“My ancestors are from Ko Yao Yai but our home was on Ko Phi Phi. Now we live in Patong.”
The old man nodded. He had never traveled to any of those places but he had fished for years in the waters off Ko Yao Yai, the long island, and Ko Yao Noi, its smaller sister, and he had heard how Patong had become a wild place, popular with tourists. And he had heard what had happened on Phi Phi. “I hope that your family is happy in Patong,” he said, asking about the tsunami without asking anything at all.
Pim bowed her head. “My parents would not have liked Patong very much, and I think my nephew and grandfather miss our old home.”
“And the ferangs,” he said, pausing to watch them approach his home, “where are they from?”
“Somewhere in America,” Pim said, glancing back at Mark and Robin as they started up the steps. “Uncle, do you speak English?”
The old man laughed.
“Perhaps that is best,” Pim said, speaking more to herself than the old man. On the beach, the boatman pull-started the motor on the long-tail, swinging the ten-foot shaft to the side of the boat to maneuver out to sea. The boy waved at the boat but the man did not look back. On the stairs, the tall ferang nodded at the old man, the blonde gave a quick grin.
“You will stay and have something to eat. The fish is fresh and it is good. It may not be as fancy as you are used to in Phuket…”
“That is very kind of you Uncle, but there are five of us.”
“I can count, child. Tell your friends that they are welcome.”
“Thank you, Uncle.” Pim paused and wet her lip, working up the courage to say what needed to be said, now before it was too late. “Uncle, I am embarrassed to ask a favor of you.”
“The embarrassment is mine if I am unable to help.”
Pim took the photo from her shirt pocket but held it behind her hands. Behind her, the steps creaked as Mark and Robin leaned forward. “The ferangs have come very far. They are looking for a man. He may have traveled past here not long ago.”
“Not many people stop here.”
“I know this, Uncle. Now please, if you will, I will show you the picture and if you have seen the man, I would be grateful if you would tell me all about it.” The old man reached out a gnarled hand but Pim held the photo close. “And Uncle, if you have not seen the man, if he did not come by this way,” she said, taking time to swallow, “I ask you to please point to the south.”
The old man glared at Pim and she looked down at the mat.
“This is the favor you need of me? To help you deceive the ferangs? To lie to them? Is this what you ask me to do?”
Pim drew in a deep breath and lowered her head. “Yes, Uncle.”
He looked past her to the ferangs, the couple smiling at him. The old man looked back at Pim, running a hand through his thick white hair before reaching out his hand again. Pim hesitated, then gave him the photo.
The man in the picture was a ferang, with the muscular build of a kick-boxer and a smile like the toothpaste ads that they showed on satellite TV. The man was on a beach but it didn’t look like any beach he knew. It was missing green islands on the horizon and the long-tail boats in the water and the sand was a different color. But it was a good beach, wide and flat, with plenty of places to moor a boat. Maybe the picture was taken in America—but if they had beaches like this, he wondered, why would they bother to come all the way to Thailand? He knew that there were beaches that were far prettier than the one on which he had spent his whole life. But life wasn’t about finding a beautiful place to move to. It was about being moved by the beauty in the place you already lived.
The old man looked a moment longer, a broad grin cracking along his weathered face. “I hope you find what you are looking for,” he said, raising his arm, pointing a bony finger to the south.
***
“I’ve been in Thailand, what, four days?” Robin said, looking up as if the answer were written along the eaves of the old man’s hut. “I think all I’ve eaten is rice.”
“It is served with every meal,” Pim said, scooping up a ball of sticky rice and fish off the square mat with the tips of her fingers. Cut from a single banana leaf, the mat folded under the pressure, making it easier for her to gather the stray grains. “It plays a similar role to bread in your country.”
“Thank you, Martha Stewart,” Robin said, the leaf mat buckling in her hand, spilling half the white rice onto her lap as she spoke.
