Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

  Annabella journeyed through Europe and discovered one of life’s harshest truisms—nothing remains the same. Weeds take over the garden. She had hoped to slip back into those happy years when she was young, and single, when commitments were for another, faraway day. But now, as she wound her way through France and Italy and into Greece, at each place that held a memory she found only disappointment. Long ago friends, from almost a decade earlier, who had been fragilely bound through letters, were no longer what she remembered. Everyone was older, most were married, lives were filled with work and children—and there was no room to admit an American girl who had brushed against them so many years before.

  Annabella was on the threshold of thirty and slowly she realized that most lives have fences built about them by that milestone. There was nothing for her to do but say hello, say goodbye, and move on, following the trails worn by the young. True to her word, she kept her anxious parents continually informed of her odyssey. From Afghanistan she wrote: “A man told me I would be worth 30 camels as a bride!” It seems that every American girl who visits Kabul is advised of her matrimonial worth in livestock. And from Pakistan, “Bit of a rough time here. Few hassles. Not to worry, though—am on to India.” An occasional phone call ruptured the quiet nights of Northern California, and Jane’s heart churned until she heard her daughter’s voice, always with the assurance, “Don’t worry about me. I’m doing fine. The money is holding out, and I’ve got it sewn inside my blouse.”

  Annabella felt the same apprehension about India that most travelers do, but she selected the most comfortable port of entry—Bombay, a city whose Western glitter can almost conceal the fact that 200,000 people sleep nightly on the sidewalks and gutters and bathe at public water pipes. The warmest of welcomes awaited Annabella at Sanjoy’s home. His mother, Mrs. Fatima, presided over an upper-class villa with a wall around to shut out the harsh realities, and an armed guard to protect those inside from molestation. She was a heavy woman with a sweet face and an enormous ring of keys about her girth that opened and locked each door and cabinet in the house. Mrs. Fatima was flattered that Annabella would journey around the world to bring news of her son’s brief and tragic life in California. She treated Annabella like a royal visitor and immediately pronounced her to be “my adopted American daughter.” Later she wrote Jane a letter about Annabella’s stay in Bombay:

  When Annabella was here, she was a joy to have in our home, and we all shared her love. I only wear white saris because I am still in mourning so I gave my colored ones to Annabella.… She draped them so beautifully. I massaged her hair with Indian oil and combed it in the Indian way … She could have become a motion picture star immediately! One day she combed our daughter Sushi’s hair into eight braids … Annabella loved to stay in our home in a quiet way. Many times she asked me about my philosophy of life. I told her I believe there is no such thing as total death. She agreed with me that there must be a God, no matter what the religion. How else could we have met? What other force could have joined our lives from worlds apart? … She mentioned a “tough time” going through Pakistan. I told her over and over again that she should not travel alone, but she laughed and assured me she always found the company of foreigners and that she had faith in herself … What a beautiful girl! She loves mango ice cream and orange juice. She’s learning Hindi and Gujarati …

  When Annabella expressed interest in staying in Bombay and perhaps working at a hospital, as she had in California, an appointment was arranged at one of the city’s better institutions. Annabella went to the hospital with great anticipation, having conjured visions of dedicated service and penance for whatever ill she might have done in her life. But once there, her illusions crumbled in the mass of suffering that began on the steps, continued through the thronged foyer, and spilled into every corridor. The twin devils of bureaucracy (of which India has more than Washington and Whitehall put together), and lack of personnel and equipment made the hospital a well-meaning but grotesque house of tragedy. A representative of the hospital administration came to lead Annabella on a tour, when from the emergency-room waiting room arose a wailing. A woman had been crouched against a wall and upon seeing Annabella rushed forward and clutched at her clothes, holding on as if the American girl was the rope of salvation. The hospital officer frowned and spoke sharply in Hindi. Then he listened impatiently while the woman—she could have been thirty or seventy, her face was thin leather stretched over a frame of taut bones—flung her chicken bone arm at an ancient man lying in the corner.

