The Deceivers

by Harold Robbins

  Taksin thought of himself as an artist, not a thief … though some might say that he was both an artist and a thief. He didn’t take money with sleight of hand like a pickpocket or with a gun like a robber, but by creating reproductions of great works of antiquity. Because of his incredible skills, more often than not the works were sold as bona fide antiquities.

  He didn’t consider his works fakes, nor thought of them as fraud when they were sold as antiquities. He created what he had the ability to craft and if others believed the pieces were something besides the works of Taksin of Bangkok … well, people could believe what they wanted. Besides, Taksin never got involved in selling his creations to collectors. He sold to dealers who in turn marked his pieces up a thousand percent and resold them.

  About thirty years old, he had been raised by Buddhist monks but left the order in his teens. He wasn’t certain of his exact age because he had been a foundling left on the steps of a temple. The monks gave him the name of a famed, eighteenth-century general king because he was found on the great man’s birthday.

  His talent for carving and sculpturing was recognized early. At first he made small wood objects that he “gave away” for no more than an extra bowl of rice because he wasn’t permitted to sell the pieces. From wood he graduated to carving soapstone for inexpensive tourist souvenirs. His early life was spent in a temple near the Cambodian border and he was drawn to Khmer art.

  When he was in his late teens, antique dealers noticed that Taksin’s inexpensive soapstone reproductions of Buddhist religious objects often looked as good as the authentic pieces he was copying. Dealers began having him make custom pieces from sandstone that they then passed off to buyers as authentic antiquities.

  He gave up his bright saffron robe and begging bowl for a more earthly existence reproducing works of art and experiencing a more worldly existence than his life in the temple.

  The progression from making souvenirs to making works of art was evolutionary and inevitable because Taksin was simply a genius. A Renaissance master for his own time and place, he possessed the eye, touch, and patience of Khmer masters dead a millennium.

  He began a work by buying a piece of sandstone. To make it appear authentically Khmer, rather than freshly quarried stone, he bought temple rubble—chunks of building material from Angkor and other Cambodian sites.

  Taksin didn’t know that sandstone had a “fingerprint” in that it could be tested for its mineral and chemical content to establish whether the stone actually came from the claimed antiquity site.

  He chose the temple rubble because in his own mind the stone from religious sites was imbued with a spirit that made his finished piece of art even more desirable. The debris was inexpensive and easy to obtain.

  Taksin worked his pieces with just a mallet and a variety of iron chisels. Dealers who wanted him to produce pieces quicker urged him to use some modern tools to speed up the process. Modern steel chisels had a different cutting edge than the iron ones used by Khmer craftsmen a thousand years ago; much sharper, they would have made his work easier and faster, but he insisted upon using iron ones, refusing to use steel even in the early shaping of the piece.

  Electric tools would have speeded up the work even more; it was common to use electric tools in the production of faked artifacts, with the telltale marks covered up by sanding and chiseling later. But Taksin made his pieces slowly and laboriously because he believed that was the only way he could really walk in the shoes of ancient craftsmen.

  Once he had the stone sculptured into the final shape, the last step was to re-create a realistic surface coating, the patina. This, again, was a step where fakes were frequently exposed. The surface coating that gave an authentic Khmer antiquity its aged appearance came from sun and rain, jungle foliage, dirt, river water, or whatever other environmental forces the piece had been subjected to since it had been created a thousand years before.

  It was easy to “age” the piece by creating a coating that made it look old. Every Thai artist had their own technique for aging, but just burying it in a muddy pig’s pen for a few months could give the piece an aged look. Bronze pieces especially “aged” well, adding centuries over a short period of time.

  To pass more than cursory scrutiny—simply having an aged look wasn’t good enough—the piece had to look exactly like artifacts from the site where it was supposed to have been obtained. More important, if it was to be sold at a high price, scientific tests would usually be done, so the corroded coating of the piece had to have a chemical fingerprint like those found at Cambodian antiquity sites.

  In creating the patina, Taksin again had acted intuitively rather than from knowledge of scientific tests. He chose only rubble that had not been fully buried, thus didn’t have an impact from leaves, tree roots, and organic matters contained in soil that would have made it easier for tests to determine exactly where the piece was supposed to have come from—and thus easier to expose as a fraud by comparing it to authentic pieces.

  After carefully removing the outer coating from other pieces of rubble, he liquefied the mixture and let the piece ferment in the concoction for months in a warm clay oven.

  Nothing was foolproof but each step he took made it more difficult for experts to detect that his works were fake.

  In Taksin’s mind, he wasn’t trying to fool anyone. He was simply re-creating the piece exactly like the masters of old had done.

  The most common “fingerprint” left by the master artists of antiquity was their workmanship. And Taksin had been kissed by the gods when it came to creating with stone. His work played well when put up against masterpieces of ancient Khmer art … and that was the most telling test of all and the most difficult for an artist to fake.

  Because he had a sense of his own worth and an ego, he “signed” each work with a mark that was visible only with a magnifying glass. The lopsided half-moon shape symbolized the object that had been most connected with him during his years as a monk: a begging bowl.

