'Faces of the Night' by John Hinds

Review by Alexander Turner

Tragedy is sitting at night on a plane on a runway at Don Muang airport waiting for take off. You sit there like a condemned man with his head on the block anticipating the sharp bite of cold steel on his neck. "Fasten your safety belts please ladies and gentlemen. This plane is about to whisk you back to the frozen joyless wastes of Farangland". The jet-whistle reaches an ear-splitting crescendo as you rumble at an alarming speed along the steaming wet runway. Suddenly the bumping and buffeting ends and you feel the gentle pressure of an unseen force pushing you firmly back into your seat as you are lifted as if by magic into the sky. The darkly star speckled sky where you can see the twinkling event of a new galaxy being born a hundred million light years in the distance and not know what possible significance it has for you.

I remember my first time leaving Bangkok. I remember it clearly. February 1992. It was the middle of the night, just about the same time the Thermae would be getting really busy. KLM flight number Str82L. I remember glancing back at the terminal building imagining Tak standing by the long wide window watching me disappear into the sky like a speck. I imagined that but I knew full well she'd be sitting in a taxi halfway back to central Bangkok. "Step on it driver. That farang no good. I need to go back to Patpong and find a better one."

I was at a window seat. There's always a sense of childlike wonder watching a living breathing city transformed into a toy town with dancing diamond lights standing for places you knew. I didn't know Bangkok well enough to be able to map out where anything was from here but I could still imagine. That light down there. That might be the Pink Panther on the corner of Patpong 2 and Suriwongse, that's where I had first stepped, almost by accident into the world of irresistible Thai women. Ah. Now that little light there. That would be Our Place near the Soi 23 end of Soi Cowboy. Da would be there now. Dancing in that skimpy top that went translucent under ultraviolet lamps and revealed her perfectly formed breasts for all the world to see. Maybe she'd be down there thinking of me up here in the sky holding back the tears, wishing I didn't have to go, wishing I could stay with her there forever. Of course it was just as likely she'd be smiling sweetly at another man. A better man with me. One with a beautifully bulging wallet and lust in his heart. Shit.

Yes. Life in a plane leaving Bangkok is pretty tragic. Yet even in that sadness there was also a sense of elation. I mean what a life ! Three months in Bangkok. The only place I'd been where sexual opportunity got so commonplace you took it for granted. Women of incomparable beauty and just a touch of psychosis were constantly trying to make you sleep with them. I'd had nights in Bangkok laughing with friends until the dawn with waves of goddesses harassing you with sexual promise. If the plane suddenly combusted into a mid-air ball of flames I couldn't complain. What the fuck. At least I'd die having known the best that life had to offer. Not a bad day to die. Plus if the plane blew up now I wouldn't have to think about arriving back in the UK. I wouldn't have to face the mindless routines and sour unsmiling faces. And that was only Heathrow Airport.

I couldn't put Da from my mind. I couldn't forget her silent sobs and the dampness of her tears as she held on to me as if for dear life creasing up my new shirt. I'd told her I was leaving that day and had no idea when I'd be back and she just held on to me. Weeping. Weeping. I'd mentioned this to Billy as we sat enjoying a last beer together in a Khao San Road bar. "You don't want to let those tears bother you. Best little actresses in the world. I wouldn't give it a second thought. Just part of the show." It annoyed me that Billy felt he had to say this. I'd been very affected by Da and I didn't want to think she was that calculating. But maybe he was right. Maybe it was all just part of the show. I wondered what would happen to Billy. He'd ripped off some Pakistani gangsters and then been ripped off in turn by his girlfriend. He was like a sitting target in Bangkok with nothing but enemies and no money to get anywhere else. I liked Billy a lot. He was quite a character and he was having a rough time. But, in a sense his problems were of his own making. He could have gone back to Australia when things started going wrong. But what options did Da have ? Her face haunted me. Her beautiful hurt heart-shaped face. She'd got right under my skin and I wanted to keep her there and wear her like a scar. But then there was Tak. Shit. I was married to Tak. She bore my second name. How the fuck had that happened ? And, perhaps more to the point, how the fuck was I going to get out of it ? Then there was the satin skinned Ae, Khmer, with a voice like honey and her small slim frame that moved through the streets like a summer breeze, and then the sweetly poisonous other Da who, while I was with her, had berated girl begging in the street asking her why she didn't go out and sell pussy like a regular person, and then there was Fon who's expert embrace had dragged my innocent self to the dark side of the force in the first place, and, of course, Pow, all screwed up and passionate and... shit. It seemed stupid, even to me, but every woman I'd had anything to do with in Bangkok had made off with a piece of my soul. How many women could I say that of in the UK ? There'd been maybe one or two, but then again maybe none. How was I going to just amble back into my old life as if none of this had happened ?

