At the terminal, I could see them from a distance, Aziz with Li Ya, Fang Wei and Georgy. Things had worked as planned. Li Ya was weeping inconsolably, obviously wanting to return back to her lover. Fang Wei was thanking Aziz while Georgy tried to calm Li Ya down. In a few minutes Aziz left them, moving towards the coffee shop on the upper level, our intended place of meeting.
I too moved, walking slowly as I dialled Fang Wei’s line. She answered in a few rings, and I could see her on the concourse as she spoke into the phone.
“Thank you Palash. Despite what you have been through, you have come to our help in our darkest hour,” she wept gently, moving away from Li Ya and Georgy, so she could be private.
“I had no choice. I can’t look after or even be near Li Ya because she loves me too much and I am not the example that a daughter should emulate,” I simply said, my eyes too watered.
“No Palash, in the end you have been the best dad possible,” she replied. “Despite everything, you have preserved and protected our darling.”
The defiant triumph of my life’s failure, came crackling in the words of my biggest adversary, my wife. A good feeling surfaced in me, like a meditative calm that a beggar monk experiences, having lost all before gaining what cannot be lost, self-respect.
“I don’t think we will speak again . . . I am sorry for any pain that I might have caused you. I want you to know that I bear no grudges against you, or Georgy; it is the past and I am leaving it behind. In the future, you are the right parents that Li Ya needs, not me,” I said, meaning each word that I had carefully spoken.
On the terminal concourse, I saw her stoop, weeping without restraint into the phone.
“Try to keep her in Singapore, away from the drugs . . . She has a penchant for those, wonder where she gets that from,” I managed a chuckle. “Promise me, you will take care of yourself,” I said, before hanging up, watching them for a few minutes more. She wept on Georgy’s shoulder, who wrapped his arms around her. Then, they disappeared beyond the immigration checkpoint. It was the last I saw or heard of Fang Wei.
At the coffee shop, Aziz was livid. “There is a fucking shoot-out in Patpong. What have you done? Why didn’t you tell me you were planning to hand Miho over to Kawai?”
Miho, deadly little Miho, she wasn’t going away quietly.
“What are you talking about?”
“Mr. Mitra . . . I think you have misconstrued my offer to help,” despite his anger, he held himself together, raising the cappuccino to his lips. “Bringing chaos to Bangkok and its peaceful existence was definitely not what I had bargained for. All I wanted was to help a desperate father, that is all,” he rose, asking me to follow, jumping into a cab outside the airport. We hit the rush hour and were trapped in the pollution for a couple of hours. It gave us ample time to speak. I tried hard, but it was futile trying to explain that I thought it a good trade, to sacrifice Miho along with the blood on the streets, in return for keeping Li Ya away from her, forever.
His phone kept ringing and he alternated between aggressive shouting and restrained compliance, clearly taking and giving orders all at the same time.
About a minute or two before we arrived back at Patpong, Aziz slipped a gun in my hands. “Keep this and come with me. Now I may need your help,” he said. This was the second gun I had been handed, in about as many weeks. I simply accepted it, all the while knowing that Li Ya would be in a blessed cold turkey on the jet liner scorching towards the Gold coast, safe from the clutches of doom that I almost lost her to.
The otherwise festive street of sex was unusually quiet, as if in mourning after a tragedy. Business was clearly hit, and when the river of money shrinks, its famine starves the most powerful of our world. Aziz ducked into an alley and made inquiries, asking me to wait outside and keep a watch.
“They had a gun fight, it is true. You should have told me, you know. This is out of control,” he was moving away quickly and I followed.
“What happened, Aziz?” I eventually asked, after we were in another taxi, this time moving steadily on the side streets while the traffic struggled on the main street on our right.
“I am not sure, but she fought back when they found her. She is injured, not sure if she is still alive, but I know she is with Kawai, either way.”
When we got off the cab, Aziz was on the phone, clearing our way into the dilapidated palace of Kawai. It was as if through the phone, the news of our arrival was keeping the guard dogs away from us. Strangely, Kawai’s palace was quite ordinary, standing on the end of a dirty everyday street with his dogs scattered all around it. They did not frisk us; such was his power, Aziz – the keeper of law. We walked up to the den of the walking-talking painting, Kawai.
