By then I was aware of eyes. At first count I made out six belonging to camouflaged gardeners in army surplus, armed with hoses and hoes but merely standing around like extras. Two more eyes were looking at me from an upstairs balcony. These, I assumed, belonged to the man I’d come to see, Sugit Suttirat. They were set deep in a piggy little head on top of a beefy body. It was like looking up at the underbelly of a turtle except this particular turtle was wearing a Kim II Sung special safari suit and a baseball cap. I didn’t know whether he’d come to the balcony specifically to meet me or whether he’d been there all day practicing his false-teethy smile and his air-calculator finger wave. I’d phoned ahead, of course. “Freelance journalist doing follow-up stories on memorable politicians.”
I couldn’t have been accepted any more warmly if I’d arrived naked on a mattress of thousand-baht notes.
“Nong Jimm?” he called.
Nong was designed to rub you up the wrong way if you weren’t an actual younger relative. You used it on waiters and cleaners and street children so it really put you in a place you didn’t want to be. But to a man of his standing it meant nothing at all.
“Tan Sugit,” I squealed.
Tan was top-end suck-up. As far from nong as Klong Toey slum was from the Ginza. Once I’d jumped through all those superfluous honorific hoops and clambered over the ice-breaking debris, I was beside him on a vast brown leather couch in his living room. From this close I could see that Tan Sugit had been worked over by a plastic surgeon or two. He was able to move his mouth but, north of his neck, that was pretty much it. His beady eyes didn’t blink and his cheeks didn’t billow when he smiled. He was in a sort of facial truss.
My old faithful tape recorder sat between us. I could have gone the digital route but I enjoyed watching the tape rotate. I tested it; “One-two, one two,” in English to establish my international credentials, then launched into the interview. My intention was not to head straight into the ‘Did you murder two hippies and bury them because they threatened to expose your criminal activities?’ question. That could come later. This was more a get-to-know-you session. As an almost award-winning journalist I had to remain impartial and talk to him as if he’d been born of human parents rather than eels. As a member of the press you remained passive and talked to your interviewee without allowing yourself to imagine feeding the tail of his navy blue safari suit into the jaws of the ice crusher at the fish factory. You are a professional.
Throughout the interview, as I studied him, the question ‘How does a short and overweight person, obviously incapable of looking after himself with his fists, get to be an influential figure?’ kept arising. The answer, as always, was ‘money’. He stank of it. My brief run through his early years had arrived in Surat in 1978. I looked pointedly at my clipboard.
“I believe at the end of the nineteen seventies you were involved in the rental car business,” I said. It was just another in my list of questions and I didn’t put a great deal of emphasis into it. His smile stretched to its limit. I was afraid it might crack a seam all the way up the sides of his face and across his bald head. I’d be a witness to his face falling off. But it held.
“I don’t know where you heard that one,” he said. “I was involved in a number of ground-breaking ventures back then but car hire wasn’t one of them.”
An overweight woman in her fifties with short cropped hair dyed crimson arrived with coffee on a tray. She was dressed all in white like a late-starting Judo student with no belt to her name. He ignored her so I knew she was either a maid or a mistress. A wife he’d be obliged to introduce.
“Really?” I asked.
“I think I should know.”
I flipped back to the previous page of my clip file.
“It says here that there was a disturbing incident in nineteen seventy-eight when allegations were made that your…company had been accused of stealing rental cars. My records tell me you spent some time in prison.”
He laughed again, or, at least, his mouth did. As there were no tics or flickers to be found on his face I couldn’t look for indications of guilt.
“Nong,” he said in his deep baritone, “with a man of my standing, it’s only to be expected there’ll be envious individuals trying to pull you down. There’s a lot at stake. When you have an honest man at the helm, the criminal classes see him as a threat to their well-being. A man who cannot be corrupted or bribed is always going to be a target.”
“So you weren’t ever arrested?”
“Of course not.”
Ooh, he was smooth. The lie was so deft I felt certain a polygraph needle wouldn’t have flickered through the whole performance. A politician if ever I saw one. He glanced at his watch and I could tell he was becoming irritated by the direction in which the interview had headed. So, I fed him a few more scraps of ego fodder to get him back on track. He was chuffing along nicely again with all the aplomb of an elected official, so I chanced throwing another metal bar across the rails.
“So, we come to your relationship with the Chainawat family in Ranong,” I said casually.
Of course, I had no idea whether there was such a relationship but it was worth a try.
“Where are you getting all this background information from, exactly?” he asked sternly.
“Oh, you know, public records, old news archives, the Internet. I was even discussing you with the provincial governor on the telephone a few weeks ago. He was the one who suggested I write a feature on you. You’re really a local celebrity so it’s thrilling for me to be here in person. I actually went to see the Chainawats on another matter and even they mentioned you.”
“They did, did they?”
I had him. His teeth had been exposed to the air for too long and they’d stuck to the inside of his lips. My tentative dig had hit a pipe and caused a sudden charisma leak. There was something. I was prepared to leave it at that and go on to a different topic but he’d switched to slow advance.
