There were people coming at me from every side, more people than I can describe, from every corner of the world. Large Arab men in their smocks and gowns, teams of Japanese businessmen in suits, men who looked like they’d been left over from the Vietnam War and earringed couples who could have been from anywhere—all of them thronging down this lane of lights and looking into the entrances, into red-lit magic caves, all smoke and noise, to see if they could spot a Chinese princess. There’s one area—you wouldn’t believe it (or maybe you would; I suppose the place has become quite a legend now)—where they have whole Arabian palaces on a dark lane, furnished with great chandeliered rooms full of divans and men in gallabeahs smoking hubblebubbles, while girls of every shape and size move among them, from one dream chamber to the next, looking for a touch of magic, a month’s salary in a night’s adventure.
Anyway, you know all about Bangkok already. And this isn’t the kind of thing one would ordinarily be telling a sister. But since Sarah went away—well, you know how it is. Nobody will listen to me, or if they do, they listen in a way that says they’re only being kind or doing their charity work for the day. You’re the only one who understands. I tell myself that talking to you is like talking to a better version of myself.
So there I was in the Arabian Nights. It sounds mad, I know, but I felt as if I’d fallen into some other kind of world that was waiting beside me the way a shadow might, like those stories Nana used to read us in the nursery. Remember Alice in her rabbit hole, ending up on the underside of the world? Or the little girl who went to sleep and woke up in another place? I suppose it’s what people get when they pop those pills you told me about in the disco, or shoot themselves full of the
Plus, of course, I was jet-lagged. Walking and walking through the streets after dark and looking for lunch at 3:00 a.m. Everything took on a different aspect, as if—how can I put it?—well, as if I weren’t seeing the lights, really, only their reflections in a puddle. Everything blurred and shimmery and reflecting. I’d look at my face in the shop windows, and I wouldn’t know who it was looking back at me. As if I’d left my self—my regular daily self—in England and now some kind of outline or facsimile was playing me, off the ground and weightless, in a trance.
The noise from the bars, the boys coming up and trying to pull me into their caves. “Here, sir, very good,” “Come here, no problem, only looking.” I’d turn a corner and end up in a little lane that opened up onto the river, the shining golden pinnacle of a stupa at the other end. And then I’d stumble back, and there were all these signs—Bad Boy, Helicopter, The Alternative—and you could imagine you were in the mind of a magician. Aladdin’s cave, I thought.
So anyway, I walked and walked, all night, it seemed, and at one point I went into this little alleyway—lights, girls in bikinis, people selling elixirs of some kind in bottles—and I stopped off in a trattoria (they have everything here) for lunch. Outside, on the street, there were flocks of girls rather vamping it up: with long hair that swung below their shoulders, long slim legs, high heels, leopard-skin shorts, the lot.
They were cavorting up and down the street, having fun, really, occasionally stepping into a pool hall, red-lit, or one of the open-air bars that look out onto the street; once, one of them came and stood looking at me where I sat, eating on the terrace. Looking at me very directly, half-pout and halfcaress.
“Where you come from, mister? What you need?”
“Nothing. I’m just passing the time, really.” I sounded foolish, I knew, but I didn’t know how to sound here.
“No want la-dee?” The way she said it was itself a sort of insinuation.
“No, thank you. I’m here on business.”
“Same-same,” she said, “business,” and let out a husky laugh. “Business, pleasure, same-same. You show me good heart, I show you good time.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” she said, as if we’d shared an illicit joke.
“You no go with ladee?” said the waiter, as the woman walked away.
“No go,” I said, and then wondered why exactly I was speaking like one of them.
I looked around me, then, and realized I’d never seen so many beautiful women in one place before; then I looked closer and realized why they were so beautiful. They weren’t real. They were real people, of course, just not real girls. And yet not not-real either. Some of them, I thought, just made themselves up as girls. But some were no doubt on the way to becoming real women, in every way. And some of them had completed the transformation and now, reborn, were more girlish than any girl could be. All the excitement of them came from this sense of ambiguity, of mystery, I suppose. I felt almost seasick watching them.