“Aziz, you worry too much,” Kawai smiled, his shirt was undone and rivulets of sweat ran down his body, as if paint dripping from a drying canvas, drenching the sarong that he wore around his waist. His exertion was from the whip he had been wielding upon Miho, who sat tied to a chair, slumped over and barely breathing. When she looked up, I saw that her face was a ruin, the whip having taken with it the skin where Kawai may have directed its snap. She was barely conscious but her eyes were alive and when they met mine, she spat a large pool of saliva and congealed blood in my direction. Weakened, the projectile of red oral discharge simply fell on her lap, dripping over her thighs before adding to the pool of blood in which her chair stood.
“Do you want to fuck her, before we kill her?” Kawai the animal offered, looking at me looking at Miho. Fucking Miho, it was a repulsive thought, like lusting for a son’s girlfriends, and I suddenly hated myself for having masturbated with her in my mind on many occasions. Kawai, the catapult that I had used to eject Li Ya from Bangkok, was ugly and corrupt, with a life valueless and bereft of any meaning. It was a pitiable site, Miho nearing her end, yet it gave me heart, since I knew it was necessary to erase Miho so Li Ya could have a chance at a decent life, a life of good values that the young must cling on to, allowing time to sift the ones worth embracing for a lifetime. All of us are ready to die, the moment our values seem misplaced and un-justifiable through a lifetime of good acts.
“We can wash her and give her to you for a few minutes, if you like?” he looked at me again, searching for a taste for sadomasochism that many in his trade satisfy with his aid. I did not have it, a taste for sexual bestiality.
“Just kill her, please, she is just a kid,” I asked of Kawai.
This flared and fanned his anger.
“No one tells Kawai what to do, I will cut and feed you to the fish, kill you at my will, slowly, like your bitch inside,” his voice got raised and the tension in the room sharpened as he undid his fly, motioning me to follow him in, to the inner room.
In the smaller room inside, Thuy Binh was on the floor, naked and tied to the grill of the window, like a captured wild-vicious animal, sagging after a sapping struggle. Kawai urinated on her, starting with her face, and finishing on her torso. I knew if I followed my instinct of covering her body with my shirt, his rage would get redirected towards me. She was nearly finished, pumped full with alcohol and drugs, apart from the brutality that Kawai’s gang had clearly unleashed upon her. Yet, in a surge of energy, she glanced at me, peacefully gazing up, as if pardoning me for not having been able to save her. My ravaged Buddha was close to finding her peace.
“Kawai, you gave me your word there would be no more street violence and shootings. You promised, you would let them run Pattaya, without any plans of vendetta and revenge,” Aziz stepped into the room. He was upset, his words loud and not scared of showing displeasure, unlike me. The sorry sight of Thuy Binh did not hinder the flow of his words or actions, as if he had always known what he would find inside the room.
“Yes I promised, and I never broke my promise. I never sought them out in Pattaya, I could have if I wanted to but I did not. They came here, into my territory, and that I cannot tolerate. I am Kawai the Prince of Bangkok,” he swayed alcoholic as he spoke, the gree
n dagger on his back and the serpent of black ink around it seemed to slither and hiss, as if preparing for the fight at hand, intimidating Aziz.
“We can’t have this chaos in Bangkok, it is bad business and I need to know what your plans are,” Aziz turned pragmatic, assuming his role as the catalyst of peaceful tourist trades of the city. Without tourism’s industry of pleasure, Bangkok would sink within weeks if the influx of sex seekers disappeared, which they would if Aziz was unable to keep the streets safe. As it is, the political street protests had barely subsided. Now this mess, it would paint the city’s books deep red, closing on a bad year.
