Black Buddha

by Richard Waters

  The Frenchman drew on a cigarette as a soldier started crying.

  ‘You cold Private, that why you’re shaking?’ snapped Carabas, frog marching the shaking Private to the VC bodies; ripping away black rags to reveal a bare chest still glistening in sweat. With a single slice the stomach opened, pectoral to yellow midriff. ‘Come a little closer.’ he said paternally, guiding the soldier’s hands into the mass of intestines and holding them there. ‘See, it’s warm now. That feel better?’

  But for one, a single line of men took communion from the dead man’s stomach. To a watcher in the woods it looked like a solemn affair; their hands dipping in the font, smearing it like wine across their faces.

  - 6 -

  ‘Did you murder Mistah Martin?’

  5.30 a.m. I was sobbing so much my ribs hurt. There was a bright fluorescent strip-light above us, and I could barely see for the snot and tears. I didn’t care who saw me like this. The sounds of the Police station sounded distant and tinny as if it were a bad dream I might yet wake from, the death rattle of an ice machine, the occasional raised voice and punching of keyboards. We might yet climb on the overnight sleeper train to the islands in the south. ‘And tomorrow the islands, Al?’ Like fuck.

  The plain-clothes detective looked at me impatiently, still trying to gauge whether I was guilty of killing a farang called Skip Martin. ‘Did you murder Mistah Martin?’

  All I could think of was the conversation in which I’d convinced him to come to Thailand. ‘No, I didn’t murder him! He was my friend. My best friend…’ I couldn’t speak then, my throat full of acid, my arms and legs spent and alien to me. A fan hummed in the corner, for a long time the cop sat watching me. I looked at myself in the reflection of an interior window; I looked like a frightened kid. I wonder what he saw; maybe to him I was just one of those kids you see on ‘Trouble in Thailand’ featuring tattooed chavs misbehaving with drugs whilst on holiday in Pattaya or Phuket. When most of us look at an Asian we see the same country – not the individual races who span a continent of thousands of miles and vastly different cultures; Khmer, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, Lao, Indonesian... we often see just one skin. So the shoe was on the other foot now; I was a drunk, a whoremonger, fraudster, mule and junkie. Just another farang unstuck in the Bangkok night.

  ‘Look, ask the woman at the guesthouse, she saw us leave together.’

  ‘I spoke to her, she no see you return Mistah Deschamps.’

  I tried desperately to remember. ‘That’s because she was asleep! Listen, why would I do that… tell me? Why not just kill him in England?’

  ‘What time you leave him?’

  I stared at him and sighed, he was doing his job after all. I had to try and reason with him, slow down a bit. ‘I think… it was about nine or ten pm, he left to get some cigarettes, I waited for him but he didn’t come back to his room. I fell asleep and tried his door a few hours later when I woke up, but it was locked. Then I went looking for him… that’s the truth, I swear.’

  ‘That’s better. You sure about this?’ His face looked wan and yellow in the light, covered in a slick of sweat. Outside I could hear someone barking in Thai.

  ‘Yes,’ I said wearily. ‘I’m sure.’ Then I was crying again. Maybe he felt sorry for me, maybe he already knew I was innocent, but out of the blue like a minor reprieve, he said, ‘Okay. I keep your passport, no further questions till tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m free to go?’

  ‘No, not free. I have passport remember? You must stay in Bangkok.’

  ‘Are you arresting me?’

  The face softened, the cheeks riddled in blackheads like miniature beetles moving beneath his skin. ‘No, just keep passport… formality. Please, you come with me now, identify body.’

  I must have fainted. I was faintly aware of the smell of mothballs and stench of sterilised linoleum under my nose. He helped me to my feet and said, ‘You need some more time before you see the body.’ Then he left the room.

  I slapped my face to wake up. Why would anyone want to hurt Skip, let alone kill him? He was the most harmless person you could hope to meet. He’d never been in a fight, always tried to cheer you up if you were down, lent you money on the rare occasions he had some... It should have been me. The men in the bar, I knew it was them, but why him and not me?

