All of a sudden our ferryboat man is restless, and Sukum, too, has decided it is time to leave. When we reach the shore, Sukum hands the nervous boatman a large amount of cash, far more than the value of a river crossing, and the boatman races away into the night. Sukum doesn’t look at me. We don’t talk until we have reached the road and found a cab.
In the backseat, Sukum looks away at the deserted streets, and murmurs, “D’you get it now?”
“I think so,” I say. “The one they were initiating, he was who I think he was?”
“Yes. Of course. Didn’t you get a view of any of the others?”
“A couple.”
“So? Can we just forget about the case now? This is the moment to stop, when you have a clear and corroborated suicide-you don’t need to pester Moi or her maid anymore. You don’t need to die; you could say she’s let you off.”
There is something strange about the way he says suicide which is hard to pin down; but Sukum is confident that what I have seen tonight is enough to stop any Thai cop in his tracks, even me. He does not understand that all of a sudden the Fat Farang Case is my last hold on integrity. I don’t care that it’s a suicide. I want to know everything that led up to the American’s death. I want to prove I’m still a cop.
“No,” I say.
When I look at him I remember the detective he used to be, before Moi ruined him. I imagine him staked out on the river somewhere, night after night, brave, enthusiastic, confident that in his case, at least, the system would allow him to grow into full manhood. I remember his breakdown at the end. After she slipped him the acid he was off work for three months.
He turns to stare at me in disbelief. “Half the Thai-Chinese movers and shakers in Bangkok were at that initiation. I risked everything to show you, including my life. Don’t expect any more help from me. I’ve done enough. I’ve done a lot more than any other cop in my position would have. I’ve done a lot more than you would do-after all, you’re Vikorn’s consigliere, aren’t you?”
I’m shocked and saddened that the word has entered his vocabulary. It means the whole station must know what I am. I say, “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Terror,” he explains. “For some stupid reason I don’t even understand myself, I seem to want to stay alive. Don’t you see, if any of those people tonight find out that two humble cops know more than we should, they’ll waste us in a heartbeat? Drop it, Detective, drop the whole thing. Whatever that fat farang was really doing in that movie, it wasn’t what he claimed-or maybe even he didn’t know why he was doing what he was doing. You can see the power of her magic from the kind of people who attended her gathering tonight. What’s the matter, is your farang blood telling you to play the hero? Not in Thailand, Detective. You know that.”
I allow a period of silence to do justice to his vehemence before changing the subject. “I didn’t know those kinds of societies use women in their rituals.”
“They don’t-at least, not anymore. We’re talking about a Thai version and you know how conservative we are about rituals. It seems at the beginning, long before the Shaolin Monastery stuff the movies talk about, these were initiation rites into an ancient mystery dating back to the Warring States period. Before Buddha, before even Confucius, women were used as priestesses and had a lot of power. Naturally, that’s something Moi’s family insists upon, seeing as she doesn’t have any brothers. Her family members have been the Dragon Heads, Incense Masters, and White Paper Fans for more than a hundred years. Unlike in Hong Kong, in Thailand these are not elected offices, they are inherited.”
I let a few minutes pass. I’m finally seeing the world according to Sukum. “Look, Detective, you don’t have to help anymore. I understand. You took a big risk tonight and I appreciate it and I have no right to ask more of you. But I have to work this case. I just have to. But answer one question. That other suicide, the Japanese jeweler named Suzuki-it’s connected, isn’t it?”
He stares at me resentfully, then opens his window and turns to howl softly at the night, like a wolf.
40
I need the vastness of dharma, so I’m sitting on the back of a motorbike taxi on the way to Wat Rachananda.
At the wat I pay twenty baht for a set of the following: one candle, one lotus bud, four squares of gold foil, and a bunch of incense-and I switch off my cell phone. Lighting the incense is always a chore because it takes a while to catch fire, but Wat Rachananda has an oil lamp permanently burning for that purpose. I stand in line behind a couple of middle-aged women and a young man to light up, slip off my shoes, enter the wat, hold the incense in a high wai at forehead level, bow three times to the enigmatic gold Buddha on the dais, stick the incense into the sand pit at the back of the temple, place the lotus bud on the silver platter, walk toward the Buddha, and prostrate three times. The ritual over, I turn to the more demanding business of meditation and go sit in a semilotus against one of the pillars at the back.
Before I met Tietsin and his blade wheel it would take me a good half hour, sometimes double that, before my mind would still itself to the point where any real meditation could happen. Now, though, it takes less than ten minutes. Even while my mind is still zinging with the events of the day I can sense an appetite just under the surface-nay, a desperate, rabid lust-for some way out of here. Just before the attack from the blade wheel, I’m thinking about the fat man, Frank Charles; and Tara; and Pichai; and a dozen small, petty things-then it’s suddenly as if I am faced with the prospect of death. Nothing is important except that elusive thing the Buddha advised us not to even try to define; the terror of death does not compete with the terror of surviving death, once you’re convinced. The reality of the transcendent, in its infinite and crushing variety, causes synapses to short, hearts to groan, brains to fry. In other words, the blade wheel is here. It can appear as a gigantic terrifying rotary engine with scythelike blades or it can camouflage itself as a microscopic insect that turns metallic when it enters your bloodstream. And it can multiply itself arithmetically, which is what it does right now. With my eyes closed I experience the whole wat as filled with Tietsin’s blade wheels, all inexorably flying toward me. Like a madman I am muttering, Yes, yes, rip away, whatever the price get me out of this quicksand only an idiot would describe as life. And: Pichai, where are you? The experience is almost epileptic, the way my nerve-tormented body writhes where I sit in a kind of orgasm, until the grasping which has dominated this continuum for a thousand years melts under the power of the Buddha and I experience a few seconds of peace.