by Paul Theroux
‘ “What happens when we go upstairs?”
‘She leans over. She says, “Anything. Anything you want to do to me, you can do. Anything you want me to do, I do. I know how.” Does this give me a hard-on or what?
‘What if a beautiful girl – I mean, a real piece of ass – said that to you? “Do anything you want to me.” It’s like having a slave. I thought of two or three things – crazy things; I wouldn’t even tell you. She’s saying, “What? What?” I’m too embarrassed to tell her, but I’m thinking, She’s making a bargain and she can’t back out of it. I keep thinking these wild things and saying, “Anything?” and she says, “Sure, what you want?” But I didn’t want to say.
‘Then she says, “Tell me.” I says, “I’ll tell you upstairs,” and I go over to the mama-san, a real hard-faced bitch, and give her four bucks. Then we go upstairs. Her name was Oy. She takes off her blouse, and she’s got these fantastic knockers and this beautiful brown back. She says, “What you want?” I says, “Anything?” She says, “For five dollars – anything.”
‘I gives her a fin and she takes my clothes off and starts washing my process and asking me if I’ve got the clap. The washing sort of turns me on and I tell her to hurry up. So she turns off the light and pushes me back on the bed, and God I’ve never been gobbled like that in my life. Her tongue’s whirling around and I’m practically fainting. But I pulled it out before I came. Now what? I had these oddball ideas and I just said the first thing that came into my head. “Turn over,” I says. “I want to piss on you.”
‘ “Okay,” she said. Okay! She gets down on the bed and I knelt over her. But I couldn’t do it – I don’t think I really wanted to – so I started screwing her ass for all it was worth. I came and rolled her over and that’s when I slid my hand up her thigh and touched the biggest process I’ve ever – Look, I don’t want to ruin your dinner.’
‘I think I’ve heard that one before,’ I said, as we passed down the train to the dining car.
‘No, no,’ said Tiger. ‘You don’t understand.’
We each had a Singha Beer. I ordered fried rice with prawns and mixed vegetables, and outside was the perfectly flat, unwrinkled Khorat Plateau. Tiger had been drinking whisky in the compartment and by the time the food came he looked a bit drunk; his face was flushed and even the scar on the top of his head was slightly rosy.
‘You’ve heard the story, right? The girl that turns out to be a guy, right?’ He began to eat. ‘Well, this isn’t the same story. Sure I panicked and she laughed – or he laughed. He says, “Don’t you like girls?” and gives me a really horrible smile in the dark. I puts my clothes on – I’m dying to get out of there. But downstairs in the bar I decide to have another beer. I sit down and Oy comes over again. He says, “You don’t like me.” I buys him another Pepsi and by then I’m kind of calm. “I like you,” I says and – believe it or not – I give him a kiss on the cheek. I mean, don’t get me wrong. This wasn’t really a man – it was a girl with a prick! It was fantastic. You probably think I’m nuts – I know this sounds screwy – but if I go to Vientiane again I’ll probably go over to the White Rose and if Oy is there I’ll probably – yeah, I probably will!’
Sometime during the night, Tiger left the train. I woke to an empty compartment at six in the morning, and, snapping up the window shade, saw that we were moving quickly past black klongs to a city of temples and square buildings coloured pink by the sunrise. But the light was brief. It turned sickly, then dimmed to greyness, and we arrived shortly afterwards at Bangkok Station in a heavy rain.
21. The International Express to Butterworth
WHEN the American troops left Vietnam and all the Rest and Recreation programmes ended it was thought that Bangkok would collapse. Bangkok, a hugely preposterous city of temples and brothels, required visitors. The heat, the traffic, the noise, the cost in this flattened anthill make it intolerable to live in; but Bangkok, whose discomfort seems a calculated discouragement to residents, is a city for transients. Bangkok has managed to maintain its massage-parlour economy without the soldiers, by advertising itself as a place where even the most diffident foreigner can get laid. So it prospers. After the early morning Floating Market Tour and the afternoon Temple Tour, comes the evening Casanova Tour. Patient couples, many of them very elderly, wearing yellow badges saying Orient Escapade, are herded off to sex shows, blue movies, or ‘live shows’ to put them in the mood for a visit later the same evening – if they’re game – to a whorehouse or a massage parlour. As Calcutta smells of death and Bombay of money, Bangkok smells of sex, but this sexual aroma is mingled with the sharper whiffs of death and money.
