There"s so much I want to ask him, but I can"t form the thoughts, especially not in Chinese. I"m young, Corey. I"m not thinking karmic cycles. What are you trying to ask me?
"I thought Si Ui ate children"s livers," said Corey. "Not some dumb old birds"."
We were still on the klong, turning back now toward civilization; on either side of us were crumbling temples, old houses with pointed eaves, each one with its little totemic spirit house by the front gate, pouring sweet incense into the air, the air itself dripping with humidity. But ahead, just beyond a turn in the klong, a series of eighty-story condos reared up over the banana trees.
"Yes, he did," I said, "and we"ll get to that part, in time. Don"t be impatient."
"Grandpa, Si Ui ate children"s livers. Just like Dracula bit women in the neck. Well, like, it"s the main part of the story. How long are you gonna make me wait?"
"So you know more than you told me before. About the maid trying to scare you one time, when you were five."
"Well, yeah, Grandpa, I saw the miniseries. It never mentioned you."
"I"m part of the secret history, Corey."
"Cool." He contemplated his Pokemon, but decided not to go back to monster trapping. "When we get back to the Bangkok side, can I get another caramel frappuccino at Starbucks?"
"Decaf," I said.
That evening I go back to the house and find Mom in bed with Jed, the police detective. Suddenly, I don"t like Jed anymore.
She barely looks up at me; Jed is pounding away and oblivious to it all; I don"t know if Mom really knows I"m there, or thinks me just a shadow flitting beyond the mosquito netting. I know why she"s doing it. She"ll say that it"s all about getting information for this great novel she"s planning to write, or research for a major magazine article, but the truth is that it"s about survival; it"s no different from that concentration camp.
I think she finally does realise I"m there; she mouths the words "I"m sorry" and then turns back to her work. At that moment, I hear someone tapping at the entrance, and I crawl over the squeaky floor planks, Siamese style (children learn to move around on their knees so that their head isn"t accidentally higher than someone of higher rank) to see Sombun on the step.
"Can you come out?" he says. "There"s a ngaan wat."
I don"t know what that is, but I don"t want to stay in the house. So I throw on a shirt and go with him. I soon find out that a ngaan wat is a temple fair, sort of a cross between a carnival and a church bazaar and a theatrical night out.
Even from a mile or two away we hear the music, the tinkling of marimbas and the thud of drums, the wail of the Javanese oboe. By the time we get there, the air is drenched with the fragrance of pickled guava, peanut pork skewers, and green papaya tossed in fish sauce. A makeshift dance floor has been spread over the muddy ground and there are dancers with rhinestone court costumes and paG.o.da hats, their hands bent back at an impossible angle. There"s a Chinese opera troupe like I"ve seen in Shanghai, glittering costumes, masks painted on the faces in garish colours, boys dressed as monkeys leaping to and fro; the Thai and the Chinese striving to outdo each other in noise and brilliance. And on a grill, being tended by a fat woman, pigeons are barbecuing, each one on a mini-spear of steel. And I"m reminded of the open fire and the sizzling of half-plucked feathers.
"You got money?" Sombun says. He thinks that all farangs are rich. I fish in my pocket and pull out a few saleungs, and we stuff ourselves with pan-fried roti swimming in sweet condensed milk.
The thick juice is dripping from our lips. This really is paradise: the music, the mingled scents, the warm wind. Then I see Si Ui. There aren"t any birds nearby, not unless you count the pigeons charring on the grill. Si Ui is muttering to himself, but I understand Chinese, and he"s saying, over and over again, "Si Ui hungry, Si Ui hungry." He says it in a little voice and it"s almost like baby talk.
We wander over to the Chinese opera troupe. They"re doing something about monkeys invading heaven and stealing the apples of the G.o.ds. All these kids are somersaulting, tumbling, cartwheeling, and climbing up onto each other"s shoulders. There"s a little girl, nine or ten maybe, and she"s watching the show. And Si Ui is watching her. And I"m watching him.
I"ve seen her before, know her from that night we squatted on the veranda staring at American TV shows. Was Si Ui watching her even then? I try to remember. Can"t be sure. Her name"s Juk.
