Bangkok Knights

by Collin Piprell

  “Mai pen rai” said Sunantha. “Never mind.” But I could see she was disappointed. She’d wanted it to be perfect, just like it had been the year before.

  She was pleased that Ernest’s craft, at least, had joined the serene and lovely pattern of gently rocking candle-flames which graced this river, as similar motifs were ornamenting rivers and ponds all over Thailand, this night.

  “We must come here again all together next year,” said Sunantha, “when Noi can come, too.”

  And then she looked at me in a way that only promised guilt and sadness to come, no matter how happy she thought we were.

  VII.

  Finally Noi was released to convalesce at home. A week later, I had a phone-call from Ernest Could we join them at one o’clock on Sunday afternoon? At the Erawan Hotel?

  VIII.

  It’s not your usual rainy-season day. It’s the kind of day, in fact, you wouldn’t be dead for a hundred bucks, a glorious harbinger of the winter weather soon to come. Despite the snarling streams of traffic at the Erawan intersection, the air is crystal; everywhere the colors and forms are intensely, impossibly vivid in the sun, probably inspired by the brilliant blue of the sky.

  Elephants of all sizes, someof them enormous, stand in mute attendance around the perimeter. The heads of the larger ones glisten gold. Thousands upon thousands of people have come to pay their respects, rubbing on little squares of gold leaf till it appears the teak carvings have been cast from solid metal. They stand guard around the golden image which gazes down serenely from its perch in four directions at once.

  There are lots of people. They throng in the compound, carrying incense sticks and flowers and candles. Petitioners are prostrating themselves, foreheads to the ground, pleading, promising.

  All around the base of the shrine there are huge mounds of fragrant flower garlands, hundreds and hundreds of them, some of them several feet long, each with the prescribed seven varieties of flower. Thin veils of scented smoke twist and rise from the forests of joss-sticks burning in front of Phra Prom’s image.

  The musicians are over there in the corner, under a shelter, the deeply resonant banging of the drum giving form to the happy discords struck from the big bamboo keys of the ranaat. In and out of the shadows move the temple dancers, the metallic scales of their costumes scintillant red and blue and gold and green.

  There is an hallucinogenic intensity to the whole sunlit feast of color and image and movement.

  You could say Ernest looks like a lunatic, though it’s midday and he has an expression of solemn intent on his face. He’s dancing about waving his arms with pretty well no grace at all. Occasionally he topples over on one leg and shoots the other out like a somewhat lethargic karate student. Maybe only a beginner. His hands flop about on the ends of his arms in some kind of spastic syncopation. The other people, almost all of them Thai or Chinese, are looking at Ernest with varying degrees of amusement and alarm.

  He has his clothes on, yet he is as naked as ever he could be — this fastidiously rational Child of the Enlightenment, this sober husband-and-family-man-to-be — exposed as he is to the public scrutiny under this sunny midday sky.

  He has paid off the regular dancers, and they’re taking a break so as not to upstage him. They’re in the shade, with the musicians, watching the show. Ernest is wending through the crowd, the crowd willingly making way, who knows, he might be dangerous. He topples this way and that, limbs extending awkwardly in all directions like a starfish Isaac Newton describing anew his universe, wishing he had eyes to see. There is maybe some connection between his movements and the toomb-toomb of the drum and the manic chonging of the big bamboo xylophone, but if so it’s a tenuous one, I reckon.

  Ernest has invited everyone he knows. They’re all here — Leary and Nancy, Stack and his wife, Big Toy, Dinky Toy, Eddie and Lek — everybody.

  Noi is in a wheelchair, out here on the sidewalk with me. She’s peering in through the wrought-iron bars of the fence and laughing delightedly. She sounds totally happy, never mind the man she’s about to marry, the man whose child she carries, is doing a fine imitation of a Bedlamite.

  “Yeah,” he’s told us. “It looks like she’s gonna be okay. And more than okay — the doc says she’s going to have a baby!”

