Opium Fiend

by Steven Martin

  “In that case I’d better get this pipe to work,” I replied gamely.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I cut long strips of cotton batik cloth from a piece that Roxanna kept folded in the drawer. These I dabbed with latex glue and wrapped around the collar of a pipe bowl that I had brought along. Then I began cutting half-dollar-sized patches for “gee-rags”—cloth gaskets that would create an airtight seal between the bowl and the pipe stem. The heat was oppressive, and I stopped frequently to wipe the sweat from my forehead. When I had finished, I brushed the bits of cloth off my trousers and went downstairs to splash my face with cool water. Jamie stuck his head out from his bedroom door as I was going back upstairs; he said nothing and closed the door as soon as he saw it was me. When I got back upstairs Roxanna was trimming the opium lamp’s wick. I decided to broach a subject that had been on my mind since I’d arrived.

  “Does your son know about this?”

  “No, of course not,” she answered, looking up from the lamp. “Nobody knows.”

  “Can’t he smell it? And you’re so close to your neighbors. I would think they could smell it, too.”

  “Well, maybe they get a whiff now and then but I doubt anybody knows what the smell is. They probably think I’m cooking American food!” Roxanna laughed. It was clear that she wasn’t worried about it.

  “Are you sure your son doesn’t know? I just had this feeling when you introduced us that maybe he wasn’t too thrilled to meet me.”

  “No, he’s just like that. Jamie’s quiet.”

  I didn’t bring the subject up again. Instead I reassured myself that Roxanna would not have brought me home if there were any danger of her being found out. I wanted to ask how long she had been addicted, but without using that word. I tried to come up with an appropriate euphemism. “So have you been smoking daily since Vietnam?”

  “Oh dear no,” she answered, and then after a long pause added, “It’s a long story.”

  The latex glue on the pipe bowl was tacky enough now for me to attach the bowl to the stem. In the old days the gummy opium itself served as a sealant, but that was when opium was as cheap and widely available as tobacco. I dampened one of the gee-rags and applied it to the bowl’s collar before inserting the bowl into the saddle. The fit was perfectly airtight. Feeling proud of myself, I handed the pipe to Roxanna and then watched as she began cooking a few drops of chandu over the tawdry brass lamp. She talked without looking up from the bubbling chandu. “You haven’t asked about my leg. Most people ask within minutes of meeting me.”

  “I figured that was probably the case. Which is why I didn’t ask.”

  Roxanna finished rolling and lifted the pipe to her mouth. Before inhaling she smiled and said, “I’m sorry to disappoint, but it didn’t happen in Vietnam.”

  “I really hadn’t given it much thought, but you did say nobody you knew was hurt in the fall of Saigon and I assumed that included you, too. And if it had happened before that … well … anyway,” I changed the subject. “So tell me about the opium dens in Phnom Penh. You mentioned at Willi’s that there were two good ones there.”

  Roxanna was rolling a second pipe with her bicycle-spoke needle. Or perhaps it was the rib from an umbrella. If necessity is the mother of invention, drug use is surely its can-do father. Archaeological sites at nineteenth-century Chinese settlements in the American West—old mining and railroad camps—have turned up opium paraphernalia fashioned by enterprising tinkers from the most unlikely objects, such as pipe bowls made from glass ink bottles. I decided right then to make Roxanna a gift of a pair of my antique needles the next time I saw her.

  “Yes, there were two opium dens in Phnom Penh that were open to Westerners. The original one was in a big old house, and it was run by a Chinese-Khmer woman named Choum. ‘La Mère Choum’ was what the French used to call her, ‘Mother Choum.’ Her place was very popular with the French. I used to go there with Bernard Groslier. He was the director of the École Française d’Extrême-Orient and an authority on Khmer art. Bernard didn’t smoke, but Choum kept a bottle of cognac there just for him. It was the one place I ever saw him really relax. Toward the end, the Khmer Rouge had taken Angkor and occupied all the countryside, but none of that mattered at Choum’s place. She had cotton sarongs to wear so you could get comfortable, and there were girls giving traditional massage, too. It was an oasis. An oasis of calm and civility.”

  “It sounds wonderful. What year was this?”

