by Harlan Wolff
He took them both by their hands and led them into the garden where a stone table with stone benches on each side had been prepared for them under a flame tree. They squeezed their large legs under the stone table and sat with their knees pressed against stone and buttocks partly hanging off the back of the bench. It was not a problem as long as neither one of them moved.
“Welcome to my house.”
“Thank you Khun Boonchoo. I’m sorry it is the middle of the night.”
“For you and Khun George any time is a good time.”
The table was covered in small plates of food. A bucket full of ice and bottles of beer had been placed at the centre of the table. They were an old-fashioned north-eastern Thai family and while the men sat in the garden eating and drinking the women and young girls ran backwards and forwards to the kitchen carrying buckets of ice and plates of food.
They were nice people and they all looked after each other. Out of everybody in Carl’s circle, Boonchoo was probably the most content. Carl and George spent a pleasant hour talking, eating, and drinking beer with ice cubes in it. Carl almost felt normal for a while.
After the meal Carl took the old man to one side and explained what he needed him to do. Carl told him George would be overseeing everything and offered to pay him up to date and for the days ahead.
“I know you have troubles so you don’t have to pay me. I will do whatever is needed.”
“Thank you Khun Boonchoo I know I can always rely on you. Money’s the least of my worries at the moment so please take it.”
He took the money reluctantly. Carl had always known that, in Thailand, the people with the least were always the most generous. They had some more drinks, then they both thanked him and his family politely for their hospitality and left. It was two in the morning.
Once inside the car George asked, “I’ve arranged a safe house like you asked. Do you want to go there?”
“Is it peaceful?”
“Quiet as a guilty conscience.”
“All right chauffeur, stop by the hotel to pick up my stuff then drive me home.”
They picked up Carl’s meagre possessions and drove north for almost an hour. Then George turned off the highway onto dirt roads that meandered beside canals and fruit orchards. He stopped the car at a big wooden gate with a seemingly endless hedge on one side. He jumped out of the car and opened the double gate. Carl followed him out of the car so he could close the gates after George took the car in.
The driveway was very long and had a hedge on the right and a green field full of trees on the left. Carl walked after the car taking in the country smell of the place. The driveway ended at an old Thai style teak house that could not be seen from the dirt road. Carl walked around in the moonlight. It was very large and surrounded by orchards and ponds. Carl could hear the sounds of birds and animals all around him.
“It is incredible, you really are a wizard George.”
“It belongs to a very old Englishman. It was to be his dream retirement home. Unfortunately it took so many years to build that by the time it was finished he was too old and sick to live so far away from a modern hospital. He lives in a small apartment with a view of Bumrungrad Hospital now. His children rent this place out to Thai television for their latest ghost series. I told them I had a Hollywood production team on a location hunt and they gave me the place for a few days so I can show it. Do you want to see the special rates they created for our Hollywood production?”
“I assume they are double what Thai TV are paying.”
“Triple actually. Nice to see you haven’t lost your cynical grip on reality.”
“Contact them tomorrow and tell them that the scout is very excited and can’t wait for the director to get here next week. A week should do us.”
“Already did. I called them this afternoon.”
“Hiding out in a ghost house!” Carl laughed out loud. “Pure genius. Even the assassins in this country are scared of ghosts.”
They opened up the house and turned on some lights. At the back of the upstairs sitting room was a door that opened onto a very large wooden deck that ran the length of the entire house. To the side of the deck was a wooden stairway that went down to a pond that occupied the entire back section of the land. It was home to various kinds of birds and plants. It was straight out of old Siam, all except for Carl’s favourite inhabitants, a pair of imported white swans that glided around the surface of the water like luxury yachts. They were imports.
“This is absolutely fucking wonderful George.”
“You want to hear the best bit? A Canadian lived here for a while. He rented the whole place for forty thousand baht a month. The Thais won’t live here because on television it’s full of ghosts and the foreigners don’t like it because it’s in the middle of nowhere.”
“Let’s have a drink George. But when this is all over I want to rent this place.”
“I’ll go find a bottle of whiskey and a couple of glasses,” Georgesaid as he went into the house.
There were mosquitos but for once Carl didn’t mind. This house was where he wanted to be. George came back and they sat drinking under the deck and looking at the private world of the old house bathed in moonlight.
When they had become comfortably numb George asked Carl, “How come you never talk about my wife?”
“Would it help if I did?”
“No it wouldn’t, in fact it would make it worse.”
“That’s why I don’t talk about it.”
“I figured that was the reason,” George said and then didn’t feel like talking any more.
They sat in silence watching the swans glide backwards and forwards across the pond surrounded by the dances of the fireflies. After a couple more drinks they stumbled off to find their beds.
Chapter 23
Carl was woken at dawn by a screeching sound outside his bedroom window. It was a shocking grating noise and it was being made by something very close, too close for his liking. Carl pulled on his jeans and went outside to see what was going on.
George was already awake and sitting on the deck drinking coffee after having taken a ten-kilometre run and a shower. Carl was dehydrated and miserable. His head hurt, even his eyes hurt. He’d always seen George as an alien creature. What kind of person slept only a few hours, and then ran a ridiculously long distance with a smile on his face? Not Carl, that was for sure.
