by Steve Toltz
“Your dad could never turn off his mind—that’s why he was always breaking down. Unless you want to suffer the same mental deterioration, you’re going to have to achieve a stillness of the mind through meditation.”
“Leave me alone, Anouk.”
“Jasper. I’m just trying to help you. The only way you’re going to survive all this hatred is if you have inner peace. And to find inner peace, you first have to reach the higher self. And to find the higher self, you have to find the inner light. Then you join the light.”
“Join the light. To what?”
“No—you and the light become one.”
“What’s that going to feel like?”
“Bliss.”
“So it’s good, then.”
“Very.”
Anouk went on in this way, about inner peace, about meditation and the power of the mind not to bend spoons but to thwart hatred. She wasn’t fooling me. She was only a wannabe guru—hearing rumors of enlightenment was as far as she’d got. Still, we tried to find peace, light, our higher and lower selves, and all those in between. Anouk thought I might be a natural at meditation, since I’d confided in her that I suspected I could read my father’s thoughts and often saw faces where there should be none. She seized these revelations zealously, and her frenzied voice became more insistent. Just as in the old days, I was defenseless against her fanatical compassion. I let her buy flowers and wind chimes. I let her buy me books on different approaches to meditation. I even let her drag me to a rebirthing experience. “Don’t you want to remember your own birth?” she snapped, as if she were noting forgetfulness as another of my character traits. She took me to a center that had walls the color of an old woman’s gums, and we lay in a dimly lit room in a semicircle, chanting and regressing and struggling to recall the moment of birth as if we were trying to remember someone’s phone number. I felt like a fool. But I loved being around Anouk again, so I went along with it, and every day afterward, as we sat cross-legged in parks and on beaches, repeating our mantras over and over again like obsessive-compulsives. For those couple of weeks I did nothing but watch my breathing and attempt to empty my mind, but my mind was like a boat with a leak; every time I got rid of a bucket of thoughts, new ones poured in. And when I thought I might have achieved the slightest emptiness, I got scared. My emptiness was not blissful but felt malignant. The sound of my own breathing was faintly sinister. My posture seemed theatrical. Sometimes I’d shut my eyes only to see that strange and terrible face, or else I’d see nothing but I would hear, faint and muffled, my father’s voice, as if he were talking to me from inside a box. Clearly meditation couldn’t help me. Nothing could help me. I was beyond help, and not even a sudden sun shower could lift me up. In fact, I started wondering what I had seen in nature all that time I lived in the labyrinth. It suddenly seemed to be horrible and ostentatious, and I wondered if it was blasphemous to tell God that rainbows are kitsch.
So that was my state of mind when Dad, Eddie, and Caroline turned up at my apartment building and honked the horn until I went down onto the street. The car just sat there, engine idling. I went over to the window. They were all wearing dark sunglasses, as though they shared a collective hangover.
“They’re coming to arrest me tomorrow,” Dad said. “We’re making a run for it.”
“You’ll never make it.”
“We’ll see. Anyway, we just came to say goodbye,” Dad said.
Eddie was shaking his head. “You should come with us.”
That seemed a good reason to shake my head, so I did, and asked, “What are you crazy fugitives going to do in Thailand?”
“Tim Lung has offered to put us up for a while.”
“Tim Lung?” I shouted, then whispered softly, “Christ.”
That’s when an absurd and dangerous idea entered my head with an almost audible pop. Just as I loved the Inferno with clenched fists, I hated Tim Lung with open arms.
I thought: I will kill him. Kill him with an impersonal bullet to the head.
“Are you all right?” Dad asked.
In that instant I knew I was not above the fulfillment of a bloodthirsty fantasy. For months I’d been harboring vile ideas about people (I dreamed of filling their mouths with haggis), and now I knew actual violence was the next logical step. After years of witnessing my father’s seasonal dissolutions, I had eons ago resolved to avoid a lifetime of intense contemplation; an abrupt departure into murder seemed the way to go about this. Yes, suddenly I was no longer in the darkness, groping along the endless corridors of days. For the first time in a long time, the path ahead was well lit and clearly defined.
