There was a touch of Thai coolness (perhaps repugnant to you, farang, but somewhat charming to me) in the way Chanya watched for his reaction to the opium. The alcohol reached his brain first, with the usual effect. His mood changed, he joked with her and commenced to undress her. They took the ritual shower together (he called it whore hygiene), and her body worked the usual magic. There was no doubt about it, at these moments he literally worshiped her. She could not cynically characterize it as simple lust-there was such reverence in his love-whispers, such gratitude at the relief their coupling would bring to his feverish mind, such genuine awe at her beauty, especially when she smiled. What woman would not be impressed? This was heady stuff, better than the movies and apparently authentic.
Just when he slid his muscular thigh over her body in preparation for mounting her, he gave a long, slow incredulous grunt of satisfaction, like a man who has finally broken the curse of a lifetime. His right leg lay heavy across her own, and she was able to experience the progressive relaxation of the muscles. One by one they opened like flowers, giving up their insane energy, that mad grasping that the Buddha identified as the source of all karma and therefore all suffering. She was so surprised and impressed (the old crone really knew a thing or two after all) that all she wanted to do herself was to lie there, as if she also had taken opium. It was such a relief to experience this great masculine tornado finally let go, the catharsis was hers as well as his. They lay like that for fully ten minutes with him staring at the whorls in her right ear and her listening to the relaxed, deep breathing of a mind that had temporarily healed its terrible wounds. Peace rearranged his tormented features.
It was difficult to overestimate the effect this moment had on her: all of a sudden the expression on his face was normal, human. For more than a year she had assumed that this strange giant was a being-a farang-constituted differently from anyone she had ever known. Now she was witnessing a transformation in which he returned to the human family, with the inevitable implication that everything that went before was a form of insanity, a farang delusion leading nowhere, walking evidence of a whole society’s failure to grow up. She was in shock. Finally she managed gently to push his leg off and lay him on his back. He held her for a moment, staring unseeing into her eyes.
“Marge,” he whispered.
“Yes, Homer,” she replied, doing her best to imitate the cartoon character despite her Thai accent.
The teeniest little chuckle as he spun off into some intriguing puzzle where she could not follow. She put a pillow under his head and wrapped a towel around herself and left him there. Eight hours later he came around feeling delightfully refreshed and in the most serene of moods.
“Opium,” she told him. “I put opium in your wine.”
The news didn’t puncture his serenity at all. Just as the crone had predicted, he asked her for more.
41
How like a farang to find a sweet spot in life and then ruin it by excess! In the golden days of opium, a gentleman smoker would restrict himself to a couple of pipes a night and might live to be a hundred, contentedly carrying out his daily chores with the confidence that an exotic vacation from the mundane awaited him on his divan in the evening. (Buddha knows where you get the idea that the unvarnished monotony of the inventory-obsessed mind is normal and healthy, farang.) No one thought the poppy was the answer to life’s problems; everyone understood it as merely a break in the interminable workings of the mind; nobody expected to stay high all day.
Chanya made several visits to Mitch after his opium debut. The drug almost replaced her as his main focus of attention, and he always wanted more. He became expert in the use of the pipe, and she grew accustomed to his smeared eyes and stares into the middle distance. The upside was his great gentleness and gratitude. From the depths of serenity he was a perfect lover and husband, although their sex life did reduce in intensity. That also was probably no bad thing. She liked the long, contented silences, during which the farang obsession for filling space with noise was replaced with-glorious emptiness.
On each visit she brought more opium, but with a sinking heart. The crone was becoming alarmed at the amount the farang was consuming. She didn’t see herself as a dealer at all-she simply gave people who needed it the traditional herbal cure that was part of her culture. It went with her role as village crone. Finally she warned Chanya she wasn’t going to sell her any more. The last thing she needed was some farang drug enforcement agency on her back, or the local cops demanding a cut. Chanya determined to tell Mitch he would have to quit, because she couldn’t get him any more of the drug. For once, though, fate seemed to intervene in her favor.
