She pats my hand. “As soon as you’re out of here, let’s you and me spend a few days at my house in Phetchabun, no? We’ll get in some beer, I’ll invite some people, we’ll play hi-lo, I can get you some ganja if you want-I know how much Pichai’s death must be affecting you.”
“Mother-”
Another pat on the hand. “I’m building up the courage, darling. Really I am.”
I sigh and allow her an indulgent smile. At least she has come to the hospital and plans to stay the week in Bangkok so she can be near me. She smokes another cigarette, tells me about Pichai’s funeral, which went exactly as expected-the police had to be called to break up a fight between two yaa baa dealers-and leaves me to fall back to sleep. I awake a few minutes later to find the FBI trying to open a window to let out the cigarette smoke. “Please leave it,” I tell her, “I like the smell of Marlboro.”
“Do you and your mother normally speak to each other in German?”
“Now and then. When we feel like it.”
“Do Thais usually learn German?”
“My mother and I learned a little from one of my professors,” I reply with a smile.
I want you to tell me who my father was. I still wonder about him almost daily, although my obsession has bedded down to some subconscious layer. I still stare rudely at middle-aged white American men who seem to fit the bill, but I no longer suffer from the unhealthy fanaticism of my teens. In my thirteenth year I took over one corner of our hovel and forced my mother to witness my yearning, month by month, while I plastered the walls with old Vietnam War clippings. For one week I was certain he was one of those who fought with superhuman courage in the tunnels of Cu Chi. For more than six weeks he was an aviator, imprisoned and tortured in the Hanoi Hilton, until I discovered that those heroes were not released until after I was born. Where was he during the Tet Offensive? Was he one of those of troubled conscience in the photograph where disillusioned GIs are smoking ganja through the barrels of their rifles? I think I was sixteen when I finally realized that America had lost the war, despite my anonymous father’s best efforts. But by then confusion had already divided my mind. After all, despite his undoubted qualities he must have been one of those white men from far away whose mission it was to kill brown men racially indistinguishable from my mother, her father and her brothers (some years later I realized Vietnam was not a race war but a war of religion). And what about the atrocities? My only overseas trip without Nong consisted of a week in Vietnam, where I searched for him in Cu Chi, Da Nang, Hanoi and the Museum of American War Atrocities in Ho Chi Minh City. And all that time she watched in agony. Sometimes her lips would tremble as if she were about to speak his name, but she never did. What terrible secret was she keeping? Was he “special forces”-one of the torturers?
22
The FBI has a good figure, blue eyes, light blond hair, peaches-and-cream complexion, the pleasant odor of honest soap. No Parisian perfume for her. She tells me her name is Kimberley Jones. I think she’s about twenty-eight and a worrier. She is a little gaunt. I suspect overexercise.
I am in a hospital such as I have never seen: a private room like a room in a five-star hotel, with a window which looks out on palms and banana plants, orchids and bougainvillea, hibiscus and the infinitely enticing whish-whish of an automatic irrigation system. When I last regained consciousness the FBI was already here. She said: “You lost a lot of blood, pilgrim, we only just got to you in time.” She could almost be a nurse, the way she takes my pulse from time to time and plumps the bed.
When I reemerged the second time from the depths of delicious oblivion, where I’m sure I encountered my brother Pichai, the seat by my bed was occupied not by the FBI but by a more military figure.
“All this for a scratch? The Buddha must really love you.”
“How do I look?” I had been afraid to ask this question of a foreign woman.
“Without the nose? On you, an improvement.” To my startled glance, the Colonel added: “Joking, joking.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “But just tell me this, it won’t go any further I promise: Why did you have to kill the old lady? Was she coming on to you?”
I lay back on my pillow and returned to oblivion, just so I could tell Pichai about that one.
It seems that my mother met the Colonel in the corridor today. There’s a gleam in her eye as she draws up her chair.
“He’s very charming, isn’t he? I think he must be very rich.”
“No, Mother.”
“He asked me out on his yacht. Is it true it’s one of those huge things with a captain and crew, swimming platform, all that?”
“No, please, don’t.”
“Oh, I don’t care for myself, but it would be good for you. You deserve promotion more than any cop on the force, and you’ll never get it without developing connections. He even hinted-”
“If I was offered promotion that way, I would refuse it.”
She sighs and pats my hand. “Well, you can’t say I don’t try. You’re such a moral boy, I don’t know where you get it from.”
“Of course you know who I get it from, obviously not from you. I don’t know who I get it from because you won’t tell me.”
Nervous laughter as she reaches for her Marlboro. “I will, darling, one day, I just need a little time, that’s all.”
23
Random-access memory: an island in the Andaman Sea reserved for nature and forbidden to everyone except high-ranking cops with luxury yachts; more girls than I could count, their perfect young bodies permanently sparkling with droplets from incessant diving off the swimming platform (the girls really had fun that trip); Pichai and I uncomfortable and aloof, taking a lot of flak: to refuse bribes was bad enough, to refuse free sex was downright seditious. It was an office outing, a bonding binge soon after the assassination of those yaa baa smugglers, intended to cement the esprit de corps, just in case anyone was getting cold feet (no one was). The other cops were all too keen to bed the girls, leaving Vikorn, Pichai and me to drink beer together and stare at the stars. I guess the old man felt secure there on his boat, with the velvet night around him-and maybe he loved us, Pichai and me. On the boat’s stereo system Vikorn was playing “The Ride of the Valkyries,” the only piece of Western music of which he showed any awareness. In a lull in the conversation Pichai finally asked what no one else had dared to ask: What the hell was that weird music?
Even at his drunkest Vikorn’s war stories were veiled in secrecy. He might seem to lose control of his tongue altogether, but there was something as hard as diamond, some heavily guarded safe room in his mind that he dare not enter in company. The only real clues he gave us consisted of single words: REMFs; Ravens; O-1s; the Other Theater; American Breakfast; eggs over easy; Pat Black.