Bangkok 8 Part 6

"Sonchai, I swear to you, may Buddha kill me if I lie."

"A stunning woman in her early thirties or late twenties, half Negro, half Thai, very tall, maybe as tall as six feet, beautiful long legs, full firm bust, great face, hair dyed all the colors of the rainbow, a discreet little piercing in her navel for a jade ball set in a gold stick. Who is she?"

The Colonel sips his whisky. "I'm supposed to know?"

"This is your bar, right in the middle of the red-light district. Girls move around between here and Nana, they try everywhere to see if they can get a better deal-you know the skin trade like the back of your hand."

"You're saying she's a prost.i.tute?"

"What is the likelihood she's not?"

"She's a suspect?"

"She's a possible accomplice. No woman acting alone could organize something like that. I still have no idea how it was done. How does anyone drug a full-size python and twenty cobras and get them to bite the right guy at the right moment? It must have taken an incredible organization involving a lot of people. The snake aspect is simply incomprehensible to me at the moment. Who is she?"

19.

"What am I, an idiot?" The Colonel is drunk and has launched into his favorite topic-the difference between East and West-without answering my question.

"Don't I know I'm vulnerable to an inquiry anytime? Don't I know that some army b.a.s.t.a.r.d or muckraking journalist, or some a.s.shole who wants my job, can start digging anytime and find stuff-my boat, my little house up north, my handful of bungalows on Samui-and start pointing the finger? Wouldn't I be happier with less a.s.sets and more peace of mind? Why d'you think I keep that stuff where everyone can see it, when I could just sell up and put the money in a bank in Switzerland? Why?"

"Because this is Asia."

"Exactly! If I'm to do my job properly I have to have face. And my enemies have to see the war chest. You just don't survive at the top of the greasy pole if you're a humble little cop piously shuffling files around. Someone's bound to defame you, and then what d'you do if you don't have the money to pay lawyers? If you don't have money to buy senators and M.P.s, how the h.e.l.l are you going to defend yourself? How are you going to fight back at all?"

"Very difficult."

"I envied you and your late partner from the start, because you guys made a decision never to rise in the force-how could you if you never take money? I admired it. You made no contribution to the common pot, but I put up with that. I defended you against those who said you're not pulling your weight. I said: Look, every district needs at least one cop who doesn't take money, we're lucky, we've got two. We can wheel them out as s.h.i.+ning examples, pure Buddhists, half monks, half cops. Besides, I said, Sonchai speaks perfect English, what a prize for a district like ours to show off to the foreign press. How many times have you spoken to the foreign media?"

"Hundreds." Dozens anyway. Every time there's a big enough scandal in District 8 to fascinate people overseas-the extravagant execution of those fifteen traffickers was a good example-the Colonel drags me out in front of the cameras to send my mug zinging around the international networks.

"And you do it brilliantly. What's that favorite phrase of yours? I love it."

"Whilst Thailand is a humane Buddhist society committed to human rights and the dignity of its citizens, the wealthier countries of the world must appreciate we do not always have the resources to meet those high standards of law enforcement which, frankly, are a luxury afforded only by those countries which industrialized first."

The Colonel claps his hands in delight. "Brilliant. Did I ever tell you the Director of Police himself said what a good front man you are?"

"Yes, you told me. But it won't get me a promotion. You told me that too."

My Colonel sighs. "Sonchai, the difference between us, the only real difference, is that you are a man of the future, I am a man of the present. The present is still, unfortunately-" He cuts himself off to watch a girl who brings more Mekong, more snails, more sticky rice, a whole chicken fried in honey and chili sauce and shredded, two bottles of Kloster clouded with condensation. She wai wais respectfully, and slightly flirtatiously, to the Colonel. She is the most beautiful of the bar's girls and the one who most frequently serves her boss, who waves a hand toward her and laughs before he continues. "The present is as it is. It's not only your enemies you have to have face for, it's your friends, too, perhaps even more than your enemies. What kind of district do we serve? Is it populated with upwardly mobile yuppies, Internet fiends, law-abiding sandwich-cla.s.s lawyers, doctors and dentists?"

I miss my cue because I'm cramming chicken into my mouth with large quant.i.ties of sticky rice. The chicken is to supply nutrients, the sticky rice to absorb the alcohol and chili. I have never felt so surely on the point of being dangerously ill.

