by Vago Damitio
“It seems that it wasn’t a tiger”, Johnny said blandly.
“Nor a bullfrog,” I replied.
Neither of us felt a need to say more as we looked at the footprints leading into the pigpen outside the window.
(Star and her sister outside of Maung Singh)
Homecoming
(This story was both told to and witnessed by me as I stayed at a guesthouse near the hilltribe villages)
Star looked at the tiny girls around her.They were doing their best to look fashionable and appealing. It made her smile at first, before she realized why they went to so much trouble. The tiny ripped t-shirts held with colorful handmade ropes wrapped around the body creating a sort of Paris in the village look. A little girl with a sweet face in a purple t-shirt carrying her baby brother who was nearly the same size as her stopped to readjust him on her side.
“Sabadee” she said when she saw Star standing at the edge of the village. ”Sabadee Mai.” You Good. You good, right?
“Sabadee” Star said, hearing the difference between the 6-year-old Lao villager and the 26 year old Bangkok bar girl. “Sabadee Mai.” “Sab-ah-deee.” The girl replied. Her inflection was so high and birdlike. So beautiful. Her tiny brother slept through the whole exchange even as he was shifted on her side.
“Do you know I used to live around here?” Star asked in English.
“You and me are probably related but I look like some exotic foreigner to you. I probably represent everything you dream of… or at least you think I do…” she shuddered again, remembering the day she left her village 17 years before.
The Thai man had driven to the village in a large black Mercedes. It was rare to see any sort of motorized vehicle besides the occasional Chinese tractor. Most of the people in the village came to stand behind the protective gate of the village as the stranger got out of his car, surrounded by three large men in dark suits. Star’s mother had called her inside the hut and done a quick combing of her hair. She took a glass necklace on twisted rope from her own neck and put it around her little girls.
“La korn, kong koi.” Star remembered her confusion as her mother said goodbye. “Where am I going?” she thought. Maybe her mother was going to take a trip. She’d run outside to where the villagers were now surrounding the four Thai men. The important man noticed her immediately as she pushed through the crowd.
“Well, hello little Star. Where did you come from?” She had recognized some of the Thai words but they had been so much harsher than she was used to hearing, even though the tone was gentle. She stopped and looked at the ground. “Sabadee!” She had said softly.
“Five hundred baht for her.” He told the crowd. “Who is selling this child?” She remembered the low murmur that swept through the crowd as he named such an extravagant price for just one child. The other girls he had already bought looked jealously on the new one, their friend, who commanded such a high price. Her value exceeded theirs combined.
She remembered the secret feeling of pride when they told her that on the way to their new home in Bangkok. Her mother had stepped forward and collected the money. Suddenly, the rich woman in the village. And now, here was Star, the rich foreigner visiting the village.
She looked at the girl and tried to remember her mother’s name. She tried to remember her own name, her family name, anything besides the name Star which had stuck with her since she left, but all she could pull up was the memory of that last day in her village. Somewhere around here. Somewhere in the Golden Triangle.
A crowd of children was now standing around her. Mostly girls with pretty sarongs wrapped around their wastes. The boys stood a bit in the distance…shy of this exotic stranger in jeans and a lace tank top. She smiled and joked with them aware of the harshness of her Thai accent as compared with the low bird sounds they answered in.
“Are you a Thai?” a young boy asked “Are you looking for girls to take to Bangkok? Hey, I’ll go get my sisters..wait…” he ran off even as she began to explain.
“I’m Lao. I used to live around here and now I am here to visit and to see if I can find my mom. I don’t want to buy anyone. Okay?” When had her voice changed so much? Why did they look at her like she was so strange?
An old woman in a tiny hut looked out over trays of homemade sticky sweets wrapped in pastel colored plastic. Star walked over and bought two handfuls and began to hand them out to grubby little hands frantically reaching for them.