In Bangkok I'd lived in a room the size and shape of a large cardboard box. It had been noisy and hot and infected with 24 hour reggae from the tape stall in the street below but I'd found as much peace in that room as I had anywhere else in my life. I'd hung out in ramshackle temporary housing off Ruam Rudi and Khlong Toey. I'd had moments when I believed my life was in peril. I'd had intriguing feverish diseases that I had seriously considered as being fatal. I'd eaten things that I thought, if I had hesitated too long, might have leapt up off their plates and eaten me. I'd even made friends who were stupid enough to put themselves between me and a Mekhong-driven farang-hating psychopath's flick-knife. How was I going to slip back into my daily routines as if nothing had changed ?

Who was I going to talk to ? Who was I going to tell ? If only there was some wise old soul in London who I knew had been through something similar. Someone who would listen to my stories, believe them, and point out when I was acting like a half-wit over some woman who had probably forgotten I even existed. Of my mates, people who had known me for years, nobody understood how Bangkok worked. Many of them would listen to my stories of Bangkok believing every single word to be a lie.

The plane soared over an increasingly black landscape. As each second passed there was less and less evidence of electric lighting in the land below accompanied by more and more evidence of black impenetrable foliage. Was this still Thailand or had we crossed over into Burma. The out of all proportion animated plane on the TV map jerked almost imperceptibly on the border. The wealth of blackness outside seemed to enter into me inviting me to try sleep. But I didn't want to sleep. If I slept for a second my last day in Bangkok would become yesterday. I didn't want Bangkok to be yesterday. Now I could still believe it was only this morning that I had woken with Da wrapped around me, her naked body pushed against mine in a night-long embrace with a dust flecked ray of sunlight caressing the shape of her body. A single brown nipple visible above the sheet that covered our bodies. I wanted that memory to stay 'this morning' for as long as humanly possible. If the plane was going to blow it should blow now while I was still alive, before the silver dawn brought its own kind of death.

Surprisingly perhaps I hadn't gone to Thailand to meet women. I wanted to escape all my problems, live a little, free up my mind without messing up my head. I don't know what planet I was on when I thought that Bangkok would be a good place to do that. I'd always been drawn to the East and Thailand was the easiest part of the East to get to. Plus unlike Japan or Hong Kong it was cheap. Even cheap enough for me and I was very cheap. I thought it would be a good place to write. There was a comedy script I had all plotted out. I'd make like a traveller for a bit, have a few lightweight adventures, then with a cleaner soul than before I would find these moments of great inner peace where I would be able to sit and write like a literate genius.