They were sitting on the old man’s porch, Robin and Mark together in the shade, Pim, her grandfather, and the boy leaning against the porch railing, their feet tucked under their legs, hidden from view. A large bowl of rice divided the groups, and a series of small plates—the pungent spices stronger than the smell of boiled fish—dotted the woven bamboo floor covering. The old man lay curled up in a droopy hammock. He had seen to it that the women of the household prepared a proper meal for his guests; and now, with the sound of pots being cleaned in the home, he drifted off on a well-deserved nap.
The fish was filled with pin-sized bones and after two bites, Robin gave up, doubling up on the rice. Across the porch, Pim and her family seemed to race through the meal, shoveling mounds of rice into their mouths, spitting the little bones under the railing. Mark made quick work of the meal as well, his fingers long adept at mastering rice and curry. He could taste the subtle flavors in the simple meal: the coconut milk broth and the diced chilies, the earthy lemongrass and sweet tamarind sauce. The tea was weak but the old man had added two scoops of clumpy sugar, which helped explain his toothless grin. It was a good meal and Mark sensed that it was better than the old man and his family usually ate.
“I want to give him something for the food,” Mark said to Pim as he sipped at his tea.
Pim frowned. “Please, this is not necessary.”
“We ate a lot. It’s the least we could do.”
“If you do, if you give him money, you will insult him.” Pim shook her head, mumbling something to herself in Thai.
“What was that?” Robin said, raising her chin as she spoke.
“I said that Americans can not understand, that is all.”
Robin chuckled. “Americans know a thing or two about generosity, or have you forgotten all those aid shipments already?”
“We can never forget,” she said, her voice changing, the words sounding less like a promise and more like a command. “That was a great kindness. That kind of kindness Americans know well. But they don’t know the small kindness. They don’t know náam-jai,” she said, the others looking over when they heard the familiar Thai word. “The juice of the heart.”
“Yeah, kindness. Okay, big deal. I get it.”
“No, Miss, you do not,” Pim said, countering Robin’s sarcasm with a gentle smile. “This man, he invited us to eat, not because he is kind but because we were hungry. If he did not feed us his neighbors would think less of him, and his family would be ashamed.”
“They’d lose face,” Mark said.
“Yes, but it is even more than that. The way he feels about himself—the way all Thais feel about themselves—it is all based on náam-jai. You can not feel good about yourself if you have not helped others who are in need.”
Robin nudged Mark with her elbow, raising an eyebrow. “You buying any of this?”
“Excuse me, Miss,” Pim said, waiting for Robin to look at her before she continued. “I have only known you for a short time but I can tell that you are a daring woman. I have met many American women and they are like this, too. Being daring, it is important where you are from; it is the way you were raised. You do not think about being daring. You are daring. Here, in Thailand, we do not think about being generous, we just do what we have been taught to do.”
“Well Mark, it seems we’ve stumbled onto paradise, a little slice of heaven where everyone does kind and
good things and no one is unhappy; and tourists don’t get overcharged just because they’re tourists, and bad men don’t lock up young women and force them to be hookers to cover somebody else’s debts. Nope, everything is just peachy-keen here in Thailand.”
Pim’s shoulders drooped and Mark could hear her sigh over the old man’s snoring. She opened her mouth to speak but said nothing, looking down at the banana leaf mat, pushing a stray grain of rice to the center with her painted fingernail. Out of the corner of his eye, Mark could see the smirk on Robin’s face. He pinched a piece of fish and a scoop of rice between his fingers, sliding it into his mouth, washing it down with the over-sweet tea, coughing once to clear his throat before he spoke, startling the old man from his nap.
“This was an excellent meal.” He said the words slowly and clearly, his tone matching his broad grin, patting his firm, flat stomach with both hands. “Pim, please tell this gentleman that this was the finest fish I have ever tasted.” He looked up at the man as he gestured to the pile of fish bones on the mat. “And tell him that I hope to repay his kindness someday.”
