The Gates of Ivory. Margaret DrabbleЧитать онлайн книгу.
notices that she has changed her rings to complement her costume. Gone are the emeralds. She is now sporting amethyst and ruby and sapphire. She is a symphony of hard reds, hard pinks and blues. She taps his knee with small light fingers.
‘Welcome,’ she says. ‘Welcome to Bangkok.’
Her lips are a glossy, varnished, violent pink. Unnatural, delightful. Her nails are painted a bluish pink.
‘Stephen,’ she says, experimentally, affectionately, a little smugly. She seems surprisingly proud of him. He wonders how, amongst all these rich travellers, he has managed to catch her fancy. He wonders whether he should reply with a murmured ‘Porntip’, but cannot quite make it. She seems to acknowledge that her name might ring oddly in his ears, and to pay this possibility no attention. She has assurance, she has dignity. She is a sophisticated woman, Miss Porntip, a woman of the world. Is she to be trusted? (He supposes he ought to ask himself, trusted for what?)
Trusted for dinner, anyway. That is agreed. She leads him out of the party, scattering little nods and thanks as she goes, a compact princess. She takes his arm, and trips beside him, propelling him firmly through high rooms furnished with antique furniture and gilt mirrors, and pushing her way through a white curtain woven of ropes of fresh white jasmine. Now they are in a perfumed garden, twinkling with Chinese lanterns of orange and deep iris blue. She leads him on, towards the river. They stand, on the parapet, overlooking the Chau Praya. They stand where Conrad stood. They gaze at the broad heaving swell, at glittering bedecked barges, at buzzing hydrotaxis, at water ferries, at dark slow moving hulks, at twinkling lights and reflections, at a whole city on the move. ‘Come, come,’ she says, and leads him further onwards, to a swaying landing stage of wood. They stand there, rising and falling to the irregular rhythm of the water. Green and purple water hyacinth float and suck in the current. The flood slaps and tugs. Miss Porntip takes Stephen’s left hand, and kisses each of his fingers, and then sucks, gently, upon the smallest of them. They both stare at the water.
Miss Porntip sighs, happily. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Now we go eat, and I tell you more about my poor childhood and my business success. Yes?’
‘Yes,’ says Stephen. He is struck into docility by this strange little woman, by this warm night. She can suck him dry if she wants. If she can. The water sucks at the wooden legs of the landing stage. A smell of burning diesel and rotting vegetation mingles erotically with the scent of jasmine and the vinous musk of Miss Porntip.
‘Come,’ she says. And they go.
They walk through dark narrow streets full of people, through the smell of noodles and soya and oil, and knock on an unlikely door let into a wooden building on stilts over water. They are no longer by the wide river. This is a backwater, a hidden way, a secret canal. ‘Klong,’ murmurs Miss Porntip, mysteriously. ‘Klong.’ They make their way past alcoved diners to a low table on a wooden terrace overlooking the reflections. A flowering tree bends over them from an inner courtyard. ‘Sit, sit,’ she says, and he sits, a little creakily, as the seats, though prettily cushioned, are low. He looks around him with keen interest. Is he about to be murdered? Is Miss Porntip about to produce from her person a tiny jewelled dagger and slit his throat? He really does not care.
Does the whole terrace move and sway a little, or is it his head that swims? It seems to him that there is a slight, almost imperceptible motion, a giving, a non-resisting. The wooden walls of the building behind them are a deep polished red brown. They slope and incline, tapering upwards and inwards, slightly off true. He has left the Bangkok of right angles and marble and cement. Silk hangings portray temples, bamboo groves, little goddesses. A calm stone head smiles serenely from the depths of thick foliage. A little spirit shrine adorned by candles flickers in the leafy distance like a magical dovecot. It is hard to tell whether they are indoors or out. The table at which they sit is elaborately lacquered in red and gold. The only discordant note is the clash between its rich flamelike tones and Miss Porntip’s harsher metallic pinks. He half expects her to click her fingers and change colour like a chameleon, but it does not seem to cross her mind to do so.
Pretty pickings. Electric spoils. Is this the Thai equivalent of high Victoriana?
A small silk waitress approaches and sinks to her knees beside Miss Porntip. They converse, quickly, briefly, in a foreign tongue, with many smiles and nods. She vanishes. Miss Porntip smiles at him with confidence.
‘I order meal,’ she explains.
He nods acquiescence.
‘And now I tell you more of my sad story,’ she says, ‘and you tell me more of yours.’
‘It’s a deal,’ he says.
For the first time in their acquaintance she looks very faintly disconcerted.
‘A deal?’ she echoes, as though she has never heard the word.
‘A deal,’ he repeats. ‘You know, a bargain. Your life for mine.’
This time she gets it, and she smiles, radiant again.
‘Is my life first, then yours,’ she says.
He is glad of this small hesitation, this retreat and advance. It proves she is not an automaton, a musical doll. She can understand most of what he says. Can those be real gems around her little throat? A bird sings from the spirit house. It is not a real bird. It is a jewelled toy.
‘Yes,’ she says, as a thin tapering glass of pale straw wine appears at her elbow, at his. ‘Yes, my sad story.’
They sip the wine, nod approval. A person less formed for sadness it would be hard to conceive.
‘I tell you more of the village,’ she says. ‘The hard life, the poor land. My parents were farmers. Like your grandparents. But not good land. Very poor land. Your grandparents very rich fields, many cows, farm subsidies, you tell me. For us, not so. Our land is very poor. Very porous soil, hard to store water, and saline deposits also. Many droughts, then floods. Very primitive farming. Low yield farming. My family own twenty acres, but very poor crops. Only 750 kilograms per year of paddy we produce. We have no mechanism, only buffalo.’
She smiles, nostalgically, and from her tiny bag produces a tiny square photograph. A small child in a limpet hat sits on a water buffalo against a green sunset. Miss Porntip when young, or a favourite niece?
‘For many years my family farm this land. Once we had been more rich. Our house was good house. Teak house. But many bad harvests made many difficulties, and my grandfather sold land. So we had only twenty acres. We gathered also food in the forest. Bamboo and toads.’
She smiles, dazzlingly.
‘Delicious toads.’
She pauses, dramatically, and continues.
‘And then came Americans and the new roads.’
She looks at him interrogatively, to see if he is paying attention. He nods. He follows her.
‘I was born 1955,’ she says. ‘I was little girl when the Americans come and build highway. They build highway, airbase. They chop forest. They take the women. My aunt, she live with American man in town. She keep his house and cook his food. The Americans bring much money to our district. But not to our village. We too far away in hills. My aunt, she go live in town with American man. With Uncle Mort.’
She sips her wine, reflectively. Little bowls and dishes begin to scatter themselves upon the table.
‘Uncle Mort eat a lot of meat,’ she says. ‘It is true that Americans eat much meat, much more meat than Thai people. Thai people like meat, but Americans more so. American meat. It arrive in deep-freeze. Airloads of meat. Also ice-cream and maple syrup. Is also true about ice-cream and maple syrup.’
Piquant little sauces cluster in shallow vessels. Green herbs float in a watery pool. The aroma of lemon grass rises.
‘Uncle Mort give me much ice-cream.’ She shakes her head, pulls a slight face. ‘I did not so much like the ice-cream. But he kind man, he nice man, he good to auntie. She good to him. Auntie, Uncle