The quote is taken from Williams’s Encyclopedia of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives, which was originally published in 1932. Of course, the author was not referring specifically to opium paraphernalia, and as it turns out, opium antiques are not so simple for Chinese artisans to copy. For one thing, China has a very limited supply of genuine examples to use as models. Much was destroyed during eradication campaigns, and what remained was then sold to foreign tourists—who removed the forbidden relics with even more thoroughness than the authorities and their bonfires.
I never had much problem telling the Chinese fakes from genuine pieces. With a couple of notable exceptions, the Chinese were not investing much effort in making reproduction opium paraphernalia, and their corner cutting was obvious to a trained eye. Newly crafted pipe bowls from the old kilns at Jianshui were so thick-walled that if used, they would have taken ages to heat up and cool down, slowing the process of rolling to a crawl. It was also possible that modern craftsmen simply lacked the know-how to make bowls properly—that the knowledge had been lost. At any rate, by the beginning of 2008, I began noticing that when it came to making fakes, the Chinese were nowhere near as sophisticated as the French.
The French take antiques seriously, and it was Parisian dealers who began to give real attention to opium antiques. A Paris auction house was the first to arrange a sale highlighting opium relics—way back in 1995. Seven years later a second auction was held—it presumably took that long for a respectable collection of opium-related lots to be gathered. Then, beginning in 2003, there was a frenzy of auctions in France featuring opium antiques, often combined with a sale of objets du tabac—tobacco pipes and tobacco-smoking accessories. These latter Paris auctions seemed legitimate in every way—they even had the names of house experts printed in their respective catalogs. The only problem was the offerings themselves. As the decade wore on, the fact that demand had outpaced supply became more and more apparent.
By examining the items in the catalogs I could tell that any careful selection of genuine and relevant items had been completely abandoned. This was not a matter of dealers not knowing what they were selling, as I had encountered during my early days of collecting. Instead, they seemed to be banking on the belief that buyers would not know what they were bidding on. I used my photographic archive—which consisted of thousands of images of genuine opium antiques—to compare the offerings of the French auction houses with what I had seen come up on the market over the years. I discovered many pipes and lamps that had been newly manufactured by copying existing examples. Some auction houses got around ethics issues by not giving an estimated age for their lots—their catalogs often had flowery descriptions of the history of opium smoking, but nowhere was it actually stated that the lots of opium paraphernalia were genuine antiques.
The whole situation was profoundly depressing. Even before antique opium-smoking paraphernalia could become a recognized collectible among aficionados of Chinese art, the collecting scene had been hijacked and was being poisoned by greed.
For me it wasn’t a matter of recouping an investment—I had long before made the decision to donate my collection to the University of Idaho. A number of collectors tried to talk me out of the idea (Armand Hoorde sold his entire collection and offered to act as a go-between if I wanted to sell mine), but my mind was made up. I would rather live in poverty than sell my collection.
And if all this grief weren’t enough, there was something else—something much more distressing than dealers resorting to trickery or sellout collectors; more disturbing than a lack of cash to acquire anything new.
Back when I could smoke opium, I used to liken preparing pipes to driving a classic car. I thought the comparison was apt. It had taken me years and cost a lot of money to gather all the components to complete my layout, and then I had learned to skillfully drive this breathtaking set of wheels. I once even mocked the collector Helmut P.—who had sampled opium courtesy of Armand Hoorde—because he did not know how to roll. Via an email exchange with Hoorde, I told the non-emailing Helmut P. that he was no different from someone who owns a fleet of rare automobiles yet does not know how to drive. Being a passenger didn’t count, I sneered. Until he learned to drive, Helmut P. would never really know his vehicles or understand their many accessories. I taunted him with relish: “Learn to drive, old man. Learn to drive.”
