Paul Theroux - The Great Railway Bazaar

'Did he see you throw it on the floor?'

'Why not? We Thais have good eyesight.'

'I'll bet he wasn't very happy.'

'Was cross! "Who are you?" he said to me. "A traveller," I said. "What do you do?" "Travel." He got very annoyed and asked me for my ID card, "No ID card!" Later on he went to bed – I made him take the upper berth. But he couldn't sleep. All night he was tossing back and forth. Holding his head, and what and what.'

'I guess you upset him.'

'I don't know. Something like that. He was trying to think who I am.'

'I'm trying to think the same thing.'

'Go ahead,' said Mr Pensacola. 'I don't mind. I like Americans. They saved my life. I was up in the north, where they grow poppies for opium and heroin. So-called "golden triangle". I was stuck, and all the guys were shooting at me. They sent a plane for me, but it couldn't land in all the shooting, so they sent a helicopter. I looked up and saw three choppers circling around. I was shooting at the guys behind the tree -1 was all alone; it wasn't easy. One chopper tried to land, but the guys shot at him. So I went across and shot one of the guys and the other chopper landed on the cliff. He was calling to me, "Pensacola, come on!" But I didn't want to go. I don't know why. Maybe I wanted to kill some more. So I kept still and moved closer and I killed – what? – maybe two more. Chinese. I was still shooting and I crawled over the chopper – '

His extraordinary story, told in a mocking monotone, continued. He held off the gang of opium smugglers; he gunned down two more; and inside the helicopter he reloaded and murdered the rest of them from the air. When he finished I said, 'That's quite a story.'

'Maybe. If you think so.'

'I mean, you must be a pretty good shot.'

'Champion.' He shrugged.

But things had gone far enough. I said, 'Look, you don't expect me to believe all this, do you?'

'I don't know. Maybe.'

'I think you read it in a book, but not a very good book.'

'You Americans,' said Mr Pensacola. He beckoned me into his compartment and stood showing me the bulging pouch he had been carrying under his arm. He tapped it. 'It's a cheap one, right?'

'Maybe,' I said. 'I don't know.'

'Plastic,' he said and, before he pulled the flap open, he said, 'Don't be afraid. Peek inside.'

I leaned over and saw two pistols, a large black one and smaller one in a holster, both nesting in a jumble of brass bullets. Pensacola gave me a wolfish grin, and, snapping the hasps of the pouch, said, 'A thirty-eight and a twenty-two. But don't tell anyone, will you?'

'What are you doing with two pistols?' I whispered.

'I don't know,' he said, and winked. He tucked the pouch under his arm and walked down to the dining car, where I saw him later in the evening, drinking Mekong whisky, deep in conversation with two red-faced Chinese.

A rumour went through the train that we would be held up at Hua Hin, about 120 miles south of Bangkok, on the Gulf of Siam. It was said that the rains had swollen a river to a point where it was threatening a bridge on the line. But the train showed no signs of slowing down, and there was no rain yet. The moon lighted the flooded rice fields, making them depthless, and the water to the horizon made this stage of the journey like a sailing across an unruffled sea.

Mr Thanoo said, 'Why are you reading a sad book?'

He had seen the cover: Dead Souls. I said, 'It's not sad at all. It's one of the funniest books I've ever read.'

He offered me a cigarette and lit it. 'I am sorry for this cigarette. It is of inferior quality. Do you say "inferior quality"? I don't talk English so well. My circle is all Thai people and they always want to talk in Thai. I say, "An incident happened to me today which was very surprising," and they say, "No English!" I need practice -1 make too many mistakes, but I used to talk very well. That was in Penang. I am not a Malay, though. I am pure Thai, through and through.

'How old do you think I am? I am sixty-five. Not so old, but older than you, I think. I come from a well-educated family. My father, for example. He was educated in England – London. He was Lord Lieutenant of Penang – same as governor. So I received my schooling there. It was called the Anglo-Chinese School, but now it is the Methodist School. They have high standards.'

One thing I had regretted in my conversation with Mr Bernard on the train to Maymyo was that I hadn't asked him specific questions about his subjects at St Xavier's at the turn of the century in Mandalay. I did so with Mr Thanoo.

'English was my favourite subject,' said Mr Thanoo. 'I studied geography – Brazil, Ecuador, Canada. Also history – English history. James the First. Battle of Hastings. Also chemistry. Tin is Sn. Silver is Ag. Copper Cu. I used to know gold but I have forgotten. I liked English literature best of all. My masters were Mr Henderson, Mr B. L. Humphries, Mr Beach, Mr R. F. MacDonald. And others. The books I liked most? Treasure Island. And Micah Clarke, by Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes stories. Tale of Two Cities was very interesting, and The Poison Island, by Lord Tennyson – a kind of dream. And Wordsworth. I like Wordsworth still. And Shakespeare. The best Shakespeare play is Like It or Not. I hope you have read it. David Copperfield - about a poor boy who is mistreated by people – that was very sad. He worked hard and he fell in love. I can't remember the girl's name. A Tale of Two Cities is about France and England. Sidney Carton. He was a kind of genius, and he suffered. Who else? Let me see. I like Edgar Wallace, but best of all is Luke Short. Cowboy writer.

'I live on the island of Phuket, a very small place. People laugh at me when they see me reading English books on my island. What is that old man bluffing? Why is he pretending to read his English books? But I like to. You see this book, Colonel Sun? I thought it was a good one, but it is useless – '

As Mr Thanoo spoke the train came to a halt, nearly dumping us on the floor of the carriage. It had stopped with the suddenness that presages a long delay, but I looked out the window and saw that we were at Hua Hin: it was a scheduled stop. A breeze brought the sea air into the compartment, which became heavy with dampness and salt and the smell of fish. The station building at Hua Hin was a high wooden structure with a curved roof and wooden ornamentations in the Thai style – obsolete for Bangkok, but just the thing for this small resort town, empty in the monsoon season. The arrival of the International Express was something of an event: the station-master and signalmen approached us sombrely, and the rickshaw drivers left their vehicles parked in the palm-fringed forecourt of the station and stood on one leg, like cranes, to watch the passengers receive the news of the threatened bridge. Estimates for the delay, given in round figures, ranged from two to eight hours. If the bridge were washed away we might be at Hua Hin for a day or two. Then we could all go swimming in the gulf.

There was, on the International Express, a team of Chinese girl gymnasts and acrobats from Taiwan, who drove the other passengers wild by appearing in the dining car in flimsy flapping pyjamas. At Hua Hin they skipped on the platform, holding hands and laughing: they wore heavy make-up, including mascara and lipstick, with the pyjamas – an effective combination. They were eyed by little groups of passengers, who stopped grumbling when they danced past. I bought a quarter of a pound of cashews (for ten cents) and watched an old lady roasting squid over a brazier she had set up next to the train. Still chattering about the delay, people bought these and ate them gloomily, as if studying survival, tossing the burned tentacles on to the track.