A Haunting Smile

by Christopher G. Moore

  4

  The Massacre of May, 1992

  Bangkok

  Dear Richard,

  CROSBY AND PURCELL stayed late at HQ naming names while I searched for a girl named Daeng from Nan Province. Crosby gave me a full report the following morning. Purcell apparently suffered from a near seizure brought on by serious cold flashes followed by hot flashes. This might be explained by a) he is going through male menopause or b) he was consuming a large quantity of double gin and tonics at HQ. Things got out of hand over the naming game. That old hardcore version of scrabble. Crosby’s conclusion was that Purcell knew more strange names with dirty meanings in other languages than any other person alive. But Crosby has always been in awe of Harry Purcell ever since the T-shirt incident.

  I had my own name game that night near a university. The name was Daeng or Red and it belongs to a young Thai girl with a scar on her face shaped like a half moon. I searched the entire night for her but failed to locate even one person who had any information about her whereabouts. Things are chaotic in Bangkok with all the shooting by the Army. Who in the West would name a daughter “Red”? It is difficult to imagine. One must be careful in naming children. One must also be careful in naming the dead or the bones left behind by the dead. Harry claims the bone he gave me came from General Xue, a relative on his mother’s side, and that I was in line to receive it. He never really said why I was the inheritor of the General’s bone. But Harry is great on practical jokes. And the more he says he is not joking, the more you know that he is doing just that.

  I still think about the bones I scooped out of the Nan River. In a cremation culture reconstructing the past from the present is done through ashes. A river of bones flows only in one direction; bones which once had names attached. What name? No Carbon 14 dating could ever say. There was no Carbon test to recover a name or a word; sounds were carried on the wind—how many knots was the wind blowing at seven in the morning 14th April one hundred thousand years ago? To ask such a question is to provide an answer as to why certain questions rarely, if ever, are raised. Such questions outstrip all ideas, concepts, theories embedded in religion, philosophy, science, art, or witchcraft to assemble information required for an answer. Such questions force us to admit the weight of what lies beyond any knowledge system; we can find old bones and Carbon date them but the flesh is gone, the wind is gone, the sound has vanished.

  When Mr. Key or Khun Shit, as the Thais would hear his name, escaped to London with all that laughter ringing in his ears he understood his name anchored him to the soil of his language and customs. If he had renamed himself, he could have stayed in Thailand. What memories of his past would have gone up in smoke in exchanging names? People would have reminded him until his end that he didn’t know the difference between shit and shinola. The last use of a name is to remember the dead. Mr. Key would not wish to be reminded how his memory will continue over time—after his death—as his name is passed from person to person in Thai, as the Englishman who called himself Khun Shit.

  Yours,

  Robert Tuttle

  ps. Enclosed is a short story written not long after I met Dow, an unusual Thai woman—an engineer educated in America. Dow has pitched in to help me find Daeng.

  5

  THE WATER BOY

  A Short Story

  by

  Robert Tuttle

  IT WAS NEARLY six in the evening when the water boy in dirty, ragged cut-off trousers, his shirt unbuttoned, sweat lines streaked across his chest, arrived in the compound. He kicked off his plastic sandals at the door. A ten-liter plastic bottle of water was hooked over his shoulder. He looked small under the weight. A kind of pack animal separated from the train. This was his last delivery in a twelve-hour shift. The next morning would be another day and he would start his beast of burden job all over again. His liquid eyes blinked as the maid directed him, one hand on her hip and the other pointing to a spot on the floor next to the fridge.

  “Put the bottle there,” she said.

  As he padded across the floor in his bare feet, in a split second, a word, a gesture, the signature tune from the ice cream cart in the soi, caused a reaction in the water boy.

  “One is not enough. Bring another one,” the maid said.

  He swiftly turned and walked out of the house. He walked down the compound pavement, picked up a second ten-liter plastic bottle, and slung it over his shoulder. He padded back to the house. After he had set it down next to the first bottle, some emotion erupted; a thread of hate and anger rose inside him, as if it were a thing about to break or tear apart inside the water boy. As if an invisible force which glued mood, attitude, and respect into a unified whole had fallen apart. The two bottles of water were perfectly lined up in a row. He had done his job; done what he’d been told his entire life. Two bottles were delivered. He had sweated to cart them from the street through the compound. Dogs had barked and snapped at his feet. He kicked out at one of the dogs and the other sank its teeth into his ankle.

  Then the emotional dam burst—after his work was done. He rose up with a kind of strength which did not seem possible from his tired, slender frame. His face twisted into an angry sneer. He threw a fit of temper—jai rawn. With this anger, this hot heart he raced back to the fridge and grabbed first one bottle, carried it to the door, then returned for the second. He had said nothing, loading the bottles on the van again, his ankle bleeding from the puncture wound left from the dog attack. No one in the compound including the Old Uncle asked for a reason or explanation. His action was beyond reason. They watched as the water boy stormed through the compound, kicking one of the dogs which had not been involved in the attack. This foul mood storm of anger swept through the compound, filling the maids, Old Uncle, the children, and the others with silent fear. Rage out of control caused damage. And no one wanted to get in the way of the water boy. His frustration swirled, threatening to swallow them, suck them into the head wind.

