A Woman of Bangkok by Jack Reynolds

Author:Jack Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Urban Life, Contemporary Women, Family & Relationships, Travel, Asia, Fiction, Romance, Southeast, Coming of Age, Family Relationships, General, Cultural Heritage
ISBN: 9789814358620
Publisher: Monsoon Books
Published: 1968-08-12T04:00:00+00:00

Luck is like money—to him who already has plenty, more is given. The Lord Buddha dispenses it, meting out much to those whom he thinks merit it, withholding it from those who by their acts displease him. But the trouble is that a mere woman cannot understand the workings of the divine mind. She herself for instance was a good woman, and the Buddha must know that; she never did anything wrong for the sake of doing it, but only to make money or because some evil spirit had temporarily taken control of her. Yet all her life her luck had been bad, as if the Buddha disliked her.

Was there ever going to be a change in her fate? Most of the time she faced the future unflinchingly, knowing it would be grim, and increasingly grim. But once in a while she liked to amuse herself with happier dreams. And it occurred to her now that she hadn’t been to a fortune-teller for weeks …

She signalled for a samlor, and five hurled themselves at her. She sized them up in her usual lightning style, selecting the best combination of man and vehicle just as at the Bolero she would select the best combination of man and money. The vehicle she got was sound enough though short on chromium and coloured lights. The man was rather old but he looked the hard-pedalling type and fairly tidy.

She asked the price and gasped at it and suggested an amendment and of course the man knew the amendment was correct and accepted it at once without rancour. She got in and arranged her legs to one side as if she’d got skirts on and they set off.

It was quite a long way to the fortune-teller’s she’d chosen. The samlor-boy was fast, daringly dodging in and out of danger, and continuously ringing his bell, as if trying to draw attention to himself with this dazzling cargo behind him. She assisted all she could with the navigation but he took no notice of anything she said. She also kept a bright eye on the shops, pedestrians, cars, and passengers in other samlors, for she was eternally vigilant, eternally on the hunt; you never knew when a chance to do yourself a bit of good would present itself.

Yet all the time she couldn’t keep the memory of that thin bawling baby from troubling her. And all the time it reminded her of another little golden-brown baby she had loved.

Mam would have been twelve or thirteen by now. That is the age when a mother really has to take her daughter in hand. Up till now she would have been a child, sexless, hardly distinguishable from a boy, always in mischief, like Udom, unconscious of herself, climbing trees to get her own green mangoes and blossoms and cicadas, never thinking of inducing the boys to fetch them for her. But at thirteen a girl starts to look at herself in the glass. By then she has learned all the useful stuff that a schoolteacher can impart, how to read and write and add up baht and satang.

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