by Tom Robbins
Ultimately, the appeal of Madame Ko’s act rested not on skills but on appearances, not on clever tricks but on the paradoxical and unconquerable dignity with which those bulbous beasts, so awkward, lumbering, and cartoonish in demeanor, went through their routines; and, moreover, on the abject pleasure they seemed to take in themselves. To see wildwood oddities break spontaneously (to their mistress’s feigned chagrin) into a hippy-hoppy little dance, a jaunty Chaplinesque jig rife with pathos and a kind of implied defiance, and to hear them suddenly accompany their slapstick steps by thumping their parabolic paunches with a rhythm at once anarchistically explosive and as equanimously elegiac as the fugues of Bach (pla-bonga, pla-bon-bon-bonga-ga-ga), was to confront—spotlighted and in three dimensions—what Alfred North Whitehead must have meant when he wrote that “the notion of life implies a certain absoluteness of self-enjoyment.”
Maybe the affecting aspect was that Madame Ko’s tanukis sparked in an onlooker’s muscles a kinetic memory of the innocent freedom of early childhood, when one could let one’s body go all akimbo on the slightest whim, could bounce, flop, and skip about in pure corporeal joy without embarrassment, judgment, or restraint.
Or maybe there were more “mature” associations, memories, say, of being falling-down drunk at the company picnic—but now crazy little animals were serving as surrogates, allowing one to vicariously relive those deliciously liberating and rebellious moments while maintaining one’s veneer of civilized respectability, protecting, in the process, one’s marriage, one’s standing in the community, one’s job.
Or maybe, on a strictly subconscious level, circusgoers recognized in the antics of the tanukis—antics that appeared goofy and bumbling yet, at the same time, brave and successful—an analogy to their own blindly hopeful gyrations in a complex, impermanent universe where every happy dance was danced in the lengthening shadow of death. And maybe they were inspired, if only for a night, to emulate the tanuki capacity for self-enjoyment, a gift that ought to be the birthright of every Homo sapiens.
Or maybe not. Maybe all those interpretations are just so much god-fodder (The God-Fodder, The God-Fodder II), the very sort of bullshit responsible, some say, for keeping alive a modicum of divine interest in our discredited race.
In Lisa’s case, surely, it was nostalgia rather than analysis that held her in her seat before that empty circus ring. But there she sat, motionless, quietly staring, and who knows how long she might have remained in that position had she not felt a pair of lips pressing with warm familiarity on the nape of her neck?
Once the government-leased Learjet became airborne after taking off from Hickam Field in Hawaii, the shackle was removed from Dern Foley’s left wrist. His right hand remained cuffed to a steel ring in the cabin wall. Ever watchful, Technical Sergeant Canterbury sat directly across the aisle from him. Sergeant Canterbury, who spoke several Asian languages and had mastered several martial arts, was at least as brawny as Dern and four inches taller. In that regard, but in no other, Col. Patt Thomas felt secure.
Never in his career had Thomas embarked on a mission whose parameters were as ill-defined as this one. The objective, assuredly, was to learn if Foley’s fellow crewmen on the B-52 known as “Smarty Pants” were also alive somewhere in South-east Asia, and if so, to what extent they—and possibly other MIAs?—might be involved in a drug-trafficking operation. Yet, should he, with a paucity of leads, a minimum of assistance, and an uncooperative suspect, succeed, against odds, in ferreting out those things, what then? Because of its military desertion aspects, the case couldn’t just be foisted off on the DEA. America had one criminal MIA, a hero turned traitor, on its hands. Wouldn’t two more only inflate the pickle and make matters worse?
