“I’m on my way,” I said, thanked her, and left.
Out on the street I waited for a taxi to take me across the river. Perhaps it sounds odd to you, R, that in a difficult case one should ask for occult help, but for us it’s really not so strange, though we don’t normally tell farang like you about it. To suppose that humans are rational is a largely Western superstition to which most Asians are resistant. After all, if reason has failed in this case, that must be because reason isn’t powerful enough to penetrate the mystery, mustn’t it? Clearly, I need something with more chili. I’m off to see the wizard. All the best seers live on the west bank, known as Fangton.
In the taxi I replay those bloody words for the thousandth time: Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, I know who [smudge] father is. A couple of days ago I put the phrase through a simple computer test. On the assumption that the smudge is a word erased and that the writer was using grammatically correct English, there are not many alternatives: in all likelihood the missing word would be an article or a pronoun: my, your, his, her, their, the, our. None of them would surprise in an ordinary case of murder by a disorganized psychopath. In the case of an organized mind, though, only two would really make sense; either Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, I know who your father is, which would not normally be an important enough message to write in blood, or Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, I know who our father is. That would at least be a revelation worth making; in the mind of a certain kind of psycho, it might even be worth murdering for.
Now as my mind relaxed in the back of the cab it started to gnaw on something Inspector Krom had said with that in-your-face directness that takes no prisoners: Then there’s your permanent search for your biological father. Everyone knows about that.
4
R, did you know your same-sex parent when you were growing up? If you did not, then my song will be familiar: I never stopped looking for him, from the minute I realized he was missing. All the kids at infant school had a dad, why not me? Therefore the previous thirty-seven years had been rich in daddy substitutes, most of them from my imagination. All I had to go on was Vietnam: a good-looking Yank in his early twenties, face blackened with war (sometimes); a charmer of women (Mum in particular). Because his English was perfect, so mine had to be. Should I thank him for opening my mind to farang confusion? I’m not sure, but how else were my fantasy dads going to communicate with me or I with them? He sure didn’t speak Thai worth a damn, I had Mama Nong’s testimony to rely on there.
Sometimes I made him muscle-bound like those GIs you see in the Museum of American War Atrocities in Saigon (of course I went, long before they renamed it so they could trade again with Uncle Sam-it’s still there if you don’t believe me). I found one in a photo on the wall of a soldier with arms so powerful he looked incomplete without something heavy to lift. When I realized I wasn’t built that way I slimmed my dream dad down a bit. I kept him at average height, calculating that I was going to be tall for a Thai anyway, and who wants to stick out at age thirteen? Then, when I realized how important brains were, I made him smart, really smart. To justify my daydreams I read and read-and did extra well at school and started to imagine that maybe Einstein had paid a visit to Soi Cowboy sometime in the seventies and had an adventure with a bar girl named Nong; until I realized how smart Mum was (Mama Nong learned to speak English faster than me and she didn’t even have an American dad); my smarts didn’t necessarily prove a thing about him. And so on. I drove myself crazy trying to find some trait of body or mind, anything that I could point to about myself and say, That’s from him. Did I become a detective in order one day to find him? I’m not sure. Certainly, I was tormented at an earlier age than most by the conviction that it was possible to discover who I was. Did such an absurd idea originate in your hemisphere, R?
Sometimes my search hurt so much I’d confide in Mum. Tell me, I’d say, tell me, just one thing that is definitely him not you? She didn’t answer for years, until the girls in the bars started passing on stories about me. “That,” she said, pointing at my crotch. “All men have it, but not all have it that bad. That’s him all right.”
“He was really as bad as me?” I asked, somewhat troubled by the thought.
“Worse.”
“And you put up with it?”
“It was the seventies, there was a war on, I was a bar girl, there were thousands of us, you were grateful even for the chance to compete.”
“But you loved him, you told me. I asked you a million times, and that’s the only question you’ve ever given a consistent answer to.”
“I was a country girl. In the country you judge the male by its virility and the female by its fecundity. You could say he was a prizewinning buffalo, gold medal, any farmer’s pride and joy, deprive him of sex for a night and he’d tear the shed down. Sure I was proud of him. Proud as hell that he stayed with me, took me to America, once-that alone raised me to queen-of-the-village status. And he shared. He was generous. Almost as generous with his dough as with his sperm-and that’s saying a lot.”
“You were in love with his dick, then?”
“You want a whack?”
She was tough. Looking back, it can make me laugh how she played the fragile Oriental lotus to soak the johns. Like all Thai women, she was master of the art of flattery. Not a customer she slept with whom she didn’t compliment on the size of his member, however diminutive: Wow! Honey, I don’t think I’ve seen one that big before-was she thinking of Dad as she flicked those flagging phalli back to life? There are questions even sons like me don’t ask, but the fact speaks for itself: she only let herself fall pregnant the once. Only one man she so honored. Why him?
So, although I never got used to being without him, I did get used to always having a make-believe him to turn to as a role model. In fact I had a whole wardrobe of hims who I could wear depending on the need of the hour-e.g., strong, resolute, honest, the best kind of American-especially when I started as a cop. H/we grew partial to weed at an early age, though, and loved stealing cars (just a phase h/we went through, you understand). And when I doubted the historical accuracy of my invented progenitor, I had the brothels to turn to. There I always could find him, so to speak. I knew his excitement when a new, extra-delicious girl appeared on the revolving stages; I understood the profound respect he felt for the way she kept her dignity-and held out for the dough. I experienced that inexplicable compulsion to see just one more naked young woman on a bed waiting for me, like the drunk who needs just one more drink. That, basically, is all I have of Dad.
–
Now we’re stuck at the lights just before the Memorial Bridge, and a monk passes in front of us with an alms bowl and his looksit in white behind him carrying the morning’s haul of vegetarian food in a bundle of plastic bags tied up together. I almost became a monk; that could have been me there crossing the road. I still believe in enlightenment. It only takes about twenty years on minimal rations, five hours’ sleep per night, possessions reduced to one change of robes, one alms bowl, and an umbrella, unlimited concentration on emptiness, then a good monk can return to the Infinite at will. He sees everything, understands everything, is everything. That’s what Dr. Supatra’s mordu did more than half a century ago, but he is Khmer and ordained in Cambodia, which country he had to flee when Pol Pot made life impossible. In Thailand he formally disrobed and hung up his shingle as a know-all clairvoyant named Master Soon.