We’re turning into Wireless Road now, on the way to the Hilton. I wonder what is going to happen next when I say: “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because I wasn’t going to pop your naÏveté until you popped mine. I kinda liked that medieval loyalty you have for your Colonel-says a lot for your heart, but not much for your head. No money no honey, isn’t that what your ma always told you?”
“Fuck you.” As she’s getting out of the cab, I say: “Surichai? What was he doing there tonight?”
An elaborate raising of the hands and shoulders. “Did I say I knew everything?” Then: “Want me to pay for the cab, or can you manage?” Poking her head back into the car, almost going nose to nose with me: “Warren’s winning, by the way. He’ll have me out of here in a week or less. I’ll be out of your hair.”
I am in the back of the cab, racing through the night; the shock of Vikorn socializing with Warren and Surchai, of Fatima singing in a jazz club, is slowly eclipsed by a shock of my own making. I’ve never told the story of my mother’s first sale of her body before, never really taken it out from that secret, painful place where it resides in my heart. It wasn’t Nong who told me, but Pichai. The friend who sat in the toilet was Wanna, Pichai’s mother, who must have told her son, who whispered the story to me one dark night up in the monastery, when the future seemed nonexistent.
What is shocking is the way the story has marked me without my realizing it, and Jones’ effortless reading of me: yes, that must be why I’ve never slept with a farang woman. If I didn’t know that about myself, what else don’t I know?
When I reach my room I call Jones. She is half asleep, surprised to hear from me and intrigued by the tremor in my voice. “According to the principles of profiling, how long has Fatima got?”
“Before she flips completely you mean? There’s no way of knowing that. Profiling is like predicting share prices. You know what the market will do eventually, but you never know when. A day, a month, a year-who knows? Why is it suddenly so important?”
“Surichai,” I say, and hang up.
There was something else too-something to which only a Thai cop would have attached significance. A couple of tables removed from Vikorn’s group: five well-dressed Chinese men in business suits. Vikorn must have been aware of them. Likewise Warren.
47
Professor Beckendorf, in volume 3 of his masterwork Thai Culture Explained, turns almost Thai himself in the final paragraph of chapter 29 (“Fate and Fatality in Modern Siam”) in the way he lurches without warning into metaphysics:
Whereas your average Westerner does all he can to direct and control his fate, the latter-day Thai is no closer to adopting this attitude to life than were his ancestors a hundred or two hundred years ago. If there is any aspect of modern Thai psychology which continues to accept in toto the Buddhist doctrine of karma (so close to that Islamic fatalism often expressed by the phrase: It is written) it is surely in the conviction that que sera, sera. At first glance such fatalism may seem backward, even perverse given the dazzling spectrum of weapons Westerners now have in their arsenal against the vicissitudes of life; but anyone who spends much time in the kingdom quickly finds themselves questioning the wisdom, and even the sincerity, of Western attitudes. When he has paid up his taxes, his life insurance, his medical insurance, accident insurance, retrained himself in the latest marketable skills, saved for his kids’ education, paid alimony, bought the house and car which his status absolutely requires he buy within the rules of his particular tribe, given up alcohol abuse, nicotine, extramarital sex and recreational drugs, spent his two-week vacation on some self-improving (but safe) adventure holiday, learned to be hypercareful of what he says to or does with members of the opposite sex, the average Westerner may-and often does-wonder where his life went. He may also-and invariably does-feel cheated when he discovers existentially that all the worrying and all the insurance payments have availed him not a jot or tittle in protecting him against fire, burglary, flood, earthquake, tornado, the sack, terrorist activity, or his spouse’s precipitate desertion with the kids, the car and all the spare cash in the joint bank account. True enough, in a kingdom without safety nets a citizen may well be brutally flattened by accident or illness, where a Westerner might have bought himself a measure of protection, but in between the bumps a Thai still lives his life in a state of sublime insouciance. The standard Western observation is that the Thai is living in a fool’s paradise. Perhaps, but might the Thai not reply that the Westerner has built himself a fool’s hell?
One cannot help but feel sorry for Beckendorf, peeping out at us from between his books, wishing to god (or Buddha) he had the guts to drop out, take some yaa baa, go to a disco, pick up a girl and get laid. I don’t know why he has popped into my mind as I ride a motorcycle taxi on my way back to Warren Fine Art in River City. As far as I know, Warren and Beckendorf have nothing in common; indeed, you might say they represent opposite ends of the farang spectrum, with Beckendorf the eternal student, naÏve and credulous despite all his fine long words, and Warren the ultimate cynic. But they do both belong to the farang spectrum, both spend their lives looking over the wall a little wistfully, although wistful is not the first word that comes to mind when I think of Warren. Perhaps I’m trying to make sense of a telephone conversation last night at around midnight in which Warren invited me to come “check out my wares” this Sunday morning. There was something just a shade, well, wistful in the voice, almost shy, as if he had something personal to share which he had trouble putting into words. He even seemed on the point of blurting something out-again, not a word I would have expected to think of in his case-when Fatima came to his rescue and asked me in Thai, in her soft, husky tones, if I could make it for around 11 a.m. She made it clear that Kimberley Jones was not invited.