Breathing Water

by Timothy Hallinan

  “Okay,” Rafferty says. “You can turn on the tape recorder.” He waits until the red light glows again and she nods at him to proceed, and then he says, “This morning my life and the lives of my family were threatened. I was snatched off the street, hooded, shoved into a car, and taken someplace where I was given the names on the yellow sheets and told that we’ll all be killed if I don’t write this book—and I mean this book, the one I would get from these sources. I can’t tell you who threatened me, because I don’t know, but I can give you some information, off the record for now, that might help the police to identify them if my family and I are killed. Does that sound like news to you?”

  “I can’t print the information that would lead the police to them?”

  “No. You can say you have it but that it might violate the libel laws.”

  “In Thailand it probably would.” She glances down at the tape recorder, making sure it’s running, then flicks the yellow list with an extremely long index finger tipped in black polish. “Before we go any further, you realize there’s no way I can verify this story.”

  “No,” he says, “but you can report truthfully that the farang who was authorized to write Pan’s biography says that his family’s lives have been threatened by unknown persons unless he writes a violently anti-Pan book. And just so you know that it isn’t a publicity stunt, you can also report that he’s going public with this in the hope that the reduced risk will allow him to quit the project.”

  She studies him for a moment. “You’re not going to write it?”

  “I’m going to try like hell not to.”

  “And you think this story will reduce the threat?”

  “I hope so. At least we won’t be killed in a vacuum. Whoever’s behind this will know that the American embassy will demand an investigation, a real one, not just going through the motions. It might scare these people off. They’ll know that the investigation will focus on the information you didn’t print.”

  “Why don’t you go to your embassy directly?”

  “What could they do? Get me out of Thailand? My wife and daughter are Thai. They don’t have travel documents.”

  The buttercup scarf seems to require her attention again. She is still fiddling with it when she asks, “How old is your daughter?”

  “Nine.”

  “My daughter is seven,” Elora Weecherat says. “It’s a magical age.” She aligns the strands that make up the shawl’s fringe until they are precisely parallel. “Let’s start from the beginning,” she says. “You’re a travel writer. How in the world did you get into this?”

  18

  The Furniture Takes a Vote

  Arthit says, “The thirty-sixth floor.” His face is rigid, the mask of muscle he wears when he’s just been with Noi. His eyes are still poached from the previous night’s alcohol.

  “In both English and Thai.” Rafferty is trying to conceal his dismay at the way his friend looks. Arthit’s composure seems thin as a coat of paint. The hands clasped on the table betray a faint tremor. A cup of coffee cools untouched in front of him, the cumulus burst of cream in the center not even stirred smooth.

  “Even in the New Bangkok we keep hearing about, there aren’t that many buildings with talking elevators,” Arthit says. “But as much as I hate to say this, it won’t mean anything even if you figure out who it is. You’re not going to get anywhere near him. If I’m right about what’s happening, this is a level where I can’t help you. I don’t even know who could help you.”

  “Then what do you suggest, Arthit? Should I just roll over and die?”

  “It would save you a lot of effort.” Arthit rubs his face with both hands, as though he were trying to erase his expression.

  “Well, in the absence of that kind of wisdom, here’s what I’ve done.” Poke tells Arthit about the meeting with Elora Weecherat.

  “Not bad,” Arthit says, in a tone that suggests it’s not very good either. “Still, you should get Rose and Miaow off the map somehow, just in case the reaction to the newspaper story isn’t what you want it to be.”

  “Moving them will be hard. I think the other side is four deep on them all the time. The followers got a little chesty today when I shook them.”

  “And why did you shake them?”

  “That thing with the gun and the SUV. I got pissed off.”

  Arthit takes a fistful of his own hair and tugs at it in sheer frustration. “You can’t afford to do that,” he says. “I don’t think you understand what’s going on here.”

  “Has that just occurred to you?”

