Khin shook her head. ‘To really see Wieng Kum Kam you have to wear your uncynical X-ray glasses. You have to realize that some of these bricks were laid seven-hundred years earlier. The buildings were erected by slaves and soldiers in the days before back hoes and cranes. If you look at Wieng Kum Kam and see a building site then you have been deprived one of the most profound experiences of living in Chiang Mai. When they first discovered the ruins in 1978 it was all I could do not to sneak across the border and come to see them myself. I could hardly contain my excitement.’
She was still unable to contain her excitement. She waved her long fingers in front of her like the blades of Edward Scissorhands. Her voice rose to a pitch. Her noodles sat neglected. We watched her enthuse and I wondered when my own passion had died. I wondered when I’d last experienced a thrill at the thought of performing a task. When did all my bubbles go flat? I needed Khin around with her lust for knowledge and her far-fetched theories just to stop myself from dropping into a deep sleep and never waking up.
‘I’ll try harder next time,’ I said. ‘Sorry, Khin.’
Sissy had no patience with diversions. ‘So, Mangrai built this city under water?’
‘No, Sissy.’ Khin often addressed my brother as would a high school teacher speaking slowly for the benefit of the dumb kid in the back row. ‘When they built the city it was on dry ground. But every monsoon season the river rose higher until it reached the stage where the city was flooded for two or three months a year. Thailand has a history of establishing cities in totally inappropriate places. Bangkok itself is constantly investing in flood reparations. Chiang Mai’s own downtown spends several weeks under water every …’
‘Khin, the water city!’ Sissy snapped.
‘Yes,’ said Khin. ‘So my interpretation of the manuscripts is that, in his dotage, Mangrai spent more and more time in his original city and left the running of Chiang Mai and Lanna to the nobles. Lamphun was once a very religious, almost sacred part of the country. It is said the Lord Buddha spent much time there himself. And it was this fact that drew Buddhist scholars from near and far. Many Mangrai dynasty leaders dedicated their twilight years to the faith. Wieng Kum Kam was a small area no more than a square kilometer in its heyday, but it contained and was surrounded by some forty temples. I can visualize Mangrai there away from the chaos of the city, making his peace with the Lord ...’
‘Up to his knees in flood water,’ Sissy added.
‘Reading the scriptures, dictating his memoirs,’ Khin continued. ‘It would have been the ideal spot – the perfect setting for laying the souls of the Mangrai treasure to rest. I am certain that’s where it will be found.’
‘Based on reading about something that might have been the Sikanchai dagger in a place that might have been Wieng Kum Kam,’ I said.
‘Jimm, I have told you a number of times that history is not a science,’ she said. ‘It’s an interpretation of collaborating evidence. The war in Vietnam as written by the CIA and the Viet Khong, are two vastly different wars. A good historian is one who can sift through the propaganda and balderdash and be left with what can only be true. It’s an analysis of all the material available. I can look at an event that took place yesterday and observe that news reports vary from around the world depending on a country’s bias and political stance. The further back we travel in time, the more we are left with accounts of events that were written by scribes commissioned by the rulers of the time. Of course, every king will be bold and valiant if he’s writing his own history.
‘Then there were the monks,’ she continued. ‘They wrote their versions of events based on rumours and tittle-tattle from travelling merchants. Is it possible that everything written in and about the thirteenth century was a lie? Of course it is. There are those who believe everything they read. There are others who read two or three versions and draw a compromise. And there are historians who look at everything, analyze it, and refer to scientific and geographical data to eliminate the impossible. As Sherlock Holmes said, once the improbable has been eliminated, what you are left with, however illogical, has to be the truth. I am left with a dagger and a water city and I ask myself, why would the scribe bother to mention these two if they are irrelevant, and why would they survive numerous rewritings?’
After one more pause to be certain Khin had finished her lecture, we got to our feet and applauded. Khin harpooned a last knot of cold noodles and scooped them into her mouth without a nod of recognition.
