by Sean Wallace
Mors walked free. Not guilty. Not guilty. A second trial almost happened. But while Thai rapists and pedophiles had no embassies to flee to, farang ones did, and that was that. Mors was, after all, American.
Then, almost incidentally, the world broke and the chaomae network went into operation, five hundred and ninety-nine brass-and-ivory Guanim flaring to life, puissant with mantras Rinnapha and her team had been storing up like coins in a piggy bank.
Nathamol couldn’t remember what sunlight looked like. All natural light had attained a wan lunar quality, and in her one-room apartment she only had lamps and candle stubs. The chaomae infrastructure demanded all the dreams and chants and wishes, leaving no energy to spare on anything else. Power plants had been flooded or destroyed by American saboteurs, and most streets were gas-lit.
She held two jobs: immigration officer and pyre supervisor. Regulating the burning was important. Bodies couldn’t be piled up and torched just anywhere, or the smoke would clog up what remained of the clean air. Neither career was as prestigious as practicing law, but the new struggling Krungthep had little need for solicitors, and prestige had gotten Rinnapha nowhere but dead.
Four years on and it still hurt. Assassination by American sniper. Kwankaew had devoted all she had, all she was, to countermeasure projects, arms and espionage. “The war isn’t over,” Kwankaew would often say when they met. It scared Nathamol. It reminded her that there might, would, be repercussions for the deaths, the corpses she had personally helped incinerate by the dozen.
Nathamol began her day in the Immigration Bureau, eight sharp, behind reinforced glass that separated her from a waiting hall too small for so many. Thai faces mostly, stained and haggard from their treks through the national subway tunnels, six–seven hundred kilometers’ worth of walking and scavenging what she could not imagine. Their ID cards were given priority; Chinese ones followed. It was wise to stay on good terms with the country that fought America and won. Stranded Chinese needed only to wait for shielded aircrafts at Suvarnabhumi; Beijing remained standing with much of its infrastructure intact. Nathamol tried to imagine that. Computers that worked, cell phones that functioned, hospitals with medical technology from this century. All she had was candlelight.
Toward the end of her shift she was down to thirty-five applicants, her fingers numb from wielding stamps. Red for no and condemnation back to the subway, blue for yes and clawing out some semblance of a life in the streets. The state couldn’t provide housing any more. BTS trains had become makeshift residences, crammed end to end. Nathamol could scarcely remember their rumbling purr, the serpentine sleekness of the steel carriages at rush hours.
A couple, Thai woman and a western man some twenty years her senior. Without even thinking Nathamol stamped his papers red. “I’m sorry,” she said in Angrit. Years past she’d have been flustered, worrying over her pronunciation, her accent, whether it’d impress whites or embarrass her. “You aren’t a Thai citizen.”
The man thrust his face at the pane. His complexion was raw chicken frozen for too long, and he reeked of tobacco, human waste. She tried not to gag. “I’ve been living in Maehongson for five years! Married to her for three!”
“That doesn’t make you Thai. I’m going to have to ask you to leave. We can give you some water and food, but that’s all.”
Vorapol wasn’t physically intimidating, but he had a good stare and the westerner wilted under the policeman’s regard. The wife stayed and received Nathamol’s blue approval. Most Thai–farang couples separated here. The westerner would have died in any case, another carcass for the pyres. Already just from breathing Krungthep he might have caught the plague.
The waiting room emptied gradually, the air lightening to a breathable point. Her last one before she signed off. “Khun Maneerat Puangjit,” she said and eyed the logs left by her colleagues. Blue, then. This one had had a German husband, unpronounceable name, recently deceased. “Welcome to Krungthep Mahanakhon. My condolences for your loss.”
“No need, officer. Congratulate me instead.”
Nathamol looked up, startled. “That’s the first time I’ve heard it put that way.”
The curve of Maneerat’s mouth was more riddle than smile. “Could you point me to orientation officers?”
“There aren’t any.” She eyed the clock. It’d have to be wound up soon. Everything was made of scraps, and always on the verge of breaking down. “But I’m coming off my shift. Can you wait?”
