Love In a Distant Land: Rachel Marie Series Book One

by David B. Smith

  They ate the delicious soup slowly, enjoying the ambience and the beauty of the gathering evening shadows. The traces of a still nearly full moon began to penetrate the palm trees and the abundance of frangipani all around them.

  “This soup is to die for,” she informed him before suddenly breaking into a female fit of giggles. “Sorry. I guess that doesn’t make much sense.”

  “This is an American idiom I have not heard,” he confessed.

  “It just means good.”

  He shook his head, pleasantly confused. “‘To die for’ means good.” His mock sigh was so charming she laughed again. “English is not the easiest language in the world.”

  “Well, what about Thai?” she retorted. “Five tones to remember–high and low and medium and rising and falling? And you use the same word for both ‘far’ and ‘near’.”

  He took a last bite and grinned. “So true.”

  The main course arrived, and Khemkaeng asked the waitress to bring Rachel Marie a second pineapple drink.

  “No,” she protested. “I don’t need another.”

  “Please.” He gave a nonchalant wave. “On such an evening, it is good to enjoy a small extra delight.”

  The vegetables were perfectly seasoned, and she dug in eagerly. In the corner of the restaurant, a trio of musicians began to play a tinkly native tune, the oddly hypnotic Thai melody beaten out on a long, curved instrument resembling a xylophone. There was an underlying beat, a strange mix of 5/4 rhythms that seemed to loop over and over, and the undulating arpeggios of the flute player were anything but Western in their cadence. Um, I wouldn’t exactly go and buy a CD of THIS.

  “That music is a first for me,” she smiled diplomatically, savoring the last ounces of her pineapple smoothie.

  Khemkaeng dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin. “Do you forgive me if I ask you a question?”

  Rachel Marie gave a reproachful shake of her head, putting a hand on his arm. “Of course. Anything.”

  “It is about religion.”

  “That’s all right.” Inwardly, though, she felt her pulse skip a beat. Please, Jesus. “What is it?”

  “When Christian people say that Jesus Christ is God’s son, what do they mean?”

  The query was spoken in full honesty. “I hear at our school, ‘God the Father,’ and then ‘God the Son.’ And I see in U.S. films as people say, ‘Son of God.’” He pulled a large bill out of his pocket and handed it to the waitress as she passed by. Rachel Marie started to remonstrate, ready to pay half, but he held up a hand, quieting her. “Never mind.”

  She thought for a moment, thankful for the training she had received as a child in Christian school, and for the Bible discussions she enjoyed with Bucky while growing up. “Well,” she began, “Jesus is not God’s son in the sense of God having a wife and driving to the hospital . . . and then a son is suddenly there.”

  He smiled. “No wife. I understand this part. But if God is the Father, then he was present first. Correct? And then later came the Son?”

  Rachel Marie looked directly at him. “Christians believe that Jesus and God are both fully divine. Do you know what ‘divine’ means?”

  “It means to be God, not man.”

  “Yes.” Pleased, she went on. “What we believe is that God the Father has always been. Always. There has never been a time when God did not exist. There has never been a time when he ‘started.’”

  “Of course.” Khemkaeng bowed his head in agreement. “How could a God ever begin? Then whoever began him, he would be the God instead.”

  “Uh huh. But Jesus, we believe, has also always been. Jesus is forever as well. As long as the Father has been, Jesus has existed too.”

  Khemkaeng seemed confused now. “Then how is he the Son? The son cannot always be there as long as the father. This is impossible.”

  “I know.” She thought hard. “In this world, that’s the way it is. A father and a mother get married, and then later there’s a son. That’s the human way. But for God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, all three have always been. God did not ‘have’ Jesus.”

  “So to call him a ‘son’ is not, how we should say, ‘biological’?”

  “No. Not at all. In that way, divinity–God–and humanity are not the same.”

  “Yes. I can see that.” He looked off into the distance, taking it all in. “But . . .”

  She waited, feeling an eagerness to share her good news with this gracious friend.

