What Could Be Saved

by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

  The lady was moving awfully slowly. She wasn’t pawing the goods the way farang normally did. She hardly even looked at the merchandise. What was she doing? She leaned over to talk to a child and something flashed on her hand. A ring, a large oval opal in a gold setting. Nitnoy felt a deep stab in his chest; he looked up at her face, saw that she was looking at him too. A flame of something like terror jumped inside him, and he ran. He heard a crack as though the sky were breaking and he ran faster in his syncopated skip-hobble, the crowd suddenly running with him. He reached the bank of a khlong, dove in, and swam. Gunfire crackled behind him. Was the lady shooting at him? Others were jumping into the water too, all of them swimming for their lives.

  He stayed away from that area for weeks, even after the violence had died down. He went back to the place he still thought of as the hospital. He had nowhere else to go: the army was shooting anyone on the street after curfew. He was received with little welcome, allowed to kick a sleeping space for himself among the others. He ate whatever Hong could sneak him and lined up with the others whenever a visitor came, although Khi scolded him and tried to push him out of the room. He was half a meter taller than her now.

  The blond visitor who came one day was unexpected. His clothing and shoes, the expensive watch clutching his wrist, the gold chain at his neck—all marked him as wealthy. The rich didn’t come to this squalid hole. There were much more beautiful places they could afford. Hong had briefly worked in one of them, palatial with bowls of lotuses and clean soft white beds, before her face got burned. The rich came to the hospital only if they were new to Bangkok or if they had true depravity in mind.

  The man walked down the line, all of the eyes following, and stopped in front of Nitnoy.

  Sprichst du Deutsch? asked the man. That was also unusual. Usually the negotiation was accomplished without Nitnoy’s participation, as if he were an objet d’art or livestock being purchased. Tu parles français? said the man, when Nitnoy didn’t respond to the German. Or perhaps English? said the man, and Nitnoy hesitated, then nodded.

  * * *

  The man’s name was Kenneth. He turned out not to be depraved at all. He took Nitnoy to a good hotel, fed him an enormous meal. He was gentle, kept asking Is this all right? After Kenneth was asleep, Nitnoy rifled carefully through his possessions, the wallet, the wristwatch, the gold chain, hearing Hong’s voice, Don’t be stupid, take it and go before putting them down and climbing back into the soft white bed.

  Kenneth took Nitnoy to Phuket for a week, a private cabin on the beach where they stood waist-deep in the warm salt water, millions of tiny jellyfish swarming and stinging. Back in Bangkok, they spent nights at Kenneth’s smart apartment. The consistent feeding began to fill Nitnoy out, his ribs no longer jutting from his skin. While Kenneth was at work, Nitnoy cajoled Hong out for a meal, bought her candy and a lipstick. Lucky you, she said, twisting up the tube of scarlet, but her voice didn’t sound entirely happy.

  Nitnoy made Kenneth describe his home again and again: frosty air, mountain peaks against the sky. An internal flickering reel of memory played while Nitnoy listened, of cold bits falling to his face and melting away, mittens encrusted with cracked white shapes, patting lofty handfuls together to make a ball. Imagine never having seen snow, marveled Kenneth. I never have, said Nitnoy.

  Kenneth needed to go away for business; Nitnoy went back to the hospital and counted the days. When Kenneth returned after a month and walked down the line, Nitnoy was already getting to his feet when he saw that Kenneth had stopped, was resting his hand on the shoulder of another boy. At the door, Kenneth looked back, as if Nitnoy’s hurt had called to him. He told the boy to wait and walked back. He and Nitnoy stood eye-to-eye; Nitnoy had had another growth spurt and the nickname was a bit of a joke now, the way that elephants or big men can be called Tiny. Kenneth put a hand out to Nitnoy’s jawline, the fingertips reading the bristles there like Braille. It used to be so smooth, he said sadly. Nitnoy’s eyes glassed with tears and Kenneth took his hand down, said in a voice turned harsh, You knew this couldn’t last.