Maneerat was from Yala, which meant exquisite eyes and a hint of khamtai in her low thrumming voice. They exchanged nicknames: Maneerat was Bua, which Nathamol thought fitting. A flower that doesn’t easily fade.
Nathamol hailed a pedicab and told the driver, a girl in hijab and school uniform, “Siam Paragon.”
They went up rusted, dead escalators and stained marble walkways. Many of the windows and walls had been knocked out for ventilation, but it reassured Nathamol that the mall retained its essential nature: a collection of meticulous storefronts, gravitas and class. In place of light bulbs, paper lanterns hung Loy Krathong-bright, dappling floor tiles in puddles of turquoise and tangerine, magenta and maroon. Nathamol picked an eatery purveying naan and curries.
They slotted into a corner table. A little boy started pedaling a fan; his older sister took their order. “The meat’s lab-grown,” Nathamol explained while Maneerat scrutinized the menu. “It’s all safe to eat, or at least I haven’t died to it. So what did you study?”
“There must be respectable jobs you can get without a degree now, surely?”
“Chulalongkorn, Thammasat, Mahidol and most of the rest are still around and operating.” Nathamol’s neck warmed and she knew she was being defensive. “Maybe you did something vocational? That’s in high demand.”
Maneerat shifted her battered suitcase under the table, holding it between her knees. “For the last six years I’ve been a farang’s wife, officer. You would call it prostitution.”
The flush marched to Nathamol’s cheeks. She occupied herself with her masala. Agriculture had moved underground; it was fortunate that spices and rice both thrived there. Between mouthfuls she could feel Maneerat studying her. Her last attempts at small talk petered out. She had never been subjected to anyone’s scrutiny so intensely. So many years of invisibility and she’d settled into that, comfortable with it, wanting nothing more.
A couple took an adjacent table. Nathamol glanced at the tom surreptitiously, wondering how anyone could live with breast-binding for that many hours a day. The dee was pretty even by dee standards, immaculate and long-haired with not a wisp out of place. They held hands and looked into each other’s eyes, girlishly delighted. They seemed so young.
“You can stay with me until you find somewhere better,” she offered as she paid the bill with ministry-watermarked notes; those had slightly more value, and civil servants’ custom was courted anywhere. “I’ve got a sofa.”
Maneerat looked at her. “Do you,” she said slowly, “offer this to everybody?”
“Of course not. I live on my own.”
“Your family?”
“My mother and sister live too far to commute.” She did not say that her brother had been out of town when it happened. In her dreams he would stand alone on an empty highway, head uptilted and smiling, as the sky deepened to ochre and the air sharpened to glass.
“Ah.” Maneerat finished her food and wiped her mouth. Her trimmed nails glinted blue. “I’ll repay you. As soon as I can.”
Nathamol’s apartment was a nest where memories laid eggs that hatched into dreams, into nightmares. Photos of Rinnapha, photos of her brother, college yearbooks leaning against faded wallpaper kinnarees. She thought of rushing in and covering them all up under bedsheets, but it was too late – Maneerat’s foot was over the threshold – and there was no hiding things she had never meant to put on display. This was only the third time she’d invited anyone in, and the other two occasions had been premeditated; she’d had time to put e
verything away, leaving just a set of threadbare furniture, an empty room that’d absorbed nothing of her but smell and sweat. “It’s not much to look at,” she said and stared at a spot on the carpet.
“I’ve been living in a dank Pattaya basement smelling of fish sauce. Subways full of roaches and rats and sick people. This? This is the last word in luxury. And you have running water?”
“Yes. It’s weak, but clean.”
“My,” Maneerat breathed. “You’re living almost like it was normal.”
She wasn’t, but did not say so. Listening to the gurgling, she worried that Maneerat might find fault with the toiletry. The wrong color of shampoo.
Maneerat emerged towel-wrapped and glitter-slick. Deprivation had thinned her collarbones to knife blades, adding years to her she didn’t have; even then Nathamol had to avert her eyes from shadows that collected at the base of her throat, that pooled between her breasts. Mysteries half glimpsed, doors just ajar.
