Lost in Pattaya

by Kishore Modak

  If I pushed, BMI would be forced to find a scapegoat. A sacrifice that would absolve the tarnished-stature of the larger organisational entity, before the press is briefed on the inexplicable slide in results.

  The other option was for me to look the other way, ignore what I had found, and simply clear the audit, which my client would desperately seek off us. In return, we could sign a long term services renewal with BMI, a big win since these circumstances would mean an easy enhancement of fees and services, implying assured long-term revenues for the audit firm, at least from the Asia operations. As regards the losses at BMI, they would dwindle with time; some would be recovered from the bank, after protracted contract negotiations, while others could be written down each quarter, in small un-noticeable amounts. The people at BMI who were responsible for this situation, some would continue at BMI, being experienced in managing premature billings, while others would attrition naturally, finding positions in other organisations. Even those who continued would change roles, distancing themselves from the situation that others would be forced to face. Of course, there would be heated calls and meetings, but, the situation could be handled if it was made to stretch over a period of time. All our knots are eventually undone by time, and the solutions that the future holds, no matter how cruel.

  * * *

  When I landed in Singapore, my phone was choc-a-full of missed calls and messages from Georgy. I ignored them, calling instead the police in Pattaya and Singapore, who expressed futility, remorse, and their will to do the utmost to re-unite us with our daughter. They had not found her while I was mid-flight, these last few hours.

  “Georgy, did you hear anything. Have they found her?” I returned his call, from the travellators of Changi airport.

  “No, they have not. I was trying to reach you about something else; you visited the bank and I saw your assessment,” he said.

  “What about it? And, how did you get my mail, I did not send it to you?” I asked.

  “The HQ forwarded it to me and asked me to speak to you. How on earth can you recommend a write down of four million dollars, and threaten our client with an audit fail if they don’t do so?” he was shouting into the phone, with a discernible change of tone, indicating the perceived elevation of position that the HQ’s directions may have indicated to him. After all, he was being asked to manage my situation, which was almost like being asked to manage me.

  “Because, they are not going to get paid by the Bank of Manila, so they have to reverse the sale and face the music, that is why,” I said, surprised by the intensity with which Georgy attacked. My voice remained calm, ignoring for the moment his assumed sense of authority over me.

  He would have told the HQ about Li Ya and the obvious impact she was having on my performance and judgement of business situations. Maybe he had even promised them his solutions for situations before hanging the phone up and jumping into the frenzy of calls and messages I received after I landed in Singapore.

  “Listen, you know this, we get paid to clear audits and pass business statements, not to block them. Just give them some time and they will sort their problems out with the bank. The business is theirs, for them to run, we are here only to support them, please, listen to me,” he was pleading.

  “Hello, hello, you are breaking up. I will call you once I get home, or, maybe we can talk tomorrow at work, Hello… Hel…bye for now,” I could hear him well but I was in no state to talk business since my mind was completely focussed upon reaching home and seeing Fang Wei, hoping to spend time with her and maybe discuss what we needed to discuss, the building back or the breaking down of our life together.

  Our apartment in Singapore is perched high in a stack of flats, overlooking the sea on which a constant fleet of industrial vessels float gently in and out of the harbour beyond. It is small but adequate, since we get no visitors who stay over. She has her family in Singapore, but they are sensitive enough not to stay over, given it is a tiny flat. It has an open kitchen expanding into a living space, and two bedrooms, one for Li Ya and the other for us. At the doorway, our shoe stand was waiting for me, her footwear arranged neatly in it while mine were left in a haphazard pile outside the stand. Clearly, she had thrown all my shoes and slippers in the untidy pile, clarifying without words what she wanted: my removal from her life.

  She didn’t seem to be home and I simply sidestepped the pile of footwear, reaching for the keys to the front door, which I dreaded would not unlock my own house, a remote part of me anticipating the changing of locks that Fang Wei may have planned as another tasteless attempt at conveying messages, without the need for conversation. They still worked- the keys.

  From the living room windows I could see the flotilla of trading vessels on the water, the whole seascape was a-glow in the orange of the setting sun. It was a great view, one which helped this tiny apartment carry worth a couple of million dollars in valuation.

  Even before I had pulled my luggage through the doorway, I saw a bottle of whiskey on the table with a large sad faced emoticon on its label, drawn with a marker in bold strong black lines. There was a glass set next to it. What was I supposed to conclude, that the alcohol inside me was the cause of Li Ya’s loss in Pattaya?

  In the bedroom, our wardrobe had been rearranged, my side of which was neat with my stuff but Fang Wei’s clothes were missing; there was simply an empty shell where her clothes and useless accoutrements had hung before we had left for Pattaya. She could not have left me, not like this, not without conversations, no matter how futile they might be at this fag end of our relationship. I had been trying to reach her but she never replied and when she did, it was always in frigid single word sms’s.

