John Burdett - Bangkok Haunts

The Khmer guards watch me warily, but unlike Smith and Tanakan I am free to walk around. If I go too close to the jungle perimeter, though, they fire warning shots above my head. At night I am locked in a wooden hut from which I could easily escape, but escape to what? My chances are better here than in the jungle. In this heat it takes only a day of desperate wandering in the undergrowth for one to begin to die of thirst.

I have no idea if Gamon bought the elephant farm or rented it; his conversation does not lend itself to such details. It is hot, hotter even than Bangkok, and there is no air-conditioning in any of the buildings. Electricity is intermittent, depending on whether the Khmer can be bothered to start the generator or not. Most of the time there's nothing to do except watch the guards chew betel or shoot at trees. Or watch the elephants. There are three of them, young, irritable, and weighing about three tons each.

Smith and Tanakan are imprisoned in concrete huts that seem to be new and purpose-built and face the compound, so they can see the animals trundling up and down on their giant carpet slippers. They can see the Khmer building the giant bamboo spheres too, out of a great pile of slats. The KR work slowly and often take time out to grunt at one another or shoot off rounds into the air. They are also given to inexplicable bursts of energy that they use not for work but to fire their Kalashnikovs into the jungle because they imagine they see something move. Only Gamon and I know that Baker's death may have changed everything.

He tried to escape, or perhaps he simply preferred to be shot. Somehow he managed to bust the locks on the steel door of his prison. There was a burst of machine-gun fire in the middle of the night, but this was not unusual. No shouts, no audible conversation. I imagine the guard simply shot on reflex, without giving the matter a second thought, then went back to sleep until morning. They called me at dawn because Gamon, who was meditating in his hut, had given orders not to be disturbed, and I followed them to the body lying on the perimeter of the compound. The spray had caught him in the head. He lay as he fell, twisted weirdly, because his brain died instantly and his body folded on itself. He was naked save for a dirty pair of green shorts with a camouflage motif. Already armies of insects were frenziedly feeding (reincarnations of souls that have been falling for a million years, they are drawn irresistibly by the odors of death-hard to believe they once enjoyed the privilege of human consciousness, which only goes to show where a string of poor choices can lead). Twin trails of red ants lead to and from the cornucopia of his mouth; larger monsters with proboscises, also imbued with a ferocious work ethic, lapped at cerebral matter dripping from the wound. Feeling grim, I walked over to Gamon's hut and kicked the door. He was deep in meditation, so I kicked him too. Still, I had to almost drag him to Baker's corpse. In the ten-minute interval a great swarm of flies had enveloped it. At first he seemed tempted to take it as another meditation exercise, another knot of karma to dissolve under the power of absolute truth. The law of cause and effect played on his mind, though, and I watched an unendurable anguish take over. He had turned the highest form of life on earth into a banquet for the lowest; turned Buddhism and evolution on its head. I think he suddenly saw the karmic price he would have to pay. Panic presented itself as an option. I grabbed his arm. If you run away now, the Khmer will kill the rest of us."

He seemed to wake up from a dream. "Come on," I said, and led him back to his hut. "Meditate now." And I left him. I don't know if he is alive or dead.

Time slows in the jungle without TV. The Khmer are used to it-they can put their bodies in almost any position, then stare at nothing for hours on end. They are conditioned to obeying orders, though, and since Gamon is paying, he is the one they look to. But Gamon meditates sometimes for twelve hours at a stretch. I'm quite impressed. Before they shot Baker, I used to check on Gamon in his hut to see if he really was practicing vipassana. I think he was; his body has that combination of suppleness, emptiness, and immobility that is a good clue to what he is doing with his mind. My theory, for what it's worth, is that this man uses meditation as another might use morphine. Something happened to him when he ordained; he realized there was a way out, that the mind was infinite in its possibilities, so why choose constant pain? It didn't do much for his grasp of the here and now, though, a criticism that is often leveled against our form of Buddhism. It was never designed to build caring communities or create social welfare programs; it was brought to us in times quite as desperate as our own, when there seemed nothing left to our species but a downward spiral into barbarism. Plus ca change. I ought to visit Smith and Tanakan in their cells, of course, but so far I have not had the courage. Sometimes, despite myself, I spend hours staring at the elephants.

Knowing the business plan gives a sinister aspect to these animals. One cannot help but be morbidly aware of them. In midadolescence they are already many feet taller than the tallest horse, and possess the independent minds of jungle lords. There seems to be only one mahout, a Khmer man in his sixties, dressed in filthy rags that in color and texture bear a resemblance to the pachyderms themselves. They are not tethered but wander around the compound at will. Yesterday one came up behind me, for they can be quite silent on those padded feet, and swung its trunk gently across the backs of my knees, bringing me to the ground. For a moment I thought I was done for, but the several tons of pure muscle were simply carrying out an experiment of some kind and trundled off with his conclusion, as if to share it with his three companions.

I know that I have to go see Gamon in his hut again sooner or later but I have no idea what to do or say. The whole of his sister's careful planning seems to be unraveling. I decide to wait until tomorrow. Finally I summon the strength to see the prisoners. Despite the cultural divide, it is easier to approach Smith than Tanakan, who somehow still towers over me from his great height in the feudal hierarchy. I rouse myself and hitch up my sarong, a frayed, largely gray piece of cloth I found in the washhouse the day I arrived; my shirt and pants were sweaty and already beginning to stink; it was liberating to change into traditional dress.

Smith is in a bad way. It is a shame to see that big, attractive farang body in a corner of its cell, curled up in a fetal position. His depression may be terminal, and I wonder if it would not be more humane for me to leave him alone. I press my head against the bars, watching. I see movement in his eyelids and the occasional twitch of a hand or leg. "Khun Smith," I say, "it's me, Detective Jitpleecheep." He blinks and looks up at what must be a single intense shaft of light.

My face disorients him still further. He cannot be sure it is really me, and if it is me, have I come to save or to gloat? We remain like that for perhaps ten minutes, neither of us sure of what kind of communication may be possible. Eventually he shifts his body, like an animal coming out of hibernation, and manages to stand. Like me, he is reduced to wearing an old sarong, which gives him the aspect of White Man Gone Native: an image from tales of the Raj. The bars impose a grid of vertical black shadows, like a giant bar code. "You," he says, as if I am the source of his misfortune. He approaches the window with the curiosity of a man toward the devil that is tormenting him. "You."

"I didn't do this," I say. A jerk of his chin points out that I am free and he is not. "Damrong," I explain. The name triggers a shudder. "It is hard for a farang to understand, perhaps impossible." I scratch my head exactly because it has struck me just how difficult it must be for a Westerner to comprehend, even a man who has spent time in the East. "She left instructions." He shakes his head. "She was not afraid of death, in a way had been looking forward to it all her life. Then came the money, you see, Smith, the money."