Escape (23 page)

The band was playing the final chords of ‘Yes sir, I Can Boogie’ when I arrived for the beauty contest. Two dozen ladyboys from Building One were in the finals for Miss Klong Prem. Curiously most of these transvestites were dressed in a modest and old-fashioned style: long dresses of heavy silk with imitation pearls and fulgent rouge highlights on their cheeks. Those few among them dressed as tarts in leather miniskirts were quickly eliminated. It seems prisons everywhere hold the custodians of conservative and prudish views.

At the edge of the stage I found Australian Brian Wittol who had accompanied his Thai wife to the contest. Brian was disappointed that his Butterfly had been struck from the ranks.

‘I knew I shouldn’t have let her enter.’ Brian shook his head as tearful Butterfly McQueen fled the stage. ‘But what can you do? A fellah has to let his woman have a day out.’

Brian’s compatriot, Martin Sallowface, was also visiting Building Six for the show and had never before seen the cream of KP’s ladyboys. He seemed disappointed.

‘Can’t see what all the fuss is about. Pretty fugly bunch. Lucky if they can earn a crust over there.’ Martin was referring to the tent city within Building One where the
kathoeys
and the near-enoughs entertained their gentlemen callers.

Brian’s grip tightened on Butterfly’s make-up bag as he whispered to me, ‘He’s just jealous ’cos me wife’s had the full cut.’ Brian then jerked his head toward the remaining contestants. ‘They’re jealous too, the nobheads. That’s why they wouldn’t let her win.’ Despite what some saw as a risky leisure pursuit, Brian was the healthiest of the Australians at the time, perhaps because he was at least enthusiastic about something.

I left the hall just as the winner was announced. This particularly tall girl cried as she held her flowers. Her Adam’s apple trembled and badly sewn sequins rained at her feet. ‘I never expected—I’m so proud of my friends.’ She threw her bouquet to her supporters with such heartfelt force, they ducked instinctively.

My old office and factory was completely deserted when I brought my new key into the daylight. I glued the two halves of the glass key together with fast-setting epoxy resin using the tip impression as a guide to width. There was still time with the festive distractions to compare this resin master with the original upstairs in the block. I did and I saw that it was good. With that done I made three copies, two of which were embedded with metal strips for strength.

The following week Pornvid returned from lunch with a packet of expensive X-ray film. He sent the film to our office to avoid any discussion of change from the money I’d given that morning.

‘Photos of family?’Arib asked as he carefully lowered the yellow box to my desk.

‘I hope not,’ I said, wondering if I could save some of the film for the forthcoming solar eclipse. ‘Arib, go get me a blue-shirt, please.’ I meant a trusty as I would need an escort beyond Building Six.

I was taken through the inner wall to the AIDS hospice for my X-ray in search of kidney stones. Beyond the hospice another wall separated Building Ten and yet another before the outer western wall. My escort had stopped to speak with another trusty at Building Five where he collected half an ounce of heroin for the AIDS-ward trusty. There were not many patients there who could afford pain relief or oblivion as the dope prices at the hospice were beyond the means of most families. Morphine was never officially prescribed due to concerns of addiction. Over 400 inmates were dying in this building yet the wards and corridors were quiet. Moans and sighs subdued or repressed. To Western eyes Thais approached death with great decorum.

As I’d expected, the X-ray room had no other patients and little space for any as the ancient machine took the volume of a cold-war computer. The trusty-operator threw monstrous switches, twisted plate-sized dials and then hid behind a narrow and useless screen as the behemoth sucked power from tangled cables knotted through the window bars.

‘You’re the radiographer?’ I asked.

‘Yes, sir. Ten years, sir.’

‘Ten years’ training?’

‘No, sir. Ten years Klong Prem.’

When the radiographer disappeared to develop the film, I took in the view from the X-ray room. A direct path from Building Six would mean crossing a field and garden with two watch posts. I could not imagine those huts being occupied at night. A trusty manned the AIDS-hospice gate and since the moment my escort trusty had left to take tea with his fellow blue-shirt, I’d heard no sound other than the footsteps of my radiographer.