At the end of the deck perched on the wooden rail within a few feet of the window to the room where Carl had been sleeping was an adult peacock. His fan of a tail was open in all its multi-coloured glory and he was jumping up and down on the wooden rail in all the excitement of wanting his opinion heard.
“What the fuck is that?” Carl asked.
“It’s a peacock.”
“I know it’s a fucking peacock George. What’s it doing screaming abuse at me outside my bedroom window?”
“Sorry, I forgot to mention Pretty Boy Floyd over there. He was another pet of the Canadian that used to live here. He was abandoned to be fed and looked after by the gardener, like the rest of the wildlife.”
“Maybe you can reason with him. Tell him that all of us foreigners may look alike but it wasn’t me that abandoned him.”
Pretty Boy Floyd turned around to face them and continued to scream at Carl.
“I need a coffee,” Carl told George as he walked away and re-entered the house. Carl was getting very attached to the house. It would be a wonderful life, away from the madness of central Bangkok and it was a long way from his enemies.
Carl found a coffee maker and a bottle of cold water in the kitchen. He went upstairs and found a dock for an iPod on the second floor landing connected to two battered speakers. He retrieved the iPod from his bedroom and plugged it in before selecting some appropriate morning music. Good morning Sibelius and welcome to paradise.
The violin concerto suited his mood. He carried the coffee mug and bottle of water out onto the deck and sat contentedly in the morni
ng sun. Carl didn’t have anything to do with his day. He had put a plan in process and had allowed it to run with its own momentum. Now he had nothing to do but wait.
“Where’s the gardener?” he asked George.
“I told them we had some famous people arriving from Hollywood that didn’t want to be bothered by paparazzi so he has been given the week off.”
“Good move.”
“I know you like your privacy. I’ll take the car and do some running around today.”
“Give the old man a call late afternoon while you’re out.”
“I’ll do some shopping as well,” George said, and then he was gone.
Carl heard the car engine disappearing into the distance. He went into the house and got a piece of paper and a pen, which he brought out to the deck. Carl always thought more clearly when he wrote things down, so he wrote out his entire plan. He then made notes beside each section with all the things that could go wrong. It was not perfect but he was not unhappy with it. It was all he had. He read it through one more time and then went down the steps to the garden and burnt the paper.
Carl had been hiding and looking over his shoulder for several days so he decided to take advantage of his rural surroundings and go for a walk. The ability to open the gate and walk along the dirt road through the orchards and over the small canal bridges was magical. Being a foreigner and of a certain age meant the local people didn’t see him as a threat so he could ramble through their lanes and fields. It was midday and the heat meant the local dogs barked and postured but didn’t really have the heart for a fight. Mad dogs of English men go out in the midday sun, Carl thought. Well somebody has to do it.
He noted that the house he was staying at was isolated and the nearest neighbour was some distance away. He had walked for five minutes before seeing another occupied house. There was another wooden palatial residence a couple of hundred meters along the dirt road but it was rundown and empty. Probably a wealthy person from Bangkok who had been bitten by the nostalgia bug but lost interest when confronted with the reality of lengthy traffic jams, country smells and violent mosquitos. Carl noted how isolated he was and smiled. His plan had just got bigger.
He returned to the house a couple of hours later drenched in sweat. The car was not there, so George was still out checking on things for him. Good old George. The rule was that no phones were to be switched on within fifty kilometres of the house so Carl was totally without communication. He took a shower and put his wet clothes back on. He was still travelling a bit too light for his liking. He went to sit in the sun to dry off but immediately started sweating again. Carl stripped down to his boxer shorts and went looking for books.
There was a small room with a desk and a table light, behind which was a bookshelf with a few dozen mildewed paperback books. The shelves had the usual collection of semi-pornographic muzak read by millions. Fortunately there were also a couple of gems. He picked out Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway. An unfortunate title in his recent predicament, but it was a wonderful escape into the world of Spanish bullfighting. Carl threw himself into the nostalgia of a Spain from the past, sitting in his garden from old Siam. All in all he had a very pleasant afternoon.
George came back around five o’clock with plastic supermarket bags and a paper shopping bag containing new jeans and casual cotton shirts. Carl immediately took a cold shower and put on the new clothes. Carl felt good, surprisingly happy. He was in the Thailand he had fallen in love with in his youth. More accurately Carl had fallen in love with what Thailand could have been like for him. He had probably fallen in love with pictures of old Siam. Carl’s life was a series of adventures falling in love with things that only existed in books, so that was probably the case. The house may have only been an oasis in the present day chaos that was modern Thailand but an oasis is big enough for one man. Carl dared to dream for a while.
George was suddenly all business-like and he pulled Carl back to reality. Carl didn’t like it.
“Boonchoo and his son were in the noodle shop behind the old office like you asked,” George told him. “Some nasty looking cops showed up, plain clothes boys. They asked lots of questions all round the neighbourhood. Lots of questions about youth gangs and drug parties at that building.”
