What Could Be Saved

by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

  “Go on in and wait for me,” he said, pushing the door inward and standing outside, jerking his head at Philip.

  Philip hesitated on the step. The room was stuffy and smelled like hot plastic.

  “I told you I was on the way somewhere,” said the man. “It’s important, I can’t be late. I’ll go there, and then I’ll come back after to get you and take you home. I won’t be long.” Philip walked into the room. The man added as he closed the door, “Clean yourself up in the bathroom. Your mother will have a fit if she sees you like that.”

  It wasn’t technically a bathroom, as there was no tub in sight. But it did have a sink and a toilet, and a drain in the floor. Philip looked into the mirror. His lip was swollen but not as big as it had felt to his fingers, and there were wide red scratches on his neck, beaded with scab.

  Philip used the toilet, then went to the sink and turned the hot tap, standing on his toes to squeak it open as far as it would go. He undressed while it ran from rusty to clear. He kept his underwear on. He lathered up as well as he could with a flat lens of soap he pried from the side of the sink, and cleaned everything he could reach, even rubbing his ears carefully between foamy-slick fingers. He used the small bucket under the sink to splash water over himself, leaning forward to try to keep his underwear dry. He considered, and rejected, the soiled towel on the rack, instead jumping up and down to shake the water off. He dressed again, combed his hair with his fingers, looked at his reflection. His mother would definitely notice his injuries, but he did look better. Then he sat on the bed and waited for the orange-haired man to return.

  * * *

  When the snick of the door finally came, Philip was asleep, curled up on his side with the hard edge of the robe’s lapel pressing into his face. He lifted his head and sat up, rubbing the ridge left on his cheek.

  The person standing beside the bed wasn’t the orange-haired man. It was the shiny lady from the party. He recognized her immediately in the light that buzzed from the ceiling, although her hair was down now and she was wearing a short green dress with a lattice pattern on it, instead of the bright yellow dress.

  “Hello, Philip,” she said. “Do you remember me?”

  “Yes,” he said, and added automatically, “How are you?”

  “I am well,” she said. She smiled but it didn’t touch her eyes. He remembered her name: MinWin. “I’ve come to take you to your parents.”

  “Thank you,” said Philip, sliding off the bed and following her, shoving his feet into the gritty flip-flops that he’d left inside the door. It was dark outside now, cooler than the hotel room. Min held his hand as they walked around the black mouth of the pond and out to the street, to a tuk-tuk standing by the curb. A few soft strokes of Thai between Min and the driver before Min and Philip climbed up and in and were moving.

  Philip had rarely been outside in nighttime before, and never in the open air like this. Traffic was light; the wind lifted and riffled his hair. The moon was a flat silver decal in the black sky. They rode between sidewalks dotted sparsely with people. He looked for the Dusit spire to orient him, but didn’t see it.

  “Nine Soi Nine,” Philip reminded Min as they turned through an intersection.

  “I’m taking you to the hospital,” said Min. “Your sister’s been in an accident.”

  That explained why his parents hadn’t come to get him.

  “What kind of accident?” asked Philip.

  “I don’t know,” said Min.

  The tuk-tuk turned onto a smaller road, turned again into a narrow passage, bumped to a stop outside a building with a long metal eave. “We’re here,” said Min. Philip hesitated. This wasn’t Fifth Field Hospital, where they got their vaccinations and where Bea had been taken the time she needed stitches. Min pushed against him from behind, and he stepped down from the tuk-tuk onto the street, telling himself that perhaps there was a wider variety of hospitals in the world than he had encountered so far, and this small crude building could be a hospital in the same way that the other place had been a hotel.

  “Was it Bea or Laura in the accident?” he asked.

  “Mai pen rai,” said Min.

  Her voice sounded different; her hand was a pincer on the soft place between his shoulder and neck. His heart jumped. “Stop,” he said, to the hand gripping him, to the tuk-tuk no longer behind him, that had already driven off. He stared around as he was pushed along, saw eyes scattered in the darkness, people silently squatting and watching. “Please stop it,” he said to them. None of them moved.