  The hospital worker glanced at him cursorily. The old man wore street pajamas and weighed perhaps seventy-five pounds, curled into a yoga knot. Then the official muttered something brusque to the woman and with apologies escorted Annabella out of the madhouse where a thousand hurting people were squeezed into a room meant for fifty.

  “What was that about?” asked Annabella.

  Oh, that. The poor man in the corner was dead. But his daughter refused to believe it. Someone would come soon and take care of the matter.

  “What did he die of?” asked Annabella.

  “India,” said the official.

  She pushed on to Delhi, lured to the core of the city—Connaught Circle—and found a hotel infested by a colony of Western youth. Each day they spread blankets in the circular green park and ate mango ice and complained of “Delhi belly” and watched a dancing bear. One day a hustler brought around an elderly but still surly cobra to rise from a basket, the first serpent that Annabella had seen in India. Talk among the youth on the grass was usually threefold: (1) drugs and where to buy them safely, (2) gemstones and which to buy and how to avoid glass imitations, and (3) ways to reach and survive in Katmandu, Shangri-La to those who had come this far in search of something.

  But most of her acquaintances in the park were too young, or paired, or stoned, so Annabella struck out alone to sweep up the sights of Delhi. One night she went to the Red Fort for the son et lumière presentation. The setting was spectacular, with colored lights rising and falling against the walls of marble palaces where for three centuries the history of India played out. The sounds of mounted warriors clattered against cobblestones as they came in the viewer’s imagination from Perisa to steal the Peacock Throne; harem women preened and giggled, fountains splashed, the pomp of dynasties thrilled the senses. Here Nehru spoke to proclaim India’s new independence in 1948, and here a poet once wrote, the words carved into enduring marble, “If paradise be on the face of the earth, it is here, it is here, it is here!”

  The night was sweet and smelled of jasmine and orange. During the spectacle, a man slipped into one of the bleacher seats beside Annabella and made an apology in English. Later, Annabella glanced discreetly at the new arrival, noting he was Western, dressed casually but well, and alone. When the show concluded with the Indian national anthem, and the harsh lights of utility glared on to wash away the magic, the man nodded warmly. He was American. One word led to another and Annabella found herself stopping for a soft drink at one of the refreshment stands that congest an entrance corridor where once elephants lumbered bearing princes on their panoplied backs.

  His name was Mark, he said, and he was a textile buyer from New York who came to India three times a year, his mission to purchase the inexpensive cloth that could be fashioned into kaftans and sold at American department stores for twenty times the price in Delhi. His manner was easy and polite; he was not particularly handsome but nice enough to look upon. Annabella guessed his age to be nearer forty than the thirty-five he announced, but it did not matter. She warmed to him quickly and gratefully. In her months on the road, she had met many men, none worth remembering past sunrise. One Swedish youth in Athens had been remarkably attentive and romantic, with a body strong and golden, but when he asked to “borrow” fifty dollars, Annabella felt humiliated. In Istanbul, a Turk who claimed to have lived in Dallas for three years, but who spoke English as if reading it phonetically, entertained Annabella for a memorable day but then sh
e caught his hand in her shoulder bag and sent him away with a rain of curses. “My advice is to either bring a built-in lover to Asia,” she wrote to a friend in California, “or else take a vow of celibacy. The men are not too attractive, they all use too much hair oil, and as soon as they hear the word ‘American’ they think you’re a Rockefeller.”

  But on this night in Delhi, Annabella needed someone to hold onto, and she gambled one more time. Mark was a take-charge person, packing her into a taxi and on the way to his hotel for late supper before she could demur, even had she wanted to. When the taxi arrived at the Akbar Hotel, Annabella sensed immediately that she was improperly dressed. Her jeans and an embroidered cotton blouse from Pakistan were suitable for her budget class of travel. But the Akbar was new and arrogantly expensive and listed in the India on $5 and $10 a Day guidebook under the category of “Break the Bank.” Men who looked like diplomats or company directors stepped in and out of limousines, and the doorman, in a costume from the Raj, scrutinized each arrival almost rudely.