"No, it's not. It's a sewer and the rules which apply to sewer workers are not the same as those which apply to stockbrokers. My people would never forgive me for being as small as life. Of course, I do not fool a man of your intelligence, I don't try to, I'm not a superman, but my people need a superman and that requires-" A yacht, a hundred bungalows, et cetera-I recite the list to myself as he falls into a rant. "There are gangsters who give millions to the poor, honest people who talk compa.s.sion and give nothing. Tell me, wise one, who do the poor prefer?"

"The gangsters," I manage to croak. I'm so drunk now, the feeling in my stomach so lethal, that I'm afraid I'm going to have to make a dash for the toilet before the punch line. It comes just as I'm standing up. "Sonchai, I swear to you I know no woman of the description you gave to me. If I did, if she was as good as you say, I would have invited her for a week on my boat-you know me." The old man grins and waves a hand to excuse me. As I rush toward the sign marked GENTLEMEN GENTLEMEN I look back once and catch an image of an attractive military figure br.i.m.m.i.n.g with health and contentment as he pats the backside of his favorite, who jumped to fill his gla.s.s as soon as I left the table. I look back once and catch an image of an attractive military figure br.i.m.m.i.n.g with health and contentment as he pats the backside of his favorite, who jumped to fill his gla.s.s as soon as I left the table.

I am a long time in the toilet, and when I return to the bar the old man has gone. It is like the Colonel to offer this subtle compa.s.sion, just when one least expects it; he has cut short the lunch which he was clearly enjoying and given orders for me to be taken upstairs to the room the girls use to service their short-time clients. I don't want to sleep here, don't want to look on this girl showing me the way up the stairs and see my mother twenty-five years ago, but I know I couldn't make it out in the street. Fearing I might soil the bed in my sleep, I lie down on the floor in the upstairs room and fall asleep there, just like a wh.o.r.e. After such a banquet what would I dream of if not Paris?

At a big cafe near the Opera, with a gla.s.s extension that took up three-quarters of the sidewalk and waiters even ruder and more arrogant than elsewhere in the city, my mother said: "If only he were a hundred years younger."

Only a slight exaggeration. I had watched Monsieur Truffaut in the mornings as he crossed the great s.p.a.ces of his Cinquieme Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt mansion flat in his paisley dressing gown, looking exactly like the undead. It was as if he'd left his mind in the grave during the night and did not catch up with the fact of being alive until after twelve o'clock, when he swallowed his collection of pills.

Nong reported that her bedtime duties were not heavy. He was one of those Frenchmen who had enjoyed a young female body next to him in bed all his life and saw no reason to give up the habit merely because his biology was failing.

It was hardly a strain to fit in with the old man's rituals. Nong and I had the mornings to ourselves. The old man would spend the hour between 12 and 1 p.m. digesting his pills and the daily newspapers with increasing vigor as the drugs took hold, then we would march off to one of the world-cla.s.s restaurants at which he was treated like the Roi-Soleil. Roi-Soleil. Maxim's, Lucas Carton, the restaurant at Fauchon, Le Robuchon; these shrines from the gospels of cuisine were everyday events for the bar girl and her son. With true Parisian discretion, the waiters neither nodded nor winked behind the old man's back. They called Nong "Madame" in reverential tones, and I was "Monsieur." Maxim's, Lucas Carton, the restaurant at Fauchon, Le Robuchon; these shrines from the gospels of cuisine were everyday events for the bar girl and her son. With true Parisian discretion, the waiters neither nodded nor winked behind the old man's back. They called Nong "Madame" in reverential tones, and I was "Monsieur."

Truffaut's afternoon vigor lasted long enough to give me an English lesson, interspersed with French, and here was revelation. To the old man the only reason for learning English was to win arguments with Englishmen and Americans, preferably without their noticing it. He taught the finer points of the language: the effective use of sarcasm, the acid two-word cap on a bore's monologue, how to tell the other guy he was a jerk in a way that everyone except the jerk understood; it was the English of a fencing master, and I loved it.

He also taught pleasure. A lunch or dinner at a place like Lucas Carton was to be approached with reverence, as one would seduce a beautiful woman. The pleasure of food was more reliable than s.e.x-a wink at Nong, ironic and self-mocking, which made her smile. "Paris is an old wh.o.r.e, but a five-star one."

