108 fountains
12-04-2014, 02:03 PM
Here is another long piece. I'll post it in two parts. MANICHAEAN, I think you will appreciate this story, but I'd love to hear comments from anyone.
My Knight in Shining Armor
“If men want only bad girls,” she said, in part laughing and in part despairing, “then I will be bad!”
Ratana held the match under the glass and watched the crystals sublimate. “Go ahead, then,” she said to her friend Suchin, “be bad!” 1
Suchin chased the white dragon and laughed again, but it was a mournful laugh. The room she was in was dimly lit; Ratana kept a dark maroon silk scarf wrapped around the tiny lampshade next to the mattress on the floor. They had turned off the fan to prevent its rotating blades from disbursing the smoke. Without the noise of the fan, the ticking of the tiny clock was the only sound in the room. The two young women sat silent for some minutes.
Ratana watched her friend with a keen eye. The other girls who smoked “ice” did it to lose weight or to stay awake or for the euphoric rush or for all these reasons. But Suchin was different. It was her escape from depression, her deliverance from life’s desolation. When the other girls smoked, they became excited, sky-high, beings of light dancing through clouds. When Suchin smoked, she emerged from the depths to a semblance of normalcy. At three o’clock in the morning in that dingy room, without the fan, the heat was intense, but the silence was unbearable. Ratana sought to break it. “Well, you know, men do have brains, but they don’t use them to think. They think with their stomachs or with another part of their anatomy. You know what they say, for men, joy is found in only two things – eating meat and putting meat inside of meat!” 2
Suchin did not respond. She exhaled slowly. She felt her insides tingle.
“They are all the same,” Ratana continued. “Thai or foreigner, they are all the same.”
“Maybe,” said Suchin thoughtfully, “But one day, I will meet my knight in shining armor.” She closed her eyes and put her hands together in a transport of rapture. “Like in the European storybooks – he will be tall and handsome and have blue eyes. He will have a good heart, and he will see the goodness in me. My knight in shining armor. When I meet him, and when his lips touch mine, that will be the time I leave this all behind me – the pain, the sadness, the cruelty, the sickness.”
“That is a beautiful thought,” said Ratana. “Maybe too beautiful for this world.”
Ratana again observed Suchin. She was a genuinely beautiful woman – even Ratana could appreciate Suchin’s long, velvet hair falling in gentles tresses, her almond colored cheeks, her penetrating, yielding, trusting brown eyes, her flat nose, the slight curl to her cherry lips, her long, tapered fingers, the slim, boyish shape of her body, the subtle sensuality in the way she moved. At once sultry and sweet, physically alluring and spiritually pure, Suchin was a mid-summer moon on a dark winter’s night. 3 Ratana could not understand why Suchin had such bad luck in attracting good men – and such good luck in attracting bad men. She laughed, “I saw Big Eyes watching you again tonight. I think he is in love with you.”
“Eeeeyaai! Oh, my Buddha!” exclaimed Suchin, laughing. “The first time he came in, it was funny, but now – now it’s just creepy!”
Big Eyes was the nickname the go-go dancers at Whassup a-Go-Go had given to a middle-age man who had been coming into the bar every night for the past two weeks. He sat at the stage, ordered one beer, took one sip, and then sat watching the dancers for the next two hours, never smiling, never saying a word, never showing the slightest hint of any expression, except when Suchin was in front of him. Then he would shift in his seat, move forward slightly, and stare intently. He explored her body with his eyes, examining, probing, violating her. But he remained cold and expressionless. The first couple of times he sat at the stage, Suchin gave him quite a show, but his continued staring was intimidating and menacing. Now Suchin avoided being directly in front of him.
“It might sound strange to you,” Suchin said to Ratana, “but it is easy for me to go with a man to his hotel if I like him. At least that is my choice. What I hate is being up on the stage on display like a piece of meat. We are all just prancing around up there in our little costumes like horses at a horse show. They look at us, inspect us, compare us, and then haggle over the price. I swear, the other night a man bought me a drink and then told me to open my mouth so he could look at my teeth.”
“I hope you bit him,” laughed Ratana. “Suchin, you are so different than the other girls. Most girls would be so thrilled to be a showgirl, a headliner, like you. But you don’t like it. You don’t like it when men look at you.”
“Oh, I don’t mind that they look at me,” laughed Suchin coyly. “It’s just that when they look at me, they see only my body. They don’t look further to see my heart.”
Suchin stood up to leave. Ratana held out her hand. “I need a little extra tonight. I have to pay my electric tomorrow, and I have no money.”
Suchin saw the familiar expression on Ratana’s face – an imploring look, disguised in smiles. She did not need to ask how much. Ratana supplied the information in a whisper, “Five hundred baht.”
While Ratana carefully slipped the pastel-colored bills into a small purse, Suchin opened the door and stepped outside.
“Where do you go?” asked Ratana.
“Internet shop,” replied Suchin. “Goodnight.”
The little alley where Suchin walked was deathly still. The street vendors had all closed up shop and pushed their carts away long ago. As she walked along, she heard the scurrying sound of a swarm of rats that she had disturbed while they were chewing on the refuse in the gutter. They dashed into the darkness, then stopped, turned and raised their ravenous pink eyes toward her as if they were trying to think of a way to get something from her. A slight breeze blew in from the sea, but it only served to stir the stifling heat. The nighttime sky was starry, but the humidity in the air weighed down on any lost soul that might otherwise have taken a fancy for flight.
Suchin walked six long city blocks to the Internet shop. She had hoped to buy a used motor-scooter by now, but she never seemed able to save any money. Her biggest expense was the money she sent every month to her auntie for taking care of her son. She suspected – no, she knew she was giving double – triple – the amount that it cost to take care of a six-year-old boy, but her auntie insisted that she needed it for school uniforms, for food, and for all sorts of miscellaneous expenses. Besides, her auntie reasoned, Suchin was a showgirl now and was making big money. She could afford it, her auntie said, and it was her duty to help. In fact, it was her auntie who first suggested Suchin go to Pattaya to work as a dancer. Whenever Suchin hinted at her humiliation, her auntie would only say, “You should make money now while you are still young. Your good looks won’t last forever. Make the best of them while you can.” Although it was understood how Suchin earned her tips, it was never spoken of directly. Previously, her auntie had worked as a seamstress taking in piece work, earning in a month less than a quarter what Suchin was providing. With Suchin’s support, her auntie quit that work and now spent her days watching television.
It was three years since Suchin left her son at her auntie’s home in the village. That departure, that separation, was the most difficult task she had ever undertaken. He was the love of her soul, the blood of her heart. 4 She counted nineteen weeks and two days since she had last seen him. She talked with him on the phone, but child that he was, he did not understand. She was worried that he might not understand that she was really his mother and not just some lady who came to visit him two or three times a year. Whenever she spoke with him on the phone, she spent the next few hours in tears.
She remembered when she was pregnant. The father, Virote, had taken her to him when she had just turned seventeen. At first, he had a certain charm, and she was attracted to him. He was handsome and proud, a man of the world who seemed to know everything. He flattered her, he complimented her looks, and finally he declared that he could not survive without her. He brought her to his room, a dark, one-room cinderblock structure. During the first several weeks, he was romantic, gentle. He brought her larb and sticky rice after he had satisfied his passion. But soon, even though she gave him no cause, his own insecurity led to fits of jealousy. He began locking her in the room whenever he went out. And although he never struck her, his verbal abuse was ferocious and cruel. “You are nothing!” he would scream at her over and over again. “You think you are beautiful. You think you are special. But you are nothing! Nothing!”
She tried her best to soothe him, and often she succeeded. Despite his growing hatefulness, she wished for them to be happy, she wanted nothing other than for them to be a happy couple, and so she appeased him, apologized for imagined wrongs, and responded to his disparagement with mildness and submission. It never occurred to her to leave him. She had nowhere else to go. Over time his malevolence increased. She cost him money, he would say. He could not afford to feed her. There were days when all he gave her to eat were the morsels he left from his own plate. And there were days when he left her nothing.