  He had progressed from a teenager creating for the tourist trade, to a young man making pieces for the art trade in antiquities. Now he had reached a higher dimension: fine art for the rich. Pieces so good they couldn’t be differentiated from genuine artifacts … and that sold for millions of dollars because they were “authentic.”

  A year ago he thought he had reached the height of success when he got a thousand American dollars for his pieces. But he transcended even that plateau when he was approached by Cambodians and offered twenty times that.

  Earlier in the day he finished a thousand-dollar piece and had delivered it to a dealer at the central market. It had been promised long ago and was the last one he would do at that price. Never again would he make what he had come to think of as “small pieces.” Now he would devote himself to “big pieces.” Not big in size, but in price.

  His change in life coincided with the city’s Songkran celebration, the water festival that was a time for cleansing and renewal. A friend, Phitsanu, was coming over so they could go out together to wash away his old life and bless the new, richer one he had embarked upon.

  * * *

  ENTERING THE TWO-ROOM hut that served as his home and workshop, Taksin hid in a secret hole in the floor less than half the money he received from the dealer. He kept out the rest for the night’s activities—it was going to be an expensive evening and he would have to pay for both Phitsanu and himself.

  After Phitsanu arrived, they drank a bottle of rice wine and then stood by the river in the dark and masturbated. They were going to be with prostitutes later, and prepped themselves so they would not ejaculate quickly when they were paying for sex. “More bang for the buck,” Taksin said, quoting a line from an American movie he’d seen.

  Afterward, they made their way through the playful, noisy, and ruckus crowds of the Songkran Festival.

  The rituals of the festival were observed by people bathing monks and religious objects and then each other. It went from a serious rite to fun as
people sprayed water on whoever they could. Water came flying from people on the street, passing cars and trucks, and from balconies overhead. Buckets and bowls of water, water balloons and water guns, and even an occasional garden hose was put into action.

  All of it was done with good humor—getting splashed was the objective, not something to avoid. The water renewed the spirit by washing away bad luck.

  Homes were cleaned thoroughly at festival time because it was believed that throwing away things that were old and useless kept them from bringing bad luck to the owner.

  Taksin and Phitsanu stopped at a street vendor’s cart for a meal of spicy squid on a stick and green curry chicken served on a banana leaf. They squatted behind a counter to eat in order to keep from being targets for water throwers.

  After eating, they went to a bar for the first step of Taksin’s celebration of his new life of affluence and satisfying his dreams and desires: a cobra-blood cocktail.

  The drinks were expensive. For the king cobra concoction Taksin would pay the equivalent of two hundred dollars each for him and his friend.

  Live snakes in glass cases lined a shelf behind the bar. Taksin and his friend didn’t just walk in and order the famed cocktails—there was a ritual to be observed. They sipped ordinary rice wine and looked over the snakes from their positions at the bar, evaluating their size and color, talking to other men who were also bellied up to the bar, getting the opinion of the bartender, as they debated which snake they would choose. It was not unlike selecting a lobster from a glass tank in a restaurant.

  The snake cocktail was prized among Thai men because it was believed to be an aphrodisiac that gave men powerful loins and made them irresistible lovers.

  The bar served other drinks that were reputed to increase a man’s sexual prowess—above the cages with live snakes to be used for blood cocktails were jars of rice wine flavored with Chinese herbs. Each jar contained a creature from the jungles of the country—coiled vipers, cobras, and green snakes, scorpions as long as a hand, the balls and penis of sheep and oxen.

  The creatures were pickled in the wine for several years before the concoction was considered aged enough to drink. No wine was served before its time …

  The wine didn’t absorb the poison of the snake, making the liquid drinkable—for those who could stomach it. And a surprising number of men were willing to drink anything to increase their sexual potency.

  When it came time to order, Taksin pointed out the snake he wanted. The bartender opened the lid and stuck a pair of metal clamps in the cage, seizing the snake just below its head. He raised its head out of the box with the clamps enough to grab it with his free hand. Bringing it to the bar, he slammed its head against the counter until the snake was dead.

  It wasn’t a technique that a bartender blotched more than once.

  Spreading the creature out with its pale belly up, the bartender slit it along the belly with a knife and drained the blood into a container. He poured rice wine with a high alcohol content into the container, then added the snake’s heart and other innards. He shook the whole batch up and used a strainer as he poured the liquid into a glass.

  The bartender set the glass in front of Taksin and tossed the meaty innards from the strainer into a pan to be heated and served as a side dish to the blood cocktail.

  Nervous but laughing at the egging on he was getting from his bar mates, Taksin got up the courage and jerked down the drink. The snake cocktail burned like liquid fire going down his throat.

  Phitsanu followed suit and downed his cocktail.

  A bit tipsy, Taksin and Phitsanu left for their next stop: a house of prostitution. They had not bothered to get condoms. The cobra cocktails were reputed not only to drive up their sexual performance, but to prevent AIDS.

  That medical fact was verified by the bartender and confirmed by a man at the bar who said it saved him twice from the dreaded disease.