One took a stroll before the meal, then an aperitif at one of the pavement cafes. "Choose a place full of life, for G.o.d's sake, full of intrigue and adultery. Then make your way slowly to the temple of pleasure."

Everything about the old man told me what I was going to miss out on: urbanity, the cultivated conversation of the demimonde, that special sort of job which was an extension of one's social contacts. Like the Colonel, whom I had not yet met, Truffaut was one of life's golden ones, a member of a special tribe to which I knew even then I would never belong. There was something else about him, though, an authenticity to which Vikorn would never aspire. Every day after my English lesson Truffaut, in a state of rapture, read two pages from a book by someone called Marcel Proust. Nong noticed it too-the authenticity, not the Proust. I think she would have settled for twenty years younger, for they shared a pa.s.sion for life cleansed of illusion. More than once I saw her reach out, but they both knew there just was not enough of him left. Oh yes, we could have been happy in Paris, and for several months we were.

The inevitable happened during our fifteenth week. In the middle of the night my mother felt obliged to call a number the old man had given her, and the emergency services arrived with oxygen and drips.

It was not a serious stroke, but it brought a small army of bequest-minded relatives, one of whom was delegated to tell Nong it was time for her to go. The old man had been persuaded to agree-he was hardly in a condition to argue-but true to his code, he insisted that mother and son return to Thailand in style on a first-cla.s.s ticket on Air France, with whom he had family connections. An Air France official met Nong and me at the airport and during the flight we were treated as if we were Siamese celebrities, perhaps of a new generation of brown-skinned billionaire entrepreneurs. Nong groaned when we emerged into the muggy heat of Krung Thep and joined the taxi line. Going back to the bars was going to be especially tough after Paris.

I awake to a familiar ghost gnawing at my feet.

20.

It is male, about nine feet tall with the round shape of a tic, tiny feet and legs. His mouth is the size of the eye of a needle, just as the tales stipulate. I have seen his kind too often to be truly frightened, but the echo of my childhood is infuriating to me, as if I've got nowhere in all these years. From downstairs there is the m.u.f.fled boom of the club's sound system, but we are all alone in a primeval s.p.a.ce, this hungry ghost and I. He is the spirit of one who was greedy and selfish in his lifetime and must spend a thousand years with that tiny mouth which can never take in enough food for that huge body.

The hungry ghosts are the most common of our indigenous ghouls, of which there are many varieties, and I'm not entirely surprised to find him in a go-go club, for they feed on every kind of vice. We all believe in them, by the way, even those who would deny it to foreigners. To many people, especially in the country, the undead are a serious pest. One of their more disgusting tricks is to appear late at night on quiet lanes holding their heads under their arms, although the more common posture is a dead-eyed, flabby-lipped stare from the foot of the bed. They bring bad luck and the only repellent is a visit to the temple and some expensive exorcism by the monks. They can be a hazard to prost.i.tution. Every bar has its own story of the girl who contracted to spend the night with a client, only to flee in the middle of it because the ignorant farang farang had chosen an old run-down hotel infested with these filthy spirits. Even Nong, above averagely robust in most respects, once woke, with her middle-aged customer snoring peacefully beside her, to see an apparition greedily licking at the used condom which the had chosen an old run-down hotel infested with these filthy spirits. Even Nong, above averagely robust in most respects, once woke, with her middle-aged customer snoring peacefully beside her, to see an apparition greedily licking at the used condom which the farang farang had been too lazy to dispose of. She too had dressed hurriedly and departed, vowing never to visit that particular hotel again. I deal with this one by reciting the Four n.o.ble Truths to myself in Pali. I watch while he vanishes, and with him the dull gray s.p.a.ce he inhabits. I stand up and open the door. had been too lazy to dispose of. She too had dressed hurriedly and departed, vowing never to visit that particular hotel again. I deal with this one by reciting the Four n.o.ble Truths to myself in Pali. I watch while he vanishes, and with him the dull gray s.p.a.ce he inhabits. I stand up and open the door.

The music and roar of voices from the bar is suddenly deafening. The burning in my stomach is ferocious and the sourness in my mouth makes me nauseous. I grope my way down the stairs and enter the bar.