Yeah, and suppose he could find no trace of Goldwire and Stubblefield—a distinct possibility—or acquire no further information regarding the source of Foley’s narcotics: what then? What did he do, then, with the moon-headed, tongue-tied, Bible-cruising motherfucker? Turn him over to authorities in Thailand or Laos, pressure them to salt him away in some rat-gnawed, backwoods bamboo hell cell and never, ever let the foreign media get wind of it? He wouldn’t bet his retirement pay on a happy ending to that scenario. I could kill him, thought Thomas, although having not taken another man’s life—at least, not directly—in twenty-five years of military service, the thought suffered from a deficit of authentic resolve. Or I could have him killed. One of Mayflower’s weaselly smack artists would gladly accommodate, or I could order Canterbury to off him. Dirty business, but the alternative would be to haul his troublesome ass back to the U.S. and start plugging leaks, bamboozling sisters, and grinding the damn sausage all over again. Aw, man!
Motivated as much by frustration as anything else, the colonel unfastened his seatbelt, strolled to the rear of the aircraft, and exchanged seats with Sergeant Canterbury. Dern was perusing the Bible. Thomas stared at him until he was forced to look up. “What you doing, man?” Thomas asked. “Looking for loopholes?”
To the colonel’s surprise, his prisoner actually smiled. He tapped the Bible with his fist. “If I was, I’d be in luck. There’s not much behavior that can’t be justified by one verse or another in here. Ambiguities and contradictions, that’s what biblical guidance is made of.”
“You don’t say?” Thomas was encouraged. This was the first time he’d ever heard Foley speak three consecutive sentences. “Like what, for example?”
“Well, in one place, we’re commanded to seek revenge: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. In another, Jesus instructs us to turn the other cheek, love our enemies. That’s an easy one to reconcile, of course. Given an equally pious choice between altruistic loving and wrathful maiming, what’s a real man going to do?”
“I see what you mean. But, you know, it isn’t often you find a religious scholar in the dope trade. That’s kind of a contradiction, too, isn’t it, Foley?” When Dern didn’t answer, the intelligence officer nodded at the Bible again. “So, you looking for God in there?”
The prisoner audibly scoffed. “In here?” Then, after a moment, he said, “Oh, I suppose you can find God’s fingerprints in a book, even in an incoherent hodgepodge of myth, history, genealogies, inventories, poetry, sexual fantasy, and politics like the Bible, but”—Dern pointed out the window—“there’s a whole lot more divinity in that reef down there. If I thought I had to hunt for God, I’d be looking in a place like that.”
This is a good sign, man! thought Thomas. If I can just keep the cat talking, who knows? At the same time, he actually was kind of interested. “I guess that means you’re one of them environmentalists.”
Dern looked puzzled. “One of what?”
“Environ—Oh, hell, I reckon they weren’t around much back when you were an American. You know, they’re the, uh, they’re the people who put the ecology—the boondocks and the swamps and the minnows and spotted fucking owls—ahead of progress. Ahead of our economy. Ahead of our national security. The undeveloped, bug-chawed ‘natural’ situation is the whole pot of gumbo to them types. We call ’em tree-huggers.”
Thomas rather thought Foley might ask what purpose was served by an economy whose success and protection depended on people living in ugly, sterile, unhealthy environments—he’d met that argument before and admittedly had had some difficulty refuting it—but the ex-pilot merely shrugged and said, “There’s more to trees than you think. I’ve run across some trees I’d sooner hug than a woman.”
As unexpected as the remark may have been, Pitter Patt saw it as an opportunity for a segue. “Speaking of women . . . you got a wife over there?”
“Over where?”
Damn him! Oh, well, it was worth a shot. “Laos.”
“You calling me a cootie, Colonel?”
Double damn him! “Just axing if you got an old lady.”
For the second time that day, Dern’s lips scissored into an approximate smile. “Not in the legal sense,” he confessed. “What about you? You a married man?”
> “Uh. Yeah. I am.”
“Never saw your wife around our luxury suite there in Frisco. You don’t let her drop in on you at the office?”
Who was questioning whom here? Out of some kind of need that was stronger than protocol, perhaps, Thomas deigned to answer. “She’s down in Louisiana these days. Looking after my sister.”
“Your sister’s sick?”
“Pancreatic cancer.” The way the words scraped against his palate, he might have had his own “implant” there.
“Damn. What a shame. That’s a particularly painful one.”