How greatly things had changed. I still had my car, but had lost the privilege to drive it. This was how my collection now seemed to me: a parked car with no hope of ever flying down the road again. Tools that I once used to manipulate the chandu felt dead in my hands. While sitting at my computer trying to work, I sometimes absently rolled my favorite needle between my thumb and forefinger. The exercise was about as gratifying as sitting in a parked car and turning the steering wheel to and fro. The engaging scenery was now just a memory.
I missed opium. I had to admit it. And my collection, the detritus of thousands of past addictions including my own, was everywhere I looked. I was surrounded by it. The dust-covered pieces of paraphernalia, looking forlorn and desperate, seemed to call out to me, begging to be put to use again. And then there was Jean Cocteau. Across the decades and with a knowing smile, he, too, was speaking to me: “The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.”
Thus it was the master, Beelzebub opium, led his imp a devil dance constantly.
—William Rosser Cobbe,
Doctor Judas: A Portrayal of the Opium Habit (1895)
In April 2008, after five long months of avoiding Roxanna, I finally felt I was ready to pay a visit to her home. The occasion was a visitor from the States, a collector I met through eBay who had during my time of dependence bought some of my desperate offerings and kept me afloat. Justin was visiting Thailand for the first time, and after talking with him, I was impressed with what he knew about opium smoking—especially from a medical standpoint. Justin was able to explain to me in laymen’s terms why I was suffering so:
“Think of the receptors in your brain as hungry little mouths. Normally they feed on endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers and mood enhancers. But if you start regularly feeding those little mouths with the much more delicious opium, they’ll get spoiled. Take away their daily feast of opium and expect them to be happy with endorphins instead, and your body and brain will revolt until you give the receptors what they want. And they won’t give up easily. The receptors must be fed opium or some other opiate, or you’re really going to suffer. After many months of life without opium, the little mouths will get used to eating endorphins again. But they still remember the taste of opium, and if you smoke it again just once, their angry demands for more will be impossible to ignore.”
After some hours spent discussing this and many other details pertaining to opium, I got the idea to take Justin with me to Roxanna’s house. I knew he would be very interested to see her in action, and his being there would take the pressure off me to smoke—since Roxanna would have another guest to prepare pipes for.
I called Roxanna—the first time in recent memory that I was doing the calling—and proposed the idea. She knew Justin’s name because we used to talk about what I was going to sell and to whom. Justin was one of two collectors in the United States to whom I regularly sold, and I was happy that I had established a friendly relationship with him. I hoped that someday I might be able to buy back some of my pieces, but if that were to happen, it was going to be far in the future. Since I had neglected to keep in touch with editors, I was no longer being offered many freelance writing jobs, and I was still struggling to get back on my feet.
The afternoon of the following day, Justin and I took a taxi to Roxanna’s neighborhood, trading the car for a pedicab once we reached the market where the lane narrowed. A pedicab was the most scenic way to arrive, and this lane was one of very few in Bangkok where they were still in use. During the ride in, Justin asked me questions but I was unable to concentrate and kept asking him to repeat them. In my
mind I was rehearsing the scene when Roxanna would offer me a pipe—it was inevitable—and I would calmly decline.
“When was the last time you were over here?”
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
My mobile phone rang. It was Roxanna, asking if I could buy her a pack of cigarettes at the corner store. I said that we had already passed it, and she said never mind, she would borrow a cigarette from her Thai brother-in-law.
“We’ll be there in three minutes,” I said.
“Okay, the door is unlocked, just let yourself in. I’m upstairs already.”
Familiar routes and familiar routines that in the past had always led to bliss. We disembarked from the pedicab and walked the concrete causeway, the hot afternoon sun making the frond-like leaves of the banana trees droop limply. At Roxanna’s doorstep we ran into her brother-in-law and his wife, an amiable couple whom I had been on friendly terms with. They looked both surprised and happy to see me, and paid me a typically Thai compliment by remarking that I’d gained weight since I was last there for a visit.