‘Khin, you’re a one-off,’ I said. ‘Only you could support a closing argument with a quote from a fictional character created by a guy famous for hoaxing the scientific community.’
‘I have a knack.’
‘You sure do.’
‘Now, where am I sleeping?’ she asked.
‘Wait, what are you doing here?’ Sissy asked.
‘I am in transit,’ she said.’ I shall be relocating anon to Wieng Kum Kam. I wanted to update you on my progress and assure myself that you could survive here without my protection. One can only hunt treasure when one has peace of mind.’
Chapter 17
“This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.”
Watchmen (2009)
It was early. We’d become used to the 5AM bells that shook the monks from their heavenly slumber and sent them off on their rounds. We were immune to the hoarse braying of the cocks and the pops of the early bamboo bonfires. But it wasn’t long after these that I entered into an erotic dream about the raspy tongue of a rugged Burmese infantryman licking my thigh. I’d never been that fond of foot soldiers till then. I was awoken by a warm damp feeling in my lap where a rogue cat had chosen to end her night wanderings. I didn’t have the energy to swipe her off. It was then that Arny came banging on my door to tell me the shoot was off and we were free for another day.
Wieng Kum Kam was a difficult concept for a foreign visitor to take in. One would have to imagine a place like the ancient monoliths of Stonehenge in the south of England with no rules. Rather than the vast expanse of land surrounding the site, you have a housing estate. The backyards of the houses abut the stones. Perhaps one household extends from one side of an arch to the other and visitors have to ask permission from the householder to go through their back gate and take a look.
Such was the value of real estate close to Chiang Mai that the ruins coexisted with a clutter of private residences. Many treated the brick piles like garden ornaments. Children played soccer amid the foundations and stood up ancient steps as goal posts. Dogs sprawled on temple pediments giving no mind at all to the fact they’d been crafted seven hundred years earlier. A motorcycle leaned against a half-constructed stupa. Washing hung across the entrance to a temple. There was nothing grand about the place at all – narrow streets, small houses, compact sites. But still the tourist trade flourished in its way. Ponies and traps once popular in Lamphun and Lampang had relocated to Wieng Kum Kam. There was a standard tour from one abandoned dig to the next. The drivers had no English so the visitors were obliged to buy a photocopied map at the restaurant and attempt to match it to the sites. It was no easy task as the temples and chedi’s on the map were spectacular and complete whereas the remains were neither. There were stops for ice cream on the way and souvenirs. Who knew? Perhaps one of the pebbles for sale in the zip lock plastic bag was an actual relic from a kingdom of old Wieng Kum Kam.
To my eyes it was just depressing. We all sat in the hot Suzuki at the official starting point of the tour: me, Khin and Arny. We’d dropped off Sissy at Chiang Mai airport and he’d managed to get a late standby ticket on Nok Air to Bangkok. He’d handed the car keys to me and told me to keep the radiator topped up. Suzukis had a habit of overheating. I drove the twenty kilometres south to Wieng Kum Kam with my foot on the accelerator and my eye on the oil and temperature gauges.
The complex was laid out in front of us, a rubble field to me, an historical orgasm to Khin. As far as I was concerned the only element of wonder about the site w
as the remote possibility that under one of these suburban rockeries there might be a billion dollars worth of treasure. But with Khin as my guide I knew it was an ill-conceived fancy. There was no more chance of digging up sacks of gold in this graveyard of history than there was of finding King Mangrai alive in the rubble. Khin seemed capable of ignoring the march of the suburbs and notice only the debris of glories past. She was insistent on leading her guests on a walking tour.
