The Marriage Tree Read online

  The Marriage Tree

  The Marriage Tree

  A VINCENT CALVINO P.I. NOVEL

  CHRISTOPHER G. MOORE

  Heaven Lake Press

  The Marriage Tree

  Christopher G. Moore

  Smashword Edition 2014

  The Marriage Tree is published by Heaven Lake Press at Smashwords.

  Copyright © 2014 Christopher G. Moore

  Author’s web site: http://www.cgmoore.com/

  Author’s e-mail: [email protected]

  Jacket design: K. Jiamsomboon

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For Daniel Vaver

  This novel is also co-dedicated to the following individuals in recognition of their financial contribution to support a one-year scholarship for disadvantaged children living along the Thai-Burmese border: Mike Herrin, Kevin Cumming, James Gulkin, Michaela Striewski, Jarad Henry, Keith Bacon, and John Bright.

  “Men are not gentle creatures, who want to be loved, who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus [man is wolf to man].”

  —Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents,

  trans. and ed., James Strachey

  (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961)

  ONE

  From: Vincent Calvino

  To: Dr. Apinya

  Confidential: Patient/Doctor Privilege

  Date/Time: 25 April, 20:37

  Fifteen days have passed since I found Ploy’s body. I should buy a lottery ticket ending in the number fifteen. As I sit here staring at the empty page in my typewriter, I realize it’s been almost two weeks since the start of Songkran. And eight months and ten days have come and gone since the first arrival of the visitors. My words appear in one color -- black. Empty containers on a dark, moonless night, stacked at a port, waiting to be shipped. No one comes for them. No one wants them.

  As a private investigator, I have a one-man Bangkok office. It has been temporarily closed because of the health of the one man. Since I returned from Rangoon, I’ve been picking the lock on a secret door. Why would I do that? On the other side are people banging to get out. Some of them are strangers, but some of them I know, some I loved, and all are waiting. You are going to ask me, “Waiting for what?” And I am going to tell you, that’s what I want to find out. But to unlock that door requires a special key.

  Care must be taken in speaking the word “key” in Thailand. If the wrong tone is used, it sounds like the Thai word for shit. Pick your metaphors with caution. Pick your dreams with care. Pick your beliefs or they will be picked for you.

  Hallucinations. People look away when you tell them you see things they can’t. Madness is what they call such reports. What I experience is the sight, smells and sounds of the dead, who come as visitors. They come almost every day. Sometimes they appear more than once or twice.

  The plight of Sisyphus comes to mind as I watch the visitors. Technically they aren’t hallucinations. I know what I see comes from my head, though it makes little difference. Everything we witness comes from inside our minds. How can I say my computer is real and the visitors are illusions? The Romans handed down the ancient Greek story of Sisyphus. My Italian grandfather taught me all about the old gods. He thought they were the way to unlock the secret door. That they were the key.

  Sisyphus was an ancient reality show about the meaning of hell. He cheated death and in doing so swindled the gods. Sisyphus wished for eternal life -- but his immortality came with a condition. As a penalty for his sneaky behavior, Sisyphus was given a job for eternity. His task was simple -- he had to roll a boulder up the side of a mountain, but each time, just before he reached the top, the boulder would break free of his grasp and roll down to the bottom of the mountain. It wasn’t a great job, but he did have great job security. He realized his dream of living forever.

  Every day, forever, Sisyphus climbed the mountain, pushing the rock, and each day it rolled back to where he’d started. The next day, more of the same. Eternity measured out one day at a time, always with the same outcome. His story is a bit like that of the Bill Murray character in the movie Groundhog Day, but without the Hollywood ending.

  Our hell isn’t just a physical place; it exists also in pointless, repetitive, mindless and meaningless activity. To live without purpose or meaning is worse than death. Everywhere I look I see the mortal clones of Sisyphus -- a lawyer at his desk, a secretary in her corporate cubicle, an Indian nut vendor walking on Soi Cowboy, a plastic surgeon, a yoga master, a bargirl as she clutches a chrome pole. These are the boulder pusher’s bastard children, each dwarfed behind his or her own high stone. These mountain climbers work without ropes. Each day they face the same version of eternity as the day before and know that when tomorrow comes, it will be waiting for them again.

  My grandfather’s lessons in mythology failed to teach me, though, that in Thailand the likes of Sisyphus climb not mountains but sword trees. The daily life of Sisyphus was sweet compared with the fate of adulterers condemned to climbing one of those trees for eternity.

