Bangkok Knights (21 page)

I had a camera with 1,000 ASA print film in it, and
Sunantha had me take pictures of a circle of kids, all of them about six or
seven years old, each with their own
krathong.
They had the floats on
the cement pier, in the center of their circle, loath to float away these
beautiful creations just yet, and their eyes danced with wonder and delight in
the light of the candles.

“Aren’t they
lovely?”
she said. Her eyes were
lovely in the candlelight, and I felt saddened.

I took pictures of Sunantha with our
krathong,
and
I took pictures of Ernest with his and Noi’ s
krathong.
Then I took
pictures of Sunantha and Ernest with both
krathong,
and Ernest took
Sunantha and me with just ours. And everybody took more pictures of kids.

Ernest didn’t have a
one-baht
coin, and he put a
five-baht
piece on his float, instead.

“One
baht
is enough,” Sunantha told him. “Those boys
will only steal it anyway.”

There was a swarm of little urchins in the water, and, under
cover of helping all us good citizens launch
our krathong,
they were
making themselves rich. Ernest put the
five-baht
coin on his anyway, and
sure enough, we saw a kid abstract it before the
krathong
was well
underway, popping the coin into his mouth, his cheeks bulging like a miser’s
money-bags.

Sunantha reminded me that I mustn’t forget to make my
wish, and she wished hard, and we both put coins on board for the river
spirits, which looked a lot like urchins with mumps. Chances are the
krathong
was getting conflicting psychic signals from its two captains, though,
because it immediately capsized in the wake of a passing boat.

“Mai pen rai”
said Sunantha. “Never mind.” But I
could see she was disappointed. She’d wanted it to be perfect, just like it had
been the year before.

She was pleased that Ernest’s craft, at least, had joined
the serene and lovely pattern of gently rocking candle-flames which graced this
river, as similar motifs were ornamenting rivers and ponds all over Thailand, this night.

“We must come here again all together next year,” said
Sunantha, “when Noi can come, too.”

And then she looked at me in a way that only promised
guilt and sadness to come, no matter how happy she thought we were.

Finally Noi was released to convalesce at home. A week
later, I had a phone-call from Ernest Could we join them at one o’clock on
Sunday afternoon? At the Erawan Hotel?

It’s not your usual rainy-season day. It’s the kind of
day, in fact, you wouldn’t be dead for a hundred bucks, a glorious harbinger of
the winter weather soon to come. Despite the snarling streams of traffic at the
Erawan intersection, the air is crystal; everywhere the colors and forms are
intensely, impossibly vivid in the sun, probably inspired by the brilliant blue
of the sky.

Elephants of all sizes, someof them enormous, stand in
mute attendance around the perimeter. The heads of the larger ones glisten
gold. Thousands upon thousands of people have come to pay their respects,
rubbing on little squares of gold leaf till it appears the teak carvings have
been cast from solid metal. They stand guard around the golden image which
gazes down serenely from its perch in four directions at once.

There are lots of people. They throng in the compound,
carrying incense sticks and flowers and candles. Petitioners are prostrating
themselves, foreheads to the ground, pleading, promising.

All around the base of the shrine there are huge mounds of
fragrant flower garlands, hundreds and hundreds of them, some of them several
feet long, each with the prescribed seven varieties of flower. Thin veils of
scented smoke twist and rise from the forests of joss-sticks burning in front
of Phra Prom’s image.

The musicians are over there in the corner, under a
shelter, the deeply resonant banging of the drum giving form to the happy
discords struck from the big bamboo keys of the
ranaat.
In and out of
the shadows move the temple dancers, the metallic scales of their costumes
scintillant red and blue and gold and green.

There is an hallucinogenic intensity to the whole sunlit
feast of color and image and movement.

You could say Ernest looks like a lunatic, though it’s
midday and he has an expression of solemn intent on his face. He’s dancing
about waving his arms with pretty well no grace at all. Occasionally he topples
over on one leg and shoots the other out like a somewhat lethargic karate
student. Maybe only a beginner. His hands flop about on the ends of his arms in
some kind of spastic syncopation. The other people, almost all of them Thai or
Chinese, are looking at Ernest with varying degrees of amusement and alarm.