Bangkok has an aspect of violation; you see it in the black jammed klongs, the impassable streets that are convulsed with traffic, and in the temples: every clumsy attempt to repair the latter seems to have been initiated by tourists rather than worshippers. There is a brisk trade in carvings and artifacts stolen from temples upcountry, and this rapacity – new to the once serene Thais – is encouraged by most of the resident foreigners. It is as if these expatriate farangs expect a kind of repayment for the misery of having to live in such an insufferable place. The Thais muddle along, as masseuses and marauders, but a month before I arrived several thousand Thai students (who described themselves rather curiously as ‘revolutionary monarchists’) marched on the police headquarters, brought down the government, and in the space of an afternoon managed to destroy seven fairly large buildings downtown. It was, like the patchy regilding of the recumbent Buddha, a popular violation, and now the street of gutted buildings is included in the Temple Tour: ‘Over here you will see where our students burned –’
The railway station is not on any of the tours, which is a shame. It is one of the most carefully maintained buildings in Bangkok. A neat cool structure, with the shape and Ionic columns of a memorial gym at a wealthy American college, it was put up in 1916 by the Western-oriented King Rama V. The station is orderly and uncluttered, and, like the railway, it is run efficiently by men in khaki uniforms who are as fastidious as scoutmasters competing for good-conduct badges.
It was dark when the south-bound International Express (so called because it penetrated Malaysia to Butterworth) left the station. In the klongs Thai children were floating banana-leaf boats, with jasmine rigging and masts of flickering candles for the Loy Krathong festival. We rolled along under a full moon, which was the occasion for the festival, the lunar fluorescence mellowing the suburbs of Bangkok and giving to the Chao Phraya River a slippery sweetness that persisted until the wind changed. Fifteen minutes out of Thonburi, on the opposite bank – once the capital – the countryside and all its crickets rushed swiftly up to the train and we were swept with sighing grass.
Mr Thanoo, the aged traveller in my compartment, sat reading Colonel Sun, by Kingsley Amis. He said he had been saving it for the trip, and I didn’t want to interrupt him in his reading. I went into the corridor. A Thai, about forty, with thinning hair and an engaging grin, said hello. He introduced himself: ‘Call me Pensacola. It’s not my name – my name is too hard for you to say. Are you a teacher?’
‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘What about you?’
‘You could call me a traveller,’ he said. Out the window, Thais wearing hats like inverted baskets were paddling canoes in the streams that ran next to the tracks. The lanterns on their narrow boats lighted the rippling water and clouds of gnats. ‘I just travel here and there.’
‘Where do you get your money?’
‘Here and there. Out of the air; out of the ground.’ He spoke playfully, with a laugh in his throat, in a tone of knowing vagueness.
‘Out of the ground? So you’re a farmer.’
‘No! Farmers are silly.’
‘Perhaps you don’t have any money,’ I said.
‘Plenty!’
He laughed and turned, and now I noticed that he was holding a pouch under his arm. It was about the size of a squashed shoe box and he held it quite close to his si
de, almost in concealment.
‘Where does your money come from, Mr Pensacola?’
‘Someplace!’
‘Is it a secret?’
‘I don’t know, but I always get it. I’ve been to your country three times. What state are you from?’
‘Massachusetts.’
‘Boston,’ he said. ‘I’ve been there. I thought it was so dull. Boston is a very sad place. The nightclubs! I went to all the nightclubs in Boston. They were awful. I had to leave. I even went to Negro nightclubs. I didn’t care – I was prepared to fight, but they thought I was Puerto Rican, something like that. Negroes are supposed to be happy and smiling with teeth, but even the Negro nightclubs are awful. So I went to New York, Washington, Chicago, and, let’s see, Texas and –’
‘You’ve certainly been around.’
‘They took me everywhere. I never paid anything – just enjoying, looking, and what and what.’
‘Who took you?’