When she learned she was pregnant, she was afraid to tell him, terrified at what his reaction would be. After several weeks had passed, however, her condition became obvious. He looked at her with disgust. He hissed at her, “Do you think this makes you special? Do you think this binds me to you? Look at you. You are nothing! I can leave you whenever I want. What will you do? Nothing. Because that is what you are – nothing!”
One day, when she was about eight months, he locked her in the room and went out. He rarely stayed out late of an evening, even when he had been drinking, but on this night, the hours ticked by and there was no sign of his return. Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, midnight. She was hungry, but had given up hope that he would bring dinner with him when he returned. She fell asleep until morning. Still he did not come home.
All day long she waited in vain. He had gone to work, she reasoned, and would return at his usual hour. But the late afternoon turned to evening, and the evening turned into night. A dog howled outside, and the realization struck like a blow – he had abandoned her. By now, she was dizzy with hunger. She tried picking at the lock and at the doorknob fixtures with a type of putty knife she found in the bathroom – the only kitchen utensils in the house were plastic. Her trembling fingers fumbled in the effort. With no other option, she decided to break the window. She pulled the thin mattress up off the floor, leaned it against the window, and pounded it with her fists. She heard the glass crack and then shatter. Laying the mattress aside, she poked the remaining dagger-like shards out from the pane so that she could squeeze through safely.
She made her way to the market in the village where the few coins she had bought her a mouthful of grilled sticky rice. She was more than twenty miles from the small town where her mother’s sister lived. She knew no one in this village and was apprehensive at the thought of asking for help. She returned to the cinder block dwelling from which she had recently escaped and resolved to walk to her auntie’s house the following morning.
She crawled back through the broken window and lay down on the mattress on the floor, her hunger appeased, and fell into a fitful sleep. Slivers of dreams slithered through her slumber like snakes in slimy waters. Toward dawn, she awoke to horrible cramping pains in her abdomen. At first, she didn’t realize what was happening. Then the awfulness of her situation made itself known.
She tried to raise herself to climb once again through the window to seek help, but the pain was too unbearable, and she was too weak. She called out for help, but her voice was feeble, and the cinderblock house, located on the outskirts of the village, was far from the nearest neighbor. No one heard her desperate cries.
She remained conscious throughout, pushing, panting, panting, pushing. The sweat dripped from her nose and rolled down her neck. The agony was indescribable, but mercifully it lasted only ninety minutes. The final push and it was over. She wiped the baby with the bed-sheet. She looked at his gray little face and wept. She kept thinking of how it should have been – like in the movies, with a nurse to help, presenting the beautiful baby to her waiting arms, her husband standing by smiling – not like this, not alone in a sweltering room, bloody, abandoned and discarded.
She peered again at the baby’s face. It looked like Virote. It repulsed her. She cut the umbilical cord as best she could with the putty knife and then fell asleep, exhausted and nauseated.
She slept until noon, until sun’s searing blaze had turned the concrete cinderblock house into a broiler. The baby whimpered in the terrible heat. She took him into the shower and washed him and herself. Then she changed from her bloodied clothes into a clean shirt and loose fitting pants, wrapped the baby in a towel, and climbed out the window to begin the long, hot walk to her auntie’s house.
Now at the Internet shop, she checked her e-mail. There were several messages in her in-box. One was from Melvin, a German whom she had met a week ago. He was in Cambodia now, he wrote, but would be back in another two weeks. “I’ll introduce you to a friend of mine,” he wrote. “The three of us can have a good time together. I bet you have never done that before.”
Shy typed, “Of course, my darling. I will do whatever you want. I am crazy for you!” And when she hit the “send” button, she muttered under her breath, “Pig!”
She scrolled down and found a message from Daniel. Her heart fluttered involuntarily whenever Daniel called or wrote to her. She remembered the first time she met him three years earlier. It was her very first night on the job at Whassup a-Go-Go, one of the many receptacles of strange and curious people that crouched in this odd corner of town. 5 Recorded music was blaring so loud that Suchin could barely hear herself think. Two dozen girls in bikinis danced lethargically on stage. Beer, hard drinks, money and bawdy laughter flowed freely. Secret, lascivious activities were taking place in dark corners. And alone in the midst of all this corruption, decadence, wooden grins, and ugly faces gone awry, Suchin stood near the door, smiling, trying to make believe she was in a gentle slumber and this was all a dream. 6
Apple, one of the older girls and the person who had helped Suchin get the job, pulled her over to the side. “Look there,” she said. “There is a man with a good heart. Come with me.”
“No, no!” cried Suchin, pulling away awkwardly. She knew a dozen words of English and had never spoken to a foreigner before. “I can’t! Really, I just can’t.”
“Come on!” Apple laughed, pulling her none too gently toward a man sitting by himself at a table in the back.
“Hello, darling.” Apple said, sitting down next to the man and pulling Suchin to sit down on the other side of him. “Are you having a good time?”
“Well, I am having a better time now,” the man answered, slipping his arm around Apple and acknowledging Suchin with a smile. He looked to be somewhere in his late forties. He was better dressed than most of the customers, wearing long pants, a dress shirt, and leather shoes. Most customers wore shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals or tennis shoes.
Apple and the man engaged in the usual small talk. After the introductions, Apple asked, “You buy me drink?”
“Sure,” replied the man.
“And my friend, too?”
“Of course.”
After another few minutes of banter, Apple told him that she had to go up on stage to dance. She pushed him closer to Suchin as she got up, and the man slipped his arm around Suchin with as much indifference as he had put his arm around Apple, changing girls as easily as changing shirts. Suchin was scared to death. She was suddenly conscious of being nowhere near as sophisticated as the other girls. She didn’t yet know how to wear bargirl make-up; she didn’t yet know the words to engage in flirtatious small talk; she didn’t yet know the effect she could have by simply breathing on a man’s neck or laying a hand on his thigh. Rather than try to converse in English, she snuggled up to him and laid her head against his shoulder, and waited for Apple to return.
After a few minutes of silence in which he stroked her hair and pressed her a little closer, he pulled her head back gently, looked in her eyes, and asked, “Are you okay?”
“I okay,” she answered, “but my English is a little.”
“Oh, I think your English is fine,” he said with a smile. He observed her again carefully, inquisitively, as if he were studying some unusual item in a curiosity shop. “My name is Daniel” he said. “I hope you don’t mind my saying, but you really are a very, very beautiful woman.”
She smiled, pleased that he seemed to genuinely like her. She tried to carry on a conversation, but her English was too poor even for simple dialogue. She was relieved when Apple returned.
Apple had already decided that Daniel should pay Suchin’s “bar fine” and take her out for a “short time.” Daniel was open to persuasion and quickly agreed. He gave six hundred baht to Apple to pay the bar fine. He also paid for the drinks. Suchin listened to the discussions between Apple and Daniel in a semi-conscious state of disorientation. She understood what was expected of her, but somehow as she listened to them negotiate, it was as if they were talking about something else altogether, some other transaction that did not involve her. Apple had to pull Suchin up from her seat to go back to the dressing room to change into her street clothes.
Once it struck home to her what was actually occurring, Suchin protested, “I can’t go with him. I can’t speak English.”
Apple laughed merrily as she helped Suchin pull on her shirt. “Don’t worry about that. He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
Suchin protested as she pulled on her microscopic jean cutoffs. “Oh, this is too much for me! I’m afraid! He’s a foreigner. I don’t know what to do…”
Apple pinched Suchin’s cheek and smiled, “You will know what to do. You will be okay. He seems like he has a good heart. If you have any trouble, just call me. Here is your phone. Here are your shoes. Hurry! You don’t want to keep him waiting.”
