Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

Really? You never know. They are still everywhere, you know. Radicals and dreamers.

Suki comes clacking out onto the balcony with a fresh pitcher of tea, and hands Silpa a note, which he glances at, folds, and slides into his shirt pocket, so smoothly that it almost seems rehearsed.

I was thinking, Kelly, he says, earlier today, about how I wouldn’t want to have your job. I mean, on a practical level. There is too much to say, isn’t there? I mean, what question should you ask me first? Where do we begin? The conceptual level, the cultural level, the actual nuts-and-bolts part? You have complete access, you know. We are going to do this once and do it right. Want to watch some surgery? Fine. No confidentiality laws here. Want to interview the staff? No problem.

I’ve been trying to place his accent, and now I’m hearing it: upstate New York. Rochester, I remember; he did his residency at the University of Rochester. There’s that slight midwestern nasality, the crisp, definite, let’s-lay-it-out tone of an actuary or a school principal. And, at the same time, the wry melancholy that comes from surviving nine months of lethal winter, the heaps and barrows of snow, the rusting city with its empty museums and obsolete innovations. This is a Thai man, of course, and we’re in Bangkok, in the throbbing heat of mid-morning, birds chattering around the edges of the roof, but if I turned ninety degrees and listened to him without looking I could swear we were standing in a silent white-tiled hallway, next to the emergency eyewash station, watching snow fall over a parking lot in a blue-black winter afternoon. He has a little winter madness in his voice.

I appreciate that, I say.

I’m not sure that I’m doing you a favor.

No, in a way, it is. I mean, my focus is still on Martin. Of course. So all this stuff, this operation, as you say — it’s all about explaining the process step by step. It’s not a magic trick. It’s not science fiction. It’s not, like, an illusion .

He stares at me again for a long moment.

No, he says, no more than anything else.

From a Buddhist point of view.

I suppose. I would have said from a human point of view.

Well, folks, Martin says quietly, if you’re going to keep philosophizing, I’m going to be on my way. More houses to see. I only came to introduce Kelly, in any case. He hitches up his elbows and makes ready to stand, with a wry, ingenuous smile. I knew you would hit it off, he says. Now you see, Kelly, why I said you had to come here? I mean, I may be the face, but Silpa’s the voice. I prove that it’s possible, but only he can prove that it’s right .

He’s like a fawning graduate student, I’m thinking. A disciple at his guru’s feet. That combination of terror and glee in the presence of the master. Okay, I say, trying, again, not to sound as annoyed as I am. Should I take a taxi back?

No, no. Silpa says. One of our drivers will take you.

Best not to take a taxi in Bangkok, Martin says. Not on the highways, anyhow. The drivers are all on yaa baa. Burmese meth. It’s like letting a toddler onto the Autobahn.

Silpa smiles, a wide, still smile, as if to say, you said something . No agreement or disagreement, no concern or unconcern. And Martin walks away, silently dismissed.

—

For lunch, he says, we have to go outside , meaning out of the building, away from the groaning traffic on Sukhumvit Road, and down a series of narrow alleys to a bigger alley, a side street, properly speaking, where cooked-food vendors have set up plastic tables from one sidewalk to the other. You can call it a Thai buffet, he says, gesturing up and down the row of stalls. Whatever you like. Shrimp? Barbecue? Whole fish? Papaya salad?

You pick. Surprise me. I still have moments of dizziness, the world sliding around at the very edges of my peripheral vision, but my stomach seems to be settling, now that I’m back on the ground, at street level.

Good. Smart man. He leads me from one huge tray to the next, pointing and calling out to no one in particular. There are heaps of fragrant long beans and Chinese broccoli, enormous prawns swimming in a marigold-colored curry, shrimp poking their feelers out of piles of grated mango, crabs, eels, whole fried frogs, chicken wings, duck webbing. When we finally arrive at our table there are seven dishes waiting for us, magically, steaming hot, with a basket of sticky rice in the middle, and a sweating bottle of Pellegrino with two plastic cups.

Do we pay afterward? I ask him.

Oh, he says, they have me on credit. I come here nearly every day. Every month or so I settle up my bill, and then they get a big tip for Songkran. That’s Thai New Year, you know. It was just three weeks ago. The end of the dry season. You don’t mind eating here, do you? I dislike restaurants. Anyway, Thai food has to be eaten outside.

It reminds me of where I lived in China.

Of course, he says. In hot weather you are supposed to live outside. Do everything outside. When we lived in Rochester, in the summer, my wife and I, we used to shock the neighbors when we did the dishes on the back porch. Bucket of dishes, bucket of soapy water, and the hose. That was our sala . People used to come over and tell us to put screens on our windows. Because of the mosquitoes! I said, look, do you have malaria here in Rochester? Do you have dengue fever? Fire ants? Pythons? To them it was as if we’d stepped out of National Pictographic .

National Geographic.

Right. And speaking of pictures, I have something for you. He reaches into his briefcase — in all this time I’d hardly noticed him carrying a briefcase — and hands me a slim, heavy, blue three-ring binder. Unmarked on the outside. I open the cover and read, in large bold letters, Case History of Martin Wilkinson.

I had Tariko put it together, he says. Took quite a bit of time, but I think it will make your life much easier. I’m quite proud of it, too. You could say it’s my Dora . My most famous case. Though probably more successful than anything Freud ever did.

Because the criteria are different?

Excellent question! He beams at me, like a professor who’s discovered a bright student in office hours. Who can say, if we want to get terribly theoretical, how much aggregate happiness we could provide to the world, if we gave people the option to be something other than what they are? But watch out, the food’s getting cold. Eat this. Here. He passes me a bowl of finger-sized fish, served whole, tails facing up. They’re marinated in lime leaves for twenty-four hours, he says. Put the binder away. You have plenty of time for that later. Take ten minutes and just eat .

At the other end of the block, where the street meets another broad avenue splashed with midday sun, there’s a low, disorganized clangor: a sound of cowbells and paint buckets and frying pans pounded by amateurs, with no beat. A stream of red-shirted marchers comes into view, carrying signs, banners, and flags — also red — flooding the sidewalks and spilling onto the pavement. Air horns begin shrieking. The people around us look up for a moment and return to their food. Silpa scoops up a hunk of rice and rolls it delicately into a perfect ball.

Who are they?

Oh, he says, the People’s Party. On their way to the parliament building.

Do they do this all the time?

There’s a crisis at the moment. A look of sour boredom appears on his face; then he shakes it off, as if reminding himself who I am. With the prime minister. About rice and the commodity market. Frankly, I’m no expert. You’d do better to read the Bangkok Post . But are you interested, really, in politics?

As context, at least.