by Paul Theroux
Perhaps this bewilderment showed on his face. Song said, “You come me.”
He knew what she meant.
“I get taxi.”
Song gave the driver directions. They went through a district he recognized from its noodle shops and street life, not far from his hotel. Off the main road, down an alley, into a smaller lane to a courtyard and a doorway. Song paid for the taxi. A young man in a white short-sleeved shirt at the doorway gave Song a key on a wooden tag.
“You give him baht.”
Osier opened his wallet, and Song plucked out the equivalent of ten dollars.
The young man led them to a ground-floor door, showed them in, switched on the air conditioner. Osier sat on a wooden chair and saw that the room had no windows.
“You want drink?”
“Beer.”
Song left the room, and when she came back with a tall bottle of Singha beer and two glasses, she sat on the bed across from his chair and poured his beer slowly. They clinked glasses. Osier thought: This is how criminals conspire, this is how they behave, hardly speaking, over beer, in windowless rooms, rationalizing their heads off. Yet—giddy, defiant—he thought, I am happy.
Song said, “You take bath”—and she had to repeat it before he understood what she meant.
In the shower, he thought to himself, This is reckless, this is absolutely stupid. And then, Life too short.
When it was Song’s turn for a shower, she turned off the light in the room, left the light on in the bathroom, the door slightly ajar. A stripe of light from the cracked-open door lay across the bed, where Osier was propped against the pillows with his glass of beer.
Wrapped in a towel, Song crawled next to him. Her skin smelled sweetly of vanilla. Her full breasts were cool and damp against his arm. While he drank, saying nothing, she caressed him, stroked his chest. He put his drink on the side table and closed his eyes, loving her touch. And he touched her, not longingly or with any passion, but merely holding her breasts, weighing them in his hand. He made to steady her arm but she shrugged, she wouldn’t let go, her hand went lower.
When he did the same, she reacted with a sudden movement, pushing his hand away with the hand she’d used to caress him.
“What’s that?”
But she had buried her face on his shoulder, and he felt the heat as of a secret against his neck.
“It my knife.”
He became very still. He knew now, he’d heard it all, he even knew the word. He said, “You ladyboy?”
“Why not?”
He was amazed at his own calmness, and recognized a kind of strength in himself. He needed most of all to be kind. He said, “That’s all right.”
“You want me stop?”
Taking shallow breaths that he knew she could hear, he thought for a long time. He didn’t say anything. And then, when she stirred, he allowed it to happen, thankful it was night.
And it ended, a jostling in the dark—a clumsy farewell in a lane of noodle shops outside the room, Song urging him to take a taxi on his own, a sleepless night in his hotel, and he was on his way home through the silver tunnel to America, being shot from one end to the other. Lying on his narrow folded-down airline seat, half asleep in his twisted clothes, in the same posture in which he had been touched, he was flesh. Not weak or strong, but a helpless hot organism in a rapture of possession.
4
In a rental car, heading north from Boston, observing a ritual, Osier drove to the nursing home where Joyce’s mother was a resident. She sat, her head tipped to the side, looking hanged, in a chair by the window, not so much white-haired as balding. A tang of urine in the air made him catch his breath.
She said, “Have you come to take me away, Roger?”
Roger was Joyce’s father, her late husband.
Osier said, “No. I’ve brought you a lovely shawl, though. It’s silk.”
“I want to go home. Take me home. I don’t want to die here.”
He went cold, hearing this. He hated that she was so logical. Her house had been sold three years ago, to pay for this assisted care. He dangled the shawl to distract her, but she remained agitated and querulous.
“I want the key, Roger.”
“What key?”
“The key for my toe,” she said.
He continued north, ate a lobster roll in Wiscasset, and by midafternoon was in Rockland, driving toward Owls Head. Saddened by the leaves turning russet and yellow, by the chilly air, the dark water of the bays and inlets, he drove slowly.
Joyce’s greeting was “Aren’t the colors incredible?”
But the colors reminded him of something much worse than retirement. The next big storm or the November rains would tear all of them from the branches and beat them to the ground and blow them flat against the fence.
“Lovely,” he said.
Death was the dry veins and the brittle curl in the withering leaves. These weren’t colors. Color was life and heat; a naked body could have color; fish twitching in a tank had color, and when they were dead they lost this brilliance and went gray. He took a drive, parked at the shore, and called Song. With his eyes on three lumpy islands, he heard the purr of her warm voice, heat and sunshine in his head.
“You no forget me.”
“I want to see you.”
“See you when I see you.”
When he got back to the house, Joyce was seated by the window, holding his pictorial diary in her lap.
“It all looks so amazing. Those temples, those flowers, those lovely people.”
The images of his days at the plant were accurate, but after that first meeting with Song, he had disguised his nights, falsified his pictures, turned Siamese Nights into a temple, sketched Song as a slender boy, on one page a balloon enclosing “Life too short,” and another, “Everybody always go home,” and later, “See you when I see you.”
Joyce’s smile tore at his heart, because she didn’t know anything, because she was happy, solicitous, believing he was overworked. He knew how murderers felt when they were in the presence of their unsuspecting victims: powerful, even perhaps pitying.
