Bangkok Knights (13 page)

The Libber was somewhere ahead of me as I made my way up
the little ravine, refusing to shuffle, looking for a place to pee that would
disturb neither snakes nor fellow travelers.

“I’m going over here,” hollered the Libber, though I was
pretty sure this wasn’t an invitation.

When I got back to the boat, Husband was speaking; this
time, it looked like, he held the attention of one and all.

“But you don’t think there’s any real danger, do you?”
asked BW, her fine sandy-blonde hair blowing loose across her face, failing to
hide her huge gray eyes. “Thailand is supposed to be really safe.”

“Oh, it is,” said Wife. “He’s just being silly.”

Using his tongue, Mr. Macho was rolling a dead,
half-smoked cigarillo back and forth between his lips, something he must’ve
seen in a movie somewhere. “It can happen, mind you. They wouldn’t jump us
here, though; how would they know we were going to land exactly here? No,
they’d come out with boats, or they’d think of something to draw us ashore.”

”What would you do if bandits did stop us?” said BW.

“Oh, I’d hand over whatever they asked for, I expect.” Mr.
Macho managed to make this admission seem like a tough stance. Maybe it was the
cigarillo.

“That’s one thing,” he continued. “Out here, they don’t
put the same value on human life. They could kill you just because you looked
at them wrong. Or just because you didn’t have enough money to give them.”

“What?”

“Too right Loss of face. These boys’ll kill you as soon as
look at you, if they think they have to save face.

“I always keep about 300
baht
out where it’s easy
to get at. But you see this belt, here?” He was wearing a broad leather belt It
looked like elephant hide. “I’ve got a couple thousand
baht
and $700
zipped up in this here.” He gave BW a big slow wink and then relit his
cigarillo, dragging a lungful of smoke and exhaling it without removing the
butt from his lips. “And there’s more in here,” he added, tapping the same boot
that concealed his knife.

“I’ve never been robbed, mind, though a couple of drongos
tried it once, in Calcutta.”

We waited for the story, but it never came. He merely took
another big puff and then flicked the stub out onto the water. “It’s going to
piss down,” he said, directing a canny gaze at the sky. There was a flash of
distant lightning.

The Libber came out of the bush and we all piled back on
board. I asked about the other boat, the one with the guard, and was told
there’d been no sign of it since shortly after we’d first set out.

“We lost them a long ways back,” said Mr. Macho. “Don’t
know what it is, what with them loaded down with ten or twelve people, and them
with the same size boat and engine, but I guess they’re running lots faster
than we are. Lost ‘em way back there on the second bend; we came around it and,
just like that, they were gone.”

“We haven’ t seen
any
boats,” said Husband. “Only a
big raft of bamboo being floated down by a couple of guys. I got some good
shots of it, I think.”

I was feeling better, and I was sitting up front near the
others. For the first time since we ‘d left the pier, I had a proper look
around.

Rugged cliffs limned in white mist, steep, heavily
forested hills receded from rich greens to grays and black in the misty
drizzle, enormous gum trees, ancient teak giants towering here and there above
the jungle canopy. We came across a stretch of low flat ground on either side,
jagged limestone outcrops covered with thick vegetation thrusting out of
intensely green rice paddies which, startlingly vivid, vitiated the prevailing
dullness. Husband was fussing that it wouldn’t translate onto film. You’d
really need your own darkroom so you could print the images just the way you
wanted them, dodging and burning to bring out the depth and subtleties of light
and color.

The river ran fast, squeezed between high banks covered in
tangled undergrowth. I found myself looking along the river, scouting for
likely ambush sites. Almost any given spot would’ve done the trick nicely. We
came up on a hill tribe village, a few huts with woven bamboo walls and
thatched roofs perched precariously on a muddy slope slashed out of the green.
Pigs rooted about under the stilted dwellings. Several colorfully costumed hill
people waved from the water’s edge as we went by.

Husband had drawn a bead on them with his camera, fiddling
with the zoom and focusing rings, shaking his head fretfully and adjusting the
aperture. “Not enough light,” he said to no one in particular. “Should’ve
switched to 400 ASA.”

