The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy (19 page)

I dump my jacket, loosen my tie and, with thoughts of sobriety several time zones in the past, take a Singha beer from the minibar. Feeling like an aged rock star on tour, I flick through the TV channels and settle on Thai boxing from Lumpini Park. I light a Camel cigarette and leaf through the tourist guide. Between boxing, beer and cigarette, I ponder the problem of translating the AIDS prevention message into a Thai culture that views illness as an inevitable atonement for past misdemeanours. I shave, shower and change.

Out on Silom Road I need no reminding Bangkok is one of the hottest and most polluted cities in the world. The fumes fight with the heat and mingle with the sweat on my back, making the shower but a sweet memory. I light another cigarette in the firm belief its fumes are less noxious than the air around me. I drop my spare coins to the first limbless beggar and turn into Patpong, heading towards some form of leisure.

I edge past the garish market stalls and dodge the young boys in their striped, distinctive silk shirts, plying for trade outside their clubs. Surveying the endless row of neon signs I remember another trip when I met Poon, the heroin dealer, who played pool on a snooker table and trained the infant rose sellers in Chiang Mai. Poon told me Patpong clubs with royal titles were run by his uncle and would be as honest as you're likely to get in this part of town. With a little knowledge doing me no harm, I climb the stairs to ‘King's Paradise'.

Inside, the false ceiling has just opened up and the Harley Davidson with its copulating passengers is being lowered to the stage. Seated on stools around the circular set, the assorted men, from East and West, of a certain class and wallet, sip their drinks as women massage their limbs and stroke their temples.

‘Welcome to Thailand. Are you from the World Bank meeting?' hums the beautiful woman who guides me to an empty seat, beckoning the bartender.

I drink my beer and watch the show, as the woman, no more than a girl, squeezes my thigh, moving her body against my back. After the motorbike comes the birthday cake, the darts and balloons, the razor blades and the cigarette smoking. Girls move around the bar seeking men to take upstairs or to nearby hotel rooms. I enjoy the anthropology and the attentions of my new companion. I say I have nothing to do with the World Bank, but am involved in improving health and reducing disease.

‘Like the AIDS?' she asks.

‘Yes, like the AIDS,' I reply.

I ask her if they use condoms in the bar, an issue Richard Pryce told me was a big problem in brothels. She gives me a curious look and says her name is Soylam and she likes gold. She asks me if I want a good time, Johnny. I drink more beers and tell her about a young Thai doctor I'd heard about who was working to set up health promotion north of Chiang Rai. When she finally realizes I am genuine in my interest about AIDS she talks of the
mamasan
in the bar who trains the girls about HIV, provides condoms and brings a doctor to the club for tests.

‘But, you'll pay my time?' she asserts, ever the professional, the eye of the
mamasan
always overseeing her troop of girls.

I nod and drink more beer. There's never going to be enough beer, no matter how many bottles I drink.

‘But they're not all like this,' she adds, never releasing her contact with some part of my body, clicking and massaging my fingers as we talk.

Above us, on the circular stage, girls dance and gyrate, waiting for a man to pick them out and rent them from the bar. She goes on to describe the hotels where small children are kept to be used by the highest bidder; of the cheap condoms, sold at some bars, which split on contact; and of the teahouses, lounges and numbered hotels where the desperate and drug-addicted women work, doing anything for money. She explains how the police take their pick, when and any way they want. Soylam speaks of her village, how much she misses her family, how she worries about her younger brothers and sisters.

‘Pay the bar and I'll come home with you,' she whispers gently in my ear, blowing warm breath, her hair the deepest black, her skin so soft and silky.

Soylam had learned quickly – English and other essential tricks – from the lounges in Chiang Mai, where she sold herself to the Hmong labourers, lost like her in the big city, losing, like her, their identity; spending their wages on an hour's passion in a mirrored room above a restaurant. Like so many others before her, she graduated to the dance clubs in Bangkok, where she was taught to pull the short white shift beneath her breasts and twine her legs around the calves of foreigners as they paid double for beers and treble for ladies' colas. She saved what she could hide from the debt collector, living in the hope of returning to her village and family. The debt she owed was the money the agent gave to her parents when she was bought. And this debt never seemed to reduce, no matter how many men grunted and sweated between her thighs, no matter how much she repaid.