When the operator returned with the large sheets of developed film, I quizzed him on the use of heroin in his ward.

‘I suppose it makes it easier for them,’ I suggested.

The trusty paused in thought and then answered, ‘I understand but I don’t like it. It makes them live longer.’

As I sat at my desk, frowning at tiny abdominal ghosts on the X-ray plates, Jet delivered a letter from English Martyn. It was, in part, his report on the state of the foreigners in Building Two.

‘…
somehow the fact that they have separate huts built by nationality has made them more resigned to their fate. Even within these groups of expatriates there is no cohesion. I don’t think that it’s the tropical heat or mere apathy but the drain of continual self-regard.

You’ll find no serious recruits here; embassies hold out hope, you see. Honestly I think most of us are better off in this madness that in our Western prisons. At home even drug crime is seen as pathological. There would be demands for behaviour-modifying therapies, educational courses to address one’s offending behaviour. Everyone would hate it and especially so for being locked up by our own people …

Some visitors had arrived at the office. I folded Martyn’s letter at:

‘I have something for you. Try to visit when you can.’

Before me stood the two new Chinese–Thai owners of the coffee shop, friends of Charlie Lao. Between them stood a small Chinese boy who appeared not more than twelve years old. The boy had wide eyes and a face of immaculate skin as if painted in ivory emulsion with the brush dipped too deep. Spotless except for a freshly blackened eye and a yellow highlight on his cheekbone.

After Arib and Jet had found chairs for my guests I sent the servants away, which peeved them, and began making tea.

‘I have a fine wedding cake from Sri Lanka,’ I offered. ‘I’ve been waiting for a good moment. You might find it too rich and the rosewater scent can be a bit overpowering.’

We three then made polite enquiries about the state of our respective affairs. Not before I’d served the tea and cake were the problems of the boy introduced.

‘He comes from a good family but they are not rich,’ began the elder. ‘We didn’t know he was in Building Six until this morning. But Qing only spent one night with the others. We think they—the Superintendent and his people—did not want to tell us.’

‘Did the blue-shirts keep him in their cell?’ I was wondering whose interests were in play.

‘No, they found a place for him with one of their friends. Some big men.’

‘I see. How can I help?’

My visitors then relaxed. ‘We will certainly take the boy to our room but for one or two days that will not be possible.’ The older man looked at his cake cubes. ‘We are too full. But we will fix that. One or two days.’

This meant that the chief was asking for biggish money for the room change and that the coffee-shop owners were stalling. Rightly so, for they already paid the chief THB200,000 each month. As well, my all-seeing Chinese friends knew that Bruce the Pakistani would be released from our cell that night. I put down my cup and wiped my hands with a paper serviette.

‘Qing is welcome in my cell. For as long as necessary. No harm will come to him.’

A sorrowful tone of enquiry formed around the elder’s next words. ‘You may have some difficulty with the ledger-keepers.’

I waved such concerns away. ‘Pornvid is the accommodation guard. The chief leaves every day at three to beat the traffic. Send Qing to Jet at four.’

My guests soon left after paying compliments to Dinger the cat who sat on my desk like a furry blotter. I was pleased to make an accommodation to these influential friends and flattered that they’d never hinted at money.

‘Well, how about that, Ding?’ I spoke to the cat. ‘We’ll not allow them varmints to get to the kid. Raise that paw of yourn and I’ll swear you in as deputy.’

However, I meant it.

That night Rick, Theo, Bruce and I were already in #57 as Sten arrived with Jet and tiny Qing. The little ones were carrying extra containers of food and an icebox of drinks.

‘Blow-Job’s made us some kind of feast tonight.’ Sten threw some towels on this bed. ‘I didn’t ask him to.’ Sten then gave Bruce a lightly disguised sarcastic grin. ‘Maybe it’s a sendoff for you.’

‘Is that so, Jet?’ I asked. ‘A surprise for mister Bruce?’

