of late afternoon. It is, I guess, about four p.m. when I notice a shuddering in the structure of Gamon's flimsy hut, signifying that he is moving around. Finally the door opens slowly, and it remains so for a full five minutes before the human form emerges.
I know I inhale sharply, and I bet everyone else does too, when the figure in a black ballgown and a wig of long black Asian hair begins to walk sedately down the stairs. You would need to be in the grip of some Western superstition to suppose that this new creature is simply a gifted transvestite. I don't think any of us believe that, except maybe the English lawyer Smith. It is Damrong in every movement, every gesture, down to the last nuance. Goose bumps have erupted on both my forearms and the back of my neck is rigid; in the unendurable heat I am frozen to the spot. Appalled and fascinated, I wait for the first words to emerge from those lips that she has enriched with purple lipstick.
She crosses the compound elegantly with a beautifully straight back, not a trace of exaggeration in the seductive swing of her buttocks. 'It's time,' she calls out in that soft, compelling voice. Astonished and profoundly impressed, the Khmer stand and roll out the giant bamboo balls. 'Bring the prisoners,' Damrong commands; it is her voice. She has spoken in Khmer, but there is no doubt about her meaning.
'No!' I yell in an involuntary outburst, and stand up.
She turns toward me curiously, daring me to meet her gaze. This I am unable to do. No matter how hard I try, I cannot bring myself to look into those eyes. 'Hello, Sonchai,' she says in a mock-seductive tone. 'Have you eaten yet?' Struck dumb, I shake my head. 'Look at me, lover. Look into my eyes.' Again I shake my head like a village idiot. 'Aren't you pleased to see me, darling?'
'Wha, wha, wha,' I start to jabber. 'What have you done to Gamon?'
She smiles. 'Just like you to ask the most difficult question. Do you love him more than you love me? I think you do. Why Sonchai, he's in the hut meditating. Why don't you go and say hello?'
If I was scared before, I'm suffering a paralyzing extreme of terror now. At this moment I think that nothing in the world would induce me to walk over to Gamon's hut-except for one thing. 'Go to the hut, Sonchai,' she commands, 'or look into my eyes.' She takes a step toward me, leaning her head to one side, as if to force me to meet her gaze. I turn away and find myself making toward the hut.
I climb the rickety stairs slowly, with more than an inkling of what I might expect. Sure enough, when I enter, he is all dressed up in his robes, sitting in a semilotus position. It is Damrong's corpse, of course, beginning to rot and filling the hut with the stench of formaldehyde, the eyes glazed and wide open. In a strange way, everything suddenly fits. Somehow the logic of sorcery would have required her cadaver; but has she really imprisoned her brother's spirit in that corpse? Outrageous, even for her. But at least the cadaver is immobile. I take the opportunity to rummage around until I find my cell phone, which the Khmer confiscated. I press an autodial number, and Kimberley answers, 'Where are you?'
'I have no idea.'
'Drama?'
'Plenty.'
'Leave this line open as long as you can. I'll see if I can patch you over to Virginia.'
I lay the cell phone on the floor with the line to Kimberley still open, hoping the battery holds out.
Now I hear sounds of steel doors opening down in the compound. When I step out onto the balcony, I see the Khmer have tied the hands of Smith and Tanakan behind their backs and are bringing them out. Smith, with his farang addiction to logic, is able to maintain his mental balance, terrified though he is. Tanakan, on the other hand, is trembling like a child and appears to have peed into his sarong.
'Hello, lovers,' Damrong says. 'Are you surprised to see me?' She walks elegantly up to them and caresses Smith's face with one hand.
'Fucking pervert,' Smith says.
Damrong responds with that cynical-joyful laugh of hers that I remember so well. 'Tom, Tom, you always did miss the point. That's why you're in this mess. If only you'd been born Asian, you would have understood so much better.' He turns his head away from her and spits. I have to admire the way he has found his courage again. But he won't have it for long, I fear. 'If you're so sure I'm just a screwed-up pervert in drag, why don't you look into my eyes, Tom? Please, do that little thing for me.'
