Bangkok Knights (12 page)

Just then my heart gave a little leap; I heard
“Marrr-velous!” articulated as by a furry oboe, and there was that familiar old
fuzzing and fizzing deep inside.

“Blasted bird ! Auk!” Nixon added in his normal voice.

“You said it,” Eddie replied. Then Lek called and he had
to go inside.

I went over to Nixon and said: “What’s the bottom line?
Eh, Nixon? What’s the bottom line? Cmon. What’s the bottom line?”

“Auk!” he answered, somewhat enigmatically.

There was a sudden sharp report like a gunshot, as the
minivan we had come in backfired and left. I winced, and winced again as the
boat motor started up, the boatman racing the big engine, impatient to be gone.

We piled into the long-tail boat off the old wooden pier,
the six of us. Bags and backpacks had already been stowed under a tarp up in
the bow. Mr. Macho was still going on about white-water canoeing in Canada. Heady adventure it was, real hot stuff. Exactly what I needed, what with a whole
two hours sleep behind me, and what with feeling as though somebody had just
shot Dead Man’s Rapids using my skull for a boat. Mekhong — Thai whiskey — is
okay if you mix it with lots of soda and ice. It’s okay, that is, as long as
you don’t drink too much of it. And as long as you don’t first lay down a few
large Singha beers as a foundation for the whiskey.

“Oh, yeah. No problem. As steady as a church, is this
boat.” Mr. Macho felt it was incumbent on him to reassure the ladies. Maybe me
too, since an innocent bystander could’ve been forgiven for thinking I was
sea-sick even though the boat wasn’ t moving yet.

About thirty-five feet long and narrow, gaily painted
yellow, orange, and blue, the craft swept up to a high pointed wooden prow, the
beak of some exotic river bird out of Thai mythology. In the stern, where the
boatman sat on a raised bench to one side holding the tiller, there was a
diesel truck engine mounted at an angle, the long steel propeller shaft
trailing behind. Engine and prop could be tilted and swung with ease when it
was necessary to clear floating water hyacinth or other obstructions. The
long-tail boats on the Chao Phraya River, back in Bangkok, were usually covered
with canvas awnings which ran their length; this one, however, was open. Great,
I thought, looking up, going glower to glower against the dark monsoon sky:
five hours in an open boat in the rainy season with a gargantuan hangover. And
Mr. Macho.

Besides Mr. Macho, the Australian world traveler, there
were two girls in their twenties, a married couple from the States, and me.
Everyone except the boatman and myself were on vacation. The boatman, of
course, was driving the boat, while I was mostly wishing I was back in
Chiangmai sleeping off the previous night’s indiscretions. But I’d had some
time and I’d booked this boat-ride on the River Kok, figuring I could get some
extra local color en route to my appointment next day. I was going to talk to
people in a hamlet on the Mekong, near where the borders of Laos, Burma, and Thailand came together. Khun Sa, the notorious opium warlord and commander of the
so-called Shan State Army, had reportedly put prices on the heads of Americans
and their dependents living in Chiangmai — at least on those in any way
connected with drug enforcement Thai officials, with the help of American
agents, had just grabbed off about half a ton of best quality No.4 heroin, and
Khun Sa was unhappy. Money aside, there was the small matter of face; the
authorities had done some amount of crowing in public about their big bust, and
the local papers were full of it. So I was in the Golden Triangle to get some
background for a story I wanted to write. A story I
had
wanted to write.
Just at that moment I didn’t want to do anything except maybe toss lunch over
the side and then sleep for a week. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t have minded
seeing Mr. Macho get eaten by a crocodile as well, before I went to sleep, but
I guessed crocodiles were pretty rare items in these waters, these days.

It seemed we were to travel in convoy. Another long-tail
boat, more crowded than ours, was loaded and ready to go. They angled out into
the current first, taking the lead. I noticed they had an armed and uniformed
guard riding shotgun, but if he was meant to reassure us, I didn’t find it very
reassuring. Why wasn’t there another soldier in
our
boat? Anyway, if we
ran into bandits, there were going to be more than one of them, and you could
bet they wouldn’ t be carrying what looked to me at a distance like a WW
II-vintage M-2 rifle. They’d come much better equipped than that. Realistically
speaking, of course, there was a very small chance of any such encounter. But
there you had it—hangovers always made me morbid.