Suchin checked her make-up in the mirror. She was still in a state of bewilderment. She wondered how she would communicate with this foreign man. What was he expecting of her? She tried not to think of anything. She would go with him and then see what would happen. He did seem like a good man. He had a sweet smile and a gentle deportment. She told herself she would be okay.
Daniel greeted her with a smile when she returned. Suchin liked his smile and lost some of her nervousness. “Shall we go?” he asked her.
“As you like,” she answered shyly. He took her by the hand, and they walked out of the bar into Walking Street. The street had a carnival-like atmosphere. Hundreds of tourists surged backward and forward singly, in pairs, and in groups large and small, in and out of bars, discotheques, restaurants, and shops. Street vendors sold costume jewelry, gyro sandwiches, pineapple slices, toys, lottery tickets, and a fabulous assortment of colorful trinkets. Music blasted from several different directions so loudly that it was necessary to shout to carry on a conversation. It was like Bourbon Street at Mardis Gras, only more crowded, more intense, more bizarre, more sensual, and with an Asian flavor. Here and there, Suchin saw other young Thai women, like herself, walking hand in hand with older, Western men.
At one corner, Suchin saw several ferang men congregated together dressed in short-sleeve white shirts, black ties, and black pants. They were standing outside an open-air beer bar. One of the men was shouting something; the others seemed to be murmuring something in approval. The beer bar patrons totally ignored them. As the street was crowded at this juncture, Suchin and Daniel were pressed up against them. She tried to hear what the man was shouting.
“Sinners! Give up thy evil ways! Listen to the Lord! Hear his gospel! Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.7 The Lord will rain down burning sulfur on thee, as He did on Sodom and Gomorrah! For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 8
“What he talk?” Suchin asked.
“Oh, he’s with some religious group,” Daniel answered with a dismissive gesture, pushing her forward through the crowd. “The Mormons or the Mennonites or something like that. They believe there is a clear-cut line between good and evil, and they think they know where it is.”
“Nobody hear him,” Suchin said. She had to fairly shout above the din in the street to be heard.
“It doesn’t matter to them,” said Daniel. “They’re not trying to save anyone here. They’re only here to feed their own egos – and their arrogance.”
“What? I not understand. My English is a little.”
“Don’t worry about it,” replied Daniel, pushing her past them. “They’re… inconsequential.”
After walking a half a block further, the crowd thinned out somewhat, and they could hear each other talk. “Where shall we go?” asked Daniel.
“Anywhere!” replied Suchin enthusiastically, thinking they might go to a discotheque or a movie theater.
“No. I mean what hotel do you use for short time?”
“I don’t know,” said Suchin. “This first time for me.”
Daniel looked at her incredulously with a shrug that indicated a measure of impatience. “Well, I know a place then,” he said, and pulled her toward Soi Eleven.
Not twenty yards into the alley on the right side was a dimly lit stairway. Over the doorway at the top of the stairs, a blue neon sign read “Grand Hotel.” Daniel paid for a room for one hour. He took the key from the receptionist and led Suchin up another flight of stairs. Suchin followed passively, still somewhat dazed and disoriented.
Daniel opened the door and turned on the light switch. A king-size bed occupied nearly all the available space. There was barely room enough to walk across to the small, adjoining bathroom located on the other side of the room.
Daniel turned to Suchin and asked “Is the room okay?”
Suchin tried to speak but could not find her voice. She nodded her head as she gulped for air.
Daniel unbuttoned his shirt. Suchin watched, her eyes growing wider as he pulled off his shirt and tossed it carelessly on the bed. Without thinking, but clutching at any idea that might delay the proceedings, Suchin instinctively opened the small bag she carried with her and pulled out a photograph of her son.
“You like to see this?” she asked. She heard her own voice speaking, but did not recognize it. She saw herself holding out the photograph to the shirtless man as if she were watching the scene from the other side of the room. That person – the one watching from the other side of the room – laughed at her ridiculousness.
“What’s that?” said Daniel, taking a step toward her to look at the photo.
“This my son. Him name Kris,” replied Suchin. “Him three years old.”
Daniel looked at the picture and back at Suchin with a quizzical look on his face. He took the photograph and feigned interest. “He’s a very handsome boy,” he said. “He looks like you.” He handed the photograph back to her. As she placed it back in her bag, she fumbled and dropped the bag. Daniel picked it up for her and, as he returned it to her, he noticed her hands. “Why, you’re trembling!” he exclaimed.
Suchin’s voice cracked and a tear ran down her cheek. “I sorry,” she said. “You my first customer. I afraid a little. I sorry,” she repeated
“This is really your first time?” Daniel asked, taken aback.
“Yes,” she said simply.
Daniel regarded her with some surprise. She looked more beautiful than ever in the downward droop of her eyelash, the tremulous curve of her lips, and in all the soft, voluptuousness of her. 9 When she turned those eyelashes up toward him with tears clinging to them and with a frightened, vulnerable expression, Daniel’s entire demeanor changed. He put his shirt back on. “Come,” he said. He took her hand and led her out of the room.
They drifted back down Walking Street. Daniel took her to one of the several seafood restaurants on the ocean side of the street. The large dining room was built out upon stilts over the sea shining in the moonlight. The restaurant, like everything else on Walking Street, was crowded.
Four Westerners, two men and two women, with American accents, sat at the table behind Suchin. They had just paid their bill and were picking up their belongings to leave when Suchin heard one of the women say, “Well, now that I’ve been down here to see all this first hand, I must say, I’m glad we approved the grant to the Global Justice Foundation. But I know you still don’t agree with me, Robert.”
“I agree we need to help fight trafficking,” said the man addressed as Robert, “but the GJF… I’ve heard too many stories about them. They rescue girls, but then they literally hold them hostage against their will, brainwashing them, Christianizing them, preaching morals to them…”
“If they are trafficking victims,” chimed in the second woman, older, with a puffy face and wearing a heavy cotton shawl over her shoulders despite the tropical heat, “then they should be grateful for being rescued. If they are not victims, if they are just common prostitutes, then a few lessons in morality won’t hurt them. This town is perfectly dreadful. I’ve been shocked and disgusted by what I’ve seen here. What do you think, Martin? You’ve been quiet all night.”
“I don’t understand any of you,” said Martin, who had already risen from his seat and stood just inches away from Suchin. “I don’t understand why these girls have to be labeled as either victims or whores. Why can’t they just be human beings who, for whatever reason – and likely for a combination of complex economic, social, cultural and personal reasons – have ended up working in the bars here?”
“Martin the philosopher!” cried the second woman in exasperation.
“I’ll tell you why,” said Robert to Martin out of earshot of their two female colleagues. “Because if we thought of them as human beings capable of making their own decisions, then we wouldn’t be able to congratulate ourselves for rescuing them.”
As the four Westerners departed, Suchin felt her cheeks blush. She had been unable to understand all of their conversation, but she had understood enough. Suchin had experienced much in her young life, but this was the first time she had felt shame.
“Don’t worry about them,” said Daniel nonchalantly, noticing Suchin’s discomfort. “They’re worse than those religious preachers down the street. The foreigners who come here come from a different world. They don’t understand this place. They’re terrible.”
“What about you, Daniel?” Suchin asked quietly. “You a foreigner, too.”
“Me? Bloody hell!” laughed Daniel. “I’m the worst of the lot! Now just forget about all that. Let’s order some dinner.”
Suchin smiled. She liked Daniel’s confidence and easy manner. He made her feel comfortable. He called over a waitress and ordered steamed crabs, pan-fried ocean perch, raw shrimps in a spicy garlic sauce, and Pad Thai noodles. As they waited, Suchin noticed the full moon cast its ancient, silvery light across the ocean in the distance and several small craft crisscrossing the waters in the nearer distance. She looked into Daniel’s face. He returned her gaze with a gentle expression. “You okay?” he asked.
