I grab her to hug her, but she turns away.
“I have to see the video again, my love. It’s quite a chore for me. Kimberley is going to be with me.”
“Why not me?”
A long silence full of the anguish of separation: “Because of what you would see.”
“You think I can’t handle a video like that?”
“Of course you can. I can’t handle you watching me watch it.”
Neither of us wants an argument, and Chanya has grown too used to serenity to squander it on something trivial like a snuff movie. I watch while the kind of divine sleepiness which is the privilege of the pure takes over.
I take the opportunity to caress the Lump, full of wonder, fear, and anticipation. Vipassana meditation affects everyone in different ways. Although I was never any kind of master, I penetrated to that part of the psyche where memories of the womb lurk. These have returned to me since I’ve known that I will soon be a father. I can easily relive the fear of birth that afflicts us in that transient security: that first agonizing acid-breath of oxygen, air burning your skin like napalm, hanging upside down like a bat while someone in a white coat smacks your ass, then-and here’s the first taste of the police state-if you’ve seen enough already and decide to turn back because corporeal existence is not for you, it’s the oxygen mask: It ain’t optional, bud-you’re here to be processed. Who would fardels bear? Pichai seems still to be quite merry in his shrinking domain, though. According to the ultrasound, he is kicking and flapping his arms about and showing commendable faith in the future. In my less confident moments I fear a sports-obsessed brute. I reluctantly decide to pay a visit to Lek’s moordu, when I have the time.
“Want a painkiller?” Kimberley asks the minute I’ve settled on the sofa in her suite at the Grand Britannia. “I don’t have any coke, but I guess you could get that if you wanted it. How about a single-malt Scotch? They have miniatures in the minibar.”
She goes to the minibar and hands me a tiny bottle, keeping one for herself. We unscrew the tops and clink. “Good luck,” the FBI says. I take the video out of my jacket pocket and hand it to her.
At first I think I’ve cracked my inner resistance, that I’ve got my objectivity back. I am able to watch the prolonged foreplay with a certain distance and professional eye. I have to admit, Damrong pulls out all the stops. With her, fellatio is developed into an art form, complete with elegance, romance, humor, drama, tension, and an attention to the visual side of the thrill which is nothing less than masterful; a sorceress at the top of her game. The masked man, too, is no amateur. He understands that he is the foil to this extraordinary performance and does not permit ego to intrude. Kowlovski is particularly courtly on his knees during the cunnilingus scene. Advanced camera techniques allow us to participate in the versatility of his tongue, the anguish of her pleasure. Kimberley pauses the disk for a moment, freezing Damrong with the tip of her tongue just touching her upper lip with her eyes half closed, to say in a philosophical tone, “I’ve been thinking about it, and the way I see her, she’s a kind of Madonna phenomenon. A basically plain face, nothing special at all, which somehow highlights the sexual charisma. A paradox, really. But you can see how it works.” The FBI presses the button that makes Damrong come to life again. “Look, she’s actually enjoying it. She’s not faking. She’s excited.”
Which is very hard to take; her excitement, I mean. Accepting how real her enjoyment is ten minutes or so before she dies does something to my head. She isn’t even slightly frightened; she is in a state of ecstasy. I tell Kimberley to turn it off, but she refuses.
“Tough love, kid,” she growls. “You’re going to suck it up this time.”
“At least give me another shot.”
She pauses the video to get four more miniature bottles from the minibar. With the action frozen, it is possible to take in a little of the scenery. Just as I recalled, a shelf with priceless objets d’art is visible: the jade reclining Buddha. Now that I know what I’m looking for, it is easy to identify the decor of Tanakan’s room at the Parthenon Club. We swallow the miniatures quickly, and she unleashes the rest of the flick.
“Wait,” I say. She pauses again, using the remote, with a what-now look on her face.
“I’m not going to be able to look at it again, after the ending, so let’s rerun the story so far. I need to know more about Kowlovski, but that damned mask is in the way.”
“Watch his hands,” Kimberley says. “They’re all we have of the human in him.”
We replay the foreplay in slo-mo. The FBI is right-the only clue to the psychology of the masked man lies in the way he uses his hands.
“There,” Kimberley says. She freezes at a point where he is attending to Damrong’s left breast.
I say, “What?”
“The shaking. You can’t see it when I freeze. There.”
It’s true -her female eye saw it probably from the start. I myself was too transfixed by Damrong. “It doesn’t prove anything,” I say.
“No, but it’s all we’ve got. Virginia sent me some porn stuff he did not long before. In the narrow confines of mainstream porn, he was something of a master.”
“No shaking in the hands?”
“No.”
The FBI backs up a few frames and freezes again. Now we are looking at three fingers lightly supporting Damrong’s left breast, while bearing in mind that those fingers are actually shaking rather wildly. Indeed, we must bear in mind that the whole hand is shuddering from the wrist. I exchange a glance with Kimberley, and she presses play.
Now that the FBI has shared her wisdom, it is not difficult to pick up on other clues. When their foreplay is almost over, he lays her on her back to begin the first of five intercourse intervals before the final countdown (on her back; doggy style; with her on top; plus a couple of rather complicated maneuvers that have him penetrating her from behind while she twists around for him to thrust his tongue down her throat).
The FBI takes us through the first penetration scene again in slo-mo. Now that I’m focused, I see that the hands that dramatically part her unresisting thighs are hardly under his control at all. At one point Damrong herself reaches down to grasp a bunch of his fingers in a comforting way: one professional to another. She also whispers something in his ear.
“STOP!” I yell. This time Kimberley obeys. She goes to the mini-bar and brings all the miniatures she can find, about ten in all, a mixture of brandy, whiskey, vodka, gin; necessity is the mother of anesthesia. I gulp two; my hands are the ones shaking in this scene. I have no choice but to let Kimberley see my pathetic, tearstained face.
“Stay with it, trooper,” she says, which only makes things worse. She has to hold my head in her arms, as she would comfort a child.
“She’s giving him moral support,” I say, hardly able to get the words out.
Even the FBI is having trouble with self-control. “Say what you like about her, that is one amazing woman.”
“It’s almost as if she loves him.”
“Why not? He definitely loves her, though he might not know it.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Why else would he be suffering like that?”
“If he’s having so much trouble with his head, how can he still perform at all?”
“Viagra is the lifeblood of the porn industry, Sonchai.”
She presses play again. We are deep into intercourse territory now, with the camera somehow zooming in on private bits that, at this level of magnification, could be any part of the body at all; could even be the genitalia of some other anthropoid species; at one point the shading of flesh from deep crimson to light pink reminds me of carnivorous vegetation, say the pitcher plant.