I didn’t bruit these thoughts about, and no one would’ve
heard me if I had, sprawled the way I was in the bottom of the boat down by the
boatman on a sheet of polyethylene, cocooned in the racket from the engine. The
other passengers were up near the bow, to all appearances engrossed in each
other’s company. Mr. Macho was evidently still the center of things, much as he
had been on the bus. He was all extravagant gesture, tanned skin, and laughing
white teeth. In part, he was attired in the standard uniform of a
Southeast-Asian backpack traveler: baggy cotton trousers, probably from India, and an embroidered Shan State shoulder bag. On top, however, next to his bare skin, he wore a
studded leather vest which you would’ve thought was extremely uncomfortable in
that weather. In a final triumph of style over comfort, he sported lizard-skin
boots with a boot knife in a hidden sheath. He’d pulled the knife, with studied
nonchalance, when one of the girls had had to cut a thong on her pack. He also
wore aviator sunglasses with mirrored lenses.

“Well, yeah; I was traveling with this German sheila,”
he’d told the ladies on the bus, “but I left her in Kathmandu.” The way he said
this, he wanted you to know he’d left a lot of sheilas in a lot of far-out
places, and probably most of them were still combing the world trying to find
him again.

Oh, yeah, he’d been into Burma overland from Thailand with a laisser-passer from an insurgent army; he’d been white-water canoeing in Canada; he’d lived with the estranged wife of an Italian czar of industry, floating about
the ‘Med’ on a fifty-foot motor yacht until it turned out there was no more
money for fuel and his ladyfriend was going to be broke flatter than the dregs
of yesterday’s beer until she got her divorce, but he wasn’t going to hang
around when there was so much world out there, so many things to do. Too right,
he’d said, sliding his newly-polished sunglasses back on with both hands and
grinning in the way healthy young adventurers grin when they are impressing
young ladies. Or maybe I just envied him his vitality, that muggy grey day in
August.

“Been there, done that,” Wife had said admiringly.

“How many times have you had the clap?” asked the Libber.
The Libber was at least as fascinated with Mr. Macho as were Wife and the
Braless Wonder, the Libber’s Scottish traveling companion. Only her interest,
she’d have had you believe, was less admiring, perhaps more that of the
entomologist confronted with an intriguing species of insect.

The lad’s peregrinatory accomplishments were inspiring an
entirely ingenuous wonder in BW, on the other hand. Actually, if Ihadn’t been
lying in the bilge waiting to die, I might well have been led into a contest of
checkered histories, BW was that tempting a morsel of maidenly charm, what with
her dewy golden skin and nipples sticking out everywhere. This was not even to
mention the arm-holes in her tank-top, teasing windows on a fine musky world of
heavy swells and smooth curves. And there were her beautiful big gray eyes, as
well, great pools of willingness-to-believe-anything you wanted to drown
yourself in.

No matter how much Wife had lavished admiration on Mr.
Macho, Husband had talked with quiet enthusiasm of photography the whole way to
the boat landing. He’d seemed to direct his conversation to the assembly at
large, though I’d been the only one who’d even pretended to listen.

“I have just the one lens,” he’d said, at least twice.
“This is it, you see; it’s a 35-200 mm. That’s all the range you need for
handheld photography. Any more than 200 mm., you should have a tripod. Of
course, sometimes I could wish I had a wider angle, but...”

“Did you hear that, dear? Wife had interrupted. “Our
friend has been to China; he went in through Tibet. Isn’t that something?”

Husband had nodded. “We could’ve gone to China, sweetheart,” he said in mild tones, “but you didn’ t want to. You said it was still too
uncomfortable to travel there. Too primitive.”

He’d turned back to me and gone on: “Of course a zoom
doesn’t really give you first-class images, but it’s plenty good enough for
most purposes.”

“No, no,” Mr. Macho was protesting, taking off his
sunglasses so the Libber could see how big and round and honest his eyes were.
“She wasn’t a prostitute. A hooker? Oh, no. This was
China
.
This
sheila was a government official. But still and all, if we’d been caught at
it... This was China, you know.”

