The Bangkok Asset: A novel (5 page)

R
, did you know your same-sex parent when you were growing up? If you did not, then my song will be familiar: I never stopped looking for him, from the minute I realized he was missing. All the kids at infant school had a dad, why not me? Therefore the previous thirty-seven years had been rich in daddy substitutes, most of them from my imagination. All I had to go on was Vietnam: a good-looking Yank in his early twenties, face blackened with war (sometimes); a charmer of women (Mum in particular). Because his English was perfect, so mine had to be. Should I thank him for opening my mind to
farang
confusion? I’m not sure, but how else were my fantasy dads going to communicate with me or I with them? He sure didn’t speak Thai worth a damn, I had Mama Nong’s testimony to rely on there.

Sometimes I made him muscle-bound like those GIs you see in the Museum of American War Atrocities in Saigon (of course I went, long before they renamed it so they could trade again with Uncle Sam—it’s still there if you don’t believe me). I found one in a photo on the wall of a soldier with arms so powerful he looked incomplete without something heavy to lift. When I realized I wasn’t built that way I slimmed my dream dad down a bit. I kept him at average height, calculating that I was going to be tall for a Thai anyway, and who wants to stick out at age thirteen? Then, when I realized how important brains were, I made him smart, really smart. To justify my daydreams I read and read—and did extra well at school and started to imagine that maybe Einstein had paid a visit to Soi Cowboy sometime in the seventies and had an adventure with a bar girl named Nong; until I realized how smart Mum was (Mama Nong learned to speak English faster than me and she didn’t even have an American dad); my smarts didn’t necessarily prove a thing about him. And so on. I drove myself crazy trying to find some trait of body or mind, anything that I could point to about myself and say,
That’s from him.
Did I become a detective in order one day to find him? I’m not sure. Certainly, I was tormented at an earlier age than most by the conviction that it was possible to discover who I was. Did such an absurd idea originate in your hemisphere, R?

Sometimes my search hurt so much I’d confide in Mum.
Tell me,
I’d say,
tell me, just one thing that is definitely him not you?
She didn’t answer for years, until the girls in the bars started passing on stories about me. “That,” she said, pointing at my crotch. “All men have it, but not all have it that bad. That’s him all right.”

“He was really as bad as me?” I asked, somewhat troubled by the thought.

“Worse.”

“And you put up with it?”

“It was the seventies, there was a war on, I was a bar girl, there were thousands of us, you were grateful even for the chance to compete.”

“But you loved him, you told me. I asked you a million times, and that’s the only question you’ve ever given a consistent answer to.”

“I was a country girl. In the country you judge the male by its virility and the female by its fecundity. You could say he was a prizewinning buffalo, gold medal, any farmer’s pride and joy, deprive him of sex for a night and he’d tear the shed down. Sure I was proud of him. Proud as hell that he stayed with me, took me to America, once—that alone raised me to queen-of-the-village status. And he shared. He was generous. Almost as generous with his dough as with his sperm—and that’s saying a lot.”

“You were in love with his dick, then?”

“You want a whack?”

She was tough. Looking back, it can make me laugh how she played the fragile Oriental lotus to soak the johns. Like all Thai women, she was master of the art of flattery. Not a customer she slept with whom she didn’t compliment on the size of his member, however diminutive:
Wow! Honey, I don’t think I’ve seen one that big before
—was she thinking of Dad as she flicked those flagging phalli back to life? There are questions even sons like me don’t ask, but the fact speaks for itself: she only let herself fall pregnant the once. Only one man she so honored. Why him?

So, although I never got used to being without him, I did get used to always having a make-believe
him
to turn to as a role model. In fact I had a whole wardrobe of
him
s who I could wear depending on the need of the hour—e.g., strong, resolute, honest, the best kind of American—especially when I started as a cop. H/we grew partial to weed at an early age, though, and loved stealing cars (just a phase h/we went through, you understand). And when I doubted the historical accuracy of my invented progenitor, I had the brothels to turn to. There I always could find him, so to speak. I knew his excitement when a new, extra-delicious girl appeared on the revolving stages; I understood the profound respect he felt for the way she kept her dignity—and held out for the dough. I experienced that inexplicable compulsion to see just one more naked young woman on a bed waiting for me, like the drunk who needs just one more drink. That, basically, is all I have of Dad.