Thomas sighed. “Extremely painful. Extremely. Just goes on and on. None of that shit they give her takes the hurting away.”
For the first time ever, Dern looked the colonel straight in the eye. The eyes were as brown as ale bottles and, at that moment, as damp as a bar rag. “They claim heroin’s the one thing that’ll ease it,” said Dern.
“I’ve heard that. But they can’t give her no heroin. Against the law.”
“In the U.S. it is.”
“Other countries, too.”
“True. But there’re clinics here and there in the world that will treat with it.”
Thomas frowned. “What kind of clinics?” Doubt and suspicion obscured whatever hopeful interest there could have been in his voice.
“You know, medical clinics. Safe and clean, staffed by doctors. I mean, I’ve never been in one of ’em, I’ve only helped—” Dern caught himself. The colonel noticed. “I’m told that they’re pretty compassionate places. Lots of fresh flowers and soft music, and spiritual guidance if the patient wants it. They don’t put the person in a stupor, just administer enough dope to ease the transition. Make dying as sweet and painless as possible.”
For a long time after that, Thomas said nothing. That suited Dern just fine. He felt he’d talked much too much as it was. He returned to his Bible, meditating on that verse about how the lilies of the field don’t bother to flip burgers or climb the corporate ladder. Ten minutes must have passed before Thomas inquired in a low voice, “Can you tell me where the best of those clinics is located?”
Dern sniffed. “I’m not a referral service.”
“But you could tell me?”
“Maybe. There’d have to be considerations.”
“What kind of considerations?”
Dern closed the Bible, leaned his glossy head back, and shut his eyes. After a lengthy interval, he said, “Forget about it.”
“You can’t be induced to—”
“No!” snapped Dern. “I can’t. You’re not to be trusted. I know about that oath you took. I took it once myself. You’re sworn to uphold and defend whatever wrongheaded, incompetent, self-serving, slicky-slicky, totally corrupt interpretation of the Constitution that a gang of avaricious hillbillies and lying shysters decide to. . . . Forget it. You’re sworn to duty, Thomas, and your type has never let the suffering of innocent people stand in the way of doing that duty; even your conscience, if you still have one, wouldn’t stand in the way. Sooner or later, the narrow channel that’s open in your mind would be flooded with fear and ambition; you’d hear duty calling, you’d hear the Pentagon calling, you’d hear the power and the glory and the right and the might and the yankee and the doodle calling. You’d . . . listen, you may be black and, for a field-grade officer, halfway hip, but you’re still a willing cog in the big ugly wheel of patriarchal progress, and those birds on your epaulets are predator birds. You’re going to have to dance with the ones who brung you, Colonel, sir, and may the gods, including the ones in the trees, have mercy on your poor sis.”
Although Dern’s passionate speech was delivered in fairly measured tones, the vocal effort—so uncharacteristic of one of his reticent inclinations—seemed to exhaust him, and he reopened the Bible with a weary gesture, as if taking refuge in an all-too-familiar asylum. Colonel Thomas looked away. Then, he rose and returned to his seat at the front of the cabin.
Madame Phom—the young Madame Phom, granddaughter of the wire-walking patriarch—and Lisa Ko had grown up together. Best friends, they had always hugged, kissed, and fondled each other, and the fact that her little fling with Bardo Boppie-Bip had cast a permanently different light on such intimacies only slightly inhibited Lisa’s reciprocation of the circus star’s caresses.
“Phommie! Mmm. Darling. What are you doing here?”
“I’ve just come to check the set-up we’ll be using this season. What are you doing here, my love? And why are you talking funny?”
“Oh, well, I have a sore tooth. An abscess, I think. I’ll go to a dentist tomorrow. But in Bangkok.”
“Yes, yes, Thai dentists are much better educated. I wish I could go to Bangkok with you! Wouldn’t we have fun? But I must return to Fan Nan Nan in a day or two.”
