“Okay,” says the FBI, “could you tell me what these are all doing in the grounds of the Hilton hotel?”
There may be as many as three hundred of them, ranging from six inches in length to one which is all of ten feet tall. They are arranged in a semicircle around the spirit house and even form a kind of low fencing around the flower beds. They are parabolic with bulbous glans, a tiny slit at the top, and some are on gun carriages with balls hanging down. Some are stone, at least three are concrete and most are wood. Some are painted lurid reds and greens. To the left is a gigantic ficus tree, its aerial roots tangled in passionate embraces.
“The spirit house is dedicated to the spirit of the tree, which happens to be male.”
“And this is a Buddhist country?”
“Buddhist with a lot of Hinduism and animism underneath.”
“I’m surprised the Hilton management put up with it.”
“They wouldn’t have had any choice. You don’t destroy important shrines-it’s incredibly unlucky. No one wants bad luck, especially not senior management of international corporations.”
“So who brings all these cocks? Who adorns them with fresh marigolds?”
“Local women.”
The FBI walks up to one and stares at it. “Women bring giant dildos to dedicate to the male spirit of the ficus tree? Hmm, food for thought.” She extends a finger and traces the loop of the glans where it meets the shaft. She checks me with a half smile. I think the effects of that antiflirting course are wearing off. I decide not to return the smile, not even my half of it, and am shocked by the anger-cloud which passes over her face. She recovers in an instant and now we are walking briskly back to the lobby and the coffee shop. I’m thinking about the Heckler & Koch when she snaps: “There’s a meeting at the embassy tomorrow, Bradley’s senior officer is going to tell us what he knows, if anything. In the interests of information-sharing, you’re invited to attend. I’ll tell Rosen you’re coming.”
I think I’m being dismissed, without discovering why I was summoned in the first place. Despite decades of study, I still find the Western mind hard to take, close-up. The expectation that the world should respond to every passing whim (ice cream, cock, target practice) is shocking to this son of a whore. Like most primitive people, I believe that morality arises from a state of primeval innocence to which we must try to be faithful if we are not to be lost altogether. I fear such a conviction would be quaint and pathetic to the FBI, if I ever dared to express it. In Western terms Jones and Fritz are poles apart; to me they are almost identicaclass="underline" two infantile bundles of appetites-except that one is a catcher and the other got caught.
30
I’m late for the meeting and racing to the embassy on the back of a Honda 125, listening to Pisit on my Walkman. He is doing his daily run-down of the Thai-language dailies.
The tabloid Thai Rath has resurrected the old story of the cop’s wife who chopped off her husband’s penis (the standard penalty for overuse outside the home) and attached it to a helium balloon to send it sailing over the city. The significance of the balloon was that it made it impossible for Police Sergeant Purachai Sorasuchart to retrieve his organ within the vital nine-hour minimum for our skilled surgeons to reattach it. The organ was never recovered. Thai Rath reports that new evidence from neighbors now suggests that the helium balloon was a sensationalist invention (probably by Thai Rath), for Mrs. Purachai was seen on the day of the severance behind her house prodding about tearfully in the rubbish heap, which was unfortunately much visited by rats who doubtless got there before her. Pisit insinuates that the new evidence itself was stimulated into life by Thai Rath, who wanted an excuse to replay the story which Pisit is now replaying. Now Dr. Muratai comes on the program to be jollied into giving the usual lurid details of the reattachment surgery and why Thai surgeons are the best in the world in this field: they get more practice. “So, gentlemen, if your philandering results in a visit from the knife in the night, whatever you do, retrieve the missing piece and don’t forget the ice.”
Pisit reminds us, Thai-style, that the story had the happiest of endings: Sergeant Purachai retired from the force and ordained as a monk in a forest monastery, from which lofty viewpoint he is able to look back on his erstwhile philandering and his former organ with equal indifference. He claims to be grateful to his wife for propelling him onto the Eightfold Path.
I pull off my headphones as we approach the embassy and realize that I’m ten minutes late for the meeting, which I interrupt when I’m finally through the security and allowed to enter Rosen and Nape’s office.
A lean, fair man in his forties in a buff military uniform, bursting with health, is talking to a rapt audience. “I was Bill Bradley’s superior officer for most of the five years he spent here. He came in March 1996, posted at his own request. I arrived in late November of the same year. He was older than me by five years and he was the kind of sergeant you leave alone, if you’re a smart captain. He was a long-service man and he knew his job inside out. He knew what he had to do better than I could have told him, and he also knew the rule book cover to cover. Frankly, with a sergeant like that under your command your worst fear is he’ll make you look inferior, but Bradley knew how to handle that, too. He was always extremely respectful, especially when there were other servicemen around. I guess you would say he was the perfect sergeant and that perfection made him impenetrable from a personal point of view. If I have any insight at all that I would care to share, it would be that he was a man who sought perfection, of himself and his environment. My guess would be that was why he never tried to rise higher. A good sergeant like him is in total control of his world, even though it’s a small one. Join the officer class, and other forces come to bear on you, forces which are never entirely under your control no matter how good you are. A perfect sergeant, on the other hand, is that rare animal in the military: an almost free man, in command of his turf.”
Rosen said: “Anything in his service record you would like to draw our attention to, Captain?”
“His record was perfect. He was serving at the embassy in Yemen at the time of the attack by a local mob with AK-47s, rifles and other firearms. He risked his life bringing back another marine from the roof of the embassy while the roof was under fire. There was talk of a medal, but it never came through.”
“What about his private life?”
“Like I say, this was an impenetrable man. He did his duty and gave a hundred and ten percent while he was here, but off duty we hardly saw him. He came to those functions he had to attend, when a colleague retired or left Bangkok, for example, but didn’t socialize.”
“Isn’t that unusual for a marine?”
“In a younger man it might have been cause for concern, but Bradley was middle-aged, coming to the end of his thirty-year term. A lot of men value their privacy in those circumstances, and no one was about to cross-examine him about what he did in his spare time.”