! Now we shall forget these bad things. We shall never speak of them again. We shall lift our thoughts to serious matters, Granddaughter, instead of bursting into rooms and racketing about like people unable to behave with dignity. A woman is never too young to acquire dignity. It takes a great deal of thought and skill to live successfully as a woman, especially a clever one. Fetch the calligraphy things.’