It is about eleven-thirty, the time when all good hawkers get cooking in readiness for the midday rush. They have set up their stalls opposite the police station especially for cops and staff, which earns them a special dispensation from arrest. You can tell what they are selling depending on the utensils: a simmering brass basin probably means a beef-based soup; a big enamel basin will have pigs’ legs simmering in it; a dark brown burnt-clay mortar with wooden pestle will produce wickedly hot somtan salad; a wok over charcoal means a fry-up, and so on.
I’ve cooled down a bit by the time I’m returning to the station, and I’m wondering if this might be the time to bring the monk in for questioning when he reappears out of the Internet cafe just as I am passing and bumps into me all over again. I turn on him with a sarcastic comment on my lips but freeze because he is standing with his hands in the air, palms facing me. The expression on his face is quizzical, almost amused. Mad monks are as common in Buddhism as in other monastic traditions. I think he must be really crazy, though, when he maneuvers to stay in front of me until I can find a way around him. I’m still thinking about him when I reach my desk and Lek joins me.
“D’you know what that Internet monk just did? He deliberately bumped into me and went like this.” I hold up both hands, palms toward Lek.
“He did the same thing to me yesterday.” I’ve noticed that Lek is less keen on the monk than he once was. “Maybe he is nuts. Did he show you his scar?”
“What scar?”
“I thought that was why he was holding his hands up. He has this scar on his wrist, like he once tried to commit suicide or something and maybe now he’s obsessing in some way.”
“But the bracelets?” I say.
“Maybe he’s giving bracelets to everyone he meets. Maybe there is no connection.”
“He didn’t give me one.”
Actually, I did see the scar but paid it no attention. We both shrug. Nobody wants to be the one to get a monk put away in a mental asylum. It’s a shame, though, for one so young to be in such decline. I dismiss him from my thoughts as I refocus on how to pot Tanakan, whether Vikorn likes it or not. I don’t think about the monk at all for the rest of the morning, and it’s only when Lek and I are sitting at a cooked-food stall for kong kob kiao, something to chew, that I think of him again. I am holding half a dozen fish balls on a stick, which I put down on the table.
“The scar,” I’s‘ay.
“What scar?”
“On the monk’s wrist.”
“What about it?”
“I want you to check the Internet cafe to see if he’s still there. I’m going back to the station. If he’s in there, ask him if he wouldn’t mind coming up to see me at his convenience. Be polite.”
Lek shrugs. Maybe I’m the one who will soon end up in the nuthouse.
I watch from the window next to my desk while Lek emerges from the Internet cafe, pushing his hair back with both hands. He appears at my desk a few minutes later, alone.
“Well?”
“He said he would be delighted to come and see you here in about an hour. He is going to the wat to meditate for a short time.”
I feel a twinge of annoyance, then let it pass. I remember that no one is more meticulous than a fraud. I’m recovered by the time he does show up, only to get irritated all over again at his self-conscious monk-at-the-shore-of-nirvana posing. I have to take myself in hand not to use an aggressive interrogation technique. Since he likes to wear monk’s robes, he obviously enjoys seeing others grovel.
“Phra-I’m sorry, I do not know your Sangha name.”
His sangfroid is imperturbable, I have to give him that. “It doesn’t matter. From the look on your face, I suppose you believe I do not have a Sangha name. Is that not so?”
Irritated all over again, I ask, “How many precepts do you follow?”
“What a childish question, Detective. You know very well every monk must follow two hundred and twenty-seven precepts.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, “foolish of me.” I am taken aback at the educated quality of his Thai. I expected a lost, unlettered young man from the poor north.
“I understand. You think that I have not been behaving like a monk, therefore I cannot be one. This is called clinging to fixed images or, more generally, ignorance. Do you always behave like a detective, Detective?”
The elegance of his answer startles me into playing a poor hand. “For a monk you spend an awful lot of time in an Internet cafe. Are you a modernist Buddhist?”
A smile-not quite patronizing, but close. “Of course not. Modernism is largely a form of entertainment, and a superficial one at that. It doesn’t survive environmental disasters or oil shortages. It doesn’t even survive terrorist attacks. It certainly doesn’t survive poverty, which is the lot of most of us. One flick of a switch, and the images fade from the screen. Ancient questions begin to torment us all over again: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? But without wisdom, these questions turn toxic. Confusion seeks relief in bigotry, which leads to conflict. One high-tech war, and we’re back to the Stone Age. This is the connection between modernism and Buddhism. In other words, there isn’t one unless you posit the latter as a cure for the former.” A sudden charming smile: “On the other hand, it’s convenient to download Buddhist texts without having to spend hours searching for them in a library. Until recently I’d had no idea how limited Theravada is. If I were to ordain today, I think I would do so in Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama lives.”
I push my chair back. It has dawned on me that the case has taken an unexpected, even a shocking turn. In my surprise I find I am mesmerized by this young phra, whose true identity seems to grow more elusive whenever he opens his mouth. Have I mistaken his mannerisms for those of a fraud exactly because he is so advanced that he is no longer conscious of the effect he has on others? Perhaps he doesn’t give a damn. Real monks don’t.
“I’ll take you to a private room.”
In our smallest interrogation room I say, “You have been watching me for more than a week now. Why?”
“I wanted to tell you about my sister,” he says with that same balance of compassion and detachment that may or may not be authentic.
My tension collapses in a grateful sigh. “You sister’s name is Damrong?”
“Yes. You guessed anyway from the scars. I made it obvious enough.”
“You have information regarding her death?”
“No, none at all.”
“So why come to me?”
“Because she has information she wants to give you. She visits me every night. Her soul is not at rest.”
I take a moment to absorb this forensic bombshell. “Why play games? Why not come to see me like a normal person?”
“I am not a normal person. I am a monk.”
“Or does it have something to do with that?” I point to his left wrist, where a short white scar exactly replicates the scar on Damrong’s wrist.
“Not what you think,” he says with a smile. “A teenage prank, nothing more.”
I grunt in resignation. “Please tell me all you know,” I say with a sigh.
“Not here,” he says, looking a little fastidiously around the small bare room. “I prefer the outdoors. I think you do too, is that not so?”
He leads, I follow, out into the blinding light and the never-ending business of the street. I remain half a step behind him, as protocol requires. We keep pace with a man in a straw hat pulling a cart piled high with brushes, brooms, and dustpans while I bend my ear to catch the monk’s every ward.
Damrong, according to her brother, was something of a female arhat, or Buddhist saint. Born with the name of Gamon, now using the Sangha name of Phra Titanaka, he was a sickly child. Even at that time their mother was a yaa baa addict and losing her mind, given to sudden bouts of irrational violent anger. Their father was a career criminal whose body was covered in tattoos bearing magical incantations in khom, the ancient Khmer script, who was ritually murdered by local police when Gamon was seven years old. Both parents were Khmer refugees, who fled after Nixon bombed the eastern half of their country and destabilized the whole of it. Both children were born in a refugee camp on the Thai side of the border. His reverence for his sister is impressive.