year-old girl could punish two hardened criminals.
'She snitched on our father to the cops. She arranged for him to be caught red-handed during one of his burglaries.' I know from his tone that he heard my intake of breath. 'It worked better than she could have imagined. The cops were sick of him for his endless crimes. They killed him with the elephant game.' Another pause. 'She was ecstatic. I remember the shine in her eyes. Next time she took on a contract of prostitution, in Singapore this time, my mother treated me very well for the whole six months. When she was sober.'
He has closed the phone.
When he next calls, the massage is over and I am in the process of paying the masseuse.
'I forgot to tell you, Detective. There was a written contract- Damrong insisted on it.'
I swallow. 'I see.'
'Don't tell anyone. Don't tell Vikorn.'
He has hung up. I'm thinking, Don't tell Vikorn-betray my master? I am simultaneously thinking, Yes, screw Vikorn.
A written contract sounds unlikely, but if it exists, I'm prepared to bet Tom Smith drafted it. His masters surely would never have trusted any other lawyer. The possibility of getting hold of it seems remote. Was Damrong allowed to keep a copy? If so, where is it? Why didn't she give it to her brother for safekeeping?
I'm at home watching Chanya cook when he calls again. I know that Chanya has grown concerned by my state of mind, that she is watching me as I fish the cell phone from my pants, which I already hung up on a hook on the bedroom door because I changed into lightweight shorts. It is almost as if I can experience her heart when my features alter at the sound of his voice: sorrow, fear, sympathy, a touch of anger because I seem to be slipping away from her.
'Can you talk?'
'Yes.'
'Talk about gatdanyu. What do you think of it?'
I scratch my ear. 'It's all we've got. There's no other way to organize Thailand. It's not perfect, people abuse it, especially mothers, but there's no other way for us.'
'You're half farang. You must look at it from a different point of view sometimes.'
'My blood is half farang, but I think like a Thai.'
'You've been abroad. You speak perfect English. You even speak French.'
'So?'
'I want to know.'
My tone expresses the beginnings of exasperation. 'Know what?'
There's a long silence. Perhaps he has never formulated this thought before. 'What I'm doing.'
'I don't know what you're doing.'
'I think you do. I want to know, from a farang point of view, am I going too far?'
'Too far?'
'The price she's making me pay-is it too high?'
'What is the price? Did she give you instructions?'
A pause. 'Perhaps.'
'And money. She gave you all the money she made out of the contract, didn't she? How much? A lot, I think- she was very shrewd.
That's what you don't want to face, isn't it? Two weeks ago you were a helpless monk; there was no point in dwelling on the horrors of your childhood; you were penniless; the most you could hope for in this life was to be left to pursue your meditation practice. You were already very advanced, almost an arhat. You were able to dissolve the past because the present offered no way of-' I stop deliberately in midsentence. I want to know if he's hooked or not. When he says, 'Go on,' I'm sure that from now on he will not be able to stop speaking to me.
'Revenge,' I say.
Apparently this word has not yet crystallized on the surface of his mind, like a virus that does not reveal its true nature unless magnified and photographed.
'Revenge? Where would I start?'
'You would probably never start. You were never the one to start anything, were you? It was always her. She knew how to survive, you didn't. You spent your life as a second-stringer. You still are a second-stringer. Sure, you wouldn't know where to start when it came to revenge, but she would. Tell me what she is making you do.'
A pause. 'No, I'm not going to tell you that. Anyway, I think you have already guessed.'
'She would never have left the strategy to you. I think that nothing has changed. In death as in life she is controlling you.'
'If you think like a Thai, you must know I owe her everything. If she had left instructions for me to hang myself with my robe, I would have followed those instructions to the letter.'
'How easy that would have been for you,' I say gently.
He takes a full minute to reply, then: 'Yes. That's true.'
'And how hard this is for you, whatever it is she is making you do.'
'I have to do it.'
'How? Will you hire foreign mercenaries? You can certainly afford them. But it would be difficult for them to understand. Even mercenaries have rules.' Listening to my own thoughts, I suddenly realize where the help will come from, when the moment arrives. 'They'll be Khmer, won't they? I don't know why I didn't think of it. Retired KR foot soldiers have many advantages. One, they will do anything for money. Two, they obey orders instantly and to the letter. Three, they are plentiful and inexpensive. Four, they know all about elephants.
Five, they will be able to disappear into the jungle, or more likely Poipet, where geriatric generals in wheelchairs will protect them.'
He is full of surprises. 'Poipet?' he says with an intake of breath. 'You've been there?'
'Yes. Once.' Memory clip: a drab Cambodian town near the Thai border, roughly the same latitude as Angkor Wat. A terrible coarseness everywhere, even in the faces of children, most of whom were prostitutes. I really did see the famous retired KR generals in wheelchairs sucking on tubes attached to oxygen cylinders. 'Have you been there yourself, Phra Titanaka?'
'I ordained there.'
He closes the phone, but the number he was using is recorded on my own. I think he will not answer, but I try anyway.
'Yes?'
'At least tell me about Kowlovski.'
'Who?'
'Her costar in the movie.'
'Ah, yes. The masked man.'
'You worked on him, didn't you? I think you abused powers you had acquired in meditation. You didn't raise a finger, but you killed him by making him kill himself, didn't you? I think that would have been very easy for you. His tiny, shallow, ersatz heart was open to your gaze.'
A long pause, then: 'I'll send you the video.' He hangs up.
Chanya has pretended not to listen the conversation, or to see the intensity of my involvement with Phra Titanaka. She serves the pla neung menau in a tureen. The delicately textured fish is cooked perfectly, with not a touch of rawness or dryness, and the lemon sauce balances the natural taste of the fish to produce that wonderful tang on the palate. When we have finished, I pat the Lump, delighted to have the opportunity to play happy family. Our little rented house seems so small, though, and the walls so thin, our existence here so precarious. But it is not outside where the storm rages; it is in my head.
When we go to bed and make spoons, with Chanya curled up against my stomach, my mind flips back not to the case but to the womb. I reexperience that moment of total panic when we must break out at all costs; perhaps the most primeval of all human memories, and the one that always remains deep down inside us, like a door god at the gates of maya. Without that desperation born of claustrophobia, we would never leave that safest of safe havens; but the memory of those months of oceanic peace ensure we spend our lives trying to get back in. Damrong knew that about men.
I nod off for a couple of hours, then awaken with a single phrase on my mind: the elephant game. It
