White Eye

by Blanche d'Alpuget

  Romanus was still grinning sardonically after he put the phone away, picturing Grossmann at the moment when he discovered his crimes were known. The thing he hated most about Otto was that he had the power, through his money, to do good.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Otto Grossmann was tête-à-tête at home in Bangkok at two o’clock on Monday afternoon when his butler entered the drawing room to say that Dr. Parker from Australia was on the phone. Grossmann left the room, taking with him the crumpled pages, sent by fax, that he and his visitor had been discussing.

  “Put the call through to my study,” he told the butler, who acknowledged the order with a faint bow, murmuring the honorific “Khun Otto.”

  The study was air conditioned, like most of the house, which was one of the remaining teak mansions of Yannawa. Its garden was screened from the noise of the city by a high, whitewashed wall, and to enter it one had to cross a narrow, ornate bridge that spanned a pond with carp glinting in the depths and a cunning, savage turtle. Besides the bridge, the pond was spanned by steppingstones, but when people were leaving Grossmann’s parties they were sometimes too drunk to step on them. Guests who fell in the water invariably suffered a bite from the turtle. When this happened, Grossmann would announce he was going to catch the reptile and have it killed, but when everybody had left he would go to his study and laugh until tears ran along the creases near his eyes and into his small, flat ears.

  There was an orchid in a pot on his desk, the archetype of the white flower that was Siam Enterprises’ logo. Grossmann found its shape mysteriously pleasing. As he lifted the telephone receiver he looked at it intently, hoping for a relaxation of the tension that had built up in him during his interview in the drawing room. He laid the faxed pages on the desk so he could read them again while he talked.

  “Hello. Grossmann,” he said, his eye running down the report, which was written in Spanish, a language he spoke and read with ease. It was titled “Siam Enterprises: Illegal Exports” and had been sent to CITES in Geneva, with a copy to the Primate Rescue Organization in California. It said that Siam was exporting chimpanzees and other apes to private collectors in Europe, Japan, Australia, and America, in defiance of CITES regulations governing endangered species, to which Thailand was a signatory. It gave details, including some cargo receipts, of ninety-eight apes it claimed had been sent from Thailand illegally. This information was followed by the heading “Background” and several paragraphs of confidential data about the company, including that its board was composed of a number of Thailand’s “unusually rich” men. It gave their names and went on to say that two of them were known to be engaged in illegal logging in Burma and Cambodia and were suspected of supplying arms to the Khmer Rouge.

  “Shit!” Grossmann muttered. “Spanish shit!” He was more angry than he had been for years. Michael must have known about this, he thought. Why didn’t he warn me? A wave of angst rolled through him. He tried to see the Spaniard pointing a gun at Michael, threatening him to keep his mouth shut. The effort to imagine this made Grossmann pant, and the pant turned into an angry laugh. You’ve played me for a fool, he thought.

  Parker’s voice continued whining from the telephone. He had used such heavily veiled language—“our friend from the northern guesthouse,” meaning Lek—that Grossmann had not understood at first what he was complaining about.

  “John,” he said, “it’s full moon here. All the Buddhists are going to the temple. She’s probably upset because she’s missing the festival.”

  Parker continued to complain.

  “So what if she saw a ghost?” Grossmann shot back. “A billion Chinese see ghosts. In England, people used to see ghosts—that’s what we learned at school anyway: there are ghosts in England, but they can’t cross the English Channel.” He laughed.

  Parker realized he should not have mentioned the ghost episode as evidence that Lek was going mad. He should simply have said she was behaving irresponsibly and he wanted her replaced.

  “What I’m trying to say, Otto—”

  Before he had finished the sentence, Grossmann made one of the fast imaginative connections between disparate facts that had made him a millionaire. His plan would make Parker happy too.

