“Lork?”

“Yes, and what is more, this anguish seems to have sharpened my perception, because when I saw you, I experienced all over again that joy, that leap of recognition which I experienced the very first moment I set eyes on you.”

“Lork?”

“And I even love the way you say lork. On the lips of another Thai woman it is just as dreary as that pathetic English word really, but from you it possesses the intangible quality of nirvana.”

“Do you want me tonight? I have time for a quick one, before I start filming down by the river.”

Henri forces his features into an exaggerated beam. “I’m saving up.

Three more microwave manuals and five DVD players, and you will be mine, cherie. On the other hand, why don’t you extend to me a little credit? The orders are in, I just have to do the work.“

Marly, who thanks to Yammy’s irresponsible encouragement has set her sights on Hollywood, raises her eyes to the ceiling in disgust and turns away. I smile at her and invite her to join us, in the hope it will put an end to Nong’s moaning. “How’s the filming going?”

“Fine, I think. Yammy’s ting-tong-l mean, the guy is totally nuts-but he really knows what he’s doing.” She checks her watch.

“Give me a ting-tong Jap any day against a two-faced farang,” Nong growls. I feel sad because I know where her anger comes from. She didn’t expect much from renewed contact with the young American soldier she fell in love with more than thirty years ago, only a certain belated sharing, a pride in the son they made together-I haven’t turned out that bad after all, compared to most leuk kreung from the Vietnam War-a chat about old times. It’s his meanness of spirit she resents with its racist implication: would he have been so neglectful of a white American girl? Marly looks at me, and I raise my hands to convey helplessness. Luckily, at that moment Greg the Australian walks in. Nong has the same soft spot for him as I have for Henri, and she gives him a big welcoming smile. He responds with an inept wai that makes Nong grin and shake her head. Without waiting for his order, she goes behind the bar to open a cold bottle of Foster’s and hands it to him without adding it to his slate; she is using this gesture to change her mood. “Love the way you look after me,” Greg says. “You’re better than twelve mums.” The idea of someone having twelve mothers tickles Nong’s funny bone, and she cackles at him.

A word about Greg. Endowed by nature with a metabolism that keeps him slim no matter how much Foster’s he drinks, he looks quite a bit younger than his thirty-eight years. A product of what I believe his countrymen call “the tall poppy syndrome,” he manifests normality to a morbid degree. He drinks beer with men, has sex with women, loves rugby, football, cricket, and gambling on what he calls the jee-jees, and is always bright and friendly with a ready “G’day” in all stages of inebriation except the last.

It is Lek, usually, who rescues dear Greg from his fits of uncontrollable sobbing at the end of a Foster’s-intensive evening, usually in the lavatory, when he feels no embarrassment at being hoisted from the pit of suicidal despair by an exceptionally effeminate transsexual:

Greg says to Lek, “I’m all in fragments, mate, atomized. Me mum drove me dad away when I was a kid. Then she worked on me mind, mate. She hates men, see. All Australian women do-there’s something in the food down there. Must be the mushy peas.”

Lek shudders in revulsion. “Mushy peas? Oh, you poor thing.”

“I never really had a family,” says Greg, “grew up all by meself. I’m like the product of a Saturday night bunk-up. You’re the only family I’ve got-that’s the god’s honest truth.”

“How awful. Don’t worry, love, we’ll take care of you.”

“I love the girls-they’re terrific. They do more for me in an hour than anyone else ever did for me in thirty-nine years.”

“Well, that’s because you’re all man, dear,” Lek says.

“Am I? You’re looking pretty good from where I’m sitting right now.”

“You’re drunk, love.” He giggles. “Don’t do that-you can’t have me, darling. I’m a cop.”

“You’re rejecting me?”

“Me? I don’t reject people, darling. I’m at the bottom of the bottom of the bottom – getting rejected is my role. Don’t make me jealous, now.”

Having won on the horses today, Greg is feeling generous and doesn’t mind buying drinks for Henri, who is nursing his thousandth rejection by Marly. It doesn’t take long for them to rebond in the medium of alcohol (they had a fight last week that neither remembered the next day), and as they get drunker, their voices get louder. I’m pinned to my seat at the table with Marly and Nong, who try not to look at me while my guts are laid out for public consumption by the two drunks.

“D’you remember her?” Greg asks Henri. “She worked here a few years ago.”

Henri glances quickly over his shoulder, apparently believing we cannot hear him. “Of course, she wasn’t a common prostitute. She was a born courtesan, a creature of the Belle Epoque stranded in this age of functional barbarism. I felt a certain camaraderie, but she was so formidably elegant, I didn’t dare even speak to her. I was afraid of what her starting price might have been.”

“I did. I saved up. She was terrific between the sheets, but she had a way of screwing your head up. After the second time I was depressed for a week. She was way out of my class.”

“Shush. The boss’s son had her too.”

Greg is surprised. “Sonchai? He never goes with his girls.”

“He fell for her. It was the original coup de foudre, avec bells and whistles.”

Greg says conspiratorially, “The beat on the street is there’s a snuff movie. That’s how she croaked.”

“Mon Dieu, I didn’t know that.”

“Sonchai, why don’t you check upstairs to see if the cleaners did their job properly today?” Nong says, avoiding Marly’s eyes and casting a furious glance at the backs of Greg and Henri.

I go upstairs to lie down on one of the beds to let my mind wander. Musing: prostitutes were the world’s first capitalists. The ancients understood very well that men need sex more urgently than women. It was natural, therefore, that this imbalance should be redressed by means of cash, which hitherto nobody had had any use for. Later, of course, whores found other things to sell, and many were reincarnated as lawyers, doctors, dentists, merchant bankers, presidents, sweetshop owners, mayors, et cetera. Commerce was born, and war became just a tad less fashionable. Hey, if it wasn’t for prostitution, the human race would never have got beyond the siege of Troy. Many haven’t, of course.

I didn’t intend to do anything more tonight-I was in lazy-Thai mode-but Henri and Greg have stirred up a gut full of bile, and now I’m restless. When I check my watch, I see it’s only eight in the evening. There won’t be any airplanes flying to that part of the Cambodian border where they are holding Baker, but there will be plenty of buses. I don’t think I can quite stand a long, hot, uncomfortable bus ride tonight, though, so I make a call to Hualamphong railway station and manage to book a first-class overnight sleeper. It’s one of those third-world treats I like to accord myself from time to time, and I’m quite excited when the train starts and the uniformed orderly comes around with his crisp white sheets to make up my bunk. Suddenly I’m a boy again taking a first-class trip up north with Nong, who is flush with dough from our sojourn in Paris with the ancient Monsieur Truffaut. Clickety-click, clickety-click, I might not have the most respectable mum in the world, but I definitely have one of the smartest. Clickety-click, clickety-click, we have money in the bank and medicine for Granma’s eyes, and we’ve paid the rent-nothing to worry about for at least a month. Clickety-click. To know how to cheer oneself up is a first step to enlightenment. It’s fun to be disobeying Vikorn, who thinks I’m checking out Yammy at this very moment.