As soon as we began smoking, the room became hushed as if some delicate piece of surgery was being performed in an operating theater. It was so quiet that I was sure the spectators could hear the soothing burble of the pipes as vapors were inhaled through ceramic bowls. Hoorde rolled three pipes for himself and then six for me before rolling for himself again. Now and then a whispered comment came from the direction of the tables, but if not for that and the occasional knock of porcelain against rosewood, I might have forgotten that our every movement was being keenly ogled. The opium had its effect on me and I grinned at the curiousness of the circumstances. The reaction of the spectators was similar to what I had seen at sex shows in Bangkok, when set demonstrations of sexual positions (some of them quite acrobatic) invariably caused observers to go silent with astonishment.
After my tenth pipe or so, I decided to try to break the ice by approaching one of the tables. Hoorde urged me on. “Go see if you can interest any of them in trying a pipe.”
I got up slowly and stood still for a moment to keep from getting dizzy. Hoorde’s opium was strong, and it would cause Vientiane-style moonwalking if I wasn’t deliberate in my actions. As I stood there, I saw that everyone was watching me. I walked to one of the tables and, pulling out a vacant chair, slowly lowered myself into it. To my right sat a thin, elderly man, perhaps in his seventies, who was nattily dressed in a billowy white shirt. He stared straight into my eyes, and in his face I saw intense curiosity mixed with apprehension. It was the sort of look you might see in the eyes of someone who had come across a dazed space alien near the site of a recently crashed flying saucer. Partly out of amusement and partly because I’d lived in Thailand so long that it came naturally, I smiled back. His eyes widened with alarm and he immediately looked away from me.
A small porcelain teapot and cup were placed in front of me by one-half of the dealer couple, and she began translating for her guests as she put questions to me about how I felt. At first they looked at me as though I were a talking head in a crystal ball. I found myself suppressing laughter and the temptation to play games with them.
Instead, I answered their queries about dreams and hallucinations and even one question about heightened sex drive. They listened intently and, after I felt they had relaxed a bit, I invited the most inquisitive one, a woman in early middle age who had asked about opium’s reputation as an aphrodisiac, to try a pipe. She smiled at the old gentleman next to me as though challenging him to forbid her and then answered me in English, “Yes, I try.”
Her efforts were watched with great interest by the spectators, who were now away from their tables and standing at the edge of the mat. Only the old gentleman remained seated. Maurice rolled for the woman and coached her on inhalation technique, and on her second try she got the pill to vaporize. After her third pipe another of the guests took her place, and then another. Finally, even the old gentleman lowered himself onto the mat and held the mouthpiece daintily between slender fingers. After he had successfully exhaled the vapors of his first pipe, the others politely applauded. The atmosphere of the tea house became casually genial, like a reunion of old friends, and we all smoked together until nearly three in the morning.
Gone were the old romantic notions of wild drug orgies and heavily flavored dreams, but I didn’t regret them, because the truth was much better.
—Emily Hahn, “The Big Smoke,” The New Yorker, February 15, 1969
I arrived back in Bangkok flush with excitement, having made valuable contacts with collectors and antiques dealers and even managing to bring home a piece for my collection. My arrival was on a Monday in May, and I knew the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum was closed on Mondays, but it was the middle of Bangkok’s torrid hot season and Roxanna usually went to the museum even on her day off just to escape the heat. I called her as soon as I walked out the airport doors and toward the taxi queue.
Roxanna’s cheery hello was just what I was hoping to hear—it emboldened me to invite myself over under the pretext that I could tell her about my trip. In truth I was craving a pipe after the long flight from Amsterdam. The feeling was not unpleasant. It was excitement for something I was looking forward to, like the giddy anticipation one feels at the prospect of a hearty meal after a day of going without food. Roxanna said she would call her driver and arrange to leave the university and go home immediately. I was traveling with a single bag but would have gladly lugged two or three suitcases over that narrow causeway to Roxanna’s house if there was going to be a pipe waiting for me. I got into a cab and told the taxi driver where I needed to go.
