Mischa Berlinski - Fieldwork

Martiya broached the subject of a new hut with Farts-a-Lot several times. It was an immensely tricky point in etiquette, because it was chiefly to get away from Farts-a-Lot that she wanted a new hut. But Martiya was intensely mindful of Eskimo Kathy's story. Farts-a-Lot was an important man in the village, and Martiya suspected that if she offended Farts-a-Lot, her work in Dan Loi would soon be effectively over. It sometimes seemed to Martiya that half of the village was involved in bitter quarrels with the other half, and Dyalo feuds ran deep: there were people in the village who had no idea that a new baby had been born just one hut down, despite the agonized howling that accompanied Dyalo childbirth, so deep did their antipathies run. Watching the Dyalo snipe and bicker had disabused Martiya of the naïve notion that tribal peoples would live in peaceful harmony with one another, just as watching the villagers hack down virgin forest and set it on fire for their fields had disabused Martiya of the notion that the Dyalo would live in placid harmony with nature. But as an anthropologist, she couldn't indulge in such diverting pleasures as blood quarrels. She needed to be a neutral Switzerland, an unencumbered Sweden. Farts-a-Lot was a leading member of the largest clan, the clan of the Fish, and Martiya suspected that if Farts-a-Lot felt in any way slighted, she'd never swim with the Fishes again. Martiya could imagine the moment when she was called upon to defend her doctoral thesis and she explained to the esteemed and august members of the examining board, men who had collectively spent half a century in the field, that she had failed to interview half of the village because she had found her host irritating .

Karen wrote to Martiya, "He's baiting you. Don't give in." But every time Martiya gave in. She didn't know why Farts-a-Lot wanted to make her life miserable, but she was sure that was his intention. There was one little incident after another. The time that Farts-a-Lot rolled a cigarette with a page from her copy of Anna Karenina —and an important page, too, just as Anna was arriving at the train station. Why couldn't he have used Paradise Lost ? The time that Farts-a-Lot put red-hot chili peppers in her tea. This was Farts-a-Lot's notion of humor.

"Did you do something to offend him?" Karen wrote.

"I could not care less at this point," Martiya wrote back.

She talked the matter over with Vinai, who assured her that what she was proposing — simply moving out of Farts-a-Lot's house — was, indeed, downright offensive in Dyalo terms. When Martiya had first arrived and declared so winningly that she was but a child in the ways of the Dyalo, Farts-a-Lot had taken her at her word, and although reluctant to take on so great a responsibility at his age (he was almost forty), he had nevertheless agreed to the headman's request that he look after her. The headman had chosen Farts-a-Lot to look after Martiya because Farts-a-Lot had twice in his life been as far as Chiang Mai and had seen other white people; from these experiences, Farts-a-Lots was reckoned something of an expert in their weird ways. Farts-a-Lot, Vinai said, had done his best. Farts-a-Lot had repeatedly sought out Vinai to make sure that there was nothing Martiya needed, and to ensure that Martiya realized that she was free to sample from his selection of rice whiskeys, a generosity that he extended to no one else at all, not even his wife's eldest brother. Farts-a-Lot had asked his wife and his wife's sister to accompany Martiya in the forest when she went to defecate, so that she did not mistakenly relieve herself near a snake, or worse, right on top of a bad spirit; and feeling certain that she must be lonely so far from home, Farts-a-Lot had sought her out whenever she was alone. The villagers thought Farts-a-Lot had been an admirable foster father. Furthermore, Martiya's arrival had naturally affected Farts-a-Lot's status in the village. Martiya was, after all, the only farang in Dan Loi, and her arrival was an exciting event. Nobody could quite figure out what she was doing there, and the villagers looked to Farts-a-Lot to explain her presence. It had been a long time since Farts-a-Lot had had such prominence in the village. Now, if she left Farts-a-Lot's hut precipitously, he would lose face; and if he lost face, Martiya's position in the village would be compromised as well. It was a delicate situation.

Martiya several times tried to suggest in the most oblique way possible to Farts-a-Lot that she would be willing, if he wanted, to move into her own hut and liberate him from the burden of hosting her. One evening, she brought out the bottle of tequila that she had lugged all the way from California at Joseph Atkinson's suggestion. Remembering that more than once she'd been convinced to do things under the influence of tequila that she otherwise wouldn't have done, she poured out a hefty shot for Farts-a-Lot. She even found a lime. Why was it no surprise how easily Farts-a-Lot got the hang of tequila shooters? After about four shots, Farts-a-Lot began to sing.

"I mean," Martiya said, "there's no reason I couldn't have my own hut, and save you so much trouble. I'm so grateful, but …"

Vinai was translating for her. Farts-a-Lot said something in a loud, slurry voice. "He says, ‘I love you,' " Vinai said.

"Really?"

"He says something else," Vinai said, and blushed.

Later that night, Farts-a-Lot vomited on Martiya's notebook.

That's when Martiya decided that the time for action had come. Nobody was going to make jokes in the graduate lounge about Dyalo van der Leun.

NOT LONG AFTER WE CAME BACKfrom Pak Nai, Rachel stayed late at school supervising a soccer match and I met her for dinner at a riverside restaurant we favored called Noi's Place. The owner of the restaurant, the eponymous Noi, had worked for many years in the Thai film industry as a set designer, and had bought the place on a whim during the glory days of the 1990s, before the Thai economy collapsed. He intended the restaurant chiefly as an amusement for his wife, who complained of boredom when he was away on business. But the devaluation of the baht had left Noi out of work, and nowadays he had little to do but moon around the restaurant he had bought as a diversion, waiting for the fax to ring. The walls of the restaurant, lined with oversized photos of Noi on the sets of various films, from Bombay to Bangkok to Los Angeles, testified to better times. There was a photo of Noi with Mel Gibson: Noi was nestled in the star's armpit; the two of them were smiling broadly at the camera.

Noi and I had bonded over our underemployment, and I asked him if he had found work yet.

"Maybe this week," he said. Noi had been saying this now for over a year. "I've been hearing big things."*

The restaurant was in the open air but protected from the sun in the

*In fact, what Noi said is that he had been "healing" big things, Noi, like most Thai, having some trouble with the distinction between the letter "l," as in "a little light lunch," and "r," as in "a really rough recipe." (Noi, who had learned the language from the lips of Hollywood stars, always spoke in English with us.) But given that I had only so much as to say a warbling " Sawatdee-kap " in Thai to receive a flood of congratulations from the locals on my mastery of the language equal in effusiveness and genuine pride only to the congratulations my own parents offered me when I mastered the potty; given that of the Thai language's five tones, I could perhaps produce two properly; and given that on being introduced to a revered and august, possibly enlightened, local Buddhist abbot, I accidentally employed a form of verbal address I later learned was appropriate only to dogs and pigs — given all that, I think that I will refrain, here and in the future, from mocking the complete inability that Noi shared with so many of Asia's teeming millions to distinguish between what are really two very similar liquid consonants. What's more, I hereby set down as a challenge to those who would so mock: go to your neighborhood Thai restaurant, your Siam Garden or your Bangkok Kitchen, and ask the waitress there to teach you to pronounce in Thai, "New silk does not burn, does it?" If you can repeat properly what the waitress tells you, a single sentence which to the untrained occidental ear sounds something like " Phaa mai mai mai mai ," if the waitress does not laugh and smile and correct you two dozen times, then and only then will you have my permission to laugh gently at little Noi healing big things.