Drunk and stoned Kawai drew his knife and pointed it uncertainly at Aziz. A trickle of sweat appeared under the fangs of his ink black serpent, as if spitting venom. His dogs, three of them, alerted themselves for action, reaching for their assortment of guns and knives. Kawai and his dogs tarried; it was Aziz who turned decisive. He drew his gun with finality and shot Kawai in the head, killing him instantly. There was no neat hole in his head, it was as if his face had exploded, a thick pool of blood and brain splattered all over. The useless knife was quivering in the grip of his dead empty threat. It was too late for that. The snake too seemed to have received the bullet from Aziz -- it stiffened into a lifeless tattoo, unable to adorn an ugly man anymore. Kawai’s dogs, they remained uncertain, without conviction as they witnessed the sudden horrific death of their leader, wavering with their useless weapons at Aziz who was already on his phone, speaking calmly in Thai as he explained the situation. He waved at the dogs to mute their hollow snarls. They obeyed, awaiting instructions from Aziz.
I took the knife from Kawai and cut the ropes binding Thuy Binh. Her freed arms fell to the floor, offering no resistance to gravity. Ripping the shirt off my back, I bent and covered her, the smell of urine and dog rose foul in my nostrils, but, I did not cringe or turn my nostrils in disgust. Instead, the Southern Cross appeared gliding in my thoughts, with me and Thuy Binh sailing alone and forever away on the seas, following fair weather till she healed from the nightmare of Kawai and his dogs. I didn’t want much more from life either, the lapping of waves and that long final journey would leave us drifting forever on the waters, at the mercy of the currents till we beached and decayed on an abandoned island, churning into the oceans grains of sand. I stroked her forehead, realising how precariously dehydrated she was; her tongue was a raspy blob of sand, stuck hard and pasty in her open mouth.
“You have to leave her, come on let us go,” Aziz got off the phone.
“No Aziz, they never abandoned me and I can’t leave them like this,” gently stroking her face, I replied, never once looking at Aziz. Her eyes came to life; for now that was enough.
“Come on, I can’t explain everything to you,” he said, grabbing a small pillow and handing it to me, I placed it under her head and went to the room outside, cutting Miho free too. She responded well, finding her feet, getting up from the chair, realising her reversing fortunes for the first time.
“Miho, go away, quick run away, turn back to Pattaya. You are needed there, go and take charge of things. I will call you,” Aziz said. Miho moved towards the door, fear crusting on her bloody face. Then, she turned and became of the night.
Aziz was barking in Thai to Kawai’s dogs. I came to learn of the trap that he had laid out for them much later. From the night beyond, faint circular screams of police’s sirens reached us.
“Come on let us go, I promise you, she will be safe. You have to trust me, come there is no time. If they get here before we flee, they will kill us,” he grabbed my arm and we too moved into the night.
They were the force of police, closing in on us, alerted by Aziz to the very spot where the lifeless body of Kawai lay wasted in the heap of his own convoluted body-art. Aziz had left a large enough force of dogs to defend the failed fortress of Kawai, but, he knew that without leadership, courage would abandon the pack-dogs and they would submit in a mere token resistance.
Aziz asked me to walk besides him, asking me not to run, and in about seven minutes we heard the sporadic firing of guns coming from behind us. I imagined the dogs trying in vain, without any avenue of escape from the battle all soldiers dread, the ones that they have to fight in.
At the forgotten-lodge, we were welcomed without ceremony and shared a room that Aziz paid, for the night.
After he had put his phone to charge, he spoke softly into it, in Thai for about an hour, before looking up at me. I was on the bed, still elated at the ejection of Li Ya from this cess pit where I knew I now belonged. I did not have to say it; my gaze was question enough for Aziz. “Is Thuy Binh well?”
“Yes she is safe, she will be in prison, getting proper medical care. I promised you, we won’t go after her,” he said.
Aziz began to play soft, old Thai songs from his little phone speakers, and we stoned to genteel lullabies.
That morning, the papers were full of the night’s events, and Aziz was pleased with his work, planned to the hilt with no trace of him or me in the news of death and demise that Bangkok woke up to. The news for once was accurate, portraying the demise of a vicious gang lord at the hands of the Thai police, and, the capture of the southern vamp, nabbed alive.
“What about Miho?” I asked, as we sat by the street, having digested the news before munching a breakfast of grill on sticks, straight off the coal, from the street vendor besides us.