Those Chinese cymbals, with their annoying "boing-boing-boing" sound, are clashing. A man is intoning in a weird singsong. The monkeys are leaping. Suddenly I see, in Si Ui"s face, the same expression I saw on the ship. He"s utterly still inside, utterly quiet, beyond feeling. The war did that to him. I know. Just like it made Mom into a wh.o.r.e and me into...I don"t know...a bird without a nesting place...a lost boy.
And then I get this...irrational feeling. That the little girl is a bird, chirping to herself, hopping along the ground, not noticing the stalker.
So many people here. So much jangling, so much laughter. The town"s dilapidated paG.o.das sparkle with reflected colours, like stone Christmas trees. Chinese opera rings in my ears. I look away, and when I look back they are gone--Sombun is preoccupied, playing with a two-saleung top that he"s just bought. Somehow, I feel impelled to follow. To stalk the stalker.
I duck behind a fruit stand, and then I see a golden deer. It"s a toy, on four wheels, pulled along by a string. I can"t help following it with my eyes as it darts between hampers full of rambutans and pomelos.
The deer darts toward the cupped hands of the little girl. I see her disappear into the crowd, but then I see Si Ui"s face too; you can"t mistake the cold fire in his eyes.
She follows the toy. Si Ui pulls. I follow, too, not really knowing why it"s so fascinating. The toy deer weaves through the ocean of feet. Bare feet of monks and novices, their saffron robes skimming the mud. Feet in rubber flip-flops, in the wooden sandals the jek call kiah. I hear a voice: Juk, Juk! And I know there"s someone else looking for the girl, too. It"s a weird quartet, each one in the sequence known only to the next one. I can see Si Ui now, his head bobbing up and down in the throng because he"s a little taller than the average Thai even though he"s so skinny. He"s intent. Concentrated. He seems to be on wheels himself; he glides through the crowd like the toy deer does. The woman"s voice, calling for Juk, is faint and distant; she hears it, I"m sure, but she"s ignoring her mother or her big sister. I only hear it because my senses are sharp now; it"s like the rest of the temple fair"s all out of focus, all blurry, and there"s just the four of us. I see the woman, it must be a mother or aunt, too old for a sister, collaring a roti vendor and asking if he"s seen the child. The vendor shakes his head, laughs. And suddenly we"re all next to the pigeon barbecue, and if the woman were only looking in the right place she"d see the little girl, giggling as she clambers through the forest of legs, as the toy zigzags over the dirt aisles. And now the deer has been yanked right up to Si Ui"s feet. And the girl crawls all the way after it, seizes it, laughs, looks solemnly up at the face of the Chinaman-- "It"s him! It"s the c.h.i.n.k!" Sombun is pointing, laughing. I"d forgotten he was even with me.
Si Ui is startled. His concentration snaps. He lashes out. There"s a blind rage in his eyes. Dead pigeons are flying everywhere.
"Hungry!" he screams in Chinese. "Si Ui hungry!"
He turns. There is a cloth stall nearby. Suddenly he and the girl are gone amid a flurry of billowing sarongs. And I follow.
Incense in the air, stinging my eyes. A shaman gets possessed in a side aisle, his followers hushed. A flash of red. A red sarong, embroidered with gold, a year"s wages, twisting through the crowd. I follow. I see the girl"s terrified eyes. I see Si Ui with the red cloth wrapped around his arms, around the girl. I see something glistening, a knife maybe. And no-one sees. No-one but me.
Juk! Juk!
I"ve lost Sombun somewhere. I don"t care. I thread my way through a bevy of ramwong dancers, through men dressed as women and women dressed as men. Fireworks are going off. There"s an ancient wall, the temple boundary, crumbling...and the trail of red funnels into black night...and I"m standing on the other side of the wall, watching Si Ui ride away in a pedicab, into the night. There"s moonlight on him. He"s saying something; even from far off I can read his lips. He"s saying it over and over: Si Ui hungry, Si Ui hungry.
So they find her by the side of the road with her internal organs missing. And I"m there, too, all the boys are at dawn, peering down, daring each other to touch. It"s not a rape or anything, they tell us. Nothing like the other girl. Someone has seen a cowherd near the site, and he"s the one they arrest. He"s an Indian, you see. If there"s anyone the locals despise more than the Chinese, it"s the Indians. They have a saying: if you see a snake and an Indian, kill the babu.