I introduced Justin, and then the two of us made our way up the narrow wooden stairway. Roxanna was taking her cigarette break, and I immediately noticed the layout tray was littered with dross, indicating that she had been smoking opium for some time before we arrived. I had only seen her do this once before—when she was hosting both myself and her old Vietcong friend who was visiting from Vietnam. That day, she had smoked her fill first so she could concentrate on rolling for her guests. Remembering this, I took it to mean that today she was expecting me to smoke, too.
Roxanna and Justin exchanged greetings, and I invited him to recline alongside the layout tray. I then took a seat in a dusty wooden armchair situated in a corner of the room. The chair had been there almost as long as I’d been coming to smoke with Roxanna, but this was the first time I had ever sat on it. My place had always been on the floor.
Roxanna stubbed out her cigarette and began counting drops of chandu into the miniature wok while she and Justin chatted about his flight over. Just as in the pedicab, I was having a hard time focusing on the conversation and felt unable to join in. The musky smell of opium soon drove the sharp odor of cigarette smoke from the room, and I sat bolt upright in the chair, crossing my legs and arms in a subconscious effort to stiffen my resolve.
Justin was soon drawing on his first pipe—quite expertly I noticed—and the soft, sputtering sound of opium being vaporized took over my senses. A lotus pond full of croaking frogs; a summertime flame tree abuzz with cicadas; a maddening ringing in the ears; the forlorn sound of crying babies. I could not hear a thing they were saying above the din. I sat and stared, deafened and dumbstruck, and suddenly I remembered seeing my Time buddy Karl Taro Greenfeld staring at me goggle-eyed from a dark corner of that opium den in Vang Vieng seven years before. I remembered thinking, What’s his problem?
Now I knew.
After Justin had smoked three pills, Roxanna held up the pipe and gestured with her needle, pointing it at the bowl. “Do you want one, too?”
“No, thank you,” I heard myself say.
“Okay,” she replied. Her tone said: Suit yourself.
The room was closed up as usual to keep out drafts that might make the opium lamp flicker, and the heat was becoming unbearable. Although I didn’t think there was much chance of inadvertently breathing in any opium fumes—because I was sitting off by myself in a corner—I still felt as though I needed to get out of there. I looked at my mobile phone and saw that barely fifteen minutes had passed since Roxanna had called me. It would be awkward if I tried to leave now.
I closed my eyes and ran my detox mantra through my head, concentrating on each syllable in an effort to push out all other thoughts. The effect was not what I’d expected. Somehow the exercise was making me drowsy, and soon I felt that I was nodding off, entering that relaxing state just between sleep and wakefulness. My head dipped abruptly, causing me to snap back awake. Roxanna noticed this and asked if I wanted to take a nap downstairs in her bedroom. I jumped at the idea.
Lying on Roxanna’s bed with the air-conditioning on, I found myself wide-awake again. I looked around the room and took in her life. Above her bed was the framed black-and-white photo of a very young and beautiful Roxanna in Vietnam-era jungle fatigues. Over the door was an oversized ornamental fan adorned with an Asian village scene painted in garish swipes. On the plywood wall near her vanity were snapshots of a decades-past trip to America: Roxanna and her Thai husband were riding bicycles on some tree-lined suburban street. Jamie, just an infant then, was strapped into a kiddie seat. There were photos of Roxanna’s wedding—both bride and groom wearing traditional Thai dress and kneeling in what looked like a Buddhist temple. There was a small shelf with academic books about Asian ceramics, and I noted that my own book was among them. A clothes rack in lieu of a closet was hung with her silk and batik wardrobe. Besides the rack, the bed, and a vanity and stool, there was no other furniture.
The luster of romance that I had once seen in Roxanna’s life was tarnished considerably now that the opium had left my system. Roxanna was sixty-two, her health was fragile, and she was working to support her son and Thai in-laws and their extended family. On top of that she had this expensive drug habit that was steadily draining her finances as well as her vitality. I decided then and there that I would talk Roxanna into doing detox at Wat Tham Krabok. I was sure I could do it—I just needed an opportunity to talk to her privately.
