Losing and Gaining Face by Harry Potter
Auntie Noy sat under the Mango tree from where she could just see the legs of the farang that Nu had brought home to the tambon last night.
The farang had very expensive shoes, but why anyone would spend so much money just to have hot feet Aunti Noy coudn't understand.
Auntie Noy was more than a little confused by it all. The farang seemed very nice, he was very kind and he had a big nose and big hands, which meant...(here Auntie Noy covered her mouth and giggled, not allowing her thoughts to proceed). Nu said the farang came from a place called Ingerand, whick she thought may be near to Merika, but she wasn't sure about that at all.
But she was very confused to begin with. She wondered why Nu had brought him home? Now, if it was Lek she would have understood. Lek was Katoey and Noy knew that farangs liked Thai Katoey, and having seen some of the very ugly farang women in the Chiang Mai bazaar she could well understand that a man would prefer a Katoey to one of those!. Lek had been Katoey from the beginning. He always played with the girls, he would rather help his mother in the house than his father and brothers in the fields and whenever there was a party Lek would dress up and dance and sing for them - she loved little Lek! But in fact Lek had now moved to Chiang Mai where he was second 'wife' to a rich man who worked for the government.
But Nu wasn't like that. Nu had always been a real boy, he fought with other boys, he could handle the buffaloe and he was very good at football. He had been clever at school too, although he had to leave school at 15 and then worked in the fields until he was 19 but then, after Pond had come back one weekend and told Nu and al the boys about this very good job he had working in a restaurant that farangs went to in Krung Thep, Nu and one other boy went off to get a job in the same sort of restaurant in Chonburi Province in a city called Pattaya. Nu was a good boy though, he always sent money home for his mother and often he had a present of cloth or some pretty glass for his old Auntie Noy!
Aunty Noy worried about the farang. Why did people call him a white man? He wasn't white, he was very red..and most worrying was that the skin on his face was falling off. Nu told her not to worry. Many farang went red and had their skin fall of when they went swimming, and usually they put coconut oil on their face and then their skin didn't fall off but instead went a little bit brown, like roast pork. Noy, however, was so concerned that she asked the Monk to make a special amulet for the farang so that his face wouldn't fall off... she would give it to Nu to give to the farang later.
Phra Parinya said the farang was a good man. He wore an amulet with the farang god, Ji-zuss, around his neck and he had given a good gift to the temple to help the boys who eat ya-ba.
Auntie Noy regarded herself as being very sophisticated. She had been to Chiang Mai many times, she had even been to Krung Thep, but that was before her husband had died when he slipped when repairing the temple roof two years ago. It was very sad, but of course he would have earned much merit dieing as he did.
Still, Aunty Noy still couldn't understand what was happening with Nu and this farang, especially since Phra Parinya said that Nu was going to marry the farang.
Her brother, Nu's father, didn't seem to mind - he just drank the farang's whisky and told everyone in the village that when Nu and the farang got married maybe the farang would buy him a motorbike and a buffaloe. Men - ayyyy - all they ever thought about was motorbikes, buffaloe and whisky. Unlike Lek, he didn't worry at all about buffaloes - although Lek did now have a pink motorbike.
Ah well, it was all very confusing, but Nu was a good boy. Maybe the farang was a Katoey? She would ask Nu to ask him to dance tonight at the Karaoke party.
Auntie Noy threw a mango at the mangy dog and slowly got to her feet. The farang noticed her and waved and she smiled and greeted him. Very strange, he didn't look like Katoey at all, but farang were very strange so you never could tell.
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