The Catherine Lim Collection (55 page)

In the Talmud and the Kabbalah are accounts of
Lilith, the first wife of Adam. She had been made of the dust of the earth, as
Adam had been made, and he was not pleased. He commanded her to lie beneath
him, as a sign that she was inferior to him. But they said she refused to lie
beneath him, insisting that the only love she would have was love with mutual
respect. Angered by her pride, they began to deride her, and spread stories
about her, insisting that she was the demon of the night, encouraging men to
spill their sperm. She, the woman with strength, was transformed into a
temptress of men.

(From The Woman’s Book Of Superlatives)

He was 47
years old,
and he was about to take his first
prostitute: she was coming up to his room, as arranged, in half an hour.

The thought amused him and brought on a slow
ruminative smile. The amusement was not in the contemplation of an absurdly
long postponement of a necessary rite of passage (“What? Never had one in your
life? What sort of man are you?” Benny had said), or of the much-vaunted
insecurity of the middle years, or even of the need of a virtuous man to take a
break from virtue. Indeed, Andrew Chin was not sure why he was feeling so
amused. Perhaps the word did not sufficiently describe the whole complex of pleasurable
thoughts and sensations he was experiencing as he sat on the bed in the hotel
room. Perhaps it was no more than the schoolboy’s sense of self-gratification
at a first prank about to be carried out.

“Bye! Be good!” his wife had said at the
airport. The parting advice was more in the nature of the teasing raillery
between husband and wife completely at ease with each other, than of any
serious admonition to a departing spouse.

“Bye,” he had said cheerfully, adding, “I
should not be good in a place like Bangkok, no man’s supposed to be good in
Bangkok,” echoing the irrepressible Benny who visited the city at least once a
month and made no secret of it. His wife, laughing good-naturedly, kissed him
and he was off.

And now the teasing words were about to
become fact, for he was about to have his first prostitute. It had not been
intended this way. He had planned, in the one day left after completing the
business for his company, to explore the city’s famed temples, markets and
shops and pick up the obligatory Thai silk for his wife, gifts for his
daughters and souvenirs for his secretary and the other girls at the office.
The brochures at the hotel hinted of more exotic enjoyment, but these were not
part of his world (“What!” Benny would have expostulated. “Go to Bangkok and
not see these? What sort of tourist are you? Why, when I was there the last
time, I went to the – Go, man. You won’t believe until you see with your own
eyes. My God! You know what the dancing girls do? They have these bottle caps,
see – It’s incredible, man – ”, finishing with his famous guffaw). So it was to
be innocuous temples, markets and shops. But entering his room after lunch, he
noticed a slip of pink paper under the door. He picked it up and read with
increasing amusement: ‘Virgin Prostitutes. Genuine. No Fake. With Good Proof in
Certificate of Virgin, has signature of 2 doctor. If not satisfy, can refund.’

Andrew put the pink slip into his pocket,
intending to take it home to show his wife who was an English Language teacher.
But the little advertisement had a curious power which began to work on him, so
that as he sat on his bed, he began to think strange thoughts which translated
into strange sensations.

When he was a little boy of eight and
staying with his grandparents, he hid himself one day behind the curtains when
he heard his grandfather come in from the rain and speaking to a bondmaid who
happened to be the only one in the house then, apart from himself. He knew for
a certainty that his grandfather had never intended to go out at all, and would
be back as soon as the others were out of the house. He also knew that his
grandfather’s curt order to the maid to take up a cup of hot tea to him in his
room was no routine instruction.

Something was about to happen, and as soon
as he heard the door softly closing after them, he darted out from behind the
curtains, climbed the stairs noiselessly, then lay flat on his stomach outside
the locked room to peep up through the convenient slit between door and floor.
He watched, fascinated, and was later to connect the intense pleasure,
approaching ecstasy, that he had seen oil his grandfather’s face, with the
appropriation of virginity. A physiological intricacy beyond his little mind to
grasp, he nevertheless understood its tremendous value through listening in on
the many adult conversations in that large household of women. The knowledge,
with the myriad trivia of childhood, had faded away as he grew up, but now in
the tantalising pronouncements of the pink paper slipped under his door in the
Bangkok hotel, it came back with vividness and power and insinuated itself into
his very being, climaxing always with the recollection of pure ecstasy on his
grandfather’s face.

