Bangkok Haunts

try, I cannot bring myself to look into those eyes. “Hello, Sonchai,” she says in a mock-seductive tone. “Have you eaten yet?” Struck dumb, I shake my head. “Look at me, lover. Look into my eyes.” Again I shake my head like a village idiot. “Aren’t you pleased to see me, darling?”
    “Wha, wha, wha,” I start to jabber. “What have you done to Gamon?”
    She smiles. “Just like you to ask the most difficult question. Do you love him more than you love me? I think you do. Why Sonchai, he’s in the hut meditating. Why don’t you go and say hello?”
    If I was scared before, I’m suffering a paralyzing extreme of terror now. At this moment I think that nothing in the world would induce me to walk over to Gamon’s hut—except for one thing. “Go to the hut, Sonchai,” she commands, “or look into my eyes.” She takes a step toward me, leaning her head to one side, as if to force me to meet her gaze. I turn away and find myself making toward the hut.
    I climb the rickety stairs slowly, with more than an inkling of what I might expect. Sure enough, when I enter, he is all dressed up in his robes, sitting in a semilotus position. It is Damrong’s corpse, of course, beginning to rot and filling the hut with the stench of formaldehyde, the eyes glazed and wide open. In a strange way, everything suddenly fits. Somehow the logic of sorcery would have required her cadaver; but has she really imprisoned her brother’s spirit in that corpse? Outrageous, even for her. But at least the cadaver is immobile. I take the opportunity to rummage around until I find my cell phone, which the Khmer confiscated. I press an autodial number, and Kimberley answers, “Where are you?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “Drama?”
    “Plenty.”
    “Leave this line open as long as you can. I’ll see if I can patch you over to Virginia.”
    I lay the cell phone on the floor with the line to Kimberley still open, hoping the battery holds out.
    Now I hear sounds of steel doors opening down in the compound. When I step out onto the balcony, I see the Khmer have tied the hands of Smith and Tanakan behind their backs and are bringing them out. Smith, with his
farang
addiction to logic, is able to maintain his mental balance, terrified though he is. Tanakan, on the other hand, is trembling like a child and appears to have peed into his sarong.
    “Hello, lovers,” Damrong says. “Are you surprised to see me?” She walks elegantly up to them and caresses Smith’s face with one hand.
    “Fucking pervert,” Smith says.
    Damrong responds with that cynical-joyful laugh of hers that I remember so well. “Tom, Tom, you always did miss the point. That’s why you’re in this mess. If only you’d been born Asian, you would have understood so much better.” He turns his head away from her and spits. I have to admire the way he has found his courage again. But he won’t have it for long, I fear. “If you’re so sure I’m just a screwed-up pervert in drag, why don’t you look into my eyes, Tom? Please, do that little thing for me.”
    I see that he too cannot bear to meet her gaze. The idea is profoundly counterintuitive, like an animal’s fear of fire. She reaches out to hold his jaw. “Call me a ‘fucking pervert’ again, Tom, please.”
    Something has happened to his identity. He would like to show true British spirit at a time like this, but he cannot. She is destroying his center, that complex, contradictory, illusory, but vitally necessary idea of self, without which we are no more than helpless infants. She nods to the Khmer, who have melted into her slaves. One of them holds Smith’s head, while another tries to keep his lids from closing. I cannot help my fascination as she takes one step closer to him and stares directly into his retinas. I am thinking,
No, no, you cannot do that. You cannot bring a virgin soul into contact with the other side without preparation. You will destroy more than his body.
    The effect is electric, as if he has been whipped. Suddenly he is a limp rag, a shadow, all autonomy lost. I turn away as he bursts into tears. He is blubbering something that sounds a little like “Mother,” but it is hard to be sure. She has raped him.
    She turns away from him in contempt and steps toward Tanakan, who starts to speak rapidly in Thai. I strain to catch his words, which are incomprehensible until I realize he is listing his assets, all of them—mansions, palaces, islands, gold, stocks,