A group of young Malays, each with the Thai “wife” he had rented for the day, had just finished the obligatory tour when Mr. Wu and I arrived. They were trying on green berets with red stars, having their photographs taken holding old rifles, and buying a potent “guerrilla ointment.” The old Communists had become, like the prostitutes, one of the tourist attractions that made Betong’s fortune.
I spent the evening walking around the center of Betong. At sunset huge flocks of small birds fly in and blacken the sky. Their chirping makes a deafening noise that drowns out the music of the karaoke bars. They settle for the night on the electric and telephone wires along the streets—tens, hundreds of thousands of them.
Equally impressive was the coming and going of Malay men from brothel to brothel. On the dark windows of each is a notice in writing so small as to be barely legible: “Risk of AIDS without a condom.” I went into a couple of them. Their furnishings were more or less identical: a counter, as in a bar, plastic armchairs with girls in plenty, and some small cubicles to which the couples could retire. The price varied from 120 to 200 baht ($3–$5) for an hour. The rent for a girl for a whole day was between 1,000 and 1,500 baht ($25–$35).
“With a condom?” I asked.
“If you don’t want to, you just have to pay a bit extra.”
Thus it is that AIDS has been spreading like a prairie fire. A twenty-five-year-old Chinese madam, with a little boy of three playing at her feet, explained to me that there were about three thousand girls in Betong’s barber shops, many of them from the north (“They have light skin and the Malays like them better”), and that recently several hundred had been removed because they were under sixteen. But if I was interested in one of these, they were only a telephone call away, in nearby dormitories.
Outside, I was struck by the sight of a Caucasian, who stood out in the crowd, the only Westerner in town apart from me. He seemed quite at home. I asked him what he was doing in Betong.
Scott, aged sixteen, was a Canadian high school student who had come on an exchange program sponsored by the Rotary Clubs of Betong and his city in Ontario. He was amused to think that in Canada they had absolutely no clue about the place where he had ended up. He was living with one of the most prominent people in town, who was one of the biggest brothel owners, too.
We went to eat in a small Chinese restaurant, where Scott met his teacher. She was from Bangkok, a cultivated woman in her mid-thirties who had been sent to work in the south as a punishment for her left-wing views. At the end of the meal I asked if she knew of a good fortune-teller in Betong. Yes; she had never been to him herself, but she had heard of an excellent one living a little outside the city. He was an expert in black magic. She offered to take me there, and we agreed to meet the next day at the school entrance.
The teacher arrived on a motorbike and I climbed on behind her. After about five miles we reached the fortune-teller’s house, which was behind a rusting old petrol station. He received us in a big downstairs room with a concrete floor, at the far end of which his wife and two beautiful daughters were preparing a meal. He was a thin, sharp-eyed man of fifty or so, and was sitting on a mat with an image of Mecca—he was a Muslim. In a semicircle in front of him were four women.
One of them looked well-to-do, with a ring on each finger and several gold chains around her neck and wrists; the other three were more subdued. The woman complained that business was not going well, and the girls were short of customers. She was sure someone had put the evil eye on her barber shop, and had brought the three girls for the magician to check. “They’ve all run away from their husbands,” the teacher whispered in my ear.
Looking at them, poor little things, it was easy to see why they were unsuccessful: the evil eye was manifest in their appearance. One was small, fat and dirty, another was tall, pale and thin as a rake, and the third was simply dull, with nothing that might have attracted even the most desperate Malay.
The fortune-teller asked the woman if she had brought all the necessary supplies. Yes: from her bag she extracted a chick, some eggs, and some hard green fruits like wild lemons. Turning to me, the magician said it would be half an hour before he was finished with them, and apologized for keeping me waiting. I was happy to stay and watch.
