by Yigal Zur
“Where is she now?” I asked.
Again, she closed her eyes. This time it felt like an eternity before she opened them. “Now I see only water. Much water. It make the picture not clear. Fear spread out like ripples in water.”
There was plenty of water in Bangkok. The canals, or what they call khlongs, form a complex network of channels that flow into the Chao Phraya. A lot of life goes on along the canals and the river. People looking for work, former farmers who left their failing rice fields, live in the narrow spaces between the canals and the streets and under every bridge. Was she hiding in one of the infinite number of waterside shacks? It would take years to check them all out. You’d need more than one lifetime to complete the job.
“Try again,” I said, tossing another purple five-hundred-baht note into the basin.
While I waited for her to open her eyes, I gazed at the old woman and envisioned her fading away. Soon, no one will need your services anymore, I thought. Everyone’s hooked up to the internet these days, expecting to find all the answers there. It won’t be long before no one even remembers who you were.
This time when she opened her eyes, they seemed clearer, the way they used to look. “I see Chao Phraya. People get out of black cars and taxis. They come and go. When they come, they tense; when they go, they laugh. I see girls. They smile, they invite. Water all around. She in middle. Shaking. Maybe she cold, maybe too much drugs. Shaking. Not move from fear.” She paused for a moment and then went on. “Not much time. You must find her.” She rested her hands on her thighs, resuming the position she had been in when I arrived, and closed her eyes. The reading was over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE GROUND FLOOR of the Jasmine Hotel was occupied by a row of shops and offices that opened onto the street and sported signs in every color, shape, and language. One in pink read, “Ravi, Your Tailor in Bangkok,” the message spelled out in English, Thai, and Hindi; above a Lebanese shawarma restaurant was a green sign reading “Little Beirut” in English, Thai, and Arabic, with a crescent below. On another sign, written only in English, were the words “Reuven Enterprises Inc.” One of those names that doesn’t give anything away.
I pushed on the glass door. Inside was a human zoo representing every stage in some weird evolution. In the background, the whiny disco music that only Thai people can tolerate was playing. The office was a busy hive of kathoey, ladyboys, the young men who come to Bangkok in droves looking to earn the twelve hundred dollars they need for a sex change operation by working in the sex industry or in cosmetic and hair salons. Peeling the banana, the boys—or is it girls?—call the removal of their penis.
Kathoeys were going in and out. The one at the reception desk near the door was a prime example, having undoubtedly undergone every surgical procedure possible. She raised heavily made-up eyes with long artificial lashes and flashed me a smile with her deep red lips. “Yes?” she asked.
I told her I was looking for Reuven.
“Reuven no yet come.”
With such excellent English she could go far, I thought cynically.
I sank into a faux leather armchair nearby and picked up one of the glossy fashion magazines piled on the low table beside me. I leafed through it, but I didn’t actually read it. Across from me, a long row of kathoeys sat in front of huge mirrors applying layers of makeup. Others went upstairs to the dressing room and came back down to show themselves off to their friends. The word that rang out again and again, beginning nearly every sentence, was tai, the local pronunciation of “die,” as in “to die for,” or in tai di chun, “I’m dying.”
Tai di chun, my makeup doesn’t look good. Every falang fool will see right away that I’m a man without having to check under my skirt.
Tai di chun, the damn silicon. One of my breasts is sliding down.
Tai di chun, my pubic hair is showing in the crotch of my body suit.
So many reasons to die, and all with a magnitude of emotion and intensity that no foreigner can understand.
They completely ignored me. I was watching them so intently that I didn’t even notice the man who came in a few minutes after me. But so many of the kathoeys hurried over to him, kissing him on the cheek and making a slight curtsy as they held their hands in the wai gesture, that eventually I became aware of his presence.
He was standing with his back to me. The shudder that ran through my body said it all. Then he turned and looked at me. His hair was dyed black and the skin on his face was stretched tight from repeated Botox injections, but there was no mistaking the eyes. It was him. There might have been a few artificial improvements, but it was still him.