  He felt so stupid. He’d gone along like a lamb, climbed into the tuk-tuk and ridden willingly to this place. Enjoying the breeze, when all that time he could have jumped out, run away, found a policeman. He could have run to a different tuk-tuk—they’d passed so many on the way—could have jumped in and told the driver 9 Soi Nine. Mummy or Daddy or Daeng would have paid when they got there.

  Those alternate storylines surfaced in his panicking brain, jumbling his internal horizon briefly like ships of rescue. By the time Min had marched him up to the door of the not-hospital and was knocking hard, all options were capsized and lost.

  “I’m sorry,” said Min, her hand gripping very tight, holding him in place. “You’re a nice boy.” Her beautiful face looked broken open, anger in its creases like veins of lava. “So was my brother.” She pushed Philip so hard through the opening door that he stumbled. “It’s not only little American boys who matter,” she said. He never saw her again.

  * * *

  They took his judo outfit. He gave it to them, actually. In his experience, a woman asking for his clothes had always meant she’d take them to the laundry and bring them back clean and folded. When they brought him other clothes he put them on. He didn’t think about the judo outfit again until a long while later, when it hardly mattered anymore.

  He was given something to drink, which he guzzled gratefully, and then sometime later he awoke in total darkness, his mouth very dry again, a fuzzy collection of memories in his mind—a rumbling of engine beneath him, being carried in someone’s arms. Hello? He called into the darkness. Hello?

  A widening slit of gray in the blackness told him there was a door in one of the walls. A door but no windows. Through the door came a girl with half of her face roughened by scar; she was about Bea’s age. The thought of his sister and home was so painful that he cried out, an involuntary yip of sorrow. The girl spoke in whispered English as she put down a bowl of food: If they give you medicine, take. A fingernail paring of kindness.

  * * *

  The next part will stay in his memory like a dark slurry through all the years to come. A deep-buried river, cutting a rut where light doesn’t reach.

  * * *

  He tried to fight them, but it was pointless. After a while he just let them, lay there and let them, the thin sheet under his face salty from crying and his throat hoarse from crying out, until no more tears or sound came, his chest heaving in breaking, empty shudders. When one man said Take this, Philip remembered what the girl had said, and opened his mouth to accept the pill fumbled onto his tongue.

  Whatever they offered he accepted after that, even putting his arm out when they told him to, the needle under the skin a bright sting but distant, like the memory of a bee, like something happening to someone else. Eventually, he knew to look forward to the bee stings, to the warm flush under his breastbone and then the welcome oblivion.

  His body seemed precious to them, even as they allowed it to be torn. They kept him clean and bathed and carefully tended his wounds, the old ones and the new. His swollen lip healed; he could tell by feeling with his fingers.

  * * *

  He managed to escape once, blundering past the scar-faced girl bringing food, down a warren of narrow passages into the open street. After the swelter of the windowless room, the clean hot sunshine and the light breeze carrying the fetid breath of khlong felt ecstatic.

  “Help,” he said to the loiterers in the street. “Nine Soi Nine
.”

  They laughed while he stood on his toes, turning, trying to see the Sony sign or the Dusit Thani spire over the roofline. Was he even in Bangkok anymore? He ran up the street, his weak legs making the movement jerky, like falling forward over and over.

  “Nine Soi Nine,” he cried as he ran. “I’m Philip Preston, I live at Nine Soi Nine.”

  His voice was frail, a whisper swallowed by the noises of the crowd, music from a radio somewhere. A child looked at him curiously as he stumbled past, but none of the adults looked over.

  “Please,” he said.

  And then he was caught, a clatter of footfalls bursting behind him, a hiss and an onion-smelling hand clapping over his mouth.

  He was punished for that.