A handsome black cat paced back and forth over the threshold, rubbing voluptuously against the shoes which the women had removed before presenting themselves to the fortune-teller. In such an atmosphere of black magic, this cat with its satanic eyes brought to my mind the evil eye and images of bad luck; but no one else, so far as I could tell, gave it a thought—which further goes to show that the perception of misfortune and its symbols varies according to the local culture and point of view. For example, we Westerners see snakes as hateful and dangerous. Face-to-face with one, our instinctive reaction is to kill it. For Asians, however, the snake is a supernatural being. The snake dominates all the elements, it is the lord of all levels of the universe; in heaven it dances, flashing through the clouds; on earth it can live in and out of water, and in the underworld, whose every door is known to it, it feels completely at home. For an Asian the snake is not a symbol of danger and death, but of protection. It is under the shade of the naga, the seven-headed snake, that Buddha meditates.
The eggs were put on to boil, the green lemons were arranged on a fine silver plate in front of the fortune-teller, and the madam held the chick in her hands, which she joined in front of her bosom. She stayed like that, eyes closed, utterly absorbed. The magician recited formulae which even my teacher could not translate. All she could tell me was that at the close of the ceremony the eggs would be eaten, the lemons would go into the water that was to wash away the evil eye, and the chick would be set free.
There was a rumbling of distant thunder, and then came one of those magnificent storms, explosive and liberating, which provide temporary respite from the tropical heat. The rain came down in sheets, and the trees behind the magician’s house were scarcely visible.
The teacher talked to me about how hard it was to do her job in a town like Betong, full of prostitutes no older than her students. She said that the presence of the barber shops poisoned every aspect of existence, that corruption dominated every social relationship, that the police themselves took part in rape and extortion. In such a climate of violence, sex and money it was impossible to bring up normal young people. She said that in the city’s schools it was forbidden to mention AIDS because the local authorities, who shared in the profits, wanted nothing to interfere with the work of the brothels.
The magician concluded his rites. The poor chick was thrown out of the window to run free into the woods, but it remained motionless, peeping feebly in the heavy rain. Its owner paid the fee and left with her three girls.
I still had AIDS in mind, and when I sat down with the magician I asked him what he thought about it. A terrible disease, of course, but he, by studying the girls in the barber shops, had learned to recognize those who had it. “I feel it as soon as they come near me. Inside they’re on fire, as it were, they’re burning, but outside they’re cold and pale. Their skin’s colorless.” However, he said, there was not much cause for concern. He knew for sure that contagion occurred only between people of the same blood group, and that anyway AIDS could easily be avoided.
“By using condoms?”
“No, by eating raw garlic and red peppers.” He was absolutely convinced of this.
He began looking intently at me, and without asking me any questions, without wanting to know where and when I was born or where I came from, without reading my hand, without doing calculations, he slowly began to speak. The teacher translated.
“You’re one who travels a great deal, but what you like best is to live in a place in the country.” (Clever fellow! If there is one image that comes to my mind whenever I think of escaping from the world, it is that of our house in the Apennines, with the meadow in front and the chestnut woods behind. That is peace.) “You’re one who attaches no impo
rtance to money, and you can’t ever hang on to it.” (Right, but do I have it written all over my face?) “What you earn you spend. You’re attractive to women. Women love you, but you’re not all that interested in them.” (Brilliant!) “You’re made for being faithful, faithful to your wife, and you’re lying when you tell her you want a second wife. You don’t really want one at all.” (Well, it takes all sorts of fortune-tellers, and each one reflects the local culture and values. This, for example, is a Muslim area where men can have several wives. So my fortune-teller treats me like a Muslim, just as the blind man in Bangkok treated me like a Chinese, for whom the failure to make money was the worst possible news.)
