Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

“No you understand?” she said in English. “My father. He is dying!”

“Eddie,” I said, “what are you doing?”

“Jasper, can you go for a little walk?”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that I was about to be an accomplice in the dirtiest piece of blackmail possible.

“I’m not leaving,” I said.

Eddie looked at me with crushing, concentrated hatred. It was a showdown. “Jasper,” he said behind clenched teeth, “I’m telling you to get the fuck out of here.”

“No way.”

Eddie went ballistic, ranting at me with the full extent of his lung capacity. He tried everything to get me to shove off and leave him alone to rape and pillage. I wouldn’t budge. This is it, I thought. My first physical confrontation with evil. I was eager to triumph.

I didn’t.

He pushed me. I pushed back. He pushed me again. It was getting tedious. I took a swing. Eddie ducked it. Then he took a swing at me. I tried ducking too, but instead of socking me in the jaw, his fist connected with my forehead. I staggered backward a little, and taking advantage of my wobbling, he let fly an unexpected kick that got me in the throat. I fell back and hit my head on the dirt. I heard the car door slam, and by the time I got to my feet, I couldn’t do anything but watch the car drive off.

Eddie, that disgusting bastard! That oily, rancid, horny bandit! I felt guilty for my failure to protect that poor girl, but if someone you’ve known since childhood is so determined to commit a crime he’s willing to kick you in the throat, what can you do? Anyway, it was too late now. That fiend had made away with the girl and left me stranded in the middle of nowhere. And where the hell was I, anyway, other than the exact place where all the heat in Thailand gathered for a meeting?

I walked for several hours. Swarms of overexcited mosquitos pursued me assiduously. There was no one in sight, no sign of human life. It was easy to imagine that I was the only one in existence, and it didn’t make me feel lonely at all. It’s exhilarating to imagine every human dead, to have it in your power to start a new civilization or not. I thought I’d choose not. Who wants the humiliation of being father to the human race? Not me. I could see myself as the ant king, or the figurehead of a crab society- but Eddie had seriously turned me off humans altogether. One person can do that.

I walked on, oozing from the humidity but more or less content in my last-man-on-earth fantasy. I didn’t even mind so much that I was utterly lost in the jungle. How many times would this happen in my life? A lot, I predicted. This time it’s the jungle, next time it will be the ocean, then a department store parking lot, until finally I will be irretrievably lost in outer space. Mark my words.

But my solitude was short-lived. I heard the chattering of voices coming from the bottom of a hill. I went over the slope and could see a group of maybe twenty people, farmers mostly, in a circle next to a police van. There was nothing in this scene to suggest it had anything to do with me, but something told me not to go down there. I suppose this is what happens when you feel guilty all the time for no reason.

I stood up on my tiptoes to get a better view. As I did, I saw a shadow creeping up on me. I spun around. A middle-aged woman holding a basket of apples was staring at me. No, she wasn’t. She was stealing dark glances at the amulet around my neck.

“Stay down. Don’t let them see you,” she said in an accent as thick as the jungle around us.

She pushed me to the ground with her long, muscular arms. We lay side by side on the grassy slope.

“I know you.”

“Do you?”

“You’re the doctor’s friend, aren’t you?” she asked.

“What’s going on?”

“He’s in trouble,” she said.

So they knew he’d blackmailed the poor girl into sleeping with him. Well, good. I couldn’t care less if they threw him in jail so that he could be sodomized for the rest of his life. He deserved it.

“They dug up the bodies,” she said.

What bodies was she talking about?

“What bodies are you talking about?”

“The old doctor, and the young one too.”

“They dug them up? What made them do a creepy thing like that?”

“They thought it might be a plague of some new virus. A couple of years ago, we had an outbreak of chicken flu. Now there is much vigilance when it comes to multiple deaths of uncertain causes.”

Interesting, but what has this got to do with blackmail and rape? I wondered.

“And?”

“They did an autopsy. And I suppose you know what they found.”

“A hideous mess of decomposing organs?”

“Poison,” she said, looking at me carefully for my reaction.

“Poison?” Poison? “And so they think…” I didn’t bother finishing the sentence. It was obvious what they thought. And moreover, it was obvious they were right. Eddie had done it, the despicable bastard. To realize his dead parents’ dream of his becoming a doctor, he had killed the old doctor and the young apprentice to get them out of the way.

“So the police are going to arrest him?”

“No. You see those people down there?” Did she want me to answer that one? They were right there.

“What about them?”

As she said this, the two policemen got into their van and drove away. The crowd filled in the space where the van had been.

“They just told the police your doctor friend had already moved to Cambodia.”

I really wished she’d refrain from describing Eddie as my “doctor friend,” although I understood it was good for clarification, as there were three doctors in this story. But was I being unbearably dense? Why had the farmers told the police that Eddie had moved to Cambodia? And why was she excited about it?

“Don’t you see? They’re going to take the law into their own hands!”

“Meaning?”

“They’re going to kill him. And not only him. You too.”

“Me?”

“And those other Australians who came here to help him.”

“Wait a minute! Those Australians are my family! They didn’t do anything. They didn’t know anything about it! I didn’t know anything about it.”

“You’d better not go home,” she said.

“But I didn’t do anything! It was Eddie! This is the second time Eddie has put a lynch mob onto us. My God- my father was right. People are so single-minded about their immortality projects, it brings them down and everyone around them too!”

She looked at me blankly.

What could I do? I couldn’t waste valuable time trying to find the police; I had to get home and warn everyone that an angry mob was coming to tear them apart.

What a dog’s breakfast this trip turned out to be!

“Hey, why are you helping me?”

“I want your necklace.”

Why not? I had been foolishly superstitious by wearing it at all. I took off the repugnant amulet and gave it to her. She hurried away. I’d worn it only out of desperation, I suppose. If you don’t keep your guard up and someone tells you it has magical qualities, you can find comfort in a grain of sand.

The group below set off on foot through the jungle. I followed them, thinking of Eddie and my family and of their surprise when the bloodthirsty mob turned up to kill them. I had to make sure the mob and I didn’t converge; it was unlikely, not being Thai myself, that I would be assimilated into their number. I would be swallowed whole, as an appetizer. So I kept my distance. But I didn’t know the way home- I’d have to follow the mob back to Eddie’s house. The inherent dilemma was obvious. How could I arrive in advance and warn everyone that a murderous mob was on the way when I had to follow the mob to get there?