I went by motorcycle taxi not directly to Som’s house but nearby. The last steps I went on foot. I passed the open garden gate and entered the property. Behind the house I found the motorcycle I had bought and received this news with a smile. In front of the back door I stopped. It was closed, of course. I didn’t hesitate long, took my huge hammer and smashed one of the windows next to the door. Somewhere a dog was startled and barked, but not for long. Otherwise it was quiet. I put the rubber gloves on while listening. Then I opened the broken window and jumped inside the house. I took my time looking around. The house was small, no surprise that the big one which I had seen had been so “very reasonable”. The house had only two rooms, a small kitchen and a tiny bathroom. Now I considered how to get started.
First things first. I looked for the telephone. Luckily, Som had a landline. I called my lawyer in England with whom I was more or less befriended. I told his secretary I had to talk to him urgently and she put me through. I asked him for a favour. He didn’t understand what I was aiming at but promised to help. He put the call back to his secretary and she passed it to a third telephone. I asked her not to put the receiver on the cradle for at least twenty four hours but to ignore the telephone altogether. She couldn’t hide her astonishment but did what I wanted. She said goodbye but it didn’t click–on the line I could still hear some distant voices. I carefully laid the receiver next to the telephone and avoided getting near the cradle during the hours that followed which I spent working in the house.
There were two air conditioners in the house. One in the living room and another one in the bed room. I switched both on and turned the thermostat down all the way to the bottom, to fifteen degrees centigrade. I made a mental note to open a couple of windows when I left the house. Just to make sure. After that I went to the kitchen and opened the fridge. I turned the thermostat at its highest level–five. I blocked the door with a shoe I found somewhere. The power consumption of the fridge was by comparison with the air conditioners ridiculously low, but many a little makes a mickle. I could use the water heater in the bathroom only a short time, but first I put in on the highest level and turned on the water which came out of the shower almost boiling. I had taken care of electricity and telephone bill and was looking forward to the rest of the evening. Finally I had the opportunity to blow off some steam and rage of my previously uncontrollable anger.
I went back to the kitchen and turned on the water heater. From the shelves I took the china and smashed it on the floor or played Frisbee. Som had some plastic bowls and plates I could unluckily not destroy. I put the spoons, forks and chopsticks in the water heater, and mixed a little red paint from the bucket inside. It didn’t take long and it smelled brutish. The moisture condensed and only dried paint was there. The water heater and cutlery weren’t of any use anymore.
In the bed room I could have real fun. There were Som’s clothes in a wardrobe. I emptied it and threw her things on the floor. When I became tired I could return to the clothes. The bed came next. With a knife I slashed the cushions and the mattress, with the axe I worked on the bed frame. It was very noisy but I doubted anybody could hear me or interrupt my activities. I stood on the bed and pissed on the remains of the mattress. In a chest of drawers, I looked for personal things. I ripped out the drawers and they made an acquaintance with my axe. I discovered several little photo albums. They are common in Thailand and you get them from every photo shop after developing pictures. Som was in most of the photos. Many of them were made not so long ago. They showed Som with her daughter, with her mother, and with different men, farangs. I tore apart all photos and hoped there weren’t any negatives. I threw the pieces of paper together with toilet paper in the toilet and flushed. The toilet clogged up immediately. I flushed again. The water was rising, ran over the toilet bowl and down to the floor. I pocketed two or three recent photos.
Next was the dining area in the living room. There were four chairs around a glass table. On the table lay the keys for the motorcycle. I put them in my pocket and started to work on the glass table with my axe. When the glass splintered I tuned my face away because I was afraid of pieces of flying glass. Then it was time for the wooden chairs. From each I cut two legs. Slowly but surely my hand went lame. That is the reason I left the chairs like that. There was a new white couch in the corner, still wrapped in clear plastic cover. I turned the plastic cover down and dumped red paint on the sofa. It looked like a piece of modern art. In New York you could have exhibited it in the Museum of Modern Art. I still had half a bucket full of paint. I should have bought more but paint was heavy. On the other side of the room there was quite a large television set. I unscrewed the frame at the back. I then hammered against some green circuit boards and dumped the rest of the paint into the TV. After that I put the frame back on. One or more splashes of colour were visible on the side. Some of the paint ran out of the set and dripped onto the floor. But at first look the television looked untouched.
I discovered my laptop in a shelf and put it next to the back door. Som hadn’t yet had the time to sell it. I didn’t find my digital camera. I figured she took it with her to Chaiyaphum. I ripped the boards off the shelves and chopped them up. I found two fans in the house. One of them belonged to me. I cut the cable with scissors. The stereo set came last. I turned it on, opened the CD-player and hammered on it. After that I worked on the frame and after three or four hits it looked like a car after an accident. I chopped up the plastic loudspeakers and I dropped the axe and hammer to the floor. I was at the end of my tether.