  “John,” he interrupted. “Am I right in thinking you don’t like this friend of mine and you don’t want to entertain her? Listen: I’ll invite her to return to Thailand as soon as possible, so she doesn’t annoy you. But if you wouldn’t mind, I have another friend who wants to visit Australia.” He fingered his ear, massaging its stiff, curled rim. “We’ll talk about the details later.”

  When the call was finished he pressed the buzzer on his desk. A few moments later, the butler returned.

  “Tell Somchai I want to see him when my guest leaves.” Grossmann glanced at the title page of the report again. It had been sent from Chiang Mai. How ironic, he thought, that so much that is complex and secret has been uncovered, while simple facts are over-looked: that I own the hotel from which this was sent, for example. Grossmann tapped the phones and faxes of guests in that hotel and was often able to pass on useful information to his friend the minister for internal security. Everyone knew Chiang Mai was a heroin town, and a lot of fascinating dialogue went through the wires. I’ve always been lucky, he congratulated himself.

  He bared his strong, square teeth in triumph when he returned to the drawing room, where the hotel security manager from Chiang Mai awaited him.

  In the servants’ quarters behind the house, Somchai, the after-hours chauffeur, was lying on his mattress, wearing only Y-front underpants. He had pictures from magazines stuck on his whitewashed walls, including some Penthouse pets, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mike Mentzer. For the past six months, Somchai had been following Mike’s magazine advice about using NutraLife products to help build his biceps and brachials.

  When the butler poked his head in the door, Somchai made fists and crunched his pectorals, for the fun of seeing the look on the butler’s face. “Whaddaya want, Frogshit?” he said.

  “Master wants to see you in his study.”

  “Tell ’im to wait.”

  As soon as the butler left, Somchai leaped up and began dressing in his white uniform, first strapping his knife to his leg. His calves were so big now the knife was becoming difficult to conceal. He had asked Khun Otto to allow him to wear a pistol, like other night chauffeurs, but the master answered, “My life isn’t threatened. I don’t need a bodyguard.” He had patted Somchai on the shoulder, adding, “Anyway, I don’t know if you can shoot.” I can shoot, Somchai thought, flushing with the memory of insult.

  Diana had work to do quickly on Monday afternoon when she returned from the Research, then she had to turn her mind to the eagle. The bird had been outdoors all day on the block perch, with no food and nothing to do except watch the sky.

  As she approached the ti-tree fence, Diana felt her heart rate rise. Will the eagle still be tame? she wondered. She had tamed the bird yesterday, but today the bird could be wild again.

  Outside the aviary, she paused and gave her imitation of a wedgetail’s call. There was no reply, except from the ducks, who quacked loudly.

  Duck feathers were in a wet mound near the base of the perch, and a few still clung to the eagle’s foot. The eagle herself was back on the block, gazing at something on another planet. Diana poked at what was left of a drake: a pair of yellow feet and the wings. None of the raptors had killed the ducks before.

  “Well, Aquila,” she said, “I brought you some rabbit, but obviously that won’t be necessary.”

  The eagle continued to ignore her, but when Diana turned on the hose she twisted her head to watch and in anticipation began to loosen her plumage. Daily hosing had strengthened her feathers and encouraged her to preen, and she was now as glossy as satin, embellished with a tawny band, like a shawl, on her nape and across her wings. She preferred, Diana had discovered, to be bathed in a cone of fine mist. As the water began falling on her feathers, the bird’s e
xpression became less severe. It was remarkable how much emotion she could convey—all in the eyes. Diana had read that the golden eagles in Afghanistan, trained to hunt wolves, became as tame as cats, willing to have their legs stroked not just with a feather but by hand. Some people said that the great birds loved their trainers. Only a fool would believe that, she thought. Love, for an animal, was simply food. Only for humans was it confusing and painful.

  At the end of the shower, she approached the bird, her braced arm still sore from the strain of yesterday. Because of the height of the perch, Diana had to bend over, her face level with the huge curved beak. For a moment nothing happened. Then Diana’s shoulder jolted as the eagle stepped onto her arm.