An elder of the village walked up to her. He did not smile. “What do you want?” he asked. ”If you are not here to take the children…why are you here?” They were rejecting her. She’d been foolish to think she could walk into a village and be accepted. The past seventeen years had changed her too much to enter this idyllic paradise.
She had changed enough to recognize the squalid conditions that soiled her imaginary Garden of Eden. She saw the untreated cuts on feet and legs and bodies. The ripped clothing was far from traditional, more likely cast offs from backpackers who considered it garbage. There was little beautiful beyond the children who stood around her looking up with wistful eyes. “Will you take me to your city?” a little girl asked her. “My father will let me go cheap. I want to go to the city.”
Star closed her eyes. She too had wanted to go, she’d been excited to go, but she had not known the life that awaited her. A brutal life of sex, drugs, and leering old men staring at her through plexiglass and then leading her to dimly lit hotel rooms.
The money she received from the Thai’s had been barely enough to feed herself. Locked up like an animal most of the day and only allowed to leave once she was so hooked on heroin that they knew she would return. Finally being moved from the brothel to the bar when her “young” appeal had dried up at age 15.
It was the bar that had given her the opportunity to free herself. Two years of selling herself for next to nothing. Two years of loveless love before she saw her opportunity, and took it. She allowed the Dutch man to fall in love with her. He was old and ugly, but he took her to Holland with him.
They spent two weeks in courtship before he proposed marriage to her. She accepted and after they were married, he flew her to Amsterdam. His house was huge. He was only there on the weekends. He spent most of his time in Rotterdam, managing his many business affairs while Star occupied herself bringing hundreds of Johns to his mansion, making more money than she had ever thought existed. The Dutch gilders multiplied in her small bag until she had to arrange a suitcase for the money and finally to get the cleaning lady to help her open a bank account.
When her husband died she inherited the Amsterdam house. Seven girls had moved in. She ran a respectable house. Madame Star’s House.
She walked to the village gate and reached out to touch an ornament, knowing that the touch of a woman on the sacred objects was forbidden. Knowing that it was expensive to coax the spirits into forgiving the touch of a woman. The Lao people behind her got excited and she could hear them asking her to step back. Her fingers wrapped around the palm ornament.
“I am very sorry,” she apologized, “It is just so beautiful.” She knew what had to happen now. She walked back to the elder’s hut and opened her bag. The small gold coins felt heavy in the knit bag. She pulled out a handful.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she began to drop the coins in hands reaching towards her. ”You must accept this gift to ward off the spirits I have angered.” She continued handing the coins to the hands that reached towards her again and again until only a small number were left.
She knew that even with this new found wealth, the villagers would continue to sell their daughters to the men from Bangkok, but she hoped that it might save just one of them from the life she had been forced to lead. She walked to the headman.
“Use these to buy a pig for a sacrifice,” he looked in her eyes with a confused expression. “And give me a bottle of Lao-Lao.”
He turned and went to his hut bringing back a bottle of clear whiskey and handing it to her with
out a word.
Star put the bottle in her now empty bag and walked from the village careful to detour around the gate that would keep evil spirits from bothering the inhabitants.
Eric the Exploiter
“You go lay down in the hammock and I will come over to fuck you,” Eric, the fat Belgian told the Thai woman. She looked at him for a moment, then at the ten other white people at the table.
“You go fuck yourself,” she replied. Her response caused ripples of laughter, but several of the other guests were looking anything but amused. She grabbed the bottle of lao-lao and took a quick swig.
“Give me some lao-lao, or I will come take it.” Eric started to get up.
I stood up too, shoving Eric back down in his seat. “That’s not your whiskey, she’s not your woman, and you can’t talk to these ladies any way you want. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Eric looked down at the table, “I’m sorry.”
I’d been expecting a fight. His meekness surprised me.
“You should be apologizing to Star, not to me. You’re acting like an asshole.” I pointed to the ladies in our group. There was Star, a mysterious Thai beauty,Debbie, the mousy Australian woman,Laila, the big Dutch girl who looked like Cindy Crawfor, and Evie, another Belgian. She was twenty years younger and not connected to Eric.