Later, in the market, Detective Jed is escorting the Indian to the police station, and they start pelting him with stones, and they call him a dirty Indian and a cows.h.i.t eater. They beat him up pretty badly in the jail. The country was under martial law in those days, you know. They can beat up anyone they want. Or shoot them.
But most people don"t really notice, or care. After all, it is paradise. To say that it is not, aloud, risks making it true. That"s why my mom will never belong to Thailand; she doesn"t understand that everything there resides in what is left unsaid.
That afternoon I go back to the rubber orchard. He is standing patiently. There"s a bird on a branch. Si Ui is poised. Waiting. I think he is about to pounce. But I"m too excited to wait. "The girl," I say. "The girl, she"s dead, did you know?"
Si Ui whirls around in a murderous fury, and then, just as suddenly, he"s smiling.
"I didn"t mean to break your concentration," I say.
"Girl soft," Si Ui says. "Tender." He laughs a little. I don"t see a vicious killer. All I see is loneliness and hunger.
"Did you kill her?" I say.
"Kill?" he says. "I don"t know. Si Ui hungry." He beckons me closer. I"m not afraid of him. "Do like me," he says. He crouches. I crouch too. He stares at the bird. And so do I. "Make like a tree now," he says, and I say, "Yes. I"m a tree." He"s behind me. He"s breathing down my neck. Am I the next bird? But somehow I know he won"t hurt me.
"Now!" he shrieks. Blindly, instinctively, I grab the sparrow in both hands. I can feel the quick heart grow cold as the bones crunch. Blood and birds.h.i.t squirt into my fists. It feels exciting, you know, down there, inside me. I killed it. The shock of death is amazing, joyous. I wonder if this is what grownups feel when they do things to each other in the night.
He laughs. "You and me," he says, "now we same-same."
He shows me how to lick the warm blood as it spurts. It"s hotter than you think. It pulses, it quivers, the whole bird trembles as it yields up its spirit to me.
And then there"s the weirdest thing. You know that hunger, the one that"s gnawed at me, like a wound that won"t close up, since we were dragged to that camp--it"s suddenly gone. In its place there"s a kind of nothing.
The Buddhists here say that heaven itself is a kind of nothing. That the goal of all existence is to become as nothing.
And I feel it. For all of a second or two, I feel it. "I know why you do it," I say. "I won"t tell anyone, I swear."
"Si Ui knows that already."
Yes, he does. We have stood on common ground. We have shared communion flesh. Once a month, a Chinese priest used to come to the camp and celebrate ma.s.s with a hunk of maggoty man to, but he never made me feel one with anyone, let alone G.o.d.
The blood bathes my lips. The liver is succulent and bursting with juices.
Perhaps this is the first person I"ve ever loved.
The feeling lasts a few minutes. But then comes the hunger, swooping down on me, clawed and ravenous. It will never go away, not completely.
They have called in an exorcist to pray over the railway tracks. The mother of the girl they found there has become a nun, and she stands on the gravel pathway lamenting her karma. The most recent victim has few to grieve for her. I overhear Detective Jed talking to my mother. He tells her there are two killers. The second victim had her throat cut and her internal organs removed--the first one was strangled, completely different. He"s been studying these cases, these ritual killers, in American psychiatry books. And the cowherd has an alibi for the first victim.
I"m only half-listening to Jed, who drones on and on about famous mad killers in Europe: the butcher of Hanover, Jack the Ripper. How their victims were always chosen in a special way. How they killed over and over, always a certain way, a ritual. How they always got careless after a whilst, because part of what they were doing came from a hunger, a desperate need to be found out. How after a whilst they might leave clues, confide in someone. How he thought he had one of these cases on his hands, but the authorities in Bangkok weren"t buying the idea. The village of Thapsakae just wasn"t grand enough to play host to a reincarnation of Jack the Ripper.
I listen to him, but I"ve never been to Europe, and it"s all just talk to me. I"m much more interested in the exorcist, who"s a Brahmin in white robes, hair down to his feet, all nappy and filthy, a dozen flower garlands around his neck and amulets tinkling all over him.