“I okay,” she replied. “I not know how to say…” She looked around the busy dining room and then out to the sea. “This… This very nice!”
“I’m glad you like it,” he said in even gentler tones. Then he reached across the table and took her hand in his. “I’d like to make this a special night for you.”
The waiter brought the seafood and the noodles. Both Suchin and Daniel attacked the meal with relish. Suchin cast her eyes shyly downward whenever she saw Daniel looking at her and especially when he remarked – as he did more than once, but in a good-natured, teasing way – on her appetite. But when he wasn’t looking, she turned her eyes on him. He was an older man – there was no mistake about that – and he had a weathered handsomeness about him, like a sailor returned from years at sea. He seemed completely at ease, self-assured, even exultant with her. She realized that he had brought her to the restaurant as an act of compassion after her embarrassment at the hotel. She was immensely relieved and grateful to him. He did have, as Apple had noted, “a good heart.”
Because of her limited language abilities, they did not progress much beyond the most basic conversation during the meal. Suchin was pleased at the patience Daniel showed with her limited capacity for communication. She learned that he worked and lived in Hong Kong. He came to Thailand four or five times a year on business. About halfway through dinner, he noticed her examining at the gold band on his finger. Yes, he told her, he was married. His wife and a teen-age son and daughter lived with him in Hong Kong. He said it so matter-of-factly, with no embarrassment or hesitation, that Suchin asked nothing more about it.
After dinner, Suchin found herself walking hand-in-hand with Daniel toward the far end of Walking Street. The blaring music and harsh noises faded away as they walked across a wide, largely deserted parking lot. Several sailboats and other pleasure craft were moored for the night at a lonely jetty that emerged from the distal end of a small marina on the other side of the asphalt lot. From here, Daniel walked her onto a ribbon of sand that trailed away from the streetlights and into the moonlight. She followed Daniel as he climbed up a moderate embankment. No other living beings were in sight on this deserted patch of seashore, but it never occurred to Suchin to be nervous or afraid. Finally, Daniel found a comfortable perch on a log that lay half buried in sand on a crag that overlooked the dark waters and the blinking lights of the fishing boats in the distance.
Suchin sat next to him and laid her head against his shoulder. He had his arm around her, stroking her neck and her hair. A warm breeze blew in from the sea, the surf rose and fell like sighs, and occasional sprays of salt mist moistened their cheeks. Suchin had never felt so content or so tranquil. They listened to the ocean whisper its secrets to them in the dark, and between them emerged an unspoken understanding.
When the moon had made its descent to the nadir of its celestial sphere, Daniel pulled her so that he could look into her eyes and told her it was time to go. Her eyelashes drooped and she held onto him all the more tightly. He kissed those lashes and felt the dampness on them.
The din and tumult of Walking Street had subsided only slightly. Before handing the motorcycle taxi driver twenty baht to take her home, Daniel asked Suchin for permission to come back to Whassup a-Go-Go the following night to see her. Suchin felt a deep warmth of feeling as she told him he didn’t need her permission, but she would be very happy to see him again.
She looked back, but Daniel had already disappeared in the crowd. Then the thought struck her that he might be directing his steps toward another bar where he would meet another girl. She felt a flash of embarrassment at how she had behaved at the hotel. The realization that she might never see Daniel again chilled her. How could she know then how many other men would walk away from her over the next few years, and that the pang she suddenly felt now would assail her so often that it would become an unceasing ache in her heart?
All the next evening, she waited for Daniel at the bar. Her eyes wandered to the door all night long. She hoped he would not come in while it was her turn to dance on the stage. Another girl would sit next to him then, and the thought filled her with jealousy. She had told Apple what had occurred the night before. Apple was somewhat taken aback to hear how gently Daniel had treated Suchin, but she was not surprised when he did not show up the next evening. “He won’t come back,” she said. “You should have given him what he wanted.” Still, Suchin watched the door, and every time that she saw someone enter she thought for a split second that it was him, but she was disappointed every time. As the night wore on, she watched the door a little less eagerly, and a little more sorry.
But around midnight, he walked in. Suchin hesitated. Daniel took a seat near to the stage. He glanced around and immediately saw her watching from across the room. A cheerful smile of recognition flashed across his face. He waved for her to sit down next to him. She was surprised at her own emotions. She was drawn to him and was excited – joyful – that he had come back to see her.
That night, like the previous evening, Daniel took Suchin out for a seafood meal. Afterward, they sat at the table for a long while, he patiently making efforts to converse with her. He said nothing about going to a short-time hotel, and Suchin felt both relieved and disappointed at this omission. He said he was returning to Hong Kong the following morning, but would be back in Thailand in about three months. They exchanged phone numbers, and he promised to stay in touch with her.
At the Internet shop, Suchin smiled as she recalled her relative innocence and naïveté in those early days. She had grown much wiser in the past three years, but she had not hardened like so many of the other girls. She maintained a sweetness and vulnerability that set her apart from them.
Over the next three years, Daniel came to visit her in Pattaya every time he traveled to Thailand. Sometimes he stayed for two or three days; sometimes he stayed a full week. They never went to another short-time hotel. When he came to Pattaya, he stayed at her apartment. She had been warned many times by Apple and others to never bring a customer home, but in Suchin’s mind Daniel was not a customer. From that first encounter, and over the succeeding months and years, she felt they had transcended the bounds of physical passion and reached such a sublime state of devotion that when she cried, the tears ran down his cheeks, and when she closed her eyes, he saw her dreams. 10 And yet, despite that, Daniel’s marriage preyed constantly on her mind. It was not that she felt guilty about having an affair with a married man, but rather that she knew they could never completely belong to each other. She was excited and happy when Daniel showed up at her doorstep, but she hated to see him packing his bags for the flight back to Hong Kong and his family.
She had met many other men at Whassup a-Go-Go in the meantime, and several times she thought she had finally met her knight in shining armor. But every one of them had disappointed her, and many of them had broken her heart. Throughout it all, Daniel had remained a constant.
She opened his e-mail. He often wrote to her in language akin to poetry, and Suchin had difficulty understanding him. She kept a small English-Thai dictionary in her bag, and spent long minutes trying to decipher his messages. Tonight she was tired. She skimmed his message for passages she could easily understand. “My sweetheart, after all this time, I am still amazed how you and I found each other down here in the grass… 11 You always tell me how complicated you are, and yes, you have led a complicated and difficult life. But the longer I know you, the more I come to realize that you are not complicated at all. All you want is to love and to be beloved. Then happy I.12 For all I want is to understand you better and to love you more.”
Suchin tried unsuccessfully to suppress a sob. No one knew her, no one understood her, so well as Daniel. He was right. In all her life, that was all she wanted – to love and to be loved. Only that. Why should that be so hard?
Suchin hit the “reply” button and started to compose a long response. Her spoken English had improved dramatically in the past three years, and she kept a diary in English as a way to practice writing, but her words got all jumbled up when she tried to express her feelings in composition. She typed, “Thank you, sweetheart. You are everything to me, but I am ashamed that I have nothing for you to bring, only what I am, which worth is nothing.” 13 After a few moments, she thought better and deleted those sentences and typed simply, “Thank you, sweetheart. You always make me feel good.” And then she hit the “send” button.
She departed the Internet shop. The streets now were completely empty. It was that unnatural time of night when criminals and victims had long since retired, and when farmers and fishermen had yet to feel the first flutterings of wakefulness. In the quiet, silent half-light, the out-of-tune call of a nightjar could be heard even in this urban setting. 14 A tear streamed down her cheek as she walked toward her studio apartment. At one time, and even now, she sometimes thought that maybe it was Daniel – maybe it was Daniel who was her knight in shining armor. But no, that could never be. He was married and devoted to his children. Despite his love for her, she knew he would never desert his family. Nor would she want him to do that. No, Daniel could never be her knight in shining armor.