I went to the fridge grabbed a can of Coke and drank it. It was time for the finishing touches. I went back to the bedroom and sat down next to Som’s clothes. I cut in every blouse two holes at breast height. I did the same with T-shirts. I cut out the crotch in her shorts and severed the pockets. All her bras I cut in half. The jeans were left and the scissors didn’t work on the thick garments. In the Second World War the Germans might have called it Wunderwaffe, the Thais dubbed it gao dtra chang and I called it superglue. I superglued the trouser legs of the jeans from the inside and used two tubes per jeans. Overkill. Like the television set the jeans looked untouched. The bad surprise would come later.
While performing my handicraft work I braced myself. I went to the bathroom and looked for a place for the water pipe. It was certainly easier to find it behind the house in the garden, but my plan was much more mischievous. I had so search next to the edge of the shower in the nearly square bathroom until I found the right location. I worked on these the tiles with my hammer. The tiles went down immediately and if the resistance of the wall was too strong I had to alter my plan. There was no need to rack my brain, because the wall was top Thai quality: There was hardly one centimetre of wall between tiles and supply line. I could see a blue PVC-pipe, took my axe and severed a large piece of it. Water was squirting like a fountain out of the pipe. The water heater turned off automatically, because no more water was coming out of the shower. Two blows send the water heating into Nirvana. I stuffed toilet paper into the drain on the floor as good as possible. Maybe the water would run into the living room some time later, who knew. I had taken care of maximizing the water bill as well.
I went back to the living room and returned with my secret weapon, and superglued the bathroom door in its frame. I used around twenty tubes. No man on earth would go through this door again. The bathroom window was very small. If you wanted to enter the bathroom you had to tear down the wall.
Because of the air conditioners I opened the bedroom windows and superglued the door at the frame. I did the same with the main entrance and the back door. I looked around one last time and went out of the window which I didn’t close. I left the tools. My last act was to smear superglue in the lock of front and back door. It was completely senseless because nobody could open the doors anyway. I was eager to work on the motorcycle as well. I had a shining example when I thought about the gang of youths in Chaiyaphum. But that would have been stupid. The magi
c of fire I wanted to save for later. That’s why I took off my gloves, threw them over the neighbour’s wall and put the key into the ignition. I started up and rode my motorcycle to Soi Buakhao just to get some sleep.
* * *
Som had a boyfriend; I was sure of it. Her strange behaviour during my first few days in Pattaya was evidence of it. She had more than likely lived in Pattaya much longer than she had admitted. And I could no longer believe that she had actually been looking for a massage parlour during the final days of our relationship. She had certainly met another man during the time we hadn’t spent together.
Her boyfriend, if there was one, would give Som accommodation after her return from Chaiyaphum. She couldn’t and probably didn’t want to stay in her destroyed house. My master plan was very simple; I wanted to destroy Som’s life. I limited her personal freedom and took her living space. When she was seeing a Thai man the cards were stacked against me.
Almost all bar girls as well as the masseuses have Thai boy friends or even a Thai husband. The farangs, who have had a relationship with these girls don’t know about the other men, regardless of how many years they may have been seeing their girl-“friends”. The Thai men can take shelter as long as their lover or wife stays with her farang, and this farang continues to provide enough monthly sustenance to maintain the Thai boyfriend. They meet at only the right moments–even if that means they are separated for many months.
If Som had a Thai boyfriend, he would never leave her. At least not because of influence from the outside. If he wanted to leave her that would be his own decision. I thought about Thong. He would never let go of Dao, let alone leave her. He would rather kill her. Dao was hiding in my room and only risked going outside with a companion. She had a fear of death. She didn’t want to go to her hometown, either. She was afraid Thong would stay there quietly waiting for her return.
Dao thanked me gratefully. I had helped her with her parlour and now I gave her a place to stay. There was no other place where she could seek shelter because she had to fear Thong was right around the corner waiting for her. Dao told me many times she would never forget that I had helped her.
Thais like to tell you what you want to hear. If you stay in Thailand very long it becomes difficult to believe anything at all. Bad news isn’t told or changed in a way that it almost becomes good news. Of course Thais have a word for “bad” but they never use it. Instead they change it to a more positive expression. Every farang hears it once in a while: “not good” or “mai dee”. Almost never the word “bad” is mentioned. The same goes for the word “beautiful”, which is “sooway” in Thai. The opposite of “beautiful” is “not beautiful”. You almost never hear “na grie-et”, which could be translated as “ugly”. Another point is that you receive only rarely direct answers, and those to the most simple of questions.
Nevertheless I had to try to get the truth out of Dao–even if in doing so, to Dao it was as much fun as a root channel treatment without anaesthetic.
“I know Som has a boyfriend,” I said to Dao. “I would like to know who he is. I know this is an unlucky situation for you to be in, but I have to know the answer.”
“You are going to kill him. I am afraid.”
With that she had already admitted that Som had a boyfriend and confirmed my presumption.
I shook my head. “It's not his fault that Som sleeps with him, is it? I assume she didn’t tell him about me, unless he is Thai. Is he Thai?”
Dao shook her head.
I became cheerful despite Dao already telling me the bad news. It's one thing if you suspect something but if the suspicion is confirmed it's a totally different case.
“Who is it?” I persisted and thought: ‘Jesus, I just hope it isn’t Peter.’ But this was much too far fetched and absolutely ridiculous. “Do you know him?”