Back on the old floorboards, my pores open and oozing sweat for the first time in ten days, the whole whirlwind of a trip felt like a dream from the night before. Roxanna listened to my stories and was wowed. “You took an opium tour of Europe!” she laughed. “I’m jealous!”
But there was a problem. Over the course of half an hour, Roxanna rolled ten pipes for me and I eagerly smoked them, but they had no effect on me. I explained to her that Hoorde’s opium had been very drossy and that, having smoked the morphine-laden stuff constantly while in Europe, I probably needed more of her subtle chandu than usual to feel anything. I also told her that I hoped she wouldn’t get tired of my company, because I would need a daily session for a week or so in order to taper off my usage. Then my heart sank when Roxanna told me that she had to leave town and would be gone for a week.
“A whole week?!” I exclaimed. “What am I going to do?”
The idea of not smoking opium for a week seemed tragic. It wasn’t that I feared withdrawal. In Europe I had noticed hay fever–like symptoms and mild headaches a couple of times when Hoorde was slow to offer me a pipe. Not that I couldn’t manage it, of course—it was just that going a week without opium would be like enduring a week with a head cold. As my mind skittered about for a solution, I remembered that I could roll proficiently and there was no reason why I couldn’t smoke alone. “What if I were to buy a week’s worth of chandu from you?” I asked Roxanna.
“Sure. Why not? How much will you need?”
Taking a break from smoking, I counted out drops into a spare medicine bottle that Roxanna had on hand. The amount was supposed to be enough for twenty pipes a day, which would be much more than I needed since my plan was to smoke just enough chandu to comfortably wean myself off Hoorde’s dross. I twisted the dropper cap tightly onto the little brown bottle and then zipped it in my overnight bag with my razor, toothbrush, and deodorant. Even in the totally unlikely chance that I was stopped and searched, no policeman would ever guess what that little bottle contained. If questioned, I could always say the iodine-colored liquid was some traditional herbal remedy—perfectly plausible since they were very popular in Thailand and often came in unmarked packaging. I had no doubt that I would be believed if somehow I had to resort to this story.
I didn’t have the money with me to pay Roxanna for the chandu, but she waved this information away as though she were trying to dispel a bad smell. “Oh, come on. Just pay me when you can.”
Back at my apartment, I took the bottle out of my bag and put it in the refrigerator. I left the rest of the bag unpacked and, after having a hot shower, climbed into bed. Among other things, opium is the perfect cure for jet lag. I spent a wonderful night reliving my journey to Holland and France and, while I didn’t get much real sleep, I got up the next morning feeling refreshed.
I had a week’s worth of email to catch up on as well as some light work—a synopsis for a guidebook to Cambodia that I had been asked to update—which took me most of the day to finish. By late afternoon there was a nagging angst in my stomach. I thought of the bottle of chandu that I’d left in the fridge after coming home from Roxanna’s the night before. Hours in the chilled air would have made the liquid thick and rich. In my mind’s eye I could see the chandu slowly dripping from the dropper into the little wok … and then it struck me that my wok for evaporating chandu was packed away in a box somewhere. I was also lacking a worki
ng pipe—all were with Willi or Roxanna. The antique paraphernalia at my apartment hadn’t been used for many decades at the very least; pieces would need hours of modification before I could smoke.
This realization set me to thinking. Until now I had never even contemplated smoking in my apartment. By keeping opium at a safe distance I had been able to rationalize my smoking in the name of research—and the infrequency of my smoking was an important part of that rationalization. How could I justify smoking in the name of research if my behavior was no different from that of a common addict? I sat and stared at my computer screen until it went black. The screen saver suddenly launched a parade of images that glided to and fro. They were photos of some of my most prized pipes and lamps. A splendid little idea came into my head, causing me to smile and nod.