It didn't turn out that way. Trouble with Bangkok is it's just too damn interesting. Every time you think you have a peaceful evening ahead some Bangkok adventure comes bounding into your peace and serenity like a bouncy dog wanting to be taken for a walk. And of course, once I'd had my first fling, I was well and truly screwed. Whatever you try to write about it always comes back to the texture of her skin, the lustrous black tumbling shower of her hair, or her perfectly white even teeth biting into the flesh of a ripe mango, juice cascading down her stretched throat and forming small rivulets that tickled their way between her small round breasts. I'd see ordinary women on the street. Narrow waisted, shapely curving at the hips and narrowing again following the line of a smart skirt. Perfection was almost a bad habit amongst the women here. They oozed feminine charm standing waiting for a bus, walking down polluted streets with the ease and grace of movie stars or models. Even the lighting of a cigarette became a graceful act, a glance, a smile, a softly spoken "kha". And their elegance seemed to be innate. The women just moved and acted like fantasies. When they smiled at you the warmth spread out and met you. There was no guile in their expressions either. These smiles were just a natural response to the business of living. You'd see this winning smile on the faces of everyone from a girl who served you a coffee in McDonalds to the girl who cleaned out the rooms in my guest house. I realised very early on that I was seeing something in Thai women that I had only rarely glimpsed in other women I had met.

My growing obsession with Thai women would not endear me to many of my friends and particularly female friends in the UK. I had given this some thought. Would I admit it ? Would I talk about it at all. The media was obsessed with painting Bangkok as just about the most evil place on Earth. Anyone who went there and got involved with the women was asking for a swift case of AIDS and a lot of people would figure a deserved one. If my friends in the UK saw me sitting in a Patpong bar with a bargirl whispering sweet somethings in my ear without putting up any kind of fight I'd definitely lose my good citizen badge of honour. I'd suddenly be transformed into the type of man who wearing horn-rimmed spectacles and a plastic mac approaches pretty girls in pubs to tell them why he likes the smell of milk. I'd be the overweight man who crawls into women's changing rooms in big department stores at delicate moments pretending to have lost his contact lens. I'd be on a similar social level as a Japanese game show host hanging around a beach resort with a garden hose, a bag of eels, a camcorder and a baseball cap saying "Super Pervert Man" in Kanji. If I was going to be honest this sudden dip in status would simply be something I'd have to bear.

After leaving the viewless views of Burmese air space the plane pushed into the even more viewless views of Bengali air space. The main lights were lowered for the benefit of those who wanted to sleep. I didn't want to sleep but I couldn't keep staring out the window moping over all that I'd left behind and all the nothing I was headed to. Blackness followed by blackness and for an encore, a bit more blackness wasn't going to distract me much. Having accidentally stored my Bumper Book of Kid's Crosswords in the overhead locker and not wanting to disturb the sleeping fat person next to me until I had to go to use one of the already blocked toilets I tried the airline magazine. I put on the dim overhead reading lamp and started reading an article about the quality of seafood in Istanbul. Fascinating though this might be for seafood lovers on their way to Istanbul I decided it was probably time to start reading my book, Faces of the Night by John Hinds.

I'd picked up Faces of the Night a few days before at one of the second hand book stalls on Khao San Road. In Bangkok second hand books went for about the same price as first hand books and on occasion a little bit more. I figured it was a bit like that whole antiques racket back home where rich people bought a three hundred and fifty year old chair for the price of twelve kitchen units from IKEA. But Faces of the Night was actually labelled 70 baht, 20 baht cheaper than the original cover. Maybe this was because it was published in Thailand, or because of the lurid, customer deterring, cover with its go-go dancers flaunting their wares to go-go customers. The Khao San Road backpackers wouldn't be seen dead reading a book like this. They might lose their Joe Cumming's good backpacker badge of honour. But as I figured mine was already up the spout anyway I bought it to read on the plane. It wasn't a very thick book which was fine for me because I have the short attention span typical of a generation that grew up thinking Yogi Bear invented television. Within a few pages I was completely hooked by the direct and uncomplicated writing style and Hinds' ability to develop his characters evocatively and economically. By the time I was still an hour away from Schipol Airport I'd read the book from cover to cover and I felt it had some sense of what I had been through. In the absence of an understanding friend, an understanding book can be a great solace.