  A few days passed, the incident had been largely forgotten. Then the water boy’s strange conduct arose in the course of a discussion between Old Uncle and Noi, his niece who had returned after four years at university in America. She had been in the compound when the water boy had arrived and departed. A few days later, she had raised the concept of patience and justice with her uncle. Noi had acknowledged that Old Uncle had more patience and tolerance than she. She claimed America had changed her; before she had been patient and the incident would not have been worthy of further comment. But now her Old Uncle’s patience exceeded her own. This statement was not intended as a compliment but as a matter of fact; as if patience and tolerance were not a question of higher morality or good breeding but connected with genuine forces unevenly distributed in life.

  “Do you remember the water boy?” Noi asked.

  The incident returned with clarity. A small, tired boy with torn clothes, and soiled hands. “The impatient boy,” said Old Uncle.

  Noi said, “Yes, the impatient boy. But it isn’t that easy. The water boy has no chance in life. He will never go to America for education. His life is what it is. Nothing can deliver him from his life. He sees the whole outline of how his life always will be. You can’t expect a boy who understands that he lives a life which offers him no chance for deliverance to show the virtue of patience.”

  Old Uncle smiled and returned to tending his garden. Noi knew he had, in his own way, dismissed her. The conversation was over. She walked through the compound to the house of Khun Gerald. A farang who had lived more than ten years in the compound. He worked in a travel agency. She saw him sitting in a chair reading a newspaper. He was dressed in shorts. His large feet were crossed on the table, and on the table was an open bottle of Kloster beer.

  “Khun Gerald, I would like to talk to you.”

  He invited her into his house. “Would you like a beer?” he asked. “I’d offer you water but I have none.”

  “You know Old Uncle. I love him as I love my own father. But he doesn’t understand
how I’ve changed. You heard about the water boy and the bottles of water he took away?”

  Gerald had heard the story from his maid and a different version from Old Uncle.

  “I’m troubled Old Uncle doesn’t understand. Because of my father, I have had greater opportunity than the water boy. But what does this mean? My chance in life is far less than your life even though this is not your country. You see no limit to your opportunity. You have no fears holding you back. But like the water boy, I see the walls which surround me. I see stones rising into the clouds. They are higher walls than I remember before I went to America. I can never climb or go around them no matter what I learned in America. The water boy’s wall is as high as the sky. I think he saw that wall when he came to the compound. He saw it here in your house. That is why I’ve come here. I wanted to see the wall the water boy found inside your house.”

  “You want to see through the boy’s eyes?” asked Khun Gerald.

  “I cannot. You must understand that I have greater patience than the water boy. But it is unreasonable for me to have your patience because I do not have your chance in life. Even with a university degree I can never catch up with you in my own country. Your life is huge with opportunity and this promise of deliverance makes you unable to understand. I cannot sit naked in my room reading a newspaper alone and drink beer.”

  He looked over his newspaper, reached forward and sipped from his beer can. “Why not?”

  “You have a cool heart. You know why?”

  He shook his head. Beer suds bubbled around his mouth and he remembered the one time he had made love to Noi. It was before she had left for America. Now she was back. She had changed just as Old Uncle had said that she would.

  “You were born with the promise of deliverance,” said Noi. “It’s your birthright. It explains your luxury of patience and tolerance. Because patience and tolerance are a luxury. They are part of the wealth which comes from opportunity. Nothing stands in your way. America grants you this. You can carry this knowledge on your back to any country you wish to live in. I can possess it but I can’t carry it back to Thailand.”

  “Why?” asked Gerald, thinking how sexy Noi looked sitting across from his chair. He no longer tried to read the newspaper.

  “Gerald, when you understand one simple fact, then you can understand why you have no water. You can understand the lack of patience and tolerance in the water boy. You can also have compassion for those like me who know what is beyond the wall but can never reach that high. Noi was born to a place which she cannot leave. Mine is a world with limited chance. You should never forget that people like me cannot experience the world like you, and the pain of our knowledge weighs on our shoulders like those ten-liter jugs of water. We carry that heavy weight each step we take. We carry it for a lifetime. Set it here, someone orders us. Cart it there, another says. No, I’ve changed my mind, I want it downstairs. When you see the water boy and the bottles on his back, you see me. You see me forever burdened.”

  “Did you talk to your father about this?” asked Gerald, coming back from the fridge. He opened two fresh beers and handed one to Noi. She pressed the can to her lips and took a long sip.

  “I told him what I learned in America,” Noi said.

  “Which was?” asked Gerald.

  “No one has a right to order you to carry their water fourteen hours a day. You can choose your own life.”

  Gerald drank long from his beer, his eyes never leaving her breasts. “What did your father say?”

  “He said Americans teach me megalomania. They make me crazy, selfish, think only about myself. In a family, everyone carries the water on their backs. No one is without this burden. If I want to walk alone, stand out from the family, then I can no longer be part of the family.”

  “So it’s all or nothing,” said Gerald. “Freedom or prison.”

