When Waen says there’s going to be a funeral, I know exactly which funeral he means. It’s the funeral for this general who was very famous for fighting the communists, back in the days when they had communists, of course. All funerals have lottery-ticket hawkers, because everyone knows that being near a corpse brings good fortune; but a general this powerful is going to be particularly heng. I wonder why his family chose to have the ceremonies in this un-high-society part of town. If we can’t find the number from Waen’s head at this funeral, we won’t find it anywhere.
“We’ll sneak out when the brothers are on their way into compline,” Waen informs me. Suddenly I understand why he’s so well dressed. He wants to blend.
“I’ve nothing to wear,” I say.
“So go scruffy,” he says. “They’ll just think you’re a dek wat. You’ll blend.”
Sometimes I think the dek wats have it easier than we do. Most of them aren’t orphans; they’re country boys whose parents have sent them to the temple for a few years to learn proper manners and to earn merit for their next life by sweeping and dusting and carrying the monks’ begging bowls. But they get the leftovers from the begging bowls, and everyone knows that monks get the best food.
We eat in silence for a while. Waen can’t see his food clearly because of his glasses; he’s constantly stabbing the table with his spoon. “Take them off!” I tell him. “Don’t draw attention! Wait until compline.”
Sneaking out during or after compline is always a good idea. Our brothers observe silence from the end of compline until dawn, which means that there’s not much they can do about anything. The lay teachers don’t live in the orphanage, but there’s always one who stays to supervise the dormitory.
Tonight, the sleepers’ watchman is going to be Uncle Wong, who used to be an orphan himself and now owns a Chinese restaurant in Yaowaraj. He made good, so he volunteers one day a week to repay the brothers. But since he used to live in this dorm himself, he tends to turn a blind eye. Or maybe it’s just that he’s always too drunk to notice.
We eat quickly, trying not to talk too much. Talking is actually forbidden during supper, but the brothers tolerate it as long as it’s not too rowdy. When it’s done, the brothers say a blessing. It’s in very bizarre, “Catholic” Thai with weird words which no one understands, but in the end we all join in in a sort of boyish shout, making it sound more like a football cheer than a prayer: decha phra naam phra bida lae phra butr lae phra chit amen, which means something like “in the holy name of the holy father and the holy son and the holy mind amen” as far as I can figure. The brothers believe that these are three gods that are really one god, much like Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu from the shrine across the street.
Then, Father Du has an announcement. “There will be no dessert tomorrow,” he says, “because all the bananas are missing from the kitchen. Now, you know that these sorts of pranks just hurt everyone, so if one of you will confess, we’ll stage a public caning and I will have new bananas purchased from the discretionary fund. You see, honesty will be rewarded, even if there’s a bit of pain beforehand, just as our dear Lord was scourged and crucified in order to allow all of us to attain paradise.”
I’m puzzled. I mean, Mr. Strange guzzled a plate of them without peeling them, but has he already been in the kitchen as well? They keep hundreds of bananas there. Deep-fried bananas with crunchy breading, stewed bananas in coconut cream sauce, sliced bananas, bananas wrapped in cheese—the things they can do with bananas on an orphanage-type budget are impressive. It can’t have been Mr. Strange.
Another announcement: “Someone has tampered with the mousetraps in the video room. That person will be found and punished.”
I can’t help smiling at this. I know it’s Waen. He fixed the traps after he had his little epiphany about the lottery. Tomorrow, if he wins the lottery, he’ll confess and get six whacks. If he doesn’t win, he won’t confess. That’s fair, isn’t it?
“Finally, I want to tell you all we will have a distinguished English teacher who will take over from Brother Adam, starting tomorrow. English class will be right after Thai history, right after Jesus hour. Mr. Leopold Strange is a famous writer. He was once nominated for the Hugo Award.”
“What’s that?” a boy shouts.
“Quiet!” Brother Poo raises his rod of chastisement.
“You don’t scare me!” comes another voice. Brother Poo whips around and scowls.
