A Haunting Smile

by Christopher G. Moore

  7

  IN BANGKOK IN the week before the killing started, there had been a lull when the Army and the pro-democracy movement had reached a kind of compromise. Hope of a peaceful resolution hovered like a fog of hope in the polluted city air. It was enough of a breather for Robert Tuttle to take his kayak up to Nan Province; the night before he left Bangkok, Tuttle had checked into HQ. An hour later, Harry walked in carrying a battered briefcase. He had a portable library of family notebooks, old letters, ledgers, articles, books, and clippings about head hunting and cannibalism. Harry unpacked part of the contents and set up camp in an HQ booth with Tuttle looking on. As the prostitutes watched, they gave Purcell’s booth a wide berth, shaking their heads over the strange behavior of a half-farang.

  Tuttle had seen the inevitable changes in Harry’s physical appearance over the years. His hair was pure white and shoulder length; his eyebrows coiled like a witch’s collection of amputated spider legs. His gold capped teeth sparkled as he smiled, concealing some secret family atrocity. The fingernails on his little fingers—both right and left hand—had been left to grow three inches in length and he painted them firehouse-engine red. He could have passed for someone five hundred years old, or how men would appear five hundred years in the future—of indeterminate race, age, and nationality. His physical appearance spooked some of the HQ girls who made a point of steering clear of his booth.

  He spent little time in England, and more time on the road—as an ex-full professor he had what he called “scope.” Harry had been working day and night on a short history of head hunting and cannibalism. It was a personal project to amuse himself and shock his friends. As Tuttle’s Singha Gold arrived at the table, Harry Purcell spoke.

  “The Tibetans drank from the skulls of their ancestors. Think of that. Tuttle raises his cup which just happens to be the skull of his grandfather and takes a long drink of Singha Gold. The Teutons in ancient times used the skulls of their enemies as drinking cups.”

  “After they were dead,” said Tuttle.

  “Most of the time,” said Harry Purcell. “For thousands of years Asians and Europeans and Africans drank from skulls. As a linguist you will like this,” said Harry, pulling out one of his photocopied books. “La Barre has the Italians using coppa which means cup and skull. There was no distinction between the two. In Sanskrit the skull and cup become kapala. In Germanic languages kopf ; Scandinavian skoal; the Scots skull and the French tête. From the Chalcolithic to early Bronze Age, Europeans had a common language: skull meant cup, and cup meant skull. The only difference was—whose skull are you drinking your beer from? Your grandfather or the warrior you killed in battle? When you raised your cup in a toast, you raised the skull of another human being to wish the good health of others.”

  As Harry finished his drinking story, Crosby appeared in a T-shirt with the words printed on three separate lines:

  No Experience

  No Family Connections

  No Chance

  He joined them in the booth, sitting next to Purcell, brushing some of Harry’s computer print-outs to the side.

  “Sorry to interrupt your lecture, Professor, but I prefer to drink my beer straight from the bottle,” said Crosby. “With most of the skulls I see, one would be hard pressed to get half a pint inside one.”

  “Skoal,” said Tuttle raising his glass. “Harry was making a point....”

  “You should think about cutting the first two lines from your T-shirt, Crosby,” said Harry.

  Crosby looked down at his shirt. “There was once a Last Chance Bar.”

  “It went out of business,” said Tuttle. “It burnt down.”

  “Someone threw a bomb. Personal conflict, the press called it.”

  “Personal conflicts were far more interesting in earlier times. Cortez found 136,000 skulls in an Aztec temple,” said Harry Purcell. “Imagine you sail in a wooden ship from Europe with its history of skulls as drinking cups centuries behind you, then pull open the temple door and find 136,000 skulls.”

  “The ultimate coffee shop, Cortez must have said to himself,” said Crosby. “Or he thought he had cornered the cup and saucer market in Spain for the next century.”

  “In the sixteenth century, the Spanish had stopped drinking from skulls,” said Harry.

  “Thanks, Harry,” said Crosby.

  Tuttle watched a girl curl herself around Crosby. She hugged Crosby and flashed a wink at Tuttle, pursing her lips into the kiss phase. He wondered if there was any other place on earth like HQ.

