The Dying Beach

by Angela Savage

  He stopped short as Charlie grabbed the first cobra just below the diamond-shaped pattern on the back of its hood.

  ‘Holding one cobra!’ Tom cried with excitement.

  Charlie held the snake like a trophy, its head turned to face the audience. A couple of people gasped. Many, including Rajiv, stood to take photos.

  ‘You were saying?’ Jayne nudged Rajiv when he sat back down.

  Charlie seized a second cobra by its stiff neck.

  ‘Holding two cobras!’

  Jayne wondered if the sound system could take Tom’s mounting excitement.

  Brandishing a snake in each hand, Charlie gave the photographers in the audience a tough-guy frown and pout—a man clearly accustomed to the limelight. When he’d finished posing, he released the snakes onto the floor of the ring. They seemed to calm down as they made contact with the carpet.

  ‘You see how the snakes want to return to their box,’ Rajiv said. ‘The cobra will not be attacking a human unless it feels threatened.’

  As if to prove him right, Charlie intercepted one with his snake hook. The cobra puffed itself up with a loud breathy hiss and gave his tormentor what Jayne imagined was a look of pure loathing.

  ‘And now,’ Tom said in a low voice, ‘Mister Charlie will go mouth-to-mouth with the black cobra.’

  Charlie dropped to the floor as if to do a push-up and placed his lips to the cobra, holding the pose long enough for more photos. Gasps from the audience were drowned out by Tom’s wild music as Charlie bounced back onto his feet.

  ‘He is not kissing the cobra on the lips,’ Rajiv said into Jayne’s ear. ‘He was pressing his lips onto the top of the snake’s head.’

  ‘Surely a technicality.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Rajiv said. ‘The cobra has most likely had its venom removed, perhaps even its fangs. It is another Indian snake charmer’s trick—’

  Rajiv was interrupted by Tom’s announcement that Charlie would now milk the venom from the black cobra he’d just kissed. Charlie scooped up the cobra, seized it by the head and pressed its fangs into the pink rubber stretched over the opening of a specimen jar. He held it up so the audience could see the venom oozing into the container. Rajiv took more photos.

  ‘I give up.’ He shook his head. ‘It appears these men are not playing tricks. They are simply crazy.’

  Mickey took Charlie’s place in the ring and performed a similar range of stunts with a mangrove snake, coaxing it to leap through the air, placing his index finger in its open jaws, and going mouth-to-mouth with it.

  At this point a little girl with pigtails and a doll under one arm wandered into the arena, took a seat next to the cot of snakes and proceeded to comb her dolly’s hair, unmoved by the spectacle of grown men kissing snakes in the pit in front of her. Jayne wished she had the girl’s sangfroid.

  For the grand finale, Charlie produced a king cobra—‘the world’s largest venomous snake’—and went mouth-to-mouth with it.

  ‘What is it with all the snake kissing?’ Jayne said.

  ‘In my country, people are sometimes marrying animals to ward off bad luck.’

  Jayne pressed her forehead to Rajiv’s shoulder. ‘It was a rhetorical question, my love.’

  She started to relax once they left, and Rajiv realised his mistake in taking her to a snake farm. He had better luck with his choice of dinner venue, a seafood restaurant by the beach in Ao Nang, where they ate a delicious meal of deep-fried fish and green mango salad, washed down with cold beer. They lingered afterwards over cigarettes and conversation, before walking hand in hand up the hill back to their guesthouse.

  Rajiv’s luck didn’t hold. He opened the door to their room but before he turned on the light, he noticed something flashing. It was Pla’s mobile phone—Rajiv had left it on the narrow table that served as their desk—and it was flashing with a missed-call message.

  ‘Shit.’

  Jayne pounced on the device and, although it was nearly ten o’clock, Rajiv knew she would try to return the call.

  ‘Recorded message. The phone is switched off or out of range.’ She held the handset as if weighing up the idea of throwing it across the room. ‘Shit,’ she said again. ‘First time Pla’s phone rings since she died and we miss it.’

