“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.