  * * *

  He went a while without visitors while he was healing from the punishment. His brain had settled on that word for them: visitors. In and out of sleep, sometimes turning over in his slumber and coming awake with a cry as his damaged ankle rolled on the mattress. The wall opened sometimes; usually the girl with food or a sour liquid medicine; once in a while it was the older lady with a bee sting. One time he was shaken awake, whimpering at the jostling movement of his ankle, and realized that he had messed the bed and was being scolded. The old woman scolding him held up the pail and knocked on it. Khi, she said, over and over. She pinched his thigh. He yelped and then repeated Khi. He understood: she was named Khi and he was to call her if he had to go to the bathroom, and she would come to help.

  The room was like a closet, just the bed and a pail on the floor, so dark it was all one color. It was impossible to imagine that this same world included that home he was beginning to think he’d dreamed, with parents and sisters and the trembling blue rectangle of water, the scrambled eggs and chocolate milk, the sparklers and Christmas tree. When those things came into his mind he groaned loudly enough to bring a slat of light into the blackness, the angry sounds that might have meant “bad boy” or possibly “hold still,” and sometimes a pill or bee sting. The medicines made a false bright river on top of the dark deep one; he floated along in the current, pushing himself into the middle of it, away from all thought, letting everything sink around him into memory, beyond reclaiming.

  * * *

  The ankle never knitted up properly. That was probably the point, he realized as he was finally allowed to walk a little: he wouldn’t be able to run. Once he hobbled down the corridor into a small courtyard and Khi came chattering angrily after him, yanked him back by the arm, making him twist the still-tender injury and shooting a pain up from his ankle to his knee. She pointed at the shade under the eave, slapped her own arm. He understood that he had to keep out of the sun: his pallor was valuable.

  * * *

  He tried to ask some of the visitors for help, particularly those he thought might be American. The first time, it got him a hard slap (You’ll speak when I say); the next time simply a hand across his mouth, pressing hard to keep the words in, partly covering his nostrils so he had to breathe in snorts. One man, hearing the timid words—I’m Philip Preston, I’ve been kidnapped, I live at 9 Soi Nine—jumped away from him looking terrified, left the room, and did not return. The next visitor assured Philip he would call his mother and father, he would phone the police. After that man left, Philip waited with hope, but no rescue came.

  The girl Hong who brought him food told him in English If you nice, they give present. She drew with a finger on her wrist until he understood wristwatch. She smiled the word tang and eventually he knew it meant money. Hong taught him Thai word by word, naming things. She explained, pealing with laughter, that Khi was not the name of the old lady. After some confusing pantomime he understood it meant what he was supposed to do in the bucket—what the Preston children would have called poo-poo. He blushed madly during that discussion, although Hong was completely matter-of-fact.

  She said khao, meaning the rice in the bowl, and he repeated and she burst into laughter. Khao, she said again, and again he repeated, and again she laughed, putting both hands over her mouth. He started to become angry, it felt like a teasing game; she saw that and stopped laughing. Khao, she said carefully. She put her finger on the rice bowl. Khaaao. A long sound, rising and then leaving her mouth, like a balloon swelling and emptying. She put the same finger on his knee, said Khao. A shorter, rounder sound, starting and stopping in the hollow of the mouth. Khao, he said, tapping his knee. Khao, he said, touching the rice bowl, and she beamed.

  * * *

  He understood much later, looking back, that if he’d managed to get outside for more than that one minute in the first year or two he would almost certainly have been rescued, would have been borne like a surfer on a tide of Thai citizenry to the American Embassy or the police or back to the house in the American quarter where the family waited for him. But he wasn’t allowed outside alone while there was still any Philip in him, and after the punishment that made it impossible to run, he didn’t try to escape again. By then, with the dark river inside him, he didn’t want to be found, not by anyone who’d known Philip. When one of the visitors asked his name, he gave the one he would keep for many years afterward, the name he’d once loathed and rejected. It fit him now. The thing he’d feared so much had happened: the worst part of him was now all of him. To his surprise, he found that something else had changed: his need to even things out was gone, the counting banished from his head.

