Paul Theroux - Mr. Bones - Twenty Stories

“Hello.”

“Who’s that?”

He heard smoky laughter but no reply.

“You have my cell phone. I need it.”

“I give you tomorrow.”

“When? Where?”

She spoke the name of a bar, she repeated the street, but even so, writing it down, Osier was not sure he’d heard the name correctly. Free had to be three. What was nigh ?

The next day was Saturday. Osier hailed a taxi after lunch and read the scribble he had written. The driver said, “I know, I know,” but he didn’t know. They discovered the soi in Sukhumvit, but he guessed at the bar — Siamese Nights.

From the outside, it was indistinguishable from six other bars nearby: neon sign, opaque window, strings of beads hanging at the entrance. But inside it was large, vault-like, and quiet, gong music playing softly, like the melody in a children’s toy. Out of the back window he could see a canal, and plump lotuses in it, floating on their outflung petals, light falling across the water. He was looking into a Bangkok that was enclosed and placid and pretty.

She wasn’t there; hardly anyone was in the bar. He sat in the mildewed air of midafternoon and drank lemonade — it was too early for alcohol. Besides, a beer would tire him, and this being a Saturday, he planned to spend the rest of the afternoon walking — not to the railway station or the big flea market, but simply to exhaust himself in the heat — then an early dinner and bed.

At a quarter past three he saw her. She entered the bar and without hesitating walked straight to him. He was reminded of the directness of the man-woman at the railway station who’d confronted him.

He was relieved to find her manner the same as the previous evening: assured, casual, undemanding, as though they knew each other fairly well. He was glad the place was dark. He’d thought of taking the cell phone and leaving, but now he felt like lingering. He loved her piercing eyes, her thick hair, her height — even sitting down she was almost his height, their eyes level. She was not a sprite, not kittenish like the other girls, but a cat-like presence.

“Lemonade,” she said to the waitress.

A shaft of sunlight slanted through some boards near where they sat, and he could see through that crack the brightness of water, the glittering canal, the floating flowers, the bubbly stagnation shimmering in the hot afternoon.

“This is nice.”

“Everything nice for you!”

She remembered that he’d said she was nice, but what he wanted to say was that he was less lonely. Her accurate memory made her seem intelligent, impatient with small talk.

“I meant it’s quiet.”

“Other bar too noisy. Too many people. Crazy people. Farang ba-ba boh-boh. This better.”

“What’s your name?”

“I Song. What you name?”

“Boyd.”

“Boy,” she said.

He smiled. “That’s right.”

The gong music seemed to slip through him and beat like a pulse, relaxing him. A small boy in a red shirt approached, selling single flowers. Osier bought one for Song, and he felt as he had on his best night at the railway station — serene, calmed, triumphant. The sunlight glancing from the klong glimmered in a bright puddle on the ceiling. He thought, This is all wrong, but this is bliss.

“I’m happy.”

“Why not? Life too short.”

She’d heard that from someone, another farang, and yet it pained him to hear it. It was true. He felt absurdly tearful, thankful to her for saying that.

And now he remembered himself at the railway station, mourning, seeing the travelers leaving on life-altering journeys while he sat sketching their faces, as though grieving for them. He had believed his waiting was a death watch for them, but no, he was grieving for himself, as he waited for retirement. I don’t want to go, he thought, and glancing across at Song, he was creased by a pang, something deeper than hunger, like the foretaste of starvation.

“You’re so young,” he said, and heard fear in his voice.

“ Khap khun ka. Thank you. Look young, but not!”

“How old?”

“I hate this question.”

Impressed by her rebuff, he said, “Me too. Any children?”

She laughed and tapped his arm as if gratefully, and said, “No children.”

“None for me either.”

“We same!”

Bar talk, flirty, facetious, but a little more than that, with the revelations of foolery, Song emerging as clever and gentle and self-mocking.

Then Osier remembered. “My cell phone,” he said. “Where is it?”

Song took the phone out of her bag but she didn’t hand it over. She said, “You give me?”

“Why?”

And because he’d hesitated, she gave it to him.

But because she gave it to him so quickly, he said, “Why do you want it?”

“So I can talk you.”

He loved that. He tapped her arm as she had tapped his. He said, “Yes. I’ll get you one. Let’s go.”

He still sat. He didn’t want to leave this shadowy place, Siamese Nights, the coolness of it, the girls huddled on the banquette, laughing, their knees together, the one other farang at the bar shaking dice onto the counter out of a cup and talking to the bartender. The watery light from the klong outside dappling the ceiling gave its fishbowl completeness an illusion of life’s essence.

This is who I am, this is where I belong, this is a place where I can tell the truth. Guessing that Larry and Fred were consoled by places like these, he understood them better. He told himself that he had no wish to possess Song, but only to ease his famished soul by being with her, to relieve his gloom.

But this was peaceful. He thought, I have someone I can tell this to. He told her. She listened with bright eyes, saying nothing, not judging him, her skin so lovely he wanted to stroke her like a cat.

And when at last they were on their way to the cell phone shop, in the traffic and the heat, he wished he were back in Siamese Nights, sitting with Song, looking over her pale shoulder at the canal beyond the back window. Song had sat placidly with her hands on her lap. Osier liked her size, not one of those tiny bird-boned Thai sprites, but rather tall, angular, with a deep laugh, and a presence he hadn’t associated with the Thais he knew. Song was a woman confident in repose, sweet without being submissive, with the melancholy he’d first seen that made him think of a fallen angel.

He said, “Why don’t you have a phone?”

“They cancel. I no pay.”

The clerks in the shop were so helpful, Osier let them explain the calling plans, though he knew most of the details by heart. He chose the simplest one, a six-month plan, renewable, inexpensive. Song picked out a red phone, and Osier signed the agreement.

Side by side in the taxi, he called her number.

“Hello, Boy.”

“Hello, Song.”

“You happy?”

“I’m happy.” But he caught a glimpse of himself in the taxi’s rearview mirror and turned away from that idiot face.

“Who are you calling?” he asked, seeing her tapping numbers into the phone.

“Mudda,” and, hearing a voice, she smiled and broke into Thai. Osier heard gleeful croaking from the other end and was content.

For the next few days they called each other. He did so just to hear her voice. He didn’t want to think why she called him, but she seemed happy to hear him. He remembered how, when he’d seen her in a group of five or six girls in a bar, Song had seemed the most feminine, the most mature, the softer, the more self-possessed, the only one not reaching out, not trying to catch his eye. She had not been looking at him at all; she’d been looking at the other girls posing for him, smiling slightly, and her narrow smile made her seem strong. She was not a coquette.