Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

  Applause burst from the crowd, but the spectacle had still one more scene—an epilogue of horror. A wooden stake appeared on the stage and to it was lashed a live chicken, its feet tied together by rope and fastened to the stick. As the frightened creature squawked and tried to get away, the snake rose up once more from its basket, as if annoyed to be roused from a nap, and watched the chicken entangling itself in the rope. With mounting irritation, the serpent stared deadly at the noisy fowl, finally shot forward in a blur. Once! Twice! Three times the cobra buried its glistening snout into the screaming chicken. Floundering, the bird fell back and died; the cobra returned to its basket—and the proof was there that the snake had not been milked of venom.

  “You have seen that beauty can charm the serpent,” said the master of ceremonies in dullish patter that he used each night, “but when beauty is taken away, the serpent kills. Please show your appreciation for this performer as she passes among you. Thank you and good night.”

  From this point on, in or around the curfew of midnight, little else is known for the record. But speculation permits a myriad of possibilities. Perhaps Jennie was loser to the war of sensuality raging within her. Perhaps she had such grave doubts about being able to keep her commitment as a Buddhist nun that she abandoned her plan. Perhaps, as a Buddhist friend in Los Angeles would one day suggest, “She was unable to fight the negative forces and they overwhelmed her. She surrendered to them for one long ‘Last Night on the Town.’” Perhaps, as authorities would believe, Jennie was given a drug that made her pliant to the wishes of Charles Sobhraj/Alain Gauthier.

  Or, finally, this was where destiny had brought her.

  At dawn, as a new, faint sun spread pale light and warmth over the serene Gulf of Thailand, an old man rode his bicycle along a remote beach near Pattaya. He was delivering eggs from his farm to customers. As he pedaled, he glimpsed a young Western woman lying on her back in the shallow water, hardly an inch or two deep, just at the edge of the sand, where the gentle morning tide was washing against her. The old man paused briefly to look, for the young woman wore a flowered bikini and her figure was full and beautiful in the mauve light of the new morning. She seemed to be resting, catching her breath after a vigorous swim. Ah, Western women are strange, he murmured to himself. He went on about his deliveries. His wife would screech at him if he were late getting home.

  An hour later, the old man rode back on the same path and for the second time, under full sun, saw the same young woman. She had not moved, and now the stillness of her body was eerie. Waves were building, washing over her immobile face. Her eyes were open; she was staring at the sky. The old egg seller got off his bicycle and timidly approached the girl. When he was but a few feet away, he recognized what had happened and he began to shake as he cried out for help. Before him, almost covered now by the sea, was a young woman lying gracefully on her back, her face composed, her arms outstretched like a crucifix. Bits of shells, gleaming pink and pearl, dotted her body. She was dead.

  Police came and made a primitive investigation, hoping that the death would not be serious enough to arouse the bureaucratic attention of Bangkok. Provincial police in Thailand prefer to be left to their own devices. Granted, they did check with Pattaya’s major hotels to determine if a guest was missing. Nothing. When they were unable to identify the corpse, some official hurriedly proclaimed “death by accidental drowning” and ordered the remains to be placed in a huge plastic bag and sealed and hastily thrown into a paupers’ cemetery. And forgotten.

  Many months later, an investigation would finally be conducted, and the body exhumed for autopsy—with considerable problems. The gravediggers had forgotten exactly where they buried the girl and had to make several holes before the right remains were found. In Bangkok, a pathologist found salt water and sand in the lungs. He called it “a terrible death.” Jennie Bolliver’s lifelong fear of water was well founded. In her last moments of this life, someone pushed her head beneath the sea and held it there for a few moments of awful terror—until she struggled no more, and euphoria took over, and karma was fulfilled.

  A day or two had passed. Marie-Andrée was sunning beside the apartment house pool when Belle joined her. The two women rubbed cocoa oil on their darkening limbs and cooked in the blistering tropical sun. They spoke of trivial matters, Marie-Andrée rousing on one elbow to tell about an “amusing” American girl who had enlivened one of her parties. The girl was a flirt and rather naughty, gossipped Marie-Andrée. Her name was Jennie and she had come on strong to every man in the room with her sexuality.

  “Is she still there?” asked Belle, tossing her head toward the fifth floor.