I see that he too cannot bear to meet her gaze. The idea is profoundly counterintuitive, like an animal's fear of fire. She reaches out to hold his jaw. 'Call me a 'fucking pervert' again, Tom, please.'
Something has happened to his identity. He would like to show true British spirit at a time like this, but he cannot. She is destroying his center, that complex, contradictory, illusory, but vitally necessary idea of self, without which we are no more than helpless infants. She nods to the Khmer, who have melted into her slaves. One of them holds Smith's head, while another tries to keep his lids from closing. I cannot help my fascination as she takes one step closer to him and stares directly into his retinas. I am thinking, No, no, you cannot do that. You cannot bring a virgin soul into contact with the other side without preparation. You will destroy more than his body.
The effect is electric, as if he has been whipped. Suddenly he is a limp rag, a shadow, all autonomy lost. I turn away as he bursts into tears. He is blubbering something that sounds a little like 'Mother,' but it is hard to be sure. She has raped him.
She turns away from him in contempt and steps toward Tanakan, who starts to speak rapidly in Thai. I strain to catch his words, which are incomprehensible until I realize he is listing his assets, all of them — mansions, palaces, islands, gold, stocks, shares — offering them to her, begging her to accept them, at the same time painfully aware that he doesn't have anything the dead might need. He is using terms of address normally reserved for royalty and Buddhas. No Caucasian resistance here, he has accepted the new reality without reservation. 'I will build a temple to you,' he is saying. 'Your name and image will be worshiped. I am a billionaire — for me such things are easy to accomplish.'
She laughs gaily and says something in Khmer. It is not difficult to understand, because the guards start to take Smith and Tanakan toward the bamboo balls.
I try to think of the most far-fetched, illogical solution, the one thing Aristotle would never have considered in a million years. Revolted though I am, I know I have to go back inside the hut.
It takes only a minute to undress the cadaver. I change quickly into the saffron robes; then, trying not to gag or to fixate on the hideous Y-shaped gash in her torso, I pick her up (she is much lighter without her internal organs) and make for the door, grabbing Gamon's Kalashnikov and at the same time picking up the butane lighter that he used to light his candles.
Unaccustomed to the robes, or to carrying a corpse for that matter I stumble on the stairs, but no one pays any attention. A primal orgy of sadism is in progress, and everyone is enthralled to watch the Khmer bind Smith's and Tanakan's feet, then force the two men into fetal position and bind them further like hogs. Tanakan is smaller and therefore easier to force through the hatch into one of the balls. His face is closed tightly like a fist when I reach the compound. Still nobody notices me as I set down the cadaver, take out the lighter, and apply the flame to the cadaver's left pinkie.
Damrong now lets out a diabolical oath and turns around, at the same time shaking her left hand exactly as if she has accidentally burned it. She is incredulous to see me, the holy fool, in Phra Titanaka's robes. But I am pointing the gun at the head of the corpse.
Any vestigial notion that there might be a rational explanation, or that 'A cannot be not-A,' is quite erased by the way she flies through the air toward me (she adopts the diagonal like a banking helicopter, about ten feet from the ground, black hair flying wild, no broomstick), her face distorted with rage. In the circumstances I feel I have no choice but to pull the trigger on the cadaver. In the far distance I believe I can detect the sound of rotor blades.
It is not the approaching helicopter (somehow I knew the FBI would find a black one) that freaks the Khmer, though — it's the sorcery. Even as the chopper circles above the compound, the thugs are fleeing into the jungle, taking the mahout and the elephants with them. Somewhat disheveled, I fear, and not managing the robes very well at all, I walk toward the figure in the black ballgown lying facedown a few yards from me. The wig has fallen off. When I turn him over, he is still breathing, but there is a terrible head wound in the region of his left temple, where I shot the cadaver. He opens his eyes, though, and seems to recognize me. I cradle his shaved head in my hands.
'She's gone, I can feel it, she's gone for good,' he says with a smile. Then: 'Whatever you do, don't save my life.'