  It was almost a relief, to be Nitnoy.

  * * *

  His first growth spurt came when he was ten, the height he had yearned for and spent his birthday and Loy Krathong wishes on. He shot up just as he’d been promised and was demoted from what he hadn’t known was his special treatment. Another, smaller child began living in the private closet behind the hanging carpet with special high-paying visitors ushered in, and Nitnoy slept on the floor in a room with others and lined up with them when a visitor came. He was allowed to wander freely in the courtyard now, no one yanking him back from the sun.

  He gleaned from overheard conversations that the war was over, the far-ang gone home in disgrace, good riddance, but they were also blamed for leaving and taking their money with them. There was a period of few visitors and little food, the old lady he still thought of as Khi particularly irritable. Then business got very good again, even better than before. Nitnoy learned some words from the new visitors, more Thai and some Korean, some German, some Japanese, but never revealed to any of them any understanding of their language. They preferred it that way, he could tell; they wanted that gulf. They’d traveled far from home so that they could safely take down the masks they wore; they didn’t want to be known. Afterward, they hastened away as though leaving it all in that dark room, but Nitnoy knew that they carried an indelible mark, like a secret, vile tattoo.

  As Nitnoy continued to grow, he was chosen less often. The visitors looked up into his face and down at his tracked arms, and moved along. They want fresher boys, Hong told him in blunt Thai. Younger. Don’t eat so much, stay thin.

  * * *

  Eventually, he became totally free to wander the streets, although he still limped badly and might not ever be able to run. He attracted no attention—at a glance, tall and tanned, with tangled hair to his shoulders, he looked like any strung-out wayward teenager. The city was filled with those now, backpacked and unwashed and wearing goofy Thai-stick grins. If anyone had looked closely enough, they might have seen that Nitnoy was younger than his height made him seem, but if they’d looked that closely they’d have seen the rest too: that there was nothing left to rescue.

  He had few visitors now. He scrounged in the streets, selling the tourists stolen cigarettes or stolen trinkets, leading them to the various heroin rooms or sex clubs or the places they could buy Thai stick, speaking broken French or German, fake-shaking his head when they spoke English to him. Sometimes he robbed them. The first time he did it, seeing the frightened look on a previously trusting face, a muffled compassion stirred deep inside him. Then a voice
jumped into his mind—Your parents would be so ashamed—and the last bit of Philip winked out. Nitnoy took the money from the sobbing ngo hippie, Nitnoy bathed in the khlong Philip had been forbidden to approach. Nitnoy was the one who performed and tolerated acts Philip couldn’t name.

  He did go back to 9 Soi Nine once, purely by accident, ambling up Sukhumvit into the American quarter and coming upon the address. He was almost surprised to see it, as though he’d been in a different city all along, a different universe. How could it still be there? It was morning; he squatted across the lane and waited. When the gate opened and a light blue automobile drove out, a Thai man at the wheel, Nitnoy couldn’t help himself; he got up and ran-limped alongside, looking through the back window. A farang stranger was there in the back seat; he looked up briefly, eyes passing over Nitnoy and then back to the newspaper opened across his knees. The man’s lips moved, saying something to himself or to the driver as the car accelerated away down the road.

  * * *

  Hong now urged him, Eat as much as you can. He understood her meaning: he’d become too rough, too old and unappealing, and soon they would throw him out.

  * * *

  One morning during the rainy season he was in the market crowd—farang were always distracted and vulnerable in a market—and spotted a good-quality pocketbook being carried on a wrist, handles only, no straps. He trailed the lady as she went from stall to stall, waited for her to wander closer to the mouth of an alley into which he could escape after the snatch. His ankle meant he couldn’t outrun a pursuer, but he knew all the shortcuts, had houses he could run through to a rear exit, crevices into which he could fold himself.