I set about gathering paraphernalia to form a layout—one that would be very different from the previous two working layouts I had put together. The one at Willi’s had taken years to assemble and was a work in progress, like the Chamber itself. It was meant to electrify emotions and evoke feelings of time travel back to a more elegant era. There was no way to outdo the Chamber layout in terms of opulence or the harmonious nature of its matching paraphernalia. Conversely, the one I had put together for Roxanna was durable and had a reliable functionality that was necessary for somebody who was going to smoke daily for years. Of course, when building both layouts I had kept the rarest pieces to myself. I would not, for example, have thought to use my pipe with the sugarcane stem because there were very few such pipes in existence.
But if only I would be smoking from the pipe—and for only one week—there was little worry about anything getting damaged. I knew how fragile my accoutrements were and how best to handle them. With this in mind, I decided that my personal layout should be a platform for experimentation that allowed me to do things I’d never done before. I had a full week to try out pieces that were too fragile to travel, and because my collection was all there in my apartment, I could dig out whatever I needed to put any theory to the test. When questions or ideas had come up at Willi’s or Roxanna’s, I sometimes didn’t bother to jot them down and then forgot them altogether, my train of thought severed by conversation. Alone in my apartment I would have a notebook and pen at my side at all times. I would turn the exercise of reducing my opium intake into a windfall of knowledge.
By 10 P.M. I was on the mat. It was a Cambodian woven-cane affair, about ten by twelve feet, that I had long ago carried back from a trip to southern Laos. The mat had been rolled up and propped in a corner for years and would not lie perfectly flat on my living room’s wooden parquet floor, but that was not a worry. I placed a large rectangular rosewood tray inlaid with mother-of-pearl in the center of the mat. This would be my layout tray. I then spent nearly an hour selecting and symmetrically arranging various boxes, tools, a lamp, and two smaller metal trays upon the larger tray. The mother-of-pearl patterns on the layout tray were mostly floral but punctuated with birds and butterflies. There were also depictions of four vases filled with bouquets of four types of flowers, which in Chinese culture represented the four seasons (winter—plum blossom; spring—peony; summer—lotus; fall—chrysanthemum).
Besides the depictions of flowers and insects, bits of opalescent nacre had been painstakingly cut into straight pieces as thin as kite string and buried into the rosewood. These lines divided the layout tray into sections—and were meant to be used as a diagram for whoever was setting up the tray. Using these patterns to guide me, I looked for accoutrements sized to perfectly fit within the mother-of-pearl delineations. The most obvious of these was a rectangle in the very center of the layout tray that marked a space for the lamp tray. Once I had finished arranging, the paraphernalia neatly conformed to the pearly schematic, allowing the flowery symbolism to show through.
Taking an idea from the Chamber, I brought from my bedroom a vintage gooseneck desk lamp and placed it on the mat at one end of the layout tray so the light would shine straight down on the accoutrements. On top of the mat where I would lie, I spread out a Burmese sarong of metallic green silk. I then folded a smaller length of silk into a square to use as a cushion atop the block-like porcelain pillow. As I am right-handed, I would lie on my left side facing the tray. Behind me were a bottle of mineral water, my notebook and pen, and, of course, the opium smoker’s scepter: a back scratcher. When everything was in place I lit the lamp.
Smoking opium alone was something I’d never done before. Sure, there were times when Roxanna catnapped while I was learning to roll, but other than that, smoking had always been a social event for me. Being alone with my thoughts was something I did after the session had concluded.
In his 1882 book, Opium-Smoking in America and China, H. H. Kane, who spent years interviewing opium smokers in New York City, stated, “I have never seen a smoker who found pleasure in using the drug at home and alone, no matter how complete his outfit, or how excellent his opium.” But Kane never met Jean Cocteau, who was born seven years after Kane’s book was published, and who said, “Smoking à deux is already crowded. Smoking à trois is difficult. Smoking à quatre is impossible.”
