I know the country tradition of building a special space for a daughter who has reached puberty and whose honor needs to be kept inviolable until a husband can be found. It is a custom which is emphasized in every second soap that appears on our TV screens. By a fantastic psychological maneuver Damrong’s mother must have decided one fine day to protect the virtue of her absent daughter, whom she forced into prostitution and from whom she has not heard for years. I have to give her two hundred baht before she will fish out the key to the padlock and open the door. Inside, the tiny room consists of two-by-four studs holding up plywood walls. There is nothing else at all except for two photographs, both of Damrong. One is about eight by twelve inches, old and yellow, pinned to the plywood: the kind of romantic pic only country photographers produce, with softened lines, starry eyes, and a stiff white dress with plenty of lace. Damrong could not have been more than thirteen years old when it was taken; she has been told to look skyward to a TV heaven of handsome husbands and air-conditioning. Despite the photographer’s efforts, her classic beauty shines through, and there is no denying the power of it. The other photograph is of a child running under a huge elephant. The old lady sees me stare at it and starts into an incomprehensible babble in her native Khmer. I think this hopelessness I feel, intensified by a factor of millions, must have been exactly what Damrong decided to combat one fine day when she was still very young.
“Just one thing, Mother,” I say, putting a finger to her lips. To my surprise, she stops ranting on the instant, like an obedient child. Gently I turn her around so she has her back to me and lift up the T-shirt. She yields as if she’s undergoing a medical examination. Sure enough, the tiger tattoo begins somewhere in the small of her back and leaps up so that its head is just peeping over her left shoulder. Interesting. The other tattoo is an elaborate horoscope. Both are very faded and wrinkled, I would guess she’s had them since her teens. I examine the horoscope for a while; it is written in ancient khom, of course. I don’t think there’s much more to be gained here, so I say goodbye and descend the stairs to the ground. Outside, looking up at the rickety hut with its rotting stumps and the black madness of the old lady who is at this moment slamming the door, I experience an overwhelming rage. What psychological mountains did Damrong have to climb just to function, just to get up in the morning—merely in order to believe in herself enough to work? What superhuman power enabled her to do it all with genius and panache? They knew nothing of all that, of course —Baker, Smith, and Tanakan—when they made use of her charms. I knew better but carefully concealed that knowledge from myself while I took my pleasure; just like them, mes semblables, mes freres.
The hamlet is a sprawling affair that takes up a surprising amount of land because each family owns a smallholding which separates it from the others. A few of the homesteads are quite affluent, even boasting carports with pickup trucks; most are at subsistence level. Everyone has heard that a stranger, a cop, has arrived, and ragged kids emerge blatantly to stare. Nobody wants to be seen talking to me in public, though. I decide to try my luck with the family who live next door to Damrong’s mother. A woman in a sarong is squatting under her long roof, using a pestle and mortar to make somtan salad. She has been watching me from the corner of her eye, and when I pause at her gate, she calls out, “Have you eaten yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Eat with us.”
There is a sliding iron gate, which I push open. At the same time three kids appear, the youngest about three years old. A bent old man, probably in his eighties, emerges from the house on wobbly legs, holding a bottle of moonshine. Behind him nagging abuse streams from an old lady. Now a young woman appears, walking very slowly. It is almost a perfect replica of Nok’s family. The first woman, who is in her fifties, has been watching my face as I gaze with a professional eye on the young woman.
“Medication,” she says.
“Yaa baa?”
“Her second husband was a dealer. The police shot and killed him, but not before he’d screwed up her head with his drugs. One half of her brain is mush. The mental hospital was going to keep her locked up for seven years if I didn’t guarantee her. I have to pay for the medication every month or she loses it completely.”
“Those are her kids?”
“All by different fathers. If it wasn’t for my first daughter, I don’t know what we’d do.”
“Your first daughter works in Krung Thep?”
She turns her eyes away. “Of course.” She begins serving the somtan and places a wicker basket of sticky rice between us.
I regret the insensitivity of my question and change the subject even as I stick my fingers into the rice and make a ball out of a handful. “I’ve been talking to your neighbor.”
“I know. You’re here because of Damrong.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Forever. We’re villagers—this is the only land we own.”
I decide to let her talk in her own time. She rolls her ball of rice around in the sauce of the salad, which is crimson with chili, and eats for a while, then says, “So, you’re a cop investigating poor Damrong’s death. That’s one family with very bad karma.” Shaking her head: “What other explanation could there be? We are poor too, we suffer just the same as them, but we don’t go bad. We’re good people, we go to the wat, we make merit, we keep a clean house, we never break the law.” A pause while she shakes her head. “What’s that mother going to be, chart na? She can’t even talk properly anymore. She’s going to hell. When she gets out, she’ll be lucky to be reborn a human. I’ve never seen anything that dark, that hopeless. What people do to their minds, hey?”
Suddenly the dwarf woman has appeared from nowhere. She is peering around the open gate, looking in. My hostess catches her eye. “Have you eaten yet?”
“No.” The dwarf joins us, lowering herself onto the rush mat we are eating off of and sitting upright with the straight back of a child.
“He’s asking about poor Damrong.”
“I know,” the dwarf says. She looks me full in the face, as if she has decided it’s time I knew the truth. “She was a very strong spirit with very bad karma,” she explains. “That’s why she incarnated into that family. She was very strong.”
“The mother’s spent a long time in jail,” I say.
“Yes.”
“There’s Khmer writing under the tiger on her back.”
“Yes.”
“And I think the horoscope is in the black tradition. Did she belong to some criminal cult?”