  She tossed the phone on the bed and made for the bathroom. Had it closed properly, the door would have slammed behind her.

  Rajiv picked up the phone and checked the log for the missed call. There was a number but no name and no voicemail message. He opened up the contacts list and found it empty. He checked the record of dialled numbers. There was only one, the same number dialled with relative frequency up until two weeks earlier, after which no calls had been made. He checked the dialled number against the missed call. They were identical.

  Jayne re-emerged from the bathroom.

  ‘I’m sorry I forgot to check the phone earlier and did not think to bring it with me tonight,’ Rajiv said. ‘But I’ve checked it now and I believe Pla used this phone to communicate with one person only—the person who tried to call earlier tonight. We can be trying them again tomorrow, yes?’

  ‘Sure.’ She got into bed without meeting his eyes. ‘Do you mind if we have the air con on tonight?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Rajiv lied.

  He excused himself to use the bathroom, showered quickly and ran a disposable razor over his chin to avoid annoying Jayne further with scratchy kisses.

  But she had already turned out the light by the time he finished and was lying stone still with her back to him. Rajiv lay awake for what felt like a long time, listening to her calculated breathing, the sound of withheld anger.

  18

  Paul waited until the phone rang out, unsure whether to be annoyed or concerned that Pla didn’t answer. He’d given her the mobile expressly so they could keep in touch. She’d let it run down at first, but he’d since shown her how to keep the battery charged. It was too late for her to be out, and in the tiny room she shared with Suthita there was no pretending not to hear the phone ring. Was Pla in trouble? Or was she ignoring him as punishment for cancelling his visit? It was so hard to tell with Thai women. They could turn passive aggression into an art form. Paul didn’t blame Pla if she was giving him the silent treatment; it was part of her culture. But he had choices. He didn’t have to put up with it.

  Paul had arrived in Bangkok from Hobart nine months earlier to work as a volunteer with a Thai environmental organisation. While he was too young to be part of the successful campaign to save the Franklin River from being dammed, he’d studied it as part of his environmental science degree. He knew that as the market for their product shrunk at home, Tasmanian hydro-electric companies were moving their interests offshore, to countries like Thailand, where corruption was rife and environmental protection laws were not worth the paper they were written on. Paul wanted to bring Tasmanian-style activism to Thailand, to live and work alongside local people, sharing his skills and knowledge, training them in the techniques of non-violent resistance.

  But his colleagues at the Thai Environmental Defenders Office—TEDO for short—seemed indifferent to his experience. Despite running simultaneous campaigns against the damming of rivers, deforestation and forced evictions—the details of which were inaccessible to Paul because he couldn’t speak Thai—they neither asked for his advice nor seemed interested when he offered it. He was given often tedious jobs like summarising English language reports, representing TEDO at international stakeholder meetings, and writing material for donors. Paul did as he was asked—he was no quitter—hiding his disappointment in carefully worded briefings he suspected no one ever read.

  As for living among the locals, while his colleagues were friendly enough, they were less welcoming than he’d expected, given Thailand’s reputation as the Land of Smiles. His Thai colleagues took him out to dinner a few times when he first arrived and showed him around the neighbourhood. But no one ever invited him home, and his suggestions that they socialise in the evening
s or on weekends were politely rebuffed.

  Paul tried hanging out in pubs—in Australia that’s what you did to meet people in a new town—but Bangkok’s pubs were full of beer-sodden backpackers and alcoholic expats. The only locals who hung out in pubs were selling something—drinks, drugs, themselves—all of which Paul resisted, afraid of getting AIDS or fleeced, or both.

  He grew lonely. His short-haired, stern-faced female colleagues at TEDO seemed to find it an imposition to speak with him in English. Paul didn’t dare ask any of them out. He tried dating a Thai woman he met at a seminar and another who worked in a local coffee shop. But he couldn’t sustain his interest beyond the first date, not when every question he put to them was met with the same response.

  ‘Are you hungry? Would you like to eat now?’

  ‘Up to you.’