Nathamol fixed her attention elsewhere. They’d only just met.
She introduced Maneerat to the apartment, what little there was of it – “There’s a power generator downstairs, but mostly it doesn’t work so don’t try the sockets. Communal washing machine’s at the end of the hall, you pedal to get it going. The phone and radio run on batteries.”
Maneerat unlatched her suitcase, dug through sets of underwear and jeans, and exhumed a plastic box. Wordlessly, she handed it to Nathamol.
Inside, tightly packed, sat unbranded cubes. Rechargeable sodium batteries. “You could,” Nathamol said, dazed, “buy out this block and have everyone evicted. Get years’ worth of food.”
“I started stockpiling when things went downhill. Think of them as my contribution to the rent.” Maneerat shrugged. Wet hair slid off her shoulders, seaweed fronds. She twisted a handful between her fingers and pursed her lips. “Is it true that all the farangs are dead? From being sick.”
“Yes. It happened after the shielding went up.” After Rinnapha’s assassination. Farang men had been rounded up during the initial outbreak and put under quarantine. Embassies had railed shrilly, but since they’d been staffed by farang men that soon quieted. “Some farang women survived, but it doesn’t seem to touch anyone else. No one understands what happened or how.”
Maneerat’s expression clouded. She straightened and opened the window, inhaling deep. “The air’s become so clean. I used to hate Krungthep, but the last four years it was all I could dream about. I dreamed it ugly, I dreamed it beautiful, but I never dreamed it’d be safe to breathe. All the way to the lungs, until you can feel it in your stomach.”
The next morning, Kwankaew rang. Meet at Chatuchak Park, at so-and-so o’clock. Less a social call and more a command vested with the authority of guilt. Nathamol left Maneerat with a list of addresses where she might find work.
Waiting for a cab, she watched other tenants leave the soi, which they shared with a hardware store and a book rental. She toyed with the ten-baht coins in her pocket, thinking of picking up something light, a period novel. Currency wasn’t useless yet, but if food production didn’t improve it would soon be.
“I heard you got a new room-mate.”
“People are nosy,” Nathamol said in Angrit.
Samantha leaned against a lamppost. It didn’t keep her from looming. “If you keep doing that how’ll I learn Thai?”
She smiled non-committally. Samantha was a new tenant who intimidated her more than a little, and not just because she was one of the few remaining farang. The clipped speech perhaps, which made her think of soldiers, or the way every crease in Samantha’s face looked as though it’d been carved onto her rather than accumulated with years, as though she’d been born looking exactly this old. “I’m heading out. Maybe I can introduce my room-mate to you later.”
“That’d be good. A boy?”
“That wouldn’t be proper,” Nathamol murmured. Living several floors down Samantha probably hadn’t noticed the rare few times she’d brought someone home. Then again, sometimes she’d catch the woman watching her in a peculiar, lingering way she didn’t like.
Samantha chuckled, a sound like landslides.
At the park, Kwankaew was waiting for her by the lake, one leg tucked under a long skirt hem-flecked with grass, a small laminated book and a bottle of chilled coffee in her lap. “I just came from a meeting with Ambassador Wong Mianying.” She poured the coffee into two plastic cups, offering one to Nathamol.
“You’ve become very important.” Nathamol never asked exactly how much, or what office Kwankaew held. Whatever it was, it wasn’t public.
“I’ve become underpaid and overworked, more like. Which is why I want to ask you, again, to come work with me.”
Nathamol stopped sipping. “I’m not a scientist, or engineer, or anything useful. I’ve already told you that.”
“You undersell yourself. I want someone who can think but who’s not drowned in theorems and numbers. A fresh head. I know you can keep secrets.” A sharp inhalation, a crack in composure. “I know you’ll do this for Som.”