  “The first time I went would have to have been around 1969. Then, not long after the coup in 1970, when Lon Nol deposed Prince Sihanouk, there was an influx of Americans into Phnom Penh. They liked Choum’s place, too, but the French weren’t too happy about that. They saw themselves losing influence in their old colonies, and Americans at Choum’s was just another sign of that.

  “I remember going with a group of friends to celebrate John Steinbeck’s birthday in 1970. Not the writer, but his son. He was an army journalist in Vietnam, but after he finished his tour he stayed on in Southeast Asia as a freelance journalist. So that day we went to Choum’s as a big group. The old house had two stories and the den was upstairs, taking up three private rooms and one big common room. We donned our sarongs and were looking for some space on the floor to accommodate us, and this made the French patrons complain, but we paid them no mind. It was John’s birthday and we were not going to be turned away.

  “Not long after that, Choum had one of her cousins open a new opium den and take some of the prettiest girls along with her. This new place we called ‘Chantal’s’ after Choum’s cousin. It was an instant hit with us Americans, but there were also quite a few French guests. There was a rumor that the French ambassador had an opium pipe at the embassy that he kept under lock and key but ready for use. Maybe this was true. I often used to see the French embassy staff smoking at Chantal’s, but I never saw the ambassador himself there. I used to visit Chantal’s so often that I became very good friends with her. She gave me this ring.” Roxanna stopped rolling and held out her hand so I could admire a ruby set in solid gold.

  When two friends smoke opium, the more experienced smoker is usually the one preparing the pipes, and it’s customary for him or her to smoke a pipe or two before rolling for the other. Roxanna finished her third pipe, then rolled a fourth and offered it to me. I acted hesitant, knowing full well that I would turn it down. I thought that by seeming to be less than sure it might soften my refusal. “Hmmmmm. Nah, I just want to listen to your stories today.”

  “But what about your rolling lessons?”

  “I want to stay sharp-minded. I’ll forget your stories if I smoke.”

  “Well, okay. But if you change your mind …”

  Roxanna vaporized the pill herself and then asked if I would mind going downstairs to bring her up a single cigarette. I suggested that while she smoked it, I might open the windows to let the heat flow out—the sun was just setting and the air outside was cooling. From the window I could see across the neighborhood. A line of betel palm trees stood sentry along a neighbor’s fence—an increasingly rare sight in Thailand since betel chewing began falling out of favor decades ago. The noticeable lack of any modern development made the surrounding vicinity different from other parts of Bangkok, but the houses themselves weren’t very old, perhaps no more than twenty or thirty years, and there was something odd about the way so many of them incorporated pieces of scrap lumber and even old election billboards in their construction. Roxanna explained that much of the surrounding property belonged to the State Railway of Thailand and that, technically, many living here were squatters. She said her in-laws lived just a stone’s throw away along the edge of the tracks. By stringing together bits and pieces of her story, I learned that she was supporting an extended family—that of her Thai ex-husband. They, in turn, looked after Roxanna, bringing her meals and cleaning her house daily. After Roxanna had finished her cigarette, I shut the windows and she began rolling anew. I steered the conversation back to opi
um dens. “What about Laos? Did you ever smoke in Vientiane?”

  “Of all the capitals of French Indochina, Vientiane’s opium dens were the poorest. Now that I think of it, Choum’s and Chantal’s in Phnom Penh were the nicest, but even those were just converted private homes and nothing fancy. Saigon was strictly for takeout. There we almost always just had the pipe boy come around to our apartment or hotel room to roll for us. But Vientiane had some atmosphere back then and I always enjoyed smoking there, even though the conditions were rustic. One opium den was run by an old Vietnamese woman whose tongue had been cut out by the Vietcong. There was nothing left of her voice but a rough whisper.”

  Roxanna stopped smoking and sat upright. She used a small screwdriver to scrape the dross from inside the pipe bowl. After shaking the loose dross into the glass jar, she pushed the bowl back into the saddle and started rolling another pill. She began to tell me about people she’d known in the old days; people whose names I might be familiar with. “I knew a lot of interesting people back then, but I’m sure none of them would remember me now. I met Paul Theroux in Singapore. I studied there for a time. Singapore was a popular destination for R & R, and I often had journalist friends passing through. They would stay for a few days and I would show them around town and take them to where we could smoke a few pipes. Can you imagine Singapore with opium dens?”