“Children, children,” says Father Duvalier, “we’re not actually sure what the Hugo Award is. It’s some American thing.”
After supper we are all supposed to bathe, a habit which Waen abhors; water frightens him. He claims that he had a near-death experience at the seaside. None of the rest of us have ever been there, so maybe it’s true.
The communal bath at the orphanage is like this: there is a long trough in the middle of the room, which the bath monitor fills from a plastic hose. Each of us has a plastic bowl with our name written on it in indelible marker; they hang on a rack at the bathroom door. We also have a little cloth bag with our toothbrush and toothpaste. There is a little pigeonhole for all our clothes.
The brother on duty blows a whistle, and we take our bags and line up on both sides of the trough. On the next whistle, we start dishing up the water in the bowls and pouring it over ourselves. We keep our shorts on, of course; the Thais are much more modest than farangs, who parade around with it all hanging out (we’ve seen the brothers in their shower, which has hot water—who knows why, you’d have thought this country was hot enough already). We pour the water over ourselves in a regular rhythm. Then, whistle, soap; whistle, rinse. No talking, no horseplay of course, though you should see what happens when one of the less observant brothers is monitoring.
Brushing our teeth is much more of a musical exercise because the brother will insist on one tweet for every stroke of the brush . . . tweet up, tweet down, tweet up, tweet down. By the end of it, we feel like we’ve been working our way through a song and dance number at the transvestite cabaret down the road.
Speaking of transvestites, one of the boys in my dorm, Pek, is a katoey. He’s in the orphanage because his parents didn’t want to pay for the operation. He has decided to become a priest instead, because the vestments are as close to a dress as he will ever be able to afford. But more about him later.
I’m brushing next to Pek tonight because Waen is already hiding in the video-room closet. I can’t help making fun of his mannerisms when he brushes. He says (between tweets), “Really, P’Krit. Don’t be mean.”
He’s the only other boy in the orphanage who uses “P” as a form of address instead of “Hey, you.”
“I’m not trying to be mean. One just can’t help it, with you.”
He knows I care about him, really, so he just giggles.
TWEEEEEEEET!!!!
Time to grab our towels and, oh, yes, a quick murmured recital of the magic mantra about the father, the son, and the holy something-or-other. Then, into the sleeping uniforms, and an hour for TV, reading, ping-pong, or internet. There’s also a fifth favored activity: being beaten up by Man and Yu. Favored by at least two of us, anyway.
There are only two computers, but they are broadband, so the seventy-eight boys fight over them. In practice, a boy named P’Fat (the nickname is from babyhood, he is actually thin as a rake and really, really tall) is the guardian of the roster, but he can always be bribed. The brothers like him. He and Pek are the only ones who actually believe in any of this stuff and have even said they want to be priests. On the other hand, the brothers can’t quite come to terms with Pek’s reasoning . . .
Next year, I will be thirteen, so I will have one extra hour to fidget and fight over who goes online.
The brothers are off chanting to their threefold god. Uncle Wong has already arrived and has already hit the bottle. The video room is a big, messy place with donated plastic armchairs that don’t match and three TVs that get louder and louder until someone yells, then star
t soft again. Boys are everywhere, wrestling, throwing things, seriously cussing (thankfully, the brothers never seem to know quite enough Thai to catch everything we say). The broom closet, I know, is where P’Waen is hiding.
I know the routine.
“Uncle Wong,” I say, “can I be the one to close down tonight?”
No one ever wants the job . . . it’s extra work.
“Sucking up, eh, Krit?” he says. “Sure.” And takes another swig. It’s Mekong whiskey. Deadly stuff.
I can’t wait for the entertainment hour to be over. The constantly crescendoing noise from the three TVs, which show a soap opera, a music video, and a boxing match—the three main interests of us boys—gets on my nerves so much that I just want it to stop. I’m about ready to scream, but I can’t scream, so I just keep thinking and thinking and thinking—
Stop! I think.