To be continued...
My Knight in Shining Armor
“If men want only bad girls,” she said, in part laughing and in part despairing, “then I will be bad!”
Ratana held the match under the glass and watched the crystals sublimate. “Go ahead, then,” she said to her friend Suchin, “be bad!” 1
Suchin chased the white dragon and laughed again, but it was a mournful laugh. The room she was in was dimly lit; Ratana kept a dark maroon silk scarf wrapped around the tiny lampshade next to the mattress on the floor. They had turned off the fan to prevent its rotating blades from disbursing the smoke. Without the noise of the fan, the ticking of the tiny clock was the only sound in the room. The two young women sat silent for some minutes.
Ratana watched her friend with a keen eye. The other girls who smoked “ice” did it to lose weight or to stay awake or for the euphoric rush or for all these reasons. But Suchin was different. It was her escape from depression, her deliverance from life’s desolation. When the other girls smoked, they became excited, sky-high, beings of light dancing through clouds. When Suchin smoked, she emerged from the depths to a semblance of normalcy. At three o’clock in the morning in that dingy room, without the fan, the heat was intense, but the silence was unbearable. Ratana sought to break it. “Well, you know, men do have brains, but they don’t use them to think. They think with their stomachs or with another part of their anatomy. You know what they say, for men, joy is found in only two things – eating meat and putting meat inside of meat!” 2
Suchin did not respond. She exhaled slowly. She felt her insides tingle.
“They are all the same,” Ratana continued. “Thai or foreigner, they are all the same.”
“Maybe,” said Suchin thoughtfully, “But one day, I will meet my knight in shining armor.” She closed her eyes and put her hands together in a transport of rapture. “Like in the European storybooks – he will be tall and handsome and have blue eyes. He will have a good heart, and he will see the goodness in me. My knight in shining armor. When I meet him, and when his lips touch mine, that will be the time I leave this all behind me – the pain, the sadness, the cruelty, the sickness.”
“That is a beautiful thought,” said Ratana. “Maybe too beautiful for this world.”
Ratana again observed Suchin. She was a genuinely beautiful woman – even Ratana could appreciate Suchin’s long, velvet hair falling in gentles tresses, her almond colored cheeks, her penetrating, yielding, trusting brown eyes, her flat nose, the slight curl to her cherry lips, her long, tapered fingers, the slim, boyish shape of her body, the subtle sensuality in the way she moved. At once sultry and sweet, physically alluring and spiritually pure, Suchin was a mid-summer moon on a dark winter’s night. 3 Ratana could not understand why Suchin had such bad luck in attracting good men – and such good luck in attracting bad men. She laughed, “I saw Big Eyes watching you again tonight. I think he is in love with you.”
“Eeeeyaai! Oh, my Buddha!” exclaimed Suchin, laughing. “The first time he came in, it was funny, but now – now it’s just creepy!”
Big Eyes was the nickname the go-go dancers at Whassup a-Go-Go had given to a middle-age man who had been coming into the bar every night for the past two weeks. He sat at the stage, ordered one beer, took one sip, and then sat watching the dancers for the next two hours, never smiling, never saying a word, never showing the slightest hint of any expression, except when Suchin was in front of him. Then he would shift in his seat, move forward slightly, and stare intently. He explored her body with his eyes, examining, probing, violating her. But he remained cold and expressionless. The first couple of times he sat at the stage, Suchin gave him quite a show, but his continued staring was intimidating and menacing. Now Suchin avoided being directly in front of him.
“It might sound strange to you,” Suchin said to Ratana, “but it is easy for me to go with a man to his hotel if I like him. At least that is my choice. What I hate is being up on the stage on display like a piece of meat. We are all just prancing around up there in our little costumes like horses at a horse show. They look at us, inspect us, compare us, and then haggle over the price. I swear, the other night a man bought me a drink and then told me to open my mouth so he could look at my teeth.”
“I hope you bit him,” laughed Ratana. “Suchin, you are so different than the other girls. Most girls would be so thrilled to be a showgirl, a headliner, like you. But you don’t like it. You don’t like it when men look at you.”
“Oh, I don’t mind that they look at me,” laughed Suchin coyly. “It’s just that when they look at me, they see only my body. They don’t look further to see my heart.”
Suchin stood up to leave. Ratana held out her hand. “I need a little extra tonight. I have to pay my electric tomorrow, and I have no money.”
Suchin saw the familiar expression on Ratana’s face – an imploring look, disguised in smiles. She did not need to ask how much. Ratana supplied the information in a whisper, “Five hundred baht.”
While Ratana carefully slipped the pastel-colored bills into a small purse, Suchin opened the door and stepped outside.
“Where do you go?” asked Ratana.
“Internet shop,” replied Suchin. “Goodnight.”
The little alley where Suchin walked was deathly still. The street vendors had all closed up shop and pushed their carts away long ago. As she walked along, she heard the scurrying sound of a swarm of rats that she had disturbed while they were chewing on the refuse in the gutter. They dashed into the darkness, then stopped, turned and raised their ravenous pink eyes toward her as if they were trying to think of a way to get something from her. A slight breeze blew in from the sea, but it only served to stir the stifling heat. The nighttime sky was starry, but the humidity in the air weighed down on any lost soul that might otherwise have taken a fancy for flight.
Suchin walked six long city blocks to the Internet shop. She had hoped to buy a used motor-scooter by now, but she never seemed able to save any money. Her biggest expense was the money she sent every month to her auntie for taking care of her son. She suspected – no, she knew she was giving double – triple – the amount that it cost to take care of a six-year-old boy, but her auntie insisted that she needed it for school uniforms, for food, and for all sorts of miscellaneous expenses. Besides, her auntie reasoned, Suchin was a showgirl now and was making big money. She could afford it, her auntie said, and it was her duty to help. In fact, it was her auntie who first suggested Suchin go to Pattaya to work as a dancer. Whenever Suchin hinted at her humiliation, her auntie would only say, “You should make money now while you are still young. Your good looks won’t last forever. Make the best of them while you can.” Although it was understood how Suchin earned her tips, it was never spoken of directly. Previously, her auntie had worked as a seamstress taking in piece work, earning in a month less than a quarter what Suchin was providing. With Suchin’s support, her auntie quit that work and now spent her days watching television.
It was three years since Suchin left her son at her auntie’s home in the village. That departure, that separation, was the most difficult task she had ever undertaken. He was the love of her soul, the blood of her heart. 4 She counted nineteen weeks and two days since she had last seen him. She talked with him on the phone, but child that he was, he did not understand. She was worried that he might not understand that she was really his mother and not just some lady who came to visit him two or three times a year. Whenever she spoke with him on the phone, she spent the next few hours in tears.
She remembered when she was pregnant. The father, Virote, had taken her to him when she had just turned seventeen. At first, he had a certain charm, and she was attracted to him. He was handsome and proud, a man of the world who seemed to know everything. He flattered her, he complimented her looks, and finally he declared that he could not survive without her. He brought her to his room, a dark, one-room cinderblock structure. During the first several weeks, he was romantic, gentle. He brought her larb and sticky rice after he had satisfied his passion. But soon, even though she gave him no cause, his own insecurity led to fits of jealousy. He began locking her in the room whenever he went out. And although he never struck her, his verbal abuse was ferocious and cruel. “You are nothing!” he would scream at her over and over again. “You think you are beautiful. You think you are special. But you are nothing! Nothing!”
She tried her best to soothe him, and often she succeeded. Despite his growing hatefulness, she wished for them to be happy, she wanted nothing other than for them to be a happy couple, and so she appeased him, apologized for imagined wrongs, and responded to his disparagement with mildness and submission. It never occurred to her to leave him. She had nowhere else to go. Over time his malevolence increased. She cost him money, he would say. He could not afford to feed her. There were days when all he gave her to eat were the morsels he left from his own plate. And there were days when he left her nothing.
