resonates for anyone who has ever been involved in criminal law, but how can I be sure a simple Cambodian monk is reading from that hymnbook? Surreptitiously I slide out of bed, fish out my cell phone, and go into the yard.
'The elephant game,' I whisper when he picks up the phone. 'Tell me about it.'
A sigh. 'You don't know? I thought all Thai cops knew about it. The cops built a ball out of thatched bamboo, just big enough for a small human being to be placed inside. My father was not tall, maybe five-four at most, and very slim in a vicious kind of way. There was a hatch with a lock on the outside. On the day we were taken to the police station, we stood against the wall of a compound at the back. Some grinning cops brought my father out into the yard and made him lie down while they tied him up hands and feet like a hog. Then they slid him through the hatch in the bamboo ball, locked the hatch, and pushed him around the compound for a while, just for some fun before the main event. Then they led a young elephant, maybe eight or nine years old, into the yard and they started to teach the elephant to kick the ball. That's when my father started screaming. He was always so hard- boiled, I was sure he would keep his cool right to the end; after all, he'd wasted plenty of people himself. But he lost it after the elephant's first kick. That made the animal curious. It sniffed around the ball with its trunk and discovered that every time it rolled the ball, the human thing inside would start screaming its head off. The cops thought it was hilarious. Pretty soon the elephant got addicted to football. It kicked to move my father a few feet along, then pushed with its trunk, then kicked. I guess this went on for maybe ten minutes until the ball stuck in a corner of the compound and the elephant lost patience. People don't realize, elephants can have quick tempers. It whacked the ball with its trunk a few times, making a big dent in it; then it started trying to bring its foot down on it. The ball was too big for the elephant at first, but after it made a few more dents with its trunk, the ball collapsed to half its size, and the animal was able to stamp on bits of it. My father was screaming out of control by this time. Then he stopped screaming, but I could see he was still alive. I guess the animal had damaged some part of him that stopped him from screaming. He managed one last howl, though, when it stamped on his lower back. Next thing I knew, there was just a mess of spiky bamboo splinters all mixed up with my father's remains.'
During the long pause I'm trying to think of what to say. It's hard to say nothing, but he's too smart, too mentally advanced, for any normal condolence. He saves me by speaking again: 'There's a picture.'
'What do you mean?'
'Of him being crushed by the elephant.'
'Who took it?'
'Who do you think? Actually, there are lots of pictures. She used up a whole roll of film. I'll scan a few and send you a sequence.'
29
He sent me the pix by e-mail. I was expecting a few amateurish snaps in which an out-of-focus elephant steps on something indistinguishable. Not so. Whatever camera she used, it had an impressive zoom. Here's Jumbo close up, sniffing around a gigantic bamboo latticework ball with a clearly discernible human form inside. Now she's homed in on her dad, all trussed up. He was naked apart from a baggy pair of shorts; his elaborate esoteric tattoos are clearly visible. Now here's a cruel sequence: the elephant with trunk upraised; elephant bringing trunk down on helpless human; close-up of helpless human's big terrified eyes; split-second snap of furious elephant with trunk raised high in the air; trunk splintering the ball with bamboo shards flying; right foreleg lifted as high as it can manage; right foreleg squashing human.
I cross-examine myself thus: You of all people must have seen some clue, some pattern of behavior, that would have revealed her true nature. You, who have spent your whole life with women, who understand women better than you ever understood men, who have been known to cause hardened prostitutes to fall in love with you exactly because you're the only man they ever meet who does understand them, you of all people: why couldn't you read her?
Because I was in love is a pathetic reply, but it is probably no more than the truth. We didn't talk much, few thoughts and feelings were shared, but she did not give the impression of a bored professional going through a pantomime of love. She was interested in me; with hindsight I guess the interest was that of a praying mantis for her doomed lover. She was interested in me as food; I invented a heart for her.
After sex, usually, when she had really made an effort to deliver the experience of a lifetime-not for my benefit, of course, but with exactly the same meticulous self-criticism a world-class ballerina might apply when dancing in front of a mirror-her long black hair would end up tangled and wild. She could get wild-eyed too with the frenzy of sex, and I have a snapshot of her in that state: black hair flying, madness in her eyes, naked, hunched like a witch over her breasts, her brown skin glistening with sweat, the room redolent with the stench of our lovemaking-even at such times to deny her power would have been as futile as denying our pagan origins. A hundred thousand years our ancestors spent carefully adding to the stock of irresistible allurements in the collective subconscious: her real art was to take men back to that forbidden jungle of lethal pleasure. Choosing the most vulnerable men was easy after a lifetime of practice.
Generally I was too intimidated, too concerned that my performance was not up to scratch-terrified, I guess, that she would come out with some cutting remark, some comparison with another lover that would destroy my face. She never did-she merely had to look as if she were about to.
This morning, in addition to the elephant pix, the monk sent the DVD of his conversation with the masked man.
The scene is Stanislaus Kowlovski's apartment in Phnom Penh where he killed himself; I recognize the rip in the sofa. I think Phra Titanaka bought a DVD camera with his new wealth and learned to screw it to a tripod. It does not move throughout the interview, so that the monitor is full of our handsome buck, who is no longer so handsome after however many hours and days spent with a merciless interrogator of the soul. It is impossible to know if the camera is hidden or not. Perhaps the monk didn't read the handbook too well, because the disk seems to begin in the middle of the interview. Phra Titanaka's English is surprisingly grammatical, although his accent is thick Thai:
S.K.: I want to know how you found out about me, how you knew where to contact me in L.A. You still haven't told me.
Monk: I have contacts on the other side.
S.K.: Oh, yeah, we're not getting into that spiritual thing again are we?
Monk: Not necessarily.
S.K., shaking his head: This is weird, man, very very strange. First I thought you were putting the squeeze on me. That's how you got me here. You know stuff about me, but I don't know how much you know. Let's say you convinced me it was in my best interests to get a plane to Phnom Penh. Then I thought you were going to kill me. Then I thought just for a moment you wanted to save my soul-you are wearing a monk's robes after all.
Monk: Why would I want to kill you? You've been dead for a thousand years already.
S.K.: Shit, man, I don't know if I can do that again today. Just tell me how much you want. I'll borrow the dough.
Monk: Let's say I'm a collector of stories of cause and effect. Let's go back to that moment-that white-out we're calling it, I believe-when you were, how old?
S.K., with a reluctant grunt: Thirteen. Yeah. I was pubescent all over. I finally knew what I was. A prick. A big, hard-
Monk: But why?
S.K.: I told you, sport was the only official way out, but I wasn't any good at it. Gigolo was the only role left. It was the Columbine syndrome.
Monk: Deeper, Stan, please.
S.K.: Deeper? What can be deeper than that?
Monk: Was that the moment you decided there was no morality in the world?
S.K.: Yeah, that was it. I didn't really give it a second thought I would have had to get into some born-again racket if I wanted to do moral. For what?
Monk: I think there was something else.
S.K.: What else?