“And it’s a bit slow,” Husband went on. “All zooms are
slower than your fixed focal-length lenses, of course. But no problem.” He
rummaged in a bulging pocket on his camera bag, pulling out boxes of film.
“See? 200 ASA. 400 ASA. With the fast films, these days, you can get good color
saturation, very adequate resolution even at 400 ASA. In this kind of overcast,
this rainy-season weather like today, you have to use at least 200 ASA film if
you want results with a zoom lens. At longer focal lengths, anyway.”

Husband’s camera was in his lap, the strap around his
neck. He held the erect zoom in one hand as he dabbed and blew at the lens.

Wife, whom I would’ve sworn hadn’t been listening at all,
had cut in with, “Two-hundred ASA, schmoo-hundred ASA. It all comes out the
same, once my husband gets his hands on it. He carries that big bag around and
spends all that money for what? I tell him he’d do better to buy a little
automatic like yours.” She looked at Mr. Macho.

“Idiot-proof?” suggested the Libber, with a sweet smile
for the Australian hunk.

“What kind of boat is it going to be?” BW had asked Mr.
Macho. “I hope it’s safe; I’m not a very good swimmer. Have you been on this
trip before?”

No, he had not, Mr. Macho had disclaimed modesty, but he
had been white-water canoeing in Canada, and he proceeded to tell us about this
at length.

And now we were on the river. I tried closing my eyes and
resting my head against the hull. The vibration from the motor rattled my teeth
and kind of distracted me from my despair for a while, but I didn’t really
sleep. A fine drizzle had been falling for some minutes, cooling my fevered
brow. Opening my eyes, I was greeted with the sight of Husband and Wife in
hooded rubber jackets. Who, I asked myself, would travel in the tropics with
rubber anoraks? Husband and Wife, obviously, for there they were. But it would
be hotter and wetter inside the jackets than it was outside. I broke into a
sweat just thinking about it. Prepared for anything, was Husband. Earlier, I ‘d
noticed a combination digital watch-compass on his wrist I bet myself he’d been
a Boy Scout.

From my vantage point in the bottom of the boat, all I
could see were the tops of jungled hills going by on either side. My companions
evidently were finding much to comment on, however; I could see them pointing
and jawing away excitedly from time to time. All I wanted to know about was if
someone spotted a nice hotel with a nice dry bed. You could’ ve kept your herds
of elephants or hill tribe villages or whatever it was that was enjoying
everyone’ s attention.

The miserable, muggy overcast weighed heavy, together with
the assorted physical and psychical vestiges of the previous night’s booze-up.
When I thought about bandit attacks, for example, or when I felt the passing
urge to engage Mr. Macho in some duel of words, I experienced mild flashes of
dread, rather like the premonition I’d had the night before when I’d switched
from beer to Mekhong. I wanted to be out of the boat, on the road or, even
better, in a hotel. Asleep. I’d already had enough of this ship of fools, our
impassive boatman at the tiller, director of our destiny along this wild and
remote stream, around this bend and the next one, our fate in his hands and the
river’s for hours to come. I had the feeling, mind you, that if I could sleep
for even a few minutes, all this would pass, and I would start to enjoy the
trip, like I was supposed to.

As I was musing thusly, I was seized by a sudden surge of
alarm at the sight of the Libber getting up and charging towards me.

In fact, she was only clambering back to stand over me and
scream at the boatman. He clearly didn’t understand, or couldn’t hear, a thing
she said, but she kept jabbing a finger at the shore, her whole manner
proclaiming a call of nature which demanded an answer without much delay. The
engine throttled down and we put in to a spot where a little stream tributary
trickled down through a cut in the steep bushy bank. What an excellent place
for an ambush, I thought

Silence bellowed as the boatman switched off the diesel; I
felt suddenly exposed, vulnerable, my comfortable shell of high-decibel sound
gone. I sat up and stretched. It occurred to me I could use a leak, myself, and
I tottered up to the bow to drop down onto the sand.

“Are there any snakes?” Wife asked Mr. Macho.

“You just be sure you shuffle your feet along — make lots
of noise. Snakes are more afraid of you than you are of them.”

“There was a beautiful snake in the shower at this
bungalow we stayed in down south,” said BW. “Really brightly colored. A lovely
pattern.”

“I killed it with a stick,” said the Libber.