A Haunting Smile Read online

  A few minutes later he was gone, down the stairs, out the small courtyard and into the street. She had turned her head and curled up under a sheet. Neither one said goodbye.

  He walked through Banglamphu, carrying his collapsible kayak and gear. He had willed himself out the door, against the instincts of his blood and some deeper pulse which would anchor him to Dee’s side forever. There was an old joke at HQ—the all-night joint on Sukhumvit where Tuttle was a regular—about experiencing a coyote morning. Like a coyote with its leg caught in a steel trap, the punter wakes up with a terrible hangover and finds a old, over-weight, dragon-lady he can’t remember dragging out of HQ and can’t remember anyone else ever taking, sleeping on his arm, trapping him under layers of upper arm blubber, exhaling her garlic fumes in his face, giving him the choice of waking her and making love or chewing his arm off and slipping away. What wasn’t a joke, was to chew off some vital part of oneself held within a woman as beautiful and soft and loving as the laughter of children at play. Why was he in the street? Because of an ideal. Because of a conversation—more a confrontation than a conversation with an American DJ named Denny Addison who had struck him dead center. Without a connection with the brutal, the distorted, and deprived—without touching the margins, living on the outside, the circumstances of life would never reveal themselves for what they truly were. Innocence and sentiment appeared like children’s tender, rising voices outside a room where a candle burned. What those little cries of delight masked were the traps waiting. How many lives over how many generations had fallen through this void, thinking the embrace would break the fall? Something was waiting to change his life; river people waited for him in Nan Province. Each time he made a journey, he thought of the people living lives unconnected with his own, and how soon they would touch, and nothing would ever be the same again. This adventure of discovery of some life beyond his own, a life which would collide and forever change his own, was enough for him to extinguish the altar candle, roll up his bamboo mat, and, listening to her curses in silence, close the door and walk down the stairs.

  There was that gong again.

  The children’s voices didn’t follow. Perhaps they were asleep now, or running off to another hideaway where their games couldn’t be detected. He walked around the corner and found a taxi to take him to the train station. On the way, he remembered something Harry Purcell had said.

  Purcell, a gun-runner, from a family of gun-runners, had told Tuttle the lesson of life was threefold, “First sacrifice comfort, then blow up the bridges of familiarity, and finally detonate all bunkers of respectability. Once the sky clears from the dust and shards of metal, glass and stone and all that hate, fear, and curses of betrayal drain away, you can invent a new beginning. Once you have that chance, you are one up. Who in life takes the chance to invent a new life? I sell guns to people who put these inventors of life against a wall. They stuff a cigar in their mouth. Not a Havana but a cigar nevertheless. Next comes the blindfold and the signal to the squad. It’s over like that. You feel nothing, I’m told. The generals admire such courage. They envy it, and what you envy you ultimately fear and hate. And it is a short step to believing this object of hatred is a monster out to destroy the security of the nation. The generals wear their uniforms, issue their orders, and buy their weapons waiting for the day when they have to destroy men like you. Nothing personal. My family are like middle men between the generals and their targets. You’ve got bull’s eye written all over you. Take a chance, Tuttle. Give yourself a nice, long head start. Who knows how far you may get before some major lowers his sword as you stand before the wall?” Purcell grinned widely, lighting a Havana cigar, his Zippo lighter shooting a tongue of flame into the air.

  2

  THE UNEXPECTED ANSWER

  A Denny Addison Documentary Film

  Running time: 46 minutes

  Black and White

  THE SCREEN CREDITS roll—Director & Writer & Director of Photography & Editor—Denny Addison. The film is a grainy black and white in the style of the 40s film noir.

  The camera angle reveals a female form stripped to the waist before a full length mirror. She stands facing the mirror, touching her nipples with long, slender fingers, the nails painted. Her name is Meow. She twirls a wet Q-tip into a plastic cup and slowly works the wet end of the Q-tip over an erect nipple. The size 36” breasts are smooth, firm, and large; breasts which appear sculptured, a little too perfect—not objects that have come straight from the manufacturer but objects that have been modified substantially once the model left the showroom, and then daily polished with hot wax. She wears an ordinary expression as if she were putting on make-up.

