The Windup Girl

20

Death is a stage. A transience. A passage to a later life. If Kanya meditates on this idea long enough, she imagines that she will be able to assimilate it, but the truth is that Jaidee is dead and they will never meet again and whatever Jaidee earned for his next life, whatever incense and prayers Kanya offers, Jaidee will never be Jaidee, his wife will never be returned, and his two fighting sons can only see that loss and suffering are everywhere.

Suffering. Pain is the only truth. But it is better for young ones to laugh a while and feel the softness, and if this desire to coddle a child ties a parent to the wheel of existence so be it. A child should be indulged. This is what Kanya thinks as she rides her bicycle across the city toward the Ministry and the housing that Jaidee’s descendants have been placed in: a child should be indulged.

The streets are patrolled by white shirts. Thousands of her colleagues out on the street, locking down Trade’s crown jewels, barely controlling the rage that all in the Ministry feel.

The fall of the Tiger. The slaughter of their father. The living saint, fallen.

It’s as painful as if they had lost Seub Nakhasathien again. The Environment Ministry mourns and the city will mourn with them. And if all proceeds according to General Pracha’s plan, Trade and Akkarat will mourn as well. Trade has finally overstepped itself. Even Bhirombhakdi says that someone must pay for the insult.

At the Ministry gates, she shows her passes and makes her way into the compound. She cycles down bricked paths between teak and banana trees to the housing quarters. Jaidee’s family always kept a modest house. Modest, as Jaidee was modest. But now the last whittlings of his family live in something infinitely smaller. A bitter end for a great man. He deserved better than these mildewed concrete barracks.

Kanya’s own home is much larger than Jaidee’s ever was, and she lives alone. Kanya leans her bicycle against a wall and stares up at the barracks. It is one of several the Ministry has abandoned. In front of the place, there is a patch of weeds and a broken swing. Not far away is a weedy takraw court for the use of Ministry men. At this time of day, no one is playing, and the net hangs limp in the heat.

Kanya stands outside the dilapidated building, watching children play. None of them are Jaidee’s. Surat and Niwat are apparently within. Probably already preparing for his funeral urn, calling the monks to chant and help ensure his successful trip into his next incarnation. She takes a breath. An unpleasant task, truly.

Why me? she wonders. Why me? Why was I forced to work for a bodhisattva? Why was I the one?

She always suspected that Jaidee knew of the extra take she got for herself and the men. But there was always Jaidee: pure Jaidee, clear Jaidee. Jaidee did the work because he believed. Not like Kanya. Cynical Kanya. Angry Kanya. Not like the others who did the job because it had the potential to pay well and a pretty girl might pay attention to a man in dress whites, a man who also had the authority to shut down her pad thai cart.

Jaidee fought like a tiger, and died like a thief. Dismembered, disemboweled, tossed to dogs and cheshires and crows so that there was little left of him. Jaidee, with his cock in his mouth and blood on his face, a package delivered to the Ministry grounds. An invitation to war-if only the Ministry could be sure of its enemy. Everyone whispers Trade, but only Kanya knows for certain. She has kept Jaidee’s last mission to herself.

Kanya burns at the shame of it. She starts up the stairs. Her heart thuds in her chest as she climbs. Why couldn’t that damn honorable Jaidee keep his nose out of Trade? Take the warning? And now she must visit herself on the sons. Must tell the warrior boys that their father was a good fighter, and had a pure heart. And now I must have his equipment. Thank you so much. It is, after all, the Ministry’s.

Kanya raps on the door. Goes back down the steps to give the family time to arrange itself. One of the boys, Surat she thinks, opens the door, wais deeply to her, calls back inside. “It’s Elder Sister Kanya.” Soon Jaidee’s mother-in-law is at the door. Kanya wais and the old woman wais even more in return and lets her in.

“I’m sorry to bother you.”

“No bother.” Her eyes are red. The two boys regard her solemnly. Everyone stands uncertainly together. The old woman finally says, “You’ll want to collect his things.”

Kanya is almost too embarrassed to answer, but she manages to nod. The mother-in-law guides her inside to a sleeping room. It is a sign of the old woman’s grief that nothing is in order. The boys watch. The old woman points to a small desk jammed into a corner, a box of his belongings. Files that Jaidee was reading. “That’s everything?” Kanya asks.

The old woman shrugs dully. “It’s what he kept with him after the house was burned. I haven’t touched it. He brought it here before he went to the wat.”

Kanya smiles her embarrassment. “Kha. Yes. Sorry. Of course.”

“Why did they do this to him? Hadn’t they done enough?”

Kanya shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know.”

“Will you find them? Will you get revenge on them?”

