Excerpt
Chapter
2
As
the train pulled out of the station, they sat on benches opposite
from one another. She was still rattled, and leaning forward in
the second-class sleeper, Suda gave Breach a small slap on the
wrist, smiled, and sat back. Her eyes Bashed a look that women
often give: Men, God, they take you to the edge every time. You
wait and wait. Maybe they show up, maybe they won't. You can never
be certain.
The
air conditioner blew a steady hiss of cold mist out of wall vents
as young porters glided back and forth along the narrow corridors,
carrying trays of orange juice, water, watermelon, bananas, and
evening meals such as curried shrimp and beef and pork, together
with rice or noodles. The ultimate question in Breach's mind on
that first night lacked a context for framing, no chance of being
asked: would they make love. The law of train car physics decided
the answer in a powerfully silent way. Suda occupied the upper
berth and Breach bunked below in a coffin-shaped enclosure screened
off from the corridor by a curtain. Suda sat crossed-legged below
a small light and read a pirated Jeffrey Archer mystery that had
been translated into Thai. She had brought three books on the
trip. Breach was restless in the lower berth; he stared at the
ceiling, running the possibilities of what Suda might be doing
or thinking, and what her state of dress or undress might be at
that moment. She had small rigid mounts for breasts, he thought.
The breasts of a child.
He
had agreed to make the trip for several reasons. After the motorcycle
incident, he felt Asanee might have a point. And also Suda held
out the possibility of being that rare, if not entirely original
kind of woman, one who lived inside her own culture as an outsider;
but an extraordinary kind of outsider who did not fit within the
usual categories: whore, drug addict, lunatic, emotional cripple,
or gangster. From country to country, the women Breach had talked
with, slept with, walked, ran, and drank with in shops, small
hotels, train stations, or restaurants along the road fell into
one of those categories; living on the outside of a household,
the family, the society was not a choice most women contemplated
as desirable. It was an alternative thrust upon, a status which
seized them without much choice by lethal combination of defective
genes, crazy parents, and daytime TV. Suda challenged Breach's
theory. He liked that; he wanted to be proved wrong. He had made
a side bet with himself somewhere along the line that with Suda
an edge would be reached and Suda would be snared like all of
the, other women he knew. Finally, he swung his legs over the
side, climbed up the chrome ladder, and stuck his head into her
berth. She had reached page 29 of the Archer novel.
"Someone
woke me up at the stage. I thought it might have been you. Someone
put a hand here. On my shoulder.' When I was in the middle of
a dream. That's why I was late."
"Mai
bpen rai-never mind."
"A
Jeffery Archer comic book," Breach said.
"You
like him?"
"I
not know him."
"You
don't really know me," said Breach.
"I
not read your book."
Breach
liked that answer. "Cannot," he said, tapping his' forehead.
"It's in my private library."
"Maybe
it is boring. How do I know?" Suda smiled and stuck a book
marker inside the paperback and closed it.
"You
don't," grinned Breach. "Indians were once afraid if
you took their photograph, you would steal their soul. But you
steal a man's soul by taking his words and making them' your own.
So I only let a few out at a time, and when I speak, so that I
can call all my words home, I keep the listener occupied."
Breach
took a five-baht coin from his pocket, showed it to Suda in the
palm of his hand, dosed his hand, clapped his hands together,
slowly opening both to reveal the coin was gone. Suda stared from
hand to hand, then looked up *at Breach, who grinned. He reached
forward and brushed against her right ear. He opened his hand
and showed her the coin.
"How
did you do that?" Suda said.
"Magic,"
he whispered, wide-eyed. "So no one can steal my soul."
As
they said good-night, Breach left the five-baht coin on top of
the Archer paperback; there was a slight moment of awkwardness.
Partially because Breach wasn't fluent in Thai; partially because
they were strangers; partially because magic caused contemplation;
but mainly because everything important was left unsaid or discovered
between them.
Breach
dreamt one of his favorite recurring dreams at three in the morning.
A skinny ten-year-old with a dirty face and torn dress was holding
up a bunch of flowers. A gust of wind blew the leaves. People
walked, pressing against the storm, passed her without looking.
Her lower lip quivered, making her face look rubbery. Tears filled
her eyes. A man in a double-breasted gray suit, touched by the
display of tears, stopped and bought the flowers. As he pulled
out his wallet, a man with white hair in a soiled, baggy blue
suit Jumped out from behind a door and stood before the flower
girl.
"Hallelujah!"
he shouted several times, holding up a Bible bound in white calf
leather. The startled customer backed away.
The
little girl fell to her knees and wrapped her thin arms around
his leg. "Don't go, mister. He's me dad. He only wants you
to look at his Bible. You don't have to buy unless You want to."
Whenever
Breach had this dream, he was interrupted before the customer,
looking down at the tiny flower girl, made his decision to stay
or leave. Sleeping on the train, it happened again. A hand clutched
Breach's shoulder and shook him. His eyes popped wide open and
in the darkness of the narrow sleeper, Breach made out the form
of a man.