It is twenty minutes past midnight, just the hour when the great game reaches a climax. Shy men who have been saying no all night find their wills sapped by drink and the ceaseless attention of near-naked young women; all of a sudden the prospect of going back to the hotel alone is more appalling-and somehow more immoral, a crime against life, even-than congress with a prost.i.tute. Skillfully, the girls build a dream world of fantasy in the Western mind, a world which is mysteriously difficult to let go of. And the girls, too, have their fantasies: of finding the farang farang who would support them for life, or, failing that, take them to the West and relieve them, for a year or two, of this living hand to mouth, not to mention the indignity of their trade. The bar is packed. who would support them for life, or, failing that, take them to the West and relieve them, for a year or two, of this living hand to mouth, not to mention the indignity of their trade. The bar is packed.

A gang of brutal-looking young men, their heads shaved like pink coconuts, ears pincus.h.i.+ons of ironmongery, tattoos glowing at the edges of cutaway singlets, sit mesmerized around the bar, which is in near darkness. It is the paint act. The girls on the platform are naked except for streaks of luminescent paint asymmetrically applied the length of their bodies. Under the ultraviolet spots the effect is eerie: erotic pink and mauve shapes move sinuously to the music, a Thai pop song with the usual upbeat rhythm. Other men sit in padded booths surrounded by attentive girls and staring at the show. The floor is flooded, too, by Englishmen telling each other it is the cheapest bar in Pat Pong. As I pa.s.s a booth I hear: "I want to take you out, I'll pay your bar fine."

"I don't know. Cork you too big."

"I tip big too."

"Oh, okay."

Outside the street is no less crowded. Here the forces of capitalism produce a strange conjunction. Families on their first trip to the Orient, sleepless with jet lag, browse the dense lanes of clothes stalls. Women and girls make oohs and aahs as they translate the prices into their own currency while their men acquire rubber necks. The moral impropriety of designer rip-offs seems not to trouble the respectable bourgeois conscience as they cram plastic bags with Calvin Klein T-s.h.i.+rts, Tommy Bahama jeans, fake Rolexes.

"Well, if you're tempted, Terry, go ahead and get it off your chest," a stout woman is saying in bitter tones as she holds the hand of a wide-eyed boy of about seven. "Just remember to use protection, and don't expect us to be waiting in the hotel when you've finished."

"I didn't say I was tempted, darling," the man says (also stout, balding, haggard), "I merely said you can see how some blokes might be tempted."

"Well, I have to say I can't see what's so tempting, I hate to be racist, but this is is the Third World." the Third World."

I am in a hurry to escape this street full of sad memories, but it doesn't do to try to rush. The place is so crowded, the night so hot, the music so loud, the ten thousand television monitors so insistent, you have to adjust to the prevailing rhythm: somnambulant rather than relaxed, as if these were not real people so much as dream-bodies the true owners of which are tucked up between crisp sheets in one of the safe clean suburbs of the West. I eventually make it out to Silom, where still more stalls line the road for more than a mile. I hail a cab.

It takes more than an hour to reach Kaoshan in the dense midnight traffic. When I arrive the music is even louder. The taxi cannot penetrate the crowds in the street who are carousing, swigging from beer and whisky bottles and checking out pirated tapes and CDs on the stalls. I pay the driver and, once again squeezing between hot damp Caucasian bodies, find the soi soi where the teak house stands in near darkness. where the teak house stands in near darkness.

I imagine the black man doing this: escaping the insanity-with-soundtrack of Kaoshan, escaping the light, escaping the city, escaping the world to retreat with a sigh to his private and perfect world in the nostalgic wooden house of yesteryear. At the top of the stairs leading to the first floor I slip off my shoes and gingerly try the door. It yields to my push and I slip inside like a shadow.

It takes a moment to realize the lights are switched on. The glow they give is so soft, hardly more than that of safety lights. The old lady sits cross-legged in one of the dark corners, softly murmuring.

She is perhaps the last survivor of her generation in the village where she was born and brought up-probably somewhere in the northeast in the area we call Isaan, near the Lao border-and she is talking to all those friends and relatives who have already pa.s.sed over to the other side. They are as real to her-realer-than the living. She must do this every night, no doubt longing for her own liberation from a world she has never understood and never will. I take the key from my pocket and slip out the front door, climbing up the external wooden staircase to the upper floor where the twenty-first century awaits.