Eric began to mumble as he stared at the tabletop. It was as if he had become a fat child who was trying to explain why he’d eaten too much chocolate to his German nanny.
“I don’t know what happened, I went from one village to another, and drank so much lao-lao. Each village would have me sit down. They would pour me two, three, or four drinks and I would drink them.”
His voice lifted with a hint of pride and his eyes were off the table top. “I am a real man, I drank 10 or 15 shots of lao-lao.” He was roaring now. “I smoke opium in every village. I have many women take me in their huts. I am a real man.”
He pushed his fat black rimmed eyeglasses up his nose and looked as if he were going to stand up again. “Which woman here will I fuck tonight? Debbie, you go to my hut and I will come to fuck you. Go, you go now. Give me the lao-lao you Thai bitch.”
“Oh my goodness, he’s horrible. He’s so horrible,” Debbie ran from the restaurant to her hut and slammed the door The other guests either moved from the table we all shared with Eric and soon, it was only Star, Eric, and me.
“You are messed up man. Completely fucked up. What are you here for anyway? You’re a real fucking prick.” I still stood near Eric’s chair hoping the Belgian would stand up.
“Yeah, big fucking asshole. Fuck you Eric. Fuck you. Cocksucker.”
Star had a real way with words
“I’m sorry.” He looked at Star, then at me. “Can I have lao-lao now?”
“Fuck you cocksucker. Lao-lao is mine.” Star got up and left the table going towards her bungalow.
Bitch, I will take it,” he went to stand up again and I shoved him down on the ground. It felt like I was abusing a small child. Still, I wanted to kick this Belgian’s fat face into a bloody pulp.
“It’s time for you to go to bed. If I hear you giving any of these girls a hard time, I’m going beat you bloody. Good-night.”
I went to the bungalow I was sharing with Johnny. Johnny was busily rolling a huge three paper spliff using half a Marlboro light and about an eighth of an ounce of Lao weed. The room was lit by two candles and the shadows danced on the mosquito netting that hung over the two beds.
“What do you say we pay Laila and Evie a visit and smoke this spliff?” Johnny asked me as I came in the door.
“Sounds good to me, I need to relax a little.”
Johnny suddenly blew out the two candles. “Shhhh! It’s that fat, drunk Belgian. If he sees us we’ll have to get rid of him.”
We watched Eric stagger past in the moonlight. He turned where he should of gone straight to reach his bungalow. Instead heading for Evie and Laila’s room.
“Great, let’s wait a minute and they’ll send him packing.” Pound, pound, pound. We heard him beating on the door. “Johnny is that you?” Johnny gave me a quick wink.
“No, it’s Eric. Evie, you are Belgian and I am Belgian and you must let me fuck you tonight. Open the door.”
“Let’s go get him,” Johnny and I bolted out the door and around the corner in time to see Eric stagger off the porch and along the edge of the cliff that the girl’s bungalow overlooked.
“Go to bed, Jerk.” Evie called after him.
He was twenty-five or thirty feet from us when he disappeared. One moment we could see him lurching along the ledge. The next he was gone. His shadow replaced with a loud thud and a splash seconds later as his body landed on the hard clay at the bottom and rolled into the stream.
“Holy shit,“ Johnny ran towards the spot Eric had disappeared from. “Evie, do you have a flashlight.”
Evie screamed. “Oh my god. Do you think he’s dead? He fell off the cliff. Oh my God. I hope he’s not dead.”
“I hope he is.” Laila came outside. “Serves him right. He’s been treating every woman here like we’re whores. I hope he’s dead.”
“We’ve got to go get him.” Evie handed Johnny the flashlight she’d retrieved from inside.
“Yes we must go get him.” Johnny shined the light down the bottom of the cliff. We could see the Belgian lying face down in the tiny stream. He’d apparently landed on the barbed wire fence before hitting the ground and one arm and a leg were twisted into unnatural positions and held upright by the sagging strands.