  ‘Where would you like to eat?’

  ‘Up to you.’

  ‘How about a movie?’

  ‘Up to you.’

  Up to you. It grated like fingernails on a blackboard. He felt like yelling, If it was up to me, you’d express a bloody opinion.

  He was close to despair, hitting the cheap local whisky after work and doubting whether he could make it through a whole year, when his boss sent him to Krabi. There he met Pla, and within hours Paul had invited her to join him at a consultation meeting in Huay Sok Village. Not the most romantic of first dates, but she accepted the invitation with enthusiasm.

  The company had brought along a foreign consultant that evening, a Filipino geologist, to outline plans for the development. Paul was following the consultant in English and the translation from Thai, unaware there were any problems until Pla leaned in close to him and whispered behind her hand.

  ‘The words he is using, they are too big, too technical. The villagers cannot understand.’

  ‘Why don’t they say something?’ he asked.

  ‘They are too afraid.’

  ‘Why don’t you say something then?’

  Pla pursed her lips and shook her head.

  ‘Should I say something?’ Paul asked.

  Pla nodded eagerly.

  ‘Excuse me, Mister Santos,’ Paul piped up. ‘Would you mind using simple words? Some of us are having trouble following.’

  The consultant was an affable fellow who didn’t mind at all. But the Thai interpreter’s smile turned icy.

  After the meeting ended, Paul asked Pla why she hadn’t spoken up herself.

  ‘I cannot,’ she told him. ‘I have to kreng jai the foreign expert and his interpreter.’

  ‘Kreng jai?’

  ‘I am younger than them. They are more educated than me. I must show them respect. I cannot make them lose face.’

  Paul frowned. ‘But what if they’re wrong?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Pla said.

  Kreng jai. What a concept. Paul came from a country where everyone was fair game, especially those in positions of authority. If you sounded too polite in Australia you were mocked for being ‘posh’. The closest thing to kreng jai was known colloquially as ‘brownnosing’—and was not something to aspire to.

  ‘So did I make those guys lose face?’ he asked Pla.

  ‘You’re a farang,’ she shrugged. ‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘So I did make them lose face.’

  ‘You saved face for the villagers,’ she said.

  That was the moment he fell for her. For the first time since arriving in Thailand, Paul felt that he’d made a difference, his presence was worthwhile.

  After that first night, Pla pleaded with Paul to let her be part of the monitoring work, taking it upon herself to support the villagers’ participation in the consultation process. She did a great job of encouraging the elders to use their seniority and authority to ask the questions that were on everyone’s mind. She monitored the bulk of the meetings that took place between company officials and the villagers, posting Paul photocopies of her meticulous notes, together with her laboured English translations, so he could compare her account with the final version in the EIA report. Being on a volunteer stipend, Paul couldn’t afford to pay Pla. Not that she ever asked for money. If he could work as a volunteer, she said, so could she. The most she would do was stay with him when he came to Krabi and let him buy her dinner.

  He kept their relationship a secret from his colleagues at TEDO. As far as his boss was concerned, Paul’s enthusiasm for the research in Krabi was driven solely by his desire to contribute to TEDO’s campaign to reform the way Environmental Impact Assessments were conducted in Thailand.

  ‘EIAs work opposite to the way they should,’ Weeratham told Paul. ‘They’re requested once the engineering studies are already completed and the findings are typically adapted to legitimise the proposed project. No large infrastructure project in Thailand has ever been cancelled on the grounds of an inadequate EIA. We need to expose the flaws in the current system and push for reform.’

  Paul was fired up, by both Pla and their shared purpose. With Pla acting as his interpreter, he sat in on village meetings, and met with local officials in Krabi and foreign experts in Bangkok to monitor the Environmental Impact Assessment process. He read up on water and air quality testing, wastewater and solid waste treatment, geology and seismology, aquatic and terrestrial ecology, public health and historical values specific to the area.