Pim sat up, her smile bright against her dark skin and ink-black hair. She looked first at Mark, then turned and spoke to the old man, repeating what she said when he cupped a hand behind his ear. There was a whiney, piercing quality to the language, a high-pitched and nasal tone that was drawn out with every long A and hyper-extended syllable, a shrewish tongue that did not match the angelic face. He knew he wasn’t supposed to think that way, that it made him, as a former Bengali girlfriend had pointed out, a “culturally insensitive jackass.” But he also knew that he preferred it when Pim spoke English.
“I told him the first part, about how much you liked the fish. You made him very happy,” Pim said as the old man grinned his toothless grin.
“What about my offer to help him?”
Pim kept her smile as she shook her head. “There is no need. It’s náam-jai. He knows that you will not forget and one day you may help him, too. This is what people do.”
“Well you better hurry up and do something nice for him soon,” Robin said, wiping her hands off on an extra banana leaf mat. “You said the old man told you Shawn went to the south, and in case you forgot, that’s why we’re here.”
“Pim, those boats,” Mark pointed, under the railing and out to the row of long-tails on the beach, “can we rent one, get somebody to take us down to…wherever?”
As she exchanged bursts of rapid-fire Thai with the old man, two girls, no older than Pim’s nephew, cleared away the remaining food, rolling up the bamboo mat and sweeping the porch with stubby homemade brooms. The girls giggled when Mark winked at them, and they darted in and out of the open door, peeking around the old man’s swaying hammock. Robin snagged one of the quick-moving girls as she sped past, setting the girl on her lap, tickling her sides till they were both breathless from laughter. She could turn it on and turn it off just like that, he thought. Sweet and innocent one minute, a smart-mouthed bitch the next and back again, all in the same breath. She looked good in a tank top and shorts, probably better in less, but all that changed when the claws came out. Then there was Pim.
“Uncle says that one of the fishermen will take us to Krabi,” Pim said. “One of the big towns on the mainland, but it is a long way and he will lose two days fishing.”
“We’ll pay him for his time,” Mark said.
“Sure,” Robin said, shaking her down over her face, making the little girl squeal with laughter. “Unless of course he’s got that nama gee thing going.”
“The fishermen are asleep now, but Uncle says in an hour he will wake his youngest son and we can go. But he wants you to know that we are also welcome to spend the night here, as his guests.”
“Naturally,” Robin said, letting the young girl squirm free, only to pull her back, laughing.
“Uncle says that it is a long ride, but that we should be there by sunset,” Pim said, translating as the man spoke. “There should be no problem with sà-lât.”
Mark had been looking out over her grandfather’s shoulder to the fluid line where the turquoise shallows met the navy blue channel as Pim spoke. At the Thai word the man’s eyes became alert and he saw the muscles in his scrawny neck tighten.
“Sà-lât are sea robbers,” Pim explained. “But I don’t think they will be a problem.”
“Sea robbers? You mean like pirates?” Robin let go and the girl squirmed free again.
“Yes, but we will be there before it is dark. There should be no problem.”
Mark sipped his still warm, still sickeningly sweet tea. “We were on the water all night. You should have told us there might be a problem.”
“Where we were last night, on the west of Phuket, all that are there are fishermen. Here on this side, between Phuket and the mainland, there are many boats transporting goods and there are more ferang—more foreigners with their own sailboats.”
“But it’s just going to be us,” Robin said, “so there should be no problem, right?”
“Yes, no problem,” Pim said, pausing too long, then adding, “I think.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jarin pushed in the clutch and downshifted around a sharp bend in the beach-hugging road, thirty kilometers over the posted speed limit. In the rearview mirror he saw the two bodyguards lean against the curve, while in the passenger seat, Laang—the man hired a year ago to be his driver—braced a knee against the dashboard, straining not to slide into his boss’ space. In Bangkok he would have had a string of black Hummers or at least an Escalade, not driving himself around in a four door Honda. But that was Bangkok and this was Phuket, and here he didn’t need a flashy car to stand out since everybody who mattered knew who he was. Besides, he liked to drive.