Andrew paced the room with the pink paper in
his hand, his face mobile with a hundred flitting expressions. He was
interested, awed, fascinated, alarmed at his own daring, and so curious about
an experience at once commonplace and unique that no less than direct personal
experience, he decided, could satisfy that curiosity. The realisation that he
was 47 years old and with perhaps but a short time left for initiation into
that experience, contributed to the decision. Having made up his mind, he was
aware of a new lightness of being and of his whole body being suffused with a
tingling glow of most delicious anticipation. He looked at the telephone number
on the pink paper and realised that the simple act of his picking up the phone
would be his induction into a totally new world. He wondered what he should say
and how he should react if the pink paper people got crude or demanding, and as
if to spare him all the hassle, a polite knock was heard on the door and a very
polite-looking young man appeared and asked if he could be of any help.

So the girl was to come in precisely half an
hour. And she was to spend the night with him.

Like the prankish schoolboy who longs for an
audience, Andrew wondered, “What would Benny say?” He knew what Benny would
say: The coarse, florid face with the raucous laugh loomed before his eyes, and
made him shake his head and smile to himself. What would his wife say? The
thought was totally irrelevant to and therefore had no place in this unique,
tantalising, once-in-a-life-time, just-for-the-experience adventure, which of
course he had no intention of repeating.

There came a very timid knock, and the girl
was admitted.

She was very young-looking, was probably no
more than 16. She stood before him uncertainly, then took out a roll of paper
from her pocket to give to him; it was the Virginity Certificate, attesting to
her pristine state, signed by two doctors, one signature beside the other, in a
corner of the gold-bordered scroll.

Andrew looked at her with increasing
curiosity, then pleasure. A grotesquely made-up harridan with jangling
earrings, low-cut skin-tight dress and stiletto heels and working the chewing
gum endlessly in her cheeks (a portrait he derived exclusively from American
TV) would have repulsed him. This girl who stood before him was young and
pretty and innocent-looking, with a round face, large round eyes and a small
mouth. Her abundance of dark curly hair was swept back and kept in place by a
yellow head-band from under which a cluster of small tendrils escaped to frame
her face in the most appealing way. She was wearing a frilly yellow dress which
was one or two sizes too large, and high heels too high, so that she tottered a
little as she walked up to him to show him the virginity certificate. He
suddenly had a fleeting vision of her in another setting, her native village,
divested of make-up, frilly dress and high heels, wearing the native sarong and
walking barefoot with a water-pot on her head, a pink frangipani in her hair.

He gestured to her to sit down and she sat
in the chair opposite him, balancing on the edge, in continuing deferential
timidity. He began to speak to her slowly and gently, in English, asking simple
questions. In response, she rattled off a string of rehearsed sentences in
English, the only intelligible ones being “My name Porntip” and “I am virgin”,
the second followed by what sounded like a statement of a virgin’s fee. They
smiled continuously at each other and now and then laughed with shy amiability.

The sense of exhilaration on the approaching
consummation of the ultimate frolic could not be resisted any longer and
shedding whatever remaining tentativeness, Andrew got up, walked to Porntip and
led her decisively to the bed. This was the cue, clearly, for her to initiate
the process of disrobing: she pulled down the back zipper of her dress, stepped
out of it and out of her high heels, in one movement of practised efficiency
and ease. Then with the same sense of purpose, she lay down on the bed in her
black lace bra and panties, watching him closely for the second cue as to who
should be the one to effect the last stage of the disrobing, for a more
enjoyable preliminary. He watched with mounting excitement and interest, all
the while marvelling at the novelty of the experience. He was 47 and about to
take his first prostitute, and so far everything had been exactly as he would
have wished.