On that first night I found I was somewhere between these two opinions. Smoking fine chandu made me animated and chatty—as it did everyone I had ever smoked with. But smoking alone turned out not to be such a solitary activity after all. In the same way that I’d noticed I could vividly recall entire conversations immediately after sessions—while lying alone in bed—I was delighted to learn that I could also effortlessly imagine conversations while I was rolling. I first noticed this while concentrating on preparing a pipe. I imagined Roxanna making one of her usual remarks about the way I was letting the chandu evaporate without stirring: “Stir it or it’s going to burn.”
This should not be mistaken for “hearing voices.” There was no sensation of an audible noise—Roxanna’s remark was clearly in my mind. It was just that opium seemed to sharpen my imagination, for music as well as voices. I’m one of those people who often have songs playing in their heads—sometimes the same song for days on end. I don’t hear the song constantly; it comes and goes until some other tune takes its place. While smoking in a silent room I soon noticed that opium amplified these songs, making them crystal clear and impossible to ignore—now and then to the point that I had to turn on my stereo or get online and listen to some other piece of music, just to “change” the song playing in my head.
Of course, I’m no expert on the subject. Perhaps this is all nonsense and these non-aural songs and conversations were caused by some wrinkle on my brain. I don’t know. But my solo opium-smoking sessions were enjoyable from the start and, if some lonely people drink alcohol for the company it gives them, I can say that smoking opium alone also afforded me an imagined companionship that in time I would find preferable to the company of real people.
I was adamant that my plan to smoke just enough opium to taper off from the dross habit I’d formed in Europe go as scheduled. I was strict with myself, keeping a record in my notebook of how many pipes I smoked. That first night I smoked fourteen pipes and then promised myself that each subsequent night I would reduce the dosage by two. Every pill that I rolled would be made with no more than seven drops of chandu, ensuring that they would be about equal in size. I did not rush to finish the session but instead drew it out over nearly three hours. Between preparing pipes and smoking I passed the time examining a group of tools and accoutrements that I had lined up on the mat around the layout tray.
The largest of these items was a porcelain stand for pipe bowls, about eight inches high and shaped like a miniature chest of drawers. Two levels of horizontal surfaces were pierced with a total of five holes, each about the size of a quarter. Upon these holes rested clean pipe bowls sitting at the ready in case I needed to replace a dirty, dross-filled bowl with an empty one. The mystery of this whimsical little piece of opium furniture was a sixth hole, twice the size of the other five and positioned on a vertical su
rface, front and center on the piece. If this were really a miniature chest of drawers, this mystery hole was situated where a round mirror should have gone, but there was no mirror, just a hole and an empty, boxlike space in the porcelain behind it. A small, rectangular porcelain lid capped the space behind the round hole. The bowl stand was not unique. I had seen several others in various collections—although most bowl stands of this type were missing the aforementioned lid. What was this vertically positioned hole for? What purpose did it serve? The question had long bedeviled me.
Other collectors were convinced that the round hole had once framed the face of a clock, and that the space behind it would house the clock’s workings. It was an interesting idea, but on close examination of the bowl stand it just didn’t make sense. The space was too small even for an old-fashioned pocket watch to fit into it. Some collectors had pointed out that clocks were status symbols in old China, reflecting the modernity of their owners, and this was true. It was also true that a clock was handy to have while smoking, especially since opium could make time seem to slow down or speed up, depending on how much experience one had with the drug. Yet I was still unconvinced by the clock theory.
I owned four examples of this type of bowl stand, and so I placed one of the little porcelain mysteries at the foot of my layout tray. I then put pipe bowls on four of its five horizontal holes. The bowls I chose for this were some of my most colorful, and that first night I spent an hour gazing admiringly at this wonderfully incongruous piece of drug paraphernalia—an almost kitschy creation that could have been mistaken for Grandma’s vintage toothbrush holder—but which in fact was crafted to make an opium smoker’s messy vice more convenient and orderly.
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