by John Burdett
“You never heard where she worked, what she did?” She shook her head.
I’m about to leave when a whim makes me fish out the pictures of Warren. I show her the most recent: Warren with George W. Bush at a reception in the Rose Garden. Her eyes flicker between me and the photograph. Fear? More like consternation. She put a hand on my arm. “Is he involved? Sonchai, if he is you better forget about this case.”
“Why?”
“Did you ever hear the phrase ‘a special job’?”
“Of course. He’s one of those?”
“He’s the original special job. He used to be very well known in the bars. He would arrive once a month and the word would go round. He paid top dollar for any girl who would go with him, but none of them ever wanted to go a second time. They wouldn’t talk about it, but you can guess. Farangs don’t understand us Thais. They think if a girl sells her body, then she has no dignity, no limits. Actually, the opposite is often the truth. Women like your mother are very free spirits. Could you imagine Nong ever holding down a normal job? Or putting up with abuse from a man? A woman might sell her body because it’s more dignified and safer than being married to a violent drunk who goes whoring without protection. Well, anyway, nobody went with him twice, at least that was what I heard.”
“And he stopped going to the bars, all of a sudden?”
“In the middle of the nineties all those Russian women started appearing, from Siberia. The story was they would go with him time after time and put up with his things, whatever they were. They knew all about special jobs. Their pimps contacted him, so he didn’t need the bars anymore. Those Siberians are real tough women. Must be the weather up there.”
Kat’s hovel belongs to a project almost identical to my own, except that it is not near the river, or anything else of interest to the eye. I stand at the edge of a man-made desert, waiting for a cab, wondering if this wasteland is another Western import. Have we, in our headstrong grabbing of all things Western, inadvertently bought up pieces of the Sahara? Fortunately, I have brought my Walkman with me and listen to Pisit Sritabot’s phone-in radio show while I wait. A female professor of sociology is talking in such authoritative tones about prostitution that Pisit for once forgets to interrupt.
“It’s an unfortunate word in that everyone has a different definition. These days a huge percentage of young women studying at university and colleges are subsidized by so-called sugar daddies—men, often farangs but usually Thai, who pay their expenses, even a kind of salary, in exchange for the right to sleep with the students whenever they choose. It is not illegal, but the girl is certainly selling her body. If the sugar daddy isn’t rich enough to pay all her expenses, she’ll have to take on another, perhaps as many as three. Often the girl will own three separate mobile telephones, one for each lover so she doesn’t get the name wrong when one of them calls. Then you have the very naÏve rice grower from Isaan who has heard about the money to be made in the big city, who spends a weekend hanging out at the bars on Sukhumvit, perhaps finds a man or two who hire her, only to discover she has not the slightest clue about foreign men, speaks not a word of English. She may be horrified and mystified by the very idea of oral sex and catches the next bus home to her farm in the far north, never to visit the big city again. Then you have experts, very talented and attractive women who can literally wrap men around their fingers. Such girls often receive income from three or more foreign men, who live overseas and of course are unaware of each other, who are paying her to stay out of the bars until they arrive for their vacations. Of course, she continues to sell her body every night and is probably receiving a total income in excess of any middle-ranking professional, such as a lawyer or doctor. Then you have the girls who travel, often on false passports supplied by our local mafia, who also procure visas for countries like Britain and the U.S. Such girls, if they are gifted in their profession, may make as much as U.S.$180,000 a year in cities like London, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Paris, Hong Kong, Berlin, Tokyo, Singapore. Of course they never pay tax, and usually they save a significant amount, so within a few years they return to join our wealthier classes. Then there is the girl who is caught in some loan scam, usually in order to pay medical bills for her mother or father, who finds herself trapped in a brothel in the country, or in Malaysia, who is in reality a sex slave all of whose earnings go to pay off the original loan, who may be required to service a man every twenty minutes while she is on duty, which may be for as long as twelve hours a day. Then there are the pool hustlers. Our girls cannot compete with Filipinas, who are world class, but they’re improving all the time.”