After another hour, I heard Justin and Roxanna making their way down the stairs, and I came out of Roxanna’s bedroom to meet them. I thanked Roxanna for her hospitality and told her that I would be calling her very soon. Justin wanted to walk out to the main road in order to have an unhurried look at the neighborhood, and as we talked on the walk back, I felt good for not having broken down and smoked. I had the strength to pass such a test, and I was sure a second time would not be so difficult—especially now that I had a mission.
As soon as I got home I called Roxanna and asked if I could come over that Sunday. She sounded delighted with the idea. “Are you going to join me this time?” she asked.
I didn’t want to say no, or even worse, to sound undecided. I was afraid this would perhaps cause her to feel guilt, which might, in turn, make her nix the idea of my visiting. I had to sound sure of myself.
“Yes, I’m ready,” I confirmed.
Over the next few days I rehearsed what I would say to Roxanna. I wouldn’t rush into the proposal. If she had a few pipes in her system I knew it would help her to think clearly and be more receptive to my idea. I would keep from smoking by telling her that I had just eaten and needed to let my stomach settle before having a pipe. This would not seem strange; neither of us ever began smoking on a full stomach.
Sunday morning I arrived at Roxanna’s with an elaborate plan that began with a lie about having been forced to eat a gift of mangoes and sticky rice. “One of the old lady vendors who I always buy from handed me a box of mangoes and sticky rice as I was on my way out to get a taxi. Somebody ordered it but hadn’t picked it up and she was afraid it would go bad in the heat. I thought I would just eat the mangoes but somehow I couldn’t help myself and before I knew it, I’d eaten the sticky rice, too.”
“Oh, next time bring some over, I’ll share it with you,” Roxanna said.
I promised I would, thinking to myself that the next time I visited Roxanna, she would be off opium. We could share the mangoes and sticky rice as a little celebration. Roxanna and I went upstairs, and I immediately shut all the windows and began helping set up the layout. It wasn’t even nine o’clock, but the morning air was heavy with heat and humidity. I looked at the dusty chair in the corner and was glad that I’d be reclining on the relatively cool wooden floorboards. I told Roxanna that I probably needed an hour or so for my stomach to settle and to go ahead without me. “I’ll catch up soon as I feel a little less bloated,” I lied.
I stretched out on the floor, l
eaving a couple feet of distance between myself and the layout tray instead of lying right up against it as a smoker does. I let my head rest on a porcelain pillow, but I chose to lie on my back instead of facing the tray. Soon the old ritual began. While I stared up at the asbestos roof tiles, I could hear but not see chandu sizzling in the copper wok. Once again I closed my eyes and fell back on my detox mantra. Roxanna said nothing. She often used to take catnaps between pipes, and she believed that I had a belly full of glutinous rice—the tranquilizing effects of which must be experienced to be believed. Just as before, concentrating on the mantra put me to sleep. When I awoke half an hour later, my head was absolutely clear.
“Well, you must’ve needed that,” Roxanna said as she put down the pipe and lit a cigarette. “I’ll roll one for you as soon as I finish this.”
Now is the time, I thought to myself. I went straight to it. “Rox, have you ever tried to quit smoking? Opium, I mean.”
She blew the cigarette smoke from her lungs, as always taking care to exhale away from me. “Why, yes, of course. Many times.”
“Would you like to be finished with it for good? In just a few days and with almost no pain?”
“Go on,” she said with genuine interest.
“There’s this wat north of here. In Saraburi. They have this detox program …”
“You don’t mean Tham Krabok, do you?”
“So you know of it.”
Roxanna smiled. “That’s where I met my husband.”
“What?”
“Oh, it’s a long story. Let me fix you a pipe and I’ll tell you.” Roxanna lifted the cap from her dropper bottle and started to count drops into the tiny wok.
Opium Fiend Page 34