  “Let me give you an image,” Arthit says. He picks up the coffee and drinks half of it at a gulp. “If it would clarify your situation to think about it visually, then imagine this: You’re at the bottom of the Chao Phraya, wandering around on the riverbed without a map, and breathing water. You just haven’t realized it yet.” He erases the image with his palms. “No, actually, it’s more like this: You’re in the crevice of a deep canyon with very steep walls, and there are some enormous boulders directly above you. Let’s say the size of an apartment house. You’ve built a cute little straw roof to keep you dry, something a songbird could dent. These boulders can decide, any time they want, to roll down on top of you. For any reason. You go to the wrong place. You talk to the wrong person. You ask the wrong question. You go out too much. You stay home too much. You eat meat on Friday. They don’t like your socks. So they roll down on you and squash you to paste.”

  “Okay,” Rafferty says. “What’s the downside?”

  “The downside is that even if you do everything they want, they still might kill you.”

  Rafferty nods. “That qualifies.”

  “You’re not taking this seriously.”

  Suddenly Rafferty is furious. “What do you want me to do, Arthit? Run in circles, scream in soprano, wring my hands? Give me an option. You’ve pretty much said there’s nowhere I can go for help and that it barely matters what I do. For all the difference it makes, I might as well yell at the weather. If I write it, we’re dead. If I don’t write it, we’re dead. If I write it wrong, we’re dead. According to you, if I somehow defuse the people who don’t want it written and then write it exactly the way the other side wants, we’re dead anyway. Would you like to tell me how taking it seriously is going to help?”

  Arthit drains the cup and curls his lip at the dregs in the bottom. It makes a jittery little clatter against the saucer when he puts it down. “You have a point.”

  “One thing that might help would be for you to do what I thought you were going to do just a minute ago, which is to tell me what the hell is going on. Why is this book such an issue?”

  Arthit picks the cup up again and turns it upside down on the saucer. “I thought you understood this country.”

  “That’s what Rose said, too. And I’ll tell you what I told her. I don’t.”

  “Actually,” Arthit says, “you know all of it. You just haven’t put it together.” He pushes his chair back slightly and eases a leg out from under the table. “Let’s start with the coup.”

  Rafferty says, “You’re kidding.”

  “No. It’s a good starting point. And it’ll suggest the kind of weight you’re up against.”

  “Why? What does this little whirlwind of stupidity have to do with who governs the country?”

  “Everything,” Arthit says. “Okay. Here’s the dummy’s guide to the coup. Point One: Thaksin Shinawatra, a rich guy but not really a member of the traditional power elite, gets himself elected prime minister by purchasing the votes of a group of people who have never really turned out for an election before. The poor of the northeast.”

  “Rose’s people,” Rafferty says. “The ones she says are supposed to go where they’re told and stay where they’re put.”

  “The least powerful people in Thailand. And so what if Thaksin paid for some of their votes? What mattered was that we had the first prime minister in the history of the country who was voted in by the
poor.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Well, that development didn’t sit well with the people who have been in charge forever. They wanted to get rid of Shinawatra, and luckily for them he got caught apparently cheating the country, ducking millions in income tax, and they saw their chance. Bang, a military coup; the army overthrew him and set up a new government.”

  “And it was the Marx Brothers.”

  “Yes. But it represented the old guard, so the folks who are traditionally in charge were comfortable with it.” Arthit clanks the inverted cup against the saucer a couple of times to get the attention of the ethereal, almost transparent youth behind the counter, who is devoting his entire being to getting his bangs to fall across his forehead at a forty-five-degree angle. The boy locates the noise, registers the police uniform, and gets up. “So you’ve got a government of generals, and they can barely figure out which shoe to put on first.”

  The boy with the bangs says, “Yes, sir?”

  “Some sort of pastry with chocolate in it. And fill this.” The boy takes the cup and fades. “And the generals hold an election, and guess what—the peasants vote Thaksin’s friends back in.”

  Rafferty says, “What a surprise.”