I heard the shutter fire up close to my ear; he recocked
it and fired again. “Waste of film, really,” he said.

“So what’s new?” said Wife.

Husband told me how his zoom was a good lens, but that it
was a nuisance having to focus separately at each focal length. And your
focusing had to be right on, in this light, because you couldn’t get any depth
of field at all and still use a fast enough shutter speed.

BW was talking to the Libber about bandits, and about Mr.
Macho’s approach to getting robbed.

“You’re a man,” the Libber turned and accused him. “That’s
okay for you; but what about us? ‘Give them what they want.’ Sure. They might
want something more then money.”

BW’s eyes got bigger and rounder. “But Thais are so
kind... They’re so
gentle,
and nice!”

This was true. Land of Smiles, and all. It was
nevertheless also true that Thailand had one of the highest murder rates in the
world. It was also true that Thai fishermen, for example, regularly robbed and
killed Vietnamese ‘boat people’, refugees adrift at sea. Yes, and raped them,
too. Then there was the bounty Khun Sa had allegedly just put on certain
Americans in the country — men, women, and children alike. But I thought it
best to keep these thoughts to myself.

Mr. Macho had no such compunctions. “Did you hear about
that couple — Canadians, they were — the ones that got robbed in Chiangmai a
while back? They shot the guy in the head. Killed him. Then they beat up the
girl with a two-by-four. It had a nail in it, and it left her blind in one eye.
Right there on Doi Suthep; they’d rented a motorcycle to tour the mountain.”

This charming anecdote might have been better left for
some other time and place; it was clear that even BW was critical. She signaled
her displeasure in part by suddenly deciding I’d been rehabilitated
sufficiently to merit her interest, no longer quite the sodden, surly hulk
reeking of dubious spirits I had been earlier. She asked me what I did, and I
told her, and she wanted to know about the story I was working on. I told her I
was interested in what was being done to develop alternatives to opium farming
in the Golden Triangle.

Wife asked me whether the hill tribe cultures were
threatened the way the American Indians had been. Under cover of gazing
abstractedly while considering this proposition, I caressed the blonde fuzz on
BW’s legs with my eyes.

Wife suddenly pointed and I turned to see a small dugout
canoe shooting out from the bank on an intercept path. It darted across the
surface with a speed and ease that was astonishing, especially when we realized
it was being propelled by a couple of hilltribe urchins, a boy and a girl. They
grinned at us with pure delight as they glided across our bows, paddling with
simple bits of split board, digging in with deep strokes, one a side, in
perfect unison.

Husband was panning and zooming like a pro. Then he swore
softly and cocked the shutter, too late to get his shot.

Wife hooted. “And there’s another one that got away.”

There was a second village, much like the first, this one
with a couple of water buffalo down by the water where a dozen naked children
splashed and gleamed, waving frantically. We were past and out of sight before
Husband had time to waste more than two or three more frames.

“God, I wouldn’t want to swim in this; it’s filthy!” The
Libber wrinkled her nose at the water in much the same way she liked to wrinkle
it at Mr. Macho.

The river was indeed a muddy brown in color, but it was
only good clean soil of the land, more material for the already rich lands to
the south, you might say. Perhaps I could use the notion in a story: a northern
river representing the more general drain on the impoverished North. This muddy
stream would symbolize the flow of resources — the depletion of the forests and
erosion of the soil together with the migration of the young population, the
one to replenish and enrich the fertile rice-lands, the other to man the
engines of progress in the south...

“There’s nothing wrong with this water,” said Mr. Macho.
“It wasn’t doing those tots back there any harm, was it? You bleedin’ city
types.”

“Piss off,” the Libber suggested. Then she announced it was
time for another pit-stop, and headed down to the stern to instruct our pilot.
You could see a certain amount of heated argument going on for a bit, with the
boatman shaking his head vehemently and pointing ahead. The Libber came back to
tell us he wouldn’t put in yet. “I think he said there’s some fucking place
further along. I don’t think I can wait”

When Mr. Macho mentioned he’d told her so, and she
shouldn’t have eaten that green papaya salad back before we’d gotten on the bus
because it’d been sure to give her the shits, she replied that
he
gave
her the shits, if he wanted to know the truth.