When she learned she was pregnant, she was afraid to tell him, terrified at what his reaction would be. After several weeks had passed, however, her condition became obvious. He looked at her with disgust. He hissed at her, “Do you think this makes you special? Do you think this binds me to you? Look at you. You are nothing! I can leave you whenever I want. What will you do? Nothing. Because that is what you are – nothing!”
One day, when she was about eight months, he locked her in the room and went out. He rarely stayed out late of an evening, even when he had been drinking, but on this night, the hours ticked by and there was no sign of his return. Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, midnight. She was hungry, but had given up hope that he would bring dinner with him when he returned. She fell asleep until morning. Still he did not come home.
All day long she waited in vain. He had gone to work, she reasoned, and would return at his usual hour. But the late afternoon turned to evening, and the evening turned into night. A dog howled outside, and the realization struck like a blow – he had abandoned her. By now, she was dizzy with hunger. She tried picking at the lock and at the doorknob fixtures with a type of putty knife she found in the bathroom – the only kitchen utensils in the house were plastic. Her trembling fingers fumbled in the effort. With no other option, she decided to break the window. She pulled the thin mattress up off the floor, leaned it against the window, and pounded it with her fists. She heard the glass crack and then shatter. Laying the mattress aside, she poked the remaining dagger-like shards out from the pane so that she could squeeze through safely.
She made her way to the market in the village where the few coins she had bought her a mouthful of grilled sticky rice. She was more than twenty miles from the small town where her mother’s sister lived. She knew no one in this village and was apprehensive at the thought of asking for help. She returned to the cinder block dwelling from which she had recently escaped and resolved to walk to her auntie’s house the following morning.
She crawled back through the broken window and lay down on the mattress on the floor, her hunger appeased, and fell into a fitful sleep. Slivers of dreams slithered through her slumber like snakes in slimy waters. Toward dawn, she awoke to horrible cramping pains in her abdomen. At first, she didn’t realize what was happening. Then the awfulness of her situation made itself known.
She tried to raise herself to climb once again through the window to seek help, but the pain was too unbearable, and she was too weak. She called out for help, but her voice was feeble, and the cinderblock house, located on the outskirts of the village, was far from the nearest neighbor. No one heard her desperate cries.
She remained conscious throughout, pushing, panting, panting, pushing. The sweat dripped from her nose and rolled down her neck. The agony was indescribable, but mercifully it lasted only ninety minutes. The final push and it was over. She wiped the baby with the bed-sheet. She looked at his gray little face and wept. She kept thinking of how it should have been – like in the movies, with a nurse to help, presenting the beautiful baby to her waiting arms, her husband standing by smiling – not like this, not alone in a sweltering room, bloody, abandoned and discarded.
She peered again at the baby’s face. It looked like Virote. It repulsed her. She cut the umbilical cord as best she could with the putty knife and then fell asleep, exhausted and nauseated.
She slept until noon, until sun’s searing blaze had turned the concrete cinderblock house into a broiler. The baby whimpered in the terrible heat. She took him into the shower and washed him and herself. Then she changed from her bloodied clothes into a clean shirt and loose fitting pants, wrapped the baby in a towel, and climbed out the window to begin the long, hot walk to her auntie’s house.
Now at the Internet shop, she checked her e-mail. There were several messages in her in-box. One was from Melvin, a German whom she had met a week ago. He was in Cambodia now, he wrote, but would be back in another two weeks. “I’ll introduce you to a friend of mine,” he wrote. “The three of us can have a good time together. I bet you have never done that before.”
Shy typed, “Of course, my darling. I will do whatever you want. I am crazy for you!” And when she hit the “send” button, she muttered under her breath, “Pig!”
She scrolled down and found a message from Daniel. Her heart fluttered involuntarily whenever Daniel called or wrote to her. She remembered the first time she met him three years earlier. It was her very first night on the job at Whassup a-Go-Go, one of the many receptacles of strange and curious people that crouched in this odd corner of town. 5 Recorded music was blaring so loud that Suchin could barely hear herself think. Two dozen girls in bikinis danced lethargically on stage. Beer, hard drinks, money and bawdy laughter flowed freely. Secret, lascivious activities were taking place in dark corners. And alone in the midst of all this corruption, decadence, wooden grins, and ugly faces gone awry, Suchin stood near the door, smiling, trying to make believe she was in a gentle slumber and this was all a dream. 6
Apple, one of the older girls and the person who had helped Suchin get the job, pulled her over to the side. “Look there,” she said. “There is a man with a good heart. Come with me.”
“No, no!” cried Suchin, pulling away awkwardly. She knew a dozen words of English and had never spoken to a foreigner before. “I can’t! Really, I just can’t.”
“Come on!” Apple laughed, pulling her none too gently toward a man sitting by himself at a table in the back.
“Hello, darling.” Apple said, sitting down next to the man and pulling Suchin to sit down on the other side of him. “Are you having a good time?”
“Well, I am having a better time now,” the man answered, slipping his arm around Apple and acknowledging Suchin with a smile. He looked to be somewhere in his late forties. He was better dressed than most of the customers, wearing long pants, a dress shirt, and leather shoes. Most customers wore shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals or tennis shoes.
Apple and the man engaged in the usual small talk. After the introductions, Apple asked, “You buy me drink?”
“Sure,” replied the man.
“And my friend, too?”
“Of course.”
After another few minutes of banter, Apple told him that she had to go up on stage to dance. She pushed him closer to Suchin as she got up, and the man slipped his arm around Suchin with as much indifference as he had put his arm around Apple, changing girls as easily as changing shirts. Suchin was scared to death. She was suddenly conscious of being nowhere near as sophisticated as the other girls. She didn’t yet know how to wear bargirl make-up; she didn’t yet know the words to engage in flirtatious small talk; she didn’t yet know the effect she could have by simply breathing on a man’s neck or laying a hand on his thigh. Rather than try to converse in English, she snuggled up to him and laid her head against his shoulder, and waited for Apple to return.
After a few minutes of silence in which he stroked her hair and pressed her a little closer, he pulled her head back gently, looked in her eyes, and asked, “Are you okay?”
“I okay,” she answered, “but my English is a little.”
“Oh, I think your English is fine,” he said with a smile. He observed her again carefully, inquisitively, as if he were studying some unusual item in a curiosity shop. “My name is Daniel” he said. “I hope you don’t mind my saying, but you really are a very, very beautiful woman.”
She smiled, pleased that he seemed to genuinely like her. She tried to carry on a conversation, but her English was too poor even for simple dialogue. She was relieved when Apple returned.
Apple had already decided that Daniel should pay Suchin’s “bar fine” and take her out for a “short time.” Daniel was open to persuasion and quickly agreed. He gave six hundred baht to Apple to pay the bar fine. He also paid for the drinks. Suchin listened to the discussions between Apple and Daniel in a semi-conscious state of disorientation. She understood what was expected of her, but somehow as she listened to them negotiate, it was as if they were talking about something else altogether, some other transaction that did not involve her. Apple had to pull Suchin up from her seat to go back to the dressing room to change into her street clothes.
Once it struck home to her what was actually occurring, Suchin protested, “I can’t go with him. I can’t speak English.”
Apple laughed merrily as she helped Suchin pull on her shirt. “Don’t worry about that. He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
Suchin protested as she pulled on her microscopic jean cutoffs. “Oh, this is too much for me! I’m afraid! He’s a foreigner. I don’t know what to do…”
Apple pinched Suchin’s cheek and smiled, “You will know what to do. You will be okay. He seems like he has a good heart. If you have any trouble, just call me. Here is your phone. Here are your shoes. Hurry! You don’t want to keep him waiting.”