  “It was to the power elite. The second prime minister in a row, voted in by poor people. The old guard is flabbergasted. They feel like they went to a party and while they were out, the furniture took a vote to change the locks. Suddenly they see themselves standing on the doorstep, trying to get their keys to work.”

  A chocolate eclair appears in front of Arthit, followed by a napkin, a fork and a knife, a full cup, and a discreet retreat.

  “And okay, the new prime minister, the one the poor elected, breaks some obscure rule and appears on a cooking show because he likes to cook, and the powers behind the scenes are shocked, do you hear, shocked that he’d accept a couple thousand dollars U.S. to make an omelet on TV. So they kick him out. Only in Thailand could a prime minister be overthrown for the way he handles a spatula. But of course that’s not what it’s about, is it?”

  “No,” Rafferty says. “It’s about poor people having political power.”

  “That’s it exactly. Something fundamental has changed. Poor people have learned that their votes count. This is new in Thai politics, and it terrifies some very powerful people, all of them pale-skinned, most of them Thai-Chinese. Some of the old-power families have been in charge for generations, since Bangkok was built more than two hundred years ago. And they’ve gotten amazingly rich. Billions of dollars, Poke. Year after year, billions of dollars. They dip their scoops everywhere: the national budget, the banks, the corporations, the army, the police—you name it. All of it based on the assumption that they’ll hold power forever, which always looked like a good bet. But now the foundation is suddenly shaky. The ground they built on could be turning to water.”

  “And this has what to do with me?”

  Arthit empties the cream container into his coffee. “To bring you up-to-date, since you don’t read the papers. The elected party put up yet another prime minister, and the elite went on a rampage. Formed a group with Democracy in the name, which is kind of amusing since they want a mostly appointed government. So they demonstrated, took over the airports, and finally got some people in the Assembly to change sides so they could put one of their own in.”

  “I actually do remember that.”

  “So nothing is resolved. Nobody thinks the current situation is stable. Here’s the point, Poke. Shinawatra mobilized the poor, but he was never one of them. He was never Isaan. He’s Thai-Chinese. But Pan was poor. Pan is Isaan. Look at the way he’s lived, Poke. He never stops reminding people where he came from. He gives constantly. He’s dark-skinned. The poor liked the former prime minister, but—what did Rose say about Pan?”

  “She worships him.”

  “Then let me ask you a question. Given everything that’s happened in the past few years, if Pan suddenly decided he wanted political power, how much do you think he could get?”

  “If he lived through the election,” Rafferty says, “as much as he wants.”

  “And how much power would be lined up against him?”

  Rafferty turns to look out through the window at the darkening street. “Pretty much all of it.”

  ON THE SIDEWALK outside the coffeehouse, Rafferty forces himself to bring it up. “Listen, I know you don’t want to discuss this—”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to,” Arthit says. His voice is remote, toneless. “But it won’t do any good. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “What does that mean? You’re her husband. You can talk to her. Get it on the table.”

  “It doesn’t belong on the table. She’ll lie to me. She’ll tell me she doesn’t like the pills, that they nauseate her or something. What am I going to do? Contradict her? I’d sit there nodding, hating myself for making her tell me a lie.” He passes the back of his hand over his forehead, erasing a sheen of sweat. “Because when you get right down to it, it’s actually none of my business, is it? What could be more personal than the decision to stop living? Is there any action that belongs more completely to the person who commits it? It’s Noi’s life. She shared it with me, but I’m not the one to tell her she has to continue to live it when it’s just one wave of pain after another.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Rafferty says. “It feels like I should be able to do something.”

  “And I’m grateful for the thought,” Arthit says. “But you’ve already got more than you can handle.”

  19

  Canaries

  Rose starts to laugh when she smells the pigpen.

  Her reaction startles Rafferty, and he’s further surprised to see a grin put dimples in Dr. Ravi’s face. The swan cart has carried them in grim silence across the grounds thus far, even when they drove past a dramatically lit Garden of Eden. Rose is in agony over what she’s wearing, a white, flowing, two-piece outfit she bought to meet Rafferty’s father in. He thinks she looks beautiful, but she behaves as though she’s wrapped in a rice bag.

