I dug out all detail from the point of Thuy Binh’s capture to my finding her tied up in Kawai’s den. We built names and lists singling each and every of her assailants.
The death list eventually consisted of twenty one names, rank ordered by the number of times each of them had ravaged the holy mother. With that weight of frequency, the extent of torture got decided before death was meted on Thuy Binh’s hapless assailants. Within the month, most of the remaining had fled to the provinces where my troops found it easier to hunt them down. The last of the two were traced fleeing in the distant highlands of rural Prabang, where the Mekong refused to refuge them. The river is mine and she handed me the last of the two rapists floating on her waters. My men cut them down, throwing their bodies into the river like an offering enriching the plains in which the river eventually drained. From each of the twenty-one victims, my men, at my behest, peeled off and returned back to me the jewellery that adorned the dead dogs.
She remained steady, storing meticulously in a jar the male adornments that I brought to her. She recognised them all, jewellery that raped her.
On the first occasion, when I handed her the recognisable adornments of her tormentors, she smiled faint, not speaking, just a glimmer of her dead joy showing up, the one that I was unable to fan into a fire. By the time I handed her the last of the gold, her face had assumed a haloed glow, the imaginary one our mind associates with objects of our veneration. With each passing day, she became my Buddha, and I held her central to all my reflections of life, often turning to her for decisions even after she left us. Her advice on running the ring in Bangkok was always sound, and, with the added counsel of Aziz, peace returned to the festival of sex that opened each day for the world to enjoy in Bangkok. Unlike Kawai, a key part of our plan was to keep intact the mystery and intrigue around my own persona. This meant remaining largely cut-off from people, making it truly lonely at the top. The intrigue that we architected was critical in ensuring that my actions remained un-predictable. It created a measured respect for the incomprehensible, that all brothel owners submitted to.
The mystery of my persona grew with the lessons in Thai language that I took up. When the need to communicate arose, I spoke steady in Thai, using the element of surprise that all of my inner circle came to respect. It was like an annexation, by a foreign invader.
For the running of a mafia, we implemented an Information System with dashboards that provided me with all the alerts needed for running operations. It was created in the shadow of the internet and Aziz remains sceptical, not wanting to leave trails for another to find. With that implementation Aziz too started to distance himself, having no need to meddle with what became a smooth running machine. I suspect, with that implementation Aziz too came to fear me, me having expanded the kingdom beyond his boundary of comprehension. Each Monday, I ranked the metrics that revealed the state of each brothel’s business. Through the week we fixed problems, mending deviants, till the trade of sex in Bangkok reaped the peak of earnings from Friday through Sunday. The databases are all online and in the new regime usernames and passwords became what gang tattoos were before I etched my presence. Well after me and Aziz, when the database is discovered in the bowels of the internet, it will pave the way for prostitution to be legalised, existing like a shop in a mall with tax revenues that make matters safe.
Strangely, in that system I enforced social benefits that all my girls privileged from. Rate cards, personal banking accounts with statements, access to contraceptives, emergency medical funds, stamping out of un-agreed brutality; it helped me gain respect within the first two years that I ran the ring in.
Each and every member of my ring had a hierarchical status, with an ability to reach me, through the structure that I created. And when the need to act presented itself, I cared for each and every girl that made me the leader of the ring. Short lived, since I too was physically wasting away.
When she heard of the change, she smiled snide, un-endorsing of the new ways. When I began to succeed, she smiled proud, as if she had trained the apprentice who brought order to the mafia and the girls who get to work each night.
Thuy Binh passed away quietly; we, Miho and I present by her side as I handed her the pills and drugs that would make her decision of suicide free of physical pain. Her decision was weighed and calculated and when we had spoken of it, it was she who convinced me that all life was purposeless, and hence, giving it up had no more significance than extending it. She remained Darwinian till the end.
Thuy Binh had been the instrument of both my fall and my rise. Fall, from the loss of my child whom she had abducted, leaving me spiralling into emptiness; and rise from the low point of that tragedy, resurrecting me to where I stand today, accepting all that has come my way, without letting happenings affect my core of worship towards her. I insisted that her final resting place be in the sanctum of the Southern Cross, which my divers found wasting in the shallow depths of Bangkok’s harbour. Instead of retrieving the vessel, we simply committed her to a deep watery grave, trawling the Cross away from the harbour into darker waters, deep enough for the Yacht and her to remain undisturbed. Miho’s grief was tiresome, with endless crying and wailing, something that I found unnecessary. But, since it was only the two of us who as much as noticed the passage of Thuy Binh, her shedding of the mandatory tear seemed to complete the culmination of life, with ritual grief exhibited in the end. Maybe, I too should have grieved, since that helps us move on, but I did not, keeping her absence forever inside of me, like a belief that made all else a mere happening of inconsequential human acts.
As regards Li Ya, I remained completely cut off from my estranged family, not wanting the shadow of my sins to extend into their life. However, my informants kept tabs on her, and what they reported was heartening, she had taken up the study of medicine and was leading the mundane life of a student along the Gold Coast. Fang Wei and Georgy were well too, mellow in the evening that their time together had introduced.
The singular purpose of time, continuous movement, it traps us all, leaving only one victor, time itself. Mine eventually ran out with the onset of disease, invited by the excess of size that my life remained. The physicians informed us that my heart had enlarged and my liver had shrivelled, the symptoms of which manifested in paleness and almost no ability at even mild physical activity, like walking up a case of stairs, or, the exertions from the virility of healthy sex. My oesophageal path too had deteriorated and I was soon shitting blood, owing to the abraded walls of stomach and other digestive tracts. With each day I consume lesser and lesser food, asking instead for morphine shots which help tide the pain over. Miho visits me often, with her new lover, who seemed a reasonable woman, because soon they were running a combined operation of Bangkok and its more tasteful satellite, Pattaya.
She has promised, when I pass on, she will look out for Li Ya, like a parent providing from a distance when a child’s life demands resource. She became Li Ya’s invisible insurance policy.
I lie in my hospital bed, simply studying this manuscript, waiting for the day to be placed next to Thuy Binh, from where we will observe the life of fish, together.
Lost in Pattaya Page 15