  Mark saw her discomfort and made a quick suggestion. If Annabella would come to his room, he could find her a long skirt to wear to the restaurant, and perhaps a bit of glitter. Nothing more was meant by the suggestion, he said gently.

  In his room, Mark found a bundle of cloth samples, rummaged hurriedly through it like a man doing card tricks, pulled out a gorgeous length of crimson and violet swirls, and bade a still-suspicious Annabella to slip out of her jeans. He spun the cloth about her waist, fastened it here and there with pins, and in less than two minutes had the young woman exclaiming with delight. She stood in front of a mirror and was as lovely as the new floor-length skirt. Mark slipped up behind her and fastened on earrings that tumbled in cascades almost to her shoulders.

  They dined in the Sheesh Mahal, the hotel’s supper club, an opulent homage to India’s imperial past. Overhead, dangling like the earrings that Annabella wore, millions—literally millions—of red and green glass beads quivered, and mirrors ingeniously placed caught their reflections and made it seem that the room was an exploding galaxy of jewels. Never was a place so designed for lovers, and before Annabella had finished her appetizer, she knew that the night had just begun.

  They spent a few days together, broken only when Mark had to go to the textile district for long hours of purchases and negotiations. During those barren periods, Annabella waited impatiently in her cheap hotel for Mark’s return, having drunk her fill of Delhi’s palaces and shrines. Something was happening to her that she had thought would not occur again. Less than a year after the suicide of her husband, she was interested in a new man, and although she dared not acknowledge the word, the notion of love hovered stubbornly over her thoughts. It was rash, she knew that, and foolish, she knew that, too. But she dared not examine these feelings too closely. For the moment she was happy.

  She knew little of Mark, save that he was decent, well spoken, not addicted to either drugs or drink, divorced, and living in a house somewhere outside New York City. Once she had asked him for the address, but he could not find a pen and promised to do it later. He never did.

  She was not sure where all this was leading, or even how long they could be together, for Mark seemed indefinite as to the duration of his stay in Delhi. Some questions he answered, others he brushed away, but always gracefully. One night Annabella was dressing to join Mark for dinner at Moti Mahal, when a bearer rapped at the door and said a phone call was waiting. Annabella flew down five flights of stairs and seized the telephone. She had never been called before at this hotel, and the only one who knew where she was staying was Mark.

  “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Hello? Mark? Hello?” No answer. The line echoed dully in her ear, her own voice sounding tinny and small. She jammed her finger against the button, trying to revive the connection. She thrust the receiver to the desk clerk, who shouted his own “hello” then shrugged and handed it back. Disconnected.

  “Who was calling?” demanded Annabella of the hotel clerk. The man shrugged. He had no idea.

  With a vague feeling of unease, Annabella went to the old restaurant where their rendezvous was set and waited for Mark. She waited almost two hours, sipping hot tea, before she finally telephoned the Akbar—only to learn that nobody was registered under the last name she knew Mark by. Nor had there been anyone there that week, nor did anyone hold advance reservations. Obviously Mark had given her a false name. Only at that moment did it occur to Annabella that she had never actually called the Akbar in search of Mark. Their meetings had always been arranged in person; he had always gotten in touch with her. A day or two later, black days of tears and anger, Annabella realized that she had been duped—and so pettily! It would be a long time, she decided, before she would make an emotional investment again.

  Mark’s cheap betrayal so soured Annabella that she made plans to return to the United States. She had been gone for almost five months, and she realized now that aimless drifting around the world was a game for the young. Annabella no longer had the resilience of youth. Certainly there were many places left in the world that she wanted to visit, but they would have to wait their turn, and be accomplished on normal vacations. “I’m on the way home,” she wrote to a friend in November. “I’ll come back to India some day, but I could never live here permanently.”

  She did not want to leave before purchasing some of the gemstones for which the country is known. After shopping around the better part of a day and obtaining prices on topazes, opals, amethysts, and green sapphires, Annabella telephoned home to California and spoke with Jane. She asked her mother to obtain comparative prices of the stones at retail prices in the United States. She was thinking of making a major purchase with the balance of her travel money, about $1,600, and she wanted to know if the profit potential was there for resale.