So when Dad said his dried-eyed goodbye for the last time, I said, “I’m coming with you.”
II
Take it from me: the thrill and anticipation of voyage is compounded when traveling on a fake passport. And we were taking a private plane—Dad’s famous face wasn’t going to get out of Australia without a hefty bribe. Hidden under hats and behind sunglasses, we arrived at the airport and went through a security gate straight out to the tarmac. Eddie said the plane belonged to a “friend of a friend,” and he handed envelopes of cash to a couple of unscrupulous customs officials, which was to be shared among the corrupt ground crew and baggage handlers. Frankly, everyone we met looked utterly at ease with the transaction.
As we waited for Eddie to finish the dispensation of bribes and the completion of phony paperwork, Caroline rubbed Dad’s back while Dad ironed out the wrinkles in his own forehead. Nobody would look at or talk to Eddie. I couldn’t help but feel a kind of grief for him. I knew he deserved the alternating fury and cold shoulder he was getting, but his congenital half smile made him look so hapless, so un-Machiavellian, I might have risen to defend his indefensible behavior if only the jury present weren’t so predisposed to a beheading. “Once we get in the air, we’ll be fine,” Dad said, to calm himself down. That surreal phrase stuck in my head: “Once we get in the air.” No one else said anything; we were all lost in thought, probably the same thought. The whole time we avoided talking about the future, as it was inconceivable.
We boarded the plane without incident (if you don’t count Dad’s inhuman sweating as an incident), afraid even to cough so as not to blow our cover. I beat Eddie to the window seat, as this was my first time leaving Australia and I wanted to wave goodbye. The engines started up. We took off with a roar. We climbed the sky. Then we leveled out. We were in the air. We were safe.
“Narrow escape,” I said.
Eddie looked surprised, as if he’d forgotten I was there. His gaze drifted past me to the window.
“Goodbye, Australia,” he said a little nastily.
So that was it—we had been hounded out of Australia. We were now fugitives. We would probably all grow beards, except Caroline, who would dye her hair; we would learn new languages and camouflage ourselves wherever we went, dark green for jungles, shiny brass for hotel lobbies. We had our work cut out for us.
I looked over at Dad. Caroline had her head resting on his shoulder. Every time he caught me looking at him, he gave me an “Isn’t this exciting?” look, as if he were taking me on a father-son bonding holiday. He’d forgotten we were already insidiously bonded, like prisoners in a chain gang. Outside, the sky was a flat color; stark, austere. I watched Sydney disappear from sight with something approximating grief.
Five hours later we were still flying over Australia, over the inconceivably bleak and uninviting landscape of our demented country. You can’t believe how it goes on and on. To appreciate the harrowing beauty of the interior you have to be in the middle of it, with a well-stocked escape vehicle. Topographically it’s incomprehensible and terrifying. Well, that’s the center of our country for you. It’s no Garden of Eden.
Then we were flying over water. That’s it, I thought. The stage on which our unbelievable lives played out has slipped away, under the clouds. The feeling ran deep inside my body until I felt it settle in and get comfortable. All
that was left to think about was the future. I was apprehensive about it; it didn’t seem to be the type of future that would last long.
“What does he want with us?” I asked Eddie suddenly.
“Who?”
“Tim Lung.”
“I have no idea. He has invited you to be his guests.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, how long does he want us to stay?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you know?”
“He’s looking forward to meeting you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Christ, Eddie!”
We were giving ourselves up to the mysterious Tim Lung. Having used Dad to filch millions of dollars from the Australian people, did he now want to thank Dad for playing the sap so amiably? Was it curiosity—did he want to see how stupid a man could be? Or was there some darker purpose none of us had thought of?
The lights in the plane were turned off, and as we flew across the planet in darkness, I thought about the man I’d be killing. From media reports I’d learned that frustrated detectives in Thailand, unable to locate him, made assertions that he was the embodiment of evil, a true monster. Clearly, then, the world would be better off without him. Nevertheless, I was depressed by the realization that murder was the only utilitarian idea I’d ever had.