The
tuk-tuk,
red and blue lights flashing, hurtles along the road avoiding the pools of rain left by the afternoon downpour. It is well into the night, but we find a bar close to my hotel. Sitting at a table by the door I tell her of my last visit to Thailand for a World Health Organisation symposium and my brief trip to the northern hill tribes. She recounts her own journey in the opposite direction. She describes how opium was part of life and ancestry in her village, but heroin arrived and changed everything. Young boys crave the drug, even selling off their little sisters to the agents who come from the town to replenish their stocks.

She tells me how the village boys buy one needle, telling the shopkeeper it is ‘to inject hormones into chickens', and then make it last the group for weeks.

‘I have a cousin,' she says, ‘a herbalist, who was offered a place at Chiang Mai University. But he stayed behind because the headman needed help with the drug addicts. Every day he makes up a pot of herbs and gives them a drink to help with the addiction.'

She fears for the girl prostitutes who return to their villages with more than the scars of a lost childhood. She also worries for the young drug-addicted men, who in the old days only smoked opium. Now the drug dealers pass through the villages on the way to the cities and bring them heroin. Before long the boys are stealing from their families to support their habits. The old people sit around bemused, horrified at what is happening to their families and their way of life.

She is truly beautiful, this young woman from the bar with the skin and soul of an angel. She speaks from the heart of experience, with more knowledge and insight than a junket full of epidemiologists and associated experts. The light from the candle on the table illuminates the youth behind eyes that have seen more than they should have.

Children play with a ball in the street outside the bar. There are noises and flashing lights and people hurrying in all directions, even though it is late. The gentle stroke of Soylam's fingers on the nape of my neck brings me back to her.

‘You want good time now?' she asks.

I look into my empty glass and then shake my head. She looks surprised.

‘Then you'll pay me four hundred baht. I'm not losing money,' she says defiantly.

I open my wallet and hand her the money.

‘Thank you, Dr AIDS,' she says, laughing. ‘Maybe see you around.'

With that she smiles, stands up, and leaves the bar without turning around. The night, though late, is still young and every baht moves her a step closer to home. I watch her cross the street and climb into a
tuk-tuk.
Its engine rumbles, it lurches off and is swallowed up in the stream of traffic. Something of our conversation is left at the table. Her presence, her strength and courage. I pick up the cigarette she has stubbed in the ashtray. I straighten it, light it and inhale deeply. The nicotine hits my brain like an express train. It is almost like that first hit, which all smokers, drinkers, drug takers, try to relive. To revive. Like lost love. The boys stop playing football and wander away in twos and threes, arms slung over each other's shoulders in an easy intimacy.

I return to who I am, to what I am doing. A month ago I saw myself as making my mark. Making a difference. Now I find myself on a cargo ship halfway to hell. The seeds sit in the airport transit compound waiting for me to shift them on. And all for Caitlin. For one life. Countless thousand lives, the misery of friends and families, for my flesh and blood. One body of flesh and blood. The waiter is standing by me, expectant.

‘Sir, do you want another Singha beer, please?'

I look up at him. He is tall and there is a large beige stain on the front of his white shirt.

‘Another beer?' I repeat. ‘What else is there to do?'

He doesn't seem to have the answer, so I order another drink and begin the familiar journey to another drunk.

Hours later, back in my hotel bed, I wake to a dry parched mouth and the fragments of a dream about thick emerald vines and monkeys shrieking their distress. The starkly illuminated digits on the radio clock tell me it will soon be time to pack my bags and move on.

By early afternoon I find myself in another taxi heading towards another departure lounge. The flight is delayed. WAIT IN LOUNGE resonates: my life is on hold. I find a seat opposite an elderly Thai man. He is dressed in a cream-coloured checked suit, with a straw boater on his head. He opens a small silver case and takes out a pair of tweezers and a mirror. Carefully undoing the red and black scarf from around his neck, he proceeds to clean out his exposed voice box. He uses the mirror to guide the tweezers in this delicate operation. He catches my eye then examines an interesting find between the tweezers. I look up at the monitor in desperate need of a distraction.