The girl looked at him, then decided to take
the initiative, unclasping her bra, pulling down her panties and coming close
to him in the full warmth of her naked beauties. He immediately pulled her down
with a grunt of intense desire, rivalling even his grandfather’s.

At the moment of the breaking, she gave the
inevitable sharp cry, then when he had rolled off her and was quietly
contemplating her from his easeful position on a mound of pillows, his arms
behind his head, she pulled up from somewhere under her body the proof of the
stained white cloth, and showed it to him, smiling. The crude contrivance, not
just of the cloth, but of the practised sharp cry of pain, and of the forced
orgiastic contortions of face and limbs irritated him. The irritation was not
directed at the girl but at the whole set-up of parasites intent upon living
off her, from the manager of the hotel to the young polite-looking pimp who had
come to his door, to her parents who had probably already sold her, body and
soul, to the hotel. The girl’s total naturalness and simplicity left her
untouched in any way by the sordid business so that whatever she did from
obedience, no matter how crude, only enhanced her appeal.

He wanted to talk to her, to find out more
about her, but her ability in the language had ended with the rattled off
string of sentences and now, having been previously instructed to be with the
man throughout the night, she settled compliantly by his side and watched for
his every wish. His last thought, before he finally fell asleep, with the girl
nestling against him, was of a very satisfactory first adventure and of the
possibility that it need not be the last.

He woke up in the middle of the night with a
start, thinking he was at home. Then he remembered and stretched out his hand
to touch the girl beside him. He propped himself up on his elbow in alarm, for
she was no longer there. He stretched out his hand quickly to feel for his
watch and wallet on the beside table (“Never leave your watch or wallet or
other valuables lying around in the room,” Benny had cautioned, “And never
accept any drink from a prostitute. It’s sure to be spiked, and you’ll wake up
to find yourself stripped bare.”) They were there, intact. Where could Porntip
be? He had paid for a full night. She should not have left. He would have to
complain to the manager.

He noticed the light in the bathroom and
heard some very small sounds coming from it. Getting noiselessly out of bed, he
padded across the room to peep through the imperfectly closed door.

Porntip was squatting on the bathroom floor,
playing ‘Five Stones’. She scattered five small pebbles on the floor in front
of her, picked one up, threw it high into the air, scooped up the remaining
four from the floor in one swift sweep, and was in time to catch the falling
pebble, to complete the set of five in her little palm. She repeated the
process, scattering the pebbles yet further apart, to challenge herself to
higher levels of dexterity. With each success, she laughed softly to herself,
with each failure, she frowned and muttered scolding words to the errant pebble
that had not allowed itself to be scooped up in time with the others, or that
had perversely slipped out between her fingers. With a child’s total absorption
at play, she did not see him watching her.

She was just that, a child. She was a child
forced into an occupation that she understood only in terms of what she must do
and say to please men and what she must not do and say to avoid the beatings
from managers, pimps and parents. Her childhood had been stolen from her, but
she stole back whatever bits of it she could, waiting till the men were asleep
and snoring, to go into the bathroom, bring out her five stones and play by
herself. While the men mauled her in bed, she pretended to smile and giggle and
let out pleasing cries of pleasure, but all the time she was thinking about the
five little pebbles hidden in the pocket of her dress.

A sickening sensation of the hideousness of
it all condensed into a tight constriction of throat and stomach, and he leaned
against the wall, to steady himself. He had paid for a child and taken her to
bed. The child was probably no older than his younger daughter, Adeline, aged
13. He and his wife escorted Adeline to her school parties, forbade her to stay
late and watched over her with greatest parental care and tenderness. If
Porntip had been his daughter, she would have had the same loving protection.
With his money he had made this child, working as a prostitute in a hotel, do unspeakable
things for his pleasure, and she had complied fully, smiling, knowing that any
complaint from him would mean the whip and lash. He had noticed a healed scar
on her left thigh, probably the price she had paid for a flare of the child’s
rebelliousness that was never repeated.