The guard’s face turned to horror. We both bent over the railing to look. The Rolex had gone to that great Time Keeper in the sky, it’s splintered remains glistening in the sun.
“Oops…”
Furious, the guard grabbed my throat. He’d have killed me if Noriko and Johanna hadn’t run up and intervened.
···
The three of us sat around a small table in the now empty banquet room sipping tea from fancy China cups with lotus flowers painted on them.
“Johanna took the pictures for the slide show,” Noriko said, explaining Johanna’s presence. “You know she’s a photographer and my best friend. So of course…”
I said, “It’s just that I’m so surprised to see you both together. I thought I’d never see either of you again. I still can’t believe it. When I saw your picture in the paper, Noriko, I just had to see you.”
The girls laughed at my gushing, but I didn’t care. The emotional stress I had been under for the past two days was such that my joy and relief at seeing their friendly faces pushed me to the verge of tears.
Noriko said, “I’m flattered you went to so much trouble to see me.”
“It was very daring what you pulled out there,” Johanna added.
They were both smiling, and what’s more, they seemed genuinely happy to see me. I thought: My God, you girls have no idea the length of stupidity I’d go through to be with you.
“There was nothing daring about it,” I said. “I’m running on high octane desperation right now, that’s all.”
“What’s wrong, Guy?” Johanna asked.
Noriko said, “Is something the matter?”
As I looked up from my cup, a fat tear rolled down my cheek and plopped into my tea.
Guilt Trip
I had never been on a train before either. The plane ride to Thailand was a kick, but it didn’t compare to the thrill I felt riding that train. In a plane, everything is sterile and uniform and cramped. On my train I could open the large windows, pelt all my senses, and breathe in the land I was hurtling through. I loved the sound the train made too. It wasn’t the hoarse roar of a jet engine, but a playful clickety-clack-clickety-clack. It was very romantic, and all the more so because of my two traveling companions, Noriko and Johanna.
We almost didn’t make it aboard. We had to make a few stops on the way to the station, and of course the traffic was awful. But we slid into our seats with sixty seconds to spare.
Shortly after departure we ordered dinner. A table was attached to the wall of the train so it was like sitting in a booth at a coffee shop. I sat on one side and Noriko and Johanna faced me on the other. We clinked beer cans and Noriko said, “Kampai!” The girls had changed out of their formal wear and were dressed in shorts, T-shirts, and tennis shoes. Noriko wore white shorts and a red top; Johanna, khaki shorts and a black top. None of it was designer. They both looked fresh and pretty.
I trembled with delight at my good fortune. How lucky I was that Noriko and Johanna were in Bangkok, and that they were both headed on to Chaing Mai. They didn’t plan on going to Chaing Mai until the following day, and they intended to fly, but when I told them my story they changed their plans. I didn’t know what help they could really be, and I warned them that it might be a little dangerous. Noriko, however, reminded me of our conversation some five months back and asked me if I still meant what I had said about her counting on me if she ever needed my help. I answered, “Absolutely.”
“Then it’s got to work both ways, doesn’t it?” She said that she knew Chaing Mai well, had friends there, and that both she and Johanna spoke Thai. I was just glad for the company.
Our car was only half full. All the other passengers were Thai, except for one man who boarded just after we did. He looked like one of those ex-marine types I mentioned. He had a butch haircut speckled with gray, and on his pockmarked face he wore a scraggly mustache. Large tattoos covered both arms. He sat down the aisle reading a newspaper and I caught him peering over the top of it at us a couple of times. No doubt he was attracted to my two traveling companions, but who could blame him. The ladies backs were to him and I didn’t think he could see much more than Johanna’s profile and her legs. That alone would have driven me nuts, and I’d have been craning my neck for the rest of the story.
“What happened to your eye, Guy?” Johanna asked.
“Oh, nothin’.”
“Looks like you got popped,” Noriko said.
“Yeah, well, if you must know, someone tried to mug me the other night.”
“Mugged?”
“Yeah, but I showed him.”