“What exactly did she say?” he asked.
“Who?”
“The…Madame Chainawat.”
“Well, actually, we were discussing land. There’s a plot in Ny Kow that my family’s interested in procuring. We have a number of projects on the drawing board, hotels, you know, study camps for university students, cattle ranches, erm…”
I was struggling. I needed a few seconds to think of why on earth wicked old lady Chainawat might have mentioned the eel to me.
“…paintball courses, that kind of thing,” I continued. “Mrs. Chainawat said if I needed to know anything about land in that area, Nong Sugit was the man to ask.”
Whew! I thought the Nong was a nice touch.
“That’s how she put it?”
“Pretty close.”
“Nong Jimm,” he said, after a sip from a coffee cup long empty, “there are a large number of good, respectable Chinese families such as that of my ancestors: families who only have the future of our great kingdom in their hearts. Then, there are people like the Chainawats. Be very wary about doing any business with their sort and certainly don’t believe anything they tell you.”
With that, we were suddenly at the end of our interview. The ex-minister was on his feet and hustling me to the door.
“Would you mind if I scheduled another session with you?” I asked. “I’d like to get on to your years in government and perhaps take a few pictures. Matichon Weekly news magazine wants to make it a two-page spread.”
“Of course, of course,” he said, still prodding me onward. “Only too pleased to speak with the press.”
“When can…?”
But he’d turned and was back in the shadows of his house, leaving me in the sunshine of the front step surrounded by three or perhaps four camouflaged gardeners.
Twelve
“We must all hear the universal call to like your neighbor just like you like to be liked yourself.”
—GEORGE W. BUSH, AS QUOTED IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES, JANUARY 14, 2000
; You know how it is when the chicken manure man comes by with his truck and, instead of placing the dung in an orderly fashion twenty centimeters around the trunk of the palms as is de rigueur, he dumps it all on top of your best watermelon and drives off? One great mountain of dung. And all the chickens in the yard are looking at this pile and wondering why you’d pay for it when they could have produced it for nothing, eventually – not a mountain exactly but certainly a creditable amount. “Aren’t you pleased with our work?” they’d say.
You don’t know how it is? Well then you wouldn’t know how I was feeling when I finally got back to the resort that evening realizing I still had dinner to cook. I was like that watermelon, feeling claustrophobic and damp and dungy. I needed time to spread some of the manure around. A little bit of breathing space. But Mair, in one of her billion customer-free moments, strolled over to me in the kitchen.
“Ed…” she began.
“Mair, can we not talk about Ed for once?”
“All right. He said he’d be back at eight and he has something to say.”
“Thanks. Look, Mair. I’m running a bit late. Can you peel the carrots for me?”
“Oh, child. If only I could. But somebody has to watch the shop.”
I felt my cool pop like a tendon.
“You get three-point-seven customers a day,” I said. “They spend, on average, twenty-seven baht. Our biggest sales are bottled water, ice, individual cigarettes and garlic. At this rate, in twenty-three years we can afford a wind chime to hang in front of the shop. We’re surviving on what’s left of the sale of our place in Chiang Mai, and at the speed with which we’re spending, that should all be gone by the new year. Watching the shop isn’t going to put a meal on the table. Peeling carrots just might.”
She did her Titanic smile and I knew I’d got through to her. She picked up a carrot and started to eat it.
“The skin of a carrot contains most of its goodness, you know?” she said.
I upended the bowl of unpeeled carrots into the pot of boiling water and probably deserved the scalding splash on my cheek.
“There,” I said. “Goodness.”
“Did I mention that Ed would be stopping by at eight?” she asked.
“No, you didn’t.”
“He will.”
She turned and headed back to the shop.
♦
It was seven thirty. Ed, if he actually came, would be here in half an hour. I had to admire his persistence. He was a nice young lad, obviously enthralled by the exotic nature of our family. It had nothing to do with romance. Not really. He’d heard about us city girls and how loose our morals were. He was jumbling love and lust in his country boy mind. It wouldn’t take long to frighten him off. I’d suggest we become friends. He’d agree but soon tire of that sort of relationship and head off to the Pepsi karaoke beyond the bridge and work it all out of his system.
I imagined the fellows down here would prefer a more traditional mate than someone like me. It’s evident from the almost completely flat back tires of motorcycles I see passing that they like their women meaty. Wide and solid as boulders. I’d put my life savings on a Maprao ladies tug-of-war team. So, although my broad hip line shouldn’t be a hindrance for me, I’d be hard pressed to find anything in common with a local man. Yes I like spicy food but I prefer a good slice of pizza. What good would pillow talk be with half the night spent with your nose in the dictionary? And what kind of southern wife would I be if I couldn’t fix nets or trim palm trees with one of those chisel thingies? No, Ed the grass man, aka Ed the carpenter, would be very disappointed if I ever gave him the opportunity to get to know me.