I stood up. The moment our eyes met, the many years since I’d last seen him evaporated and everything came flooding back. I was overwhelmed by the rage I’d carried with me all this time, the kind of rage you can only feel toward someone you once loved.
“You finally came,” Reuven said. “It took you years.” His face didn’t move when he spoke. It was as if the voice emerged from a mask.
“So now we’re face-to-face,” I heard myself say drily. Reuven had betrayed me. It was an unforgiveable betrayal, the worst kind. The betrayal of a brother. And now he had gotten me tangled up in some mess again. I just didn’t know what kind of mess.
“Yes,” he answered. “Look how far we had to go to meet up again in this hellhole.”
He noticed me scrutinizing his face, searching. “They didn’t cover the scar,” he said. “I couldn’t let go of it.” He turned his cheek toward me, showing me where the terrorist had stabbed him before I took the shithead out. That was a long time ago, when we were young, and someone first got the idea of having us disguise ourselves as Arabs in order to work undercover in the territories.
Reuven extended his hand. “Isn’t it time for us to shake?” I reached for it. You can’t change a handshake. You remember it, your hand remembers it. Reuven’s was always exceptionally firm.
“Can I have my hand back?” I said when he continued to hold onto it.
“You’re still mad at me,” he stated.
“Very perceptive of you,” I said.
“I didn’t expect you to forgive me, but I did expect you to move on.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
Reuven walked toward the only seating area in the room that wasn’t covered in articles of clothing, overflowing ashtrays, and spray cans in vivid shades of pink, blue, and red. He motioned to a chair. I remained standing.
“Come on, sit down,” he said. “We have a lot to talk about.”
We sat down beside a glass table with iron legs in the shape of naked women. On it was a bottle of Suntory Japanese whiskey and two frosted glasses. Reuven poured us each a shot of whiskey.
“Neat or Thai style?” he asked.
“Neat.”
We didn’t clink glasses, merely drank in silence. I’d hardly taken a sip before he was already pouring himself another generous shot, which he proceeded to belt down as if he was in need of hydration.
I looked around the large room. From where I was sitting before, it seemed to be buzzing with life. From here it looked like I was in a theater watching a performance that would be over in an hour.
“Do you know why I brought you here?” he asked abruptly.
“Brought me?”
“Brought you—set the wheels in motion. What difference does it make? You think it was random chance that made you come to Bangkok at this particular moment in time? Nothing random about it. Everyone follows their own karma. To the letter. Initially, I thought you were the only one who could handle the investigation and save my sorry ass. I figured I could work the rest out on my own after that. Then I realized that by the time you got here, it would be too late. But still, I wanted you to be here at the end. Nobody else, just you.”
“So in a nutshell, you got me in deep shit once, and now you’re doing it again,” I said.
“That’s one way of looking at it, but it’s not what I wanted. I know it�
��s hard for you to believe me.”
“You still think I owe you,” I said. “You screw up again so you bring me here as a last resort and then you drag me down with you into your fucked-up life.”
“I expected it to end differently,” he said. “I know now I was too optimistic.”
He refilled our glasses. I was fine with that. The simplest way for me to understand what had happened, what was happening at the moment, was to let him keep drinking and keep talking.
“When I first came to Bangkok,” he related, “I was caught up in the freedom here, like a lot of foreigners. No accountability, not for anything, not to anyone. Just as long as you don’t step on anyone’s toes, you can do what you want. As they say here, it’s all mai pen rai—doesn’t matter. Right away I know it’s a place where I can put my old life behind me and start a new one. At that point, you’re more in touch with yourself than you’ve ever been before. You learn the truth about yourself, even if it’s not so pretty.”
I knew exactly what he meant. It went even deeper than that. And I knew it was pure luck that he was telling this story and not me. We could easily have traded places.