He continued with a piece of advice that only made sense in terms of the local ethic. “If you do decide to take a second wife, then take a widow.” (In that context it was like telling me to perform an act of charity.) “In any case you won’t stay with her all that long. You don’t smoke, but you like spicy foods.” (True.) “You’re acutely aware of smells.” (True.) “Wherever you go, you don’t run risks. If you have an amulet with you, that’s good. It would be best if it were a Buddha. That will protect you.” (Perhaps his eye had been caught by the one I wear around my neck.) “You’re someone who’s sincere with his friends, who always comes out lucky. If you buy a lottery ticket it’s a winning one. The problem is that you never buy any.” (Quite true. I have never bought a ticket in my life, but maybe it’s time to start!) “Your lucky numbers are eighty-eight, one and nineteen. Play and you’ll win.” (Had there been a betting shop in Betong I would definitely have tried my luck!) “You’re forever interested in what you don’t know. Before long someone will offer you an important job, but you’ll turn it down because what you like is a simple life.” (Well, I certainly care nothing about having an important job, but nobody is going to offer me one. Anyone who did would be mad!) “You often have a cough.” (No.) “You must eat more rice noodles. You should also wear something green on your right hand, preferably on the ring finger. Yes, a ring with a small jade like those the Chinese wear.” (I have always hated rings, and even my wedding ring, made with recycled gold from my great-grandparents’ rings and with “Angela” engraved inside, I wore for only a few months.)
I had just had that thought, and in my mind’s eye seen the ring with the name on it, when he continued: “Your wife is very large. She has large breasts and a large bottom.” (Poor Angela, who practices yoga every morning!) “You can indulge in sport because your health’s good. If you want to keep a cat it must be of three colors: white, black and brown.” (A bit hard to find, I thought.) “If you can’t find one like that, then it must be all gray. Your car absolutely must be red or mango color. At the moment you live in a house that’s on the right, at the end of a lane.” (Correct: Turtle House is situated just so.) “If you really want something, you always manage to get it, but your mind is like a child’s: you like to say what you think, you like to say things for the pleasure of saying them. You have an unstable character, all ups and downs. You like to sleep on your side, especially the right.”
I had the feeling he could go on like this for hours, and I was starting to get bored, so I told him about the Hong Kong fortune-teller. Quick as a flash came the reply: “No, no, you can take all the planes you like, but only in the afternoon, not in the morning. This year’s a difficult one because the winds are in conflict with your age, but you don’t run any great risks.” In a singsong rhythm, he continued: “Several times in your life you’ve been accused, and twice you have landed up in prison.” (Ah … that’s interesting!) “The first time when you were thirty-five years old.” (In Vietnam? I was not exactly arrested, but I was expelled and accused of being a Vietcong agent.) “The second when you were forty-six.” (Exactly right! The famous episode in China!)
I was amused to find him so exact, and took a strange pleasure in finding the facts that corresponded to his words. As in a rhyming game, where a line ending with “moon” has to be answered with one ending in “June” or “spoon,” sometimes the rhyme has to be dragged in by the scruff of the neck, at others it fits perfectly.
I realized that this is exactly what we tend to do with a fortune-teller. He has no sooner spoken than we are racking our brains to find something in our experience to match his words. And in this there is pleasure, as there is in writing poetry. Suddenly life itself seems to become poetry because of some rhyme that makes sense of the facts, and bestows an order upon them. Rhyme is consoling.
But was it the magician who guessed certain facts about my life, or was it I who made them fit together—like the pieces of a puzzle, which I knew backwards and which he only pretended to know?
He went on: “The next time you’re arrested will be at the age of sixty-one. Problems arise in connection with your work, but you can’t manage to keep away from them, and basically you enjoy being arrested.” (Not far wrong.)
I asked my fortune-teller if he really believed he could see someone’s past. He said yes, but that he could see into the future with even greater accuracy. The night before, for example, he had seen that I would come, a foreigner. How? By looking at his hands.
I inquired if he knew Italy, and what he thought about the state of the world. “I only understand things that happen around me,” he replied.