The girls looked at each other and snickered.
“What? You don’t believe me?”
“No,” Johanna laughed.
“I’m telling you,” I said. “It was late and I was on my way back to my guest house when this guy stepped out of the alley and tried to rob me. We scuffled, he got a lucky punch in, and then I kicked his ass.”
The girls laughed.
“Why don’t you believe me? I’m not as wimpy as you think.”
“We’re not calling you a wimp, Guy,” Johanna said.
“I’m not so sure.”
“It’s just that it’s hard to picture you in a fight,” Johanna continued. “I don’t think you’d hurt a fly.”
“I don’t hurt flies,” I said, enjoying the sound of my own bravado, “but I’d hurt a man if he tried to hurt me. Or,” I added, upping the ante, “any man who tried to hurt someone I cared about.” I glanced up and caught the ex-marine eavesdropping. He smirked. I looked away.
Our food arrived and we started eating. I asked Noriko how the benefit went and why she took such an interest in Thailand.
“Johanna and I have been coming here on and off for a long time, mainly to the rural north. We love it. We’re very close to a couple of small villages. They treat us like family. As their daughters we try to help them a little. But believe me, we’re no Mother Teresa.”
“Are there other countries where you do this kind of thing?”
“A few,” Noriko answered.
“You must have a lot of friends in high places,” I said.
“If you mean governments, no. Mostly enemies.”
“Huh?”
“It’s the countries and their people that interests us; not their governments, most all of which are corrupt and criminal. We like people, and their are certain causes we believe in. If we can, we try to help them.”
I looked at Johanna. She nodded her agreement.
“So you’re like your own United Nations?”
Johanna frowned, insulted. “Hardly. The UN is as corrupt and morally bankrupt as the majority of countries that make it up.”
“A couple of troublemakers, aren’t you?” I joked.
Johanna didn’t laugh along. “Only to those who think that government has all the answers. Inside every utopian ideologue is a despot just waiting to tyrannize you with his good intentions.”
“You know,” I said, “you two remind me of a couple of other women that I know.”
Johanna said, “I thought you didn’t know many women.”
“I don’t, but lately the ones I meet all tend to be kind of…curious.”
“Curious?” Noriko said.
“Maybe mysterious is a better word. You’re all kind of mysterious.”
“Noriko, I think Guy is flirting with us.”
“Are you flirting with us, Guy?” Noriko said coyly.
“No! … Should I be? Would it do me any good if I flirted with you?”
“You’re doing just fine,” Noriko said.
“Yeah?”
“We’re here, aren’t we?” Johanna said. “You don’t think we’d drop everything and head off on a train with just anybody, do you?”
“No, I don’t. But that’s what I can’t figure. I don’t know why you’re here, and I know you won’t give me a straight answer, just like Melody and Zeeva.”
“Who?”
&nbs
p; “The two curious and mysterious women I said you remind me of: Melody the Aussie terrorist and Zeeva the Israeli commando. They are the ones who got me mixed up in this business. Well, Melody, anyway. It’s really all her fault. But Zeeva, she knows something. I just never got the chance to find out. I hope she’s okay—”
Noriko waved her hand in my face. “W-w-wait,” she said. “You didn’t tell us everything back at the hotel, did you?”
I had been dreading this moment.
“I didn’t tell you the half of it,” I admitted contritely.
The girls exchanged chary looks. Johanna folded her arms across her chest and leaned back into her seat. “Begin,” she ordered.
The train steward came and cleared our table. I ordered another beer and told them the whole story—except for the part about my reckless adventures on Patphong Road. I was terrified of the disappointment that I might have seen in their eyes. They listened patiently and didn’t interrupt me. I finished the last of my beer with the end of my story.
“You lied to us, Guy,” Noriko said.
“No, I just left out a couple of little things. I—”
“I’m sure your sister would love knowing you consider her kidnapping ‘a little thing,’” Noriko said.
