‘You remember me telling you about sanuk? You cannot have sanuk in such a place. Inside this prison a European man is more alone than Robinson Crusoe. It is not a fate I would wish upon anybody, and I mention it to you now for one reason. So that you do not take any action that might impose on me the sad obligation to put you in there. Do you see?’
‘Is looking for a man so very wrong?’
‘Never wrong, perhaps, but on occasion certainly unwise. You can imagine that I have looked high and low for Mr Curtis, explored every avenue, turned over every stone.’
‘Yes, I’m sure. I didn’t mean to imply—’
‘But if you do imagine that then you would be wrong. I haven’t done any of those things. I have spent no time looking for him. Why? Because it has been made clear to me that he is not to be found. Your British authorities, for reasons known only to themselves, have no desire to see him found, indeed they have a desire to see him not found. If the British do not wish Mr Curtis to be found and, despite my best efforts not to find him, he should turn up, I can assure you it would not be sanuk for me either. Do you understand?’
I assured Lieutenant Colonel Nopsansuwong that his meaning was most plain. We drove back to the hotel in silence and parked. The policeman turned to me.
‘When we are young, Mr Wenlock, the monks tell us a story about a monkey who found a jar with a banana inside. The monkey reached in to take the banana, but the jar had a narrow neck, and this prevented him from getting his hand out. If he let go of the banana he would be able to free himself, but he just couldn’t bear to let go of the banana, and carried on struggling and struggling in vain. And so he remained trapped until the hunters caught him.’ He paused, and stared at me to gauge whether the story had achieved the desired effect. ‘When we are young it is a story about a monkey, but when we grow older it becomes the story of our life. The thing we cling to most stubbornly is the one that undoes us. It could be money or ambition or hatred … all manner of things that take a grip on our hearts. The banana takes many forms. For some men – such as Mr Curtis – it could be the love of a blue-eyed girl. Most of the people in the prison are like that monkey.’ He reached over and shook me cordially by the hand. He said, ‘I do hope you enjoy your stay in Bangkok.’
I found Jenny waiting in the lobby, with a look of mild concern on her face. She scrutinised my expression as I approached as if to divine the seriousness or otherwise of my meeting with the policeman.
‘Are we in trouble?’
‘Who with?’
‘I don’t know. The authorities in Singapore … or from England.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘He took me to see the prison and said how much he would regret it if I ended up there.’
‘Oh, Jack!’
I smiled at her to offer the encouragement I did not feel in my own heart. ‘Yes, I think he genuinely meant it. He really would regret to see me in there. He was warning us in the most gentle and courteous fashion to mind our own business.’
Chapter 13
We decided to confront Mr Fink about the information I had received the night before. We were saved a trip to the arcade because we discovered him on the lawn smoking a cigarette, just as on the previous day.
He greeted us in a most genial fashion, as if he had forgotten the heated nature of our discussion yesterday. So genial and open, in fact, that it pained me to hold a suspicion of him, but the matter could not be avoided.
‘Mr Fink,’ I began, ‘you will recall saying that a picture of an English cow in a meadow would not be of significance, and in that you are quite right. But I am troubled because no one would ever think to take a posed photograph of a cow, and yet here we have a man on his first visit to Siam enlisting the services of a professional photographic studio to take a picture of a buffalo. Is that not remarkable?’
He smiled and a distant gaze filled his eyes. ‘Ah yes, but this was his first. You never forget your first.’
‘First what?’ said Jenny.
‘First buffalo.’
We looked at him with puzzled faces, and he slipped into an explanation that was half-reverie.
‘All chaps succumb. For the lucky ones, it’s really just like a bout of measles. You recover, none the worse for wear, the scales fall away and you begin to acquire a sort of understanding. You look back at yourself the previous year when you arrived and you feel a bit sheepish. Back home a chap would laugh if a tart told him he was handsome. He knows he’s nothing of the sort. But here it’s somehow different, you believe it.