‘Some people. I know so many people. Maybe I’m famous. The other day in Bangkok the head of USAID rang me up. Someone must have told him about me. He said to me, “Come to lunch – I’ll pay for everything.” I said, “Okay, I don’t care.” So we went. It must have cost him a lot of money. I didn’t care. I was talking about what and this and that. At the end of the lunch he said to me, “Pensacola, you’re fantastic!” ’
‘Why did he say that?’
‘I don’t know; maybe he liked me.’ He grinned and his hair was so sparse the grin and the movement of his malicious eyes caused his whole scalp to crawl with wrinkles. Each time he said ‘I don’t know’, he smacked his lips, as if inviting another question. He said, ‘The other day I took the train up to Bangkok. There was a suitcase on the seat of my compartment. I threw it on the floor.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe because it was on my seat. I didn’t care. But I was going to say: the suitcase belonged to a police captain.’
‘Did he see you throw it on the floor?’
‘Why not? We Thais have good eyesight.’
‘I’ll bet he wasn’t very happy.’
‘Was cross! “Who are you?” he said to me. “A traveller,” I said. “What do you do?” “Travel.” He got very annoyed and asked me for my ID card, “No ID Card!” Later on he went to bed – I made him take the upper berth. But he couldn’t sleep. All night he was tossing back and forth. Holding his head, and what and what.’
‘I guess you upset him.’
‘I don’t know. Something like that. He was trying to think who I am.’
‘I’m trying to think the same thing.’
‘Go ahead,’ said Mr Pensacola. ‘I don’t mind. I like Americans. They saved my life. I was up in the north, where they grow poppies for opium and heroin. So-called “golden triangle”. I was stuck, and all the guys were shooting at me. They sent a plane for me, but it couldn’t land in all the shooting, so they sent a helicopter. I looked up and saw three choppers circling around. I was shooting at the guys behind the tree – I was all alone; it wasn’t easy. One chopper tried to land, but the guys shot at him. So I went across and shot one of the guys and the other chopper landed on the cliff. He was calling to me, “Pensacola, come on!” But I didn’t want to go. I don’t know why. Maybe I wanted to kill some more. So I kept still and moved closer and I killed – what? – maybe two more. Chinese. I was still shooting and I crawled over to the chopper – ’
His extraordinary story, told in a mocking monotone, continued. He held off the gang of opium smugglers; he gunned down two more; and inside the helicopter he reloaded and murdered the rest of them from the air. When he finished I said, ‘That’s quite a story.’
‘Maybe. If you think so.’
‘I mean, you must be a pretty good shot.’
‘Champion.’ He shrugged.
But things had gone far enough. I said, ‘Look, you don’t expect me to believe all this, do you?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘I think you read it in a book, but not a very good book.’
‘You Americans,’ said Mr Pensacola. He beckoned me into his compartment and stood showing me the bulging pouch he had been carrying under his arm. He tapped it. ‘It’s a cheap one, right?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Plastic,’ he said and, before he pulled the flap open, he said, ‘Don’t be afraid. Peek inside.’
I leaned over and saw two pistols, a large black one and a smaller one in a holster, both nesting in a jumble of brass bullets. Pensacola gave me a wolfish grin, and, snapping the hasps of the pouch, said, ‘A thirty-eight and a twenty-two. But don’t tell anyone, will you?’
‘What are you doing with two pistols?’ I whispered.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, and winked. He tucked the pouch under his arm and walked down to the dining car, where I saw him later in the evening, drinking Mekong whisky, deep in conversation with two red-faced Chinese.
A rumour went through the train that we would be held up at Hua Hin, about 120 miles south of Bangkok, on the Gulf of Siam. It was said that the rains had swollen a river to a point where it was threatening a bridge on the line. But the train showed no signs of slowing down, and there was no rain yet. The moon lighted the flooded rice fields, making them depthless, and the water to the horizon made this stage of the journey like sailing across an unruffled sea.
Mr Thanoo said, ‘Why are you reading a sad book?’
He had seen the cover: Dead Souls. I said, ‘It’s not sad at all. It’s one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.’
