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Tuppence studied the boat thoughtfully. “We don’t need him any more,” she said, pointing to the commandant. “He’s a good old hostage, but we have no use for him now.”
“We could take him.”
“Really, Evan.” She was swinging with her English accent now. “There’s scarcely room for three of us, and we have the jewels as well. We needn’t waste space on a rapist and a murderer. He made me watch when he killed those four boys. He had their heads cut off. Rivers of blood.”
“So?”
“He’s had a long life. I think it’s time it ended.”
I still had the dagger. I handed it to her. “Want to kill him yourself?” I asked. And she, of course, was supposed to do as the girls always do in the movies, clutching the dagger, studying it in horror, and then muttering something like Oh, let him live with himself, that will be punishment enough for him or Oh, no, I couldn’t, I couldn’t or No, it’s wrong, there must be an end to all of this wanton slaughter or If we kill him, then we are no better than he is or any of those lines.
But Tuppence hadn’t read the script. “I’d bloody well love to,” she said, and fastened her small black hand around the butt of the dagger and advanced on the cowering commandant. He shrank from her; he seemed as much dismayed at a woman’s being the instrument of his death as he did at dying in the first place. He let out a rather pathetic moan, and Tuppence sank the knife into his soft, round belly and ripped him wide open.
I threw up, but I think it was more the fever than the spectacle that caused it. The commandant made unpleasant noises for a time and then quietly died. Tuppence and Dhang helped me into the dugout. There was a single oar inside it, and we used it to push the boat free of the bank and out onto the waterway.
I sat in the stern, Dhang perched in the bow, and Tuppence was between us. Dhang had taken the oar and wanted to know in which direction we ought to proceed.
“Go with the current,” I said, pointing. “We’ll go that way whether we want to or not, so we might as well paddle in that direction.”
Tuppence wanted to know what we were saying, so I translated for her. Then Dhang asked what I was saying to the girl. I could see a potentially horrible situation developing, with myself in the middle of it. I told Tuppence in English that Dhang did not speak English and that I would relay to her whatever was important of my discussions with him but that we would all go crazy if I translated everything. Then I told Dhang approximately the same thing in Siamese, and then I leaned back in the dugout and watched birds diving for fish in the river and thought that perhaps Esperanto wasn’t such a terrible idea after all.
I took a fresh piece of betel for myself and offered one to Dhang, but he said his slice had not yet lost its flavor. I popped the betel into my mouth. Tuppence wanted to know what the hell it was, and I told her.
“Man, you’ve really gone native,” she said.
“It’s not bad once you get used to it.”
“Is that how come your teeth are black?”
“Yes.”
“Will you be able to get them clean later on?”
“I hope so.”
“What I could really use is a cigarette. I don’t suppose you have one?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“I’m hip, but you used to carry cigarettes for me.”
“This is a little different.”
“I know it, baby. I know a girl who’s a betel nut. She’s crazy for Ringo Starr. Sorry about that. I’ll try it, what the hell.”
I gave her a piece of betel, and she chewed it and spat in the river. We were altogether a charming little group.
“You look terrible,” she said. “Is that sunburn or from being sick?”
“A little of both,” I said. And I told her, too, about the cosmetic properties of tobacco juice. She thought that was very interesting but would be more interested personally in finding a way to reverse the process.
“What happens now, baby?”
“We just keep sailing. Later on we might be able to catch some fish for di
“Uh-huh. Moving where?”
“Downstream.”
“Yeah, groovy. What I’m getting at is where does the stream go?”
“Oh,” I said.
“I said something wrong?”
“No,” I said. I shook my head groggily. I had somehow forgotten to ask the old man that little question. I had taken things step by step, and it seemed sufficient to get into the building and out of the building and locate the boat. I hadn’t given too much thought to what would happen thereafter.
And I had no idea where the river was headed.
Chapter 13
Birds wheeled high overhead, fish and water snakes swam alongside the dugout. The sun, overhead at first, was soon lost behind stands of tall timber and eventually set, presumably in the west. We seemed to be pointed in a general southerly direction, but the river made so many dips and turns that it was difficult to say with assurance. Before long it was difficult for me to say anything, with or without assurance. There was no herb tea aboard the little boat, and without it the fever grew worse instead of better. I huddled in the stern of to canoe while the world went on around me and I paid it as little attention as I possibly could.
“You must sleep,” said Dhang in Siamese. “You must sleep,” said Tuppence in English. I agreed with both of them, but there was very little I could do about it. I kept my eyes closed most of the time because I couldn’t see very well anyway, and the light intensified my headache. I thought for a time that I might sleep after all, that the fury of the disease might induce some sort of coma.
This didn’t happen. What did happen was very odd, and I’m still not sure that I understand it. I gather that I descended into some sort of delirium. I wasn’t raving, actually. I stayed quite still and remained generally silent. But I slipped in and out of an eerie waking dream during which periods of fantasy and reality overlapped, so that it was impossible to tell which was which, and even now I ca
A variety of this, I suspect, is what alcoholics experience in delirium tremens. I have heard that one of the problems of the alcoholic is that he does not dream; he is so besotted with drink that he falls immediately into a comatose state too deep for dreaming. And dreams, the psychologists have discovered, are a necessary means of expunging various tensions and strains and doubts and fears. So the theory goes that the alcoholic in the DT’s goes through a sort of waking dream, and the pink elephants he sees while conscious are just a version of the ogres that creep through the average person’s nightmares.
I had understood the theory before. Now I found out what it was all about. It was not at all pleasant, and perhaps the best thing to be said for it is that most of it has since faded from memory. The parts that I recall now include things that probably did happen and things that certainly did not.
Fragments-
“It was a groovy trip until those cats came down on us, Evan. And Bangkok was like the best part of it. The group had this very tough sound, and I was in good voice and all. And the king was too much. You hear how all these celebrities are jazz fans, and it turns out that what they have is one old Bix Beiderbecke 78 stuck in a closet somewhere, but the king of Siam really digs. He truly does. He sat in on clarinet for a while. I thought he would be bloody awful, but his technique is good, and he knows where it’s at. Chick went through some pretty deep chord patterns, and the king never did shake out. He stayed with it all the way to the end…
“I dug Bangkok, I truly did. They have this floating fruit market, I never saw anything like it. Little boats going up and down the river, and you go there to buy bananas and like that. You know I sent you that postcard? That was the day after the command performance. After we played, the king showed us the royal collection, and then he gave us each a present. Chinese jade, he said it was. I got a crazy pair of earrings, and there were cuff links for the boys. I don’t know what happened to them. And I figured it would say in the newspaper stories how we had viewed the collection, and what the presents were, so I wrote you that bit about selling my jewels. I guess it’s good I did, huh?”