She hesitates. Niwat and Surat watch her solemnly. Their playfulness is entirely gone. They have nothing. Kanya ducks her head, wais. “I will find them. I swear it. If it takes me all my life.”

“Do you have to take his things?”

Kanya smiles uncertainly. “It’s protocol. I should have come before. But…” She trails off helplessly. “We hoped that the tides would turn. That he would be back on the job. If there are private effects or mementos, I will return them. But I need his equipment.”

“Of course. It’s valuable.”

Kanya nods. She kneels beside the WeatherAll box of files and gear. It is a careless mangle of files and papers and envelopes and Ministry gear. A spare clip of blades for a spring gun. A baton. His zip cuffs. Files. All piled together.

Kanya imagines Jaidee filling this box, Chaya already lost to him, everything else soon to be lost. No wonder he didn’t bother being careful with any of it. She sifts through the stuff. Finds a photograph of Jaidee during his cadet days, standing next to Pracha, both of them looking young and confident. She takes it out, thoughtful, and sets it on the desk.

She looks up. The old woman has left the room but Niwat and Surat are still there, watching her like a pair of crows. She holds out the photo. Finally, Niwat reaches out and takes it, shows it to his brother.

Kanya goes through the rest of the box quickly. Everything else seems to be the Ministry’s. She’s obscurely relieved; she won’t have to return, then. A small teak box catches her attention. She opens it. Medals from Jaidee’s muay thai championships gleam. Kanya hands them over to the silent boys. They cluster around the evidence of their father’s triumphs as Kanya finishes going through the papers.

“There’s something in here,” Niwat says. He holds up an envelope. “Is this for us, as well?”

“It was with the medals?” Kanya shrugs, continuing to go through the box. “What’s in it?”

“Pictures.”

Kanya looks up, puzzled. “Let me see.”

Niwat passes them across. Kanya shuffles through them. They seem to be a record of suspicious people that Jaidee was interested in. Akkarat figures in many. Farang. Many photos of farang. Smiling photos of men and women around the Minister like ghosts, hungry to suck at his blood. Akkarat, unaware, smiling with them, happy to be standing with them. Kanya shuffles more photos. Men she doesn’t recognize. Trader farang, presumably. Here a fat one, glutted on calories from abroad, some PurCal or AgriGen representative visiting from Koh Angrit perhaps, looking to curry favor in the newly opening kingdom where Trade is in ascendancy. There another, the Carlyle man who lost his dirigible. Kanya smiles slightly. How that one must have hurt. She flips past the photo and sucks in her breath, stunned.

“What is it?” Niwat asks. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Kanya forces herself to say. “It’s nothing.”

The photo is of herself, drinking with Akkarat on his pleasure barge. A long lens, a bad image, but herself, clearly.

Jaidee knew.

Kanya stares at the photo for a long time, forcing herself to breathe. Staring at the photo. Meditating on kamma and duty, while Jaidee’s sons watch her, solemn. Meditating on her patron who never spoke of this photo. Meditating on what a man of Jaidee’s stature knows, and what he does not reveal, and what secrets can cost a person. She studies the photo, debating. Finally she pulls it and puts it in her pocket. The rest she shoves back into the envelope.

“Was it a clue?”

Kanya nods solemnly. The boys nod back. They do not ask for more. They are good boys.

She goes over the rest of the room carefully, looking for other evidence that she might have missed, but finds nothing. Finally she bends down to pick up the box of equipment and files. It’s heavy but none of it weighs as heavily as the photo that now sits in her breast pocket like a coiled cobra.

Outside, in the open air, she forces herself to breathe deeply. The stink of shame is strong in her nostrils. She can’t make herself look back at the boys in the doorway. The orphans who pay the price for their father’s unbending bravery. They suffer because their father chose an opponent worthy of him. Instead of shaking down noodle carts and night markets, he chose a true enemy, an implacable and relentless one. Kanya closes her eyes.

I tried to tell you. You shouldn’t have gone. I tried.

She straps the box of belongings to her cycle’s cargo rack and pedals across the compound. By the time she arrives at the main administrative building, she has recovered.

General Pracha stands under the shade of a banana tree, smoking a Gold Leaf cigarette. She is surprised that she can meet the man’s eyes. She approaches and wais.

The general nods, accepting Kanya’s greeting. “You have his belongings?”

Kanya nods.

“And you’ve seen his sons?”

She nods again.

He scowls. “They piss in our house. On our own doorstep they leave his body. It should not be possible, and yet here, within our own Ministry, they throw down their challenge.” He grinds out the cigarette.

“You’re in charge now, Captain Kanya. Jaidee’s men are yours. It’s time that we fought as Jaidee always wished. Make the Trade Ministry bleed, Captain. Get our face back.”