“It doesn’t sound too bad a deal.”
“I know, but where’s the romance? She isn’t even scared of me. Did you see the way she looked at that gun, as if to say: The old man is playing his games again? Yesterday she said to me: ‘Are we doing sex tonight or can I watch the football?’ Since when did our women get obsessed with football?”
“It’s been going on for quite a while. I can confirm they often prefer it to sex.”
“She’s the most ambitious and the least contented of all my wives. This is liberation, to be permanently unsatisfied? What kind of a world is this? I don’t think I want to hang around in it much longer. Are you going to send me to my next incarnation or not?”
The Colonel does not so much as stiffen when I lean forward to pick up the gun. I break it open to check the chambers, all of which are full. I realize that he is quite serious, that he would like me to kill him.
“You think I’m bluffing?”
“No, but I know at least one person who will doubt the gun was loaded, when I tell this story.” I snap the barrel into place and put the gun back on the table.
“So, how do you know the bullets are not blanks? You’ve spent too much time with the FBI, my friend, you’ve started thinking like an American.” He picks up the gun and holds it shakily in both hands. “Honor is honor,” he says. The shot makes a jagged hole in the glass wall and brings his security running from four directions. Still holding the gun, he waves them back where they came from. He replaces the gun on the table with a loud clack. The bang from the shot is still echoing in my ears and there is a steady tinkle of glass from the shattered wall in which lightning-shaped cracks have appeared. It is difficult to explain why this melodrama has only deepened my love for him. He says: “I don’t know why I built a farang-style house. When I was younger I was impressed by the West. Now I can see how far we have lost ourselves. Look at that stupid window. What kind of idiot would build a wall of glass in the Tropics? Better small windows with shutters, high ceilings, a minimum of light, teak walls, the feeling of a living, breathing space.” He looks away from me. Now, in order to look at the fishermen he has to lean a little to one side. I can hear his thoughts, quite loudly, inside my head. He is talking to his brother, admitting that it would have been better to lead the life of a simple fisherman. His brother advises him not to mistake sentimentality for nirvana. Vikorn turns his attention to me with a helpless look on his face. “You heard that, didn’t you? He’s totally ruthless. Won’t let me get away with anything.”
I watch while with some difficulty he rises from the armchair and beckons me to follow. He leads me to a small private theater consisting of a gigantic TV monitor and about twenty seats facing it. He tells me to sit down, leaves the room for five minutes, then returns with a videotape. “Naturally, I made a copy.” Bending like a man ten years older than himself, he slides the tape into the machine on a shelf under the TV, and immediately a grainy black-and-white image of a young white woman with blond hair and Slavic features appears. She is wearing jeans and a tight T-shirt and smiling vivaciously, apparently determined to capture the attention of someone offscreen. She nods in response to some cue and begins to undress. The T-shirt comes off first to reveal a black bra and a gold stick which perforates diagonally the circumference of her navel. She fingers it whilst making an O of her mouth and sliding her tongue around the inside of the O. She bends forward from the hips whilst undoing her bra. She wiggles her torso to make her breasts wobble, but a quick frown followed by an obedient nod tells us that this is not pleasing to the audience. In a more serious mood she pulls off her jeans. Now she is naked except for a G-string. Apparently this is not erotic to the audience either, and with a slightly frustrated expression she pulls it off to stand naked with her hands on her hips, awaiting instructions. Puzzled, she raises her hands above her head and keeps them there for several seconds. There can be no doubt that the purpose is to highlight the gold stick in her navel.
Vikorn freezes the tape at this point and turns to me with a quizzical expression. If one disregards the color of the skin, the resemblance to Fatima’s body is startling. Vikorn presses the forward button. On instructions, the blond woman lowers one hand to finger the gold stick, erotically up and down, up and down, round and round, a combination of male and female masturbation.
Now she lies on a bed behind her, full length, and once again the gold stick seems to dominate the screen. Her body language indicates that each time she stops fondling it, she receives a reprimand from her client. Now she turns over onto her front. Immediately two gigantic black hands take one of her wrists, bind it quickly with tape to the iron of the headboard while other hands-white with a filigree gold bracelet hanging from one wrist-bind her on the other side. She half closes her eyes and gives a convincing impression of a woman in deep lust. The camera takes in only her face and the upper part of her body, therefore one can only guess by her facial expressions that she is experiencing penetration. Her expression abruptly changes to one of profound physical shock at the first lash, which sprays blood lightly over her cheek. I scream at Vikorn to stop the tape.
The TV screen is blank. Vikorn is looking at me with an expression of almost academic-and drunken-curiosity. “My brother talked about you and Pichai quite a lot. He said you were both very talented in different ways. He said your problem was your total lack of identity. You can be anyone you like, literally, but only for short periods of time. Who were you just then, the victim?”
“Fatima, the first time she watched the tape,” I mutter, ashamed of my weakness.
To my surprise the Colonel puts his arm around me. “It’s okay.”
A pause. I say: “I’ll have to bring her in, won’t I?”
This question ages him still further. The skin under his strong jaw slackens somewhat. Now I can see the reptile in him: loose-skinned, prehistoric, cunning. This is the real punishment. Not rebirth in the body of an animal, but the eternal headache of trying to manipulate his way out of the consequences of his greed. With infinite weariness: “I suppose so.”
“Want to help?”
“How can I?”
“The Chinese?”
He nods and grasps my arm. “Everything depends on them. If they choose to protect their man, we’re finished, all of us. Fatima will broadcast the tape over the Internet and go ballistic. Who knows what she’ll do? They took her humanity away-what has she got to lose? The Khmer will stand by her, they don’t have anything to lose either. There’ll be a bloodbath.”
At the door he reminds me of a toad, shrunken. A helpless gesture, then he grasps my arm again and a new light comes into his eyes. “The jeweler is a sick man, but he’s also a genius. You should have seen him in his prime. The Chiu Chow love him. How d’you think I did so well myself? Everything comes out of Chinatown, you know? We Thais are only good for fucking, fighting, drinking and dying. That’s what Warren taught me-and his Chinese friends.” A long pause. “They were great days. The mountains of Laos are true Buddha country. Green, thick with mist in the morning, we used to climb like that”-a steep gesture with the palm of his hand-“until we reached six, eight, ten thousand feet. The air starts to get thin then, and it’s ice cold. Pat would start his damned tape with ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’-that was the first time I realized a farang might love a Thai. We crash-landed twice with bullet holes all over the plane. I shit in my pants, but that American aviator was like a superman. We got back to Long Tien somehow. The Hmong were wonderful, too. How could anyone understand the innocence of the opium trade? Warren was good to the Hmong, he forced his friends the Chiu Chow to pay top dollar-how about that? Even he had honor in those days.”