“Government meaning the cops, right?”
We both stand up at the same time. It really is too hot for arguments. “Who else?”
We trudge back to the office, which is empty. From the window we watch while Suriya expertly drives one of the BMWs onto the jetty. He has already lowered the sling, and now the car sits over it, waiting to be hauled into the air. From across the river a steel barge turns against the current and makes toward the jetty. As soon as the boat is tied up, Suriya gets out of the car to work the gantry. I remember the stories of the first time he tried to work this crane; there are at least three cars drowned in the river directly under the jetty. You would never believe that now, from the great skill he exhibits in putting the car in the bottom of the barge. Merrily he skips off the seat of the gantry to fetch the second BMW. Jones is watching intently.
“New, a BMW like that costs at least thirty thousand U.S. I guess they would go for about twenty secondhand. Is that what they would fetch over here? So in ten minutes’ work we’ve just seen the Police Widows and Orphans Fund swell by forty thousand dollars? Not bad. Does he keep any books?”
“Oh no.”
“That would be incriminating, huh?”
“He doesn’t cheat us.”
Wonderingly: “Nope, I don’t believe he does at that. Let’s go back to town, Sonchai, my learning curve has been even steeper than usual this morning.”
When I reach the station the public area is full with the usual assortment. Three monks are next in line, then some beggars, a bag lady, a young girl about fourteen years old looking impossibly new and bright in this worn corner of the world; perhaps as many as sixty men and women of every age in clothes just a little better than rags. Everyone is waiting patiently with their diverse problems. When I inquire at the desk I discover that no one has heard of Adam Ferral and Sergeant Ruamsantiah was called away urgently to some traffic disaster soon after I left the station and has not yet returned. When I check my watch I see that more than ten hours have passed since he put Ferral in the hole.
The hole is exactly that, a circular excavation in back of the police station originally dug for some plumbing or construction purpose, then discarded. It was Ruamsantiah who arranged for a hinged trapdoor with padlock to be cemented on top. Inhabitants are dependent on the imperfect fit of the lid for ventilation. It takes a few minutes to find the key to the padlock and someone to help me drag the kid out. When we have done so I am relieved to see that Adam Ferral can still walk. Except that it is no longer Adam Ferral who inhabits this body. He staggers around somewhat before I put my arm around him to help him into the building and out again into the public area, where he walks into the front desk, then into the monks, before I take him in hand again to lead him to some vacant chairs at the back where I sit him down. All of a sudden he bursts into chest-jarring sobs. I can think of nothing to do but pat his back and wait. Only a few of the other people in the waiting area turn to look, and then turn back again as if nothing unusual were happening. This is District 8 after all. It takes ten minutes for the sobbing to quiet, and then Ferral yanks at the hatpin through his eyebrow until it comes out and hands it to me.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I’m not doing it for you or the sergeant, pal.” His voice is surprisingly strong and firm and as far as I can recall hardly resembles the voice he used this morning. “When I was down your fucking hole I promised Christ, God, Krishna, Muhammad, Zeus, the Buddha and anyone else who would listen that if I got out of there with my mind halfway intact I’d get rid of it. My old man hates it, he calls it a disfigurement. I’ve been torturing him with it for two years. I’m keeping the nose stud, though.”
“That’s quite a collection of deities you were in touch with.”
“More than in touch,” Ferral says, looking at something on the far wall. “I been talking to them for ten fucking hours. They helped me, you know, with the other things. You know?”
“Yes,” I say. “I know.”
“You been there, huh?”
“Yes.”
He taps my arm. “The Buddha’s great, isn’t he? Terrific sense of humor. He tell you any of those jokes of his?”
“No, I don’t think I’ve ever been quite that intimate.”
Ferral shakes his head. “Cracked me up, man. Really cracked me up. Well, thanks for the experience.”
“I look forward to reading about it on the Web.”
Ferral looks at me as if I’ve committed sacrilege and, pulling himself to his feet, staggers off in the direction of the street. In my hand a hatpin. I watch him go not without a tinge of envy. In nearly two decades of meditation the Buddha has not told me a single joke. Surely one would laugh for eternity?
Back in my hovel I turn Pisit on. His favorite female professor is answering the standard question from a caller about what the trade of prostitution does to a woman psychologically and what kind of wife does she make for those strange farang men who marry her.
“Prostitution ages women in ways they don’t notice at the time. It’s not the act of sex of course, which is perfectly natural and good exercise, it’s the emotional stress of continual deception. After all, the customer is only kidding one person that there is any meaning at all in what he is doing: himself. But the girl has to keep up the pretense with one or more men each night. Such stress works the facial muscles, tightening them, producing that hard look prostitutes are famous for, but more important than that, a great dam of resentment builds up in her mind. The first thing a prostitute does when she finds a man willing to look after her is to give up the sex goddess role and probably the charm too. Invariably, she makes the mistake of assuming the customer wanted to marry the real her, not the fantasy, despite the fact that he is only familiar with the fantasy. Then there is a dramatic change in appearance. Many of the girls use hormones to enhance their breasts, but doctors warn them not to continue for more than a year, because of the risk of cancer. Also, there’s not a whore in Bangkok who doesn’t walk around in six-inch platform shoes. The return to reality can come as quite a shock: from tall, bosomy porn star to flat-chested dwarf. No, prostitutes do not make great wives as a rule, but it has nothing to do with fidelity. Usually the last thing such girls want is an extramarital affair, in which they would probably be expected to play the sex goddess all over again. What they want is the right to be irritable and charmless, which they lost the moment they started on the game.”
Caller: “So such marriages do not usually last?”
“Sadly not. Most bar girls who marry their clients end up back in the bars within a couple of years.”
I think of him. In my mind’s eye his uniform is torn, there is blood on his sleeves and a scythe-shaped scar impressively disfigures one side of his face when he walks into the bar in Pat Pong. He came for some relaxation from the torment of war, a beer and some female company. He is a clean-living American boy, he does not hire prostitutes, not even on R &R, but three (or more) of his closest buddies died yesterday (or the day before) and a man can only take so much. He is young, for god’s sake, twenty-two-no more than twenty-five at the most. The eighteen-year-old girl behind the bar is more than beautiful, she possesses something he didn’t know he was searching for: she is bursting with a vitality which might be the only cure for his crippling sense of loss. It is self-preservation, not lust, that moves him to pay her bar fine and take her back to his hotel. She can play the sex goddess as well as any woman, but she read the heart of this broken young man the minute he walked into the bar. It is not fantasy he wants, but health. She uses her amazing strength to heal him until he is sure he cannot live without her. Some token of their mysterious and sacred coupling is called for. They decide to make a baby. Me.