The computer is as I left it, still running with the screen turned off. When I press the b.u.t.ton to illuminate the screen, it reads: Thank you, Detective, congratulations on getting here before us. A thousand bucks is a little steep but Uncle Sam can take it. We would like you to meet Special Agent Kimberley Jones as soon as possible. Regards, Khun Rosen and Khun Nape.

I nod at such gracious tones from a superpower, and delve into Bradley's software. It is difficult at first to find a common theme amongst it all, the marine was nothing if not eclectic. Little by little a surprising statistic emerges. In addition to Webster's dictionary there are three medical dictionaries, each more extensive than the last, as if Bradley started off with the simpler version and found his needs to be more complex. Similarly there are three separate programs which deal with human anatomy, the biggest occupying three gigabytes. I enter it to find stunning graphics demonstrating every aspect of the human body, from skeletal details to musculature, to highly colored representations of every organ. From the way Bradley has customized the program it seems as if his favorite page is a map of the female form with a point-and-click facility. I point to the left ear, click, and instantly find myself looking at a gigantic Technicolor ear, with a detailed explanation of the hearing faculty in text at the bottom of the screen and an invitation to examine different details more closely. I blink at the great lion-colored mountain range of the outer ear, ruthlessly cut away to reveal a temporal bone in leopard-skin cross-hatching, a tympanic membrane in wet-look mauve, a snail-like cochlea in cornflower blue.

In a flash of inspiration, I check the program for bookmarks, find several and double-click on one of them. I find myself staring at a brilliantly colored breast. The bulk of the pendulous mound is sandstone, with a fiery inner core from which lead the volcanic lactiferous ducts to the towering summit. A footnote explains that the whole hangs between the second and sixth rib from those ocher pectorals. A sound like a soft thud penetrates the floorboards from below.

I close down the computer, switch off the light and slip out of the office into the corridor. The steps on the wooden staircase are so soft they would have been undetectable except for two creaks which I noticed on the way up. I sense rather than hear a body on the other side of the door, then the unmistakable squirt of betel spit.

I open the door wide and the little old lady flies in, knocking me down. Under her, I squirm in a sticky mess, trying to gain a footing, thrusting her to one side to send her skidding across the polished floor while I roll over to avoid the blow and spring to my feet. A meat cleaver sticks in the floor at an angle while its owner, dressed in black with black motorcycle helmet and tinted visor, pulls out a knife. The visor, clearly, is an irritating impediment to my a.s.sa.s.sination; he thrusts it roughly upward, revealing a Southeast Asian face, from the Thai ethnic group, otherwise anonymous in the spherical frame of the helmet.

I manage to stand up but he has me pinned with my back against the wall near the entrance. Forensically observant to the last, I see the knife has a serrated section on the back, a channel for the flow of blood so as to avoid those vulgar sucking sounds when withdrawn from the corpse, with an elegant parabolic curve toward the tip which catches the light nicely and is about twelve inches long. My dilemma is simple: if he lunges for my heart and I evade him by dodging to the right, I shall have about a minute more to live than if I don't dodge at all, or, equally possible, if he, reading my mind like the professional he clearly is, lunges with a slight bias to the left, he should do me in with approximately a thirty-degree penetration wound, probably with an upward thrust to take in as much lung, ventricle and aorta as humanly possible with one blade. We are reading each other's minds, he with the amus.e.m.e.nt of one who has already won, me with the clarity of thought legendary in the doomed. An infinitesimal twitch in his left eyebrow tells me he will lunge in the next second. I stake my chips on a jump to the left. A mighty leap causes the wooden house to shake and ends with the knife stuck in the panel and his visor clopping back over his face. Compared to my own problems, his next decision is hardly taxing: whether to wrestle the knife out of the wall with visor up or down? I watch fascinated while he attempts both at the same time, pus.h.i.+ng the annoying visor up with the left while he pulls at the knife with the right. That thrust of his was quite something; the knife is stuck so fast between planks he needs a foot to press against the wall to pull it out, which requires two hands; whoops, that visor again. I have the feeling that things are not quite as urgent as I had thought, but decide to try a charge anyway. No time like the present, and I use the back wall to thrust myself forward. I manage to launch myself into the air, a mistake because once launched I find I have lost control over my direction and he eludes me by stepping sideways with a contemptuous grunt, leaving me winded facedown on the boards while he goes back to his ch.o.r.e with the knife, which finally yields to his efforts.