  Imagine a forest of sword trees stretching as far as the eye can see -- an infinite number of trees and an infinite number of men standing naked before each one. The men, all adulterers, were living and breathing one minute, dead the next. Each one has woken up in the forest in front of a sword tree. The branches consist of millions of small, sharp knives that glimmer in the light. The adulterer climbs to the top of the tree, lured by the sight of a seductive beauty perched at the top. As he climbs, his flesh, shredded by the tiny knives, flies loose from the bone. Bleeding from the punishing wounds, he finally reaches the top -- only to discover that the naked woman is now at the bottom of the tree. She passionately begs him to climb down and experience her fleshly pleasures. On the journey down the sword tree, his flesh is once again ripped and torn until he is nothing but bloody, raw bones. But as he reaches the ground, he finds the temptress vanished once again and reappearing on her perch at the top of the sword tree. She howls for him to hurry up the tree to satisfy her lust.

  Sisyphus got boulder duty in return for immortality. The Thai adulterer is filleted like a snow fish, and his punishment continues for eternity. Rolling boulders = An elusive, meaningless expenditure of time. Chasing women = Shredding flesh and never appeasing one’s sexual hunger.

  Behind the locked door are boulder rollers and women chasers, all longing to step out of the bargain. They no longer wish for immortality. They pray for death. When the visitors appear in my room, they are refugees from the mountain and the forest. They wish for peace and so find their way to me. I feel that they are waiting for me to unlock the door. To set them free. Why do they believe it’s within my power?

  I don’t. I tell them they’ve come to the wrong place and person. I tell them to go away and leave me alone. They always return. Boulder rollers and sword tree climbers are programmed for repetition. Like
most people who have no choice, they are desperate. The dead are more desperate and persistent than the living. Never mind. I will continue to send them away, even though they will continue to appear. We are of a kind -- the living and the dead. Entangled in our daily climb.

  Early on the morning of April 10, I found myself standing at the base of a sword tree. A seductive young woman was dead in the tall grass. Only I didn’t recognize her or the role she would come to play in my life over the following days and weeks. I saw only what was in front of me at that moment. I didn’t look hard enough. I missed the Agni icon on the ground. One of those small ceremonial figurines normally found in prayer rooms, on yoga tables or in spirit houses was on the ground in front of me, waiting for me to notice it and pick it up. I missed the Agni. I missed a number of things that morning.

  But I had found a girl who had magically flown from the top of a sword tree to the bottom and back again, ad infinitum, so I started looking for the man who’d grown tired of climbing that tree. I figured he’d be the killer.

  I knew that, more likely than not, the sword tree man I was searching for was a coward as that describes all men who accept intolerable conditions in return for immortality. He wouldn’t have had the guts to kill her himself. That in itself doesn’t make him abnormal. Killing another human being is an extreme, unthinkable act. Buying a sex slave is permissible so long as no big noise is made. My grandfather believed that Sisyphus was punished not for wishing for immorality but for cheating the gods to obtain it. Sisyphus was a cheat. The man on the sword tree is another kind of cheat. Cheats hire a sword tree gardener, someone with the experience to prune, not the tree, but the temptress forcing her man up and down it. I’d found a dead woman. The hard part was to find the man the real killer had found to free him from his daily climb.

  This fragility of life disturbs me. The flame of faith in eternity isn’t the key.

  I am searching for words to tell the story of the hardest of all missing persons cases, the case where the private investigator has gone missing and doesn’t know how or where to find himself. That kind of search tests the strength of a man’s faith -- his belief that finding what has gone missing is worth the effort.

  TWO

  MONDAY, APRIL 8, five days before the start of the Buddhist New Year. Walking along Soi Cowboy, Vincent Calvino was greeted by the joyous buzz of a street celebration with girls, punters, tourists, voyeurs, nut vendors and food hawkers. It had the look of a medieval town square as the first news that the Black Death had ended brought everyone into the street to party. Soi Cowboy—the epicenter, where the contemporary equivalent of plague survivors gathered—had rows of bars dedicated to a permanent victory celebration. Each bar Calvino passed had a version of the same laughter, dancing, drinking, whoring and singing, as if the plague had ended just hours ago. Let the good times roll. Death had been defeated.

  Calvino had survived being shot at in Rangoon. But like all survivors, he still felt the cold steel blade of fear in the knowledge that he’d only been lucky, and in the fact that those who hadn’t made it out alive had been near.

  Calvino glanced into a couple of bars like a man on the prowl. Patterson Roy waved, holding a whiskey sour in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He called Calvino over to his bar, Mama, Don’t Call, which had a dozen Isaan dancers who’d slipped their chains in the rice fields but continued to shuffle on stage as if the memory of those restraints had never left them.

  “I thought you’d be back,” said Patterson. “Nui’s inside.”

  He shook his head, tonguing an unlit cigarette.

  “Damn, if she wasn’t right. The girls know when someone’s got the sickness, Calvino.”

  Nui, a twenty-six-year-old from a village near Roi Et, had entered her third month at Mama, Don’t Call and had collected three marriage proposals, two offers to be someone’s mia noi and four opportunities to be a steady girlfriend. She had a poker hand with nine cards and was eyeing one of them, one of the girlfriend customers, when Calvino walked in. Nui finished her lady’s drink, slid off the bar stool and gave the customer a hug. Then she walked over to Calvino and hugged him.