And it stops.
Just for a split second. Not just the TV sets. It’s as if all the noise in the universe suddenly stops. Not for long. For a heartbeat.
And everyone turns around and looks at me.
I whip around to see who they’re looking at. It’s definitely me. I start to shrug, but—
Then it’s all back again, noisy as ever, the whole chaotic madness. As though nothing happened. The computers are whizzing, popping, and clicking, and the boxing match is gearing up for a knockout.
But everybody knows something happened.
“Damn electricity,” Uncle Wong says. “The church ought to pay its bills.”
The ping-pong, the TV watching, the internet goes on. Only it’s subdued.
What did I do?
Since meeting Mr. Strange, things have been strange. Do I really have superpowers? Am I really an unknown hero with a secret identity?
I think it’s going to be an interesting English lesson.
* * *
P’Waen comes out of the closet blinking because he’s been in the dark for an hour. “Brought you some civilian clothes,” he says. I quickly slip on the white shirt over my orphanage tee; if I button it up, that will be enough of a disguise.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I say. “You shouldn’t believe everything a tree tells you.”
In Canada, there’s a Catholic orphanage where they beat you every day and the police run you down with sirens if you try to escape. We’ve all seen it on one of the video nights. The film won a lot of awards. Okay, Sacred Heart isn’t like that at all. There are no locks. Once in a blue moon, someone even gets adopted!
Why would you run away? It’s a jungle out there. Slip out for a lark, and if you get caught, take your whacks with a grin; that’s all fine. But run away?
Bangkok is a city with ten million or more people, where the buildings transform themselves overnight, where the traffic gridlocks for hours yet everyone’s in an infernal hurry; it’s a dangerous place, and I’ve seen less of it than most tourists. My world is less than a kilometer square and, thanks, I’m happy to stay.
We have to hurry. We are only going to catch the tail end of the funeral. It’s the back of the temple that abuts on our slum. The front is a grand facade where, I’m sure, all the general’s well-wishers are pulling up in their long black cars.
We creep up to Pavilion No. 9 from the back. There are other pavilions with their own funerals going on—since every funeral in Bangkok lasts at least seven days, it’s an assembly-line process in any major temple—but No. 9 is the biggie. The pavilion itself is air-conditioned, which means it has been endowed by a wealthy family. We don’t get in, of course, because it’s packed. We don’t want to get in, anyway.
The alley between pavilions is lined with wreaths; they’re arriving thick and fast and the temple boys can’t hang them fast enough. As we get there, we realize it’s only the first day, and there’s a queue stretching out of the door of the pavilion practically to the front gate of people waiting to anoint the deceased’s hand with scented water . . . the bathing of the corpse. But they’re hurrying it along; this temple probably rents by the hour, like some hotels in my neighborhood.
Everyone’s in black, but no one seems particularly sad. As they stand in line, they’re all gossiping about their wives, mistresses, boyfriends, children, and so on. There are mangy dogs everywhere. Waen kicks one of them out of his way.
“Don’t do that!” I say. “It could be your father.”
“He ought to be reborn as a dog,” P’Waen says, “for abandoning me like that.”
“Don’t be so unfilial.”
“Unfilial? For God’s sake, I’m an orphan.”
“Shut up. Look for lottery tickets. Take your glasses off, no one knows you here.”
The smell of incense wafts from everywhere. The already hot air is almost suffocating. In surround sound, groups of monks chant from each pavilion. The mourners move rapidly. Waen urgently waves me over to join the end of the queue.
“What? We didn’t even know the general,” I say.
“If the general is going to give us money,” he says, “we owe respect to his corpse at least.”
No one looks at us funny. It seems that so many people respected (or at least feared) the general that there are people from all walks of life, and now that the people with the black suits and ties and uniforms have all gone through, so can we. Almost before I can figure out what I’m doing, I’m inside the chilly pavilion and I’m on the ground, prostrating myself in front of a dead man with a chest full of medals, his face set in a grimace that suggests that he’s about to have us all shot.