“In the first few months, I burned through everything I had in a whirlwind of excitement, drugs, and sex. Mai pen rai if you sleep with three girls as long as you pay the bar bill, the hotel, and the ladies themselves. Mai pen rai if you shoot up heroin. Mai pen rai whatever you do to forget your shitty past. I tried. I feasted on every kind of fuck and drug there is. I earned myself the reputation of a freak even in the depraved world of Bangkok.
“Then one day, the well dried up. I’d cashed in everything I had, my pension plan, my savings, my life insurance. It’s all gone. Not a penny left. After a week or two of living on soup and handouts from friends, or rather former friends, I pick up the last thing I still possess, my camera, and start taking pictures in Patpong.
“By now I know the place inside and out. I photographed the girls obsessively, just like I fucked them. The young girls forced to become women, the ones who become mothers. I shot what was left of their innocence after years of shoving ping pong balls and razor blades into their cunts, along with the dicks of crazy Chinamen, drunken Russians, potbellied Germans, and noisy Israelis. After a wild ride taking pictures of Bangkok’s sewers, I put together a calendar of Patpong girls that sells like hot cakes. Who wouldn’t buy it? It’s a collection of everything a lonely white man ever fantasized about.
“Then I open this agency for kathoey models, but I’m still hanging out and shooting pictures in Patpong, Nana, and Soi Cowboy, the only places I can find someone to pretend to care about me. Places where I can forget. I spend a few years like that, but every time I look in the mirror all I see is hollowness. I’m dying inside.
“One day some cops come up to me on Khao San and say an Israeli kid is walking around in his birthday suit, going up to people and challenging them to a war of who can keep from cracking a smile longest. If they don’t want to play his game, he spits at them. They don’t know what to do with him. He doesn’t have a penny on him, so there’s no point in arresting him. But if someone doesn’t get him out of there, they won’t have any choice. They’ll be forced to pick him up, and I know they’ll beat him to a pulp.
“I take him home with me. What else can I do? He’s Israeli, and all of a sudden that means a lot to me. It’s as if I have another chance to give without expecting anything in return. I keep him tied to a chair for four days until he gets clean. He screams incessantly. Now and then he sobers up a little and asks for water and then he pisses and says all the fluids are draining out of him and starts screaming again.
“I manage to locate his parents. I still have a few connections. His father gets on the first plane and takes him home, straight into a psychiatric ward. There are other incidents after that. In Khao San they learn that if an Israeli loses it, and that happens every couple of days, it’s better to call Reuven than the Tourist Police.”
I continued to sit in silence. We’d almost finished the bottle, or more precisely, Reuven had.
“One day I get a call from a guesthouse in Khao San. They tell me they have an Israeli girl who passed out a few hours ago and they can’t wake her up. They think she OD’d. They want me to come get her. If she dies in the guesthouse, they’ll lose their license. When I get there, I find the most amazing Israeli woman I’ve ever seen. She’s spectacular. It’s love at first sight.”
Reuven paused for a moment before going on.
“Sigal was beautiful even lying half-dressed on a cot, as white as a ghost. One of her legs was hanging off the bed and her arms were limp and lifeless. But beautiful. Incredibly beautiful.
“I take her home, give her a shot of Valium every six hours to reduce her body’s craving for heroin. For two days I sit vigil over her, day and night. I’ve never seen anyone like her. She’s got the softness and peacefulness I’ve always searched for and could never find in myself.
“On the third morning she opens her eyes, gazes at me, and says, ‘I was having a nightmare and you were like a light in the darkness.’ Then she smiles. If I could only freeze that moment. But nothing stays the same in this world. Everything changes.
“The next two weeks are a marathon of wild lovemaking. We found each other, physically and emotionally, like soul mates. We lie in bed for hours with her head on my chest, not talking, just staring at the ceiling. Once I ask her what she’s thinking about and she says ‘nothing.’ She says she kicked the habit. Thinking is a waste of time.