“Okay, okay. I lied. I told you I was desperate. I was afraid you wouldn’t help me if you knew—”
“That you were risking our lives?” Johanna finished.
“I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m sorry. I’m…sorry.”
The girls talked between themselves. They spoke in Japanese. They looked serious, but not as angry as I thought they were entitled to be. I, on the other hand, was raging inside. I was shocked that I was capable of such duplicity; disgusted by my selfishness and my cowardice.
The cockamamie story that I had concocted at the hotel was that Doreen had run off to Chaing Mai with an Italian stud-muffin and his buddies after we had had a big fight, and that I was going there to get her back. I didn’t mean any harm. But they were right. I had been willing to put their lives in danger. Again, I saw the mirror being held up to my face, revealing yet another ugly blemish.
Johanna said, “When were you going to tell us the truth?”
“I don’t know. But of course I had to, how else would we have been able to make a plan?”
“You have a plan?” Noriko asked.
“Not much of one, no.”
They exchanged more words in Japanese. I looked up and caught the ex-marine dude taking what I thought was an inordinate interest in what was going on at our table. Our eyes met and he casually looked away with the same smirking grin as before. Johanna noticed that I was distracted by something. She glanced behind, and frowned. She reported back to Noriko, again in Japanese.
“You girls must hate me now, huh?” I said.
“We’re going to help you, Guy,” Johanna said.
“Forget it. No way. It’s my problem.”
“I meant what I said earlier,” Noriko said.
“That’s big of you, but the circumstances were different then. I lied. You don’t owe me a damn thing.”
“You’re right,” she said, “but my promise wasn’t conditional.”
I didn’t know what to say. I looked at the two of them, trying to get a glimpse into the smoky mystery behind their eyes. They smiled reassuringly. “Thanks,” I said.
“Tell us what you were planning,” Johanna said.
“It’s not much, but…”
On the way to the Bangkok train station I insisted we stop at a stationery store. I said that I had lost my journal and felt naked without it. I also said that I wanted to pick up some paper and envelopes so that I could snail mail my grandparents. Without the girls knowing it I bought ten empty journals. I thought we could fill them with nonsense, and with the one authentic journal on top, pass off the bunch as the complete journals and exchange them for Doreen. This deception earned me another round of rolling eyeballs and disappointed shakes of the head.
“And our part?” Johanna asked.
“Well, one to help me fill in the books. Two, for one of you to make a distraction. The other would help with the get-a-way. You said you know the town and…”
Johanna said, “A little sketchy, don’t you think?”
“Like I said, I’m open to suggestions.”
Johanna took out pen and paper and drew a map of Chaing Mai station. Then the girls set about filling in the blanks to my plan, which were considerable.
After going over the details again, we each picked up an empty journal and began writing. It didn’t matter what we wrote. All we wanted to do was fill up the journals enough to pass a cursory inspection. For some three hours we scribbled fast and furious.
I wrote down whatever bubbled up from my brain, spume mostly. I wrote lyrics from songs that I knew, long lists of names and places and things; plots of television shows, movies, and books; old jokes, quotations and half-memorized poems, and ridiculous dialogues. I was amazed at how much garbage my mind contained. I thought that I could have gone on for weeks in this way, purging my brain of a lifetime’s worth of frothing banality.
We didn’t speak, but I heard numerous giggles. The girls wrote as hastily as I did, slapdash and full-tilt. I would have liked to have read what they wrote, but there wasn’t time. I bet I could have gotten a few insights into their characters.
We finished just as the steward came by to prepare our sleeping quarters. I thought it was clever how the seats folded out, and how in no time our car looked like a dormitory. We smiled at each other and shook the hurt from our wrists, proud of our accomplishments. Then we washed up and climbed into our bunks. Noriko slept above me and Johanna slept across the aisle on the lower bunk. We pulled our curtains closed and wished each other sweet dreams, just as if we were family.
I had hardly slept in three days, but I was too wired and worried to sleep. Something else kept me awake too—the journal Max had given me at the Hello Restaurant. The train was due to pull into Chaing Mai around eight in the morning when I would be handing it over to the kidnapper. I wouldn’t have another chance to read it. I turned on the tiny lamp inside my nook and opened the journal.