  I could not. Hearing Singapore and any illicit drug mentioned in the same breath is a shock to anybody who has only known the city-state since it decided to become the Tropical City of Excellence. Singapore is now a sterile place known for its long list of laws and regulations (against the chewing of gum; requiring the flushing of toilets), and draconian punishment for minor infractions—including floggings with a waterlogged length of rattan. For serious offenses such as dealing in narcotics, including marijuana, the penalty is death.

  Roxanna’s Singapore predated all this. She was able to conjure up the decadent old city, home to opium dens and the wondrously sleazy Bugis Street red-light district. When I was in the navy in the 1980s, I heard sailors tell stories about a place in Singapore they called “Boogie Street”—about wild nights of liberty in smoky seaman’s bars and being stalked by the region’s most flamboyant transvestite prostitutes. When I visited Singapore for the first time in 1990, I was just in time to see the last of Bugis Street fall to the wrecking ball. On a subsequent trip a few years later, I found that a Bugis Street–themed shopping mall had been built on the site of the original. There is nothing like a sanitized present to make one yearn for the wicked past.

  “My favorite place to smoke in Singapore was a den run by a handsome young man from Sri Lanka named Eugene. It wasn’t anything grand, but it was friendly and Eugene often let me smoke for free. Most of the smokers there were Indians and Eurasians, and he said having a ‘European customer’ was good for business. Then there was a no-name opium den on Malabar Street that catered to old Chinese smokers who used to squat around and stare at me and chatter at one another like I wasn’t even there. I didn’t mind it a bit. I couldn’t understand a word of Hokkien, that Chinese dialect they speak in Singapore, but I could tell they were impressed to see me rolling my own pipes. The old Chinese proprietor must have heard that I was also a customer at Eugene’s, because one time he asked me how I could smoke with all those Indians. That was typical Singapore. All the different ethnic groups were friendly to me but suspicious of one another. After the Singaporean government closed down the dens I heard Eugene couldn’t kick the habit. He switched to heroin and died of an overdose.”

  As I had noted during our session in the Chamber, Roxanna lapsed into a slow, hypnotized monotone when telling stories. She rolled her pipes, now and then looking up at the blank wall as though a name or a face might be projected there. Outside, the chorus of birdcalls that accompanied the tropical dusk had waned into an intimate silence broken only occasionally by the low voices of neighbors conversing in the dark. A gecko chirruped in the rafters while the throaty whistle of a Malaysia-bound train floated in the distance. The atmosphere enchanted me. It was very different from Willi’s place. This wasn’t an idealized past that I had created for myself but a slice of the real past—and it produced in me a rising nostalgia that felt like butterflies in my stomach. I could feel myself falling under opium’s trance despite not having smoked a single pipe. Was I becoming intoxicated from breathing secondhand vapors?

  Again Roxanna offered me the pipe and again I refused, telling myself to fight the urge but knowing full well that I could not resist for long unless I left the room. I hadn’t been there more than an hour but my willpower was nearly broken. I got up from the floor. “I’m sorry, I really have to be going.”

  “So soon? But what about your lessons?”

  “Maybe next weekend,” I said, knowing that if I came again this scene would repeat itself. “But please keep the pipe in the meantime. Keep it as long as you want.”

  I thanked Roxanna and apologized again when I realized that she would have to get up in order to lock the upstairs door once I had departed. On my way through the downstairs I passed Jamie eating tuna from a can. He didn’t look up, so I said goodbye in Thai as I opened the front door. He answered “Goodbye” in English with a perfectly disinterested tone.

  I took a taxi home, sitting in the front passenger seat so that I could aim the vent on the dashboard directly at my face. I asked the driver to put the air-conditioning on full blast. I felt relaxed, but my mind was sharp. I now knew for sure that by merely being in the same room with somebody smoking opium it was possible to feel a little tipsy. I was slightly tempted to have the driver turn around and take me back, and I probably would have had I known Roxanna better. Instead, I went home and immediately did an Internet search of her name.