Arny was both fascinated by Khin’s inexhaustible knowledge of Lanna history and stimulated by some unseen energy from the sites. To my frustration he seemed to see it all. Everything Khin described was real to him. There were no dressmaker’s stalls or noodle sellers. No internet cafes around him. Like Khin, he was able to visualize with his heart just as she had promised. I walked through the ancient city like an actor in a blue screen studio not knowing what wonders might be superimposed there. I tagged along behind, muttering curses under my breath. We sat on a concrete slab in front of Ma Gluer Temple. Arny looked up to where he visualized the tiered roof reflected gold against the sixteenth century sky. But at the end of a very long guided tour of bricks, I was ready to bury the Burmese and forget about the possibility of riches beyond my imagination.
‘Okay, ma’am,’ I said to Khin. ‘How can we get rid of you now?’
‘I think a visit to the palm leaf manuscripts in Lamphun would be in order,’ she said. ‘I need further clues to help me ascertain which of the Wieng Kum Kam temples held some special affection in the heart of King Mangrai. If he had a favourite, I am certain he would have erected a tope in its grounds. And that, my friends, is where he would have buried his treasure.’
Arny squeezed my arm. ‘Isn’t it thrilling?’
‘A buzz a minute, I said. ‘Tell me, Khin. Why the hell don’t you just hire yourself a metal detector and run it over all the sites here?’
Khin shook her head as if she’d given up hope of ever finding another human with common sense.
‘Don’t you suppose some half a million souvenir hunters might have already been here since this dig was unearthed?’ she said. ‘And let us analyze their effectiveness. Firstly, the detectors they use to hunt for coins on the beach in this country are probably effective to a depth of no more than eight inches. A national treasure would have been buried deep below the base of a stupa – perhaps six feet or more. Secondly, any valuables would have been caked in some type of solid material.’
‘They buried it in cement?’ I asked.
‘Some form of plaster, more like. Cement wasn’t invented until …’
‘I was kidding, Khin.’
‘Yes. Very amusing.’
‘Thanks. So when do you want to start the search?’
‘I always adhere to the maxim that there is no time like the present,’ she said. ‘I have my advance from the sadly deceased film director and my compensation from the Americans so there is nothing holding me back.’
‘Then I’ll take you down to Lamphun town and dump you there,’ I said.
‘Too kind.’
Chapter 18
“Bad luck, I guess. It floats around. It's got to land on somebody.”
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
There was the smell of incense in Khin’s old Doi Suthep house early the next morning. It floated across from the grounds of Sri Soda Temple. That was a busy old temple at around 6AM. A whole legion of monks and novices shuffled their way down past the zoo on their alms route. It was the Buddhist equivalent of drive-in banking. Busy Chiang Mai’ans drove their cars to the fitness park and waited beside the road for a chain of saffron that didn’t exceed the number of food portions they had in the trunk of the car. They’d hop out, fill the alms bowls, get blessed and be back home in time to catch the seven-o’clock news bulletin. For those who didn’t have the time to prepare any food, there were roadside monk takeaways available for a small fee. You could even hire someone to donate the alms for you and stay in bed. Buddhism was nothing if not accommodating.
‘Good news,’ said Arny, again waking me from a deep sleep. ‘The smoke’s cleared enough to shoot. They’re starting at noon. They need both of us.’
‘Too bad’ I said. ‘Hey! Do they pay for days off?’
‘Sure they do.’
‘So can’t we stay in bed?’
It was the clearest day yet at the shoot sight. The locals told them it hadn’t exactly been a gale that blew the smoke away, more a kind of draft. It wasn’t even strong enough to get tinkles out of a wind chime. But it had sufficient oomph to lean on the smoke and move it along. OB decided to film one of the major scenes while they could still see each other. It was the great confrontation from the point of view of the good guys. The extras were decked out in yellow, not because it had much bearing on allegiances in the 16th century but because it looked good on screen. When they turned Burmese in a few days, the extras would be in red.
One of two problems OB encountered that day was getting all the extras to run in the same direction at the same time. For some reason they found it difficult to retreat or attack as one. They advanced at a walk with no problem but when it came to running, some just turned tail and fled. Perhaps it was in their DNA. It was something OB hoped would be sorted out over time.