The instant Madame Phom disclosed her plans, a lamp flashed on in that chamber of Lisa’s cerebrum where the Dilemma Twins had been playing Ping-Pong in the murk. For better or for worse, she knew then what her next course of action would be. “Phommie, would you do me the huge favor of delivering a letter for me in Fan Nan Nan? Actually, two letters. Would you?”
When Madame Phom gladly consented, Lisa excused herself to seek out pen and paper and a private place to write. “Take your time,” said her friend (in reality, she said the Lao equivalent of take your time). “I have to go look over the shoulder of the lighting designer. Sometimes I think management wants to blind us aerialists with lights in order to give the bloodthirsty mob an extra titillation.”
Borrowing the ringmaster’s office, Lisa sat with the index finger of her left hand pressed so pensively, so firmly against her slightly lopsided nose that the feature became temporarily symmetrical. A Hollywood attorney could probably have written the first draft of a prenuptial agreement in the time it took Lisa to compose two short epistles. As brief as they were, however, when she at last sealed them in their respective envelopes (licking the flaps put unpleasant pressure on the lump in her mouth), there was an air of finality around them you could stir with a fork.
No news is good news in Cognito,
Addresses are damn hard to find.
The queen of spades runs the mailroom
And all the postmen are legally blind.
Although Colonel Thomas had been informed by reliable sources that the Green Spider Hotel was an obscure but comfortable hideaway where the wrong kind of questions were never asked, he frowned uneasily when the desk clerk appeared to recognize Dern Foley. He would frown frequently and with even steeper displeasure over the next thirty-six hours as he waited in vain for the elusive freelance agent and reputed hacker to return his calls.
Thomas and Sergeant Canterbury had adjoining rooms. Dern was held in Canterbury’s quarters, handcuffed to the water pipe, the only piece of metal in the place. The door between the rooms was left open, and through it, Dern and the sergeant watched Thomas pace the floor, back and forth, back and forth, like a zoo cat in a cage. He didn’t seem alarmed, particularly, but he was restless, a bit frustrated, and obviously had things on his mind.
When, eventually, the phone did ring, interrupting the air conditioner’s emphysematous wheeze, all three of the men jumped. It was not the freelancer on the other end, however. It was the American businessman and sometime informant who, without knowing the details, had recommended the freelancer to his old pal Thomas as a knowledgeable, discreet, and effective contact. “Sorry, Patt. No go. When our man learned who you’ve been playing spook with, he backed out.”
“You mean he don’t dig the saintly Mayflower? That’s good, that’s a very good sign. I like the cat already. Just set it up for me to talk to him, and in three minutes I’ll put his mind at rest on that account. Just set up a meeting.”
“Can’t do it. He’s left town. Gone down south somewhere with one of his wives.”
“One of ’em? How many wives the dude got?”
“Just two, I guess.”
“Only two. What a pity. These Thai ladies are fine,
man. I didn’t realize they into polygamy over here.”
“They’re not. One of his spouses is European, and the other’s a Yank.”
“No way! You jiving me?”
“That’s the way I hear it, and they’re not Mormons, either. It’s a weird time, Patt. This is 2001. Crazy stuff going on everywhere. You’ve been cooped up in an office too long.”
“You’re right about that, brother man. How right you are. I got every intention of blowing this stuffy room tonight and checking out the Bangkok scene. But meanwhile, stay on our bigamist, will you? Stay on him, track him down, press him, tell him I’m the sharp rock in Mayflower’s gallbladder, and if he relents, buzz me on my satt phone. Thanks, man. Bless you.”
An hour or so later, the colonel, the sergeant, and the MIA—in nearly identical khaki trousers and blue polo shirts—approached Patpong three abreast. The handcuffs (which had elicited not so much as a raised eyebrow at the Green Spider) having been dispensed with now, Thomas and Canterbury leaned against Dern, holding onto his elbow or his shirt as surreptitiously as possible, while at the same time allowing him to be their guide. As the crowds thickened, that configuration became increasingly difficult to maintain, and often one or the other of the guards found himself either in front of or behind his fellow officer and the prisoner. In that way, they entered Patpong proper.