“She must be fine. I am yet to call her, but if there was a reason for alarm, I would have known by now,” he simply said, pointing to his phone.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Get ready to take over the streets of Bangkok, you are the perfect one to replace Kawai,” he spoke unclear, still chewing at the meat off the bamboo skewers.
I almost choked on the food, in my mouth.
But when I looked around, I felt the streets of Bangkok coming to life all around us, with traffic beginning to jostle about in preparation of the day’s struggle ahead. A commuter train silently slid on the rails above and past us, as if saluting me in a march past of weaponry fit for a commander.
“Why me?” I asked, knowing he would comprehend my question, which was rooted in my lack of experience at mafia lordship.
“Because you are a good father and because you are a good man. We need good men in this business, not animals like Kawai,” he got off the little sky-blue acrylic stool, dusted the bottom of his pants, paid for what we had consumed, and only then moved away from the eatery, to savour his morning’s cigarette, like a decent man, putting some distance between our acrid smoky world and the uniformed kids who had appeared next to us, giggling in blue thigh length skirts.
It was an amusing notion, for me to run the prostitution mafia in Bangkok. In fact I was sure I would not last beyond the fortnight it would take for Kawai’s dogs to hunt and cut me down. What changed it all was my visit to prison, in about a week, seeing Thuy Binh who had barely survived the vicious ravage that Kawai and his troops had unleashed upon her.
Aziz advised me against liaising with Thuy Binh in prison, but when I insisted, he mulled it, before consenting to my demands.
The arrangements that he made were far from the dry plastic visitor booths that the prison had. I was sneaked in and allowed into her cell for hours at end, not only speaking to her, but often we would dine together. She was herself again, and the training of child prostitution helped tide each passing day, a day another would find in-surmountable. The doctors had saved her but the attack had left her damaged physically, and, she had been advised not to share her bed with a man for at least a few more months. She remained in prison at her own will, asking Aziz to ensure that the machinery of law remained protracted in a manner that kept her in prison for a period of time. In her mind, this is where she wanted to die, within walls that fold upon the shamed. The lure of the outside was dead in her. In fact, it was plain to me; she was articulating no reasons to go on with the life that medical advancements had breathed back into her.
“Promise me, you will raise her out from where she lies sunk, right there from where you swam ashore,” she too kept up with her silly notion – resurrecting the Yacht that she had been forced to sink off the Bangkok harbour, out of fear of being spotted by the predator who eventually caught up with her in any case.
“Thuy Binh, you have to let the past go, there is a future in a grander new Yacht ahead of us,” I kept trying to rekindle that what keeps us all alive, hope for the future.
Sometimes I held her, ensuring she fell asleep before I shut my eyes. I was not sure if she found my visits comforting, for I knew I had lost her, to a point from which she kept looking ahead, gazing into the abyss of her own demise.
After a few weeks of seeing Thuy Binh, I outlined my moves to Aziz “I want to hunt out and kill each and every man who tortured or ravaged her.”
At first Aziz was not to be swayed “Don’t fall into the traps of revenge; it is a precursor to wrong moves.”
“Think Aziz, if I have to be accepted as the leader I have to instil a fear in the brothel owners that is critical for me to run things. It is ideal to pick and wipe those who tortured her, it will be a justifiable cleansing, and in another manner it will be my christening for all others to witness and fear,” eventually, he saw the logic and began to consent reluctantly to that first massacre I masterminded.
Where I had found her shackled and ravaged, I built my temple, with no sanctum, enclosures or deities, just a space for me to sit each day when I awoke, for a few minutes, before I got stoned. My meditations were noticed by those that I allowed around me, and when the hunt for her rapists began, they scattered like mice, putting to rest my fears of a unified counter-attack. Eventually, within hours of the first rapist’s deaths, Kawai’s dogs, the ones who had no part in the defilement of my Goddess, they came and vomited the truth of my lover-mentor’s rape. From those who confided in me, I began to choose and form my army. To decide upon rank, we earmarked members with faces kind and a demeanour steady, preferably averse to the partake of drugs and alcohol. In about a month I had formed a trusted coterie of confidants around me, my soldiers conducting the business of prostitution in my name.
Lost in Pattaya Page 14