  “So when Christians say ‘Father’ and ‘Son,’ this is more . . . how you say . . . metaphor?” Grasping for words as he was, suddenly he seemed more real, more Thai. She smiled, appreciating his effort.

  “Well, it’s not our metaphor. The Bible uses this way to teach us, and so these are the words we use. They’re God’s words to describe the relationship, not our words.”

  “Oh. I can see that.” He nodded. “Why, though, if both have been here for all time, do God and the Son choose this way to teach us?”

  It took a moment of prayer before she recalled an illustration from the C. S. Lewis book, Mere Christianity, which was even now sitting on the tiny stand next to her bed over at Orchid Garden Apartments. “I think I can answer that,” she told him, thankful to the Holy Spirit for bringing such memories back in a miraculous way.

  “Please.”

  “It’s like this. At our school, I am a teacher, and you are our leader.”

  “Yes.” He smiled.

  “Even if you and I joined this school at the very same moment, I might still have the role of being a classroom teacher, because that’s my gift. While God might see from the very first that he gave you the gift of leadership, of being in the office, of being our example, providing us with encouragement, of meeting with parents. So even though we are part of the same team, I have a certain role and you have another.”

  His eyes twinkled, pleased at the analogy. “Go on.”

  “I have a book I really like,” she told him, “written by a man who used to not believe in God. But when he came to have faith, he explained it this way. God is like the source of light, while Jesus is the shining of the light. Or the expressing of the light. For all time, for many past centuries, for ever, the Father and the Son have been in wonderful unity. And when Jesus came to our world to redeem us”–she paused, but he quickly nodded to indicate that he understood the word–“he was the showing of the light that God always is. God is love, and Jesus shows that love.” She thought about her own words before adding: “So that is why there is a Father and also a Son.”

  Khemkaeng cocked his head, eyeing her with interest.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just that I am Buddhist, yet working at Bangkok Christian School.”

  “What about that?” She injected a bit of soft teasing into her voice. “You know we all appreciate you, Khemkaeng.”

  “It has always been my thought that religious differences are a small matter,” he told her. “My friends at BCS are so kind to me. Truly I love them. In the end, I have always felt, our desires are so similar. And so it seemed a matter of little consequence if a person was one faith or the other one. Still, I did have this question about God’s Son.”

  Rachel Marie nodded, feeling slightly crestfallen at Khemkaeng’s casual evaluation of BCS’s core purpose. “Did what I said make any sense?”

  “Oh yes. Your explanation is truly interesting,” he conceded. “And you know your faith well.”

  Murmuring an inward prayer, she allowed her countenance to cloud over. “I have to apologize to you, Khemkaeng, that you have been at our Christian school quite a long time without finding out these things.”

  The growing moonlight bathed his face as he admitted to her: “Before, when I did have questions, I did not ask anyone. Now perhaps I will ask you many things.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Beads of oil dripped from the large motor as the boat operator raised the long propeller shaft out of the muddy water. The Chao Phraya River was a gooey br
own snake wending through the western part of Bangkok, and BCS’s new faculty members were enjoying a promised Sunday afternoon ride on Thailand’s klong trip, a de rigueur part of any visit to the City of Angels.

  “Many people use Chao Phraya instead of highways for basic transportation,” Khemkaeng explained to the group. “Water taxis all through this part of the city pick people up and drop them off at the destination. Very cheap, and the temperature here on the river is not so hot as in the city.” He glanced at the middle-school teachers. “When you instruct your students about world geography, you can say that Bangkok is often given this name: ‘Venice of the East.’ Because we have so many canals.”

  It was a cooler day, Rachel Marie noted gratefully; in fact, there was a thick gray cloud cover blanketing them overhead and it almost looked like rain. She reached out her right hand and let just her fingertips trail in the cool river water, trying to force away the thought of billions of bacteria eagerly attaching themselves to this foolish American host body.