  * * *

  Hong had an idea. She had been unwanted ever since the burn to her face; now that Nitnoy was unwanted too, she shared her idea with him. She knew someone with a van they could use to recruit children from the villages. She wanted to start her own house. Clean, she said. Better than this. She needed Nitnoy for two reasons: first because her own face would frighten off children, and second because Nitnoy was a farang who spoke Thai, enough of a curiosity to overcome wariness. You can offer them anything, she said, and they’ll follow you.

  They went in broad daylight, driving into the country, and parked next to a long stretch of brackish water in sight of where some children were playing. Hong set up a stove and began to cook; when the children came toward the smell of food, she went inside the van. But their parents must have warned them, for they didn’t come close enough, and in the end only one small boy, maybe four or five years old, climbed inside the van to eat and then fell asleep curled on a blanket. One is better than none, said Hong; she closed the van door and Nitnoy jumped into the driver’s seat and drove away. The jerking acceleration woke the boy, who began to cry. Hong clamped her hand with a cloth in it over his mouth.

  There was a chemical on the cloth; the fumes reached Nitnoy in the driver’s seat. His head filled with a buzzing light and he stamped on the brakes.

  “What are you doing?” cried Hong, as Nitnoy got out of the van and opened the back door. He pulled the boy out into the fresh air, slapped him on the cheeks and pushed him, staggering, back toward home.

  * * *

  After that, he and Hong were not friends anymore. She would not sneak him food at the hospital. Nitnoy slept wherever he could, climbing into the underpinnings of bridges, tying rags around the metal support bars to baffle snakes. Stealing whatever he could, pickpocketing in the markets.

  When the honey seller arrived, Nitnoy noticed him immediately. Farang vendors were generally easy pickings, and this one seemed exceptionally stupid. Young and blond, he kept his eyes closed as he sat in half lotus on a striped cloth on the pavement with a cluster of gold-filled jars and a wide flat bowl beside him. A sign propped up against the bowl read in thick black letters: HAPPY HONEY. A steady stream of tourists flowed by; some stopped and talked with him for a little while. Some of them bought, putting the money into the bowl. Was it a test, how the man sat with eyes closed in between customers, the bowl of money unguarded in front of him? Nitnoy circled around him at a distance, watching and listening.

  “The past is a trap,” the honey man told two stringy-haired tourists. “Our lives grow crooked, like bent trees. We can’t unbend the tree, but if it keeps growing, the top will find the light.” The hippies nodded. Nitnoy snorted at their naiveté.

  The honey man wasn’t a monk, he was just a Thai-stick farang, so Nitnoy stole the bowl without a qualm, nabbing a jar of honey too. He loped down a side street with his irregular stumbling run, and although no outraged calls followed him, kept running all the way to the spot under the bridge where he’d lately been sleeping. There he counted the coins and notes and pocketed them, examined the jar. It had a small glass elephant, trunk raised, standing on the lid. He twisted the lid off, scooped the honey into his mouth with two fingers. It was delicious; under the sweetness, an additional flavor vibrated on his palate that he couldn’t identify.

  He used the money for a meal and an injection so strong that he slept almost all the next day. The day after that, he went back to the same spot in the market and the man was there again, eyes closed, with the jars of honey, the same sign, a new wide money bowl. Nitnoy squatted in the shade on the pavement across the street. The honey man sat in the broad sun without apparent discomfort, not even fluttering his lashes when flies buzzed around his face. He wore only a pair of shorts. Blond hairs glittered on his deeply tanned chest and abdomen as they rose and fell with his breathing. He didn’t move when the rain came, and when the sun returne
d, it lit his curly head into a halo, jeweled with drops of water. When the sun reached the top of the sky the honey man got up, unhurried and limber, carefully lifted the corners of the cloth, and tied them together, making a tight bundle of honey jars and money bowl, and carried the bundle away.

  On the next day it was very hot, few tourists out walking, when Nitnoy settled into the same shady spot across from the honey man, squatted there for no more than five minutes before the man opened his eyes and looked right at Nitnoy, as if he’d seen him through his eyelids. The honey man beckoned.