"I
was feeling slightly guilty," said Crosby.
"So
it was you at the train station." Breach flicked on the night
light near the window.
Crosby
nodded and shifted his weight forward, half turning and sitting
on the edge of Breach's bed. "You were sound asleep. Snoring.
Disturbing the peace actually. Ten minutes more and you'd have
missed the train. You would've slept straight through a perfect
payday."
'Go
away, Crosby. I was dreaming about my mother."
"Incest
dreams on a train? I thought only the French had those kind of
dreams.
"She
and my grandfather were running a con on Fleet Street-right behind
the Law Courts. That was back in the 30's. Their flowers and Bibles
con."
"Your
mother was a childhood criminal?" asked Crosby. He was impressed.
In most of life the man was always less than the legend; in Breach's
case, the myth and legend had not overtaken the full story locked
inside the man.
"What
are you doing here, Crosby?
Crosby
opened a brown bag and produced a plate, napkins, silverware,
two glasses and a small bottle of claret. He handed the claret
to Breach, who examined the label under the dim light.
"Nineteen-sixty-three.
A rather disappointing year."
"This
is Thailand and not Oxford, Richard," said Crosby, as he
took back the claret and opened it.
"Where's
Ross?" asked Breach.
Crosby
poured a glass of claret and handed it to Breach. "How do
you know Ross Is here?"
"Because
of the pate'."
Crosby
looked puzzled.
"The
pate' and claret are from the first-class car; and you never travel
first-class unless get someone else to pay."
"Ross
passed out in his berth two hours ago."
Why
didn't you tell me before?" asked Breach, raising himself
up on his elbows.
"When
you buggered off from my school did you tell me?"
Breach
chewed a piece of French bread and pate', thinking for a moment.
"That was an emergency. Headmaster's daughter, the headmaster,
and the police not far behind them."
"Ross's
afraid you'll change your mind."
Breach
sipped the claret and made a face. "He passed out on this?"
"On
Old Grand-Dad."
"On
his grandfather?"
"Old
Grand-Dad is a cheap whiskey."
"How
did you make out with Suda," whispered Crosby, arching his
eyes toward the ceiling.
"She
likes comic books and magic."
"I
figured you'd have a lot in common," said Crosby, before
vanishing a moment later.
Monday
morning, a barefoot train porter, with a flutter and rattle of
cloth and metal, pulled back the curtain of Breach's berth at
6:00 a.m. An empty bottle of claret tolled off the bed, hit the
floor without breaking, and careened down narrow corridor, shattering
against a luggage rack. Breach blinked at the porter and rubbed
his eyes. It was first light outside. He looked at his wristwatch.
Then he lay back on the bed, closed his eyes, and thought about
the flower girl pedaling bunches of wilted red roses to barristers
and clerks and solicitors all those years ago in London. Forty-five
minutes later the train pulled into Chiang Mai station.
Outside
the station, Suda bargained with two young samlor drivers. The
Riverside Guest House was about two kilometers from the station.
They eyed the size of Breach in settling on the fare. The drivers
flipped a coin for Breach. Then they set off in separate samlors.
Suda's driver, his leg muscles knotted, the surface rippled with
thick coils of veins, set off. Breach's driver followed behind,
cursing his early morning bad luck on a flip of the one-baht coin.
He pedaled through the busy streets, waving at motorcyclists,
tuk-tuk drivers, cars, and buses to give way as he moved across
lanes. Breach, once or twice, looked behind, trying to make out
faces inside taxis and samfors. But he saw no sign of either Crosby
or Ross. So this would be the tone of the journey, thought Breach.
Suda somewhere ahead, alone, leaning forward, and shouting directions,
suggestions, and orders. While he looked over his shoulder wondering
at what odd hour of the day or night another mediocre bottle of
claret might appear.
From
Bangkok, Suda booked the guest house off a narrow sub-soi with
large, green grounds that sloped down to the muddy banks of the
Ping River. Modern rooms and plumbing, freshly mowed lawns with
beach chairs, a restaurant beside the river, and three or four
dogs that pranced around the grass, driveway, and nuzzled guests
as they strolled past the main desk.
Another
unasked question between Suda and Breach was answered at the check-in
desk. Suda booked separate rooms on different floors. The simple
act of filling out the form cleaned the air. Separate train berths,
samlors, and hotel rooms. This woman was more than able to communicate
her intentions. Breach thought about asking her about Crosby and
Ross. Had she known they were on the train? But he sensed his
timing was wrong. He hated early morning explanations, suspicions,
and lies. He felt Crosby and Ross would force Suda into one of
those predictable categories.
Above
all, Breach sensed the truth was some distance away, and it would
find him, as it always had.