  What could I do? Somehow, try and move on, hopefully with Fang Wei, with whom I was even ready to accept the misplaced blame of losing Li Ya if it meant we could build back our family life. I needed someone to grieve with and I had no one. That was the reason my grieving was never complete. Family and society are structured for us to grapple with the grief of loss, sometimes with ceremonies like wakes and burial services, or in visitor groups, they release the loss that one may feel, letting one cry legitimately on another’s shoulder. None of that happened with me, since I, in a singular yet plural way, was the society that I lived with all alone. It was also the reason that I had embarrassed myself in front of Ortega, a complete stranger, who became the pillar on which I had released the building pressure, from my autoclave of grief.

  Many years on, I cried a few more times when I related my loss to Miho and to Thuy Binh, but in the intervening period there was little or no grieving, just a steady building up of sorrow inside me, a grief responsible in large part for the failure of my health, from the point of Li Ya’s loss. The doctors and surgeons would blame it on the drugs and the drinks and the lack of sleep from the sleeping pills, but I knew the loss of Li Ya had a large part to play in the hardening of my heart and the shrivelling of my liver before I lay irretrievably diseased.

  I reached for my shorts and T-shirt, dressing quickly, hoping a few of the guys would be at the Squash Club, where I was hoping to have a hit. At first, my getting dressed for squash seemed commonplace, but when I turned on the lights, I noticed a neat snip on the side of my T-shirt and another one at the bottom of my shorts. Both the cuts were tidy, as if done with a pair of scissors, not hurriedly, just haphazardly, making useless the articles of clothing attacked by the hands of wrath. Back in my wardrobe, I realised all my clothes had a snip on them at various locations, but all were cut and left neatly for me to find as I picked them out to wear.

  Was it still reasonable for me to harbour a hope of a reunion with Fang Wei?

  At the Squash Club, I got a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, which I changed into before joining the guys, courtside.

  “Hey, where have you been, missed whipping your arse,” one of them quipped, seeing me come in.

  “Ya, we will see,” I simply said, smiling and hi-fiving, like when one is happy to be in the company of sq
uash friends.

  The games were good, though I did not hit too well, given that my stamina had depleted in the strain of the weekend behind me, but the abstinence for at least the last couple of days and the runs and weights in the gym ensured that I saved some face. It also reaffirmed my belief that with discipline, I would rise to play again at peak form.

  The squash had one major downside, it made one want to sin, to compensate for what we squash players believe is physical worship in the squash room. Prayer to us is the motion of running and hitting the ball inside of the squash room.

  It is a ritual, like all prayers are.

  Outside, we settled for beers, me sliding continuously for messages and updates on my phone from people who could salvage my life. People like the policemen, who may have made a breakthrough; people like my wife, who may soften into dialling my number for conversation; people like Georgy, who may agree with my reason of logic that a business must be run with. There were none and I simply slid and slipped on the phone, for others to imagine that I was busy with matters.

  “You Ok man?” my buds asked, sweating in the after-glow of a game, though they did not miss the droop my face assumed.

  “Yes, fine,” I said, begging leave, making dates for another game on the following evening, before moving back to the flat with a parcel of food in my hand. Nothing fancy, just a bed of rice with succulent chicken, sliced and laid on top, a little accompaniment of vinegar-chilli on the side.

  To play and to eat well, without Li Ya, was I wrong, you judge?

  At home, I poured myself a drink from the same bottle with the rough drawn sad emoticon, settling in front of the TV, which refused stubbornly to come on despite the knocks and prods that I coaxed its remote with. The remote was light with no batteries in it, just the same thick lined emoticon at the base of the empty battery cavity. I ate and drank a bit more without any TV. Then I drank a bit more, hoping the squash would compensate for what the alcohol was draining away. I messaged Fang Wei, asking for her to meet me, so we could talk. She never replied. I went to bed awake, pictures of Li Ya kept flashing across my mind. Images from her short life with me, and more disturbingly, images from the three long days that she had now spent on her own, without me. The alcohol helped, at least temporarily, since I finally fell asleep.

  When I awoke, I could hear sounds from what had been Li Ya’s room. It was Fang Wei, all dressed and ready for work, as if it was just another day. She was standing in front of Li Ya’s cabinet, inside which were all of Fang Wei’s clothes; she had simply moved out of our room and into Li Ya’s.

  “When did you get home? I tried reaching you?” I said, rubbing my eyes, clearly in the aftermath of the night’s drinking and the deprived sleep, which she may have noticed, given the smirk that appeared on her face.

  “That is not a matter that you need to concern yourself with,” she replied without looking at me.

  “Fang Wei, we have to sit and talk about this,” I moved closer to her, wanting to touch her, wanting to set things right between us.

  “You are a wasted screw-up, nothing can set right what you have lost,” she began to cry softly, her face crumpling in crevices of grief and sorrow. Still, she did not allow me to touch her or to comfort her in any way.

  “Do you want some coffee?” I asked, disarmed.

  “No,” she said, but I made an extra cup all the same, leaving it on the table for her to drink if she still wanted to.

  When she emerged from Li Ya’s room, I was feeling better, with the coffee. “We have to work this out,” I looked at her, almost pleading for room, at least for conversations.

