“It could work,” I agree with some reluctance.
“Of course it will work. The trouble is there’s no way to patent it. As soon as the competition sees what we’re up to there’ll be a thousand similar bars springing up all over the city. We’ve got to move quickly, I’m not the only financial brain in the business.”
I watch while two young women try to walk past us carrying about ten plastic bags each, crammed with cheap clothing. There’s no room on the pavement and they walk around a taxi caught in the jam. This is where most of the sex traders buy their clothes and we have said hello to a lot of old friends today. My mother’s purchases are under the table. We are in Pratunam because a couple hundred yards away lies a vast market where T-shirts, shorts, skirts, dresses, trousers, blouses indistinguishable from the products of the ateliers of Calvin Klein, Yves Saint Laurent, Armani, Zegna et al. can be purchased for as little as three dollars each. Nong has bought her season’s wardrobe, which I noticed is a little more austere than usual, befitting a matriarch of industry. I call to the waitress to pay the bill, but my mother restrains me. “This is on me, darling, I want to thank you for signing those plans.”
I say okay, the plans did amount to a fair amount of work because she and the Colonel kept changing them. Of course there had to be a TV in every cubicle and in the end they decided to include a full Thai massage service, so each five-by-eight room has to be equipped with a small Jacuzzi in the corner with all the plumbing that goes with it. I foresee disaster with ninety-year-old scarecrows slithering around in the soap suds and expiring during the full-body massage. At that age surely a man might be knocked out cold in a skirmish with a mammary gland? But I have to assume the Colonel knows what he’s doing even if Nong has been carried away by her brief congress with the Wall Street Journal. I pass over the slim briefcase in which I’ve been carrying the plans and watch while she opens it. She takes out the plans and rifles through them with growing consternation.
“You forgot to sign them, darling.”
“No I didn’t.”
“But you promised.”
“I know.”
“So what’s stopping you? Here, use my pen.”
“No.”
“Sonchai?”
“I’m not having anything to do with this… Until you tell me.”
It’s one of those mother-and-son things. We have too much on each other not to be aware of the significance of this eye lock. I do not waver or blink. Finally she drops her gaze. “Okay, I’ll tell you. Just sign the plans.”
“Tell me first. I don’t trust you.”
“Brat.” Her hand is shaking as she reaches for yet another Marlboro and lights it.
“Why is it so difficult? If you don’t know who he was, if you were banging three a night that month, just say so, it’s not as if I don’t know what you did for a living.”
“Of course if I didn’t know I would have told you long ago,” she snaps, and inhales rapidly. “It’s not as simple as that.”
“How can it be complicated? For god’s sake, Mother.”
I might be hallucinating, but it does seem to me that some tiny tears have appeared at the corners of my mother’s eyes. “Very well, darling. But you have to promise to forgive me. Promise in advance.”
I experience profound suspicion but promise anyway.
“Sonchai, did you ever wonder why I made such efforts for you to learn perfect English? Did you even notice that almost every one of those trips we went on were with someone who spoke it perfectly, even Fritz and Truffaut?”
“Of course I noticed. If I didn’t notice before I would have noticed with that Harrods man. What else did he have to offer?” An image of a skinny Englishman with a huge nose through which he emitted most of his vowels and an even bigger mother problem, who derived strange pretensions from his apartment’s proximity to Harrods in London-an appalling two weeks when Nong had a screaming argument with his mother, who lived in the flat upstairs, and I went through a brief shoplifting phase in the great store-passes through both our minds. “I thought you were just doing the best for my future.”
“Well, I was, but it was more than that. I was full of guilt about… I was trying to make it up to you… He loved me, you see.” My mother bursts into tears. “I’m sorry, I’m so very very sorry, darling”-dabbing her eyes with a tissue from her handbag-“it was all those fire engines. And the food, it was so bland, they had no idea how to cook, it was totally tasteless.”