The coffee, sweet-milky and cold, clogged in Nathamol’s mouth. She clenched the perspiring plastic cup. It crackled. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s not dangerous, and I need people I can trust.” Kwankaew’s fingers tangled, wringing as though she meant to crush damp green air to pieces. “What I’m doing will keep us all safe. Your family, Som’s memory.”
She was still wearing that ring. Both rings, ruby chip glinting in each, around one finger. Perfectly matched pair.
“What about my job?” Prevaricating.
“I’ll get you transferred. Today. You’re free?”
Of course she was. Kwankaew must have chosen this day for a reason.
Kwankaew signaled for a covered pedicab, whose driver wore no uniform but had such a bearing that Nathamol could not mistake him for anything but military or police. Inside, hidden from the world by black glass and tarp, Kwankaew opened her little book, full of secrets, and unfolded contracts for Nathamol to sign. Unbelievable that a few years ago everything had been digital – signatures and legal documents, ID cards and books.
They entered an unassuming clinic, the back of which was stocked with mortar, pestle, jars of pastes and herbs like a traditional Chinese pharmacy. Down, and down, to a railcar that hissed and chugged on brown Chao Phraya water. Nathamol folded herself small and tried not to think. Now and again strobe lights stabbed into the car, jarring her. She saw rivets, pipes, maintenance doors: old MRT infrastructure. Under them wheels screeched against tracks built for vehicles several centuries more advanced. She smelled rust, age, sulphur.
They disembarked at Queen Sirikit station. Boarded-shut convenience stores and bakeries, defunct turnstiles and ticket dispensers. Muck and rust, and a low keen of wind tunnel somewhere above. Kwankaew stood still for a time, and the graffiti-sprayed wall between two vending machines became a sliding door.
Magic, Rinnapha had said, and because the Americans hadn’t understood it they killed her.
* * *
What Kwankaew had assigned her – jokingly calling it homework – was exactly that: a list of minutiae to prioritize. Anyone who walked through the fresh market regularly or peered at restaurant menus with their crossed-out items marking shortage would have been able to do this work. Nathamol recognized that Kwankaew herself didn’t have the time, that ticking off agricultural projects required the evaluator be impartial, but she felt faintly disappointed. She knew she shouldn’t be; this was safe, good and meaningful. There were even plans for an eventual revival of the power grid, water supply, waste disposal. Kwankaew had coded them in geometric shapes and pastel colors, rather than words or numbers. Paranoia, though perhaps justified. “There are spies,” Kwankaew had told her. “They blend in. You don’t have to be white to belong to America.”
Nathamol had started. They’d sat among dozens of researchers grinding away at computers joined by cables thick as wrists to a small Guanim. Th
is one had her own wall shrine, seated over everyone’s head, proper veneration with little dishes of fruit offerings. Everyone ate those at the end of the day, for luck and because no one wasted fruit. “What do they want with us?”
“None of their countermeasures work as well as our dream-engines. Even I don’t understand their core functions – only Som really did. If they ever fail . . .” Kwankaew’s brows deepened. She turned away. “I need access to her initial experiments, but those happened before I joined. She was brilliant but insanely disorganized. All her notes probably got flushed or ruined in a washing machine or stuck in a corrupted drive somewhere and she never backed any of them up. She was absolute about the system being perfect. The Americans think it’s some kind of weapon.”
“But it’s—”
“Ninety per cent of their expatriates died here. They were preoccupied at the time, but they’ve had years to wonder: was it us, or China? An aircraft Wong Mianying was meant to board exploded last month. Some of my people felt threatened. I’ve moved them, their families, into secure housing. Good thing most scientists don’t marry or we’d have been overcrowded.”
In the here and now Nathamol tilted back against the water tank, which was empty – rain a phenomenon of the past – and drew the blankets closer around herself. Few came up to the roof except to hang up or retrieve laundry; lines of them stretched out, dripping and sometimes fluttering in the rare breeze. The height and solitude cleared her head, and she’d thought it an ideal spot to finish Kwankaew’s assignment. But maybe she shouldn’t be alone. She tried to think as Kwankaew might. Was she in the open up here, was she exposed, what could happen?