  I tried to think of what I’d say to his parents, his sisters. They’d all blame me, I was sure of it. When I didn’t think I could cry anymore, my eyes so sore I could barely blink, the stumpy policeman reappeared with a cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup. He smiled wearily and handed it me. It tasted disgusting. ‘You cry some more Mistah Deschamps?’ I nodded numbly. Maybe this was just a trick to make me talk, good cop, bad cop.

  ‘Anyone you think of who might do this to your friend?’

  I still didn’t know what had happened, how he’d been killed. ‘Look, we arrived tonight, I mean last night… whatever. He didn’t know anyone here apart from me. I don’t even know how he was killed… you haven’t told me? Is it morning yet?’

  ‘Almost 6am.’

  ‘Have you got any suspects? Please, I’m going to have to speak to his parents in a few hours.’

  He looked as if he was at the end of his shift, another night in the city, another tourist dying of culture shock. He’d be in bed in another hour in a district far away from foreigners. I envied him that, his life was still together, his wife and kids waiting or sleeping in some humble abode. Mine would never be the same again.

  ‘Only you, farang.’

  ‘How was my friend killed? I have a right to know.’ I could feel the anger sparking through my frame, the last kick of adrenalin before I could go no further.

  He looked at his watch. ‘Come with me to cold room.’

  As I limped down the corridor faces paused at their paperwork and cigarettes and took me in. I hoped I didn’t look like a killer. The cop unlocked a thick steel door with a mesh window and ushered me in.

  I was right about him wanting to go home. ‘Five minutes only, I have to go bed soon, end of night shift.’ He picked up a clipboard and scanned the names and numbers. I saw my friend’s name written in bold capitals, ‘Martun, Sklip.’ They’d even spelt it wrong.

  The cop ran his fingers along the steel wall and found the handle he was looking for. Just as he was about to release the steel door, he paused and looked at me emolliently. ‘Please, you sure you ready for this?’

  I don’t suppose any two people are the same, but as Skip rolled into view I clasped my hand to my mouth and stopped breathing. His head was uncovered, his eyes wide-open, blue and horrified. There were no traces of bruises on his handsome face and his surfer’s shoulders were naked. I wondered what they’d done with his Wombles t-shirt. I asked the man to pull his body completely from the wall. I wanted to close his eyes.

  ‘Better you see him only like this, you no like what I show you.’ There was a necklace around the cop’s neck with a little Buddha in a capsule, perhaps some kind of charm. He brought it to his lips and muttered something before he kissed it.

  I smoothed the hair back from Skip’s face and shut his eyelids. They felt cold and refrigerated. I sniffed, held back the tears and took a deep breath, ‘I have to know what happened to him.’

  The sound of rubber wheels moving on steel runners as the gurney slid back; the soft ruffle of material drawn away from his flesh. I fell over and vomited, my eyes streaming as he tried to help me to a chair. I was hyperventilating, wanting to scream but only a thin rasp was exiting my mouth.

  ‘Mistah Deschamps please, calm sah!’

  I shut my eyes and pretended none of it was real, it was too sick, too impossible, it couldn’t be happening. When I opened them I expected us to be sat in the Dog and Duck listening to the Clash singing Straight to Hell on the jukebox, but he was still there, his ribs prized open, his stomac
h a red cavity. I’ve never felt so much hatred in my life. I don’t believe in a higher power, despite my AA mantras, but I lay on my back saying over and over again, ‘Dear God, please no,’ as if saying it many times might somehow reverse the tide of events.

  The cop covered him up and I heard the runners of the gurney as Skip disappeared behind the steel curtain. I wiped the sick from my mouth and pointed at the silver wall, ‘Who?’ I stammered, ‘What kind of person could do this?’

  ‘This is Bangkok. You go bed, sleep… we talk tomorrow morning mistah.’

  ‘Where’s his Wombles t-shirt?’ I blubbered.

  ‘Romble? I no understand.’

  ‘Where are his clothes? Give me his clothes!’

  He shook his head slowly, wiping some of the grease from his stubby nose, ‘We find him naked, guest house card and passport in his stomach. No clothes sah, no heart.’