Suchin checked her make-up in the mirror. She was still in a state of bewilderment. She wondered how she would communicate with this foreign man. What was he expecting of her? She tried not to think of anything. She would go with him and then see what would happen. He did seem like a good man. He had a sweet smile and a gentle deportment. She told herself she would be okay.
Daniel greeted her with a smile when she returned. Suchin liked his smile and lost some of her nervousness. “Shall we go?” he asked her.
“As you like,” she answered shyly. He took her by the hand, and they walked out of the bar into Walking Street. The street had a carnival-like atmosphere. Hundreds of tourists surged backward and forward singly, in pairs, and in groups large and small, in and out of bars, discotheques, restaurants, and shops. Street vendors sold costume jewelry, gyro sandwiches, pineapple slices, toys, lottery tickets, and a fabulous assortment of colorful trinkets. Music blasted from several different directions so loudly that it was necessary to shout to carry on a conversation. It was like Bourbon Street at Mardis Gras, only more crowded, more intense, more bizarre, more sensual, and with an Asian flavor. Here and there, Suchin saw other young Thai women, like herself, walking hand in hand with older, Western men.
At one corner, Suchin saw several ferang men congregated together dressed in short-sleeve white shirts, black ties, and black pants. They were standing outside an open-air beer bar. One of the men was shouting something; the others seemed to be murmuring something in approval. The beer bar patrons totally ignored them. As the street was crowded at this juncture, Suchin and Daniel were pressed up against them. She tried to hear what the man was shouting.
“Sinners! Give up thy evil ways! Listen to the Lord! Hear his gospel! Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.7 The Lord will rain down burning sulfur on thee, as He did on Sodom and Gomorrah! For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 8
“What he talk?” Suchin asked.
“Oh, he’s with some religious group,” Daniel answered with a dismissive gesture, pushing her forward through the crowd. “The Mormons or the Mennonites or something like that. They believe there is a clear-cut line between good and evil, and they think they know where it is.”
“Nobody hear him,” Suchin said. She had to fairly shout above the din in the street to be heard.
“It doesn’t matter to them,” said Daniel. “They’re not trying to save anyone here. They’re only here to feed their own egos – and their arrogance.”
“What? I not understand. My English is a little.”
“Don’t worry about it,” replied Daniel, pushing her past them. “They’re… inconsequential.”
After walking a half a block further, the crowd thinned out somewhat, and they could hear each other talk. “Where shall we go?” asked Daniel.
“Anywhere!” replied Suchin enthusiastically, thinking they might go to a discotheque or a movie theater.
“No. I mean what hotel do you use for short time?”
“I don’t know,” said Suchin. “This first time for me.”
Daniel looked at her incredulously with a shrug that indicated a measure of impatience. “Well, I know a place then,” he said, and pulled her toward Soi Eleven.
Not twenty yards into the alley on the right side was a dimly lit stairway. Over the doorway at the top of the stairs, a blue neon sign read “Grand Hotel.” Daniel paid for a room for one hour. He took the key from the receptionist and led Suchin up another flight of stairs. Suchin followed passively, still somewhat dazed and disoriented.
Daniel opened the door and turned on the light switch. A king-size bed occupied nearly all the available space. There was barely room enough to walk across to the small, adjoining bathroom located on the other side of the room.
Daniel turned to Suchin and asked “Is the room okay?”
Suchin tried to speak but could not find her voice. She nodded her head as she gulped for air.
Daniel unbuttoned his shirt. Suchin watched, her eyes growing wider as he pulled off his shirt and tossed it carelessly on the bed. Without thinking, but clutching at any idea that might delay the proceedings, Suchin instinctively opened the small bag she carried with her and pulled out a photograph of her son.
“You like to see this?” she asked. She heard her own voice speaking, but did not recognize it. She saw herself holding out the photograph to the shirtless man as if she were watching the scene from the other side of the room. That person – the one watching from the other side of the room – laughed at her ridiculousness.
“What’s that?” said Daniel, taking a step toward her to look at the photo.
“This my son. Him name Kris,” replied Suchin. “Him three years old.”
Daniel looked at the picture and back at Suchin with a quizzical look on his face. He took the photograph and feigned interest. “He’s a very handsome boy,” he said. “He looks like you.” He handed the photograph back to her. As she placed it back in her bag, she fumbled and dropped the bag. Daniel picked it up for her and, as he returned it to her, he noticed her hands. “Why, you’re trembling!” he exclaimed.
Suchin’s voice cracked and a tear ran down her cheek. “I sorry,” she said. “You my first customer. I afraid a little. I sorry,” she repeated
“This is really your first time?” Daniel asked, taken aback.
“Yes,” she said simply.
Daniel regarded her with some surprise. She looked more beautiful than ever in the downward droop of her eyelash, the tremulous curve of her lips, and in all the soft, voluptuousness of her. 9 When she turned those eyelashes up toward him with tears clinging to them and with a frightened, vulnerable expression, Daniel’s entire demeanor changed. He put his shirt back on. “Come,” he said. He took her hand and led her out of the room.
They drifted back down Walking Street. Daniel took her to one of the several seafood restaurants on the ocean side of the street. The large dining room was built out upon stilts over the sea shining in the moonlight. The restaurant, like everything else on Walking Street, was crowded.
Four Westerners, two men and two women, with American accents, sat at the table behind Suchin. They had just paid their bill and were picking up their belongings to leave when Suchin heard one of the women say, “Well, now that I’ve been down here to see all this first hand, I must say, I’m glad we approved the grant to the Global Justice Foundation. But I know you still don’t agree with me, Robert.”
“I agree we need to help fight trafficking,” said the man addressed as Robert, “but the GJF… I’ve heard too many stories about them. They rescue girls, but then they literally hold them hostage against their will, brainwashing them, Christianizing them, preaching morals to them…”
“If they are trafficking victims,” chimed in the second woman, older, with a puffy face and wearing a heavy cotton shawl over her shoulders despite the tropical heat, “then they should be grateful for being rescued. If they are not victims, if they are just common prostitutes, then a few lessons in morality won’t hurt them. This town is perfectly dreadful. I’ve been shocked and disgusted by what I’ve seen here. What do you think, Martin? You’ve been quiet all night.”
“I don’t understand any of you,” said Martin, who had already risen from his seat and stood just inches away from Suchin. “I don’t understand why these girls have to be labeled as either victims or whores. Why can’t they just be human beings who, for whatever reason – and likely for a combination of complex economic, social, cultural and personal reasons – have ended up working in the bars here?”
“Martin the philosopher!” cried the second woman in exasperation.
“I’ll tell you why,” said Robert to Martin out of earshot of their two female colleagues. “Because if we thought of them as human beings capable of making their own decisions, then we wouldn’t be able to congratulate ourselves for rescuing them.”
As the four Westerners departed, Suchin felt her cheeks blush. She had been unable to understand all of their conversation, but she had understood enough. Suchin had experienced much in her young life, but this was the first time she had felt shame.
“Don’t worry about them,” said Daniel nonchalantly, noticing Suchin’s discomfort. “They’re worse than those religious preachers down the street. The foreigners who come here come from a different world. They don’t understand this place. They’re terrible.”
“What about you, Daniel?” Suchin asked quietly. “You a foreigner, too.”
“Me? Bloody hell!” laughed Daniel. “I’m the worst of the lot! Now just forget about all that. Let’s order some dinner.”
Suchin smiled. She liked Daniel’s confidence and easy manner. He made her feel comfortable. He called over a waitress and ordered steamed crabs, pan-fried ocean perch, raw shrimps in a spicy garlic sauce, and Pad Thai noodles. As they waited, Suchin noticed the full moon cast its ancient, silvery light across the ocean in the distance and several small craft crisscrossing the waters in the nearer distance. She looked into Daniel’s face. He returned her gaze with a gentle expression. “You okay?” he asked.