Now we’re stuck at the lights just before the Memorial Bridge, and a monk passes in front of us with an alms bowl and his
looksit
in white behind him carrying the morning’s haul of vegetarian food in a bundle of plastic bags tied up together. I almost became a monk; that could have been me there crossing the road. I still believe in enlightenment. It only takes about twenty years on minimal rations, five hours’ sleep per night, possessions reduced to one change of robes, one alms bowl, and an umbrella, unlimited concentration on emptiness, then a good monk can return to the Infinite at will. He sees everything, understands everything, is everything. That’s what Dr. Supatra’s
mordu
did more than half a century ago, but he is Khmer and ordained in Cambodia, which country he had to flee when Pol Pot made life impossible. In Thailand he formally disrobed and hung up his shingle as a know-all clairvoyant named Master Soon.

Soon,
by the way, means
zero.
It was typical of Dr. Supatra to recommend him, for he is the most authentic and radical
mordu
in Bangkok, if not Thailand. Almost everything he predicts comes to pass. So, is his daily surgery filled with eager seekers after truth? Nope. People who claim to want to know their future avoid him like the plague. Women especially, who are the chief consumers of clairvoyant products in their endless search for emotional stability and amorous bliss and constitute eighty percent of the market nationwide, generally have nothing to do with him. He really does
see,
that’s his problem. His few followers hang around mainly to save him from starvation. Once I realized how unpopular he was, how close to total destitution, how even tough-minded macho types who have been to hell and back, or think they have, find him hard to hang out with, I knew he was the man for me. He just won’t tell fibs to make you feel good. No wonder he’s bankrupt. Now the lights have changed and we’re on our way.

My first conclusion on my earlier visit was that his two decades in the robes in Cambodia did not include training in shack construction. Even I, who have seen more than my share of incompetent carpentry, was impressed by the way the uprights of his hut leaned, the corrugated iron roof sagged, crossbeams seemed to have been chosen for their crookedness, the door was permanently stuck half open, and he forgot windows. Outside a woman in her early thirties was sobbing uncontrollably.

“I hope you haven’t come to see that bastard,” she managed. “I came for help and advice and he broke my heart in two minutes. He’s not a
mordu,
he’s a damned demon, that’s what he is.” More
boo hoo hoo.

“What did he say?”

A dam broke. “He said I wasted the best years of my life on useless handsome shits who were good in bed and flattered me when I could have married a boring, honest, ugly man who would have taken great care of me and my kids and now it’s way too late, and anyway, I still haven’t even begun to give up on admiring myself in the mirror even though my looks have melted, my tits and ass have sagged, and self-love has ruined my nerves so no one, not even an honest, boring, ugly man, could possibly live with me for long, and anyway, even if I could find one I’d make his life hell by taking the piss out of him behind his back and to his face because of my insufferable narcissism that even now that I’m no longer cute makes it impossible for me to feel compassion for my fellow human beings, especially if they’re not attractive.” She paused for breath. “I couldn’t believe it, the way he went on. He said what I called love was anything that made my pussy wet, I’d been masturbating since puberty and still couldn’t stop playing with myself every time I felt insecure, and the only thing that brought temporary relief was the ruthless lust of a man with a big hard cock.” She paused. “I mean, for a holy man he sure knows a lot about women and sex.” She wiped her eyes. “If he wasn’t so skinny, old, and weak, I would have kicked him in the balls. No wonder he’s a failure. Who’s going to pay good money for that kind of crap?” She glared. “And he knew it all in less than a second. He didn’t even look at me.”

“Really?”

“He was trying to fix a hole in his roof with a plastic bag, he didn’t get off the chair he was standing on. Didn’t even turn his head. What a bastard.” She paused for breath. “He’s definitely clairvoyant, though. How the hell did he know my tits were sagging when he didn’t turn around to look at me?”