  “Instead of studying English tonight, you’re going to work?” asks a male voice off camera. Asanee’s naked upper body moves into the frame.

  Meow glances up, finding Asanee’s face and breasts filling the mirror, and smiles. Their eyes lock like cats on a roof, backs raised, then the spell is broken as Meow licks her lips, shrugs, breaks the eye contact.

  “I go make business,” says Meow, dipping the other end of the Q-tip into the solution and dabbing her other nipple. The cotton end of the Q-tip moves deftly. She blows on her nipple until the glistening surface dries to a dull bone-dry invisible patch. The nipples are in working condition, that is crucial.

  “Do you tell customers that you are a katoey ?” asks the male voice.

  Meow laughs. “Of course not. Maybe you think I’m ashamed. But that isn’t the reason. I tell man I was born a man, too, then change to woman. Farang don’t like. They will not take you if you say katoey.” She stares directly into the camera, sticking out her tongue and turning her face into an evil mask of lust. “You make film of what I say and my face. Maybe you show the police. And police catch Meow.” She returns to the mirror and her Q-tip ritual.

  “Are you afraid of the police?” asks the male voice.

  “I no like the police,” she says. “Asanee show herself. She your girlfriend. So maybe I’m not too afraid. You hurt yourself if you show film to police.”

  “Do you like men?”

  “I love men.” Her eyes sparkle.

  “What do you love about them?” asks the off-camera voice.

  “Their money,” whispers the katoey.

  “Is that why you rob them?”

  “Who say I rob man?”

  There is a long silence as the camera continues to roll.

  Asanee breaks the silence.

  “The Q-tip is dipped in an Upjohn tranquilizer,” Asanee says.

  “I think I have nice tits,” says Meow. “Farang men like them very much. They tell me, Meow your tits very beautiful. I say thank you. You want to touch them? Can. You want to go with me? Can.”

  “Where do you take men?” asks the male voice.

  “Short-time hotel near Patpong.”

  “Tell me what it’s like,” says the male voice.

  Meow sets her jaw, looks over at Asanee and then over her shoulder and into the camera. She brushes her painted fingernails over what one imagines—the film is black and white—are dusky-colored nipples which, falling along the spectrum from black to white come out a kind of washed-out gray.

  “I sit on the bed. Farang he sit beside me. I say, you can touch them. It’s okay. Then he touch me. Then I say, you can lick them. It’s okay. I think you like to lick them a long time. His tongue touches here. And then here. I know five, ten minutes he fall asleep. Pass out like he’s very drunk.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I take his watch. Rolex is very good if not a fake. He have a gold chain, I take. I want his money. All of it. Baht, dollars, pounds. Sometimes a customer has traveller’s cheques and credit cards. I take them, too. Farang make it very easy. They keep everything in one place—a money belt. One-stop shopping, my friend say. She make a joke. She say, I ever meet this Upjohn, I thank him for making this drug.”

  The camera never moves from a fixed location. And Meow and Asanee slowly move arou
nd the room like sleep walkers, sometimes moving off camera, then reappearing.

  “But if you studied English you could get a real job,” says Asanee. “You wouldn’t have to sell yourself.”

  “I have a real job,” says Meow. “I like my work.” She purses her lips into a pout in the mirror.

  “Do katoeys believe in democracy?” asks Asanee.

  “Bet your sweet ass we do. I vote to cut off my cock. Hold election one time. Then no need to vote anymore,” she says.

  “What you do is a crime.”

  The katoey raises an eyebrow. “I don’t think so. We are a poor country. Farang very rich people. They come to our country for boom boom. Isn’t that a crime in their country? So why everyone say we are bad? No one make farang come here. No one tell farang go to hotel with girl. No one tell your boyfriend with camera to make this film. He decide. It’s up to him.”

  Asanee does not respond and lights a cigarette, tilting her head, her forearm covering her exposed breasts, the elbow of her other hand resting on it. She lets the smoke curl from her nose and mouth.