“I okay,” she replied. “I not know how to say…” She looked around the busy dining room and then out to the sea. “This… This very nice!”
“I’m glad you like it,” he said in even gentler tones. Then he reached across the table and took her hand in his. “I’d like to make this a special night for you.”
The waiter brought the seafood and the noodles. Both Suchin and Daniel attacked the meal with relish. Suchin cast her eyes shyly downward whenever she saw Daniel looking at her and especially when he remarked – as he did more than once, but in a good-natured, teasing way – on her appetite. But when he wasn’t looking, she turned her eyes on him. He was an older man – there was no mistake about that – and he had a weathered handsomeness about him, like a sailor returned from years at sea. He seemed completely at ease, self-assured, even exultant with her. She realized that he had brought her to the restaurant as an act of compassion after her embarrassment at the hotel. She was immensely relieved and grateful to him. He did have, as Apple had noted, “a good heart.”
Because of her limited language abilities, they did not progress much beyond the most basic conversation during the meal. Suchin was pleased at the patience Daniel showed with her limited capacity for communication. She learned that he worked and lived in Hong Kong. He came to Thailand four or five times a year on business. About halfway through dinner, he noticed her examining at the gold band on his finger. Yes, he told her, he was married. His wife and a teen-age son and daughter lived with him in Hong Kong. He said it so matter-of-factly, with no embarrassment or hesitation, that Suchin asked nothing more about it.
After dinner, Suchin found herself walking hand-in-hand with Daniel toward the far end of Walking Street. The blaring music and harsh noises faded away as they walked across a wide, largely deserted parking lot. Several sailboats and other pleasure craft were moored for the night at a lonely jetty that emerged from the distal end of a small marina on the other side of the asphalt lot. From here, Daniel walked her onto a ribbon of sand that trailed away from the streetlights and into the moonlight. She followed Daniel as he climbed up a moderate embankment. No other living beings were in sight on this deserted patch of seashore, but it never occurred to Suchin to be nervous or afraid. Finally, Daniel found a comfortable perch on a log that lay half buried in sand on a crag that overlooked the dark waters and the blinking lights of the fishing boats in the distance.
Suchin sat next to him and laid her head against his shoulder. He had his arm around her, stroking her neck and her hair. A warm breeze blew in from the sea, the surf rose and fell like sighs, and occasional sprays of salt mist moistened their cheeks. Suchin had never felt so content or so tranquil. They listened to the ocean whisper its secrets to them in the dark, and between them emerged an unspoken understanding.
When the moon had made its descent to the nadir of its celestial sphere, Daniel pulled her so that he could look into her eyes and told her it was time to go. Her eyelashes drooped and she held onto him all the more tightly. He kissed those lashes and felt the dampness on them.
The din and tumult of Walking Street had subsided only slightly. Before handing the motorcycle taxi driver twenty baht to take her home, Daniel asked Suchin for permission to come back to Whassup a-Go-Go the following night to see her. Suchin felt a deep warmth of feeling as she told him he didn’t need her permission, but she would be very happy to see him again.
She looked back, but Daniel had already disappeared in the crowd. Then the thought struck her that he might be directing his steps toward another bar where he would meet another girl. She felt a flash of embarrassment at how she had behaved at the hotel. The realization that she might never see Daniel again chilled her. How could she know then how many other men would walk away from her over the next few years, and that the pang she suddenly felt now would assail her so often that it would become an unceasing ache in her heart?
All the next evening, she waited for Daniel at the bar. Her eyes wandered to the door all night long. She hoped he would not come in while it was her turn to dance on the stage. Another girl would sit next to him then, and the thought filled her with jealousy. She had told Apple what had occurred the night before. Apple was somewhat taken aback to hear how gently Daniel had treated Suchin, but she was not surprised when he did not show up the next evening. “He won’t come back,” she said. “You should have given him what he wanted.” Still, Suchin watched the door, and every time that she saw someone enter she thought for a split second that it was him, but she was disappointed every time. As the night wore on, she watched the door a little less eagerly, and a little more sorry.
But around midnight, he walked in. Suchin hesitated. Daniel took a seat near to the stage. He glanced around and immediately saw her watching from across the room. A cheerful smile of recognition flashed across his face. He waved for her to sit down next to him. She was surprised at her own emotions. She was drawn to him and was excited – joyful – that he had come back to see her.
That night, like the previous evening, Daniel took Suchin out for a seafood meal. Afterward, they sat at the table for a long while, he patiently making efforts to converse with her. He said nothing about going to a short-time hotel, and Suchin felt both relieved and disappointed at this omission. He said he was returning to Hong Kong the following morning, but would be back in Thailand in about three months. They exchanged phone numbers, and he promised to stay in touch with her.
At the Internet shop, Suchin smiled as she recalled her relative innocence and naïveté in those early days. She had grown much wiser in the past three years, but she had not hardened like so many of the other girls. She maintained a sweetness and vulnerability that set her apart from them.
Over the next three years, Daniel came to visit her in Pattaya every time he traveled to Thailand. Sometimes he stayed for two or three days; sometimes he stayed a full week. They never went to another short-time hotel. When he came to Pattaya, he stayed at her apartment. She had been warned many times by Apple and others to never bring a customer home, but in Suchin’s mind Daniel was not a customer. From that first encounter, and over the succeeding months and years, she felt they had transcended the bounds of physical passion and reached such a sublime state of devotion that when she cried, the tears ran down his cheeks, and when she closed her eyes, he saw her dreams. 10 And yet, despite that, Daniel’s marriage preyed constantly on her mind. It was not that she felt guilty about having an affair with a married man, but rather that she knew they could never completely belong to each other. She was excited and happy when Daniel showed up at her doorstep, but she hated to see him packing his bags for the flight back to Hong Kong and his family.
She had met many other men at Whassup a-Go-Go in the meantime, and several times she thought she had finally met her knight in shining armor. But every one of them had disappointed her, and many of them had broken her heart. Throughout it all, Daniel had remained a constant.
She opened his e-mail. He often wrote to her in language akin to poetry, and Suchin had difficulty understanding him. She kept a small English-Thai dictionary in her bag, and spent long minutes trying to decipher his messages. Tonight she was tired. She skimmed his message for passages she could easily understand. “My sweetheart, after all this time, I am still amazed how you and I found each other down here in the grass… 11 You always tell me how complicated you are, and yes, you have led a complicated and difficult life. But the longer I know you, the more I come to realize that you are not complicated at all. All you want is to love and to be beloved. Then happy I.12 For all I want is to understand you better and to love you more.”
Suchin tried unsuccessfully to suppress a sob. No one knew her, no one understood her, so well as Daniel. He was right. In all her life, that was all she wanted – to love and to be loved. Only that. Why should that be so hard?
Suchin hit the “reply” button and started to compose a long response. Her spoken English had improved dramatically in the past three years, and she kept a diary in English as a way to practice writing, but her words got all jumbled up when she tried to express her feelings in composition. She typed, “Thank you, sweetheart. You are everything to me, but I am ashamed that I have nothing for you to bring, only what I am, which worth is nothing.” 13 After a few moments, she thought better and deleted those sentences and typed simply, “Thank you, sweetheart. You always make me feel good.” And then she hit the “send” button.
She departed the Internet shop. The streets now were completely empty. It was that unnatural time of night when criminals and victims had long since retired, and when farmers and fishermen had yet to feel the first flutterings of wakefulness. In the quiet, silent half-light, the out-of-tune call of a nightjar could be heard even in this urban setting. 14 A tear streamed down her cheek as she walked toward her studio apartment. At one time, and even now, she sometimes thought that maybe it was Daniel – maybe it was Daniel who was her knight in shining armor. But no, that could never be. He was married and devoted to his children. Despite his love for her, she knew he would never desert his family. Nor would she want him to do that. No, Daniel could never be her knight in shining armor.
To be continued...