Black Buddha

by Richard Waters

  ‘Never mind the girls! I’ll take you to a place I know called The Spirit House.’

  ‘Religion or whiskey.’

  ‘They do cocktails that can make your liver glow.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan for a man who recently fell off the wagon.’

  She looked at me and clutched her mouth in embarrassment, ‘Shit, I’m sorry, I keep forgetting.’

  I grinned at her. ‘So now we’re quits with our faux pas? It’s okay, I look normal on the outside but inside lurks a Hyde-like monster.’

  ‘Like a pomegranate, every person is made of a thousand selves. Wasn’t it Herman Hesse who wrote that?’ she smiled, impulsively clutching my hand and squeezing it.

  ‘Or Herman Munster. Sorry about what I said just now.’ I added. Despite the allure of Indochinese buildings and carnivalesque atmosphere, I could have been anywhere right then. Again I felt dead from the inside out. Maybe it was time to get started.

  ‘I’m going to check out the Ravens Bar.’ I said, changing gear.

  I should have kept my mouth shut and gone there on my own, only now there were complications. For a start I hadn’t told her about the matches I’d found in Paris. Giselle moved behind me placing her hand on my shoulder, I could feel her pubis pressing lightly on my buttock. ‘Why are you going to a bar if you don’t want to drink, or am I missing something?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘I’m presuming it has something to do with your friend?’

  She was fishing but not intrusively. Around every street corner might be an informer, a set of eyes who marked me out for the stomach treatment in pursuit of the key in my pocket. And the longer I spent on the street the more likely I’d be made. ‘Let’s go and grab some sleep.’ I said taking her impulsively by the hand as if we were a couple.

  At Reception a group of Israelis were trying to resettle the whole of the top floor of the guesthouse, and as usual they were bargaining for discount. We skirted past them up the wooden stairs and the sign that read: “We no accep night lady, prostitut.”

  She trained her steady eyes on me and flopped on the bed, taking my hand and pulling me down with her. ‘If I’m going to risk my ass coming with you at least you can tell me who we’re up against?’

  I flinched away from her - either she was stupid or she hadn’t taken anything I had told her seriously. ‘Giselle, we need to get something perfectly straight. First up I’m glad to be with you, really glad, and I want to get to know you. But I’m not responsible for you if anything happens. People are dying around me and…’

  She rested her chin on the heel of her hand and grinned, ‘Thanks, but you’re not getting rid of me so quick. Now, what were you thinking about a second ago that made you screw your face up like an old man’s butt?’

  ‘It’s something King told me, it makes sense now.’

  ‘That crazy guy you met on Hang Bac? He looked at me like I was made of excrement.’

  ‘Yeah, him, and he may not be so crazy. Look, you don’t seem to be getting the drift of what I’m trying to say - did you hear any of it? Two people I’ve been in contact with in the last week have died horribly. Fucking horribly. One was my best friend who may have been mistaken for me, the other was a man connected to the past, to my father.

  ‘Right now I haven’t got a clue what it’s all about apart from some kind of cult that opens people’s ribs with secateurs and removes the heart for god knows what. I don’t want you involved, that’s why I haven’t told you any more.’ We were lying on our sides, our legs entwined. I felt nervous as I looked into her eyes. She seemed curious, almost excited, certainly not scared. She was freaking me out. Or maybe it was the heat.

  ‘But I don’t understand… what are you involved in?’ As she drew me closer I could taste her breath near my mouth, redolent of honey and cigarettes.

  ‘I feel like one of those water puppets, as if someone’s leading me here on a very long string.’ I said.

  ‘Has it got anything to do with what you talked about, the thing your grandmother left you?’

  I thought back to what Maybury said, the more you know, the less… or was it King… how far back in the tunnel does the snake go? Giselle had no part in this, I should have said goodbye to her in Hanoi, I didn’t need her playing amateur sleuth on my behalf. ‘Believe me, you don’t want to know.’

  ‘You think the man who murdered your friend is in this city and I don’t want to know? Christ, how hard do I have to chip away at your shell before you trust me?’

