She glares at me, apparently not understanding the word “son.” I look for signs of him from the doorway and see, of all things, an old publicity photograph for a Harley-Davidson motorbike pinned to a wall. If I am not mistaken, it is a Fat Boy. A flicker of light passes through her eyes. She makes a shooing gesture with her hands. “Fucked off.”
“He joined the Sangha.”
She glowers. “Fucked off.”
“And your daughter, Damrong?” The name seems to have no meaning for her at all. Perhaps she would remember her daughter’s family nickname, but I don’t know what it is. From my pocket I fish out a still from the video: Damrong’s beautiful face about five minutes before she dies. It has a strange effect on the old woman, as if evoking not memories so much as a parallel world. She points at a flimsy structure in one corner of the space, which seems to form a separate room made of thin plywood, with a door that is locked by means of a cheap padlock. “Borisot,” she says: virgin.
I know the country tradition of building a special space for a daughter who has reached puberty and whose honor needs to be kept inviolable until a husband can be found. It is a custom which is emphasized in every second soap that appears on our TV screens. By a fantastic psychological maneuver Damrong’s mother must have decided one fine day to protect the virtue of her absent daughter, whom she forced into prostitution and from whom she has not heard for years. I have to give her two hundred baht before she will fish out the key to the padlock and open the door. Inside, the tiny room consists of two-by-four studs holding up plywood walls. There is nothing else at all except for two photographs, both of Damrong. One is about eight by twelve inches, old and yellow, pinned to the plywood: the kind of romantic pic only country photographers produce, with softened lines, starry eyes, and a stiff white dress with plenty of lace. Damrong could not have been more than thirteen years old when it was taken; she has been told to look skyward to a TV heaven of handsome husbands and air-conditioning. Despite the photographer’s efforts, her classic beauty shines through, and there is no denying the power of it. The other photograph is of a child running under a huge elephant. The old lady sees me stare at it and starts into an incomprehensible babble in her native Khmer. I think this hopelessness I feel, intensified by a factor of millions, must have been exactly what Damrong decided to combat one fine day when she was still very young.
“Just one thing, Mother,” I say, putting a finger to her lips. To my surprise, she stops ranting on the instant, like an obedient child. Gently I turn her around so she has her back to me and lift up the T-shirt. She yields as if she’s undergoing a medical examination. Sure enough, the tiger tattoo begins somewhere in the small of her back and leaps up so that its head is just peeping over her left shoulder. Interesting. The other tattoo is an elaborate horoscope. Both are very faded and wrinkled, I would guess she’s had them since her teens. I examine the horoscope for a while; it is written in ancient khom, of course. I don’t think there’s much more to be gained here, so I say goodbye and descend the stairs to the ground. Outside, looking up at the rickety hut with its rotting stumps and the black madness of the old lady who is at this moment slamming the door, I experience an overwhelming rage. What psychological mountains did Damrong have to climb just to function, just to get up in the morning-merely in order to believe in herself enough to work? What superhuman power enabled her to do it all with genius and panache? They knew nothing of all that, of course -Baker, Smith, and Tanakan-when they made use of her charms. I knew better but carefully concealed that knowledge from myself while I took my pleasure; just like them, mes semblables, mes freres.
The hamlet is a sprawling affair that takes up a surprising amount of land because each family owns a smallholding which separates it from the others. A few of the homesteads are quite affluent, even boasting carports with pickup trucks; most are at subsistence level. Everyone has heard that a stranger, a cop, has arrived, and ragged kids emerge blatantly to stare. Nobody wants to be seen talking to me in public, though. I decide to try my luck with the family who live next door to Damrong’s mother. A woman in a sarong is squatting under her long roof, using a pestle and mortar to make somtan salad. She has been watching me from the corner of her eye, and when I pause at her gate, she calls out, “Have you eaten yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Eat with us.”
There is a sliding iron gate, which I push open. At the same time three kids appear, the youngest about three years old. A bent old man, probably in his eighties, emerges from the house on wobbly legs, holding a bottle of moonshine. Behind him nagging abuse streams from an old lady. Now a young woman appears, walking very slowly. It is almost a perfect replica of Nok’s family. The first woman, who is in her fifties, has been watching my face as I gaze with a professional eye on the young woman.
“Medication,” she says.
“Yaa baa?”
“Her second husband was a dealer. The police shot and killed him, but not before he’d screwed up her head with his drugs. One half of her brain is mush. The mental hospital was going to keep her locked up for seven years if I didn’t guarantee her. I have to pay for the medication every month or she loses it completely.”
“Those are her kids?”
“All by different fathers. If it wasn’t for my first daughter, I don’t know what we’d do.”
“Your first daughter works in Krung Thep?”
She turns her eyes away. “Of course.” She begins serving the somtan and places a wicker basket of sticky rice between us.
I regret the insensitivity of my question and change the subject even as I stick my fingers into the rice and make a ball out of a handful. “I’ve been talking to your neighbor.”
“I know. You’re here because of Damrong.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Forever. We’re villagers-this is the only land we own.”
I decide to let her talk in her own time. She rolls her ball of rice around in the sauce of the salad, which is crimson with chili, and eats for a while, then says, “So, you’re a cop investigating poor Damrong’s death. That’s one family with very bad karma.” Shaking her head: “What other explanation could there be? We are poor too, we suffer just the same as them, but we don’t go bad. We’re good people, we go to the wat, we make merit, we keep a clean house, we never break the law.” A pause while she shakes her head. “What’s that mother going to be, chart na? She can’t even talk properly anymore. She’s going to hell. When she gets out, she’ll be lucky to be reborn a human. I’ve never seen anything that dark, that hopeless. What people do to their minds, hey?”
Suddenly the dwarf woman has appeared from nowhere. She is peering around the open gate, looking in. My hostess catches her eye. “Have you eaten yet?”
“No.” The dwarf joins us, lowering herself onto the rush mat we are eating off of and sitting upright with the straight back of a child.
“He’s asking about poor Damrong.”
“I know,” the dwarf says. She looks me full in the face, as if she has decided it’s time I knew the truth. “She was a very strong spirit with very bad karma,” she explains. “That’s why she incarnated into that family. She was very strong.”
“The mother’s spent a long time in jail,” I say.
“Yes.”
“There’s Khmer writing under the tiger on her back.”
“Yes.”
“And I think the horoscope is in the black tradition. Did she belong to some criminal cult?”
“Yes.” She nods without casting me a glance. Even in the midst of such a dark subject, her fifty-year-old child’s eyes are dancing over the house, the kids, the catastrophe of poverty, a smile always on her lips.