Fate Gets a Body
During the year that Anonymous Man had been with the partisans he saw their numbers dwindle to twenty-seven, half of whom died from malnutrition or illness. The war had been over for nearly a month before the news penetrated like a shaft of light into the shadows of the woods. There was no celebration.
The refugees emerged from the woods as if from a deep, dark cave, feeling as frightened and helpless as children. The cave, at least, had its parameters, and they were accustomed to the shadows on its walls, monstrous though they were. Outside, they felt naked and vulnerable; not knowing whom they could trust and fearing that there was little chance that anyone or anything from their previous lives had survived.
Having nowhere to go, Mr. A stuck with the partisans, who, like the Druids before them, he had come to think of as family. It wasn’t long before they realized that they weren’t alone in their misery. The countryside swarmed with refugees, and their little band got swept up into the multitude.
Barely alive, they stumbled into an American-run refugee camp. The camp was overcrowded and understaffed, but food and basic medical attention were available. Mr. A noted that when he went to war he was six-foot one and weighed 195 pounds; at the war’s end he weighed 145 pounds. The first time he passed a mirror in the medical hut he didn’t recognize himself.
In order to keep his true identity a secret and not risk arrest and court martial, Mr. A assumed a Polish identity like that of Chaim and the others. Hennes did the same. They stayed at the camp for four months.
Half the refugees at the camp were Jews, and Mr. A was surprised to learn that Chaim wasn’t the only one who was nursing a vision of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Zionism was like a fever that nearly all the Jews in the camp shared. When they weren’t talking about their misery, they talked about Palestine.
Chaim and a couple of others lectured daily on the philosophy of Zionism and began teaching Hebrew, which he said would be the state language.
Anonymous Man found their enthusiasm woefully amusing. When he looked around at the emaciated, threadbare, penniless souls and listened to them speak of creating, not just a home or a few villages, but a nation among nations, an entire country of their own in a place none of them had ever been before, he pitied them. They weren’t dreamers; they were crazy.
Still, when the time came, he stayed by the side of his quixotic friend Chaim, and marched with him on his way to Palestine. Others in their group insisted on returning to their homes first, to see if anyone in their families had survived. After many tears, the two groups separated and went their own ways. Though the war was officially over, the hatred and danger weren’t.
Hennes, who did not want to go back to Germany, headed towards Sweden where he had some distant relatives. He wrote to Mr. A many months later with the horrible news that his group had come under attack several times by Polish peasants who still blamed the Jews for their misery. Three of the group were brutally killed. Those who made it back to their homes found that nothing remained, neither their property nor their loved ones.
Hennes brought one homeless lad with him to Sweden, a thirteen-year-old boy named Jason. As for the others, they said that they were going to turn around and head towards Palestine, but they were so weary and broken, and the journey so long and treacherous, Hennes wrote sadly that he couldn’t imagine that they would get far.
Before Hennes and Anonymous Man had separated, the two of them and Chaim swore a curious oath:
It was Hennes’ idea. He made us promise that no matter what happened we had to stay in touch. At least once a year we had to write one another. He suggested every New Year’s because it would be easiest to remember. And then he made us swear to one more thing.
“It seems impossible now,” he said, “but I’m afraid we may one day forget what we have been through, what it has meant to us, and all the things we have talked about. I don’t know where we will end up or what the future holds for us, but let none of us ever become that which we now despise. You laugh at your friend, but let me tell you, we have never been saner than at this moment, and we may never see the world more clearly again. It is not penury or suffering that we should fear most, but the numbing effects of prosperity and comfort. I wish each of us great success, but not above our consciences. I propose that should one of us at any time feel that another of us has strayed too far from his conscience and lost the vision of the righteous and noble life we philosophized upon so many hungry and freezing nights together, he must send warning to the drifter that he is on a course to self-betrayal.”
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