He has his clothes on, yet he is as naked as ever he could
be — this fastidiously rational Child of the Enlightenment, this sober
husband-and-family-man-to-be — exposed as he is to the public scrutiny under
this sunny midday sky.

He has paid off the regular dancers, and they’re taking a
break so as not to upstage him. They’re in the shade, with the musicians,
watching the show. Ernest is wending through the crowd, the crowd willingly
making way, who knows, he might be dangerous. He topples this way and that,
limbs extending awkwardly in all directions like a starfish Isaac Newton
describing anew his universe, wishing he had eyes to see. There is maybe some
connection between his movements and the toomb-toomb of the drum and the manic
chonging of the big bamboo xylophone, but if so it’s a tenuous one, I reckon.

Ernest has invited everyone he knows. They’re all here —
Leary and Nancy, Stack and his wife, Big Toy, Dinky Toy, Eddie and Lek — everybody.

Noi is in a wheelchair, out here on the sidewalk with me.
She’s peering in through the wrought-iron bars of the fence and laughing
delightedly. She sounds totally happy, never mind the man she’s about to marry,
the man whose child she carries, is doing a fine imitation of a Bedlamite.

“Yeah,” he’s told us. “It looks like she’s gonna be okay.
And more than okay — the doc says she’s going to have a
baby!”

Here he comes again, rounding the structure which houses
the Brahman image; he catches sight of Noi, and his solemn sweaty red face
breaks into a grin to match the brilliance of this dazzling afternoon, to match
the electric glitter of the temple dancers’ headdresses, the burnished gold of
the elephants’ heads. But he doesn’t stop dancing, because he promised Phra
Prom ten minutes, and he still has five minutes to go.

And Sunantha is looking at me, radiant with happiness and
the pleasure of this day, seeking confirmation all is well with our world. But
I haven’t made any promises to Phra Prom or to Sunantha either, however much I
wish I were able to, somehow.

“It’s Daphne! Duck!”

Who, I wondered, was Daphne Duck? And why had my friend
Frank Keenock taken a dive under the table like he’d suddenly discovered gold
there?

“Can you see her?” quavered Frank from under the table.

“Who?” I inquired. “Daphne Duck?” I was scanning the
crowded restaurant, hoping to catch sight of this entity.

“No, no. Daphne Dangerfield. Over by the door. Is she
still there?”

Now, Frank Keenock was normally a solid, manly sort of
chap, and I was impressed by the quiver in his voice. I looked around with real
interest for the cause of his abrupt departure from the public eye. Over by the
door stood a largish specimen of womanhood sporting a bosom of Wagnerian proportions
and a gaze that would turn you to stone. She was giving the crowd in this joint
the once-over, and her eyes happened to find me at the same time I spotted her.
It was all I could do to refrain from diving under the table to join Frank. And
I didn’t even know the lady.

”I think I´ve found her,” I said to the tabletop. “About
thirty years old, 5’ 10”, wearing a flowery print cotton dress and hair tied
back in a bun?”

“That’s her,” whispered Frank.

“Eyes like two bullets dipped in curare, and a certain air
of self-righteous authority about her?”

“Yes, yes. Enough. That’s her. Act casual; don’t attract her
attention. She isn’t looking over here, is she?”

I found Frank’s behavior pitiable. Sometimes when you think
you know an old friend...

I snuck a sidelong glance at Daphne Duck and saw that she’
d left off looking our way, and was turning to leave, having already riddled
the rest of the crowd with those eyes. Why, I wasn’ t sure, but I personally
felt a great relief to know that she was off to scare the good citizens of Bangkok some place else.

I was anxious to have Frank come out from under the table
to give me the story. He waited a while, however, just to be sure she was
really gone.

“I buy the beer,” I suggested. “You tell the story.”

And this is what he told me.

“Have you noticed,” he asked by way way of preamble, “how
the world is shrinking? Remember all those faraway places— Kathmandu, Bangkok, the French Foreign Legion? You remember how, traditionally, if one got one’s
knickers in a twist back home, one could ship out for one of those faraway
places and thereby simplify everything from one’s love-life to one’s
relationship with the law? Yes, those were the days. But they are no more. No
place in the world is more than a few quid and a few hours away from any other
place. Bangkok? Bangkok is somewhere you hop on over to if you’re in the mood
for a bit of shopping, or if on a whim you decide you want to ruin your son’s
life.”