  “Work what out? You know it; we have been together for the last few years only for the sake of Li Ya. You have ruined my entire life. You are just a wasted drunk, who has lost my daughter, now there is nothing left for me to work out with you,” her eyes were tinged red from the weeping.

  “Please,” I said, not sure what exactly I meant. My face had assumed a tremble, particularly my lips, in anticipation of the impending loss of Fang Wei, which I had begun to perceive that morning.

  She banged the door behind her and left me.

  A dull pain arose at the base of my neck, slowly spreading across my shoulders. It must be the alcohol from last night. I simply lay on the couch staring at the low ceiling. Uncharacteristically, a ship bellowed its horn from the sea, the only ripple in the snooze that I fell into after Fang Wei left.

  Later, in the shower, my entire neck ached and I decided to head for a shoulder massage rather than to work, from where Georgy had practically burnt my phone down with messages, mails and calls. For now, I simply silenced my phone, expecting the massage to leave me refreshed. It did not, making the train ride in to work arduous since I had to stop and buy a few shirts and trousers as I slowly rid myself of my snipped wardrobe.

  At work, I was met by questions and doubts, which Georgy welcomed me with.

  “Where the fuck have you been, I have been looking for you,” he displayed the false passion that a lot of us office workers practice to exhibit; after all, we are supposed to look busy and charged up by our work. There was a clear notching up of his tone as well, meant to cement the elevation of authority that he had been thrust with from our HQ.

  “It’s just a bloody audit, don’t get so worked up; a few hours is not going to impact anything,” that is what I wanted to say, but instead I simply said “Give me a few minutes. I will be with you after I check my mail.”

  It was true. I had a mail from the HQ, telling me that Georgy would manage the day-to-day operations of the Asia office, at least for now, which meant that I, in some sense, was answerable to Georgy.

  In about half an hour, we cornered the meeting room. There was a discomfort in each other’s presence, a discomfort that had not been there on the previous week. I tried to remain calm and measured, at least by my language of body over the next hour, leading up to my exit from the corporate world.

  “Listen, I am sorry, I know you are going through a lot, I know this is not a good time for you, but we have to keep the business moving,” he too spoke calmly, without the panicked demeanour he had greeted me earlier with.

  “No, not at all, despite what has happened, we have to deliver our work effectively, which is why I went and met Ortega before filing my recommendations. I want to ensure I don’t fall behind any deliverables,” I looked at him, wanting to discuss work rather than the futility of search that Li Ya had assumed by now.

  The same search, with which he had actually helped earlier, now became a topic that I did not want to touch. It was like arriving uninvited for dinner where you were to be discussed, in your absence.

  “You know we have to clear the audit, right, don’t you?” he asked.

  It was not us; it was them, the greedy honchos of BMI, who needed to clear the audit.

  “Maybe, but only after we have made the point, that in this case needed making. BMI recognised revenues early, without firm contracts, and this compromised its future financial integrity. You have to agree, that is what this case is all about?” I, too, stated what I was moving towards, my defeat in this recalcitrant stand I had assumed. My obstinacy had to do with the fact that I had found something ‘principled’ to support and put my weight behind, during a phase when I was consumed by the ‘compromises’ that had built around me, by my excessive and wrong ways. The pain at the base of my neck gnawed at my entire head before it spread its cold steel like grip over my temples, reaching the sockets around my eyes, which began throbbing with each word and movement I executed.

  “But, if we fail the audit, they will have to take huge one off losses as they write down the previous period’s revenues in a single stroke. The stock will take a beating, and many families will lose out, it will be a societal loss. We have to think about the larger picture.

  Remember, our contract with them, it too is coming for renewal soon, and it is the biggest account that we have in the region. We have to consider all this before we make o
ur recommendations,” he remained calm, rebuilding for us the logic that I knew well.

  It was my family that stood destroyed; he should not have mentioned that bit, about families, about societal fucking loss when he tried to coax me into signing the audit off. My suppressed anger was becoming harder to control, only making my resolve firmer.

  “Georgy, these guys have done wrong, and they will get away with it if we let them. They will find ways to dilute these losses, slowly, over the coming Quarters. It is our job to stop them, it is our job to blow the whistle, we are the fucking auditors,” I said, knowing well that we too, were reduced to be business-like in the business of auditing others, mostly powerless when it came to setting the world right.

  The pain in my neck and my shoulder’s agony intensified. I wanted to leave the meeting room, having stated what I wanted to, but, I could not, given that we were meeting on an issue that would decide the course of my remainder life. I suppressed the sensation of retching; the act of which I believed would relieve me of the aches the moment the foul imaginary green liquid exited my stomach, gushing acidic over my tongue before it was released in a fountain of vomit into the toilet bowl I wanted to rush towards. I simply swallowed, holding myself together, hoping to mask what was breaking inside me, my self-confidence. I admit I was devoid of any confidence that these staged meetings of the corporate world demand. Irrespective of what the situation is, one is expected to reflect solidity in all day-to-day dealings. Here I was, physically in pain and mentally wrecked by the events around me, pretty much ready to give up and accept whatever fate would throw at me next.