  ‘What?’ The room was spinning again, lights playing at the corner of my vision as if I’d been hit with a three-punch combination.

  ‘They take his heart.’

  - 7 -

  He smelled donuts and gasoline; to his left he could hear the shriek of high-speed cars and more immediately, a man speaking rough Thai, ‘Eat it outside, I don’t want the stink in here.’ While his tonal enunciation of the vowels was clear, he wasn’t Thai. Khmer perhaps? Cambodians hated Thais, so no they wouldn’t be working together - at least not a Thai taking orders from a Khmer. Where was he from then? Prisoner 4234 felt his bony wrists chafing the plastic-coated wire, the blindfold tight on his temples.

  ‘Can you tell me where we’re going?’ he called to the front, faux leather upholstery sweating beneath his legs.

  ‘You’ll find out when you get there.’ said the stranger.

  ‘But why have you let me out of Big Tiger, I haven’t done anything wrong? I’m just serving my time, sir. I don’t mule anymore.’

  The prisoner collapsed back in the seat, listened to the engine start and the man with the donuts climb back in. Soon they were pulling away onto the highway and the motion sent him to sleep. He expected to wake in the communal cell among the lifers playing gin rummy, occasionally laughing at him with their turncoat faces, his stray kitten clutched to his chest. But he was in another prison now, an air-con jail with no sense of time or direction. ‘What happened to Lucy?’ he asked, shivering. They ignored him, ‘Please, she’s all I’ve got, where is she?’

  Another farang kept a pet at Big Tiger, a rat with pink eyes, and amazingly it had survived almost six months before one of the slopes gutted and ate the poor thing while he slept. Lucy was only a month old, bought for six hundred baht from a friendly guard, one of the few. He wondered what she’d be doing now, crouched in a dark corner perhaps. 4234 shook the thought from his mind. Thais ate anything, even kittens.

  Only another year until the King might pardon him… another 12 months of staying alert, of waiting for the homemade shank. Praise to the King for the gift of each day. But now after 12 years’ incarceration he was on the move again. You do your time and keep your head down, never – never complain to the man from the Embassy, and everything will be all right. This wasn’t supposed to happen, he’d done that, played the system. It wasn’t fair these people were moving him; it might trouble his parole chances.

  Something hydraulic swept above them as the car shifted gear and slowed - Skytrain, he figured, the monorail heading out toward the airport. He’d heard about its development from the inside, followed the progress of its construction in The Bangkok Post in order to have something to focus on. They were now on the outskirts of the city, and he was aware his eyes were wet with tears as the car stopped and the driver got out.

  Then they stopped, cut the engine and took him from the car. Someone pulled shut a gate on rails, locked a padlock. More footsteps, this time taking him down a flight of stairs. Artificial light bleeding through the blindfold, the smell of sawdust, and echoes, low ceiling, he thought. Where had they taken him? A train rattled by in the distance, toward the suburbs or into the city? He tried to fight the panic of disorientation as the blindfold was removed and they sat him on a chair by a table. The man with the curious accent threw a pack of Lucky Strike on the table.

  ‘Relax.’ he said.

  ‘My hands are tied,’ answered the prisoner.

  The man signalled another to untie him. 4234 looked about him quickly, a workers’ staff room; an out of date calendar with a semi-naked Thai girl complete with smile and vista of blue water behind her. It read, ‘Amazing Thailand, ‘1999’. Stacked up by the wall were dirty glass cages full of rats; brown, white and black ones, scampering up one another’s backs to sniff the perforated lid. They looked less like pets and more like something’s dinner. The tall Asian stiffened as footsteps echoed and grew louder down the stairway. He was Laotian, 4234 surmised, his face too pale to be Cambodian.

  ‘You like Sang Thip?’

  ‘No sir, I don’t drink whisky.’

  The Lao looked in the direction of the footsteps as a figure filled the doorway. The prisoner averted his eyes submissively, prison lore - be invisible, look down, feign bitch and hit the floor beneath the dog - never look up until invited.