  Pleased to hear her daughter’s voice after several days of no contact, Jane peppered her with maternal questions. Her health was fine, answered Annabella. No trouble. Money holding out. “How do you like New Delhi?” asked Jane.

  “Lots of temples,” answered Annabella. “But all in all—a hellhole.”

  And what was the next stop? California?

  Bangkok, probably. But she might make a quick side trip to Katmandu. She had met a pair of Australian girls who were headed for Nepal on a bus, and it would be inappropriate to be this close and not take a look at the once forbidden country in the bosom of Mount Everest.

  “Then be careful,” urged Jane. “And have fun. And hurry home!”

  “I’m on my way, Mama,” answered Annabella. “Love to everybody.”

  When she hung up, contented by the call, Jane found her atlas and searched for Katmandu. She found Nepal just above India, tucked between the subcontinent and China, rather like a wedge driven between two great boulders to keep them from colliding. She touched the page. She both envied Annabella’s great adventure—and felt a cold finger of fear brush against her cheek.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The town of Chanthaburi is completely off the tourist path in Thailand, secreted near the border of Cambodia with a surprising air of the American colonial South hanging over it like a mistake of geography. Old wooden houses with curlicues and carved lacy porches are whitewashed, with verandas fitting for the late afternoon and tall drinks. Rubber plantations and orchards of tropical fruits are foundations of the economy, and the women of the area are exceptionally beautiful, with a pinkish tinge to their almond skin.

  But the lure for Charles Sobhraj in the autumn of 1975 was to be found in a lush and steamy primeval jungle just outside the city, where the blur of a brilliantly colored mackaw and the screams of feuding gibbons in groves of bamboo and mango arrest the eye and ear. Here are the ancient jewel mines of Chanthaburi, scarcely changed by technology since time began. Half-naked men dig pits about six feet deep and ten feet across in gummy red clay soil, after first clearing a thicket of flaming rhododendron, tea trees, tapioca bushes, and wild orchi
ds. The pits are filled with a foot or two of water, and the men—their skins as red as the clay—leap inside, kneeling in the gumbo and patiently scooping up basketfuls of rocks and earth. The contents are strained through bamboo sieves and the trained eye can discover among the dirty pebbles an occasional stone that, when cut and polished, becomes a ruby, or a sapphire, or garnets the color of blood. While the men and their sons work, the women—mostly fat, mostly wrapped in bright silk skirts—sit under the trees singing, gossiping, and polishing the stones. The fortunate tourist who can find the mines is instantly set upon by the women the moment he leaves his car, exhorted to purchase small boxes filled with remarkable bargains. A two-carat green sapphire can be bought for ten dollars, a good ruby of at least one carat for as little as three hundred.

  Charles often left Bangkok after midnight and drove the six hours by darkness, both to avoid the frightening daytime traffic, and to be on hand for the first gem sales of the day. If he found little of interest at the mines themselves, or felt the fat women were in an exorbitant mood, he drove into the city of Chanthaburi, to a crowded strip of jewelry stores not unlike an exotic version of New York City’s diamond district. Here the stakes were higher, for the stones had been cleaned and transformed into rings and necklaces at this stage. But even so, prices were considerably less than in Bangkok, and Charles usually returned to the capital with a tempting array of glitter. He told Marie-Andrée that if he could amass between $25,000 and $40,000 in capital, he could build an empire with the cornerstone at the primitive mines of Chanthaburi. He would guarantee the independent miners to purchase a fixed percentage of the stones pulled raw from the red clay, then establish a courier service to Bangkok, where his central office would be located. There, craftsmen would cut and polish and fashion the stones into jewelry to tempt women all over Europe, then the United States. As she heard this tale, Marie-Andrée nodded with barest interest. She had heard these schemes and pipe dreams before. And despite their grandiosity, the only reality Marie-Andrée knew was that she often had to prepare dinner for as many as fourteen people, then clean up, then fall wearily into bed—alone. Charles rarely slept with her, if indeed he slept anywhere. He kept his own hours, his own secrets, permitted no one entry, entertained no questions as to his whereabouts.