Bangkok Tattoo

There don’t seem to be any cafés with spare tables and chairs, not with any privacy anyway, so we end up in the lobby of our hotel, which has been transformed into a kind of anteroom for a gigantic brothel. Girls are sitting on all the sofas, and as we watch, dark-ski

Mustafa doesn’t want to look at it, so we find an empty table in a corner. He still has some explaining to do, so I give him the silent treatment.

“You are wondering why we took such interest in one individual, when there are hundreds like him in Thailand?”

“Yes.”

“You must ask my father for a full explanation. According to him, the farang Mitch Turner was a fascinating product of the West. He said that just as intelligence agencies like to take terrorist bombs apart to see how they are made, so we should look into the soul of this strange fish, this human bomb, to see how it was made. After all, he didn’t invent himself-he was a creature of his culture.”

“His naÏveté, confusion, lack of center?”

“All those things, but what most interested my father was his spiritual agony. You must understand that although my father is very learned, he hardly ever meets farang, especially not American spies. My father is a great imam, which is to say a co

“He reached these conclusions on the basis of one specimen?”

“Why not? True knowledge comes from Allah. It does not need scientific method, only a clue, a hint for the spirit to follow.”

As he speaks, I note that he is watching the action in a totally unseeing way, like a show in a language he does not understand. For me, though, it is impossible not to take a professional interest in what is going on all over the rest of the lobby: the young men approaching the girls, the big ironic smile on the faces of the women; the man’s complex mixture of shyness, courage, arrogance, urgency, and anticipation, the woman’s searching eyes, trying to guess what sort of lover this one will be while they negotiate; the mutual relief that is almost a kind of orgasm when they reach a deal; the abrupt change of body language when they put their arms around each other and make for the lifts or walk out into the night. I know that Mustafa, if he sees anything of interest at all, sees only sin, which will no doubt be eradicated sooner or later by Allah-along with a whole range of other activities that I consider merely human.

When I tell him I’m going to sleep, he stands up immediately, like one who has been released from a dirty job.

14

Back in my room I made the mistake of drinking a couple of Singha beers from the minibar. They knocked me out for a few hours, and now I’m awake with quite a thirst and a slight headache. (Drink Kloster or Heineken, farang, when you come for your vacation-they’re cleaner brews.) The worst of it is, I’m fully conscious, and when I use the remote to switch on the TV, I see from the information bar that it’s four-thirteen in the morning. As I lie on the bed I remember my dream, in which Chanya came to me. The quality of light, the expression on her face, the whole atmosphere of the dream, tell me it was a communication from her of some kind, though I ca

All the girls are gone, except for five who are hanging around on a couple of the sofas. From their snippets of conversation that I overhear, it seems that only two of them had customers tonight; the other three have not been lucky and are moaning about the number of women in town. There just aren’t enough men to go around. At the reception desk the clerk is asleep in his chair, his head resting on his folded arms on his desk. He starts when I try to wake him and gives a sullen shake of the head when I ask to use the business center where there is Internet access. I offer money, but still he refuses. The business center doesn’t open until nine in the morning. I’m in a stubborn mood and toy with the idea of threatening to bust the whole joint, but that would not be playing the game. Instead I cajole him, make him laugh, offer some cash again, and this time he consents to let me use the hotel’s Internet access from behind the reception desk.

I’m so keen to check my e-mail because I want to know if I’ve got a reply from Superman. When I check the list of new messages, I feel a dull, bruised sensation in my heart because there is nothing from Mike Smith, even though with the eleven-hour time difference that is hardly surprising. I take a couple of minutes to scan through the usual business stuff (another gang of unruly old men who had such a good time six months ago, they want to come back for Christmas), before I notice the new correspondent: [email protected] /* */

Her message is very brief: Sonchai, here is the diary I told you about. Chanya.

The attachment, on the other hand, is more than five hundred kilobytes, nearly as long as a novel, and of course it is in Thai script. As I start to read, I’m impressed by the clarity and simplicity of the writing. Only a noble soul writes like that. I am also totally absorbed. When the clerk starts to get restless, I have to bribe him again to let me print out the whole of her diary, which I take upstairs to my room and spend the rest of the night reading. I’m hollow-eyed by the time I meet Mustafa in the hotel lobby in the morning.

Out in the street, on the way to Turner’s apartment, Mustafa’s cell phone rings; well, actually, it makes no sound, merely vibrates in his pocket, and he fishes it out in an instant. A few words in the local dialect, and he closes it again and slides it back in his pocket. “They’re here already.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think?”

As we turn a corner into the street where Turner’s apartment is located, he nods toward the building. Two farang in tropical cream business suits, white shirts, and ties are on the point of entering the building.