  “Denny, I’ve had enough of this shit. I want to stop,” says Asanee, looking at the camera.

  “Are you bored?” asks the male voice.

  “I’m not in the mood,” replies Asanee.

  “What are you feeling?” asks the male voice.

  “Hungry, tired, bored. I want to sleep. We’ve been doing this for hours. Can’t we stop?” asks Asanee.

  There is total silence. The katoey combs her long, black hair, pursing her lips in the mirror.

  “You want to know how I do it?” asks Meow.

  “Not really,” says Asanee.

  “You’re lying,” says Meow.

  She cups her left breast in her hands and offers the upright nipple to the mirror. She makes another face, pouting lips, eyes half-closed in simulated pleasure. She turns back to face the camera. “Like this. With a little music and wine. I know enough English. Isn’t that clear?”

  The camera freezes on her. She slowly lowers her head, her long tongue darts from her mouth like a snake. She hisses, her tongue coming within striking distance of her own drug-painted nipple. “Then I say, oh, you look tired. Maybe you sleep a little first. No problem, Meow wait you. Listen to music. Farang have tired eyes like Asanee,” says Meow, looking into the camera.

  Asanee storms off camera, cursing, and there is a sound of a door slamming off camera.

  “Your girlfriend go away. I think she’s pissed off. But I think she come back. Because you tell her it just a movie about Meow that make her a little crazy. She want to be a star. All ladies want to be star like Madonna. When you a big star other lady jealous. They want to cut you. Make you pain.”

  “Why are they jealous?” asks the male voice.

  “Movie star has a lot of money. When you have money you can do whatever you want. No one can stop you. You can make a man do this, and he do that. He have no choice. Because he know Meow have power. When you have power people fear you. I want people to fear me. When you make fear you can have anything you want. No one can say no to you. Everyone want you. So I go with many men. Like a movie star. I take whatever I want.”

  The voice-over resumes:

  “Meow is one among a half-dozen katoeys enrolled in an English language school in Bangkok. She never feels guilty because her English is poor. During the day when she feels like it she goes to the school and studies English. If she improves her English, she feels more confident hustling men. But she is easily distracted. Her real interest lies in the fine art of tranquilizer concealment. Her knowledge of drugs has given her a high standard of living. She knows she could never work a regular job. Meow knows what it takes to gain the high ground. To make people fear her.”

  The film ends with Meow using a Q-tip on her nipple, pouting her lips and making long, sustained groans.

  “When you have power people fear you. I want people to fear me. When you make fear you can have anything you want. No one can say no to you.”

  This last line of Meow’s speech is repeated in an echo chamber.

  “No one can say no to you.”

  3

  DENNY ADDISON’S DOCUMANTARY film about the katoey won an award at a small independent film festival in Mexico City. What his film failed to disclose in the credits was a piece of vital information: that the location of the shoot was Robert Tuttle’s English language school in Bangkok. Meow was a student at the school. Asanee was Tuttle’s daughter, and she had been living with Addison for nearly one year. And Addison had not received the permission of Tuttle or anyone else at the school to shoot this film. He talked Asanee into his scheme. On a Sunday afternoon, Tuttle turned up at Asanee’s apartment.

  “Denny’s not here. He’s out on location,” said Asanee.

  Tuttle sat on the sofa, holding a glass of cold water. On the table was a golden reel inscribed with Addison’s name for best short black and white film—The Unexpected Answer. The gold paint had peeled off at the base of the statue, making the golden reel look like a derelict ferris wheel abandoned in a field of high weeds.

  On the black walls of the apartment hung hand-painted wooden masks, movie posters, framed out-takes from several of Addison’s documentary films, including one of Asanee stripped naked to the waist. Addison’s collection of tank shell casings had paper flowers drooping over the side; his other war collections included military handbooks, flight manuals, flight helmets, shoulder holsters. Piled on the floor were art books about Asia and sex magazines from all over the world.

  Tuttle stared at the photograph of Asanee on the wall.

  “You don’t mind that Addison shows this picture?” asked Tuttle.

  “You asked me before.”

