Тимоти Холлинен - Bangkok Noir

I raised my eyes slowly until they looked into his, which were blazing black. While we were mesmerizing each other, I realized he had started to undo the top buttons of his shirt. He continued until he had undone each one all the way down to his waist band. When he pulled his shirt open, I began to understand. His flesh was a mass of black tattoos, amongst which I had no difficulty in discerning those forms and shapes that I had seen earlier that afternoon at Om’s condo: the same, of course, as those on her body.

Naturally, I called my driver and rushed out of the office to the pick-up area outside the building. My car was a high-end Lexus with tinted windows; when we reached the walled compound, where my in-laws had built a set of fine detached houses slap bang in the middle of downtown Bangkok, the great gates opened automatically, then closed with a clank behind us. For more than twenty-five years I had loathed that clank, so similar, in my mind, to the clank of prison gates.

As soon as the driver stopped the car I dashed into our house, ignored the maid who stood in the middle of the lounge looking depressed, knocked softly on my wife’s bedroom door and waited for her low, soft, pathetic “Come in.”

If I’ve said almost nothing about my wife so far it is for one simple reason: guilt. Lalita — always shortened to Lali — had never done me any harm and I really did love her once: why else would I have made so much effort to please her family? Lali, though, was one of those Asian women who are simply not sensual. We had produced no children and, except for the first months of marriage, hardly made love more than once in a blue moon to convince each other we were still an item. Soon after that Lali lost interest in love making altogether, then, a decade later, in the world. She has spent most of her middle age in her bedroom where childhood friends and her favorite aunt visit her. Whenever we meet we both feel a great sadness that things have worked out this way. I am proud to report that each of us has found the strength not to blame the other: sometimes life simply is like that. The thought, therefore, that I may have inadvertently caused her death by the vilest form of Khmer sorcery through taking Om as a mia noi , was dreadful to me beyond words. Believe it or not I began to resolve, at that moment, to drop Om. Passionate as I was about her, I could not countenance, or live with, the murder of Lali by witchcraft.

I was in quite a state, in other words, which was made worse by the doctor who was just leaving. He caught me at the door and said in a tone which I found accusatory: “Massive cancerous growth behind the stomach, too deep to operate...”

“How long does she have?”

“About a week, if that.”

I closed — almost slammed — the door behind him and went to Lali who lay on her bed watching me. I pulled up a chair, took her hand, pressed it to my lips and said: “I’m so, so sorry. So very very sorry,” and burst into tears.

She caressed my head with her hand. “Don’t worry, it’s all going to be alright.”

“How can you say that?” I said, bawling.

She smiled and said: “If you stop making a noise I’ll tell you.”

“This is not an easy question for me to ask,” Lali said in a weak voice, her head sunk into the pillow, locking eyes with me for a moment, then looking away. “Tell me the truth, have you ever felt that you were set up by me and my family?”

“Set up?” I scratched my jaw.

“Don’t lie. It’s way too late for that.”

I thought about it. “By you, no. You’re far too innocent. By your family — maybe, in an opportunistic way. After they got to know me they realised they were going to have the lawyer they always wanted: clever, respected, street wise and, being a farang , entirely dependent on them for clients and funding. I have to admit, they were right to think they needed one. If not for me everyone of your male relations would be on death row or serving life sentences.”

She took away the hand that had been holding one of mine and her features tensed to such a degree I feared she was going to have a seizure. “You’re wrong, I’m afraid. Quite wrong. I am as much a product of these people as my three brothers. How could I not be? I was brainwashed from birth. They sent me out to find a farang like you whom they could manipulate, and since I was their zombie, their robot-like all good little upper class gangster girls — I did as I was told. This is the way the world is , was their message, these are the kind of things you have to do to survive . And: look at the money we’ve spent on you, didn’t you realise it would be payback time one day?Everyone else is earning their keep. What did I know? I’d never had an independent thought in my life. If you remember, I even faked an interest in sex at first.”

“Lali,” I said, “I can’t believe you’re saying this.”

She ignored me. “But when I saw how basically noble you were, and how you had that peculiar British integrity — which my charming family sees as stupidity — that forced you to carry on with what you had started, even if you had a frigid wife and the mob for in-laws, I started to feel terrible. Really terrible. So terrible I could no longer live a normal life. You see, in my own frigid way I had finally fallen in love with you, but being a psychic nonentity I had no libido. I think I might have developed sexually, if I hadn’t been so depressed about it all. It’s been cowardice and self-disgust that’s kept me pinned to this bed — this damned room — all these years. If I’d had one atom of courage I would have told you to pack our bags and take us to the Himalayas — I dreamed of living in a cave with you in a state of total poverty.” She sighed. “But I waited too long. Middle age caught up with me. It was too late.”

“Lali, you’re killing me with this,” I said.

She put a hand out for me to hold. “But not to worry, this is Thailand. There is always a way around such things.”

I frowned. Whatever could she mean?

She beckoned me to come closer. “The Mae Nak shrine — your uncle Walter’s mysticism — they sowed seeds in my mind, but there was nothing I could do until Bunthan came to see me.”

“Who?”

“The Khmer man who came to your office today. I sent for him through my Aunt Nit, whose husband is also from Cambodia. Bunthan is a shaman of the old Khmer school that has its roots in ancient Brahmin sorcery.” She had to pause for breath. I could see her heroic struggle with weakness and nausea and felt worse than ever. She continued: “He has been teaching and training me for ten years. I wanted to tell you immediately but he wouldn’t let me. He reminded me of how fatal weakness and impatience can be — look what misery those faults had brought me already.”

“Teaching and training you in what?”

For a long moment she did not answer. Indeed, she seemed already to inhabit a different world. “Advanced techniques in cheating death,” she said at last in a whipser.

“But you’re dying — the doctor said so?”

“Yes,” she said with a grave nod, “but thanks to Bunthan I’m going to cheat. We are going to be saved by ancient magic, my love, working through me. Indeed, you could almost say that in your case you have already been saved. Just promise me one thing — that you’ll play the game and won’t freak out like Mae Nak’s husband?”

“How can I promise anything when I have no idea what you’re talking about? I’m sorry, you have to tell me more.”

Lali sighed, then beckoned me to come close to her mouth. I could see in her face all the suffering of the decades, and the toll her disease was taking. Her voice shook when she said: “All these years I’ve spent mostly in bed — immobile, you see, more or less dead.”