‘Yeah,’ said the man and laughed quietly. ‘Got you now. I saw you take the butt.’
For a few seconds I couldn’t get a handle on the situation. I kept thinking – what if I actually had been asleep? The sheets might have caught fire. I might have burned to death. The panic flipped into anger, but I suppressed it. The man was way too much of a random element for me to lose my temper. I could still only see his head and that was back-lit, in shadow.
Holding up the joint I asked, ‘Do you want this back?’
‘You were listening,’ he replied, ignoring me. ‘Heard me talking about the beach.’
‘…You’ve got a loud voice.’
‘Tell me what you heard.’
‘I didn’t hear anything.’
‘…Heard nothing?’
He paused for a moment, then pressed his face into the netting. ‘You’re lying.’
‘No. I was asleep You just woke me up…when you threw this joint at me.’
‘You were listening, ’ he hissed.
‘I don’t care if you don’t believe me.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Well…I don’t care…Look.’ I stood on the bed so our heads were at the same level, and held up the joint to the hole he’d made. ‘If you want this, take it. All I want is to go to sleep.’
As I lifted my hand he pulled back, moving out of the shadow. His face was flat like a boxer’s, the nose busted too many times to have any form, and his lower jaw was too large for the top half of his skull. It would have been threatening if not for the body it was attached to. The jaw tapered into a neck so thin it seemed incredible that it supported his head, and his T–shirt hung slackly on coat-hanger shoulders.
Past him I saw into his room. There was a window, as I’d assumed, but he’d taped it up with pages from a newspaper. Apart from that it was bare.
His hand reached through the gap and plucked the butt from my fingers.
‘OK,’ I said, thinking I’d gained some kind of control. ‘Now leave me alone.’
‘No,’ he replied flatly.
‘…No?’
‘No.’
‘Why not? What do you…do you want something?’
‘Yep.’ He grinned. ‘And that’s why…’ Again he pushed his face into the netting‘…I won’t leave you alone.’
But as soon as he said it he seemed to change his mind. He ducked out of sight, obscured by the angle of the wall. I stayed standing for a couple of seconds, confused but wanting to reinforce my authority – like it wasn’t me stepping down, just him. Then I heard him relight his joint. I let that mark the end of it and lay back down on the bed.
♦
Even after he’d switched his light off, twenty or so minutes later, I still couldn’t get back to sleep. I was too keyed up, too much stuff was running through my head. Beaches and bitches; I was exhausted, jumpy with adrenalin. Perhaps, given an hour of silence, I might have relaxed, but soon after the man’s light went out the French couple came back to their room and started having sex. It was impossible, hearing their panting and feeling the vibrations of their shifting bed, not to visualize them. The brief glimpse of the girl’s face I’d caught in the corridor was stuck in my head. An exquisite face. Dark skin and dark hair, brown eyes. Full lips.
After they’d finished I had a powerful urge for a cigarette – empathy maybe – but I stopped myself. I knew that if I did they’d hear me rustling the packet or lighting the match. The illusion of their privacy would be broken.
Instead I concentrated on lying as still as I could, for as long as I could. It turned out I could do it for quite a long while.
∨ The Beach ∧
3
Geography
The Khao San Road woke early. At five, muffled car horns began sounding off in the street outside, Bangkok’s version of the dawn chorus. Then the water-pipes under the floor started to rattle as the guest-house staff took their showers. I could hear their conversations, the plaintive sound of Thai just rising above the splashing water.
Lying on my bed, listening to the morning noises, the tension of the previous night became unreal and distant. Although I couldn’t understand what the staff were saying to each other, their chattering and occasional laughter conveyed a sense of normality: they were doing what they did every morning, their thoughts connected only to routine. I imagined they might be discussing who would go for kitchen supplies in the market that day or who would be sweeping the halls.
Around five thirty a few bedroom-door bolts clicked open as the early-bird travellers emerged and the die-hard party-goers from Patpong returned. Two German girls clattered up the wooden stairs at the far end of my corridor, apparently wearing clogs. I realized that the dreamless snatches of sleep I’d managed were finished, so I decided to have a cigarette, the one I’d denied myself a few hours before.
The early morning smoke was a tonic. I gazed upwards, an empty matchbox for an ashtray balanced on my stomach, and every puff I blew into the ceiling fan lifted my spirits a little higher. Before long my mind turned to thoughts of food. I left my room to see if there was any breakfast to be had in the eating area downstairs.
There were already a few travellers at the tables, dozily sipping glasses of black coffee. One of them, still sitting on the same chair as yesterday evening, was the helpful mute⁄heroin addict. He’d been there all night, judging by his glazed stare. As I sat down I gave him a friendly smile and he tilted his head in reply.
I began studying the menu, a once white sheet of A4 paper with such an extensive list of dishes I felt making a choice was beyond my ability. Then I was distracted by a delicious smell. A kitchen boy had wandered over with a tray of fruit pancakes. He distributed them to a group of Americans, cutting off a good-natured argument about train times to Chiang Mai.
One of them noticed me eyeing their food and he pointed at his plate. ‘Banana pancakes,’ he said. ‘The business.’
I nodded. ‘They smell pretty good.’
‘Taste better. English?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Been here long?’
‘Since yesterday evening. You?’
‘A week,’ he replied, and popped a piece of pancake in his mouth, looking away as he did so. I guessed that signalled the end of the exchange.
The kitchen boy came over to my table and stood there, gazing at me expectantly through sleepy eyes.
‘One banana pancake, please,’ I said, obliged into making a snap decision.
‘You wan’ order one banan’ pancake?’
‘Please.’
‘You wan’ order drink?’
‘Uh, a Coke. No, a Sprite.’
‘You wan’ one banan’ pancake, one Spri’.’
‘Please.’
He strolled back towards the kitchen, and a sudden warm swell of happiness washed over me. The sun was bright on the road outside. A man was setting up his stall on the pavement, arranging bootleg tapes into rows. Next to him a small girl sliced pineapples, cutting the tough skin into neat, spiralling designs. Behind her an even smaller girl used a rag to keep the flies at bay.
I lit my second cigarette of the day, not wanting it, just feeling it was the right thing to do.
♦
The French girl appeared without her boyfriend and without any shoes. Her legs were brown and slim, her skirt short. She delicately padded through the café. We all watched her. The heroin mute, the group of Americans, the Thai kitchen boys. We all saw the way she moved her hips to slide between the tables and the silver bracelets on her wrists. When her eyes glanced around the room we looked away, and when she turned to the street we looked back.