(An excerpt from BANGKOK SUNSET)
The blazing heat of Sukhumwit at high noon
hits one in the face like the rush of hot air emanating from a just-opened oven. John and Sombat exit the air-cooled lobby of the downtown hospital and step into raw sunlight, dodging cars and carts,
motorcycles and trucks, sweating
and swearing, coughing from the exhaust, seeking the solace of shadows big and
small.
Sombat airs his intention to visit a
famous shrine and John duly nods in agreement, assuming the next step is to find a tuk-tuk or a taxi, knowing how much his friend hated to break a sweat. Instead the Thai makes
the highly unusual suggestion that they go on foot. John knows then and there
that something is wrong, terribly wrong.
The hot season is
so hot at its hottest that dogs don’t stir and even insects stop crawling. Day
after day of cloudless sun has not only baked Bangkok to a crisp; it has been
drying up reservoirs of goodwill. It’s edgy weather and tempers flare easily,
the kind of heat that calls for five showers a day and lots of cold drinks in
between if you have the luxury, or the stoic acceptance of a sticky layer of
sweat and grime as a second skin. It’s about the only time of year when people
like Sombat, born and brought up in the tropics, get hot under the collar
on account of the sun.
Keeping in the
shade and napping at noon had been the standard strategy of dealing with toxic
sunshine for millennia; then air-conditioning was invented. Ever since it was
discovered that heat could be transferred from one place to another, it had
become possible for a select few to work and play in air-conditioned comfort
round the clock. The pervasive heat could be held off but not defeated. Even
the rich had to endure the steamy gaps between luxury home and luxury hotel,
the skin-reddening heat between cool shops and parched parking lots. But the
biggest gap of all was between rich and poor, for the sweltering heat was
democratic in a way the cool air was not.
Nowhere was this
more obvious than in over-developed, over-trafficked Bangkok, where the exhaust
of hulking air conditioners and hot fumes of internal combustion motors
conspired to make street temperatures soar.
John and Sombat lumber
in sullen silence down the searing, smoky urban corridor known as Sukhumvit,
where the shadow of the overhead trestle offered scant relief heat, as cars,
buses and trucks kept the trapped air filled with burning vapors.
The Thai is both
uncommunicative and serenely stoic, unfazed by light or shade, as if in numb
and in trance. His glazed eyes search the extremities of the busy thoroughfare
for divinations that only he can see.
On the way across
a rusted footbridge, two white-robed women with shaven heads politely request
cash while impolitely blocking the steps. John, who by now has picked up some
of his friend’s innate skepticism, wonders aloud if the two petite unisex
creatures are really nuns or just poor women pretending to be nuns or perhaps transvestites
pretending to be women pretending to be nuns, but Sombat will hear nothing of
it. He reaches deep into his pocket and drops a heavy handful of coins into the
outstretched alms bowl.
Back on the
sidewalk, they are confronted by the sight of a shirtless, bare-footed man
taunting fate; darting in and out of the traffic, oblivious to cars as he hops
on the hot asphalt.
“Look!”
shouts John. Before Sombat can answer, crazy-farang is in the street, trying to
slow traffic, waving one hand waving frantically while collaring the vagrant
with the other. Horns honk but the traffic halts and John leads the man to the
curbside where he collapses on the curb, writhing like an overturned insect.
“Ya ba!” shouts a bemused bystander in a bright blue
Hawaiian shirt. The man in blue quizzes Sombat as to why his farang friend
would risk breaking a sweat to save a worthless bum. John knows ya ba is slang for meth, but what it really means is
‘don’t get involved.’
According to the
prime minister’s pronouncements, no mercy was called for when it came to
druggies. Ever since the top cops launched a national anti-drug campaign,
kicked off with a series of well-publicized executions by firing squad, and a
series of extrajudicial roadside killings, it had become politically incorrect
to show an iota of sympathy for anyone who had anything to do with drugs.
Unless, of course, the victim was the son or daughter of an important
politician or socialite, or unless the addictive chemical in question produced
a profitable, socially-sanctioned chemical dependence, such as nicotine or
alcohol.
The police
arrive, a few perfunctory questions are asked, and John and Sombat move on.
They weave their way along the edge of a sidewalk that has been whittled down
to the width of a single plank by location-savvy vendors who commandeer the
curb to tap the human flow.