  That evening, the fax machine in her study began to roll. A transmission from the Fish and Wildlife Lab in Oregon was coming through, a further report on the hair from Carolyn’s T-shirt she had sent three weeks earlier. It could now be confirmed, the fax said, that the hair came from a female chimpanzee kept in close confinement. Diana sent back a message saying she had dispatched by special delivery that afternoon one more hair. It, too, was from a chimp, she was sure. Would it be possible to confirm if this hair (which would arrive in three days) was from the same animal? Ten minutes later, the reply came: “We think so.”

  Joe Miller telephoned his daughter again on Monday evening to ask if she had heard anything at her end about the Williams case.

  “I found out something,” Weasel said diffidently. “You know my friend Donnelle, from Intelligence?” She paused.

  “What about it?” His voice was offhand.

  “Nelly’s been put onto Nichols’s computer.”

  “That so?”

  “You know she can hack any computer.”

  “Really?”

  “I could find out what was in his closed files.” Weasel waited a beat. “If you’d like to know.”

  “Don’t go to any bother.”

  His blindness used to exasperate her. “I could give her a ring. It’d be no trouble.”

  “If it’s just a phone call …”

  “Yeah—that’s all it would be.”

  “Well, then, it’d be interesting to know what he was up to. I’m going to take you up on staying over Easter, by the way.”

  As soon as she was off the phone, she began tidying the flat. She gathered up the cassette tapes he would not like and hid them in a drawer in her bedroom, and took some photographs off the refrigerator door, including one of Donnelle in studs and leather and a postcard of Marlene Dietrich that opened with the greeting “Darling Doughnut.”

  • • •

  After speaking to Grossmann on Monday night, Parker took Sonja with him to talk to Lek.

  The cabin where the animal keepers stayed was made of weatherboard, like the house, and had its own solar energy panel on the roof. It was one large room with sitting space and a tiny kitchen just inside the front door. At the far end there was a bed and a capsule bathroom. The bed was a double in case, at some time in the future, the cabin could be used for its original purpose as a guest room. It had a window but no back door and no fan, and in summer it was an oven. But as Parker pointed out, the keepers were used to heat.

  “What a pong,” Sonja said as they approached. When the door opened, a cloud of incense poured out.

  Lek’s eyes were drowsy from meditation.

  “We wanted to see how you are this evening,” Parker said. He had to cough. “God almighty! You need a gas mask?”

  “I no understand.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Sank you, all right.”

  “You’re going back to Thailand soon. I’ve spoken to Khun Otto. You’re going home.”

  “Home” Her face broke into a smile they had never seen before. “I going home!” She reached out and grabbed Parker’s hand as if to kiss it. “Sank you. I bery happy. I pray Lord Buddha. Sank you.” She pressed her palms together and, turning first to Parker, then to Sonja, bowed.

  “Seems to be okay,” Parker said as they returned to Sonja’s house. His wife made a grating noise in her throat. “You don’t agree?” he added.

  “Oh, absolutely! Lek’s had a trip abroad, she’s had a bludger’s job for three months, done nothing but play with animals all day, and now she’s bored and would like to go home, and that’s being arranged for her too. She’s a smart little operator, and we’re a couple of bunnies.”

  He knew that this was a moment when he should turn to his wife and soothe her resentment, but he was still angry about the hair. Sometimes he felt as if two enormous shadowy figures were fighting within him—one of them imaginative, rebellious, and proud, the other logical, angry, and destructive. Endlessly they struggled for supremacy, appearing in his mind like two giant boxers punching and grappling each other inside the ropes of his soul. He had to be the referee.

  “Why do you sigh?” she asked sharply.

  “Just exhaling, dear.”

  They had agreed in the morning that he would stay at her place that night. During dinner, when their fight seemed to be over, Sonja began looking forward to having sex. But as bedtime approached, Parker’s yawns made it seem he had no interest in anything except sleep. Sonja, still hopeful, removed her cream silk pajamas and her bracelet before getting into bed. “Nighty-night,” he said as he rolled his back to her. She wondered if she should take half a Valium to help herself off to sleep. After a few moments, she got up, put on her pajamas again, and went into the bathroom. John did not stir when she returned to lie beside him.