He
shifted through the possibilities that could be excluded: midnight
shifting around rooms, romance and promises, and preoccupations
and disillusionment. Sex had not been his reason for the trip,
he reminded himself. Staying out of the path of Asanee's colonel
had been one reason. He might not have gone if Suda had not held
out the promise of something he wanted. She had showed him some
rare, fine ancient artifacts from hilltribe shamans; she knew
shamans living in the old way in remote northern villages. He
told himself he had signed on for the trip because he wanted a
set of ritual knives. An old mentor and friend, Thomas Pierce,
had requested the ancient shaman knives-not for fighting, for
cutting food, or for self-protection. The shaman knives had a
different, wholly mystical purpose: slaughter at a fixed time
and location, to discard a life to catch the attention of the
gods beyond a horizon which no one could enter. An urgent request
had come through Pierce's wife in Oxford. The ritual killing knives
spooked Suda. When she spoke of them, Breach could see the fear
in her eyes. They evoked ghosts, for good or evil, they sliced
a wound, opening a seam for those in one world to see and speak
with those in another.
Suda
had not slept well on the train. She tossed and turned in her
berth. The noise and motion, and a mind that she would not shut
down. The tracks curved, the car Pitched, and she felt her heart
beating in the dark. She heard voices; smelled food and wine.
She had dreamed of ritual knives, ritual slaughter, and bodies
that fled away into darkness with the loud clack of wings, hairy
limbs, and a bright-red plumage. She opened her eyes in the morning
soaked in sweat.
Her
father had nicknamed her Suda: his inspiration came from a Thai
medicine for fever. As far as she knew, she was the only girl
with that nickname in Thailand.
"It
could've been worse," Breach said. "You could've ended
up as penicillin."
Suda
shrugged. "Or aspirin," she said.
"I
never met anyone named after a drug before."
"My
father like very much. Also its the name of a flower."
If
women were thought of as a commodity, it was an easy extension
to name them after a product, drug, or flower thought Breach.
He kept his thoughts to himself. There was an invisible hard edge
where humor ended and criticism began; one was the surface, the
other the core below the surface; and, in Thailand, the culture
placed a barrier beyond the surface. Even with someone like Suda
who from an early age had been a "rebel"-a word she
found in her Thai-English dictionary.
From
age seven she sold water and juice in plastic bags at the train
station. She was one of travelling band of young faces racing
along the train platform, tugging at passengers' sleeves, eyes
large and clear, and begging in the way only a child can evoke
sympathy. At age thirteen, a turning point in her life occurred.
There had been a family crisis. Her aunt, her father's sister,
had a baby who had become very ill. Suda was sent to her aunt's
house in another town. A few weeks later the aunt's baby died.
When Suda asked her father to return home, he looked at her long
and hard: "Why don't you like my sister? You want me to lose
face." The message was clear. "You are disposable like
toothpaste. I can always buy another tube. My sister needs you
to brush her soul. clean. So you stay as long as she wants. What
you want does not matter and cannot matter."
Suda
lived at her aunt's house through her teens, picking up her love
of antiques, and finally leaving to attend university. She never
recovered from the loss of her family, that her own father had
refused to allow her back into the sanctuary of childhood. She
had lost something in the fashion that women often lose in their
relations with men, beginning with their fathers and continuing
on the back of bedroom promises. Her exile was the first sign
of what waited in the shadows, thought Breach. She hovered at
street level leaning against a fast-moving storm like the little
flower girl in his dreams.
Breach's
mother had doubled up her bet by marrying his father, who was
reputed to be the best card player in postwar England. The war
had killed off his competition, his mother had joked. For better
or worse, his father had failed in the grand style. The old man
had gambled and lost the house the furniture, wife and children,
and his marriage. His mother cut her losses and left him. The
loss did not break her; she was strong, ambitious, and calculated
that she would find better odds at another table. She had been
the same age as Suda, twenty-seven, when she made the break. And
like Suda, his mother threw herself into her work which had been
to find a new husband. Suda simply threw herself into her work
as if it were her husband. She consumed silver with a sexual fervor,
touching the bracelets, necklaces, stroking the long, silver chains,
rubbing the hairpins until her finger pads knew only the sensuality
of metal.
Suda
had perfected a silent-movie walk; a scuttling movement that threw
her carriage from side to side. She was schoolgirl-slim-the body
of a teenager-a Thai Peter Pan who had refused to ever grow up.
Her face bore the features of a teenage Mao and Burmese Buddha.
She had Mao's little facial mole and round face, and the Buddha's
oval-shaped eyes. Crosby had called her "an ancient girl"
which had said more about Crosby than Suda. It had been difficult
to image that Crosby had ever been a young child.
As
they checked into the guest house, for the first time, Breach
thought Suda's face and body possessed the perfect combination
for her work. She moved unnoticed in dangerous places. She rolled
across the landscape like a shadow belonging nowhere. She was
like a Trojan horse waiting to be pulled inside the gates. He
followed behind her, carrying his case, up the flight of staffs
to their rooms. As she stopped to unlock her door, she looked
at him, smiled, and quickly disappeared inside. He had a strange
feeling that she was like a long fishing line towed by someone
manning a boat in the distance; with pilots like Ross and Crosby
in constant radio control. Ross and Crosby were like Breach's
grandfather in the old days in London, lurking in the shallow
waters for the big fish, half hidden in the shadows with a fistful
of Bibles as bait.
