The 38 Million Dollar Smile - Stevenson Richard - Страница 44
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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.”
194 Richard Stevenson
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
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 195
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.
196 Richard Stevenson
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.”
THE 38 MILLION DOLLAR SMILE 197
“You’re just going to ask him about it outright? Good luck
with that.”
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