  Telling himself that maybe the man did not recognize him as the thief from three days before, Nitnoy rose and went across the street.

  “Smoke room? Thai stick? Boy-girl?” he asked the man, standing a few feet away.

  The man smiled.

  “What do you want?” said Nitnoy, harshly, in English.

  “You,” said the man. He stood and tied up his bundle, walked off without looking behind him.

  Nitnoy hesitated, then followed. So the man was another visitor. He felt disappointed, although he wasn’t sure what else he’d hoped for. Still, it would mean money, maybe some food, maybe a chance to steal something valuable. They walked a long while, Nitnoy a few feet behind the man, through streets that became greener and less crowded. Finally the honey man opened a gate and went through; Nitnoy followed. Up the long front stairway of a large wooden house, where a line of sandals stretched outside the double-door entrance: a lot of people lived here.

  “What do you like?” Nitnoy asked the man as they went down a corridor past a series of closed doors. The man stopped outside one of the doors, opened it to reveal a Western-style bathroom. Nitnoy understood; he stripped off his shirt, kicked off his trousers. Finicky clients sometimes wanted him to bathe beforehand. Sometimes they wanted to bathe with him. Not this man, who stepped out of the room and closed the door.

  The room was a luxury of porcelain; Nitnoy took his time. When he emerged, a towel wrapped around his waist, the man was waiting for him in the hallway, as though he had been there the whole time. He led Nitnoy to another door, opened that to reveal a small room with a clean bed. White walls, white bed linens, a white tent of mosquito netting.

  “Hungry?” the man asked him. Although he was, Nitnoy shook his head. It had been too long since the previous injection, and he was feeling the claws of craving. He’d finish this, get paid, and run back. No time to steal. He could always return to do that; he’d noticed that there were no locks on the doors.

  Nitnoy lay back on the bed. Not relaxing his guard; even the serene, monk-looking outside of a person could hold a violent soul. He had scars to remind him of that. Still, the deep comfort of being so clean, in a room and a bed so perfectly white and clean, reached to him from a lost place in his memory, and he closed his eyes while waiting for the honey man to undress.

  He awoke riding the full tossing waves of dopesickness, the sweat pouring from him in a gritty flood and cramping pain seizing his guts. The honey man was there; he held Nitnoy while he sweated and shook and moaned and retched; during intervals of quiet the honey man dribbled water into Nitnoy’s mouth, wiped his face with a cool cloth.

  Two more days of that, and on the third Nitnoy woke up alone in the white room, with blue sky outside the windows. He stood on shaky pins, saw the pile of clothing beside the bed. It was his, now clean and folded; he pulled it on, then found his way down the corridor to the bathroom. When he returned to the white room the man was there, sitting on the bed, holding a mangosteen.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked. He snapped off the cap of the mangosteen and tipped his head back to drop the gout of liquid into his mouth.

  Nitnoy sat on the bed.

  “I stole from you,” he said.

  “I know,” said the man, smiling, breaking the purple shell of the mangosteen and dividing the cloudy white fruit with a thumb. He held out a section. Nitnoy knelt before him, placed his hands on the man’s knees, leaned his body toward him and opened his mouth, indicating that the man should place the fruit there. The man did so, and Nitnoy put a hand higher onto the man’s thigh. Still smiling, the man put his hand over Nitnoy’s, staying its movement.

  “You must be hungry,” said the man, standing up. He led Nitnoy down the hall, passing a group of farang meditating in a room, to a large space at the end of the building set about with tables. Tall panels of glass all across the back wall looked out onto the grounds; a long table at the side of the room held fruit, some crocks of congealing porridge, an urn of water, a teapot. Clearly, a communal breakfast had happened already. Nitnoy put his hand against the teapot: still warm.

  The food was surrealistically delicious, the way food always was after pulling free of heroin. Nitnoy ate enormously while the honey man, whose name he still did not know, took only a little bit of khao tom rice porridge.

  When his belly was full, Nitnoy asked again, “What do you want?”