  She awoke suddenly, knowing instantly that he was gone.

  She ran to the kitchen, switched on the lights, and turned the U-1 monitor in every direction, hoping that somewhere down there she would see John. Every room in the laboratory was in darkness.

  The boards of the veranda felt cool under her feet. Above and around her, the full moon cast a white, vaporous glow, giving an enchanted look to the trees and bushes of the garden. Many birds were awake, because of the moonlight, and the sound of their calls came to her across the water—the honking of swans, the quacking of ducks, and cries she did not recognize. The whole night was pulsing with vitality and beautiful light.

  She made her way through the garden to Lek’s cabin, where a candle, placed on the table inside the front door, spread a yellow glow.

  He was there, as she knew he would be. After what I let him do to me last night! she thought in fury. But she had been waiting for this to happen, she realized. Now that it was taking place in front of her eyes, she felt a peculiar satisfaction. She was also intensely curious to know what he did with another woman, but the window through which she was looking was placed so that all she could see were his feet.

  Sonja returned to bed and closed her eyes. When John crept in about an hour later, she made a few quiet snoring sounds, breathed deeply, then turned over to escape the stink of sex and incense.

  Just before dawn, she became conscious of the noise of running water. John needed hours less sleep than she did, which was another reason she had agreed to his proposal that when they married, he should keep his condominium. How naive I was, she thought.

  He came into the bedroom and kissed her forehead with a mouth smelling of toothpaste.

  “Good morning, my darling,” he whispered.

  His wet hair dripped on her neck. “Morning,” she murmured.

  When he went out to the kitchen, she lurched across the bed and plunged her nose into his pillow. The smell of incense from his hair almost made her gag. I didn’t dream it, she congratulated herself.

  Parker had eaten breakfast, watched the television news, and left for work by the time Sonja felt strong enough to get out of bed. There was a stool in front of her dressing table, which she had decorated with decoupage, using a pattern of cherubs and wreaths. With her bottom pressed onto a cherub, she jacked one foot on the rung of the stool so her thigh was steady while she injected herself. She felt better instantly, and hungry. During those hours lying awake beside
John while he snored and farted, happy as a pig, she had done some serious thinking. “My husband,” she muttered, twisting her diabetic’s bracelet round and round her bony wrist. “He’s my husband.” She glanced at herself in the dressing room mirror. “Hello, Fox,” she snarled.

  Diana was on the road through the Research on Tuesday morning when she saw John Parker driving a Land Cruiser. In the habit of the bush, she slowed down to talk to him as their vehicles drew abreast.

  “Hello. Going falconing again?” He smirked.

  “No. I’m going to fly an eagle today.”

  “Ooh—can I see?”

  She got down and opened the back of her van. For a minute they stood side by side in silence, admiring the huge, hooded bird. With covered eyes she had an eerie appearance, seeming to be not quite eagle, but something more.

  Parker stepped back so Diana could slide the door shut. “You’re quite a gal,” he said, his eyes tugging at her.

  “Would you like to watch us training?” she asked.

  “Love to. But my rabbits, I’m afraid …”

  “Which is your lab? Yesterday I couldn’t tell from the papers where you normally work.”

  “I’m all over the place. There’s a small setup under Sonja’s house. I work there sometimes.… Then, up at the complex. Right now, for example, I’m on my way to the breeding house.”

  “I’ll look out for you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I’m being taken on a tour of the Research tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” he said, and looked bored.

  Flocks of parrots and choughs were feeding on the ground at the base of Mount Kalunga, but again there was no sign from Morrie waiting for her beside the fence post. Diana went to the edge of the pine forest and called out twice. After a moment she heard a shot from high up on the mountain. She decided that if after another week there was still no request for food, she would climb up to his cave.