  But the pigpen makes her laugh out loud.

  “How long?” she asks, wiping her eyes. “How long since he had it cleaned out?”

  “Weeks,” says Dr. Ravi. “Imagine their faces,” and the pair of them go off again. Dr. Ravi has a falsetto laugh that flutes along half an octave above Rose’s alto. Together they sound like a pair of mice on the keyboard of an organ.

  “Oh,” she says, half gasping for breath, her fingers splayed over her heart. “This is enough, Poke. You can take me home and my evening will be complete.”

  “No you can’t,” Dr. Ravi says. “There’s something you’ll want to see.”

  “What?”

  “A surprise. You’ll love it. I promise you, it’s going to be worth it.”

  Rose says, “I doubt it.” She looks down at herself and tugs at the sleeve of her blouse with an intensity of loathing that Rafferty can hardly comprehend. They are obviously deep in female territory.

  “Besides,” Dr. Ravi says with the secure air of someone who knows he’s got a first-class closer, “Khun Pan would kill me if I allowed someone as beautiful as you to leave without at least an introduction.”

  Rafferty says, “What do you mean, ‘at least’?”

  “He’s jealous?” Dr. Ravi asks.

  Rose drops her sleeve like a rag that’s been dipped into something disgusting and says, “He can’t believe his good fortune.”

  “I can’t either,” Dr. Ravi says.

  “Hey,” Rafferty says.

  “And here we are.” Dr. Ravi pulls the swan to the bottom of the broad marble steps leading up to the front porch. The double doors have been thrown wide, and even at this distance Rafferty can feel the cool air pouring out. A small orchestra is cricketing away inside, and he hears the usual party montage of conversation, laughter, and ice cubes hitting glass. Two women wearing, as even Rafferty can tell, several thousand dollars’ worth of clothing apie
ce float across the doorway on a cloud of privilege.

  “Absolutely not,” Rose says. “I can’t go in there.”

  “Oh, come on,” Rafferty says. “You look beautiful. And, Jesus, look at me.”

  “He’s right,” Dr. Ravi says. “You’ll be the most beautiful woman in the house.”

  “What I’ll be,” Rose says, “is a dark-skinned, big-footed peasant girl wearing a dust rag.” She puts a hand on Rafferty’s arm. “Poke. I want to go home.”

  “Well, well,” someone says from the top step. Rose turns at the sound of the voice, and her jaw very discreetly drops.

  “You are surprising,” Pan says to Rafferty. “You must have strengths you haven’t shown me. Goodness,” he says, turning to Rose. “What jeweled box does he keep you in?”

  Rose says, “Oh, my.” Her nails dig into Rafferty’s arm.

  “You said she was pretty,” Pan says, coming down the steps, “but you didn’t tell me she was stunning.” Halfway down, he tosses his partially smoked cigar to smolder on the marble. He wears bright yellow silk slacks with burgundy patent-leather shoes, lavender socks, and a shirt of a vibrating grass-snake green, the precise color to set off the pink lips. He looks, in all, like a newly successful pimp who hasn’t found the right haberdasher yet. Rafferty would bet everything he owns that the look is intentional, down to the last agonizing detail. “I have a show planned that will curl their hair,” Pan says to Rose, “but nothing compared to you. You’ll drive them completely crazy.” He puts a hand on Rose’s shoulder and studies her face as though he were memorizing her bone structure. “You’re Isaan, of course. Where?”

  Rose’s face is flushed with embarrassment. “About a hundred kilometers from where you were born.”

  “We were neighbors,” Pan says. “This farang is lucky that I never saw you when you were growing up. I’d have stayed in Isaan, and he’d never have laid eyes on you.”

  “Of course,” Rose says. “You’d be loafing barefoot on some hammock while I nag you to feed the chickens.”