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have come here with me. Maybe we should meet again in a few weeks once I’m a little more out of the dark.’

  I expected her to sulk, but Giselle stretched over me and rubbed her hand on the small of my back, her fingers searching my waist, the other hand stroking my neck. I could see the angry, prominent pout of her nipples pushing through her black cotton vest. Then I suppose I forgot about Maybury and the police tape cordoned around his apartment, I forgot about King behind his iron-shuttered door. The thick humidity was closing in on us, she panted heavily as we fell together in a sticky embrace, the whirr of the ceiling fan in rhythm with our tongues.

  ‘Slow down,’ she purred, ‘I’ve been thinking of this ever since you pretended not to notice me in the café.’

  I looked into her impossibly blue eyes, bluer than the Andaman Sea on the ‘Welcome to Thailand’ posters. She was too good to be true, her lithe, long-legged body smooth as rosewood, her hands strong and searching. I traced my fingers down her navel, softly pulling at her blue silk panties and curling them back down her thighs. I noticed a tiny strawberry mark on her right leg,

  ‘You’ve got one of these too.’ I said, pointing to my own on my neck. She placed an index finger in her pink mouth and licked it, tracing the wet digit across my birthmark. The sensation of her moist finger on my skin was too much, I pulled her close, needing to be inside her, racing my hands down her freckled legs. As her legs curled around my back, I could feel the plaster on her ankle hanging off; beneath it was nothing but smooth skin and I wondered why she even needed a plaster. Who cares, I thought, imbibing the vanilla scent of her hair and kissing her hard upon her neck.

  Then without warning she stopped, gathered the sheet around her naked frame and walked toward the bathroom. Maybe I’d gotten a little carried away. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked sounding flustered. ‘Hey, we don’t have to rush into anything if that’s what’s worrying you?’

  She had her back to me. ‘Nothing’s wrong, lie down on the bed, take off your trousers and close your eyes.’ There was something masterful in the way she said it, I was attracted but perhaps a little shocked as if I’d utterly misjudged her - it didn’t sound like her at all; like her tirade about prostitution. Maybe Hesse was right after all, maybe we are made up of many different selves fighting to get out. I wasn’t so sure about this self though. Perhaps I should have credited her with a little more mettle; anyone who could stomach taking pictures of corpses in the aftermath of a tsunami had to have a level self-mastery or dispassion. So I didn’t argue, I removed my clothes.

  She was in the bathroom, I heard her rumbling through her wash bag for something… women’s things, I supposed. Through the open meshed-screen I could hear music drifting up from the street, cheeky Lao music. I lay back with the sheet over my crotch and closed my eyes listening to the fan. She must have been gone a while for I was almost asleep when I heard her pad across the floor toward me, the soft exhalation of her breath as she crouched down and took me in both hands. When I tried to pull her toward me, she brushed my efforts away.

  ‘I want you to think of cold stone in the dark.’ She said placing a pillow over my face. I almost wanted to laugh. As she quickened her action, I threw the pillow across the room, shaking with anticipation as she climbed on top of me and arched her back. ‘Close your eyes!’ she
snapped.

  A shot of liquid pleasure raced through my limbs to my fingertips, her legs dark and muscular as they flexed upon me. I tried to turn us over but she resisted, her face a mask. She was stronger than her build suggested.

  ‘Now you can look.’ She said, her tight form building in momentum, eyes barely open as she rocked back and forth. A light sweat played off her angry, pointed breasts. As she moved to her climax again her face reminded me of one of those Aspara girls carved into the reliefs of the temples in Angkor, beautiful yet remote.

  We fell back in exhaustion and I noticed a fresh plaster on her ankle. It was getting late outside even though it can’t have been past seven pm, the light greying through the shutters. In the dark as we lay close but separate like strangers, I thought I heard choked little sobs. I hadn’t pushed her into doing anything, at least I hoped not.