  “A spontaneous narrative image. That’s Addison’s explanation. I keep waiting for an answer that makes sense. All I see is a naked picture of my daughter,” said Tuttle.

  She rolled her eyes and tried to control her anger.

  “Let’s not get into this again. We just end up fighting about nothing. And we are never going to agree. I know you don’t like Denny’s work. But he thinks you’re jealous of his art. His success.”

  Tuttle set down his glass of water.

  “I don’t understand how holding a camera on a katoey and his girlfriend and rapping about drugs, sex and rock ’n roll is art. He’s done nothing original. He points a camera and calls himself an artist. He convinced you to strip before a camera.”

  “You wrote about me. And let the world know I worked as a bar girl. Wasn’t that exploitation?”

  “It was a story. Denny wouldn’t know a story if it hit him in the face.”

  “He’s interested in situations. Reality. Not fiction. People want to relate to the real world. Your generation just doesn’t get it. Denny’s art is for young people. Young people like to watch situations. They get off on seeing reactions to situations. Stories are old-fashioned. They don’t entertain people. They’re boring. He said, she said. Blah, blah. No one cares in the real world what they said or think. Denny says, they take too long to read. Reading is so artificial. You can’t see the action, you only see words. Besides it’s all made up in the writer’s head. Denny says he doesn’t know anyone who’s into taking the time to read a whole book. Like he says, you have to remember someone did this on page 10 and something else on page 84. It’s a drag. But when you film situations, just let it happen naturally, you don’t get lost. You can see what’s happening—the faces, the emotions—and hear the voices. You feel what you see. Not that Denny doesn’t respect you. He’s read some of your stories.”

  He was listening to his daughter begin sentence after sentence with “Denny says,” and wondering if he could ever rescue his daughter from herself.

  “Denny has it all figured out. Every answer,” said Tuttle.

  “That’s not really fair. But he’s right about one thing.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’ve been in Thailand all these years and maybe you’ve
stopped being curious. Going out and making new situations. Denny says the art is in selection. By choosing me, he made an artistic choice. You hang out at the school or at HQ. Fine. No big deal. But don’t you ever want to try something new? Challenge yourself?”

  4

  AS TUTTLE HUDDLED in his kayak on the Nan River, tongues of fire streaked across the sky, winds boiled the surface of the water, spreading small white, wakes against the bow. Tuttle was unshaven, his nerves all jingling and jangling like an HQ regular who’s gone riding bareback, rolling back afterwards as if he had ducked out of a cowboy gathering around a campfire; all worried about whether he had climbed onto an HIV-positive pony. Tuttle’s face matched the grayish mask—the kind worn by cowboys who didn’t saddle up the HQ Termites before climbing on and going hell bent for leather into the night. From his face, Tuttle might have been a john glossy-eyed after a long, wet suck on a tranquilized nipple. As he watched the flames, he wondered if he’d ever see Bangkok again. He closed his eyes, extinguishing the flame and in his mind’s eye saw a group of regulars sitting with the hardcore at HQ. Sex had become an angry, nightmarish last round-up and HQ the last corral. The old-time riders let their booze talk about how they wanted to die with their boots on and their gun blazing. HQ sexual talk had gone wild west. The girls kept their cool; they were pros who showed a little pink gum, some uneven teeth, the color of their skin never turned gun-metal gray. Katoeys for instance—who were neither girls nor boys—maintained their color consistency even with sleep-inducing drugs smeared on their nipples. Gray was the color of desperation. No one ever sucked gray because it evoked a repellent death image.

  Tuttle’s legs had gone numb in his kayak, and he was thinking this was how death prepared the body for the final exit. Here was where it would end, he thought. Waiting to be killed and what thoughts were in his mind? Not self-pity, fear, or resignation, but Addison’s damn film and the last wish for one more night at HQ. Addison had summed up the main message of the documentary as: Never stick anything foreign into your mouth without a lab report clearing the way. Life had come to this point where he was drawing on this kind of wisdom. A cold chill found the center of his back and hiked up to his neck like an insect with electric feet. Tuttle’s legs felt cramped as if the blood no longer flown in or out; a couple of stumps attached to his ass.