"The killer might confide in someone," says Jed, "someone he thinks is in no position to betray him, someone perhaps too simpleminded to understand. Remember, the killer doesn"t know he"s evil. In a sense, he really can"t help himself. He doesn"t think the way we think. To himself, he"s an innocent."
The exorcist enters his trance and sways and mumbles in unknown tongues. The villagers don"t believe the killer"s an innocent. They want to lynch him.
Women washing clothes find a young girl"s hand bobbing up and down, and her head a few yards downstream. Women are panicking in the marketplace. They"re lynching Indians, Chinese, anyone alien. But not Si Ui; he"s a simpleton, after all. The village idiot is immune from persecution because every village needs an idiot.
The exorcist gets quite a workout, capturing spirits in baskets and jars.
Meanwhilst, Si Ui has become the trusted jek, the one who cuts the gailan in the fields and never cheats anyone of their two-saleung bundle of Chinese broccoli.
I keep his secret. Evenings, after I"m exhausted from swimming all day with Sombun and Lek, or lazing on the back of a water buffalo, I go to the rubber orchard and catch birds as the sun sets. I"m almost as good as he is now. Sometimes he says nothing, though he"ll share with me a piece of meat, cooked or uncooked; sometimes he talks up a storm. When he talks pidgin, he sounds like he"s a half-wit. When he talks Thai, it"s the same way, I think. But when he goes on and on in his Hakka dialect, he"s as lucid as they come. I think. I"m only getting it in patches.
One day he says to me, "The young ones taste the best because it"s the taste of childhood. You and I, we have no childhood. Only the taste."
A bird flies onto his shoulder, head tilted, chirps a friendly song. Perhaps he will soon be dinner.
Another day, Si Ui says, "Children"s livers are the sweetest, they"re bursting with young life. I weep for them. They"re with me always. They"re my friends. Like you."
Around us, paradise is crumbling. Everyone suspects someone else. Fights are breaking out in the marketplace. One day it"s the Indians, another day the c.h.i.n.ks, the Burmese. Hatred hangs in the air like the smell of rotten mangoes.
And Si Ui is getting hungrier.
My mother is working on her book now, thinking it"ll make her fortune; she waits for the mail, which gets here sometimes by train, sometimes by oxcart. She"s waiting for some letter from Simon and Schuster. It never comes, but she"s having a ball, in her own way. She stumbles her way through the language, commits appalling solecisms, points her feet, even touches a monk one time, a total sacrilege...but they let her get away with everything. Farangs, after all, are touched by a divine madness. You can expect nothing normal from them.
She questions every villager, pores over every clue. It never occurs to her to ask me what I know.
We glut ourselves on papaya and curried catfish.
"Nicholas," my mother tells me one evening after she"s offered me a hit of opium, her latest affectation, "this really is the Garden of Eden."
I don"t tell her that I"ve already met the serpent.
Here"s how the day of reckoning happened, Corey: It"s mid-morning and I"m wandering aimlessly. My mother has taken the train to Bangkok with Detective Jed. He"s decided that her untouchable farang-ness might get him an audience with some major official in the police department. I don"t see my friends at the river or in the marketplace. But it"s not planting season, and there"s no school. So I"m playing by myself, but you can only flip so many pebbles into the river and tease so many water buffaloes.
After a whilst I decide to go and look for Sombun. We"re not close, he and I, but we"re thrown together a lot; things don"t seem right without him.
I go to Sombun"s house; it"s a shabby place, but immaculate, a row house in the more "citified" part of the village, if you can call it that. Sombun"s mother is making chili paste, pounding the spices in a stone mortar. You can smell the sweet basil and the lemongra.s.s in the air. And the betel nut, too. She"s chewing on the intoxicant; her teeth are stained red-black from long use.
"Oh," she says, "the farang boy."
"Where"s Sombun?"
She doesn"t know quite what to make of my Thai, which has been getting better for months. "He"s not home, Little Mouse," she says. "He went to the jek"s house to buy broccoli. Do you want to eat?"
"I"ve eaten, thanks, auntie," I say, but for politeness" sake I"m forced to nibble on bright green sali pastry.
"He"s been gone a long time," she says, as she pounds. "I wonder if the c.h.i.n.k"s going to teach him to catch birds."
"Birds?"