  No, answered Marie-Andrée. Charles said he took the American girl with him on one of his midnight-to-dawn Pattaya excursions, but once there she met some hippies whom she knew and decided to stay. Nothing more was said. The coming and going of Jennie Bolliver seemed but a minor event in the frenetic days of apartments 503 and 504. Belle, in fact, paid little attention to Marie-Andrée’s tale. But she would clearly remember Marie-Andrée falling silent for a long while after telling it and then murmuring, with great emotion, “All I want to do is go home to Canada … I should never have come here.”

  “Then why don’t you?” wondered Belle.

  “I can’t,” answered Marie-Andrée in a tone that cut off any more inquiries.

  Marie-Andrée wrote in her diary: “Work is setting in so well that Charles and I must live our life with strangers. But I accept it, for I swear to myself daily to try by all means to make him love me. Because my love for him is so intense. And it grows …”

  More people came and went, so many that Belle marveled at the lavish hospitality. “How can Alain afford to wine and dine guests every night?” she asked Raoul. He had no idea, but a feeling persisted that more was going on upstairs than met the eye. “I’d rather you didn’t spend so much time with those people,” he told his wife. Raoul had heard that Gauthier was banned from entering at least one major Bangkok hotel because the security guards did not like him hustling guests in the lobby and public rooms.

  Belle found her husband’s remarks silly and ill-founded. Besides, her only interest was Marie-Andrée, or Monique, as she knew her, they both being French-speaking women trying to cope with life in a confusing Asian capital. Their relationship was confined to girl talk, anyway. The price of vegetables and coiffures didn’t hurt anybody. But as October peeled into November, and as assorted minor events began to accumulate in Belle’s head, she took pause. Unhappily, as a whole they did not set off an alarm bell. Not yet.

  Once Belle noticed a pair of handcuffs, a spyglass, walkie-talkies, and binoculars resting on the dresser in Charles’ bedroom. She could not resist asking him their use. “For my business,” he said, clearly annoyed that Belle would pry. Later he hinted that he was somehow involved in espionage, with a vague reference to Vietnamese rebels who were working to bring about the downfall of the new Communist government. Belle hastened to inform her husband of this new angle of political intrigue, but Raoul scoffed. “He’s about as political as that monkey in diapers,” said Raoul, who once again warned his wife that she should not get involved with the curious upstairs tenants.

  Then there were the passports. One morning Charles left the door of his portable safe open momentarily, and Belle glimpsed inside while Marie-Andrée was busy preparing coffee. She saw what appeared to be several passports, of different nationalities. There was also an open box of gemstones, most of them rubies.

  Belle let it ride for a few days, then she ventured to ask Marie-Andrée why her boy friend’s safe contained so many passports. A flicker of what Belle took to be either fear or annoyance crossed her friend’s face. “Ask him,” said Marie-Andrée. “He uses them for travel, I think.”

  And there were always the sick people. Dominique, who had become part of the household two months earlier, was a little better, though twenty-five pounds lighter than the day he had met the couple at the restaurant in Chian
g Mai. He had finally stopped taking Charles’ medicine, although each morning he pretended to drink the small glass of pink liquid that his host brought to his room. Dominique had managed to slip out of the apartment one day and purchase his own Kaopectate. This he was taking instead of Charles’ doses. In early November he asked Charles to return his passport, but the request was dismissed brusquely. “You’re not well enough to travel,” said Charles. “You can drop dead of tropical diseases if your body doesn’t have enough strength to fight them.”

  The two other Frenchmen, Yannick and Jacques, suffered tossing stomachs from time to time, but they were not sick long enough to still their desire to work for Charles and do his bidding, be it chauffeuring him about Bangkok in a rented brown Toyota, or cooking when Marie-Andrée was too weary to feed another pickup dozen on half an hour’s notice, or washing down both apartments regularly with a strong lye cleanser to rid the odors of sickness. Their goals were to amass $1,000 each to purchase airplane tickets for Paris and to repay Charles for his hospitality.