Presently I become aware of the crying of babies. Not one or two, but a host of tiny people, like a ripple, a Mexican wave, each one taking its cue from its neighbour. The mothers are flapping, over-anxious. It is then I realize all the babies are Thai and the mothers are European. The women speak in French, the babies cry as frightened babies do. The women do not seem comfortable with motherhood. A middle-aged Thai woman stares at the scene. She looks shocked, uncomprehending. She walks up to the line of flustered mothers, each trying frantically to soothe their charges. The babies seem to sense the uncertainty of their adoptive mothers and cry with renewed vigour. The Thai woman stands still for a moment, mesmerised by her own emotions. Then she turns her back on the line of French mothers and Thai babies and lets out a tirade to the assembled crowd. Her words are foreign to me, but forceful and impassioned. I don't understand what she says, but I think I know what she means.

Lottie lies on her bed reading the first poem Trixie has ever shown another person. It came in the post this morning. The stamp on the envelope is beautiful. It shows a robin in winter, standing on a frost-coated garden fence. The poem is written on a postcard of Chagall's picture of a couple kissing in a kitchen. Trixie's poem is about a mother who sets fire to their house so she can save her daughter from the flames and prove her maternal love.

Lottie rereads the last line, whispering it so she can hear the sound of her own voice speaking Trixie's words: ‘Crystal shattering, absorbed by the moon, that down upon me shone.'

She dozes off to sleep and drifts into a dream where the robin flies from the stamp and perches on the shelf where Lottie keeps her childhood dolls. The words ‘crystal' and ‘moon' drift up from the card and float above Lottie. She rises from the bed, stretching to touch the words, as the robin swoops down and swallows them whole. The bird chirps a merry chirp and returns to the top of the wardrobe to watch over the drama unfolding below.

The dreaming Lottie looks down at her arm. The scars she has carved are transformed into the holes of her flute. In her left hand she holds the shepherd boy. It has trebled in size and the sharpened point is serrated like a saw. She feels no pain as she rhythmically cuts through the flesh and bone by her elbow. From above, the robin sings an accompaniment. The cut is clean and the flute-arm falls to the floor. The shepherd boy sprouts wings and flies away through the open window. Lottie leans down and picks up her amputated flute-arm. She moves it to her lips and begins to play the sweetest, most serene music. By the open window stands Trixie. Her hair is blowing in the gentle breeze and she smiles a broad, tender smile. Lottie continues to play as Trixie dances to the music, silently mouthing the words to the most wonderful poem ever written. Up on top of the wardrobe the robin opens his beak wide and swallows the dream whole, so it will never be forgotten.

When Lottie wakes she knows for a certainty that Trixie will be the most important person in her life. The person she never knew she was looking for. She feels more secure and warm than ever before. She looks over the card. The words are still there. ‘Crystal,' she whispers to herself. ‘Moon.' She makes a claw of her right hand and blows across her knuckles. Then she runs the little finger of her left hand over the smooth line of scars on the soft flesh of her forearm. She makes a sound, somewhere between music and poetry, somewhere between her new self and her old self.

Later on she invites Trixie for supper. When she sees her strolling up the pathway to her front door Lottie almost swoons at the sight. It is as if Trixie has walked out of her dream and onto her doorstep. The bell chimes. Lottie checks her reflection in the hallway mirror, bobs her hair, then heads off to open the door.

Looking back over the cityscape of Bangkok as the plane arches away into the sky, I feel a mixture of relief and regret. Relief that everything is still going to plan, that in spite of my misgivings and doubts, there is still hope for my sister's safety. Regret that I will have to deceive and manipulate so many trusting people along the way. My melancholy is broken by the air steward and her offer of orange juice and peanuts.

‘Hi, I'm Rich,' says the earnest young man sitting next to me, our eyes meeting as the drinks pass by.