  Here he comes again, rounding the structure which houses the Brahman image; he catches sight of Noi, and his solemn sweaty red face breaks into a grin to match the brilliance of this dazzling afternoon, to match the electric glitter of the temple dancers’ headdresses, the burnished gold of the elephants’ heads. But he doesn’t stop dancing, because he promised Phra Prom ten minutes, and he still has five minutes to go.

  And Sunantha is looking at me, radiant with happiness and the pleasure of this day, seeking confirmation all is well with our world. But I haven’t made any promises to Phra Prom or to Sunantha either, however much I wish I were able to, somehow.

  MOTHER MAKES A MATCH

  “It’s Daphne! Duck!”

  Who, I wondered, was Daphne Duck? And why had my friend Frank Keenock taken a dive under the table like he’d suddenly discovered gold there?

  “Can you see her?” quavered Frank from under the table.

  “Who?” I inquired. “Daphne Duck?” I was scanning the crowded restaurant, hoping to catch sight of this entity.

  “No, no. Daphne Dangerfield. Over by the door. Is she still there?”

  Now, Frank Keenock was normally a solid, manly sort of chap, and I was impressed by the quiver in his voice. I looked around with real interest for the cause of his abrupt departure from the public eye. Over by the door stood a largish specimen of womanhood sporting a bosom of Wagnerian proportions and a gaze that would turn you to stone. She was giving the crowd in this joint the once-over, and her eyes happened to find me at the same time I spotted her. It was all I could do to refrain from diving under the table to join Frank. And I didn’t even know the lady.

  ”I think I´ve found her,” I said to the tabletop. “About thirty years old, 5’ 10”, wearing a flowery print cotton dress and hair tied back in a bun?”

  “That’s her,” whispered Frank.

  “Eyes like two bullets dipped in curare, and a certain air of self-righteous authority about her?”

  “Yes, yes. Enough. That’s her. Act casual; don’t attract her attention. She isn’t looking over here, is she?”

  I found Frank’s behavior pitiable. Sometimes when you think you know an old friend...

  I snuck a sidelong glance at Daphne Duck and saw that she’ d left off looking our way, and was turning to leave, having already riddled the rest of the crowd with those eyes. Why, I wasn’ t sure, but I personally felt a great relief to know that she was off to scare the good citizens of Bangkok some place else.

  I was anxious to have Frank come out from under the table to give me the story. He waited a while, however, just to be sure she was really gone.

  “I buy the beer,” I suggested. “You tell the story.”

  And this is what he told me.

  “Have you noticed,” he asked by way way of preamble, “how the world is shrinking? Remember all those faraway places— Kathmandu, Bangkok, the French Foreign Legion? You remember how, traditionally, if one got one’s knickers in a twist back home, one could ship out for one of those faraway places and thereby simplify everything from one’s love-life to one’s relationship with the law? Yes, those were the days. But they are no more. No place in the world is more than a few quid and a few hours away from any other place. Bangkok? Bangkok is somewhere you hop on over to if you’re in the mood for a bit of shopping, or if on a whim you decide you want to ruin your son’s life.”

  I was getting the idea that Frank’s mother had something to do with all this. He’d told me she was planning a visit. He was looking forward to it, he told me, though it was going to complicate existence. There was the question, for example, of what to do with his girlfriend Mu, her sister Lek, and her cousin Noi, all of whom were staying in his apartm
ent. His mother had announced she would like to stay with him, seeing as how he had written and told her what a lovely big place it was, and inasmuch as they hadn’ t seen each other in so long and had so much to catch up on.

  “No real problem,” said Frank. “I sent the girls upcountry for a couple of weeks. Mu had had a vacation coming anyway. I took my vacation as well, so I could look after Mother. I packed the girls’ things in boxes and stashed them; then I sprinkled beer bottles and dust around to give the place a bachelor-pad ambience. Everything was under control. But then my mother showed up, and she had Daphne with her. This came as a complete surprise to me. Though maybe I should have guessed.”

  Complete surprise? Judging by his expression, I would’ve said that ‘horrendous shock’ would’ve been more apposite.