The atmosphere is choking because of all the perfumed holy water. The walls are piled high with wreaths. People are actually sobbing now, family members; as I get up, a weeping old lady thanks me for coming.
It turns out we’re almost the last people. We haven’t even left the pavilion when some soldiers come forward, wrap the body in a sheet, and hoist it into a coffin, then, a couple of burly truck-driver types start hammering the coffin shut and—
<
“What was that?” I look around in a panic.
It’s a voice coming from the coffin. Not a gruff, tough, “execute them!” military-type voice, but a voice like a little kid’s, like mine or Waen’s.
“Waen, he wants out! He’s not dead!” I whisper.
<
“He’s talking to me!” I say.
“Let’s get out of here!” says Waen, pulling me toward the door. “The lottery-ticket sellers are gathering.”
Sure enough, there’s a whole army of them, each with a tray of lottery tickets slung across his shoulder: they’ve positioned themselves right next to the food, so you can’t eat without being accosted.
<
“Listen, P’Waen, I’m freaking out. The general’s talking to me in my head.”
<
A teeny little voice, more like a mouse than a big bad general. I’m afraid. Very afraid. I know that ghosts exist, of course, but meeting them is something that only happens to other people.
“Buy your tickets,” I tell him, “and let’s get back to the orphanage. I mean it.”
“You’re shaking!” Waen says. “That’s not like you. It’s not like you to be scared of ghosts.”
“It’s not like me to be having a conversation with one,” I tell him. They’re hoisting the general up now on their shoulders. This happens every night of a multiday funeral; the body is paraded around and deposited in a special room, a dead-body holding area, not to put too fine a point on it; then they trot it out the next evening for more prayers, and so on. It goes on until the cremation. It could be a week, but for someone this important, it could even be fifty days, or a hundred.
Everyone is getting in line behind the corpse now as it is being hefted out of the pavilion, and it would be very rude to try to get away. Besides, the lottery-ticket vendors are swooping down on the funerary conga line and thrusting their wares at us.
“Buy mine! Buy mine!” they’re all saying, “Guaranteed lucky!” There’s no money-back guarantee, of course.
The procession moves slowly and with grave dignity, though many people stop to pick up the elegantly catered snack boxes that are being handed out. These are particularly fabulous: they’re produced by the onboard dining service of Thai Airways, which makes a bigger profit on funerals, I suspect, than on passengers. Their chicken pies are famous throughout Bangkok.
Waen and I can’t suppress our smiles as we manage to get a couple of boxes each. We’re quite close to the coffin; I’m actually in the coffin’s shadow as it passes under the harsh fluorescent lamps that line the alley that leads from pavilion to pavilion. All the while that P’Waen is extolling the chicken pies, I’m hearing the general’s squeaky little baby voice and . . . worst of all . . . he’s tapping on the coffin lid, and nobody hears it but me.
“Anyone got nine-one-nine?” Waen keeps asking the vendors. He has to ask sotto voce, because if the news were to get out that someone has asked for a special number, everyone will want that number and there won’t be any prize money left.
They thumb dutifully through their books of tickets—with their garish antiforgery designs, you can go dizzy staring at a lottery ticket too long—and none of the sellers has one. The kids are quite perfunctory about it, especially as they don’t think they’re really going to make a sale to another kid.
You see, we’ve fooled all these high-society people into thinking we somehow belong—but you can’t fool a street urchin. They look right into our eyes and they know we’re trash, same as they are.
The procession moves along and a secondary procession moves along with it—the lottery vendors, all trying to walk sideways so they can keep up their high-pressure tactics, all flipping through their ticket books and spouting their pitches—we look like a massive black millipede on its side, its legs wriggling insanely. We go down a narrow passageway; a wrought-iron fence separates us from a courtyard where a moss-covered old pagoda stands; a young novice monk and a dek wat are peering through the railings at us.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 Page 7