A View of a Kill

A woman walked past a man begging on the street outside a shop across from the Nana Hotel in Bangkok. I sat in a taxi stopped in heavy early evening traffic. I saw the woman walk by and I saw the beggar say something to her. The woman walked on for several steps and then walked back to the man and spoke to him. He said something to her. She hit him with her purse and then her fists and then kicked him. He tried to stand up but she pushed him down and kicked his face. His head hit the side of the building and he slumped to the sidewalk. Shop owners and a few people watched while the woman took a liter bottle from a crate on the sidewalk and broke it on the man's head. There were more people stopped on the sidewalk but no one tried to stop the woman when she picked up a metal sculpture of a dancing Siva outside one of the tourist shops. She dropped the statue on the man's head and lifted it again and brought it down on his head again and a red and gray fountain lay next to his head. The woman walked away. No on followed her and my taxi moved on. The next morning I asked the Nana receptionist if she knew about the beating. The woman said, "Yes. He died." He thought yes, he must have. No one could take a beating like that.