I try to stand to run for the door, but slide on the slippery surface and collapse painfully back onto my knees. I twist to the right, in a gamble that Mr. Black will lunge to the left. Wrong, I feel the knife slice up the right side of my rib cage as I fling myself facedown onto the floor. Not the best defensive position. I manage a quick flip onto my back as Mr. Cleaver leaps on top of me, visor up. I raise my left foot and for a split second keep it there. An astonished groan peculiar to the male of our species as my honorable opponent's t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. .h.i.t my heel and the visor slowly closes over his agony. A hardy fellow, I have to admit, as he rolls over and over to the open door, apparently having trouble standing, breathing and thinking. I hear him tick off the stairs on the way down to the ground on his backside and fancy I can hear that visor clopping as he goes.

My knees are all but paralyzed from the way I fell on the floor and my own blood is pooling with the old lady's. I am skidding and flailing in a slippery pond when the motorbike starts up and roars away.

I crawl to the old lady, whose throat has been slashed back to the vertebra, then grope my way to my feet using the wall and feel my way to the master bedroom. As I switch on the light I feel her eyes on me. This time the ironic twist to her lips must be especially for me. The gold-stick-with-jade in her navel gives me pause as I pa.s.s by.

In the shower I watch my blood slipping away in pink solution and feel myself weakening.

Moment of truth: Who do I distrust least? Put another way, who is likely to be both punctual and equipped for a medical emergency? There is really no contest, the Colonel is probably carousing at one of his clubs and has certainly turned off his mobile. Nor is there any point in calling for an ambulance, since in Krung Thep there are none. I pick Rosen's card out of my pocket and call him from the telephone in the bedroom. I speak in short sentences punctuated by convincing gasps of pain, and replace the receiver.

I lie on the bed while life slips away. It is not an unpleasant sensation, although one remains tormented by the question of what happens next.

21.

Fritz von Staffen was certainly different, I had to give him that. For a start he was not middle-aged; he was in his mid-thirties. Nor was he discernibly inadequate in any other way. He was tall, slim and handsome, from the south of Germany where people are as likely to have brown hair as blond. His was almost black and his skin pale. His only affectation, apart from being an elegant dresser, was to smoke English cigarettes from an amber cigarette holder, but this he did well.

It was my first experience of flying. Fourteen hours in the belly of a huge machine, then a nervous trip from the airport in a big white Mercedes taxi, my mother making appropriate sounds of wonder with the tall German's arm around her while I gazed at wide empty streets as black as her hair.

We arrived at night, so the voyage of discovery began the next day, when we stepped out into the air. And what air! I had never experienced air in a city which smelled fresh, just as though you were in the country. Deciduous trees exploding in sprays of greens! I had never seen the pyramids on horse chestnuts before, apple blossom, chestnut blossom, the first roses. You had to wonder if this was really a city, or a gigantic park on which a few housing estates had encroached. Garten Garten were everywhere. There was the Englischer Garten, the Finanzgarten, the Hofgarten, the Botanischer Garten-it seemed that were everywhere. There was the Englischer Garten, the Finanzgarten, the Hofgarten, the Botanischer Garten-it seemed that Garten Garten were to Munich what traffic was to Krung Thep. And attached to each of these were to Munich what traffic was to Krung Thep. And attached to each of these Garten, Garten, sometimes bang in the middle, you invariably came across another kind of sometimes bang in the middle, you invariably came across another kind of Garten, Garten, the the Biergarten, Biergarten, and equally inevitably you came across one or more of Fritz's many friends and acquaintances. They seemed like a small army at first, until they narrowed down to three couples who always seemed to be there drinking huge steins of beer, which I could hardly lift, and eating potato salad, chicken, ribs from paper plates while a Bavarian band in lederhosen played Strauss. Not that I could tell Strauss from Gershwin until Fritz explained music, as he explained many other things that a young boy needs to know. and equally inevitably you came across one or more of Fritz's many friends and acquaintances. They seemed like a small army at first, until they narrowed down to three couples who always seemed to be there drinking huge steins of beer, which I could hardly lift, and eating potato salad, chicken, ribs from paper plates while a Bavarian band in lederhosen played Strauss. Not that I could tell Strauss from Gershwin until Fritz explained music, as he explained many other things that a young boy needs to know.