  As the conversation moved between redesigning Crosby’s T-shirts and the ancient practices of taking and using skulls, Gow whispered in Crosby’s ear. Gow appealed to those hardcores who insisted on a woman with a dancer’s body and a drinker’s face.

  “We go now,” Gow said. “Short time, okay?”

  “I’m making business,” said Crosby.

  Harry’s Zippo lighter shot a large bolt of flame into the air; he moved it forward, touching the end of a Havana cigar. He puffed on the cigar, sending a thick cloud of smoke across the table.

  Gow leaned forward, coughed and whispered in Tuttle’s ear.

  “That farang is devil. Why you do business with devil?” she asked. The smoke made her eyes tear.

  “Sweetheart, if the devil has a purple you would gladly do the devil’s business,” said Crosby, who had overheard her comment on Harry.

  She raised her fist to strike Crosby. Harry caught her wrist mid-flight, brought her wrist down level with his face and kissed her hand as if she were a princess. She struggled against him and pulled her hand away, jumped from Crosby’s lap, and fled in terror to the next booth, screaming to several HQers that the devil had kissed her and that nothing could purify her. In her mind only a demon sent from hell would kiss the hand of a whore in such a fashion—this hellish mocking kiss reserved for those whose worth was measured in gold rather than purple.

  When Tuttle turned around, he caught a brief glimpse of the other girls huddled with Gow. If he had looked closely, he would have seen a new face in the booth. She was young—nineteen, twenty. Her head craned around to catch a look at Harry Purcell. There was a half-moon scar on her face, casting an arc of shadow where the face should have been smooth.

  “He’s not the devil,” Daeng said to the other girls.

  “Women,” said Harry. He was thinking, “To command a she-devil with a kiss is a kind of victory.” But what he said to those around the table was a different story. “I had a relative on my mother’s side. General Xue grew a moustache so long it hung down to his chin. Before the general went on a long campaign, he had one of his mistresses braid ivory beads into the ends of his moustache. The ivory came from rare white elephants specially raised by the general for their tusks. A craftsman, really an artist, made the round ivory balls bearing the likeness of General Xue. Special care was taken to drill holes through the ivory for the general’s facial hair to pass through. He wore seven ivory skulls on each side of his moustache. He wore them into battle. He wore them into the brothels. General Xue would take a woman, and afterwards, he would give her one of the ivory skulls. When he returned home from a campaign, one could count the number of women he had taken by the number of missing ivory pieces. He often returned from one of his fourteen ivory campaigns, and inspected his white elephants for the growth of their tusks. Not until another tusk could be harvested and carved would he contemplate another campaign. He was a great warrior and lover. Once a man confused the ivory for pearls.”

  “Pearls before swine,” said Crosby.

  “General Xue once had a European executed for that very remark,” said Harry, looking thoughtfully at his teeth marks in the base of the cigar. “Beheaded.”

  It was the kind of Harry Purcell story which had often led Snow to say that Harry was full of shit. Harry saw from the way Tuttle and Crosby exchanged looks that they shared Snow’s opinion.

  “Tuttle, tomorrow, come around to my house. I have a piece of the general I’d
like you to have.”

  This sent a shiver up Tuttle’s spine.

  “What piece?” asked Tuttle.

  “A piece of the general’s femur bone.” Harry’s eyes sparkled, laugh lines stretching to his hairline. He liked this shock value. It was a family trait. His mother’s father had once told a journalist that a Japanese sniper had shot off his cock during World War II, and that he had a silver penis implanted to replace the missing cock. He showed a photograph of Harry’s mother to the journalist, and said, “This is my daughter from the silver cock.”

  Tuttle sat across from him wearing an expression of disbelief and terror not unlike what Harry imagined had been the expression on the journalist’s face. But the face which interested him most was that of Cortez. What had been the expression on Cortez’s face as he entered that temple and found himself in the midst of a mass carnage beyond anything he had seen on a battlefield? What was the look in Cortez’s eyes? Horror? Surprise? Did he stumble back, gasping for air? Or did Cortez have difficulty at first understanding the objects before him? He must have wondered about an explanation such as a natural disaster, divine punishment, or a devil living among the people of an uncivilized land.