  The district Taksin chose for their next adventure was a section popular with farangs—foreigners, mostly Americans, British, Canadians, Aussies, New Zealanders, and Japanese. Because of the tourist prices, locals—except for the very rich—avoided the entertainment centers that attracted foreigners.

  Taksin knew the girls would rather fuck foreigners because the tips were bigger. But the girls, in general, were well mannered, genteel creatures no matter who hired them—they were just a little more receptive if they knew they were being paid well. Taksin was generous at these times, reasoning that the more money he flashed, the more a girl would make him feel as if he were a prince among men …

  The two friends went to Soi Cowboy, “Cowboy Lane,” a short street with several dozen clubs that mostly catered to foreigners. He’d heard it was named after an American ex-GI who wore a cowboy hat and ran a bar in the area during the Vietnam War era.

  The street was a circus—elephant rides, handlers selling elephant food to tourists, street girls, pickpockets, and kids of all sizes and shapes, some of them learning to be a pickpocket. A neon jungle, it was much smaller but even flashier than the pictures he’d seen of the Las Vegas Strip.

  They walked by a café with an outside patio that featured the traditional form of Thai fighting called Muay Thai in which eight human “weapons”—hands, elbows, knees, and feet—were used.

  Called the Science of Eight Limbs, there were eight different ways to strike as opposed to the Western tradition of using two fists in a boxing ring and the four points—two fists, two feet—in most martial arts.

  Taksin enjoyed watching the fights, but not tonight, and not at tourist prices.

  As they went by a nightclub that offered Ping-Pong shows—women shooting Ping-Pong balls from most orifices of their bodies, including the one between their legs—Phitsanu grabbed his arm.

  “I want to see them do it.”

  Taksin shook off the grip and kept going. “For tourists.”

  Men lured in by the macabre act often found their drink bill surprisingly more than they expected … and bouncers who were not friendly to those who objected too loudly.

  Taksin led his friend to a club where he’d paid for sex before. His passion was for a katoey, a male to female transgender that was commonly called a ladyboy. Ladyboys ranged from simply cross-dressers to those who were completely castrated and had reconstructive sex organ surgery and hormone treatments.

  The preference for men to be women was not considered an evil. Thais believed that being a ladyboy was the person’s karmic destiny and that they were helpless to alter it.

  Some faithful Buddhists went further and believed that being a ladyboy was the result of wrongdoing in a past life, thus the person was not responsible for his present sexual preference. Either way, there was a great deal of tolerance even among people who otherwise rejected sexual deviation.

  Taksin’s own personal choice for sex was a male to female transgender who had been physically altered and now appeared completely female. Perhaps his upbringing and training as a monk had left him more comfortable around men, yet still with the sexual desire for a woman …

  He had first encountered his ladyboy in a blow job club in the Nana district, another red-light venue in the city. The ladyboy had moved over to Soi Cowboy when a go-go bar opened up that offered the services of katoeys exclusively.

  Taksin paid an admission price at the door that included a drink and entered. Ladyboys who had already been selected by customers were at tables. Six who were waiting to be selected held on to aluminum poles as they stood on top of the bar counter.

  The dress code ranged from the skimpiest thongs to more modest shorts and bras. Spiked heels and cowboy boots were the favored footwear. For the ones wearing thongs, it was easy for a customer to tell which ones hadn’t been altered by looking for a bulge in the crotch.

  Taksin spotted his ladyboy on the bar counter and signaled her. She wore a red thong, a glittering red bra, and shiny red patent leather cowboy boots.

  Her long black hair had a sheen and glittering st
ars, her eyebrows sketched high above their natural location had a heavy dose of blue eye shadow. Ruby red lipstick and the tattoo of a green parrot on her right shoulder completed the bar-girl ensemble.

  She joined Taksin after he argued with a bartender over the amount of the “bar fine” before agreeing to pay the Thai baht equivalent of fourteen dollars. The payment got him two hours with the ladyboy. He would have to “tip” the ladyboy an equal amount. He paid the same amount for his friend’s selection.

  The ladyboys slipped on simple pullover dresses and followed the two men outside.

  Keenly aware that every second wasted was a moment of pleasure lost with the ladyboy, Taksin hurried the group to the hotel where he had stopped earlier to arrange for rooms.

  Once inside the room, Taksin became clumsy and nervous as he undressed. This was only the third time he had had sex and each time was with this ladyboy. Raised by monks, he knew little about women because monks were more insulated from women than even religious figures in the West. Women were discouraged to physically touch a monk. If a woman wanted to give something to a monk, she was to lay it within his reach.

  All he knew about sex with a woman was to stick his penis in and pump. He’d heard that prostitutes were dry but he didn’t know why. He followed the advice of friends and brought oil to rub on the head of his penis. He used no protection except the cobra blood drink to protect him from diseases and the ladyboy didn’t insist upon any. Both had a sense of fatalism that certain things were out of the hands of mere mortals.

  After the ladyboy stripped in front of him, Taksin cautiously reached out and touched her small breasts. As always, he was both extra courteous to women and curious about the female form.

  “Lie down,” the ladyboy told him.

  After checking his penis for sores, she tore open a packaged hand-wipe and washed his organ with it. He was not circumcised and that was the norm for men of his background.