“One morning she disappears. Two days later, I get a call from another guesthouse. She’s lying in her own puke beside a bucket of needles and speed and every other kind of junk you can shove into your body. When she sobers up this time, she tells me how sorry she is. We both like to live on the edge, she says. Then she’s my incredible lover again, and she has so much love to give.
“But the story just repeats itself. She disappears, I find her. The third time she’s lying wasted in a Chinese hotel outside Bangkok. She’s selling herself for drug money. Fucked a whole tourist bus. When I get there, they’re still in the lobby, tying their overstuffed suitcases with rope so they don’t burst open. They bought up half the markets in Bangkok. And they’re showing each other the pictures they took with their new digital cameras. I know exactly what’s in them. The Chinese kiss and tell.
“I know I have to do something fast or I’ll lose her forever. We can’t keep on the way we are. I love her, but even if I sell everything I have, borrow from everyone I know, I won’t have enough to start a new life with Sigal somewhere far from anything that reminds us of Bangkok or Israel.”
Reuven fell silent, scanning my face for a reaction.
“So you arrange for her to work as a mule,” I said. “You know she’ll do anything to get money, if not for you, then for drugs.”
“I sent her to Weiss,” Reuven acknowledged. “He needed someone to transport a large shipment of heroin to southern Thailand. From there it would go on to Malaysia or Singapore. I have no idea who the buyer was. I didn’t ask questions.”
“The angel of Bangkok,” I said sarcastically.
There was a pause before he went on. “I did the math. She’d be paid well to smuggle the package to the south. But that isn’t enough for me. It always amazes me that kids from good homes are willing to take a huge risk for a few thousand dollars. It’s a fatal mistake, and they pay a heavy price for it, destroying themselves and their families. They rot in the worst prisons in the third world, waiting years for a trial and forking out tens of thousands of dollars on attorneys and bribes just to survive. Naïve kids in a foreign prison.”
“So you decide to cash in on the package,” I said.
He nodded. “I know I won’t have any trouble selling it to Weiss’s competitors. Even if they only pay me half of what it’s worth, it’ll still be enough for us to disappear and start over in one of the cheap, less-traveled, places in Central America. An island in Honduras, somewhere on the c
oast of Guatemala. A place where I can buy a piece of beach with palm trees, where you don’t see a soul for miles, except for crows and parrots and water fowl. Maybe a fisherman from time to time. A place where no one asks how much cash you brought with you.”
“What went wrong?” I asked.
“I waited for her on the train going south. She didn’t show up. I didn’t take into account that the drugs had fucked with her mind. She didn’t give a damn about the future. The only thing that mattered to her was her next fix.”
“And you didn’t anticipate that?”
“No,” he answered. For the first time, I heard the anguish in his voice. “All I could see were the wonderful years ahead of us. She was my redemption, my only, probably my last, chance at a real life. I was blind.”
“How did she know Micha Waxman?”
“He was a shadow, the kind that sticks to you. Now and then he worked as a mule, an errand boy. I guess he heard about the shipment and found out that Sigal was going to carry it.”
“I found her things in his room,” I said.
“I know. I was there. I took his passport.” I saw the hint of a smile and for a moment he was the Reuven I once knew, a master of dirty tricks. Then the inscrutable mask was back in place. “There’s a gap I can’t fill,” he continued. “A few hours, maybe a day or two, when everything went haywire. I don’t know what happened during that time.”
“Who killed Micha?”
He sat in silence for a long time. Finally, he said, “Weiss, naturally. If he didn’t do it himself, he sent one of his minions.”
“Micha was a little fish. He was taking a big risk by killing him.”
“For him, Micha was a gnat, an annoying little mosquito you can squash in your hand. He probably found out that he was with Sigal after she got the package and thought he could tell him where she was hiding.”
“How would Weiss find out something like that?”
“From our friend, Shmulik,” Reuven said bitterly. “He sold him out for a bunch of fresh Cambodian kids.”