III
“There’s no one here to meet us,” Eddie said, scanning the airport crowd.
Dad, Caroline, and I exchanged looks—we hadn’t known there was supposed to be.
“Wait here,” Eddie said. “I’ll make a call.”
I watched Eddie’s face while he spoke to someone who I assumed was Tim Lung. He was nodding vigorously, bent over in an absurdly servile posture and with an apologetic grin on his face.
Eddie hung up and made another call. Dad, Caroline, and I watched him in silence. Occasionally we gave each other looks that said, “Things are out of our hands but we have to do something, and this knowing look is it.” Eddie hung up again and stared at the phone awhile. Then he came over, rubbing his hands together gloomily.
“We have to spend the night in a hotel. We’ll go to Mr. Lung’s place tomorrow.”
“OK. Let’s get a taxi,” Dad said.
“No—someone is coming to take us.”
Twenty minutes later a small Thai woman arrived, so wide-eyed it seemed she had no eyelids. She stepped toward us slowly, trembling. Eddie just stood there like a cow chewing its cud. The woman wrapped her arms around him, and as they hugged, low sobs escaped through her small mouth. I knew Eddie was lost in the moment because he suddenly ceased looking slippery. Their embrace went on and on until it became monotonous. We all felt painfully awkward.
“I have long wanted to meet you,” she said, turning to the rest of us.
“You have?” I asked doubtfully.
Then Eddie said, “Ling is my wife.”
“No, she’s not,” Dad said.
“Yes, I am,” she answered.
Dad and I were thrown into shock. Eddie was married?
“Eddie, how long have you been married?” I asked.
“Nearly twenty-five years.”
“Twenty-five years!”
“But you live in Australia,” Dad said.
“Not anymore.”
Dad couldn’t get his head around it. “Eddie,” he said, “twenty-five years. Would that mean you were married when we met in Paris?”
Eddie smiled, as if that were an answer and not another question.
We left the airport bewildered. We were not just in another country but another galaxy, one in which Eddie had been married for twenty-five years. Outside, the heat hit us forcefully. We all piled into an old olive-green Mercedes and sped off to the hotel. As it was my first time in a foreign country, my eyes soaked it up—but I’ll save you the travelogue description. It’s Thailand. You know the sights, you know the smells. You’ve read the books, you’ve seen the movies. Hot, sticky, sweaty, it smelled of spicy food, and everywhere there lurked a hint of drugs and prostitution, because like most travelers, we had brought our preconceived notions with us on the journey and did not check them, as we should have, into immigration as hazardous materials best suited for quarantine.
In the car, Eddie and Ling spoke quietly in Thai. We heard our names mentioned several times. Dad couldn’t take his eyes off Eddie and his wife. His wife!
“Hey, Eddie. You have any children?” Dad asked.
Eddie shook his head.
“You sure?”
Eddie turned back to Ling and continued speaking softly.
As we checked into the hotel, careful to sign our new names and not the old ones, it struck me that the strangest thing for me was not just to be traveling, suddenly well and truly out of Australia, but to be traveling in a group. I had always imagined leaving Australia would be the ultimate symbol of my independence, and yet here I was, with everybody. I know you can never escape yourself, that you carry your past with you, but I really had. Small mercy that I wound up getting my own room, which looked down on an eviscerated dog’s carcass.
That night I paced the hotel room. All I could think of was that by now news of our escape would be all over Australia, in every last watering hole, and despite our furtive exit, someone was bound to trace us without too much difficulty. I could easily imagine Australia’s reaction on hearing that we had absconded, and at around three in the morning I felt hit by what I was sure was a hot wave of loathing that had traveled from our homeland all the way to our air-conditioned hotel rooms on Khe Sahn Road.