“What’s pool got to do with prostitution?”
“Thai pool. The game is used as a hook. Not every farang likes go-go bars or wants to spend an evening drinking beer. Pool mops up the remainder of the market—shy men like it too, it provides a lead-in, a hobby in common. It can seem almost like a holiday romance, which happens to last an evening instead of the usual week.”
“I see.”
“There is really no comparison between the destinies, mind-sets or lifestyles of these different women, but because they are all prostitutes we inadvertently find ourselves talking about them as if they were in the same plight, which they are not. The truth is that prostitution fulfills many functions. It is a substitute for social welfare, medical insurance, student loans, a profitable hobby as well as being the path to that wealth which many modern women expect from life. It also brings an enormous amount of foreign currency to our country, which means the government is never serious about suppressing it.”
“I see,” Pisit says again, in an unusually somber mood. “And we are talking about a significant proportion of Thai women?”
“Huge. When you consider that many women are ineligible by reason of age, or lack of physical charms, it begins to look as if perhaps twenty percent of women in Krung Thep who are in a position to sell their bodies do so. If you include the sugar daddy phenomenon and the overseas industry, which is very very big, the figure must be even higher.”
“Are we as a nation dependent on this trade?”
“I don’t want to exaggerate or paint these women as heroes, but it’s true that without their work we would all be a little bit poorer.”
“Is there something about Thai women that leads them so easily into the trade?”
Laughing: “Well, farangs especially say how beautiful we are and we don’t seem to have the same hang-ups as many Western women. The West tries to turn the act of sex into a religious experience, when to us it is no more than scratching an itch. I’m afraid we’re not as romantic as we seem. And perhaps we are a little strange. In other countries such as Japan and South Korea, prostitution declined dramatically as the economy improved. When our economy improves, the number of prostitutes tends to go up rather than down.”
I switch Pisit and his guest off when the cab arrives but find myself haunted for a moment by the rice grower from Isaan. I can see her, uncomfortable without her sarong in the short skirt or black leggings and black tank top which are almost a uniform of the trade. Perhaps her legs are short and muscular, her ass a little on the wide side, her expectations wildly out of whack with reality as she stares at passing white men, wondering which of them will be her savior. She owns the broad open face and smudge nose of the northern tribes. I experience her astonishment when her first customer tries to initiate her into the black art of fellatio, her disbelief that he could be serious, that people really did that sort of thing. In my mind’s eye I follow her all the way to the terminus, share her disgust with the city while she waits for the bus home. I find I love her, though I’ve never met her. If we are to be saved it will be by the likes of her.
On the way to my own hovel I meditate on my penis. Not only mine, my thoughts encompass every owner. Sooner or later one comes to a forked path: make it the centerpiece of your life, or put it away to be used in tumescent mode only on special occasions. Those who take the first option must surely reac
h a point where the sole function of one’s lovers is to serve the organ in all its glory? You might put it anywhere, share it with anyone, so long as it’s running the show. I find I’m not thinking about my cock at all, I’m thinking of Bradley’s: the man who sported a perfect phallus on his web page. And what of his strange bedfellow Sylvester Warren, the man who played so rough only Siberians would partner him?
28
I was twenty-one and already a cop when I visited Fritz for the second time. I went alone and never told Nong of what was to be an ongoing mission of mercy. By then he had been in the jail for more than eleven years and the transformation from suave young European to wizened sewer survivor was complete. He was entirely bald apart from a couple of tufts, with wrinkles which crossed his white shiny dome. A hypersensitivity to nuances of body language gave the impression of extreme cunning bordering on insanity. If I touched my ear, rubbed my nose, coughed or looked at the ceiling I triggered responses vital to his survival. I had come on a whim, no doubt in my usual pathetic search for a father; he emerged in chains from behind the endless warren of bars into his side of the visitors’ room in the hope of finding a savior who might somehow get him out of there. No two men have ever disappointed each other more; after five minutes we were laughing like drains. His family had disowned him, his close friends had been rounded up in Germany after his bust and prosecuted for trafficking in heroin. Their incarcerations had passed more quickly than his—he was in for life—but none of them wanted to visit him. I came away with the clear certainty that I was the only person in the world who could save his mind.