When I entered the hut he was standing on a chair, still fixing the hole in the roof. “Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy,” he said, not looking around. “All your life that’s been your mantra. No wonder you’re stunted, you haven’t even begun to live your own life, you’re waiting for daddy before you begin. Get over it.”

Now he climbed down off the chair. He was taller than I expected, about five eleven, incredibly skinny like representations of the Buddha when he was starving in the forest. He wore only an old shapeless pair of shorts held up with a piece of string, and his long hair was held back in a makeshift gray bun also tied with string. It had been decades since he’d shaved. As he possessed a mixture of Chinese and Thai genes, his beard was sparse but long, drooping down from the corners of his mouth, which was almost invisible. It ended in a few white wisps. Apart from a black fire in the depths of his eyes he looked as if he had maybe a week left in the body. And his tongue, of course. That was alive and kicking.

He assessed me in a blink. “Now I see you better. That father thing is just a distraction, isn’t it? You’re like me. I saw you in a dream.”

“How’s that?”

“A total misfit. You could come from the most stable, loving, chaste, comfortable family in Thailand with a beautiful mum and a wise dad and the very best schooling, and you’d still be all fucked-up. You chose a broken home and a whore for a mother just so you’d have an excuse to be weird. Maybe you’re not so dumb after all.” An extra voltage of gleam came into his eye. “It’s your equivalent of a broken roof.” I could see he believed he’d won the battle and was pleased with himself. “It’s your great distraction. Anytime you’re in danger of having to face the real challenge of your life, you deflect. You tell yourself you’re looking for your true identity, which can only happen when you’ve found your daddy, who, incidentally, will be of no use to you at all when you finally meet him. What a psycho scam. I’m almost impressed.” He paused for breath. “It’s not entirely your fault. Man has made astonishing strides recently in all things inessential. The price we’ve paid is enormous. Stuck with an infantile description of reality that cannot come to terms with death or even lesser challenges, the eternal infant must torture himself for lifetime after lifetime, probably without end.”

This time when I arrive at the shack I show him the printout of the English words on the mirror. He studies it for a long moment. “Don’t you want to know what it says?” I ask.

“No. What it says has no importance. Can’t you see what it really says, smartass? It’s telling you how big your problem really is.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s not written by a human being. I saw that in a dream last night, but even I couldn’t believe it. It’s there, though, plain as day.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The individual characters. Look at that one, what’s that called?”

“It’s an
E.
”

“Right. There are lots of them. And they’re all the same.”

“Of course they’re all the same. They’re all
E
s.”

“Idiot. I mean they’re
exactly
the same. Same size, same shape, no variation at all. You’ve meditated, you’ve studied the Abhidharma, you know how the mind works. Say it takes a tenth of a second to make one stroke of a pen. Then there’s a gap in consciousness too brief to notice, but it’s vital to your functioning. During that gap the whole history of humanity intervenes in the form of sparks and flashes, your own personal history, the whole cosmos, actually, which of course doesn’t exist in time, but when you make the next stroke of the pen you are a different person. After a whole inhalation and exhalation nothing at all remains except the blueprint. No way the next stroke is going to be identical to the first, there has to be a subtle difference. When it comes to a whole letter, well, no normal person possessed of normal consciousness will produce exactly the same letter over and over again.”

He stares at me. I take back the printout, hold it close to study, nod, hand it back to him. “So what are you saying? Someone has a template they use to write this stuff on mirrors in blood after they’ve brutally beheaded a person?”

“No. I’m saying the hand that wrote it was human, the mind controlling that hand was not. It was not a real mind. It was a clone of a mind.”

I gape.

“That’s a terrific battle you’ve got on your hands. Try not to win it.”

“Try
not
to win it?”

“Sure. If you win it you’ll get conceited and start feeling too positive about life, and you’ll come back powerful and successful in the next incarnation and totally fuck up all over again and have to start over as a dog or something. If you must win, make sure it hurts so bad you don’t ever want to go through something like that again.” He shrugs. “But you probably won’t win. This is big. Very big. This is the end of the world, what you have there on that piece of paper.” He scratches his beard. “By the way, what does it say?”