  “So you already have a month of teaching under your belt.” Marilyn, sharing a seat with her, was clutching a small plastic bag containing yet another souvenir elephant. Entrepreneurs paddling about in small boats routinely pulled alongside and dickered good-naturedly with farangs, Thailand’s catch-all phrase for foreigners. Rachel Marie had watched in admiration as her friend bantered and tossed around Thai numbers, resolutely shaking her head at the salesman’s prices. “Paeng mahk! Mai dai.”

  It had taken just a few days in Bangkok to discover that mahk was the word for “much” or “lots.” Her students were forever moaning under their breath about math assignments: “Mahk guen bhai.” “Missie Stone, you always give so many problems. Too much for us! Please give mercy!”

  Now she pointed at a shop by the river’s edge where silk blouses were displayed on three large racks. “So when you say paeng mahk, that basically means ‘too expensive. Give me a discount’?”

  Marilyn laughed. “Actually, most of these people have a certain price they have to get, and beyond that we’re in fair bargaining territory. I’ve bought so many of these elephants for friends and grandkids, I already know that about two hundred baht is what they go for. So these kids on the river start me at four hundred and we work our way down the ladder together!” The women both giggled.

  Khemkaeng looked to the back of the boat where Rachel Marie, Marilyn, and Ellen were gossiping and comparing treasures. His eyes twinkled as he caught Rachel Marie’s glance.

  She turned back to the discussion, but her mind stayed on the vice principal. They had fallen into a pleasant pattern of chatting after classes on Thursdays, and three times in a row he followed up by suggesting interesting dining adventures. One had simply been at a small café literally set up on a sidewalk near the famous night market, with a few tables on rickety legs just inches away from where lumbering buses and tuk tuks screeched past. But they had lingered over a divine sticky rice dessert, the fabled kow neo mah-muang, chatting and laughing until the stars came out and the ferocious traffic dwindled.

  This past week he had led her on foot through a maze of small alleys, pungent with the odor of fried grasshopper legs and banana desserts, until they suddenly came to a tall hotel a few blocks from the river. Although fairly ancient, the rooftop restaurant had a magnificent view of the night lights and the tour boats idly floating with the current, and they dined on delicious Italian pasta rivaling the best Sunday dinners at an Olive Garden back in Los Angeles.

  The interesting thing to Rachel Marie was that each outing inevitably turned to questions about her faith and the teachings of Jesus. Khemkaeng had a keen, inquisitive mind, now dramatically unleashed, and he plied her with queries about forgiveness and the cross. Did God only have a plan to save Christians–meaning that millions of people in his beloved Thailand were unfairly doomed to be lost? How could one person give up his life, and in so doing, redeem an entire world of rebels? Here in Bangkok, there were some Catholic churches, and then also many Protestant variations. Why was this? Would not all the followers of Christ belong to a single group?

  He had listened attentively to her sometimes fumbling answers, always nodding approval and agreeing. “Yes, I see that now.” The man seemed hungry to discover God’s truth and to understand what he saw plainly being a rich and proven blessing in the life of this new teacher from California. He openly marveled at how she knew by heart so many Bible passages which provided clear solutions to the very matters troubling his mind.

  Khemkaeng had finally, grudgingly, accepted the notion that Rachel Marie wished to contribute financially to these supper discussions. “It’s not fair that you pay each time,” she remonstrated after the elegant ravioli feast overlooking the Chao Phraya, and they settled on a two-thirds, one-third split of the check. “My pay is a bit more at the office,” he allowed. “Plus we have such meals so you can instruct me in matters of your religion. So that I am effective in leadership at Bangkok Christian School.” She wondered, during the long ride back to her apartment, if these weekly quasi-Bible study suppers were strictly professional. There was a kind of warm detachment to his queries, as though he was simply part of a study group assigned to prepare a position paper on the American evangelical’s mindset. Or was something else happening to the two of them? She couldn’t discount the possibility that Khemkaeng was considering a short-term romantic fling with BCS’s newcomer, and was using stock questions merely as a conversation device.

  John interrupted the pleasant reverie by standing up in the prow. “All right, you guys. We’re going to take a little detour here, hoping it doesn’t rain, and go see the Wat Arun.”