Eleven years later I am making my sixty-first visit. Just before we reach the watchtower I have the cabdriver stop for me to buy six packs of two hundred cigarettes. Fritz smokes local brands himself, but 555s are the more valuable currency in the prison economy. In addition I buy a packet of Marlboro Reds and have the driver stop again near the prison while I work in the back of the cab. Fritz has money—by Thai standards he’s quite wealthy—but translating this into prison power is not so easy as all that. Every prisoner can open a prison account if he likes, but the amount he can take out of that account from day to day is strictly limited. At first I brought Fritz some of his own money in the form of thousand-baht notes folded and compressed so small I was able to simply flick a couple through the bars in the visiting area whenever I came to see him. The problem here was that in the jail he needed small denominations. A thousand-baht note was unmanageable and made the temptation to murder him and steal it irresistible to some of the inmates. Now I clean out the insides of ten Marlboros, slide a few tightly rolled hundred-baht notes inside each one, pack the end with tobacco and play the rest by ear. We’ve never failed yet. At the prison my police ID lets me get away with a light frisk. Other visitors, especially farangs, are body-searched.
There is always a moment of suspense while I wait in the visitors’ room for the duty guard to look for him. Is he still alive, or did the last beating finish him off? Is he sick in the hospital building, perhaps with HIV from sharing a needle, or from one or other of the fatal maladies that affect the inmates? Has the King agreed to pardon him this year? Here he comes, holding up the heavy chain of his leg irons with a piece of string in his left hand, as if he were taking a dog for a walk. Officially there are no leg irons in Bang Kwan anymore, but the message never seems to have reached the guards on Fritz’s block. He sits in a chair on the other side of the bars and drops the chain with a dull clank on the floor.
Amazingly, he has heard about Pichai and tells me how sorry he is. The aging process which accelerated so dramatically in the first years of his imprisonment came to an abrupt halt some time ago, as if it were aiming for a specific state of reptilian cunning. Now he is a wrinkled tortoise, anywhere between fifty and two hundred years old. He thanks me for the 555s, which the guard has already inspected and handed over, and scans my face. I know that he is not an ordinary man, will never be an ordinary man again, much as he would love to be one of the millions of middle-aged mediocrities living nondescript lives whom he once despised. I feel him probing me with that hyperalertness and know that he has read my mind, not through any supernatural power but simply through having developed the ability to read faces to a monstrous degree.
“I knew you were coming today. I saw a white bird through a crack in the ceiling and I knew it was you. I’ve become totally Thai, haven’t I?”
“How have you been?”
He pulls the string to rattle the chain a little. “Fantastic. I’ve been promoted—how about that!”
“A blue boy? A trusty?”
He snorts. “Do I look like a snitcher? No, they finally realized they had a use for Germanic efficiency and attention to detail—I’m in charge of our little red-light district.”
“They’re bringing girls in now?”
A shudder. He speaks with incredible rapidity in a loud whisper, like some kind of eccentric genius—or a madman. “There are still things about your country you don’t know. Of course they’re not letting girls in—they’d be torn apart. I’m talking about the pig farm. Your people are genuinely homophobic, did you know that? A female pig rents for twenty-five times what a male will rent for—short time, by the half hour. They’ve given me the books to keep and of course I’m scrupulous about the time and the money both. I’ve even rigged up a little electric buzzer so the john knows when it’s five minutes before withdrawal time.” He holds up his hands. “What can I say? It’s an honor—last year they let me run the cockroach project, and I increased production by a thousand percent—the improvement in the standard of nutrition and general health of the prison population was immeasurable, and of course I’ve always been the upwardly mobile type.”