‘It’s no good getting on your high horse about it, every chap is the same. Well, most of them. It really is only a short step from that to falling in love. Then you are doomed. But she won’t leave while there is still money, a commodity which she will spend with gay abandon until it has all gone. And then her love will turn to scorn, because in her eyes nothing is more contemptible than a man without money. And it will not make the slightest difference to her that you used to have money, or that the fact of your no longer having any money is entirely down to her.’ He paused and seemed to have forgotten that we were there.
‘You sound awfully cynical about it,’ said Jenny.
Mr Fink laughed. ‘Yes, but I don’t mean to. I know it sounds absurd, but I don’t mean to suggest the girl’s love isn’t real. That’s the very devil of it: in many ways it is superior to the familiar variety. As long as the money lasts it is the genuine article, but how can a girl love a man with no money?’
‘Very easily, I should say,’ Jenny said a touch indignantly.
‘Yes, in Europe perhaps, but that’s because you have never known real poverty. Romantic love is a luxury the poor people of this world are not in a position to afford.’
‘You sound like a man talking from experience,’ I said.
Mr Fink looked wistful, almost sheepish. ‘Oh yes,’ he agreed in a soft voice. ‘My trouble is, I have always found ways to get more money. I’ve lost count of the buffalo I’ve bought.’
‘What has that to do with it?’ said Jenny.
‘Oh everything. You see, when you meet a girl here, the first thing that happens is the family buffalo dies.’
‘That sounds very strange,’ said Jenny.
‘Yes, it’s a disease common to the water buffalo of Southeast Asia, you see. As soon as the girl meets a foreign man the buffalo takes sick and dies. Without the buffalo they can’t farm, so of course someone has to replace it, but who has the means? The chap, of course.
‘The first time it happens, he’s quite chuffed. He feels rather grand to be helping out, and he will talk about it in the bar. “I bought her a buffalo, don’t you know! It’s the least I could do, really. Poor thing, she deserves it. She hasn’t had much luck in life, but her heart … if you could see what I have seen … her heart is so … is so …” At this point one or two chaps in the bar will leave, the others will bury their heads in their copies of their newspaper, just wishing he would shut up, because there isn’t a man in the bar who hasn’t bought his fair share of buffaloes. Eventually, if he doesn’t stop someone will crack and walk up to him, and cry, “Just put a bloody sock in it, will you?!”
‘The chap doesn’t understand. He thinks the bloke is suffering from the heat or something. And for a while he continues to enjoy that most perilous of feelings: being Sir Galahad. The girl feeds it of course. It’s quite remarkable how skilfully a poor, uneducated, barely literate girl from the rice-farming districts can manipulate a chap who considers himself a man of the world.’
‘Where’s the harm in buying the odd buffalo?’ I asked. ‘I presume they are not expensive.’
‘Oh no, they are not. But that is just the beginning. Not long after the buffalo goes down, so does poor Mama. She has to go to hospital for an operation that is only ever described in the vaguest terms. “Operation”, the girl will say and rub her tummy or her kidneys, and quite often the source of the problem travels around the body from one meeting to the next. One day it will be her
spleen and the next it will be something to do with her head. Well, what’s a chap to do? Let Mama die? So of course he pays for the operation.
‘For a while everything is wonderful and then another tragedy strikes. The girl shares a room with a friend she trusts like a sister. Then one day the friend discovers the secret place where she hides her money and off she goes with your girl’s savings. How she cries, how the tears stream down her smooth lovely cheeks, how shattering is the wet look of heartbreak in those dark eyes. She faces destitution, and all for sums that are so pitiful … All her hard work, so painstakingly saved, or so she claims, going without food so she can save enough to be a good girl. What’s a chap to do? He would need a heart of stone not to help her. So he gives her some money out of pity, but then on her way home she gets robbed. So he gives her more, and this time she gets arrested by the police and they search her. They find the money and say, “What’s a poor girl like you doing with all this money? You must have stolen it!” So they take that too.