I went out into Bangkok wondering how to buy a gun. I didn’t think it would prove too difficult; in my head this was a sordid metropolis, a Sodom and Gomorrah that served really good food. I was in a semi-delirious state, only looking at faces, and more specifically at eyes. Most of the eyes I saw were irritatingly innocent; only a few cauterized you just by looking. Those were the ones I wanted. I thought about murder and murderers. My victim was also a criminal; who would cry for him? Well, maybe many people. Maybe he was married too! I thought with a gasp. I don’t know why I should’ve been so surprised; why shouldn’t he be married? He wasn’t notorious for being ugly and unsociable, only for being amoral. That’s attractive in some circles.
It was four in the morning and still oppressively hot and I hadn’t yet found a single gun. I walked on, thinking, “Tim Lung—should I kill you straightaway, without even offering you an aperitif?” As I walked, I lit a cigarette. Why not? It’s not the number one preventable cause of death in the world for nothing.
I was tired and leaned against a post. I felt a pair of eyes on me. There was something frightening yet strangely invigorating about these eyes. These were the eyes I’d been looking for.
I went over to the young man and we spoke at the same time.
“Do you know where I can buy a gun?”
“Do you want to see a sex show?”
“Yes, please.”
He whisked me down the street and took me to Patpong. Large groups of Western men were going into strip clubs and I thought immediately of Freud, who believed that civilization develops in an ever-increasing contrast to the needs of man. Clearly Freud had never been to Patpong. Here the needs of man were scrupulously taken care of, every need, even the needs that made him sick.
I went into the first bar and sat on a stool and ordered a beer. A young woman came and sat on my lap. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen. She put her hand between my legs and I asked her, “Do you know where I could buy a gun?” At once I knew I’d made a mistake. She hopped off my lap as if it had bitten her. I saw her talk excitedly to a couple of heavy types behind the bar. I made a run for it, thinking I had slipped into one of those unrealities where you can really hurt yourself, and after a few blocks I stopped running. In effect, these Thai characters were no more criminal than people you’d find at any corner fish-and-chips shop in Sydney, and simply purchasing
a gun from them was impossible. In that case, when I met Tim Lung, I’d have to improvise.
When I went down to the hotel breakfast room in the morning, I deduced from the look on Dad’s and Caroline’s faces that they hadn’t slept either. They were wretched, sleepless faces. Faces pinched with worry. Over a large nonexotic breakfast of bacon, eggs, and stale croissants, our banter was light and meaningless, to try to overpower the dark mood. Whatever was in store for us, we wanted to weather it on a full stomach.
Eddie came in without his usual benign expression.
“You ready?”
“Where’s your wife?” Dad asked.
“Shut the fuck up, Martin. I’ve had enough of you. I’ve really, really had enough.”
That silenced us all.
IV
To get to Tim Lung’s place we had to catch a long-tail boat down a dirty, foul-smelling canal. As we passed wooden canoes laden with multicolored fruits and vegetables, I shielded my face from threatening splashes of murky water. My first impressions of Thailand were good, but I knew that my immune system wasn’t up to the challenge of its bacteria. Once beyond this ragged fleet of watercraft, we were alone in the canal, pressing forward. On either side, sitting lopsided on dusty streets, were houses that looked either semicompleted or semidilapidated. We passed women in large-brimmed straw hats washing their clothes in the brown water, evidently unfazed by the idea of encephalitis nesting in their underwear. Then there were long, deserted, dusty streets and huge trees with sprawling branches. The houses, now grand and flashy mansions, were spaced farther apart. I sensed we were getting close. I tried reading Eddie’s face. It was unreadable. Dad gave me a look, the subtext of which was “We’ve escaped, but into what?”
The boat stopped. We stepped off and walked up a small embankment to a large iron gate. Before Eddie could ring the buzzer, a sharp voice from a tinny intercom said something in Thai and Eddie answered it, looking at me, which gave me the feeling that we were on a road on which to go back was suicide and to go forward was probably suicide. I had goose bumps all over. Caroline took my hand. The gate swung open. We pressed on. Dad said something about the state of his bowels which I didn’t quite catch.