I’d showered and put on my most matronly white blouse even though it did leave my shoulders bare. I’d compensated for this inadvertent titillation by putting on a full-length batik sarong with fish pictures on it. It didn’t even provide a glimpse of ankle. I’d gelled my hair back but only because there was a stray breeze from the Gulf and my untidy locks had been blowing in my eyes. The red lipgloss was in lieu of the lip salve which I hadn’t been able to find.
I sat on a deckchair on the sand with Gogo at my feet and a glass of Romanian red on my lap. We’d bought twelve cases, ten bottles in each, from Chiang Mai but hadn’t found anyone with the sophistication to sample them. It wasn’t any kind of a brew to write home about but I doubt brand identity was the reason the bottles remained untouched on the top shelf. We weren’t living in Paris. Since we’d arrived, I’d taken it upon myself to work my way through the stock to clear up that shelf for sardines. I had one case to go. The bottle and one spare glass sat beneath my seat. I mean, it would have been rude to drink alone and not offer. He’d accept, of course, sip at his drink, say it was delicious, and leave nine-tenths of it behind.
I heard footsteps along the sand and stared moodily at the shimmering boat lamps strung out across the horizon.
“First sign of alcoholism.”
I turned my head to see Granddad Jah standing black against the light from the kitchen with his hands on his waist. He looked like a bulimic superhero.
“It’s late, Granddad. You should be in bed.”
“It’s half past seven.”
“You can never have too much sleep.”
“You do know I drove the motorcycle all the way to Surat for you this morning?”
“Yes. You want me to reimburse you for the petrol?”
“No, I want you to have the decency to keep me informed of ongoing inquiries.”
“What makes you think I’m not?”
“I saw you.”
“Saw me do what?”
“Go into that place.”
“What pla – ? The foundation? You were in Lang Suan?”
“I was passing.”
“Passing? I had the truck. Arny had the motorcycle all afternoon. Lang Suan’s twenty kilometers away. How did you happen to be just passing?”
“There are motorcycle taxis. There are buses. I’m not completely senile, you know? I have been getting around for seventy-odd years without the benefit of an escort.”
I laughed.
“You were doing surveillance,” I said.
“I was not. I was just…interested. After all I’d heard that morning from Captain Waew I wanted to see for myself. It was curiosity. But I saw you waltz in there as calm as you like, and I tell you…”
I waited a long while but he didn’t finish the sentence. As time was pressing and I had a young man to let down gently, I ran through the content of the interview with Sugit as succinctly as I was able. Granddad Jah didn’t nod or make comments. He merely squatted on the sand in that rural toilet pose I’d always failed to get comfortable in. When the story was told, he stood without creaking and said:
“All right. I might have some free time this week if you need…”
He turned to walk away.
“Granddad?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I’m going to need a lot of help on this one.”
He looked back. Even with the moon masked by clouds I could see the glint of his false teeth by the lamps of the fishing boats. He grunted and walked back toward the lights of the huts.
According to my luminous pocket alarm clock it was seven fifty-five when my second visitor arrived. Punctuality wasn’t a word that found its way into the vocabulary of too many of my fellow countrymen so I was impressed.
“Koon Jimm,” I heard and paused to study one or two more boats before looking back over my shoulder. Ed was standing behind me. He was wearing a white silk shirt, local style, and shiny black fisherman’s trousers. There was something heroic about the way he looked. Missing only a scabbard in his belt, I thought. Even his mustache fitted the costume.
“Ed, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yes.”
He walked down the sand and stood beside my deck-chair, breathing in the salt on the sea breeze with one healthy gulp. From where I sat he seemed every bit as tall as the coconut palms, every bit as upright and res
ilient.
“How did you know where to find me?” I asked.
“Looks like someone turned one of the table lights to face this direction,” he said. “I could see you a hundred meters away.”
“Well, that was a bit of luck, wasn’t it?” I said. “I usually sit here in the dark of an evening and disappear into my thoughts. I’m having a glass of wine. Would you like one?”
“Thank you,” he said. “I don’t drink.”
“Good for you. I have a glass rarely. It stimulates my imagination. Please sit down.”
There was only the sand but he found a spot two meters from my seat and folded himself down onto it. To my utter surprise, Gogo got to her feet and waddled over to him as if they’d been wagging buddies for years. He caressed her with one of his big hands and she rolled over to show him her belly. Her underside had always been taboo. Not even Mair got to touch it, but there was the grass man fondling her nipples with impunity.
“She’s skinny,” he said.
“She has a condition. She can’t digest her food. It passes right through her.”
“Has she been done yet?”
“Done?”
“Her tubes tied.”
“Oh, no.”
“She’s about five, six months old. She could come on heat any time soon. In the condition she’s in, one rooting from the local studs could kill her. I’d get her to the vet sooner rather than later. Get her tubes tied and it might help to settle her insides down too. Somboon’s a cow specialist but he’s good when it comes to de-sexing.”
That was quite a recommendation. Not once had he looked at me. His gaze alternated between the boats and Gogo’s belly. I surreptitiously emptied my wine out onto the sand beside the chair and stowed the glass.
“You seem to know a lot about dogs,” I said.
“We’ve had I don’t know how many over the years. You get to know what works for them.”
Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat Page 19