“And?” Carl asked impatiently.
“After they left, the woman from the dress shop walked around asking everybody what’d been said. Then she went back to her shop and sat talking on her mobile phone for half an hour. What was that all about?”
“She’s the gossip he left behind.”
“I don’t get you.”
“Inman would always have maintained a relationship with the local gossip. A strong relationship with constant contact, presents at Christmas and children’s birthdays. He has a secret in that building so he would monitor the events around it. We can assume he has now been told that the drug squad has an interest in the building.”
“How do you know he would’ve done that?” George asked him.
“Because it’s what I would have done.”
“So what happens now?”
“Now George? Now we eat and drink ourselves silly. I like it here and I intend to be very happy for as long as I can.”
Carl entered the door that led from the deck to the second floor landing and selected a 1953 mono recording of the opera Tosca with Di Stefano and Callas singing their hearts out beautifully. The speakers’ veneers had peeled in the humidity leaving them looking worthless but their sound was excellent.
He went to the kitchen to see what George had brought home in the plastic supermarket bags. There were all sorts of food items including a baguette, walnuts, dried figs, Gorgonzola cheese and spaghetti. He put all of the other items in the fridge. This was going to be very easy, and there were some bottles of Chilean red wine that looked very drinkable.
Carl boiled the pasta al dente and fried the walnuts with a little butter. He would have preferred to use walnut oil but his circumstances required a few small sacrifices. He tossed the spaghetti with the butter and walnuts. Then, as it cooled just slightly, he threw in chopped dried figs and Gorgonzola cheese, tossed the whole lot with some black pepper, and put it all in a serving bowl. He put a bottle of red wine under his arm, grabbed the baguette, plates and two wine glasses, and headed back upstairs. Dinner was served.
Later in the evening they opened a second bottle of wine and George said, “I have just realized something.”
“Pray tell.”
“The worse this situation becomes the more you seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“Other people have said that about me in the past.”
“How does that work?” George asked.
“Buggered if I know.”
They watched the swans majestically manoeuvring around the pond and drank their wine in silence. Carl thought of the life that had brought him here. He thought about the women along the way. But mostly he thought about her. There’s always one.
By eleven o’clock Carl was comfortably numb again. There was nobody within hearing distance so the music had got louder as the empty bottles had accumulated, ceremoniously laid down on the deck like dead soldiers.
When Tosca had thrown herself noisily from the parapet thereby ending the opera Carl decided to stick with Callas and di Stefano and put on La Boheme. The bohemian opera was in its final act by the time the wine was getting difficult to swallow and felt like it was on the verge of coming out of Carl’s ears.
“What is your fascination with Puccini operas?” George slurred.
Carl sat thinking, which was not easy given how drunk he was. “It’s about the real things, the important things; life, love, relationships, loss, death. In real life there are no happy endings George. Happy endings are a con trick. The trick is convincing the audience that the story is over when it isn’t. If you follow any story to its true conclusion it must end badly. All life may begin with a miracle but it must always end with a tragedy. That is the nature of life.”<
br />
“You’re a cheerful drinking companion tonight.”
“Sorry George. Don’t ask the question if you think you won’t like the answer.”
Pretty Boy Floyd could be expected to deliver his morning diatribe outside Carl’s bedroom window again so an early night suddenly seemed like a very good idea. Carl stood up and went to the rail where he stood like a latter day Alexander surveying his kingdom. Having committed it to memory he slurred a goodnight to George and left the deck.
Carl went to bed dreaming nostalgic thoughts about spending his future playing a country squire in old Siam. Nostalgic thoughts do not live in a vacuum though so the idyllic country lane became memory lane. Thanks to the vast quantities of wine he had consumed he fell asleep anyway.
Chapter 24
The rising of the sun and arrival of the new day was screeched into Carl’s bedroom by Pretty Boy Floyd. He was perched on the rail of the deck near the bedroom window again, angrily bouncing up and down from the knees with his plumage fully fanned out. Carl was getting rather fond of him and his funny habits.
Carl’s head was fuzzy but he was not unhappy with the early alarm call. The fresh air was having a positive effect on his sense of well-being. It had rained during the night and the air was cool and fresh. Carl went for a walk through the grounds, barefoot on the wet grass. There was life everywhere he looked: small birds, large birds, squirrels, butterflies and bugs. It was good.
Carl returned to the house for an early breakfast with George. He went to the kitchen and made them both what he claimed was a nice health-conscious fry-up. In reality it was a good old-fashioned greasy spoon special. Even the bread was fried. He pointed proudly at a grilled tomato on George’s plate amongst the bacon, sausages, greasy eggs, fried white bread and deep fried potatoes and said, “Vitamin C. That will sort you out.”
After they had finished what was on their plates he asked George if he could check in with the old man sometime in the mid-afternoon, to make sure everybody was doing whatever they were supposed to be doing. There was no room for errors or delays. Everything had to be perfectly synchronized like a circle of white bathing capped Nazi frauleins in a swimming pool. George would supervise all of the teams and technicians personally, so he would be away until the following afternoon.