I was getting the idea that Frank’s mother had something
to do with all this. He’d told me she was planning a visit. He was looking
forward to it, he told me, though it was going to complicate existence. There
was the question, for example, of what to do with his girlfriend Mu, her sister
Lek, and her cousin Noi, all of whom were staying in his apartment. His mother
had announced she would like to stay with him, seeing as how he had written and
told her what a lovely big place it was, and inasmuch as they hadn’ t seen each
other in so long and had so much to catch up on.

“No real problem,” said Frank. “I sent the girls upcountry
for a couple of weeks. Mu had had a vacation coming anyway. I took my vacation
as well, so I could look after Mother. I packed the girls’ things in boxes and
stashed them; then I sprinkled beer bottles and dust around to give the place a
bachelor-pad ambience. Everything was under control. But then my mother showed
up, and she had Daphne with her. This came as a complete surprise to me. Though
maybe I should have guessed.”

Complete surprise? Judging by his expression, I would’ve
said that ‘horrendous shock’ would’ve been more apposite.

“I’ve known Daphne since we were kids — ‘childhood
sweethearts’ is how both Mother and Daphne like to put it. Personally, I’ve
always thought of her as a childhood affliction, something akin to mumps and
chicken pox, only worse. Nevertheless, her parents were my folks’ oldest
friends, and it was always hoped and assumed that Daphne and I were made for
each other. I’ m willing to concede that may be the case, but only if it turns out
I have in some past life chalked up one fearful pile of bad karmic baggage
which needs atoning for.

“Daphne was a good part of my decision to leave Newcastle, way back, and hideout in London. I should’veknown that wouldn’t do it; I left England five years ago, and have never stopped running. Though actually I thought I had,
when I wound up here in Bangkok.

“Mother first of all figured it was just ‘boys being
boys’, and I would get it all out of my system and come home to Daphne. After a
couple of years, however, she started to get nervous. Her letters tended to
drop a lot of casual questions about Thai women and my relationship with and
general attitude towards the afore-mentioned creatures. She was, at the same
time, a real promotional whiz-kid for life back in the U.K., and she could find six good job opportunities in a week, all of them within a fifty-mile
radius of Daphne. She would send me news clippings describing the murders of
ex-pats in exotic climes; articles extolling the virtues of home and hearth and
the National Health Service; fruit cakes wrapped in foil and plastic and
reports of even more awesomely mouthwatering culinary masterpieces which
wouldn’t travel and which I

would never get to taste again if I didn’t come home and
Daphne says hello and to tell you she misses you. You know the kind of thing.
When is she going to get some grandchildren, and children really need to be
brought up in a nice Christian, English-speaking home, after all. Didn’t they?

“Anyway, there they were in Bangkok, and they moved right
into my apartment. Beer bottles and dust were gone with a tut and a sneeze. My
Darkie toothpaste and my Mekhong girlie calendar disappeared with even less
comment. Yeah, the place was ship-shape in nothing flat, and I felt like a
guest in my own home — welcome, just barely, so long as I behaved with the
proper decorum. Something about the two of them in concert — Mother and Daphne
— turns my internal chronometer back to when I was thirteen years old, and
about as self-assertive as your average earthworm.

“When I wasn’t making a stab at guiding Mother and Daphne
around town, I was being interrogated.

“Daphne, for example, would start up with: ‘What do you
men see in Asian women? Do you like them because they’re small and submissive?
Yes, I’m sure that’s it; weak Western men want a passive companion — a
plaything and a servant. They’re afraid of a strong and independent woman.
Isn’t that right, Frank?’

“That’s right, Daphne,’ I’d say, although you and I know
that’s lot of guff. Submissive, she says. Mu.
Submissive.
Ha! But of
course I had to agree with her. If I don’t agree with her, she starts to use
those stern and measured tones which say: ‘This Is the Way the World Is, and I
Don’t Like It.’ And she looks at me. I mean, right at me. I can’ t take it when
she does that. My brain starts to sweat ice-water, and all my joints seize up.
It’s like in a nightmare. I always want to get up and run away, but she has
some strange power over me, like when a bird gets hypnotized by a snake. So
it’s better I agree with her.”