  “Cortez should have smoked a Havana before he went through the temple door,” said Harry.

  “He could have defeated the Aztecs with one of those things,” said Crosby.

  “Harry, does it matter what went on inside Cortez’s mind?” asked Tuttle.

  For a long time Purcell said nothing. “Understanding the workings of a general’s mind is research and development for our business,” he said as a new round of drinks arrived.

  “What if nothing went through Cortez’s thoughts? His brain blanked, cut out,” said Tuttle.

  Harry liked that possibility as Tuttle believed that he would.

  “Hawks would have disagreed. Cortez’s mind was to think like a military man—so he would not have blanked out. He was a good businessman as well. We fucked him on a helicopter deal. He threatened us. We threatened him. But that’s business. His soldier’s mentality would be to ask the question of how long such a slaughter had been going on? But the real question is what would you think, or I think, or what would Crosby think?”

  “136,000 less farangs, assuming Indians are farang, to buy T-shirts in Bangkok,” said Crosby.

  “A practical, Crosby-like answer,” said Harry.

  “No matter how many skulls you collect, store, no matter how many temples you build to house the skulls, you can’t escape your destiny which is the same as for any other animal on earth—sooner or later, your skull goes on the shelf,” said Tuttle.

  “The realist’s answer,” said Harry Purcell. “The more man tries to deny he is an animal the more animal-like his behavior becomes. What other animal would build a temple and fill it with skulls of its own kind inside?” asked Harry, as Snow pulled up in his Hawaiian shirt, his glasses down on the end of his nose. He saw the young girl with the scar in the booth behind and made a mental note. You had to be careful with a booth of hardcores. It was better to keep one’s personally acquired HQ intelligence information about new girls to oneself; until the girl was checked out. Then the information would go public.

  “Ninety-nine beer mugs on the wall,” said Snow, shoving in next to Tuttle, picking up the thread of Purcell’s conversation as a perfect cover and pouncing on a distraction technique Tuttle had taught him years ago. “While you wandos are talking about that super wando of them all—Cortez—and the meaning of skulls, you missed a ringer who just walked in. She’s over by the jukebox, looking a little scared. Today’s rent day, so the hunting for ringers should be excellent.”

  Crosby looked through the crowd and spotted the girl in a slinky black dress, looking like a baby black widow spider spinning a web. “She’s not a ringer. She’s a semi-regular. Six months ago she might have been a ringer. But she crossed that line. I had her last week. Before she learns to say ‘ringer’ in English, she’ll be inducted into the HQ genito-urinary hall of fame. And from that point she’s...”

  “A shark who can smell blood-money in the water ten miles away,” said Harry without looking up from an article.

  “Exactly,” said Crosby. “She ran me a bath and then poured in half a bottle of Listerine. I questioned her about it. And she said Listerine killed germs. AIDS was a germ. Now comes the logical part. If she gave me a good soaking, scrubbed down the vital parts before we screwed, then in her mind I was AIDS and germ free. And you took her as a ringer?”

  From the jukebox came the song, “Moonlight and love songs never out of date... woman needs man, and man must have his mate, that, no one can deny. You must remember this....”

  “Listerine. God, you mean the shit that you’re supposed to gargle with?” asked Snow.

  “She buys the stuff by the case from some bloke who works the port at Klong Toey. It’s imported in containers. A few cases go missing. She tells me that she gets her Listerine at a very nice discount, too.”

  “But I really thought...I wanted....Listerine? I’m losing my ringer’s sixth sense. For godsakes, I could be in a state of advanced senility and not know it. All those drugs I took in the 60s. My mind could be a blank. Soon I will forget Crosby’s name. The purpose of Listerine. How to give directions to HQ to a cab driver. I will forget where I live. The girls will see that I’ve lost it, I’m cut adrift. A mere leaf in the storm. They will ask me how much money I have in my bank account, and I will tell them. I will live alone and not know what the story is. Where I parked my Winnebago. Or why a dog licks its balls.”

  “Why does a dog lick its balls?” asked Harry Purcell.

  “Because it can,” said Snow.

  “Because it’s not afraid to try,” said Harry.