He offered me a cigarette and lit it. ‘I am sorry for this cigarette. It is of inferior quality. Do you say “inferior quality”? I don’t talk English so well. My circle is all Thai people and they always want to talk in Thai. I say, “An incident happened to me today which was very surprising,” and they say, “No English!” I need practice – I make too many mistakes, but I used to talk very well. That was in Penang. I am not a Malay, though. I am pure Thai, through and through.
‘How old do you think I am? I am sixty-five. Not so old, but older than you, I think. I come from a well-educated family. My father, for example. He was educated in England – London. London. He was Lord Lieutenant of Penang – same as governor. So I received my schooling there. It was called the Anglo-Chinese School, but now it is the Methodist School. They have high standards.’
One thing I had regretted in my conversation with Mr Bernard on the train to Maymyo was that I hadn’t asked him specific questions about his subjects at St Xavier’s at the turn of the century in Mandalay. I did so with Mr Thanoo.
‘English was my favourite subject,’ said Mr Thanoo. ‘I studied geography – Brazil, Ecuador, Canada. Also history – English history. James the First. Battle of Hastings. Also chemistry. Tin is Sn. Silver is Ag. Copper Cu. I used to know gold but I have forgotten. I liked English literature best of all. My masters were Mr Henderson, Mr B. L. Humphries, Mr Beach, Mr R. F. MacDonald. And others. The books I liked most? Treasure Island. And Micah Clarke, by Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes stories. Tale of Two Cities was very interesting, and The Poison Island, by Lord Tennyson – a kind of dream. And Wordsworth. I like Wordsworth still. And Shakespeare. The best Shakespeare play is Like It or Not. I hope you have read it. David Copperfield – about a poor boy who is mistreated by people – that was very sad. He worked hard and he fell in love. I can’t remember the girl’s name. A Tale of Two Cities is about France and England. Sidney Carton. He was a kind of genius, and he suffered. Who else? Let me see. I like Edgar Wallace, but best of all is Luke Short. Cowboy writer.
‘I live on the island of Phuket, a very small place. People laugh at me when they see me reading English books on my island. What is that old man bluffing? Why is he pretending to read his English books? But I like to. You see this book, Colonel Sun? I thought it was a good one, but it is useless –’
As Mr Thanoo spoke the train came to a halt, near
ly dumping us on the floor of the carriage. It had stopped with the suddenness that presages a long delay, but I looked out the window and saw that we were at Hua Hin: it was a scheduled stop. A breeze brought the sea air into the compartment, which became heavy with dampness and salt and the smell of fish. The station building at Hua Hin was a high wooden structure with a curved roof and wooden ornamentations in the Thai style – obsolete for Bangkok, but just the thing for this small resort town, empty in the monsoon season. The arrival of the International Express was something of an event: the stationmaster and signalmen approached us sombrely, and the rickshaw drivers left their vehicles parked in the palm-fringed forecourt of the station and stood on one leg, like cranes, to watch the passengers receive the news of the threatened bridge. Estimates for the delay, given in round figures, ranged from two to eight hours. If the bridge were washed away we might be at Hua Hin for a day or two. Then we could all go swimming in the gulf.
There was, on the International Express, a team of Chinese girl gymnasts and acrobats from Taiwan, who drove the other passengers wild by appearing in the dining car in flimsy flapping pyjamas. At Hua Hin they skipped on the platform, holding hands and laughing: they wore heavy make-up, including mascara and lipstick, with the pyjamas – an effective combination. They were eyed by little groups of passengers, who stopped grumbling when they danced past. I bought a quarter of a pound of cashews (for ten cents) and watched an old lady roasting squid over a brazier she had set up next to the train. Still chattering about the delay, people bought these and ate them gloomily, as if studying survival, tossing the burned tentacles on to the track.
One of the squid-eaters was Mr Lau, from Kuala Lumpur. He wasn’t hungry, but he explained that he was eating the squid because they were so expensive in Kuala Lumpur. He was morose about the delay. He didn’t have a berth. He asked how much I had paid for mine and seemed annoyed that my fare was so low; he behaved as if, by some devious stratagem, I had taken his bed from him. He hated his seat. The chair car was too cold; the passengers were rude; the girl gymnasts wouldn’t talk to him. He said, ‘In Malaysia I’m a second-class citizen, and in Thailand I’m a second-class passenger. Ha! Ha!’