I went and fetched the pictures I had taken from Som’s house and showed them to Dao. In every one of the photos Som smiled into the camera in the very same way while in the company of a farang. She was always the same but her farang-boyfriends were interchangeable.
Dao pointed to one of the photos. “She stays with him for more than a year.”
I nodded fiercely. “Is or was?”
Thais almost always speak in the Present Tense also when incidents happened a long time ago.
“She is still with him. He was in America but now he is back. He needed a new visa and had some things to deal with back home.”
“And his journey to the States coincides with my arrival in Pattaya?”
“More or less.”
“And now he is in Pattaya?”
Dao nodded.
“Did she break up with him?” I asked.
Dao didn’t answer but the question was superfluous.
“Where could I find him? Do you know where he stays?”
“You are going to kill him.”
“I am not a Thai.”
“His name is Eric.”
* * *
Dao wouldn’t say more. And I hoped I didn’t need anymore. I took my backpack and looked for the letter from Orange which was addressed to Som which I had carelessly stuffed in. I ripped the envelope open and looked at the bill. It was almost 1,000 baht. Good God, how was it possible to call that much? In Thailand mobile phone calls are quite cheap. She didn’t make any long distance calls, only calls in Thailand. These were mostly to mobile phone numbers, beginning with 08 and many times an area code–044–the area code of her home. Seldom had she called numbers beginning with 038–the Pattaya area code.
Dao called Orange and said she was Som. She said, she had a new address and told the operator that she was now living with her mother in Chaiyaphum. She gave the address that the policeman from Ban Boa had written down. She also asked to have a copy of the first bill sent to the new address, because she had misplaced the original bill. When Dao finished I patted her shoulder. With that she was released for the day. I couldn’t overdo things.
I assumed Som had a second mobile phone I didn’t know about. I couldn’t imagine she didn’t own one. If the mobile phone I had bought for her was her only one she would have asked me for a replacement immediately after she left my present with her mother. But Som didn’t ask for it. She had one and didn’t need a new one. And because she didn’t have one to my knowledge at the time, I couldn’t pester her with calls when she wasn’t with me. Somewhere on the invoice was Som’s secret mobile phone number because her mother had surely called Som after her arrival in Pattaya. But I held the thought aside for the time being. Much more important was this Eric. I was sure she had called him with her new mobile phone or had she been careful enough and talked to him from her secret phone? The numbers weren’t telling tales and I wouldn’t have been suspicious. Even if I had seen the invoice I hadn’t known with whom she had spoken to, and paid the bill with a smile.
If Eric used a landline she might have called him at home. So I started with the 038-numbers. I called all the numbers and asked for Eric, it didn’t matter to me who answered. Unfortunately this idea wasn’t crowned with success. I talked to three or four massage parlours, a pizza service (with whom did she eat pizza?) and a medical practice.
Now I had to call every mobile phone number but had to go forward carefully. If a friend of Som answered the phone and recognized my voice when asking for Eric, the game was over. She would call Som immediately and tell her I was in the picture. The same went for my mobile phone number which could be seen on the display panel of the other mobile phones. You can't suppress your own number in Thailand.
I didn’t want to ask Dao for a favour again, so I went downstairs to the bar and explained to Soda what I wanted. She had already cooperated very well. I bought her a lady drink and found out that she called with One Two Call. I bought a One Two Call prepaid phone card for 500 baht in a nearby Family Mart. Back in the bar we charged Soda’s mobile phone and she started to work. We excluded my number and Dao’s. After that she called every number and asked for Eric.
The lower Soda’s finger went, the moodier I became. I had to think about a new strategy to work on with Dao to find this Eric. If she didn’t want to help me in this case I still had his photo. I would think of something even if it were difficult.
“This was Yai,” Soda interrupted my thoughts. “Again no Eric.”
“Yai?” Probably Peter’s wife.
Soda took some time out and I ordered another lady drink for her. Soda smiled at me and put her hand on my thigh.
“You have a lady, right?”
“No, we are just good friends.”
Soda didn’t believe me and who could be annoyed at her for it. Nobody would believe me that I stayed in a room with a Thai woman, slept with her in one bed without touching each apart from patting arms or hugging if the other looked for comfort.
Soda blinked with her eye, and pointed with her finger to the door of the apartments and said, “All my friends are in the bar.”
She knew Dao was in my room and suggested her own apartment for short time.
“This evening,” I promised. “But we have to get over this here first.” I pointed to the list.
Soda started to call again. I had almost lost all hope when Eric picked up the phone. Soda nodded at me smiling, and I was almost ready to tear the telephone out of her hand.
“Eric?” I shouted in the mobile phone. “We have to talk!”
* * *
Eric was a huge chap, a little bit overweight and had grey hair. I guessed he was in his fifties. He lived in a condominium near Jomtien Beach. Like many Americans he was easy to get along with and was a smiling, talkative bloke. He worked for an import-export-company. Twice a year he went to California but he never stayed there for long. Until now he had stayed most of the year in Pattaya. But his contract was going to expire and his residence in Thailand was coming to an end. Eric had bought a house south of Los Angeles and he wanted to go back home soon.
A Farang Strikes Back Page 13