The vast majority of padparadscha sapphires (and most other colors of sapphire) are heated in varying temperatures to enrich color and improve clarity. While this may have a negative effect on the price of the stone, it is an accepted practice so long as it is disclosed to the buyer in the process of the sale.
Treating stones with surface diffusion, however, is generally frowned upon; as stones chip or are repolished/refaceted the “padparadscha” colored layer can be removed. (There are some diffusion-treated stones in which the color goes much deeper than the surface, however.) The problem lies in the fact that treated padparadschas are at times very difficult to detect, and they are the reason that getting a certificate from a reputable gemological lab (e.g., Gubelin, SSEF, AGTA, etc.) is recommended before investing in a padparadscha.
The rarest of all padparadschas is the totally natural variety, with no beryllium, or other treatment, and no heating. To find a stone that is certified by a reputable lab as being completely natural is extremely rare and the stone will be very expensive. High-quality unheated and untreated natural padparadscha sapphires will start off in the range of $5,000 per carat and rise by size, color, tone, cut, and clarity, to $20,000-30,000 per carat.
I decide to take a flyer and show up in a cop car at the front entrance to Moi’s house on the river.
It’s quite a different prospect from this side. You could say the estate is almost conventional, with its long curved drive lined with tropical plants. Orchids of every shade grow like parasites in coconut husks hanging from ficus and palm trees. Scarlet poinsettias, amaryllis, and ivy poke and drape for most of the drive, with a stand of bamboo next to a large pool surrounded by tropical succulents that look as though they could bite your hand off. A large anthurium bush owns slim golden phalli that emerge from bracts exactly the same color as the backside of a red-assed baboon, and just as obscene. Finally, at drive’s end, a porch like a Thai temple, and, of course, the shrine in the northwest corner of the grounds garlanded with lotus. Someone has already made an offering of rice, oranges, and bananas to the household gods. I press the electric bell three aggressive times, because I intend to crash, whatever mood she is in. The maid answers, sees the marked police car behind me, and beckons me inside. She is immaculate as ever in her black-and-white servant’s livery, tall and elegant with her long sad moon face soaring over the frilly collar. I think it a little odd, the way she directs me across the polished teak floor of the central part of the house, and onto the terrace at back, without first alerting Moi. I can hear the Doctor yelling long before I see her. Why would the maid want me to see her mistress in the midst of one of her early-morning tantrums? Perhaps it is a statement about who is in control. To my surprise, her preferred language of scolding is not her native Teochew, nor even Thai, but finishing-school English.
“And you bloody spilled cocoa on my favorite cheungsam,” Moi is howling in a slightly hysterical voice, before she sees me. “How much more of my life are you going to destroy before you kill me, too?”
I turn instantly to catch the expression on the maid’s face: blank. Moi is sitting up on one of her chaise longues, braless in a large black cotton T-shirt which would be easily big enough to cover her loins if she cared. Even when she sees me she makes no effort, but sits there in a sulk for a moment, her vagina on general view, before she hitches the T-shirt over it with a grimace. “What the hell is he doing here?”
For answer the maid returns with a silver tray containing what I suppose is the Doctor’s breakfast: a collection of pills of various dimensions and colors, and a tiny medicine bottle with a pipette. The pipette, it seems, is the star of the show, for Moi carefully squeezes the rubber bulb, inserts it into the bottle, lets the rubber bulb expand, then examines the contents of the glass tube. Satisfied, she throws her head back, empties the clear liquid into her mouth, then tucks into the rest of the pills. Whatever was in the pipette, it works pretty quickly. Moi’s personality alters in minutes, and now she is standing and brushing the black T-shirt down over her body until it reaches the middle of her thighs, the miracle of elegance somehow retrieved. She holds out a hand for me to kiss; “What a wonderful surprise,” she says in a glacial tone. “Won’t you please sit down?”
I sit near the guardrail at the edge of the balcony, next to the river. It is quite gay at this moment, with tugs pulling a big Korean container ship into midstream, a couple of snakehead boats with their great bus engines on davits at the stern roaring past, a posse of women wearing straw hats each in her own individual sampan, hauling vegetables, fish, fruit, and whatever else they can sell. I feel a little strange to see a bunch of kids from the shantytown naked, screaming, and diving off Moi’s jetty into the river with the fanatical repetition only the young can maintain. Moi is blinking in the merciless light. Suddenly urbane all over again, she refuses to ask me what I want. I say, “I went to see your ex-husband Johnny Ng in Hong Kong.”
I kept my eyes on the maid as I spoke the name, hoping that I would succeed in making her pause while she tidied up; not a chance. Moi, on the other hand, has clamped a hand over her mouth. When she removes it I cannot read her expression, not because there isn’t one, but because it is too complex to interpret. Amusement? Excitement? Puerile curiosity? Anger? All of those, together with a certain delicious anticipation. I see no sign of fear. “Would you like some cocoa?”
“No, thanks, not this time.”
She moves toward me, I assume to take up her favorite chaise next to the guardrail. Before doing so, she brushes by me and-to my astonishment-caresses my face with one hand. “You’re so cute. So dangerously innocent, like Lord Jim. You visited Johnny and managed to stay in one piece? I’m surprised he didn’t have you for dim sum. What did he tell you? If he talked it must have been because he was bored. Boredom is his only real weakness. I do hope he prefaced everything with the confession that he’s Kongrao? That we own him all the way down to his DNA?” I’m shocked at her use of the word kongrao; but, of course, technically you could argue that the phrase might have an innocent meaning here; after all, Moi did marry him.
“He didn’t need to. The way he left out everything that could implicate ‘your thing’ made it all too obvious. But he did tell me in a few hours what I would have discovered anyway in a week or so.”
She sits down on the chaise, stretches her legs and crosses them, turns languid. “And what might that have been?”
I take out a gem trader’s magazine for the month of March 2007, open it to the page which bears the news that the famous Hollywood director Frank Charles confessed himself deeply moved to accept the position of honorary ambassador to the Thai guild of gem traders, then stand up to lay it on her black lap. She takes it in with one glance, sighs, chucks it on the floor, and stares expectantly at me.
I go back to sit on my rattan chair, lean forward toward her, and ask in a slightly plaintive voice, “Why, Mimi? He was your good friend, for Buddha’s sake.”
She looks at me in blank incomprehension, gasps, turns to the maid, and seems to say in her mother tongue, Did you hear what this jerk just said? Or words to that effect. Now even the maid is looking at me as if I have a serious learning disability. Indeed, Moi lets out a long, slow whoop. “Are you sure you don’t want some enhanced cocoa? I think you’re going to need something, Detective.”
In a voice which is suddenly regal, she dismisses the maid, who quickly leaves the terrace. “As a chemist, allow me to ask one little question. The pathologist, whoever it was, they made a list of all the chemicals found on and in his body?” I nod. “And was one of those substances beryllium?” I nod again. “Under his fingernails, perhaps?” I let her have another nod. “Then quite frankly, Detective, I could rest my case right there. Out of respect for your terrifying mother, however, I will tell you more.”