I explain to her what I have in mind for Lek. I’m quite pleased with her momentary hesitation. “An Elder Sister? Me? You know, I’ve never done that for anyone. I’ve never wanted to. It’s a tough path.” A giggle: “I’ll do it if you beg me to. I want you on your knees in drag.”
“I can’t beg. I don’t know if it’s the right thing or not.”
“Darling, don’t start talking like a farang. There’s no right or wrong-either young Lek is a natural or he’s not. If he is, and he certainly sounds like it, then a whole army could not stop him. Bring him to me. I’ll know what to do the minute I set eyes on him.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“But it’s past midnight.”
“Can there be a better time?”
I call Lek, who gasps with awe, excitement, and fear. We take a cab to Soi 39, where Fatima owns a three-story penthouse apartment in one of the city’s most prestigious developments. On the way I’m seeing Lek the way Fatima will see him; he’s just too damn beautiful for his own good.
Bastard son of a Karen bar girl and a black American GI she’s never met, Fatima is tall and chocolate brown. Of course she is ravishing in her favorite kimono (crimson with a great white sash), her long tragic face, scrubbing-board stomach, long finely manicured hands, exaggerated mascara, and eyes that have seen the very depths of desolation. She stands at the door holding Lek at arm’s length. I’m already an irrelevant spectator. How to explain to the spiritually sightless the extraordinary event that takes place when Lek’s guardian spirit recognizes this ancient soul? Fatima leans against her doorjamb; behind her: a vista of rare art objects, mostly priceless jade items on pedestals, leading to a floor-to-ceiling panoramic window filled with city lights and a yellow moon.
“Oh Buddha,” she says, still holding Lek’s hand. I cough. “You can leave us now,” she whispers hoarsely, without taking her eyes off Lek.
When I get back to my hovel, I can’t sleep. I have lived and worked in the heterosexual division of the sex trade all my life, I have seen all the things that men and women do to each other-and none of it approaches the intensity of katoeys. I don’t want to worry about Lek anymore, or what Fatima might do to him. He’ll have to follow the complex rules of his new world. By contrast, the assassination of Mitch Turner seems a more penetrable mystery-almost mundane, but no less compelling for that. I take out the fat wad of A4 paper I collected in Songai Kolok and start to read Chanya’s diary all over again.
FOUR. Chanya’s Diary
26
Chanya begins her diary thus: There are two Chanyas. Chanya One is noble, pure, and shines like gold. Chanya Two fucks for money. This is why whores go mad.
She refers to herself in the third person, a permissible device in spoken and written Thai and very common in the humbler classes: Chanya has always wanted to go to Saharat Amerika.
I seriously thought about translating the whole thing word for word for you, farang, but the style didn’t fit with the rest of the narrative, and I know how you love congruity (I also got frustrated because I couldn’t stick in any comments of my own), so I’ve opted for an impressionistic rendering of the kind deplored by all true scholars, if that’s okay?
America was a dream that infected her soul via a television screen while she was still a child. Starting with the Empire State Building and the Grand Canyon, her mind had collected a million brilliant images of a nation with a genius for self-promotion. One fine day, when she had saved enough money to keep her parents for a few months, and had paid for her sister’s college fees for that semester, and had bought a piece of land in her village near Surin where she would build her trophy house on her return, and had bought a laptop with Thai word processor, she contacted a gang who had a reputation for honesty and reliability. Their fees were high-nearly fifteen thousand dollars-but they provided the full service, including a genuine Thai passport with a genuine entry visa to the United States, a return air ticket good for one year, a minder who accompanied her as far as Immigration in New York to make sure she did not freak out at the crucial moment and blow the whole operation, and a room and a job in a massage parlor in Texas.
In return for her working in the massage parlor for six months, the gang reduced the fees by five thousand dollars. Of course, she would pay this back by swelling the profits of the massage parlor, which would contribute to the gang’s overheads. She would have to make her own money those first months through tips and by turning tricks on the side, but she knew how to do that and had no illusions. She would use that time to perfect her English, get to know more about American men, and work out which was the best city in which to practice her profession for maximum profit.
The way she saw it, she would be at the top of her game in a country that paid better than any other. When she finished, after a couple of years, she would still be under thirty years old. She would retire to her brand-new house with carport and giant wide-screen TV, decorated internally with photographs of Chanya in Amerika. The whole village would be proud of her and give her face. She would be a queen, and everyone would approve of the way she took care of her family. Maybe she would have a baby? Unlike most of her friends, she had not fallen pregnant to a Thai lover at age eighteen. She was childless and went along with the more recent fashion in that she liked the idea of having a half-farang child, who tended, according to the latest fad anyway, to be more beautiful than Thais and with lighter skin. She had no particular desire to marry, although a Buddhist ceremony was not out of the question. She knew enough about farang men to know that the father of her child was unlikely to stick around. Indeed, the chances were he would disappear the day she told him she was pregnant, which was fine by her. The function of a husband was to provide. If a woman had money, what did she need a husband for? She could satisfy her sexual needs anytime she liked, although she had always practiced Buddhist meditation and expected to become more devout once her working days were over. She would probably give up sex altogether once she retired. It was a very long time since she had enjoyed it or even thought about it other than in a professional sense. Come to think of it, she wasn’t sure she ever had felt any real passion for a man. Sex was boring. It was paytime that made her heart skip a beat.
She has insisted on a window seat in the Thai Airways 747, and her first view of America is the New England coastline. The gang chose for her to fly west, with a short stopover at Heathrow Airport in London, so for most of the journey, there has been only blackness out the window as they fled the sun. Now, though, the sun has caught up, and eight thousand feet below, the New England coast looks as pristine as when the Pilgrims first arrived. She had no idea that America could be breathtaking in its natural beauty, so it’s quite a surprise to behold that aquamarine lazily lapping at a jagged line of rocks that reflect the morning light with the brilliance of diamonds. She has never been out of Thailand before, never seen a northern landscape. It looks so pure and unspoiled.