They edge forward
single file, like hikers traversing a precarious ledge, skirting hot traffic on
one side and burning charcoal braziers on the other. One wrong step and you’re
hurled into the house of pain.
Sombat
inexplicably pauses to pray at a gaudy guardian shrine that sits in the parking
lot of a second-rate department store. The centerpiece is a gilded image set
upon an altar bedecked with incense and flowers, a warder-off of evil that John
has passed a dozen times without taking into account.
John watches in
wonderment as the Thai buys a fistful of lottery tickets from an unshaven old
man who dispenses thin paper slips printed with auspicious numbers,
methodically drawn from a flat wooden box that looks like it might contain a
chess set. Sombat pockets the lucky paper, and then goes on to make merit in
little ways, tossing a few coins to curbside beggars, including an unhealthy
little boy cradling a healthy-looking dog.
They don’t get
much further down the road when he pauses to listen to a blind crooner. The old
lady, who has dark wrinkles where her eyes should be, sings her heart out on a
tinny microphone over the din of the traffic, interrupting her sad ballad to
say khopjai ja to her unseen benefactor.
Her seeing-eye partner, a dark, shrunken man with a bemused look etched on his
otherwise impassive face, bows deeply in appreciation. Clink, clank, clunk go
the ten-baht coins. Flitter, flutter, go the twenty-baht bills.
Somebody’s having
trouble with unlucky stars.
“Hey Sombat,”
John says, wiping the sweat off his face. “Like, man, what’s the matter? What’d
the doctor say?”
“Nuttin’. He just
draw my money and take my blood.”
Then all of a
sudden it all makes sense. Sombat is ill but doesn’t know how ill. That’s why
they’re making a pilgrimage to Erawan Shrine, the most opportune lucky spot in
Bangkok. Originally built to ward off bad spirits when a spate of bloody
accidents slowed the construction of a deluxe hotel, the busy corner has
gradually evolved into a shrine open to all, rich, poor, foreign, local, in
need of a pat on the back from the invisible hand of fortune. Taxi drivers put
their faith in the shrine’s power every time they pass it, taking their hands
off the steering wheel to show their respect, leaving the guidance of their
vehicle in the hands of the supernatural, striking the fear of God into
non-believing passengers.
Even tourists
flock to the corner shrine. The rush of devotees thickens as giant buses dock
at the curb and camera-toting Taiwanese and Koreans step down to the street to
join the flow. John and Sombat get wedged between a gaggle of supplicants,
squeezing past pushcarts manned by matrons selling golden flowers, jasmine
garlands, sandalwood incense, votive candles and wooden elephants. The Thai
expertly weaves his way, never once losing his footing on the uneven walkway, a
pothole here, a chunk of detritus there. John follows cautiously in his wake.
At the shrine
entrance Sombat gets into an intense transaction with an old man tending an
assortment of caged birds. John watches with astonishment as his spendthrift
pal turns his wallet upside down and empties it of cash to buy a pair of birds.
Well, he doesn’t exactly buy them; it’s more like renting them for the first
leg of a short roundtrip flight. Many years before, as Joy had explained to
John on one of their memorable chaperoned cultural tours, releasing a caged
bird was a way of making merit, because Buddhists cherish freedom, the life
force of all living creatures.
The twittering
pale yellow birds scamper and tweet hyperactively behind the wooden slats of
their cages, looking ruffled and in a panic. While it was obvious to any
bystander, probably even the tourists, that the tiny birds didn’t venture far
from their wooden cages, the karma-challenged Sombat, at this touchy juncture
in time, has somehow convinced himself that the mere act of opening the cage
door to release the bird, only for it to fly back to its prison perch, by habit
or hunger, is going to somehow change the negative valence of his luck.
The rolling
thunder of cars, trucks and buses creates a quasi-melodic drone, oddly
comforting, almost cosmic, the moment you stopped reacting to it and just let
the rise and fall of the sound waves wash by, not unlike the pounding sound of
the surf crashing on the shore. What grates the ear is not so much the
background rhythm and base notes but the showy solo players, like the revved-up
bike, the piercing police whistle, the honking van or grinding engine.
Up the
intersection above looms the splayed concrete viaduct of the sky train, arching
over the traffic like the sun-bleached skeleton of some impossibly humongous
dinosaur. Commuter trains roll by in opposing directions, periodically slicing
the air with a whispery whoosh.