I liked the man. His work was not based on any method. He followed no astrological charts, he did no sums nor claim to interpret signs in the hand. He “felt” the person he had before him, and obviously after seeing thousands he had developed an unusual ability to read them. In this society, where little girls begin selling themselves at thirteen, where teachers may not speak of AIDS and where the policemen are the bandits, he struck me as doing something of service. Part priest, part social worker, doctor and psychoanalyst, he did no one any harm. Quite the contrary. He was there to give advice, to comfort people, to impose taboos that gave the unfortunates of Betong a sense of being able to escape from their troubles and grasp something a bit better. All for the modest sum of 30 baht (75p) per consultation.
I asked the teacher if she would like to have her future told. Absolutely not! She was quite firm. A friend of hers had been engaged to a man she loved very much. Before marrying him she went with her mother to a fortune-teller who told her the marriage would be a mistake. She left her fiancé and has been unhappy ever since.
The rain had stopped and the sky was dramatically beautiful, with big clouds, golden sunbeams, and still some dense black pockets of rain in the distance. The chick released by the woman with the evil eye had climbed up on a coconut, and a big toad had advanced to the doorway. The papaya and banana trees were heavy with well-washed fruit.
I left Betong at dawn. The national anthem was booming from all the loudspeakers in the town, and dozens of big Thai flags were being hoisted in front of schools and police stations. The traffic stopped, and the population stood stiffly to attention.
As soon as I was outside Betong I began to feel I was no longer in Thailand. The villages are dominated by mosques, the men wear sarongs and Muslim skullcaps. Goats graze along the roadside, and lie down on the asphalt itself, so that taxi drivers have to take care not to run them over. Thailand is dissolving slowly, tolerantly, with no border posts, police or controls, with no precise confines except where Malaysia looms up, first with a barbed-wire fence, then another, then some gates and a hundred yards of unobstructed ground, like no-man’s-land. At long last you see the blue and white buildings of the border police and customs.
I walked between barriers till I reached a cabin window through which a woman glared at me. She was covered in a blue veil on which a pair of thick spectacles rested. Polite but cold, she asked where I was going and how long I intended to stay. She gave me a visa for two weeks. The atmosphere was disquieting. “Death penalty for carrying drugs,” said a big notice surmounted by a skull and crossbones.
Where was the Malaysia of twenty years ago? The women in sarongs, wearing brassieres that always seemed a size too small, a
nd skintight lace blouses? Where were the rich colors and bodies whose joy seemed to reflect nature’s? Swept away by Islamic austerity? In the Malaysia I knew in the seventies, religion was marginal. The Malays had their mosques and the Chinese their temples. The Malays ate their goats, the Chinese their pigs. But then, to defend themselves against the overwhelming economic power and materialist culture of the Chinese, the Malays began slavishly following Islam. They took away their women’s sarongs and gave them veils and loose two-piece gowns, and shut themselves up in the citadels of their mosques.
At the border post all the policemen and customs officials were Malays. The taxi drivers who offered to take me to the next town, Kroh, were all Chinese. “Hua-ren”—flower men, sons of the empire of flowers—they relished calling themselves, using an expression that is no longer heard elsewhere.
It was less than ten miles to Kroh, and my flower man lost no time in telling me about the problems of the country in which I had barely set foot. “They have the power and we’re second-class citizens. Just think! If I want to buy a flat I pay 100,000 ringit, and if one of them buys it he pays 90,000. For the same flat! Does that seem fair to you? They’ve all the privileges, we have nothing. They call themselves bumiputra, sons of the soil, but what soil? We too were born here, just like them. And anyway, the real bumiputra are the orang asli, the pygmies in the jungle! What counts is being a Muslim. And we’re not.”
I had just arrived, but he took it for granted I knew that “they” were the Malays, and that the great, unsolved problem of Malaysia was race. Race is everything. Race determines who your friends are, who your enemies are, what job you do, which doctor you see, which vet tends your animals. Race determines where you live, where you go to school, whom you marry and where you are buried. The Malays have the political power, the Chinese have the money. This form of apartheid is not written in any law, but it is rooted in the practice of the past twenty years. To the Chinese the situation seems unfair. But the Malays see it as the only guarantee of social equilibrium.
A Fortune-Teller Told Me Page 13