On her next visit Mitch told her a strange story that, in retrospect, she realized had a profound effect on him, although how much was truth and how much fantasy was impossible to say; he at least seemed to believe it.
One evening about a week before, on returning to his apartment from one of his interminable roams around the small town, which he now knew like the back of his hand, he slid his key into his door only to find it open. The truth was, he had grown somewhat absentminded with the various drugs he was abusing and could not be sure that he’d locked it in the first place. As he walked in, however, two pairs of hands pulled him into the front room and silently closed the door behind him.
The scene before him so exactly resembled his worst nightmare that for a moment he was quite paralyzed with fear. The two young men who were holding his arms looked like burly Malays in skullcaps. Seated on the floor was an imam of some kind with a long gray beard, Muslim robes, and a highly decorated cap. Seated around him were about fifteen men, most of them middle-aged, all in skullcaps, who clearly were disciples of the holy imam. The two young men forced him to sit on the floor, facing the imam.
After the first wave of quite devastating paranoia, which made it hard for him to breathe, his training returned to the extent that he panned the group to check for weapons. He saw none, and indeed even the two young guards were unarmed. Mitch’s muscles were so developed from decades of pumping iron, he reckoned that he could probably overpower the young men and make a run for it. Evidently this thought had not escaped the minds of the imam and his group, who were making gestures with the palms of their hands that seemed to be requesting him to stay seated. He made a quick assessment. If this group intended to kill him, they could do so whenever they chose. If he escaped from this room, they could easily assassinate him before he reached the airport in Hat Yai-before he could leave Muslim Thailand, in other words. His nerves were badly damaged from opium and speed, but he controlled himself enough to stay seated. He even tried to prepare himself for death. It was deeply embedded among his most sacred promises to himself that he would at least die like a brave American, even if his life had been less than perfect. You can at least do that, he told himself above the violent thumping of his heart.
His self-esteem was not much improved, though, by the imam, who seemed to intuit the depth of Mitch’s terror and smiled somewhat patronizingly, as if to a frightened child. The other middle-aged men, at least some of whom Mitch recognized as respectable and influential citizens of Songai Kolok, many of them successful hoteliers, were also making calming gestures with their hands. When it was clear that Mitch was not going to make a run for the door, one of the young Malay guards respectfully seated himself next to the imam.
“Please forgive us, Mr. Turner,” the imam began. “I’m afraid that if we had approached you in any other way, certain interests would have taken notice and your life would have been in danger, not to mention our own. Mr. Turner, we are here to help you stay alive. We will do you no harm ourselves, but our warning to you is not without self-interest, as you will see.” A cough and a strange gesture that would burn into Mitch Turner’s memory: the imam had a habit of moving his hand in a curving, horizontal motion as if he were caressing a pet cat. “Mr. Turner, we know you work for the CIA and that you are here to spy on Muslims, especially fanatics from Indonesia and Malayasia who might be part of Al Qaeda or some other terrorist organization. Believe me, Mr. Turner, we are not at all out of sympathy with the cause, only with the manner of your country’s serving it.” A placatory raising of the hand. “But no matter, we are not here to convert you, only to try to help you. Mr. Turner, do you really think your presence has gone unnoticed throughout the Muslim world in Southeast Asia? Of course, no one believes your cover story about working for a telecommunications company, and of course your identity, even your photograph, has been broadcast throughout the Muslim networks. How many young fanatics do you think would be only too happy to dispatch you in a suicide bombing? We have been approached by three separate Indonesian groups, two groups based in Malayasia and a couple of young Thai Muslims who are enraged by your provocative presence here. You are an intelligent man, Mr. Turner, even a brilliant one, so I do not need to tell you about the advantages your ruling elite would derive from a permanent war with Islam. Oil and arms, Mr. Turner. America is so much easier to govern and exploit when it is at war, is that not so? Indeed, the world is so much easier to exploit when it is at war.” Another pause. “Allow me to quote a very smart American: Americais a giant but a deformed one. Yes, Mr. Turner, you are not the only ones who can eavesdrop on the electronic world-most of your components are fabricated over the border in Malaysia, don’t forget.”