If anything, I liked the place even more than the spectacular apartment in Ayutthaya. Here silk had been exchanged for cotton, gold and black lacquerware for exquisite old wood carving and painted columns, marble tile for a courtyard of laterite blocks.
It was here, I knew from Praneet, that Will Beauchamp had come on a reasonably regular basis to write. My bedroom had the desk I was certain he used, not because it was the only desk in the little house, although it was, but because it was the perfect place for contemplation and creation, with a view through an open window to sunlight filtering through the dark and luxurious tropical foliage that surrounded the grounds. I found his business card for Fairfield Antiques, one side in English, the other in Thai, stuck in the side of one of the drawers. In that same drawer I found red dust and some terra-cotta residue that made me think of the broken amulet. I looked in vain for more. If Will’s ghost was there, I couldn’t feel it. There was only the rustle of the breeze in the leaves, the rattle of bamboo, and the songs of birds. It was very close to paradise.
The guest pavilion also afforded me a view of the comings and goings at the main house. Khun Wichai visited, favoring me with his lovely smile and a wave as he went by. I hoped he would stay for dinner, especially given he’d not brought Busakorn, but he was there, apparently, on business. There were others who came and went, none of them familiar. I gathered that the business the family was there to discuss was Wongvipa’s. She had a factory and kilns just outside the city where her terra-cotta products were made.
The other haven of silence was to be found in the temples, or wats. There were hundreds of them in the city, some of them so ancient they were essentially ruins, others more modern and vital. It was to one of these that I took myself one day, the piece of paper with its name written so laboriously by the woman in the amulet market in Bangkok clutched tightly in my hand. Wats are essentially composed of two areas, the quarters of the monks and the more public areas for worship. The residences tend to be rather austere, but the public areas are often a riot of color, and gold, and splendid carving. I presented myself at the wat in question, and asked to meet with an English-speaking priest. To my surprise, they obliged.
I was ushered into one of the public buildings, abandoning my shoes, and ascending a staircase lined with protective serpents, or nagas. I had been well instructed never to touch a monk but to kneel in his presence and bow, forehead to the floor on meeting him, to ensure that the bottom of my feet at no time pointed toward either the monk or, more importantly, the Buddha image. I was to call him ajahn, which I gather means teacher. I am not religious, I’m afraid, and I was so enchanted by the place, from the decaying frescoes in reds and blues that depicted scenes from the life of Buddha, to his gold image, so calm and majestic, and at least twelve or fifteen feet high and beautifully crafted, that I did not for a time notice the monk who was sitting on a platform, his legs crossed, watching me.
“Oh dear,” I muttered and managed to get myself more or less in the right position. At the monk’s command, I was able to sit up, but had to sit on the floor with my legs tucked to one side, a position that at my age is something of a trial.
I looked up to see a man, his head shaved, dressed in the orange robe of the monk, one shoulder bare in the Thai style. What I noticed most were his blue eyes.
“You’re surprised,” he said softly. “To see a white man here.”
“I suppose I am,” I said. “Where are you from, ajahn!”
“California, but I have been here many years.” We talked about several things for a few minutes, the weather, how I liked Chiang Mai, his hometown of Fresno.
“Do you miss it?” I said.
“Fresno?” he replied with a slight smile. “California? My former life? Sex?”
That hadn’t been what I’d meant.
“No,” he said finally. But then he said, “You came here for a purpose.”
“Yes. I am looking for a monk. May I?” I said, pointing to my bag. “I have a photograph. I’m told he is associated with this temple.”
“Of course,” he said. He barely looked at the photo before handing it back to me. “He is not here.”
“But he was,” I persisted. The monk did not reply.
“Ajahn, would you please tell me about him,” I said. “I have no idea if it is relevant, but I do need to know if it is possible to talk to him. I am trying to find a man who abandoned his wife and disabled child in Canada, and I am following up every lead I have, which is not many.”
The monk said nothing for quite a while. Then he said, so softly I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly, “In Buddhism, a cool heart is something to strive for.”
“What?”
“You are very troubled about something.”
I thought about that for a moment or two. “I don’t think so,” I said. “Not any more than usual. Well, maybe I am. A little, anyway.”
He didn’t say anything.
I looked at the frescoes for a minute or two, admired the workmanship, the carved windows. Then suddenly I was just burbling away at this total stranger. I told him about Will and Natalie, about Jennifer and Chat, about my relationship with Rob. Part of me was horrified that I was going on like that, but the other was just relieved.
“You don’t have children of your own, do you?” he said when I stopped for breath.
“No.”
“Was that a mistake?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. But I have no patience. If they wouldn’t stop crying or something, I probably would have killed them.” There was a perceptible pause. I was dimly aware of chanting off in the distance somewhere, and the ringing of bells, but they had a muffled quality. “Actually,” I said. “That is not true. I would not have killed them. I would not have abandoned them. Will’s daughter is mentally handicapped, but she has the most beautiful smile you have ever seen. How could he do what he did? And you know what? He came here and he started writing a book about a woman who chopped her husband into bits and murdered her child. At least everybody thinks she did. The child’s body was never found. What would it take to make a mother murder her child? What possible conditions, other than utter madness, would have to prevail for that to happen? Surely it is our responsibility as adults to protect our children, our own, or somebody else’s.” I could hear my voice coming out in a croak as I spoke, and I realized that I had had no idea I was this upset about everything. I thought I would choke on my bile.
“And you know what else?” I said. “Almost no one has told me the truth, Thais and whites alike, since I got here. They smile, they are polite, and they lie through their teeth. Or if they haven’t lied, they have withheld information. And that includes you,” I said, pointing at the photograph.
For a moment I thought I would be struck by lightning for speaking to a monk that way.
“I suppose all religious groups have their bad apples,” he said after a minute. “He was one of them. He was a senior monk here, and he was found to have a rather spectacular home outside where he lived with a woman and drove a Mercedes. We thought he was retreating to meditate alone. The Ministry of Religious Affairs investigated—this was all done rather quietly, you understand—and he is no longer a monk.”
“Is that it?”
“No. He obviously had a lot of money. It was thought he was taking money from the temple, but there was no evidence that he had. The police decided his money came from smuggling.”