The other problem they had that day was Dan Jensen deciding he wanted Tony, his pet shi tzu, to have a role in the film. And to complicate matters, as if that wasn’t complicated enough, he wanted him in the battle scene. OB pointed out that sixteenth century generals rarely went off to war with their lap dogs at their side. Jensen got into a sulk, threatened to walk and left OB no choice but to conjure up another impromptu scene - Tony snatched from the path of a raging bull elephant at the last second. It was dramatic and emotional and would be on the cutting room floor as soon as OB could find the scissors. It all wasted another hour but still they might have got the day’s shoot in the bank before sundown if only they hadn’t experienced problems with two of the main cameras.
The technicians couldn’t work out the glitch. They’d start filming a scene and the things would freeze up; both of them, simultaneously. It was as if something about the temperature or the humidity was clogging up the works. Someone suggested it could be the dust in the atmosphere, but these were six-hundred-thousand dollar cameras. They’d filmed in sandstorms in the middle of the desert. Nobody could understand how a little air dust could shut them down.
OB had worked on projects like this before – hexed movies. The line director and producers would follow him around the set reminding him how far over budget they were going.
‘Don’t tell me. Tell God,’ he’d say.
Once the gremlins were out of their box he knew the timetable was doomed and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. There were directors who’d hit the cast and crew over the head with crow bars if things stopped running smoothly. But this was OB. He’d been around the block twice and been mugged a few times on the way. He was past caring now. He didn’t hear the whining. He had enough money and enough success. He had nothing to prove. He just loved making magic with a camera. He’d do it for nothing. And once the day was over and he’d gone through the rushes he didn’t want to go to meetings with money guys and defend himself. Money guys could always find more money and there’d never be enough profits.
All he wanted at the end of a work day was to sit, have a little drink or a little smoke and talk shit. Perhaps that was why he was so easily sold on my idea. The cameras had jammed. They’d ordered replacements from Bangkok. We were all sitting around hoping that repeatedly prodding the same button might bring the machines back to life. OB had seen me sitting on an earthen rampart reading. He’d come over to join me. I was flattered he remembered me.
‘How you doing, Jimm?’ he asked.
‘Pretty good.’
‘How’s the book?’
‘Gory. The history of Fang. Thai Tourism Authority writers have a way of glamorizing drugs and death.’
‘You do any writing yourself
?’
‘Nah,’ I said. I hadn’t told him I was there as a reporter. Thought it would be better kept to myself.
‘I made the mistake of learning to read before I learned to write. Since then I’ve had no choice but to compare myself to others. I’ve never worked out how good writers make it all look so easy. I’m a reader and proud of it.’
‘I hear you’ve found a new place to stay,’ he said.
‘Yeah. It’s heaven. On the river. No neighbours. All modern conveniences. Six bedrooms with on-suites. AC in all of them. Scant Swiss furnishings. Stocked booze cabinet.’
‘You sound like you’re selling it.’
‘I’m looking for housemates. Know anyone? There’s just me and my brothers in there. We could use some company. We need cheering up.’
‘We’re all a bit down after a day like this.’
‘Yeah, I saw you rescue the ugly Chinese dog from the jaws of death. I think it’ll make the movie. It could be to Siam what the shower scene was to Psycho. I don’t know how you do it.’
‘Rescue dogs?’
‘Juggle all the egos. I mean, who is this guy? He gets known on some TV show and suddenly he thinks he’s Richard Burton. He goes around with his frigging entourage holding everyone to ransom. Give me a break.’
OB laughed.
‘The glamour only affects a small percentage of them, Jimm. And, you’ll be pleased to know they’re the ones that land with the biggest bump when it’s all over.’
We sat smiling in silence for a while looking around at the expanse of extras in their cross-legged circles playing cards, eating, a game of rattan ball here, a soccer match there. They were happy – getting paid to do nothing. Who wouldn’t be? Even the elephants ripping vegetation from the hillsides seemed content.
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