  There wouldn’t be a bath and a meal without a price. He’d worked it out while he was eating: probably this was one of those religious groups and the honey man would want to talk to him about Jesus Christ.

  “Nothing you don’t want to give,” the man said.

  In the perfect silence, Nitnoy realized that there was no sound of air-conditioning. No breeze of ceiling fans. Yet the room was perfectly temperate.

  “What do you want?” said the man.

  “I’d like to stay here,” Nitnoy said, surprising himself.

  The man nodded.

  “Then you need to meet Gerhard,” he said.

  * * *

  Gerhard was an older farang in blue jeans and a wrinkled short-sleeved shirt.

  “You’ve had enough to eat?” asked Gerhard. His accent was Germanic, youff hat enuff. Nitnoy nodded. “Come. I’ll give you a tour.” Vaguely amused, as if the word tour were a joke.

  There was a set of jointed doors in the middle of the bank of tall windows, and they walked out of those together. Standing on the terrace, Nitnoy could see how big the compound was, the beautifully kept lawns rolling away. Men and women were everywhere, silently working: sweeping the paths, on their knees in a vegetable garden. Many of them wore beige pajamas, but not all. They looked up and smiled as Nitnoy and Gerhard passed.

  Hidden among the flowering hedges were half a dozen clearings, with buildings and open sheds of various sizes. In one of the larger buildings they stood and watched a man blowing into a long pipe, an orange bulb of glass at its end revolving and expanding and becoming a honey pot identical to the one Nitnoy had stolen. Nearby, a slight person with shorn hair was making the glass elephants for the lids, drawing out the glass with a wooden pick into legs and tail and trunk, pressing the thin edge of the pick into the hardening glass to make the wrinkles at the knees.

  “Would you like to learn how to do this?” asked Gerhard, after they’d watched for a while.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Nitnoy.

  “Trask said you wanted to stay. You must choose the work you want to do,” said Gerhard. “We also make pottery and flower garlands. Or you could tend the fishponds or the vegetable garden.”

  “So that’s your game,” said Nitnoy, suspicion rising like a bitter acid at the back of his throat, even as the honey man’s name Trask sang in his mind. “You pull people off the street to staff your factory.” He remembered the little boy stumbling out of the van.

  “We don’t do it for the money,” Gerhard said. “We don’t need the money. We need the work.” He paused. “We all need the work.” He saw Nitnoy eyeing the barrel-linked silver chain around his neck, reached up and unclasped it. “Do you want this?” he said, taking Nitnoy’s hand and pressing the necklace into it. “Take it. You can take anything here.”

  “What’s the catch?” Nitnoy said it in Thai; he didn’t know the English for it.

  Gerhard didn’t understand the Thai, but he caught the gist.

  “We don’t want anything from you,” he said. “We’re here for you
.” Nitnoy couldn’t look away from the pale bottomless eyes. “We’re a community dedicated to presence. If you want to stay here, we ask only two things,” said Gerhard. “First, you will need to work. Second, when you are ready, you will need to tell your story. Just once, to the person you select, and completely. From as far back as you remember up to the very moment you are speaking. And then never again.” Gerhard began walking again, down the grassy slope; Nitnoy followed, still clutching the necklace. “If you choose the right time and the right person, and if you are completely honest, your past and all its anguish will run out of you like sand. You will never need to look back again.” He gestured to the grounds, humming with industry. “Everyone here has left a life behind.”

  “Why?” Nitnoy’s voice cracked on the syllable. “Why would I do that?”

  Gerhard shrugged. “Perhaps you never will,” he said.

  * * *

  No one stopped Nitnoy when he left. He sold the silver chain at a poor price—the shopman could see the need in him—but it was enough for three good injections and a few meals. He slept and then woke and slept and woke. Finally he sat under the bridge, watching the water go by, in that short interval of dull consciousness after waking from an injection and before the claws returned.

  He went to the hospital, found Hong. Her face darkened when she saw him.

  “Listen,” he said, and described Gerhard’s house. “We can both go.”