  “I’ve known Daphne since we were kids — ‘childhood sweethearts’ is how both Mother and Daphne like to put it. Personally, I’ve always thought of her as a childhood affliction, something akin to mumps and chicken pox, only worse. Nevertheless, her parents were my folks’ oldest friends, and it was always hoped and assumed that Daphne and I were made for each other. I’ m willing to concede that may be the case, but only if it turns out I have in some past life chalked up one fearful pile of bad karmic baggage which needs atoning for.

  “Daphne was a good part of my decision to leave Newcastle, way back, and hideout in London. I should’veknown that wouldn’t do it; I left England five years ago, and have never stopped running. Though actually I thought I had, when I wound up here in Bangkok.

  “Mother first of all figured it was just ‘boys being boys’, and I would get it all out of my system and come home to Daphne. After a couple of years, however, she started to get nervous. Her letters tended to drop a lot of casual questions about Thai women and my relationship with and general attitude towards the afore-mentioned creatures. She was, at the same time, a real promotional whiz-kid for life back in the U.K., and she could find six good job opportunities in a week, all of them within a fifty-mile radius of Daphne. She would send me news clippings describing the murders of ex-pats in exotic climes; articles extolling the virtues of home and hearth and the National Health Service; fruit cakes wrapped in foil and plastic and reports of even more awesomely mouthwatering culinary masterpieces which wouldn’t travel and which I

  would never get to taste again if I didn’t come home and Daphne says hello and to tell you she misses you. You know the kind of thing. When is she going to get some grandchildren, and children really need to be brought up in a nice Christian, English-speaking home, after all. Didn’t they?

  “Anyway, there they were in Bangkok, and they moved right into my apartment. Beer bottles and dust were gone with a tut and a sneeze. My Darkie toothpaste and my Mekhong girlie calendar disappeared with even less comment. Yeah, the place was ship-shape in nothing flat, and I felt like a guest in my own home — welcome, just barely, so long as I behaved with the proper decorum. Something about the two of them in concert — Mother and Daphne — turns my internal chronometer back to when I was thirteen years old, and about as self-assertive as your average earthworm.

  “When I wasn’t making a stab at guiding Mother and Daphne around town, I was being interrogated.

  “Daphne, for example, would start up with: ‘What do you men see in Asian women? Do you like them because they’re small and submissive? Yes, I’m sure that’s it; weak Western men want a passive companion — a plaything and a servant. They’re afraid of a strong and independent woman. Isn’t that right, Frank?’

  “That’s right, Daphne,’ I’d say, although you and I know that’s lot of guff. Submissive, she says. Mu. Submissive. Ha! But of course I had to agree with her. If I don’t agree with her, she starts to use those stern and measured tones which say: ‘This Is the Way the World Is, and I Don’t Like It.’ And she looks at me. I mean, right at me. I can’ t take it when she does that. My brain starts to sweat ice-water, and all my joints seize up. It’s like in a nightmare. I always want to get up and run away, but she has some strange power over me, like when a bird gets hypnotized by a snake. So it’s better I agree with her.”

  As I’ve said, I’d had a look at Daphne and I could see how she might tend to leave one a bit cowed. I had a question for Frank, though: did his mother and his childhood affliction really believe that he had been leading a monastic existence here in Bangkok?

  “I don’t know what they thought before, but I fear they have come to hold dire suspicions.

  ”You know how wolves and things leave their spoor around to mark the boundaries of their territory? Well, I figure that’s what Mu was up to — maybe she didn’t believe it was really my mother who was dispossessing her of her home.

  “No sooner had Daphne tucked herself in one night, when she decided to check her pillow for scorpions or something. And what did she find, nestled there between the pillow and the pillowcase? A pair of frilly knickers with ‘Eat me’ embroidered on them.

  “The issue of the toothsome panties arose at breakfast, just about first thing. Well, it looked as though either I’d had a woman in there, or else it was something worse. But then I thought of another story: the maid also did washing for several other apartments, and she’d probably got a pair of my neighbor’s panties stuck up in there by accident. When I thought about it, I said, that had to be what had happened.