  The air felt cooler, I looked through the window’s mosquito mesh wondering where I was. The room was still dark, the shutters partly drawn with blobs of artificial light from outside leaking onto the wall like technicolour. I reached for her in the rumpled sheets beside me, but Giselle had gone. My watch read: 10:30pm - I’d been asleep for more than three hours. Disoriented, I got up and took a shower. Downstairs, the guesthouse was empty so I went out into the little square by the fountain. The Scandinavian Bakery was also bereft of customers but its glass display of brownies, cinnamon twists, chocolate gateaux and croissants looked tempting enough. Beside it a traditional French restaurant called La Provencal was cooking up oven-baked pizzas. Did Dad ever go there? I wondered, and it struck me I was walking the very same streets he had four decades ago. What was he telling me - if he had any awareness his son was now in the country that had taken him would he try and send me some kind of warning from the other side? Now I was really losing track of reality.

  I walked on down a dark street past a bunch of tuk-tuk drivers who whispered, ‘Weed, farang?’ A smell of incense hung in the air, I could hear faraway laughter and the clang of bells. I followed the noise down another side-street strewn in lotus flowers and tinsel bunting, past a trendy looking bar with aquariums lining the walls. The air felt cooler here, I figured by the breeze I must be somewhere near the Mekong.

  Crowds of people swarmed over the manicured grassed area by the river’s banks, most of them blind-drunk and smiling; more beer girls hawking bottles, the sound of karaoke drilling into my head. I looked around for Giselle, but I had no chance of finding her in this cast of thousands. Candles seem to have been lit on every corner, I felt as if I’d walked into an outdoor temple. The mood was cheerful, the sky above the low-slung city alight with green and pink fireworks. As one of them whistled overhead I could see the outline of a procession heading away from the river. An old woman on the corner of a Soviet-style hotel was selling sticky rice in long bamboo tubes, her teeth black from eating betel nuts. I was starving.

  I walked back to the fountain. Giselle… the word rolled off the tongue like a forbidden fruit. Unexpectedly I’d met my Circe, calling to me from an inappropriate, alien shoreline and perhaps that’s what intrigued me. But despite her American accent I felt I’d never get to know her; not just her comments about Thai working girls, it was something else more indefinable than cultural differences. Fascinated as I was, I didn’t trust her. I knew it was ephemeral and the sooner we got shot of each other the better.

  There was no one in the room. Evidently before she left she’d scribbled a note and pinned it on the door. I hadn’t noticed it on my way out. ‘Gone to photograph the procession, you looked sleepy so I thought I’d let you get some rest.

  X Giselle’.

  She put the ‘x’ before and not after her name. Smiling, I went outside again. Maybe I was being ungenerous? You get to forty, you become set in your ways, at least if you’re still on your own that is… maybe I needed to compromise a little and keep my mouth shut once in a while? There was a bearded guy sat outside the Scandinavian Bakery eating a Danish pastry, inside the western owner was shutting up shop. He poked his face out, ‘I’m going in ten minutes Lou. I’ll need your chair.’ He said in a European accent that might have been Belgian.

  The bearded man waved and said nothing. I noticed his fingernails were yellow, claw-like.

  ‘Can I grab a croissant please?’ I asked.

  The baker smiled, gestured at the array of cakes and pointed to his watch, ‘You’ve got ten minutes, you want a coffee with that?’

  Imagine that service in Soho on a Friday night.

  ‘Coffee would be good, thanks. Iced Latte please.’

  I went outside and sat near the man. ‘Hi,’ I said,

  He barely acknowledged me. I wolfed down a croissant, sparked a Salem and took a hit of coffee to wake me up. Good coffee too. Under normal circumstances I might have liked this place; great bakeries, fine cuisine, friendly people… I could see why fellow writers were calling it the ‘new Thailand’.

  The bearded old boy turned around, his face mottled in acne traces, long hair tied in a yellow-grey ponytail. ‘You have a cigarette I can bum, please?’ He said.