‘The poor chap can’t help but feel sorry for her, this poor poor girl whose life seems to be one endless series of calamities, so he gives her some more money. As for the friend who ran off with the money, your girl hates her and vows to kill her if she ever sees her again, but then one day in the market you see them together seemingly getting along famously. Then her brother gets in trouble with the money lender. If he doesn’t cough up a thousand tics, they will break his legs. What can you do?
‘Then Dad is arrested and they need to bribe the policeman to get him released or they will all starve. And then the little sister needs to go to school to get an education so she doesn’t have to do what her big sister does for a living, but there is no money to pay the fees because they used it to buy medicine for grandmother. What could be more noble than paying for a poor child’s education? So of course a chap will give money to send little sister to school so she doesn’t have to do what big sister does, even though in truth she won’t go anywhere near a school and is almost guaranteed to end up doing what big sister does.
‘And so it goes on. Each time he gives to the girl she is so overjoyed and tells him what a good heart he has. She assures him he’s not like other men, and of course the one thing all men have in common, the one respect in which all men definitely are alike, is the secret conviction that they are not like other men. That’s why they fall for it, you see, why they go with the girls. Back home, a chap rarely does such a thing. He wouldn’t know how to, or where. And it would all be so terribly awful, so grubby that he would be repelled …’
‘Of all the buffaloes you have bought, Mr Fink,’ said Jenny, ‘was there ever a special one?’
He considered the question. Hoshimi’s nurse wheeled her past us and placed her under a large parasol a few yards from us. She sat there staring at her cranes, but not folding anything. She looked at us and forced a smile, but today she looked drawn and gaunt.
‘They were all special in a way,’ continued Mr Fink. ‘But, as I said, you never forget the first.’
Earwig strode past us and out into the garden, and towards Hoshimi. He looked down at the lack of activity on the table and said something to her and did a little mime of paper folding. The girl ignored him, still staring unhappily into space. Earwig quickly lost the jovial demeanour. He turned sharply and strode back wearing a face of thunder. ‘It really is too much,’ he said as he passed, without looking at us. We all turned our heads and watched him walk into the lobby and through to the bar where he could be seen chalking a zero on the blackboard.
Fink rose to leave.
‘You’re not going?’ I said.
‘Yes, I’m afraid I must.’
Jenny caught his hand as he left. ‘What became of her,’ said Jenny. ‘The first buffalo?’
A sadness came into his eyes. ‘After she had had every illness in the medical encyclopedia and suffered a series of misfortunes beyond the imagining of even the biblical Job, she started bumping into things. You see with the passage of time I lost my naivety, most chaps do. I started to understand that all these misfortunes that seemed to befall her every day, it was not done out of … I mean, I think she loved me and you will wonder how can a girl who loves a chap cheat him so, but I understood she didn’t see it that way, that she was brought up to regard it in completely different terms.
‘She did it for her family because it was expected of her, her upbringing demanded it and, frankly, if she hadn’t done these things she would have been considered a heartless and selfish girl. A girl who did not take care of Mama. It’s difficult for us to understand how sacred that duty is. It hurt sometimes, but I tried to accept it for what it was, and I did, I could. But when she started bumping into things and claiming there was a problem with her eyes … I thought, no! I didn’t believe her. So I left some money out, and she saw that well enough. That was the end of it. I sent her away with a flea in her ear. Her name was Choo Choo.’
‘Is that Siamese?’ asked Jenny.
‘Yes. Sort of. Her real name was Jujit, with a low tone on the first syllable and a high tone on the last.’ He demonstrated in what to our untutored ears sounded a most authentic way. ‘Trouble is, most foreigners have problems with the tones, so if a girl has met a few she doesn’t bother with the correct name, just an approximation that we fools can pronounce. It is not of my invention.’