Jet burst into derisory laughter. ‘Absolutely, my teacher.’ He then ushered Qing into our room.

Sten directed traffic. ‘Jet, you take Bruce’s place when he goes later. Qing can go next to you.’

Jet put down his tins and whispered to me excitedly, ‘He’s beautiful. Like a little girl!’

Sten overheard. ‘And Jet, you can keep your filthy paws off him, you dammed giggling little pervert!’

So we settled and ate and toasted Bruce’s good fortune in an evil world and Bruce gave thanks. Although Bruce provided explanations—earlier promises, cultural loyalties—as to why he could not bequeath his prison riches (radio, bedding), we had doubts. Bruce was freed after eight that evening. His sentence of seven years was comparatively light since drugging and robbing people on trains was something done to poor people.

With Bruce gone Jet turned to making Qing comfortable and Rick and Theo turned to arguing about drug law. In this I had no interest but had heard much over the long nights. The opinions of lawbreakers about drugs usually followed the chemical composition of their most recent convictions.

English Rick was a cannabis man and so felt a moral superiority to those whose chemicals had passed through a laboratory. As most of us do, Rick believed that everything produced on a farm is good. ‘It’s natural,’ he’d insist. ‘Grows wild. Doesn’t make people do bad things.’

Sten argued that the drug problem didn’t really amount to much. ‘If the addictions caused any problem—I mean real problem like influenza or madness—then legalising it would have been tried. It’s all a con. They do what they do because they can.’

Martyn had once said that the drug war was the new Puritanism: ‘the fear that someone, somewhere is not only happy but can switch it on and off.’ Martyn noted that no new drugs were developed simply for pleasure; that any drug that had no other purpose than recreational pleasure would be outlawed, regardless of its safety. He would go further to say that nature encouraged a level of misery and physical discomfort, ‘perhaps this unhappy normal state provided the ruthlessness needed for survival’ and so underscores self-denial.

Theo made the usual comparisons with alcohol. ‘Would you condemn champagne just because you see some disgusting wino vomiting at a railway station?’ As for the law, Theo saw a paradox in sentences. Many countries applied the same sentences to drug traffickers as to murderers. ‘But there is now serious talk of legalising drugs, which is good. No one would compare that to legalising murder. And here the sentences are saying just that!’

None of these ideas mattered in law, according to Sten that night. ‘Whether the law’s right or wrong, we know what it is. It’s no use moaning.’ He took another plug of his
snus
, a tobacco snuff. ‘A lot of people realise that blasphemy laws are an old joke but if you burn a stack of Korans on a Tehran street corner, you can’t say the reaction was unexpected. When the rag-heads chop your head off the issue of the law being right or wrong doesn’t matter any more over there than here.’

I had to agree with Sten and said something about practicalities: that no-nonsense scofflaws cannot waste time arguing the rationality of laws. Rick, wanting to separate himself from the criminals, asked of me, ‘Surely you see a difference between selling weed and smack?’

After twenty years in the trade, sitting around chewing over the merits of drug law had become too heavy a meal. To Rick I replied:

‘I like the drug business because I’m a lazy slob. Anything that interferes with eating or sleeping is hard work. With dope, the talk is kept to a minimum and the meetings brief in case the enemy is watching. The health regulations form just one line. No industry watchdog. Industry standards are nicely reviewed at each meeting. So if I buy the best stuff I can’t go wrong. While governments keep it illegal they keep the prices high. No matter how mindless or self-serving the policy it suits me. What’s more, as soon as possible my customers eat the evidence. And if I work more than an hour a day, it means I must be stuck in traffic.’

Rick wasn’t satisfied. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t think any more than that? You use drugs, you’ve used heroin.’

‘Sure and so what? I’m still looking for something wonderfully chemical. Your garden puff hardly deserves the name ‘toxic’. It’s a great disappointment that we’re stuck with the shabby intoxicants of today. I’m envious of future generations who’ll get the good stuff.’