“Yes.” She nods without casting me a glance. Even in the midst of such a dark subject, her fifty-year-old child’s eyes are dancing over the house, the kids, the catastrophe of poverty, a smile always on her lips.
“Black sorcery?” I ask.
She shrugs. “It’s not good to think about what they did in that family. It will bring bad luck.”
“Did they use their own children?”
“Yes.”
“What about her brother?”
For the first time a moment of concern appears in her face, then is quickly erased. “She loved him. She’s the only reason he survived. A very weak spirit. Perhaps he cannot survive on his own without her.” Casting me a glance: “Do you know how her father died?”
“How her father died? Why don’t you tell me?”
“Very unlucky to talk about a violent death like that.” She lays a hand on my forearm. “I’m a non-Returner.”
It’s odd to hear a Buddhist technical expression used by someone who is obviously the product of some shamanistic cult, but when the Indians brought Buddhism to Thailand, much of it was absorbed into local animism. Nowadays it is quite common to hear people like the dwarf talk about “non-Returners.” Buddhist monks who believe they have achieved this level are careful not to commit a blunder that will land them in the flesh yet again. Even talking in an inappropriate way can ruin your disembodiment plans.
There are few proprieties to observe in the country. When I’ve finished eating, I get up to go, casting the dwarf one last glance. Without looking at me, she says, “They made the children watch, you know. Both of them, so they wouldn’t turn out like their father. The girl was just about old enough to take it—like I say, she was very strong. But the boy…”
“They watched their father die?”
She raises a finger to her lips. As I leave, the hostess calls to me in an urgent voice, as if there is something vital she forgot to tell me. “They’re Khmer, you know, not Thai people at all.”
At the main road I manage to wave down a pickup truck that will take me to the nearest bus station for a hundred baht. My driver is the best kind of country man: silent, devout, honest. In the delicious emptiness that surrounds him, my mind will not cease its endless narrative:
A Third-World Pilgrim’s Progress
1. Born into karma too daunting to contemplate, you decide to go to sleep for life.
2. Mother does not permit option I: you do run under the elephant, whether you like it or not.
3. Ruthlessness and rage at least produce reactions from society, unlike good behavior, which leads to slavery and starvation. Only sex and drugs pay a living wage. You have seen the light.
4. At the top of your game and winning, you regret aborting love. Too late, you have reached thirty and demons are massing on the horizon. Only death can save you now. One question remains: who will you take with you?
Welcome to the new millennium.
28
“Where is he, Lek?”
It pains me to use this tone, to reduce my protege to a sulky child, but I’m at the end of my rope. I’ve been back two days and seen no sign of Phra Titanaka.
“I don’t know,” Lek says camply, pouts, and looks at the floor. We are at the station in one of the small interrogation rooms, which hardly helps Lek’s mood.
“I’m sure you got close to him while I was away. I think you’re lying. I know he’s got you involved somehow. I saw you talking to him at the wat.”
He jumps up, his face exploding with hurt. “I’ve never lied to you in my life, I couldn’t lie to you —I have gatdanyu with you. You protect me every minute of the day. If you stamp all over my heart, I’ll kill myself.”
I pass a hand over my face. “I’m sorry, Lek. There’s no way I can pretend to you that I’m strong enough for this case. You’ll have to bear with me. I think you must have seen him while I was away. You were getting on so well.”
Now his mood has changed. He comes over to comfort me. Master, I’m so sorry for you. I would do anything to help.“
“When did you last see him?”
“He came to say goodbye when you were in Cambodia.”
“That’s all?”
“He asked me for your cell phone number. I gave it to him.”
I nod. Somehow it is inevitable that I must turn in the wind, awaiting a young monk’s pleasure. There’s karma here: I’m paying one hell of a price for those ten days of ecstatic misery I spent with Damrong.
Apart from the sudden spat with Lek, I’ve been listless all day. Just to get out of the station, I tell Lek I’m going for a massage, but I don’t really intend to have one. Outside, though, passing the Internet cafe— which has entirely lost its magic now that Damrong’s brother no longer uses it—I decide I may as well have the massage anyway. A wicked impulse of pure self-destruction suggests I should go to the third floor and have the works; that maybe two hours of luscious, aromatic, oily, slippery, seminal, orgasmic self-indulgence might be exactly what I need. I know it won’t help my self-esteem in the longer term, however, and I think of Chanya, even though I know she wouldn’t mind, would even encourage me if it would improve my mood. So I go for my usual two hours on the second floor.
All through the first hour my mind is hopping like a louse on a marble floor, and I hardly notice the massage. I calm down eventually, and I’m able to retrieve just an echo of the peace that once was mine by right. Then the cell phone rings. I left it in the pocket of my pants, which are hanging on a hook above the mattress. Even while the masseuse is pressing her knee into my lower spine, I grab my pants and feverishly fish out the phone.
“I need to talk,” Phra Titanaka says.
The cop in me recognizes a weakness finally, perhaps even an admission. “Talk.”
I beckon to the masseuse to go to something less strenuous— maybe tie my feet in a knot—while I’m talking. In reality it doesn’t matter what she does; my mind is focused on the monk’s slow, deliberate, cool tone.
“They sold her when she was fourteen,” the disembodied voice says into my ear. “It was a family decision. I wasn’t included in the discussion, but Damrong was. She agreed to work in a brothel in Malaysia as indentured labor on condition they look after me properly.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Your sorrow is a teaspoon of sugar in an ocean of bitterness.”
“I’m sorry for that too,” I say.
“It was one of those sixteen-hour-a-day jobs. She had to service twenty customers every twenty-four hours, minimum. The first night, though, they auctioned her virginity to the highest bidder. He was by no means gentle.”
