Timmy and I walked over to Monkey Mountain to watch the sunset. A long concrete staircase led up to the temple atop the hill. Most of the gray monkeys were swinging in the trees at the foot of the staircase next to the food stalls, or scampering around on the ground gobbling up bits of food left by tourists.
One of the bigger monkeys was hissing and squawking at the smaller ones and grabbing their food.
I said, “I’ll bet that guy was Prime Minister Thaksin’s minister of defense.”
“Or head of his police.”
There were a few other farangs climbing the two hundred or so steps, and a number of Thais. The Thais appeared to be couples and small families who had come to pray or for an outing with a view. We could see two men on motorcycles stopped down below, but they didn’t seem to be paying any attention to us.
As we approached the summit, Hua Hin was now visible to the north, spreading westward from a long arc of sandy beach.
The high-rise hotels along the water and the green hills inland gave the place a mini-Rio look, though instead of a huge cross overlooking the town there was a Buddhist temple, and now we were approaching it.
The place had the customary Buddha figure on a platform in a cozy room, with candles flickering and floral and other offerings below the altar. This gold-leafed Buddha was seated in the lotus position, palms pressed together in a wai, and he was smiling in his serene way.
I said, “You go into a Christian church and an agonized Jesus is stuck up on the wall looking like a bit player in a Wes Craven horror flick. You go into a Buddhist temple, and this guy really gives you a feeling of peace. I like this better.”
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Though long-since lapsed from the Mother Church, Timmy stiffened and gave me one of his looks. “If the Buddha had been crucified by the Romans, he might not look so thrilled with his circumstances either. But, lucky for him — and for much of Southeast Asia — he was not.”
“True enough.”
“But I do share your deep good feelings about the Buddha, Donald, and about Buddhism. Even if I don’t believe in reincarnation, or in a system of rewards for good behavior that feels to me as if it’s organized a little too much like the Delta SkyMiles program — still, Buddhism is so wonderfully enveloping with its philosophy of acceptance and tolerance, and its rejection of violence, and its aesthetic of simplicity. I’m so glad I came to Thailand — even though I came closer to dying here than I ever thought I would at this stage of my life.”
We walked over to the parapet, where the setting sun was putting on its gaudy show over the hills to the west.
“I was so afraid for you,” I said. “Pugh thought we could rescue you, but he wasn’t sure we could do it in time. And after what Yodying’s goons did to Geoff Pringle and to Khun Khunathip, we knew what a cold-blooded bunch they are. It was your presence of mind, really, and the Millpond reference, that made the rescue possible.”
“Well, it was your presence of mind to pick up on the hint that saved Kawee and me. As soon as I understood that you had heard me, I knew we were going to be okay.”
“Really? I wasn’t all that confident.”
“I told Kawee that you had the information that would free us, and he said yes, he could tell that you were a man who was up to the job because you reminded him of a kind of gay Bruce Wayne.”
“That’s a bit confusing.”
“Anyway, he really was prepared to accept whatever his fate might turn out to be. He said he had long ago accepted that suffering was central to being human, and also why should he be afraid of anything he couldn’t control? His calm in the face of danger was really amazing. And while I didn’t follow all of his logic, I saw how his belief in an ongoing cosmic continuum of life gave him strength and confidence, and just being tied up in the same room with Kawee gave me strength and confidence, too.”
“So those goons didn’t… You know…beat you or anything?”
“No, they didn’t. And they fed us decently, too. I can’t really complain about our treatment. Except for having to crap in a bucket. I wasn’t crazy about that.”
“But the heat and the tedium must have been pretty grueling. What did you and Kawee find to occupy yourselves with in that room for a day and a half?”
“Oh, we just fucked and whatnot.”
“I wondered about that.”
“I thought you might, after that Paradisio episode. No, really, what we did was, we basically just talked about how much we liked our lives and how lucky we had been with so many things in our lives up till that point. Except for one thing, in Kawee’s case. When he was seventeen, he had a boyfriend back in his village who died of malaria. The kid was Burmese and went home to visit his family in Shan state and got sick.
Burma has no health care system to speak of, and the guy was too weak to make it back to Thailand, and he just died. Kawee says this guy, Nonkie, was his great love. Some day, Kawee told me, he wants to visit Shan state, because a Burmese friend who was there told him that Nonkie’s ghost had been asking people traveling to Thailand to find Kawee and invite him to come over. Kawee said he would have gone by now, but it’s hard to get a visa. And anyway once you’re inside Myanmar the military government could grab you and put you on some forced-labor road-building project. He wants to see Nonkie’s ghost, but he doesn’t want to get trapped inside that sad country.”
The sun was gone now, but the entire western sky was aflame over southern Thailand and Lower Burma and the Andaman Sea beyond.
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I said, “Has Kawee seen ghosts before? He might be disappointed. I know Thais believe in them, but I’ve never actually met a Thai who has run into a ghost.”
“Kawee told me about his uncle who was in the hospital with several cracked ribs after he fell off a logging elephant. The doctor showed the family the uncle’s X-ray, and they all saw his phee on it. That’s his ghost.”
“I wonder if Griswold believes in ghosts. He seems to be a genuine convert to most of the bigger ideas here, both Buddhist and the old superstitions like astrology and numerology that got dragged along when Buddhism spread eastward from India.”
“But if in a previous life Griswold was Thai himself,”
Timmy said, “and was Buddhist, then he’s not really a convert.
The unfortunate diversion from his true path was his being born to Max and Bertha Griswold in Albany. He must have done something really nasty way back when to have been karmically punished by ending up for a while in the steel business in Albany. Oh, you know what? There’s something Kawee said that might help explain it.”
“What?”
“Kawee said Griswold once told him that somebody else in his family had committed a very great sin. It was something so terrible that Griswold himself would have to help compensate for it with offerings and with meritorious works in order to protect his soul and the souls of family members.”
I said, “I don’t think that in Buddhism you can be punished by being born into the wrong family on account of sins that that family hasn’t even committed yet at the time of your birth.
Buddhism is fairer than that, more morally logical.”
“But what if the sin was committed before you were born?
By your parents or grandparents.”
“There’s only one way to figure this out. We have to ask Griswold. It may be part of what set him spiraling off into la-la land six months ago — hiding out and plotting whatever it is he’s plotting.”
“You’re just going to ask him about it outright? Good luck with that.”
“I realize I may have to wait until April twenty-seventh.”
“Donald, that’s twelve days from now. I have a feeling you’re going to have to get a handle on all this well before then.
Surely General Yodying isn’t so dumb and incompetent that he won’t track us down here. And if he does, we might not be so deft and clever and lucky the next time.”
“True. But I’m sure Pugh has a Plan B and a Plan C and a Plan D. It’s how he thinks. To be on the safe side, though, maybe you should head home, Timothy. I’m sure Pugh could get you over to Cambodia, and you could fly home from Phnom Penh, just like Griswold said.”
Timmy looked back at the temple. A couple of elderly monks in their orange robes were walking inside followed by three young novices. The gold leaf on one of the smaller Buddha images in an outside alcove was glowing now in the last tangerine-colored light, and the sea beyond looked so soft that you could float out over it, suspended by particles of light, and drift down for a swim and then have a nice green curry along the beach.
Timmy said, “I may not make it to magical April twenty-seventh. But for now, I want to stick around. Despite what happened to me, I like this place.”
“Me too,” I said. “All we have to do to really enjoy Thailand is keep from being hurled into our next lives prematurely.”
“Okay, let’s do it that way, if we can. Survive first, and then take on whatever pleasant features Thailand has to offer next.”
“Deal.”