  “Your friend Gauthier likes to play the Big Boss,” observed Raoul one night after he went upstairs to extricate Belle from a party. “He reminds me of a movie gangster. Edward G. Robinson, maybe. He’s got a nice wife—Monique—to show the customers and prove how domestic he is. He’s got bodyguards, he’s got pets, he’s got mistresses, he sits up there giving orders and acting mysterious. As far as I’m concerned, he’s phony. And I wish you’d stay away from him.”

  Belle made a face of annoyance and went to bed—pointedly—alone.

  Later Belle chastised her diminutive husband for imagining dark scenarios. Alain and Monique seemed to her like nothing more than a nice young couple trying to make a go of it in a difficult place. True, their life was a bit unorthodox. But what was “normal” anyway in the Far East?

  In mid-November, two more young people became residents of the penthouse. They were Canadians and when they arrived, escorted by Charles, they both looked dreadfully ill. “What are you, a witch or something?” asked Belle flippantly of Charles when she noticed the new couple struggling to the toilet every few minutes.

  “Why do you say that?” demanded Charles, trying to look amused but failing to cool the heat in his voice.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” quickly backtracked Belle. “Just kidding around. Every time somebody comes to stay here, they get sick, that’s all.”

  “Well, this is Bangkok,” snapped Charles. “I can’t help it if people get sick. I’m trying to help them.”

  Taking her friend aside, Marie-Andrée warned Belle not to tease Alain with words like “witch.” He did not appreciate such remarks, and besides, it seemed cruel considering all he was doing for strangers in a strange land. “So sorry,” said Belle, smiling, promising, but at the same time wondering why he was so upset.

  The two Canadians were snared in Pattaya, the beach resort. Roger Klebar was a dentist in his late twenties, his wife Giselle, a lovely teacher and philosophy student. They were on an extended prowl of the Far East before settling down to the tedium of pulling teeth and grading term papers. Both were intelligent, seasoned travelers, usually cautious, but not sophisticated enough to avoid the charms of Alain Gauthier. Walking on the beach boulevard around November 15, 1975, they stopped to watch an elephant giving rides to tourists, when a French-speaking Asian man and his wife materialized beside them. The script was getting familiar, its actors growing experienced.

  The couple introduced themselves as Alain Gauthier and his wife Monique, who was thrilled to meet fellow Canadians at such a remote place. She was hungry for news of her country; the dentist and his wife were happy to give it. That very night they dined at a lavish outdoor buffet at one of the big hotels; the Canadians often left the table and went to the dance floor, leaving their new friends alone with the plates of food. In retrospect, Roger Klebar would speculate that these were the moments when someone put something in their dinner. Later that night, after the Canadians had enthusiastically accepted their new friends’ invitation to stay in their Bangkok apartment for a few days while Alain and Monique showed them the city, Roger and Giselle felt the first gnaws of dysentery. By dawn they were weak, and by the time they reached Bangkok, they could barely focus and nod to the numerous young people in the apartment before they fell gratefully into one of Gauthier’s beds.

  The next morning, the dentist and his wife woke to the sight of Monique standing over them with coffee. She was tender and comforting. She helped them drink, then drew back, watching. Quickly the Canadians fell unconscious and slept for more than twenty-four hours. When they awoke, they were frightened. The previous day and a half had been lost. They could not remember much beyond the dinner at Pattaya.

  Alain appeared at their bedside and was all reassurances. Unfortunately, he explained, the Canadians had fallen ill with acute dysentery. One of the reactions was extended sleep while the body healed itself. He clapped his hands and in came Dominique to confirm that he had slept for long periods of time during the several weeks he had been ill.

  “Perhaps we should call a doctor,” said Roger, feebly. Alain disagreed. He was as experienced in treating dysentery as any Thai doctor. In fact, he had medications that Thai doctors did not even know about. “Trust me,” said Alain soothingly. “You must trust me, and you will get well quickly.”

  Oh, and one more thing. So many people wander in and out of the apartment, suggested Alain to his sick guests, that it might be safer for them to give their host any valuables for safekeeping. Dutifully, the dentist handed over passports, airplane tickets, and traveler’s checks, thinking at the time how lucky he was to be in the hands of a French-speaking host who really cared about people. Then he blacked out and slept for two days.