  There was no way to confirm Roxanna’s wartime stories, but her expertise and position at the museum were there to see with just a few clicks. She had written a book about identifying and dating Southeast Asian ceramics and had been a speaker at universities and exhibitions, including at a recent symposium in Kuala Lumpur. This gave me something to think about. Like its neighbor Singapore, Malaysia also has harsh drug laws. The penalty for trafficking narcotics into the country—including importing the smallest amount of opium—is death. How could she travel to such a place if she was hooked? Willi was the only one who had said Roxanna was dependent on opium; Roxanna herself had never admitted it. Maybe he had exaggerated.

  But then I remembered noticing the nicotine-like stain on the calloused index finger of her left hand. Others might have mistaken it for the sign of a chain-smoker, or perhaps a dab of iodine, but I knew differently. Emily Hahn, in her essay about her own addiction to opium in Shanghai during the 1930s, had developed a similar stain from smoking daily. “There was even an oily smudge on my left forefinger … that wouldn’t easily wash off. It came from testing opium pellets as they cooled.” Hahn’s Chinese friends, also smokers, thought the stain was amusing and would call attention to it: “Have you ever before seen a white girl with that mark on her finger?”

  Over the next two weeks I thought of Roxanna often. Every time she entered my mind the one image that accompanied my thoughts of her was that of her lamp. To me the opium lamp is symbolic of the romance of smoking. Most collectors are drawn to pipes, but they are cold, dead, useless things without the lamp—that twinkling beacon forever ready to warm the meticulously crafted pill and release its intoxicating vapors. Chinese artisans had enshrined this feeble, oil-fed flame upon an ornate pedestal. They well understood the lamp’s importance and had given it attention that bordered on veneration.

  Roxanna was a real discovery. I had the good fortune to have been befriended by and taken into the confidence of a person who had witnessed the last days of opium in Asia. If Willi was to be believed, she was the last of a storied breed: the Westerner lured to the Orient by adventure and then enraptured by the “soft beds of the East,” now unwilling—perhaps unable—to leave it all behind. That lamp of hers
, that sorry excuse for an opium lamp, bothered me. Something about its commonness, its complete lack of celebration, seemed to me to imply hardship and, ultimately, failure. I had no idea whether Roxanna herself saw it in that way, but I thought she deserved better.

  A woman arrested for opium smoking is asked by the judge to give a demonstration of how the drug is smoked. A glass opium lamp sits on the bench above her. The photo was taken in 1936 in Chicago. (From the author’s collection)

  I remembered that I was going to give her a pair of genuine opium needles to replace the one she had improvised. After locating my cache of needles, I began to browse through my lamps. I wanted something functional and easy to maintain. The chimney needed to detach easily so that trimming the wick, adding oil, and after-session cleaning were not a chore. Yet I also wanted a lamp that was elegant, one that would give Roxanna joy to look at—a lamp that would bring back memories of the days before such works of art were banned and destroyed.

  After nearly an hour of pondering, I decided on a small, cylindrical lamp of brass. The openwork on the vent was a clover-like pattern, and into four sides was delicately rendered the Chinese character denoting longevity. I had a feeling that Roxanna would have balked had the lamp I offered been too ostentatious or made from silver. This little brass offering would be perfect.

  My initial trepidation about safety had begun to wane and now I had an excuse to call her. She answered as though she had been expecting me. “Oh, hi, Steven. I’ve been thinking about you all week. I’m hosting a group of curators from the national museum in Malaysia. Do you think you could give a talk at the ceramics museum?”

  I said I might be interested and we set a date for me to stop by her house so we could discuss it. As it turned out, my next visit on the following Sunday morning was the beginning of a tradition. We agreed that I would arrive around eight, before the sun could begin baking the roof tiles, and before Jamie was awake. Roxanna left the front door unlocked and told me to creep upstairs, where she would be waiting for me with the layout already prepared. She was so happy with the lamp and needles I brought that I immediately promised to bring a proper tray on my next visit. There was no question about whether I would be smoking that day. I had barely slept the previous night in anticipation of this early morning session. Somehow her academic legitimacy also legitimized my visits—at least that’s what I felt at the time. A visit to Roxanna’s was really no different from a visit to Willi’s—except now my lab was closer and I could conduct research without the expense of overnight train journeys.