“I’ve made chowder. Your favorite.”
He thought, That man is not here anymore.
Joyce made excuses for him because he was too ashamed to concoct any for himself. “Of course you’re tired. You’re not yourself. Think of the distance. Flying is no fun. All those security checks. Remember to get some exercise. Don’t drink alcohol. And I really hope you make some friends there.”
He was relieved to be summoned to Boston by Haines, the CEO, to hear the decision. It was up to them. His fate was not in his own hands.
Haines said, “We’re extending you.”
Which meant to him: Song. He called her from Logan Airport. He heard music.
“Where are you?”
“Waiting you. Siamee Nigh.”
He contrived to see her the day he arrived—and, landing, he felt younger, hopeful; life was more complicated but richer. Meeting her involved a lie to Fred Kegler, which appalled him. But it was worth it to see Song’s feline face, her straight hair stylishly chopped apart, her pretty mouth, her full breasts. Her secret ambiguity excited him. A ladyboy was more emphatically feminine to him in an old-fashioned way that reminded him of his youthful romances, and the pallor of her complexion made it seem as if he was always seeing her by moonlight.
They couldn’t spend the night together—it would require him to tell another lie to Kegler. But he saw her on the weekend, not in a bar but by a lake in Lumphini Park.
She wore sunglasses, she carried an umbrella. “Thai people hate sun.”
“What do Thai people like?”
“Like shadow. Like night.” He laughed. She went on, “Farang like sun.”
“I like shadow. I like night.”
So he was no more than a farang? He struggled to make an impression, he talked about taking her on a trip. But he found wooing her like this a humiliation, because she didn’t need him. Sh
e was always in a bar, always being pursued.
He wondered if, in spite of the longing he felt, he was kidding himself. How could he care this much for a ladyboy he’d met in a bar? Was it that he’d had a glimpse into his sexuality that he’d kept in a dark corner, a sort of corner like Siamese Nights, where he’d groped Song and not been shocked? Or in the room. It my knife.
That night, alone, he went to Soi Four and chose a ladyboy bar at random. It was loud, filled with drunken farangs, some ladyboys in shorts dancing on a mirrored stage under a glitter ball.
“You buy me drink?”
“Sure, what’s your name?”
“Me Nutpisit.”
She was elfin, with eager eyes. But he knew she was a ladyboy, cute, rather small, pigtails, a miniskirt, knee socks. They drank together—she had a Coke—and later he paid forty dollars to the bar to release her. They walked to a hotel off a side street nearby.
“I give you shower.” Nutpisit took him by the hand and switched on the bright lights in the bathroom. Through the open door, he saw himself in the mirror, his surprised face, the leering lipsticked boy.
“No,” he said, and pulled his hand away. In a panic of self-disgust he began to apologize. The ladyboy Nutpisit, who had seemed so girlish, began to rage at him. Osier was frightened by the violent temper of someone so small. Nutpisit began to push him, then slapping him so hard, reaching for his face, she scratched his upraised arms. She raked his ears with her furious fingers. He pleaded with her, but she would only be quieted with fifty dollars.
Osier fled down the street like a felon, plucked at by the teasing girls sitting outside massage parlors. He had hoped he might respond to another ladyboy; then he would feel liberated from Song. But the experience had only served to show how much he needed Song.
He called her and heard loud music. He knew she was not at Siamese Nights. “I have to see you. Where are you?”
“Tomorrow better.”
He agreed; how quickly she had power over him. It was physical, it was her flesh. It my knife. To show her he was serious and protective, that he respected her and was even proud of her, he took her to dinner at a restaurant by the river. Some people stared. They seemed to know.
“They say, Why you with katoey?”
He didn’t care. This wasn’t Maine. He said, “I want you.”
At this she touched his hand, and he caught hers, and they held hands across the table like lovers.
“I never did anything like that before,” he said.
Song said, “I understand.”
The softness, the sympathy in the way she said it, the word itself, made him confessional. He explained what an ordinary life he had lived, the places he had been sent to audit accounts, that he had no brothers or sisters, that he had felt lonely when he’d gotten back to the States. She listened, she held his hand. He could not stop himself from talking—and it was more than he had said to anyone the whole time he’d been in Bangkok, more than he had said to his wife for years.
When he was finished, Song said again, “I understand.”
They sat on the terrace, watching the narrow sampans that were powered by big square engines and long drive shafts that, plowing the river, gave them impressive waterspout tails. They ordered bowls of noodles, he drank beer, she drank lemonade. Strings of tiny bulbs, like Christmas lights, had been draped on the low hedges and spindly trees at the margin of the terrace. They cheered him as the same sort of lights had cheered him when he’d been a boy. Was this an effect of travel? That if you went far enough you found a version of your childhood?
“We go upstairs?” Song asked, pincering noodles with her chopsticks.
Osier knew what she meant—his hotel was nearby. He wanted it, but superstitiously he told himself that there was plenty of time.