  I threw him the packet of Salem. He caught it and took two, ‘Menthol, huh? One for later?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Not going to the festival tonight? It’s the highlight of the year, not that that’s anything to go by in Laos, whole calendar’s designed to be one fucking holiday.’

  I sensed an awkward old bastard.

  ‘Do you live here?’

  ‘Yup,’ he said, igniting the cigarette with a silver Zippo, ‘been here longer than I care to remember.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  He peered through his scratched, myopic specs, a trace of a smile beneath his unruly beard.

  ‘Do? I don’t do Jack. Name’s Lou by the way.’

  ‘Alain.’

  ‘Alan.’ he said, chewing on the word,

  ‘No, Alain. It’s French.’

  ‘Excusez-moi, Alain.’

  ‘You’re American?’

  ‘Apparently, but I couldn’t give a rat’s ass for Obama or Bush. So I like to call myself a resident of the Lao Please Don’t Rush - the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic. What brings you to our dusty little backwater, you on the farang circuit?’ There was little interest in his question. I doubt he’d remember meeting me the next day. The farang circuit - it made me think of exotic hamsters on alfresco treadmills, guidebooks clamped beneath their armpits, unconsciously following one another round the same places under the delusion they’re free.

  ‘No. I’m writing a book.’

  He wheeled slowly around. Perhaps writers deserved a little more attention. ‘Really? What’s it about this ‘book’? A touch of scorn in the way he said ‘book’. I wondered why.

  ‘That’s a long story I won’t bore you with. Tell me, does the heat always get to you, even this time of evening?’

  ‘What me personally?’

  ‘No, I mean anyone. I’ve just had three hours sleep and I’m already tired.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a slow death,’ he answered, ‘but a pleasant one. My breathing’s not so good these days, used to write for the Post; got shelled in Saigon in ’68… Never leaves your lungs that damn gas, never mind what the doctors tell you.’

  ‘The Washington Post?’ I asked,

  ‘Yeah, you heard of it?’

  Of course I’d heard of it, a mainstay for quality writing and balanced journalism. Congenital snob that I am, I immediately I reviewed him in a different light.

  The owner stuck his head out of the door, ‘Closing time gentlemen. Another disciple Lou?’

  ‘Nah, this one’s a writer, too smart to believe my bullshit.’

  The baker removed his apron and switched the lights off. Lou gathered up his newspaper, loose coins and Lao kip, ‘Well, I’m going to see the fireworks and frea
kshow, it was nice to meet you.’ He extended me a claw.

  ‘Where’s all the noise coming from, I saw a procession near the river?’ I asked.

  He pointed up at the sky. I hadn’t noticed the moon glowing like a pink lantern. ‘Full moon festival, they call it That Luang. These people are still living in the Dark Ages.’

  ‘Then with respect, why are you still here?’

  He held up a playful finger. ‘Cos it beats the hell out of the Enlightenment.’ He got up to leave, ‘There’s a temple where the breastbone of Buddha’s supposed to be buried, it’s very sacred to them. Ask me, I think it’s a hoax, like the Turin shroud. Still,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘it keeps ‘em happy. Magic is everything in this land.’

  ‘How far away is the temple? Can I walk it?’

  He scratched his head, ‘Nah, I wouldn’t… it’s about three clicks away. You want a ride?’

  We drove through Vietniane in his old Russian jeep, leaving the narrow streets and heading down a wide boulevard coated in dust and festival litter. The pavements were full of people and hawkers moving slowly toward the distant temple, glowing like a hypodermic on the flat horizon. At the end of the boulevard was an illuminated monument much like the Arc de Triomphe, but with Khmer flourishes. ‘Wow!’ I said as we drew close.

  ‘Nah, you should see it by day, it’s the colour of elephant hide, they ran out of money before they got to the paint. They call it “the vertical runway” cos the money was supposed to go on developing the airport.’

  We cut around it and headed off down a wide, leafy road toward the burnished temple. In the unlit street a myriad tapers carried by the throng looked like tethered fireflies.

  ‘Guess we’d better park up, half of Laos has come here tonight.’