Fritz's friends pa.s.sed our tests admirably, even Nong said so. Not the slightest Teutonic coldness toward the brown-skinned woman and her half-caste son, not a hint in the eyes that they had discussed between them (as they surely had) the likely nature of her profession. The women of the three couples were especially attentive and told my mother how delighted they were that dear Fritz had finally found a mate whom he and his friends could love. Nong told me that Germans were special people, not afflicted by the narrow-mindedness that caused so much racism in other Western countries. Germans were people of the world who could cut through cultural barriers and look into the hearts of those from the other side of the earth. If only Thais were more like that.

We had arrived in May and by July Fritz p.r.o.nounced my English way in advance of that of any German boy. Nong's English, too, had improved measurably, for Fritz had a clever way of teasing her: "Darling, I really love the way you p.r.o.nounce your r r's, we used to have a comedian who did that-he was hilarious, earned a fortune on the stage and on TV."

My mother put in the time and never made an r r sound like an sound like an l l again, except for satirical purposes, when she wanted to show her sophistication by making fun of the bar-girl accent (other improvements were no less dramatic, though even Fritz took some time to convince her that "boom-boom" was not standard English for s.e.xual intercourse, but rather a device by which some gifted predecessor had first pierced the language barrier on this crucial point). again, except for satirical purposes, when she wanted to show her sophistication by making fun of the bar-girl accent (other improvements were no less dramatic, though even Fritz took some time to convince her that "boom-boom" was not standard English for s.e.xual intercourse, but rather a device by which some gifted predecessor had first pierced the language barrier on this crucial point).

In June I caught a summer cold and Nong learned her first complete phrase in German: "Was ist los, bist Du erkaeltert?" "Was ist los, bist Du erkaeltert?"

During the third week of July my mother took me for a walk in the Englischer Garten, sat down with me on a bench under a chestnut tree, held my hand tightly and burst into tears. She laughed as she cried. "Darling, I can't believe how happy I am, I'm crying with relief that the nightmare is over-I don't have to-you know-work at night anymore. I don't have to go to Pat Pong ever again in my life if I don't want to." I too felt the sense of religious redemption: I would have her with me every night from now on, until we died.

The letdown was vertiginous. The first I knew of it was an explosion of Thai expletives from the bedroom next door, a "Calm down, darling, please, calm down" from Fritz, more Thai expletives, the sound of something being thrown, a "You little savage" from Fritz, the word Scheisser Scheisser repeated over and over again by Nong, a flood of tears not of the joyful variety, an "Ouch, you f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h" from Fritz, and "I'll make you pay for that, you vile little monkey," the bedroom door opening and closing with a slam, Nong running downstairs, the garden door opening and slamming. Silence. repeated over and over again by Nong, a flood of tears not of the joyful variety, an "Ouch, you f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h" from Fritz, and "I'll make you pay for that, you vile little monkey," the bedroom door opening and closing with a slam, Nong running downstairs, the garden door opening and slamming. Silence.

I figured a late-night dash to the airport was in the cards and prepared myself for fourteen hours with a furious mother, followed by Krung Thep in late July-not the sweetest prospect on earth. Obviously, Fritz kept a tall blond mistress somewhere and Nong had come across the evidence, probably after a diligent search of his pockets.

But the call to flee did not come that night, and Fritz really wasn't fooling around.

In my hospital bed I reflect on my mother's most defining moment with a pride that has grown with the years.

The next day she appeared alone in my bedroom, still boiling. She told me to pack my things, leaving out every single toy, game or book that Fritz had given me, while she did the same. Fritz insisted on driving us to the airport in his BMW. A telling line of dialogue broke the silence: Fritz: "I wasn't going to put you in any danger, you know." Nong: "So why don't you bring the suitcases from Bangkok yourself, if it's so safe?"