The sidelong looks of people did not embarrass him, but only reminded him of how happy he was to be with Song. And a defiant thought that had entered his mind and that had been developing over the past days was that the very oddness of the affair, an older man and a ladyboy, such an unlikely pairing, had to be proof that this desire was real—not mere curiosity but passion. And if love was the feeling of generosity, of gratitude, of unending mutual possession, it was perhaps love, too, driven by a sexual desire that had a reviving power.
“We go upstairs tomorrow night,” he said, to give himself the thrill of anticipation. “I have a meeting in the morning. Early. You know boss?”
“I know boss.”
“Boss have meeting.”
He had begun to talk in this halting oversimple way and was glad that no one but Song could hear him.
Song said, “I know meeting.” She took out her handbag and applied makeup. “You business.”
“Me business,” Osier said.
She raised her head in a superior way, flashing her eyes, and said, “Natang meehoo—pratoo mee da.”
Osier smiled and leaned toward her.
“Window have eye—door have ear.”
He said, “Where you going now?”
“Go to bar.”
Something in his heart convulsed. Jealousy, and more than jealousy, a wrenching, like a sickness.
“Why not go home?”
Song shrugged. He knew that shrug—it meant, What about money? A certain cluck meant money. A way of rolling her eyes meant money. Men in the bar would buy her a drink. She might allow herself to be touched, or persuaded for money to go with them. What did he know?
“You want money?” he asked.
Song didn’t speak. She was thinking hard, her face smoothed by the thought she was keeping to herself.
“If I give you money, do you promise not to go to the bar?”
She leaned toward him. “You think I like bar? You think I like men touch me?”
Her mouth twisted in disgust at tuss me. Osier, pleased by the energy in her response, was encouraged by her indignation, which was like proof of her morality.
“What about me?”
She touched his arm, then made affectionate finger taps on his hand. “My friend.”
“I give you money. No bar.”
“If I have money, I don’t need bar.”
He soothed her, saying, “I have money,” and never in the whole time he’d known her had he enjoyed such rapt attention, Song’s eyes fixed on him, her pretty lips moving as though murmuring a prayer, or soundlessly counting. Feeling powerful, taking his time, Osier agreed on a sum, the amount Song suggested, more than he had imagined. But he paid; he wanted to be certain of her. He couldn’t bear to think of her being pawed in the bar.
Song said, “This for my mudda.”
When he kissed her at the taxi stand that night she held him tightly.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
All the next day he was so distracted by his work that he had lunch later than usual, in the empty cafeteria, eating as the staff was finishing the dishwashing and stacking the chairs for the mopping. Osier sat at the only free table, and as he began to eat he saw Fred Kegler enter the room.
“Mind if I sit here?” Fred was holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee and already seating himself. “You’re having the chili prawns. I love the chili prawns.”
This sort of chat made Osier anxious, because he felt sure it was intended to put him at ease. There was more of it: weather, an upcoming holiday, Fred’s son in Little League, all insistently casual.
Then he began laughing softly, and said, “Spent the weekend in Pattaya. I know a guy there, American, married a local girl.”
“It seems to happen a lot,” Osier said.
“Big mistake. He’s miserable. I’ve got this theory.”
Someone announcing a theory was always unstoppable and usually wrong. Yet Osier listened, because his reputation was for being mild, a listener.
Still holding his Styrofoam cup of coffee, Fred said, “The more polite and submissive people are outside in cultures like this, the more rude and domineering they are at home.” Fred was nodding, meaning to go on
. “I’m talking about the women. These smiles, this sweetness. That’s all for public consumption. In private it’s the opposite, like they’re taking revenge. Like they’re corrupted. And not just here. I did a tour in Japan, different company. Those sweet little geishas turned into dragons at home.”
Osier, hearing crupted, disbelieved him, and said, “That’s a theory, but what’s the proof?”
“My friend is the proof,” Fred said, and sensing defiance in Osier, he seemed pained. “Hundreds of guys here are the proof.” He lowered his head and spoke in a whisper, “Some of these girls here, let me tell you, they’re not really girls. They’re dudes.”
This obvious warning by Fred had only made him more defiant. Larry had not said anything, but Osier had noticed that while seeming to avoid him, Larry was ever more watchful.
He could only call Song in the late afternoon. Song said she was in her room. He had no reason to doubt her.
He said, “I miss you.”
“I miss you.”
This echo worried him. Did she mean it as much as he did? He felt with such a person that they were only pretending to speak the same language.
“I want to see you.”
“I want to see you.”
I’m insane, he thought. But he didn’t have the power to stop, because the worst of it was that she was stronger than he; she was dominant. She didn’t need him, she could find the money from someone else. And she was a freak of nature, a kind of unicorn: he’d never find anyone like her.
He had never seen her room. He wanted to see her in it, to know her better. He waited for night to fall, then took a taxi to the address she had dictated to him. The room was in an old building smelling of fish sauce and hot cooking oil. But it was swept, it was tidy. What struck him about the room itself was the enormous calendar, the portrait of the king bordered in yellow for the royal jubilee, and the shrine in the corner, an image of Buddha, a flickering candle, some blossoms in a dish, a pair of amulets laid out side by side, and between them a slender tube of ivory chased in silver.