Thank Buddha I’m a detective and able to make sense of these fragile clues. Suddenly everything falls into place. A past I never had and a future I never will have flash before my eyes. My heart rate has doubled and for the first time in my life I feel like hitting her. Instead I reach for her cigarettes, take one, light it with shaking hand and order more beer. I drink in great gulps straight from the bottle. “An American?”
“Yes.”
“A serviceman?”
“Yes. Very brave. He had lots of medals. He was an officer. He had a terrible war, he was in a mess psychologically for quite a while.”
Inhaling deeply on the cigarette: “He took you to the States? He wanted to marry you?” A nod. “New York?”
“Manhattan. The apartment was near a fire station. There were sirens every five minutes. I thought the whole city was on fire.”
“And the food was awful?”
“Have mercy, darling. I was eighteen years old for god’s sake, I’d never been outside Thailand and I hardly spoke a word of English. I was terrified and I wanted my mother. I wasn’t the hard-ass I became. I grew up after I had you.” An exhalation. “They couldn’t even cook rice properly. His parents hated me. I was brown with slit eyes, and no matter what he said they knew how we had met, what I did for a living.”
“But he adored you?” A nod. “He knew you were pregnant?”
“He was crazy about you even before you existed. I had to run away. He came back to Thailand looking for me, but I hid up in the country. I was in a state of panic after New York. I’m sorry. I talked about it with the abbot-I went up to the monastery. You never knew that I’d been up there, did you? He asked me if my American lover needed me only while he overcame his shell shock. That was a good question and I didn’t know the answer, so I vowed to the Buddha that if you grew up strong and healthy and I had the luck, I would make sure you learned perfect English.”
“You deprived me of a crack at the presidency of the United States because you didn’t like the food? That’s very Thai.”
“You got a crack at nirvana instead. What kind of Buddhist would you have been if I’d stayed in America?”
I choose to ignore this brilliant riposte. “I could have been an astronaut.”
“No you couldn’t, you can’t stand heights.”
“What did he do, what was his profession, was he a drafted man?”
“Drafted. He was going to be a lawyer.”
“What? American lawyers are all millionaires. I could have been a senator at least.”
My mother has dried her eyes. She is a master of abrupt recovery. “Children of American lawyers all die of drug overdoses at an early age. Look what I saved you from. Anyway, if you’ll only sign those damned plans we’ll make a million and you can go and live there if you like. See how long you can stand to be away from Thailand.”
I have smoked the whole cigarette in less than a minute, causing me to feel nausea. My heart rate is calming, though, and I’m beginning to see things with a little more focus. “What was his name?”
“Mike.”
“Mike what?”
“What difference does it make? Smith. There, now you know, has it changed anything?”
I do not believe for one moment that his name was Mike Smith, but I let it pass. I surprise her by giving her a big smile and patting her hand, which seems to relax her. She drinks a glass of beer in a couple of gulps, lights another Marlboro and sits back in her chair.
“Thank you for taking it so well, darling. For thirty-two years I’ve lived in fear of this moment. Did I do the right thing or not? Don’t you think I’ve been tortured by that very question? I wanted to tell you, but all the family advised me not to-what you didn’t know you couldn’t blame me for-that’s very Thai, isn’t it? Sometimes I think I must have been insane to leave America. Even if he’d divorced me after a couple of years, I probably would have got a work permit, the right to stay. But Thailand was a different place then, we were all so unworldly, so fearful of strange lands. We were prudes, too. Does that surprise you? A girl wouldn’t think of selling her body unless she was desperate. My father was sick with his heart problems, my mother was hit by a car when she was riding her bike, my grandmother had to be kept-she was blind by that time-and my two brothers were in their early teens. I had a right and a duty to work in the bars. These days girls will go on the game just to save enough to put a deposit on an apartment, they sell themselves for any old excuse, because they love sex and money, though being Thai they never admit it and like to pretend they hate the work. Would you believe I’m shocked at what the trade has come to? But what can one do? This is the real world.”