Our attention was drawn to the landing stage, where a barge was in the process of tying up. Strapped to the deck was a strange cargo: the oversized tin of Tate & Lyle Golden Syrup. A group of men began to manhandle it from the deck onto a ramp and then onto the jetty. We all watched transfixed.
‘By Jove,’ I said.
Hoshimi’s father hurried out onto the lawn, clearly excited, down onto the jetty. As he passed us he said, ‘Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup. Out of the strong came forth sweetness. Hurrah for the King!’
‘Hurrah,’ echoed Jenny. We began to stroll towards the water.
‘I imagine it’s some sort of prop,’ said Fink. He turned to go.
‘Mr Fink,’ I said, ‘is it true that shortly before Curtis went missing, you and he had a violent disagreement?’
He flinched. ‘Of course it isn’t, what on earth makes you think that?’
‘Something I heard.’
‘Who from? Spaulding? I would advise you not to believe a word any of them say.’
‘Even so—’
‘I’m sorry Jack, but that really is none of your damn business.’ He walked off, back to the hotel. I strode after him and caught his forearm as it swung back. ‘I’m sorry, too, Mr Fink, but I really must press you. They said you threatened to kill him.’
He turned to look at me, his face filled with thunder. ‘You are a bloody fool, Wenlock, if you believe anything they tell you. A bloody fool.’ Then he violently shrugged away from my hand, and strode off, bumping against Hoshimi’s table as he passed. It tipped over and the cranes fell onto the lawn. He did not stop and so it was left to me to put the table back upright and apologise to Hoshimi as I replaced the cranes. After I had finished I walked back to Jenny, passing Sugarpie, who had come to sit with Hoshimi. Sugarpie was wearing a tartan trouser suit, and waved at Jenny.
‘How did she get the trouser suit?’ I asked Jenny.
‘Poker. We played last night while you were out with the chaps. I let her win. Apparently, it’s her birthday. I thought we could use that information to worm our way into Earwig’s confidence.’
‘That sounds like an interesting plan.’
‘I told him earlier and suggested he buy her a birthday present. I said, I’m sure if you did that she would look very favourably upon you. He seemed quite taken aback, as if the simple idea of giving a girl a gift had never occurred to him before. He said, “Do you really think it will make her like me?” And I told him that I had it on the best authority that all girls like to be spoiled. He got quite excited and said, “I know just the thing,” and with that he was off.’
‘I don’t think I’ve eve
r bought you a gift, have I?’
‘Every day is a gift with you, Jack.’ Her voice had a playful tone that allowed me to infer she was speaking only half in jest.
We sat for a while staring at the river, wider than the Mersey and brown as gravy. There was a strange and palpable majesty given off by the mighty flow, which rippled with wavelets and shimmered in the intense heat. A foot ferry plied back and forth from a jetty fifty or so yards upriver from ours. The Empire Flying Boat bobbed languidly, like a snow goose, the hull incandescent in the glare, so much that it hurt to look at her. The tin of syrup glimmered like a bronze Buddha. Roger strode across the lawn, placed a chair in front of the tin and sat down in the manner of someone guarding a prize.
Jenny slid her hand in mine. ‘Would you like to win me in a tote?’
‘I rather think I did after a fashion, I certainly won top prize in something.’
‘Don’t you think it wrong of Earwig to bet on something like that?’
‘Yes, I think the chap’s a scoundrel.’
We said no more for a while; enjoying the silence was pleasant. Hoshimi sat still as a statue, the only movement was the shimmering air and the rhythmic bobbing of the plane, which made one drowsy the way a hypnotist’s fob watch is reputed to. After a while we went to the front desk and settled Curtis’s bill. In return, the manager gave us an envelope. It was another tranche of the screenplay.
INT. CAPTAIN’S CABIN. DAY
SCARFACE enters dragging the protesting MILLIE. He throws her onto the bed, laughing.
SCARFACE
So, my pretty!
MILLIE
No, please have mercy!
The Corpse in the Garden of Perfect Brightness Page 15