  Rachel Marie, sitting on the wrong side, bent her head down and past Marilyn’s bag, so she could see underneath the canvas canopy that served as their roof. “Where? Oh, now I see it.”

  The long tail boat operator swiveled the engine to the right, and the craft skidded around in a tight counter-clockwise circle, the motor humming in high-pitched protest. John motioned to his administrative assistant. “You know more about Bangkok’s treasures. What can you tell us about this temple?”

  Khemkaeng, more soft-spoken, had to step closer to the teachers in order to be heard. “Wat Arun is the most famous of our Buddhist temples. Two hundred years old, I believe. It is called ‘Temple of the Dawn’ because often, in the early morning, the rising sun catches this spot first.”

  He gestured toward the approaching landmark. “This side of the river is actually called Thonburi, with Bangkok, or Krung Thep, on the east side. There are several large bridges–we call them sapahn–to connect the two cities together.” He laughed. “Traffic on the bridges is so bad, drivers want to jump into the river and swim instead, I think.”

  As the driver docked the craft, Khemkaeng helped each of the teachers step onto the wharf. “Please be careful,” he murmured to each. He gave Rachel Marie’s hand a friendly squeeze as she climbed onto the wooden platform leading to the temple area.

  “Sorry, folks,” John announced, motioning the group together. “Unless you’re a Thai citizen, it costs us fifty baht to tour the temple. But it’s well worth it.”

  There was good-natured teasing directed in Khemkaeng’s direction as the foreign teachers fished in their pockets for money. It was a common practice throughout the kingdom of Thailand: allowing locals to visit monuments for free, while exacting a toll from outside visitors.

  “Just wait till you visit Disneyland with me,” Rachel Marie muttered good-naturedly at her new friend, trying to keep a straight face. “I’ll make sure they charge you double.”

  Khemkaeng grinned as he hiked over to a vendor and bought two bottles of ice-cold water. “Here,” he shrugged. “So we can be good friends once again.”

  Rachel Marie noticed that a number of Buddhist priests were present at the Wat Arun, their faces solemn underneath the shaved heads that were part of the novitiate training. They wrapped bright saffron robes around themselves in an intricate pattern, and padded
quietly around the large courtyard in their bare feet, wordless and contemplative.

  “Can we climb up the temple?” Rachel Marie asked.

  “Yes,” Khemkaeng gestured. “It is quite steep though.”

  “You better come and stand just below, in case I’m about to plummet to my death,” she teased.

  “Yes. Okay.”

  She navigated the steep steps going up to a small level platform partway up the temple, then paused to gaze up at the towering pinnacle, stretching up into the leaden gray sky. “How high is it?”

  “I believe around eighty meters,” he informed her. “So approximately 250 feet.”

  “Wow.”

  They stood together for several minutes enjoying the splendid view, then climbed back down, Rachel Marie breathing hard from the exertion. A passing monk eyed the couple and Khemkaeng spoke briefly with him. The priest smiled and responded, making a gesture to duplicate the tall swoop of the magnificent edifice.

  Khemkaeng turned back toward his American friend. “He says Wat Arun has this architecture because in Buddhist faith, Mount Meru represents all the center of the universe. Also, this very tall point is a reminder to good Buddhist people to have single-minded devotion to religion and goodness.”

  She was intrigued by the trivia. “But what were those fierce-looking stone creatures we saw when we climbed up?”

  “Oh, that.” Khemkaeng peered back up at the higher level where the scowling deities looked out over the muddy river coursing through Bangkok. “Those are called ‘Yaksas,’ demon guards.” They walked around to the back part of the temple, and he pointed to another towering being. “These are Kinnaree, half human and half god.”

  A few spattering raindrops began to fall, and tourists scurried toward the dock. “There are restrooms here if you wish,” he pointed.

  “Maybe I should. Real quick,” she added, gesturing toward Ellen, who was just rejoining the group after buying some postcards. “Come with me.”

  The brief shower had already subsided as they climbed back onto the boat. The rain in Bangkok always added a sharp, clean smell to the atmosphere, and the pleasant tropical effect lingered sometimes for half an hour or more.