I give him the nod—something so slight that in the beginning I could not believe anyone could notice such an infinitesimal movement—and he rubs the back of his ear. This means the guard sitting in the chair in the corner will turn a blind eye. Perhaps Fritz has bribed him with a few 555s. I take out the pack of Marlboro, select one of the cigarettes I worked on, light it, then make a questioning gesture to the guard, who nods. I hand the lighted cigarette to Fritz through the bars, he takes a couple of drags, then pinches it out. With a faint smile: “I’ll save it for later.”
I tell him that this time there is something he can do for me and he listens with his usual paranoid alertness while I tell him about Bradley and Dao Phrya Bridge. It is a matter of choice whether to speak in English or Thai, since he is now fluent in both and knows more prison slang than I do. When I’ve finished I light up another cigarette and pass it to him. This time the guard seems not to notice. Fritz takes a couple of tokes and pinches the end, as before.
He knows nothing about Bradley or the squatters under the bridge but he agrees there must certainly be someone in Bang Kwan with the information I need. He is full of his usual twitches and restless hand movements and his eyes pierce me, asking for more information. I find myself describing the woman in Bradley’s oil painting, which does not seem to trigger any response until I add a reference to the Khmer. His eyes light up for such a tiny fraction of time I would never have noticed if I had not been trained in prison semaphore. I stop in mid-sentence. I have been speaking in Thai, but now he switches to English.
“I’ve heard of her. Everyone in here has, she’s a legend because of those Khmer. Even the Thai thugs are scared of them. She runs some kind of yaa baa operation and uses the Khmer as protection—that’s the story anyway. The reason she’s so respected is she’s managed to turn herself into a religious figure for them. You know how jungle Khmer are at the best of times, but apparently they would literally die for her. That’s the legend, anyway. I haven’t paid any attention to it until now. I’ll see what I can do.”
He asks politely after my mother and we discuss his chances of a pardon this year. By the time I leave I have passed him all the cigarettes stuffed with banknotes. This is the cash flow which has kept him alive all these years. Someone in
Germany wires the money into my account once a month.
The road from the grim prison buildings to the outside world is very long and very straight and ends in a public garden overflowing with hibiscus, bougainvillea, orchids and the luscious green leaves of the Tropics. How could a meditator not see it as a proxy for the axis of the mind?
Back in my cave I find my spirit has exhausted its capacity to deal with the world and I’m in agony from the wound. A meditation aid is called for, as always after a visit to Fritz.
Ganja is, of course, much frowned upon by mainline Buddhist tradition and indeed the Greatest of Men expressly forbade intoxication in any form. On the other hand, Buddhism (I explain to myself) was never intended to consist of a static set of rules boilerplated for all time. It is an organic Way, which automatically adapts itself to the present moment. I keep it under the futon.
I roll a fat spliff, light up, inhale heartily. Now all of a sudden I’m distilling grief. I’m ripping off every Band-Aid, I’m daring to bleed, and I’m concentrating the pain (sweet Buddha, how I loved that boy!). I don’t want relief, I want him. With my agony carefully located right between the eyes, I take another toke, hold it as long as I can, repeat the process. I don’t want enlightenment, I want him. Sorry, Buddha, I loved him more than you.
29
Anyone in the business will tell you: detection is a mundane task of putting two and two together. Very often the mind will do this automatically, like a software program running offscreen, and the answer will pop into your head as if by magic, when there is really no magic about it, merely the organization of a hundred subliminal clues, hints, words dropped inadvertently or perhaps deliberately by someone who has not the moral fiber to tell the truth to your face. The suspicions had been forming long before my week in hospital, but when she told me she had business in town I experienced that sinking feeling deep down, similar to a lover who expects the worst.