  There was a smile in his voice as he walked over to the table, took a chair opposite him just outside the perimeter of the overhead light. ‘You have another year before your appeal goes to the King. I have friends in dark prisons. Perhaps we can help you leave early.’

  ‘What is it you want me to do?’ asked 4234.

  The big man sparked up a cigarette. ‘They say you grow old four times as quickly in jail. That makes you an old man now.’

  Maybe it was true, the sharpness of his recollections had grown fuzzy at the edges, complete chapters erased by the wanderings of the hypodermic so there was nothing left but his present ruin. 4234 knew this man from somewhere, he couldn’t remember where, but that voice...

  The room stank of violence and animal cages. The prisoner noticed the young guard at the door, the finery of the tattoo that ran the length of his left forearm - two snakes twisted about a pyramid. He seemed ready to spring so 4234 repeated his question, the silence and cold gaze of the large Westerner weighing upon him, ‘Please, what is it you want me to do?’

  ‘To lead me to someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Let’s stop playing games shall we? His name is Jacques Deschamps.’

  *******

  It was night as the car swung back off the highway toward Bang Kwang jail. They passed a crowd of demonstrators demanding the return of the disgraced Prime Minister, Thaksin Shiwanatra; his redshirts had barricaded themselves behind tyres and were setting off rockets at the army. But of course 4234 had no idea what was happening as a homemade rocket flew across their path. For a moment he even fantasized about the car being toppled over, the crowd bludgeoning them. He was blindfolded, but they’d allowed him to keep his hands free this time, presuming he didn’t have the backbone to think of escaping. They were right.

  He was handed over to a guard at the prison gate by the Laotian, who passed over a package wrapped in paper… a brick of baht? Then the Mercedes drew away, leaving him to wonder about the identity of his abductors as he was led back to his cell down a piss-stinking corridor. He thought it was relief he’d be feeling as they admitted him to his stinking cell but instead something else had taken its place, something strong enough to burn away the chemical haze that had taken a hold over his memory.

  The stranger had demanded answers he couldn’t access. In the wan light of the basement he’d squinted into the darkness at the voice. At one point, as he was getting frustrated with hearing the same question, he peered through the blue smoke and asked, ‘Do I know you sir, I have a feeling we met once?’

  The other laughed, ‘Perhaps. You can come closer if you like. I don’t mind you knowing who I am,
’

  Fear coursed around his old body, he didn’t want to know, ‘I’m fine where I am thank you.’

  ‘Very well, I’ll ask you again. When was the last time you met Jacques Deschamps?’

  4234 was sweating, white spotted moths buzzed around the light bulb. Night had descended in the daylight panels cut in the wall, the indigo deepening to black. ‘I’ll have to get back soon, the guards will notice I’m absent at role-call.’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere unless you answer my question.’

  ‘I can’t remember. I knew Jacques before I was a junkie. He was a good man, sir… the best of them. I was a Tunnel Rat, we were soldiers in the war.’

  ‘Soldiers!’ laughed the other cruelly, ‘And when was the last time Deschamps spoke with you?’ Prisoner 4234 twisted in his seat and rubbed his temples in frustration. ‘You can’t remember?’ The voice in the smoke clicked his fingers and whispered, ‘Vong, our guest, please.’

  The prisoner heard a muted miaow. Presently his blue-grey kitten sat on the table blinking in the light. One of the moths flew at it before returning to the light bulb. The Laotian held it down with a thin hand, from his pocket he withdrew a straight-edged razor and placed it delicately over the neck of his only friend,

  ‘Please sir, don’t harm her - she’s all I have.’

  ‘Now do you remember? Deschamps… when was the last time you two spoke?’

  ‘We… we’re flying over the jungle.’ Fragments of the past urgently knitted together, he had to say something, anything…

  ‘Which jungle?’

  ‘We’re going to kill someone but he’s disappeared.’

  ‘”Disappeared?” Who were you were trying to kill?’

  The name came back to him like letters woven in flame. Perhaps they’d never left. ‘Carabas. His name was Carabas.’