So what was with
street-savvy Sombat buying birds from a karmic con artist? It wasn’t like him,
but he had been off-color all week long. Not only had he been hanging around
the house an annoyingly high percentage of the time, but he’d been utterly out
of character, puttering around, ironing his clothes, cleaning the kitchen,
fixing the broken steps, pacing listlessly, sorting through old photos, staring
at the ceiling; why, he even made mention of giving away his worldly possessions
to become a monk!
And look at him
now, as his unsteady hands fiddle with the matchbox cage, urging the fragile
birds out. It’s the story of his life, paying bar fines to buy a bird’s freedom
for the night, knowing full well they’d be back in captivity and primped for
re-sale as soon as he was done with them.
Finally one
frightened winged creature takes flight, shooting upward like a rocket before
zigzagging across the intersection, narrowly avoiding collision with a traffic
sign. Then the other one takes wing, darting madly to an intermediate point
above the rush-hour traffic but well below the air-rustling whoosh of the
elevated train, until they find an almost inviolable perch on an insulated
power cable suspended from a crooked utility pole planted in front of police
headquarters across the street.
Good deed done,
Sombat smiles weakly. Clean out of cash, he borrows a few bills from John to
buy a pack of candles and incense as they enter the black-and-gold fenced
enclosure of the Erawan Shrine proper, a sacred corner in a profane world where
local devotees and camera-snapping tourists perambulate the small but reputedly
potent four-faced statue. On a raised pedestal the all-seeing idol presides
over a fallen city of two-faced progress. The lord Brahma gazes benevolently
down at the material world with 360-degree night-and-day vision, seeing all,
knowing all.
The perpetually
busy shrine is the wishing well of Bangkok village, a last hope to the
hopeless. Yet John swallows hard when he espies his proud friend dropping to
his hands and knees, showing abject devotion to a Hinduistic icon. Harder still
when he sees his friend being filmed by tourists, as if the distraught Thai had
nothing better to do than perform for them.
Unmoved by
imputed omniscience of the gilded Brahma; John refuses to go through the
motions, instead retreating to a shaded corner where a tinny percussive
orchestra plays for hire. Music tinkles from the amateurish ensemble as they
hammer away on bamboo xylophones, small brass cymbals and leather-headed drums,
beating out ancient rhythms in gentle counterpoint to the mechanized tumult of
the intersection.
Eight darkly
rouged dancing girls gyrate in slow motion, turning and swaying to echoes of
Angkor and the ancient Siamese court. Attenuated bejeweled crowns sit heavily
on the dancers’ heads, pointing skyward like temple prangs. Foreheads moist
with sweat-beaded makeup, the girls plod through dance after dance, rotating in
a bluish miasma of smoking incense and auto exhaust.
John takes a seat
on a bench sinks his head in his hands, a headache is coming on. He closes his
eyes and tries to will away the searing crescendos of the
internal-combustion-engine orchestra that aurally assaults the shrine. Cocooned
by the all-embracing heat, he sinks into a trance, succumbing to the call of
the past, darting in and out of lucid dreams.
The shrine
presides over a shadowy world of fumes, the intersection of spirit and matter.
John closes his eyes, trying to picture the world back in the day when the
ancient dance the dancing ladies are dancing was new, a world without
electricity or machines, a world of unsullied skies and pristine streams;
something almost as far beyond the ken of today’s city as today’s city would be
to the ancients.
A misty series of
images, first a point of light in the distance, then a glowing rectangular
window frames the figure of a young girl smiling across the years. Phusai
ngam, a beautiful indirect way of saying “I
want to know you.”
To this day he
wonders about what happened. It wasn’t like him to take the liberties he took;
and in all likelihood it was not like her to let him take them, either. What
prompted each of them to take an evolutionary leap with a total stranger? Was
it just random, selfish genes and eager-to-replicate DNA doing its unthinking
thing, or was it part of a larger more spiritual scheme of things? He had
preferred to believe the former because it seemed to let both of them off the
hook. What difference did it make if she was good or bad, flawless or
fallen? He had had her, and she him and even though she was lost in time,
a thing of the past, were their fates not wed in some ancient elemental sense?
If there was a
heaven, could she hear him thinking?
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