“Well, when you tell her you’re not going to write it,” Arthit says, “give her a reason, or she’s going to think you’ve been scared off.”
“But if Pan has given me permission to write it, why would he scare me off?”
“There are other people,” Arthit says, “lots of other people, who would much prefer that a book, especially a sympathetic book, not be written.”
“Who?”
“People who are worried about his personal power base. He’s extremely popular among the poor, especially in the northeast.”
“Why?”
“Ask someone who’s poor,” Arthit says. “Or used to be.”
Miaow is reading the story that accompanies the photograph. She gives a low whistle, which comes as a surprise. Rafferty hadn’t known she could whistle.
Watching Miaow run her finger along the lines of type, Rafferty says, “What would you do if you were in my shoes?”
“I’d take a careful look around, assess the total situation, add up the pros and cons, and then scream.”
“Thanks. How’s Noi?”
“We’ll talk about that later,” Arthit says, and hangs up.
“What is this?” Miaow asks. She is rubbing the surface of the photo with her index finger as though she expects it to come off the page.
“It’s a picture of me.”
“You look really ugly,” Miaow says, and the door to the bedroom opens and Rose comes out, wrapped in a towel and a frown, just as the phone begins to ring.
“Why is it so noisy?” she asks.
“Poke’s in the paper,” Miaow says, rotating the Sun to face Rose. Then, without another word, she turns her back on both of them and heads for the kitchen.
“What?” Rafferty says into the phone.
“Listen to me,” says a man’s voice.
“I have the phone at my ear and everything,” Rafferty says. “Just poised to listen.”
Rose says, “This is a terrible picture.”
“You will not write this book,” the man says. “If you write it, you, your wife, and your daughter will die.”
“Who is this?” Rafferty says, and the tone of his voice brings Rose’s eyes up.
“Did you hear me?” the man asks.
“I asked who you were.”
“All three of you will die,” the man says. He hangs up.
Both Rose and Miaow, who stopped at the kitchen counter, are staring at Rafferty now. He brings up the corners of his mouth, hoping it looks like a smile, and says, “I don’t think the picture’s that bad.”
10
He’s a great man,” Rose says. She blows on her cup of Nescafe.
“Are we talking about the same guy?” Rafferty’s on his third cup of coffee, waiting for Miaow to finish getting ready for school, since he’s decided not to let her go alone today. She has grudgingly agreed to allow him to accompany her.
He eyes Rose’s cup of instant with resignation. He’s abandoned his two-year campaign to get her to give up Nescafe, the coffee she grew up on. He’s spent a fortune on exotic beans, coffeemakers, gold filter cones, and bottled water to convert her, and her dream cup of coffee still involves hot water run from the tap onto a heaping clot of brown powder.
“We’re talking about Pan,” she says. “The gold car and the girls.”
“He’s a thug. And a drunk.”
“So what? The way he acts, he knows what he’s doing. He’s like a bone in their throats.”
“Whose throats?”
“The good people,” she says, and he is taken aback at the bitterness in her voice. “The big people, the people who have everything and want more. The people who take, take, take, own, own, own. The people who go to fancy parties with blood on their hands. With their expensive cars and their big houses and their beautiful clothes and their terrible, spoiled children. The people who own the streets underneath the bars the girls work in and the rooms they sleep in when they’re finished screwing tourists. And then sell them the drugs for AIDS.” She slaps the cup down, loudly enough to straighten his spine. “You know. The people who have run everything forever.”
They are seated opposite each other at the counter that divides the kitchen from the living room. The brilliance of the new day spills into the room behind Rose, catching flyaway locks of her hair and exploding what seems like a hundred colors out of the long fall of black that stretches to the dimples at the base of her spine. He leans across and touches her wrist.
“He drives them crazy.” She turns her hand palm up and wraps her fingers around his. “He’s dirt, up from some pigshit village, and he rubs their noses in it every day of the year. He shoved his way in here, with his awful skin and his burned hands and his one low shoulder, and grabbed a place at the dinner table without being invited, and then he pushed all their plates and glasses onto the floor, and spit on them. And then he bought everything they owned, two or three of everything, and covered them with gold just to make them uglier. And he takes the most beautiful women in the country, the ones they all want, and drags them behind him like a parade.”
“What’s the point?”
Rose shakes her head. “To prove that someone like him can have everything they have, everything that makes them special, and then shit on it. That someone can get rich without pretending to be one of them or trying to hide where he came from. The richer he gets, the cruder he gets. It scares them. They think he does it on purpose, just to build his personal power base.”
Power: the word Arthit had used. “Does what? Act like a pig?”
She turns the cup in the saucer, just doing something while she thinks. “That’s one side of it. But then he also gives money away like old newspaper. He sets up what he calls ‘banks’ up north. But they’re not really banks. Real banks lend money at interest and take away houses and things. His banks make small loans, maybe three or four hundred dollars, to poor people who have an idea for a business. If the business works, they pay back a little more than they borrowed. If the business fails, they don’t owe him anything. There are weaving villages now, woodcarving villages, silver-jewelry villages. There are men who own three or four trucks that they rent to farmers whenever they’re needed.”
“Why does that upset anyone?”
She dips her index finger into her cup and flicks coffee at him. “You’re supposed to understand this country. You wrote a book about it, remember?”
“I’ve never claimed to understand it. That’s why I married you.”
She pushes the coffee aside. “It upsets people because poor people are supposed to stay poor. They’re not supposed to have papers that say they own their land. They’re not supposed to have money in the bank so they can stockpile their harvests until the prices go up. They’re not supposed to do anything except live and die, and get fucked over in between. Grow the rice and sell it for nothing. Clear the land so some godfather can kick them off it and build ugly, expensive houses. Go where they’re told and stay where they’re put. Present themselves for sacrifice on a regular basis so the rich can stay fat.”
“And Pan is rocking the boat?”
“Sure. Rich people steal from the poor and pretend they’re giving. And here he is: He was poor, he still behaves like a peasant, and he’s really giving. He’s built two hospitals in Isaan, not big hospitals but good ones, and he pays doctors to work there, to take care of people who have never seen a doctor in their lives.” She stands and goes to the sink. He looks at the day heating up through the window, hearing the clink of her spoon against the jar of instant coffee and then the flow of water as the tap goes on. “Do you remember a girl from the bar, short and a little fat, always laughing, named Jah?”
Rafferty searches his memory. “Sort of. Maybe.”
“You have to remember her. There was that girl, the ugly, awful one, who was dancing when you first came into the bar. She wore glasses, and you can’t tell me you’ve forgotten that.”