  “You’re sick, man,” said Snow.

  Tuttle watched the Listerine girl, she was nineteen or so, black tight-fitting dress, with a matching handbag and fake pearl necklace. She might have been a ringer. Crosby might have been pulling Snow’s chain simply to have a bit of fun knowing Snow’s obsession with AIDS, germs and bathing before and after sex.

  “Ringers are becoming as rare at HQ as Shitemper Sewertums,” said Tuttle.

  “What in the hell kind of girl is that?” asked Crosby.

  “One with scales, the mouth of a grouper, a head the size of a bulldog and a powerful tail,” said Tuttle.

  “I’ve not had her,” said Crosby.

  “But you had her younger sister,” said Snow. “Noi Shitemper Sewertums.”

  About then Daeng had dropped a baht coin into the jukebox and pressed number 108—Say you, Say me.

  8

  “BANGKOK’S RADIO 108.3 has received another entry for the best rumor of the mass murder award. We have a report of chemical warfare on Patpong. It is unconfirmed. And that makes it, a rumor. The problem with this rumor is that it gives the pinhead generals ideas. That’s a novel thought. A general with an idea other than killing people and asking questions later. We are still here broadcasting. Stay off the streets unless you wanna become target practice for the trigger happy. I’m telling a lot of jokes but I haven’t had any sleep for forty-eight hours, and nothing I’m seeing in the street below is funny.”

  Tuttle was listening to a portable radio on the back of a motorcycle taxi. He had given the nineteen-year-old kid five hundred baht to take him to the front lines. The streets were empty, silent; nothing moving in the night. In the distance they heard gunfire. The kid knew his stuff, winding in and out of sois, avoiding Army patrols, and finally letting Tuttle off near Khao San Road. He joined a crowd coming out of a wat, when the Army opened fire. About a dozen people in front of him fell to the ground. He saw blood flecks on his forearm from someone beside him. The body didn’t move. Gunfire raked the perimeter. People moaned, groaned; some were crying. He heard trucks pulling up as he rolled around, crawled into a doorway and watched

  The radio plugged in his ear, he listened to the familiar voice of Radio 108.3. “You just heard Simo
n and Garfunkel’s The Only Living Boy in New York. We just had a report out of the Royal Hotel that the Army has stormed the place. Repeat the Army has stormed the Royal Hotel and we have unconfirmed rumors of indiscriminate executions going on in the lobby right now. We have a journalist George Snow on the line who is at the Royal Hotel. What’s happening? We can hear the gunfire.”

  “The Army invaded the Royal Hotel five minutes ago.”

  “The Army cut our water and electricity ten minutes ago,” said the DJ. “We’re working off a generator.”

  “All I can say, I saw one girl who took a round in the leg. She’s down. Outside the window, they are loading people into trucks.”

  “Dead people?” asked the DJ on the other end.

  “Some aren’t moving. I presume they’re dead,” said Snow.

  “Presume all you want. There is serious killing going on.”

  “Now I’m hearing more intense gunfire outside. Hundreds of troops are firing into the air.”

  “They’re not firing into the crowd?”

  “These guys are firing in every direction you can think,” said Snow. “Gotta run, someone’s shooting on my floor.”

  Click. There was a moment of silence.

  “That was George Snow, a journalist, who reported to us live from the Royal Hotel. Snow has eye-witness accounts of multiple casualties and Army trucks taking away the living and the dead.”

  Tuttle had risen from the booth at HQ, walked past the jukebox, out the back, through the kitchen and piss-holes near the alley. He had kept right on walking. He had made up his mind to return to the street. One or two cars had passed on Sukhumvit Road. He had bought five baht’s worth of watermelon from a street vendor. He had been putting off seeing Dee. They had not parted on the best terms. He worried that she had been pinned down in her apartment with all the shooting going on in her neighborhood. Soldiers raking Sanam Luang with gunfire were reported to have spilled over to her soi. Dee—which means “good” in Thai—was waiting for him. She had once told him that in between his visits to her apartment her life stopped. Nothing happened. It was like white silence. Waiting for her man to return. It’s what all Thai girls did until their boyfriends returned.