  A week of terrible sickness. When she was conscious, Giselle staggered to the bathroom—twenty times on one day as best as she could remember. Roger swam in and out of lucidity, remembering only that either Alain or Monique appeared frequently at his bedside, exhorting the Canadian couple to take their medicine. It came in both pills and a tumbler of a foul liquid which Alain said was Kaopectate. Monique often spoke sharply, reminding the dentist and his wife that she had been a nurse in Quebec City and they had best follow her instructions.

  “Are we dying?” gasped Giselle in the middle of one night as her husband tossed and moaned beside her. “No, chérie,” he said. “We’re just sick. We’ll get over it.” But in his heart, Roger must have wondered if his diagnosis was optimistic.

  Then Alain went away for a few days. “Business,” he said. Monique would look after the houseguests. One morning she brought in the regular glass of medicine and tablets and waited for the Canadians to swallow them. Roger asked her to leave it beside the bed. He could not force anything down his throat at this moment. Monique seemed annoyed, but she left the medicine on the table and promised to return shortly to see if it had been taken.

  “I think this stuff is making us sick,” whispered Roger. “Don’t take yours.” Giselle nodded, so weak that she would obey any dictum. Roger crept to the bathroom and threw the medicines down the toilet. Later that day he felt better—for the first time since he had fallen ill in Pattaya while dining with their new friends. But even now he did not make a connection; he only believed that Alain was giving him medicine that was not appropriate for his condition.

  Surreptitiously, the Canadians continued to throw their medicine down the toilet each morning, and within a few days they felt well enough to leave. “Where are our passports and traveler’s checks?” asked Roger routinely of Marie-Andrée. The request was a shock; she stammered that it would be best to await the return of Alain. He would be back anytime now. Besides, she did not know the combination to his safe.

  As a compromise, or as delay, Marie-Andrée took the dentist and his wife on a whirlwind tour of the city, then to dinner at a good restaurant. A nervous hostess, her face was pale, her hand trembling occasionally, so ill at ease that Roger wondered if she was falling victim to th
e same tropical bug. At this, Marie-Andrée smiled, a little sardonically. She changed the subject quickly, disgorging a multitude of complaints against her absent “husband”—how he kept mistresses on the side, how he refused to communicate with her, how he denied her requests for a return to Canada and a visit with her family.

  Giselle waited for a tactful moment. Obviously, she finally suggested, there are enormous pressures on a marriage in a country as difficult as Thailand. Marie-Andrée stiffened. “Oh, I like my life very much,” she said, now defensive. “We travel. We see interesting places. We meet people. It’s just tiring, that’s all.”

  “I think you’re lucky,” said Giselle. “You’re living everybody’s dream.”

  Marie-Andrée pondered this and laughed.

  “Yes, I’m lucky,” she cried. “Oh God, am I lucky!”

  In the last week of November 1975, Vitali Hakim flew into Bangkok feeling fit and ready for success. The East was one corner of the map where he had not walked, and he was not only ready for a financial bonanza in Thailand—provided the contacts from Burma materialized and Charmayne showed up as directed to be the messenger girl—he intended to explore what Bangkok had to offer, from temples to flesh markets.

  On his first night, Vitali gravitated immediately to Patpong and ate lobsters—small, spiny, but delicious—and drank several quarts of the heavy Thai beer. He had promised himself to do something about his girth, being ten kilos overweight and having to strain to pull his astrological shirts over his swelling belly. But tonight was not the occasion for diet. Stuffed and bleary-eyed, he found an outdoor cafe where a boxing ring was the center of attraction. There he watched two balletic but ferocious bouts of Thai boxing before it dawned on him that the combatants were curveless young women whose feet flew off the canvas and against an opponent’s cheekbone so rapidly that they were blurs. Scattering a fistful of bahts into the ring to display his pleasure, Vitali lurched out, shopping around Patpong until he found a massage palace with red velvet and gilt and nude statuary as décor. He chose from the tiers of uniformed young women a masseuse named Joi, and for what he calculated to be roughly seven dollars experienced what he later referred to as forty-five minutes of excellent but frustrating cock tease. Joi wanted another twenty dollars before she would offer more fulfilling massage, and at this Vitali roared with laughter. In a decade of roaming around the world, never had he paid a whore, never in his whole life, and he did not intend to begin such commerce with a massage girl in Bangkok.