At the airport Nong ostentatiously opened our two suitcases and examined every item, even squeezing toothpaste and shaking cakes of soap and knocking on the cases to check for false bottoms. Fritz, with a sarcastic aside about her level of education and the Thai intellect in general, pointed out that no one exports illegal drugs from the West into into Thailand. She ignored him with true Thai stubbornness, and when she was through checked herself and her son onto the flight to Bangkok without a single backward glance. Fritz was history. Thailand. She ignored him with true Thai stubbornness, and when she was through checked herself and her son onto the flight to Bangkok without a single backward glance. Fritz was history.

Well, not quite. Fritz was not unknown in the Bangkok bar scene and the efficient bush telegraph pa.s.sed its message to Nong a few years later: Fritz had chosen the wrong girl again, this time with disastrous consequences for him. She had informed the police in Bangkok, who had mounted a sting operation, and now he was in the dreaded Bang Kwan prison on the Chao Phraya River. I was for going to see him. Nong wouldn't hear of the idea. I insisted. Fritz might be rotten to the core, but for a number of months he had been the best surrogate father a boy could wish for. We fought, I won. One fine morning we went down to the river and took the boat as far as the last jetty, from where we trekked in the heat to the prison.

Bang Kwan was even grimmer than I expected. A fortress with a watchtower and guards armed with machine guns, surrounded by double perimeter walls, the stench of raw sewage as we pa.s.sed through the first gate, and the spiritual stench of violence, sadism and rotting souls as we pa.s.sed into the inhabited part of the prison. Fritz's head was shaved, he was very thin in a threadbare prison s.h.i.+rt and shorts. The prison blacksmith had welded iron rings around his ankles joined by a heavy chain, but he greeted my mother and me with the same Old World charm, thanked us for coming to see him, and said: "I would like to apologize for the way I behaved at the airport that last day in Munich." Nong maintained a relentlessly hard face, gave brittle answers to his questions. The interview lasted less than ten minutes.

On the way home from the prison, my mother admitted it had been a good idea to make the visit. In her eyes the Buddha had avenged her by sending Fritz to jail and humiliating him in front of her. When I sneezed from the pollution she said: "Was ist los, bist Du erkaeltert?" "Was ist los, bist Du erkaeltert?"

The phrase has come into my mind because she is repeating it now as she leans over me, smiling. I grab her hand like a hungry lover, but I'm almost too weak to talk.

She has filled out somewhat in retirement, her bust is fuller and her shoulders broader, she is fifty now, and has not lost her effortless talent for projecting s.e.x.

Not that she tries to lose it. She is wearing a crimson dress which exposes her brown shoulders and some of her cleavage, black and crimson patent leather shoes with fairly high heels, a gold Buddha on a heavy gold chain around her neck, a black and crimson handbag which is an illegal copy of a Gucci, a heavy gold bracelet, gold teardrop earrings, wet-look red lipstick, heavy mascara and that perfume I remember from Paris, mostly because Nong's personal cannot-do-without budget doubled after that trip.

There is not a trace of gray in her hair, which is curled in a plait asymmetrically on one side of her head, with the end left to flop, giving her the appearance of-an expensive tart. She sits in a chair next to my bed and lights a Marlboro Red. "D'you want a puff?" I shake my head. "Is it really bad, darling? I rushed here as soon as I could when the Colonel told me what had happened. What were you doing in that house all alone late at night anyway?" She shudders, then puts a hand on mine where it lies on the sheet. "You're going to be all right, though, the surgeon told me-he's really charming, isn't he? The longest scar in Krung Thep, but basically superficial, that's what he said." She looks at me fondly, as if I fell off a ladder during some juvenile prank. "Is there anything I can get you? Anything you want?"

I gaze into her eyes. "Mother, I've been dreaming and hallucinating with all the drugs they gave me. I want you to tell me who my father was."

I have asked this question exactly ten times, this being the tenth. I remember the other nine times as vividly as I will remember this. The question takes courage, and requires the emotional intensity of a special occasion-a near-fatal attack by a would-be a.s.sa.s.sin should do.

She pats my hand. "As soon as you're out of here, let's you and me spend a few days at my house in Phetchabun, no? We'll get in some beer, I'll invite some people, we'll play hi-lo, I can get you some ganja if you want-I know how much Pichai's death must be affecting you."