His earliest memory was of watching his mother pray in front of the shrine in the family’s one-room home, not much bigger than the parking space it bordered. She would kneel in front of the painted wooden alcove that held the postcard picture of a seated Buddha—a wispy flame fluttering over his head—her face shrouded in a veil of smoke from the joss sticks held between her pressed palms. When he was old enough to imitate her movements, she had him kneel beside her, watching the candles burn on the altar as his mother whispered prayers. Once he asked her what she was saying, and she told him that her prayer was that one day he would grow up to become a taxi driver. From that day on he doubled his devotions, kneeling alongside his mother, praying that his mother’s prayers would not be answered. But as the engine redlined and he popped the car up a gear, he was glad that some of her prayers had gotten through.
It was a twelve-kilometer drive from his home near Surin Beach down to Patong, but in many ways it was a much longer journey. At his home he was Jarin the successful businessman, dutiful husband and loving father to his six adoring children—the eldest just finishing her first year at the private international high school. He could relax at home, enjoy the panoramic view of the ocean on the rustic patio—the hidden AC vents blowing out chilled air—or soak in one of the Jacuzzis, listening to the water splash down the eight-step waterfall. Home was his sanctuary and no one was stupid enough to bother him there.
But in Patong or Kathu or Ra Wai or Phuket City—anyplace outside the walled compound of his estate—he was Sua noi, the Tiger, demanding head of an army of criminals, source of millions in bribes to government officials; the man to see if you wanted something that laws prevented you from getting. And every day the list of people who needed him grew.
That was in the book, too. Rule Number Seven: Offer the right bone and the meanest dog will sit up and beg.
Supply and demand, that’s all it was. His gift was knowing how to bring them together. And no one did it better than he did. Until Mr. Shawn and his men interfered. Wasn’t it enough that he had to deal with reformist politicians and muckraking journalists, trying to pull him down so they could b
uild themselves up? They should be going after the terrorists down in the south, the ones looking to overthrow the government and start some Islamic state. If the press knew how much of his own money he had spent killing off those terrorists they would treat him like a hero instead of a crooked businessman with shadowy connections. The terrorists were the real threat to Thailand, not him. They wanted to disrupt tourism and trade; he promoted it. He needed everything to stay just as it was—a corrupt and inefficient government enabling a tourist trade based on sex and alcohol. Business was better that way.
Jarin sped around an overloaded mini-bus—a snub-nosed pickup truck with a pair of benches in the back—and continued in the passing lane until he got around a Toyota sedan and a knot of motor scooters. He heard the non-driving driver suck in his breath, and in the rearview mirror, the two guards’ eyes widened at the blind curve pass. That’s why he liked to drive—there was never any doubt about who was in control.
He took the car down the last sloping hill, slowing down enough to make the turn in front of the police station, downshifting hard as he went past Par Pom Sri Na, its gold leaf statue gleaming in the sun. Built to bring good luck and prosperity to Patong, it was one of the first things destroyed by the wave. At the base of the white stone podium, between a pair of waist-high stone elephants, an altar was covered in fresh garlands of yellow flowers, unlit candles, and green coconuts; tops lopped off, offering up their bittersweet milk. When the community leaders were rebuilding the shrine they had asked local businessmen for donations, and although Jarin had already given almost a million bhat toward the recovery, he sent a check for twenty thousand more. He had lost four bar-beers that day and a year on he was still running well behind in revenues. Par Pom Sri Na reminded him how easily he could lose the rest.
He drove up the slight incline of Phrabarami Road, past the government bank, past the mosque, up to Nanai Road, a half a kilometer from the beach. The wave had reached this far before sliding back out to sea, leaving a barricade of debris and bodies at the fork in the road to mark the high water point. He had been home that morning, smoking his first cigarette of the day, enjoying a few hours of solitude before his family awoke, when the wave arrived, lapping up against the lower patio like the wake from a passing power boat; not so much as knocking the folding chair off the dock. The scientists said that it had to do with the sharp slope of the sea floor around Surin Beach, the energy of the wave absorbed by the undersea geography before it even reached land. The same drop off, that created an undertow so strong his children were forbidden to swim past the dock, had saved his home and spared his family.
Noble Lies Page 8