Basically Faces of the Night is a collection of 14 short stories each named after the female protagonist but the one character to emerge most powerfully is Jim, a 37 year old American English teacher and bar-hound making fifteen thousand baht a month and spending about double that on women who while mad and dangerous to know aren't at all bad. Jim is quite a likeable character (and, I suspect, the author's alter-ego) who despite enjoying the privileges of a Westerner in 1989 Bangkok never mistreats the women he meets and takes great exception to those who do. In fact he spends more time in the book listening to the problems of bargirls than actually getting them to bed. A bit of a disappointment to those readers hoping for acres of porn perhaps but no book is going to please everybody.

Admittedly Jim's character doesn't progress much and about halfway through on my second reading I got a dizzying sense of women appearing, occupying centre stage, then disappearing never to be seen again. One of the disadvantages of short short stories is that just when you're getting a real taste of the characters you've reached the end. I think the book might have been better if it had been written as a short novel fleshing out some of the ideas more and giving Jim a bit more to do, but then perhaps I'm missing the point. In Thailand everything does sort of shift around and most people, especially expats, never get anywhere. Besides it is churlish to mention how the writer might have improved on a book when I've read the book three times and been entertained by it on each reading in a different way.

When I first read it on that plane it drew a clear picture of the Bangkok I had just left. I was so engrossed in each story that I barely noticed the dawn creeping up on me. I was back in the bars of the Soi Cowboy with that sense of rich life gnawing at me. Reading it now is like looking back into history. Bangkok has changed almost beyond recognition since the time of these stories. In twelve years it has become easier to get about in, more tourist friendly and willing to cater to the needs of all kinds of people (except, thankfully, paedophiles). It has also lost much of that sense of intimacy which is present in most of these tales.

The women are beautifully drawn by Hinds. I couldn't run down each of the 14 stories. But I particularly like the story of Noy. Jim meets her while on holiday in Phuket. She stays with him and takes care of him speaking of, perhaps, one day visiting him at his home in Bangkok. He gives her his address and three days later she appears at his door all set to move in. She'll cook for him, clean for him, have sex with him, let him go butterfy a little bit but not too much, then she'll have his baby. He decides to get rid of her as quickly as possible.
Then there's the story of Pawn an erudite, multilingual, beautiful, literature reading bargirl that Jim's friend Chet falls for but can never seem to sleep with. Her story has a well placed dark little twist in its tail.

Then there's the elegantly written story of Chutima, a twelve year old village girl who, seeing the beautiful Toey return from Bangkok dripping with cash, adorned with beautiful clothes and jewellery, and smoking cool illegal American cigarettes, decides that she can't wait to stop being a child and go to Bangkok like Toey and be a bargirl with lots of wealthy farang boyfriends who will buy her whatever she wants. This story, too, has a dark little sting that leaves you wondering what will happen to Chutima's dream of life as a Bangkok bar girl once she knows the price.

The stories in the book flow beautifully and are the perfect accompaniment for an evening on the patio of your ultra-modern home in Tuscany sipping a properly aired glass of Mouton Rothschild 1987. Alternatively they would be equally enjoyable read over a six pack of Guinnes in your front room. It's a great book for the Bangkok blues and offers a different take on Bangkok life to the current wave of evil bargirl stories. In fact I'd recommend this book to anyone if you can still find it. If Asia books or DK have sold out you might try one of those stalls on the Khao San Road.

And to John Hinds I'd like to offer my thanks for getting me through one of my darkest nights. If I ever meet you I owe you a beer.

Faces of the Night by John Hinds 144pp Editions Duang Kamol 1989 Cover price of edition reviewed 90B

Review Copyright Alexander Turner 2001

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Here's a link from ThailandStories.com where you can see more info on this book reviewed by JagoTurner and where it might be purchased:

http://www.amazon.com/Faces-night-John-Hinds/dp/9742104751/sr=8-18/qid=1171228919/ref=sr_1_18/105-9424482-4250065?ie=UTF8&s=books