“Leave him, let him die. Rude prick.” Laila was serious.
Johnny was already starting over the ledge, using the flashlight to find hand and footholds. “Someone go get a rope. I saw one under the restaurant earlier. We’ll need it to pull him up. Chris would you hold the torch for me?”
I reached down and grabbed the proffered flashlight. Someone else went to get the rope.
The whole process took about an hour. Five people were needed to drag the fat, unconscious man up the cliff. Each tug dragging him against the face of the cliff, and adding to the bruises on his face and arms.
“Tie it around his neck,” Laila had called down to Johnny as he cinched the rope around the man’s waist and up over his shoulders in an improvised harness. When we got him to the top, Debbie, gave him a quick examination. She worked as a nurse in Brisbane. She popped an ammonia capsule under his nose. He woke with a start.
“Oh my god. Where am I?” he began to cry like a fat 10 year old. “What has happened to me?”
“You got what you deserved,” I couldn’t help myself.
“I want you to move your fingers for me, can you do that? Good. Now what about your feet? Can you lift your legs? Good. What about your neck, does it feel alright? Can you sit up? Good, I think you’re okay. Some cuts and bruises, but you’re really lucky. You should go get yourself some bandages, go to bed, and think about how lucky you are to be here with good people who save your life even though you’ve been a complete jerk. I want you to remember that. You’re really very lucky.”
Debbie got up and left the Belgian sitting on the ground.
“Has anyone seen my glasses? Do you know where my glasses are? I can’t see anything without them. I have no extras.”
“Guess you’ll have to find them yourself, pal.” I fought the urge to kick him. I wanted to throw the blubbering old man back down the hill.
I walked to Evie’s porch where Johnny lit the big doobie. Evie, Laila, Johnny, and I watched as Eric lumbered down the trail back to his room.
“We should of left him down there,” this time it was me who said it.
“No, it’s good that we brought him up. Maybe he had to learn a lesson. I feel sort of bad for him now,” Laila had softened after his crying.
“I wonder what he will say to us tomorrow?”
When morning came the Belgian was gone. Eric had not paid his bill and had stolen several bottles of Mekong whiskey from the
restaurant. The owner wanted to know when the last time anyone had seen him, but no one could remember anything past seeing him drinking in the restaurant. It was just too hard to explain the whole thing.
Johnny, Kok, Me and Laila before I left Chaing Mai and hitched to Bangkok.
I walked to the cliff. Daylight revealed it to be nearly forty feet with a slight slope towards the bottom. I could see where the Belgian had landed and finally come to rest in the creek. The large glasses lay just under the water, the sun reflecting underneath the ripples of the creek.
Tourist Trap
The hill tribes were howling in the villages as the lightning crashed and the thunder boomed over the humid subtropical night in Northern Laos.I stood on the bamboo porch of my tiny bungalow listening as the rain began to fall and the musky smell of the newly wet earth permeated some ancient memory locked in the recesses of my brain.
The monkey mind is a funny thing, especially trapped within a human being that denies its monkeyness a thought. Hidden away beneath the veneer of a civilized human being the beast still lingers and it’s not entirely inconceivable that sometimes the beast escapes and takes over the host completely abolishing all thoughts of work, clothing, and human society.
I felt the beast rising within me. I felt that curious feeling of fear mixed with anticipation, an unknown longing for something simpler, more savage, and less safe.
Not so strange really. I’d come to Laos in search of the same thing, though I hadn’t realized it until a few days before when I found myself crawling up into an 80-year old Akha tribesman’s hut to smoke opium.
The man had beckoned to me with betel stained teeth from the trapdoor in the floor of his jungle den. The house itself stood on six foot stilts and was about twenty by thirty feet. It was made of an unidentifiable hardwood that was so weathered it matched the gray brown color of the dirt along the village paths. It was covered in disturbingly twisted brambles woven into magical symbols to ward off hexes from angry demons or jealous neighbors.