And I start to get this weird feeling. Because I"m the one who catches birds with the Chinaman, I"m the one who"s shared his past, who understands his hunger. Not just any kid.
"Sombun told me the c.h.i.n.k was going to show him a special trick for catching them. Something about putting yourself into a deep state of samadhi, reaching out with your mind, plucking the life-force with your mind. It sounds very spiritual, doesn"t it? I always took the c.h.i.n.k for a moron, but maybe I"m misjudging him; Sombun seems to do a much better job," she says. "I never liked it when they came to our village, but they do work hard."
Well, when I leave Sombun"s house, I"m starting to get a little mad. It"s jealousy, of course, childish jealousy; I see that now. But I don"t want to go there and disrupt their little bird-catching session. I"m not a spoilsport. I"m just going to pace up and down by the side of the klong, doing a slow burn.
The serpent came to me! I was the only one who could see through his madness and his pain, the only one who truly knew the hunger that drove him! That"s what I"m thinking. And I go back to tossing pebbles, and I tease the gibbon chained by the temple"s gate, and I kick a water buffalo around. And, before I know it, this twinge of jealousy has grown into a kind of rage. It"s like I"m one of those birds, only in a really big cage, and I"ve been flying and flying and thinking I"m free, and now I"ve banged into the prison bars for the first time. I"m so mad I could burst.
I"m playing by myself by the railway tracks when I see my mom and the detective walking out of the station. And that"s the last straw. I want to hurt someone. I want to hurt my mom for shutting me out and letting strangers into her mosquito net at night. I want to punish Jed for thinking he knows everything. I want someone to notice me.
So that"s when I run up to them and I say, "I"m the one! He confided in me! You said he was going to give himself away to someone and it was me, it was me!"
My mom just stares at me, but Jed becomes very quiet. "The Chinaman?" he asks me.
I say, "He told me children"s livers are the sweetest. I think he"s after Sombun." I don"t tell him that he"s only going to teach Sombun to catch birds, that he taught me, too, that boys are safe from him because like the detective told us, we"re not the special kind of victim he seeks out. "In his house, in the rubber orchard, you"ll find everything," I say. "Bones. He makes the feet into a stew," I add, improvising now, because I"ve never been inside that house. "He cuts off their faces and dries them on a jerky rack. And Sombun"s with him."
The truth is, I"m just making trouble. I don"t believe there are dried faces in the house or human bones. I know Sombun"s going to be safe, that Si Ui"s only teaching him how to squeeze the life force from the birds, how to blunt the ancient hunger. Him instead of me. They"re not going to find anything but dead birds.
There"s a scream. I turn. I see Sombun"s mother with a basket of fish, coming from the market. She"s overheard me, and she cries, "The c.h.i.n.k is killing my son!" Faster than thought, the street is full of people, screaming their anti-c.h.i.n.k epithets and pulling out butcher"s knives. Jed"s calling for reinforcements. Street vendors are tightening their phakhomas around their waists.
"Which way?" Jed asks, and suddenly I"m at the head of an army, racing full tilt toward the rubber orchard, along the neon green of the young rice paddies, beside the ca.n.a.ls teeming with catfish, through thickets of banana trees, around the walls of the old temple, through the fields of gailan...and this, too, feeds my hunger. It"s ugly. He"s a Chinaman. He"s the village idiot. He"s different. He"s an alien. Anything is possible.
We"re converging on the gailan field now. They"re waving sticks. Harvesting sickles. Fishknives. They"re shouting, "Kill the c.h.i.n.k, kill the c.h.i.n.k." Sombun"s mother is shrieking and wailing, and Detective Jed has his gun out. Tae Pak, the village rich man, is vainly trying to stop the mob from trampling his broccoli. The army is unstoppable. And I"m their leader. I brought them here with my little lie. Even my mother is finally in awe.
I push through the bamboo thicket and we"re standing in the clearing in the rubber orchard. They"re screaming for the jek"s blood. And I"m screaming with them.
Si Ui is nowhere to be found. They"re beating on the ground now, slicing it with their scythes, smashing their clubs against the trees. Sombun"s mother is hysterical. The other women have caught her mood, and they"re all screaming, because someone is holding up a sandal...Sombun"s.