“That crap? That’s what farangs get all hung up on. Here in Krung Thep we already have designer bodies-the boys on the street will cut anything off, add anything on, take any kind of drugs. We are the future, darling. The farangs will catch up. You’ll see, they’ll soon drop all that psychological caring stuff once they see how much money is in it.”
“But you must have thought about it, that at a crucial moment the man with the knife was going to cut everything off?”
A shrug. “Not really. I was doing it for love, darling. You’re a child of the street, you must know what it means to have nothing to lose? And it wasn’t really a loss. He turned me into a goddess.”
I switch the recorder off. In my mind echoes Dr. Surichai’s question: What is a transsexual? A medieval eunuch pumped full of estrogen? Did Fatima ask herself that very question now and then, in her down moments? I switch the recorder back on.
“But you didn’t make any connection with the jeweler?”
“No, except that that was where the money was coming from at first. Then Bill used the jeweler’s contacts to get into the yaa baa trade, and that was where the money was supposed to be coming from after that. But you know, there wasn’t much time, suddenly, to worry about anything. I’m taking the drugs, going to see the doctor, Bill’s obsessing about my throat, the Adam’s apple thing and what my voice is going to be like-even the whole devil thing just faded into the background after a while. I think Bill just put it into the back of his mind what he’d agreed with the jeweler.”
“When did you find out?”
“Well, Bill wasn’t doing as well as he expected with his yaa baa. The shipment came about every two months. We would go to the domestic airport to collect it. I went with him just in case there was a problem that needed a translator-his Thai never did get beyond the beginner stage. The stuff was sent by some Burmese army general who paid off everyone on the border, and a local syndicate. All Bill had to do was move it from the airport to the squatters under the bridge. They’re Karen and have strong connections to the people in the jungle on the border. The syndicate didn’t really need Bill except for that one link from the airport to Dao Phrya Bridge. It would have looked strange if a Karen squatter turned up to collect a big shiny steamer trunk every few months, but an American in a Mercedes sort of went with the trunk. But Bill’s contribution was not exactly crucial and he wasn’t indispensable, so he didn’t get paid that well. I didn’t know this until quite recently, that he wasn’t getting that much money out of the yaa baa thing, despite the risk. I mean, if he’d gotten caught they would have put him in Bang Kwan for life, wouldn’t they?”
“Probably. He would have been transferred to the States after five years, but he would have had to do time there as well. He was running a big risk.”
“That’s right, that’s what I told him, a big risk for small bucks. I’m trying to be the good wise wife at this stage. I’m also getting curious. Dr. Surichai and his hospital do not come cheap, and if the yaa baa isn’t paying that well, and the little bits and pieces he’s doing for the jeweler aren’t paying that well either, where’s the money coming from?”
“Did you have suspicions?”
“Not of what was really going on, no. I knew there was a whole side to Bill that I didn’t know about, but I had no idea what that was. For a while I really wondered if he was serious about the jeweler being the devil, or a devil worshiper, you know, if there was some kind of black magic they were into. I even wondered if Bill was blackmailing him. I asked him outright a few times, Where are you getting the money for the medicines, Dr. Surichai, the hospital, all that? He would tell me not to worry about it, the money was there.”
“But you did find out, somehow?”
Silence. She is sitting on a sofa, I’m sitting in a large armchair.
“You think I killed him, darling?”
“I know you did.”
“Little me? How on earth would I manage with all those snakes? Be real, Detective, it would have taken an army of experts.”
Then she stands up, exactly as a woman would, elegantly and with an erotic intonation in the way she twists her buttocks, which really does seem to be unconscious. In the silence I have to admit it’s eerie just how perfectly the operation seems to have worked in her case. No wonder Dr. Surichai is so proud of himself. It is only from this angle, looking almost directly up at her neck, that I can see the tiny scar he talked about. I stand up and she escorts me to the door. The idea of killing her is ridiculous at this moment. I am under her spell and she knows it. She cocks her head slightly. In a whisper: “Not going to kill me today?” The question takes me by surprise because I’m sure she read my thoughts. She leans toward me. “Let me kill the jeweler for you, then you can do what you like with me. What do I care?” Suddenly holding my chin and staring into my eyes. “You’re an arhat, why ruin your karma on a senseless vendetta? The world needs you. Let a devil do your killing.”
I try to move but she holds my shirtsleeve in a hand suddenly turned into a claw. “The first time you saw me, in the shop, you knew, didn’t you? I’m the other half of what you are, darling, if one of us is in the world, so must the other be. I’m your dark side. I think you realize that. Kill me if you like, but then you kill yourself.”
She opens the door and suddenly I’m outside again, between the Chinese door gods. There is no time to ask her about the apartment, which she bought outright in her own name according to the clerk in the Lands Department, or the priceless furnishings. The cost of the penthouse was twenty million baht, or half a million dollars, but the jade collection-on display on a Chinese temple table in polished blackwood-would have been worth more than that. Then there were all the other artifacts from Warren’s shop, artistically placed on pedestals, antique tables, or just left on the floor where one might easily kick them by accident if one were not careful.
I am left thinking how easy it would have been to kill her. The thought that I may have failed Pichai threatens to depress me. It is only counterbalanced by the opposite possibility, that she has charmed him too.
44
Yesterday my mother sent a messenger to the station with samples, for the Colonel and me, of the new T-shirts and tank tops she has designed. The motif is identical in both cases: under the main legend in burning scarlet-THE OLD MAN’S CLUB-the subtext in black italics: Rods of Iron. She employed a professional cartoonist to produce a convincing caricature of senior prurience: stooped but muscular, bald but sprouting pubic hair from his chin, tongue hanging out. The Colonel sent for me to ask what I think. Filial loyalty (read: a childhood of relentless brainwashing and emotional blackmail of the lowest kind) obliges me to opine that it is the work of genius.
He takes the T-shirt in both hands and presses it against me. I have to hold it up as he stands back. “Farangs go for this sort of thing? It’s so… so ugly.”
“It’s the way they are. If you give them a traditional Thai men’s club they’ll be intimidated.”
“Really?” For a moment he stands confused, stranded in an alien psychology. “It’s not important that some of the customers will actually look like that?”
“That’s the point. It makes them feel more secure.”
A slow nod of understanding, or at least acceptance. “By the way, your mother and I are giving you ten percent of the shares in the business. She wants you in as a family member, and I can see the advantage of not having you passing heavy judgments on us when you go through one of your devout phases.”