  “Even in prison people cart water, and even in freedom people need water to drink. So how does it get into the cup?”

  Gerald smiled. “Who said that?”

  “My father,” said Noi, with some pride. “He’s wrong but terribly brilliant.”

  “I think you should talk with the boy,” said Gerald.

  She liked this idea and nodded. As she was about to leave, the maid who had listened near the door and understood little other than that they were discussing the water boy, came into the room.

  “The water company fire the boy,” she said. “You can’t talk with him. He’s gone.”

  Noi glanced at Gerald with an “I told you so” look.

  “Why was he fired?” asked Gerald.

  “He poison two dogs on the soi. Someone complain him.”

  The water boy had been sent away. There was no possibility for Noi to have her chance of talking to him. She looked like she might cry. “Never mind,” said the maid. “There will be a new boy, you can talk to him.”

  6

  DENNY ADDISON HAD caught his second wind as he pulled himself up to the mike and waited for the music to finish. Or was he on his third wind? He made faces at the engineer in the booth behind. Addison had been tearing around the studio with his shirt off, beating his chest like Tarzan and screaming he was king of the jungle. For one moment he forgot his videocam was smashed on the staircase. No one else was all that impressed by his performance but it didn’t slow him down in the department of self-praise. Addison talked low into the microphone, snapping his fingers.

  “Here we are, Bangkok. For you. And just in case you’ve forgotten, this is your favorite 108.3 DJ, Denny Addison. That’s spelled with a double ‘d’ for our friends who still plan to have me executed as soon as they can figure out a way to break into this bubble and drag me out. This is Radio Bangkok 108.3 presenting to you live—the revolution. It is happening live in a street near you. We are live. So far. We have music. Tons of music. We have gossip, rumors, and a countdown to doomsday. We present the news as reported by you. One rumor which came in a few minutes ago tells you just how bad things are on the streets. A listener phoned in to say she had walked on the overpass bridge above Sukhumvit Road. The concrete staircase near the Ambassador Hotel. Normally the Beggar’s Patrol stations lepers and amputees at both ends. But the beggars had gone, fled the scene. At the DK Bookstore end of the bridge, there was a cat. Yes, a small white cat in a wicker basket. The cat appeared to have swallowed the beggar’s quota of drugs. Its eyes were half open. But the cat made no attempt to escape. This cat curled up, chin on paws, watching our listener in a vacant kind of way. Could this cat have seen something like this in a previous life? Who knows? Who cares, you say? Now comes the resourceful part of the story. In front of the cat drugged out in the wicker basket was a Singha Gold beer can. The top had been peeled off. The beggar cat was taking donations. Talk about a breakdown in law and order. The Beggar’s Patrol leaders have pulled their human beggars and have substituted animals. Sicko. Cats with missing paws will soon follow 108.3 predictions. Hey Animal Rights Activists, where are you? Hiding under the bed? There is a cat in the line of fire. Do you care? Rescue that animal. Protest. Resist. Cats begging in the street, tanks heading for a show-down, the hospitals filled with the dead and dying, and this is the City of Angels. A place where the cats have been left to beg for a meal. Now for some music dedicated to those who have been hearing the tanks rumbling past all night long. I Feel the Earth Move. Mr. Robert Tuttle and his gang of hardcores will immediately recognize this tune as number 127 at HQ. Scatter and reform.”

  7

  IT WAS ONE in the morning when Harry Purcell and Kleist, the German ex-tank commander who had survived the battle of Stalingrad returned to Purcell’s house. They squeezed four girls from HQ in the taxi. Purcell slammed the door before the katoey who smeared her nipples with sleep-inducing drugs could get her leg into the taxi. HQ had a rule which barred katoeys. Somehow this one had slipped through. No one would have guessed—until it was too late. Either the staff at HQ were more compassionate, their guard was down, or with all the chaos,
they simply no longer cared if a katoey slipped into the bar at the end of the universe, where killing time and buying women were the diamonds in the sky.

  They arrived at Purcell’s rented old mansion, an old Thai-style house made from teak off Sukhumvit Road which had survived being bulldozed for a condo project. The house had four bedrooms with wooden shutters that opened onto a large, secluded tropical garden—grounds lush with palm trees, a fish pond, a tree-house converted into a huge bedroom, and scattered throughout were cages with rare, exotic birds.

  Kleist ambled ahead between two of the girls, and Harry Purcell clutched the hands of the other two girls, leading them along a path to a pond. Along the way, Purcell’s two girls began to strip off their clothes and waded into the water up to their knees. Kleist splashed water on one of his girls, she splashed back. Soon everyone was hugging and kissing. Harry massaged the breasts of his two girls, watching old Kleist with his pant legs rolled up to his knees moving into the pond.

  “Why not let the girls play?” asked Purcell.

  Kleist looked back over his shoulder and shrugged.

  “I think we take the girls first,” said Kleist but not with a great amount of conviction in his voice. Then he cocked his head to one side, “Do I know you?”

  “Purcell’s the name. I think we should make our assault on Stalingrad, then take the girls as spoils of victory. What do you say?” asked Purcell.