BW was telling me all about Samui Island, and I was
listening with great earnestness, gazing into her eyes and finding new reason
to live.

After a few minutes, during which the Libber kept to
herself, tightly contained, our boatman found us another cosy little beach, pretty
well indistinguishable from the first, and ran the bow up onto it

“Shuffle your feet,” called Wife as the Libber disappeared
up over the bank and into the bush.

The sky was by this time darkly ominous. Husband decided
to change to a 400 ASA film even though the 200 wasn’t finished yet. He jumped
off the boat and asked us all to look natural while he fired off a few, using
flash fill to get detail in the foreground subject (us) against the black sky
behind. “Really, you need two cameras,” he said, “so you can have two different
films going at the same time.”

“Two
cameras,
he needs now!” Wife appealed to the
gods in disbelief.

I was feeling almost normal again, though a little sleep
wouldn’t have done any harm. I was looking forward to the rest of the trip,
never mind we were about to get stormed on in a big way. And then there was
tomorrow; it was about time I got a good story together, for a change, and I
had a hunch this was going to be a good one.

I arranged myself on the wet tarp which covered the
baggage, thinking I’d nod off for a minute or two. Thus refreshed, was my plan,
I’d set about getting to know BW better, swimming in her big gray eyes and
peeking up her armholes and all.

I was dreaming I was in a canoe, hurtling through white
water, and somebody was yelling at me... I woke up, and had the idea the
boatman had just hollered something in Thai, and that there had been other
voices... What I saw when I opened my eyes convinced me for a moment I was
still dreaming.

“This isn’t happening,” said Wife, which expressed my
thoughts exactly.

The Libber had just been pushed sprawling onto the sand at
the bottom of the bank. She looked thoroughly frightened. There were two young
Thai men with her, dressed in jeans and t-shirts. One had an M-16, the other
had an automatic pistol, and both items were pointed towards us. The one with
the rifle had intricate blue tattoos covering his arms, while the other had a
fine droopy moustache. Standing spread-legged on top of the embankment was a
third man, his M-16 cradled in his arms. He barked something at his colleagues
in tones which suggested he was their leader, gesturing impatiently towards the
boat with his weapon. They indicated BW, who was standing on the beach between
them and the boat, and replied with something that made him laugh. His face,
his whole manner was crazily animated with drugs or excitement, or both.

One of the men made a sharp comment to our boatman, who
raised his hands. Wife and I followed suit immediately. With some show of
reluctance, Mr. Macho also put his hands up, clasping them on top of his head.
For a moment I thought B W was going to go to the Libber, but then she turned
and ran towards the boat, floundering in the sand, finally falling against the
hull with a sob. I saw Husband out of the corner of my eye, down behind Wife,
and I wondered what the hell he was doing rummaging in his camera bag at a time
like this.

I could speak a little Thai, but the exchange between our
boatman and the others had been conducted in a rapid-fire Northern dialect, and
I hadn’t understood any of it. Now, however, our boatman told me slowly and
clearly that we should give our money to our visitors. All of it. He seemed
exceedingly relaxed to me, for someone under the gun. Maybe it was because he
didn’t have much to lose anyway, or maybe it was because these guys were
countrymen and he was sure they wouldn’t hurt him.

Though they probably could’ve worked it out for
themselves, I relayed the message to the others.

“I don’t have any money on me,” BW said to me in a quiet
voice. “It’s in my pack. Under the tarp.”

For sure, with her loose sleeveless top and tight shorts
and bare feet there was no obvious place to stash a bankroll. I advised her to
stay put for the time being and see what happened. One of our new friends
interrupted to suggest I keep my mouth shut. Then he indicated I should hand
him over something, and my best guess was it was money he was after.
Cautiously, I reached into my hip pocket and removed my wallet. There wasn’t a
lot of money in it, and only one credit card, which I could cancel soon enough.
Driver’s license and Thai employment card were only minor nuisances. They also
wanted my watch. Small loss; I never wore a good watch on this kind of
excursion.