  “This, my inquisitors had to admit, was a real possibility. The next thing I knew, however, they had decided my maid was not really a maid, but was really a girlfriend. I couldn’t believe it; I might as well have let Mu stay. I could’ve let them all stay, come to that, and tried to claim that Noi was the gardener and Lek was my bodyguard, or something.

  “So when I wasn’t at home facing the Inquisition, I was out slogging around in the heat getting to visit places I’d never set eyes on before and wouldn’t have even known existed had I not seen them on Nancy Chandler’s tourist map of the city and then managed to walk a long way around them. I saw snake farms, crocodile farms, rubies, sapphires, silk shops, and classical dancers. We got to go on rides in boats on canals, looking at all the other tourists in boats on canals. We got to talk to all manner of touts, and visited all the local hotspots, like Jim Thompson’s House. We even went down Patpong Road, one evening, and I had to deal with questions like this one: ‘Why is she calling you “Harry”, Frank? Does she know you?’

  “Before too long, of course, Mother began to close in on the main puipose of their visit—to close in for the kill, you might say.

  “Well, it didn’t take me too long to see it. We were sitting there, with Daphne rabbitting on about ‘birds of a feather’ and Mother chewing on the other ear about Thai food being sure to give you stomach cancer or maybe even ulcers, and I said excuse me but I had to go out to see to a few things.

  “I finally realized it—I have no choice; there’s no place to run to. The world’s too small. I’m trapped.”

  It was terrible to see the man I’d known as Philanderin’ Frank Keenock brought to this pass, hollow-eyed and trembling, a spirited young buck brought to bay.

  “You’re going to get married, then?”

  “That’s right This is something Mu has wanted for a long time, and I should’ve made up my mind months ago.”

  “Mu?”

  “Who else?”

  Mu! Mu of the eighteen cousins and a sick uncle. Mu who loved to play cards for more money than she had. Mu the sweet and lovely young thing who liked to tell Frank long stories in a version of English that wound him up into a total frenzy of incomprehension. Mu the woman who Frank had thought about marrying from the time he met her, but whom he could on a good day find twenty-seven reasons not to marry, and sometimes thirty-six on a Sunday.

  “Yeah, I think we’re just going to slip away and make it all a fait accompli. I called her last night. I’ve got to meet her in half an hour.”

  “Congratulations,” I said, and I meant it. I was happy for him; but I didn’t want to have to be the one to
tell the redoubtable Daphne. Or Mother Keenock.

  “Can I ask a favor of you?” said Frank.

  TOO MANY WOMEN

  All was quiet on the patio out behind the Cheri-Tone Guesthouse. Unusually quiet; there was nothing but an occasional whistle or mutter from the five cages which hung around the wrought-iron enclosure. The inmates were strangely subdued. Maybe they were sick, I thought. Especially Nixon, the normally ebullient ringleader of the five resident mynah birds — I hadn’t heard him scream or cuss since I’d arrived.

  The only real noise was Eddie’s wife Lek beating a bedroll. In fact, I couldn’t help noticing she was beating this item with a good deal of enthusiasm. And when Eddie Alder came out to join me at the table, I could see his birds were no more subdued than he was, maybe even less so.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “You see that mattress Lek is beating up? Yeah? Well, that’s not a mattress; that’s me”

  “She’s kicking the dog,” I guessed.

  “That’s right; and if that mattress was a dog, it’d be enjoying life in Doggie Heaven right now.”

  ’Kicking the dog’ refers to the Thai custom of indirecting your anger — if you get mad at somebody, it’s considered good form to smile at that individual while at the same time you vent your anger on some other handy object, such as a passing dog. If this operation is performed correctly, the real object of your pique is made fully aware of this pique, while being left with nothing but respect for your sense of propriety. That’s why Thailand stays the Land of Smiles. That’s overlooking the dogs, of course; they don’t smile a lot.

  Anyway, I had to think Eddie was profoundly grateful for this custom, as I watched Lek rip the bedroll off the line and carry its chastened corpse into the house.

  “I’m not a crook,” quavered Nixon in a voice that said he thought he was a good guy, even if the whole world, maybe even his own mother, was trying to claim otherwise. A broken bird. It was almost enough to inspire compassion.