  “I miss you too much, Khun Vinny.”

  With a girl like Nui, if she liked you, she’d throw away a girlfriend card. But then, a girlfriend offer was like drawing the two of diamonds. It wasn’t a card that made for a winning hand. Besides, Nui liked Calvino.

  “You pay bar,” she said.

  Calvino nodded, pulling out his wallet. She waved the thousand baht note over her head and did a little dance for the benefit of her friends seated on the backbench, like hockey players who never got much ice time. Now a high-stick pro, Nui had come a long way in three short months, from high school to a post-doc in what made men tick.

  “You okay tonight?” she asked, pouting her lip as she tried to read his mood in the dim light.

  He looked happy enough, she thought.

  “Never felt better,” he said.

  With that confirmation she hugged him again. Her smile reappeared as she ran his thousand baht note under her nose, closing her eyes and sighing. The scent of cash made her light-headed. But she still hadn’t totally made up her mind. She wanted the money, but she didn’t want trouble. Money. Trouble. The competing ideas circled like vultures as she sipped her lady’s drink.

  “Sure?” she asked, squeezing his hand.

  Calvino’s crooked smile was enough. She squeezed him tight and ran off to change out of her bikini and into her jeans and T-shirt. Patterson Roy slipped onto the stool beside Calvino.

  “Second bar fine in a week. The third bar fine upgrades you to boyfriend class,” he said. “That means you are automatically on the no-fly list for other girls in the soi.”

  Patterson thought of himself as running a luxury private airline in the business of booking private hostesses. When Nui bounced out of the back in her street clothes, the first thing she did was run up to Calvino and wrap her arms around his neck.

  “You still okay?”

  After he nodded, she said, “We go now.”

  “Don’t keep her out too late, son,” said Patterson, winking. “She has school tomorrow.”

  Patterson’s lower lip extended like a rubber soap dish.

  “What are you studying?” Calvino asked her.

  “Facebook 101 and Skype 303,” she said, grinning.

  “She’s nearly earned her master’s degree for Skype financing,” said Patterson, before walking over to another customer.

  They sat in the back of the taxi, and Nui told him how she was thinking of accepting one of the marriage proposals. It was from a German, thirty-two years old, who ran his own import/export business and promised to buy her parents a house and a pickup truck.

  “You’ll like Germany,” said Calvino.

  “You won’t miss Nui?” she asked.

  “We can Skype each other.”

  She liked the sound of that. The rest of the short trip, she showed him pictures of the German, his car, his dog, his house, his mother and father, two sisters, a brother and someone she thought was the German’s uncle. A box of condoms fell from her purse and onto her lap as she shifted through the photos. With a single graceful movement she stuffed the condoms back in without any sign of embarrassment. The problem with boyfriends, thought Calvino, is that they can’t add two and two to see what’s before their eyes. They lie to themselves about what they see and what it means.

  Calvino said, “Why are you marrying the German?”

  “He’s a good man.”

  Gut instinct, stripped clean of doubt.

  Nui knew the layout of Calvino’s condo. After slipping off her high heels, she made for the bathroom, singing to herself. Calvino figured that someone like Nui should be miserable and angry. Instead she was happy—to be out of the bar, to be in a condo rather than a short-time hotel and to be with someone she knew paid well and expected little in return. Calvino’s home was familiar, and she could relax. She took her time in the shower
.

  Calvino waited for her in his sitting room with a glass of wine. When she padded barefoot out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, she spotted him in light reflected from the cityscape outside the long bank of windows. As she’d done at the bar, she wound her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. Unlike at the bar, Calvino’s skin now felt clammy. She rubbed his sweat between her hands and dried them on the side of the towel. He no longer looked like the man who’d bar-fined her. She felt uneasy, frightened by the vacant look in his eyes. He didn’t seem to see her.

  One of the first lessons that a bargirl learns in her job is that once a new customer wants to pay a bar fine, she should ask herself where on the one-to-ten scale of sanity and insanity he belongs. Is she getting into something ugly? After three months Nui had taught herself how to read a customer and decide where he fell on various scales—sane or insane, depressed or happy, stupid or clever, rich or poor. The sanity scale, she’d learnt, was the most important.

  She let the towel fall to the floor and leaned forward, pressing her breasts against his neck, expecting him to turn around and grab her. Instead she felt him trembling against her.

  Nui reached down and picked up the towel and wrapped it around herself.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “Are you sick? Do you need to see a doctor?”

  He inhaled deeply and turned his head slightly toward her.

  “Do you smell the wet ashes?”

  The smell, repugnant and vile, clung to his nostrils, and he tasted it when he swallowed. These weren’t ordinary ashes. He breathed them into his lungs—crematorium ashes that monsoon pellets of rain had made into a fine paste, to remind the living of the nature of fine dust mixed with water.