  But try as he might, Paul found little to criticise in the EIA process and the longer it went on, the more he realised the project was not as controversial as he’d hoped. True, a small minority of villagers had misgivings. But the consultants took every complaint seriously, responding with proposals to address all concerns. The brief summary in Pla’s notes on the most recent round of consultations spoke volumes.

  ‘The villagers change the opinion to be in favour of the project,’ she wrote in her imperfect English. ‘Public relation strategy work well. Many people happy for change.’

  She’d done such a good job of giving the villagers the confidence to advocate for themselves that far from being flawed, the EIA process in Krabi might well prove exemplary.

  Paul should have been pleased but he felt deflated. After six months monitoring the EIA for the power plant, his volunteer placement was almost over and he had nothing to give Weeratham to strengthen the case for EIA reform. The villagers didn’t need him to defend them against the company, not when they had Pla. His involvement made no difference at all.

  He phoned Pla to tell her he was winding up the research.

  ‘But that’s good news,’ she said. ‘The EIA is good quality, yes?’

  How could Paul explain his disappointment?

  ‘I guess,’ he said. ‘But it also means there’s no point in me coming back to Krabi.’

  There was silence on the end of the line before Pla said the three little words Paul dreaded.

  ‘Up to you.’

  The disappointments piled on top of one another like stones in his stomach.

  ‘You don’t care then.’ His tone was harder than he intended.

  ‘I understand you’re busy,’ she said flatly.

  First time he hadn’t done what she wanted and he got the passive-aggressive treatment. In retrospect, she’d been doing it all along, manipulating the situation to get what she wanted. Playing him. Taking over. Stealing his thunder. Ignoring his phone calls was simply further proof that it would never have worked out between them.

  Paul switched off his phone. He was due to meet Karin, a volunteer from Germany, who was doing a month-long placement at TEDO to assist with their publications. He didn’t want any phone calls interrupting their date. Karin was a white-blonde who wore hiking boots, singlet tops and an axe pendant on a choker that kept getting lost in her cleavage. She spoke English fluently, said prost instead of ‘cheers’ and could match him beer for beer. The speed with which she accepted his invitation to dinner put paid to Paul’s concerns that she might be a lesbian. He’d know for sure soon enough.

  19

  Rajiv woke
to find Jayne sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed, poring over a scroll of thermal paper. He eased himself up onto one elbow.

  ‘Is that the fax you’ve been waiting for?’

  She nodded, still reading. ‘It’s from my friend Gavan. He lists the major environmental issues in Krabi as, and I quote, “overdevelopment and pollution on Koh Phi Phi and pressures of a growing tourism industry in a sensitive marine environment”.’

  ‘There’s nothing in Pla’s notes about tourism.’

  Jayne kept scrolling. ‘There’s more. “There are several endangered species in the area…blah, blah…mangrove deforestation not the problem it is in other parts of Thailand…” Ah, here it is. “In terms of potentially controversial infrastructure projects, there is a new thermal power plant being built on the site of an old power plant near Pakasai Village in Neua Khlong district, and a golf course being developed by an American-owned private company on the site of a small limestone quarry.” What do you think?’

  ‘Both projects built on the site of another. Use of explosives might be warranted in either case.’ Rajiv took out his map and checked the location. ‘Pakasai Village is quite far south of here and it is near a canal. Where is the golf course located?’

  ‘North-west of Krabi town, near Laem Kaeng Village.’

  ‘Village LK—that was in Pla’s notes.’ Rajiv found it on the map. ‘The golf course is closer, also not far from a khlong. Mosques and temples in the nearby villages—’

  ‘So we start with the golf course?’ Jayne said.

  Rajiv nodded.

  ‘The company behind it is Apex Enterprises and the project site office is in town. Gavan’s provided the address and phone number. What a champion.’

  Rajiv felt a pang of jealousy. He’d met Jayne’s journalist friend once, though in a crowded jazz bar with Jayne sitting between them they’d barely exchanged a word.

  ‘Ah, and he’s finally got himself a mobile phone. I’m going to add his number to my contacts and send him a text to mark the occasion.’