The Windup Girl

7

“Look! I’m famous!”

Jaidee holds the whisper sheet picture up beside his own face, grinning at Kanya. When she doesn’t smile, he puts it back in its rack, along with all the rest of his pictures.

“Eh, you’re right. It’s not really a good likeness. They must have bribed it out of our records department.” He sighs wistfully. “But I was young then.”

Still, Kanya doesn’t respond, just stares morosely at the water of the khlong. They’ve spent the day hunting for skiffs smuggling PurCal and AgriGen crops up the river, sailing back and forth across the river mouth, and Jaidee still thrums with a certain exhilaration.

The prize of the day was a clipper ship anchored just off the docks. Ostensibly an Indian trading vessel sailed north from Bali, it turned out to be brimming with cibiscosis-resistant pineapples. It was satisfying to see the harbormaster and the ship’s captain both stammering excuses while Jaidee’s white shirts poured lye over the entire shipment, crate after crate rendered sterile and inedible. All that smuggling profit gone.

He flips though the other papers attached to the display board, finds a different image of himself. This one from his time as a muay thai competitor, laughing after a fight in Lumphini Stadium. The Bangkok Morning Post.

“My boys will like this one.”

He opens the paper and scans the story. Trade Minister Akkarat is spitting mad. The quotes from the Trade Ministry call Jaidee a vandal. Jaidee is surprised they don’t just call him a traitor or a terrorist. That they restrain themselves tells him just how impotent they really are.

Jaidee can’t help smiling over the pages at Kanya. “We really hurt them.”

Again, Kanya doesn’t respond.

There’s a certain trick to ignoring her bad moods. The first time Jaidee met Kanya, he almost thought she was stupid, the way her face remained so impassive, so impervious to any hint of fun, as though she were missing an organ, a nose for smell, eyes for sight, and whatever curious organ makes a person sense sanuk when it is right in front of them.

“We should be getting back to the Ministry,” she says, and turns to scan the boat traffic along the khlong, looking for a possible ride.

Jaidee pays the whisper sheet man for his paper as a canal taxi glides into view.

Kanya flags it and it slides up beside them, its flywheel whining with accumulated power, waves sloshing the khlong embankment as its wake catches up. Huge kink-springs crowd half its displacement. Wealthy Chaozhou Chinese business people cram the covered prow of the boat like ducks on their way to slaughter.

Kanya and Jaidee jump aboard and stand on the running board outside the seating compartment. The ticket child ignores their white uniforms, just as they ignore her. She sells a 30-baht ticket to another man who boards with them. Jaidee grabs a safety line as the boat accelerates away from the dock. Wind caresses his face as they make their way down the khlong, aiming for the heart of the city. The boat moves quickly, zipping around small paddled skiffs and long tail boats in the canal. Blocks of dilapidated houses and shopfronts slide past, pha sin and blouses and sarong hang colorful in the sun. Women bathe their long black hair in the brown waters of the canal. The boat slows abruptly.

Kanya looks forward. “What is it?”

Up ahead, a tree has fallen, blocking much of the canal. Boats jam around it, trying to squeeze past.

“A bo tree,” Jaidee says. He looks around for landmarks. “We’ll have to let the monks know.”

No one else will move it. And despite the shortage of wood, no one will harvest it either. It would be unlucky. Their boat wallows as the khlong traffic tries to slip through the tiny gap left in the canal, where the sacred tree has not blocked movement.

Jaidee makes a noise of impatience and then calls ahead. “Clear out, friends! Ministry business. Clear the way!” He waves his badge.

The sight of the badge and his bright white uniform is enough to get boats and skiffs poling aside. The pilot of their taxi flashes Jaidee a grateful look. Their kink-spring craft slips into the press, jostling for space.

As they ease around the bare branches of the tree, the khlong taxi’s passengers all make deep wais of respect to the fallen trunk, pressing their palms together and touching them to their foreheads.

Jaidee makes his own wai, then reaches out to touch the wood, letting his fingers slide over the riddled surface as they pass. Small boreholes speckle it. If he were to peel away the bark, a fine net of grooves would describe the tree’s death. A bo tree. Sacred. The tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. And yet they could do nothing to save it. Not a single varietal of fig survived, despite their best efforts. The ivory beetles were too much for them. When the scientists failed, they prayed to Phra Seub Nakhasathien, a last desperate effort, but even the martyr couldn’t save them in the end.

“We couldn’t save everything,” Kanya murmurs, seeming to read his thoughts.

“We couldn’t save even one thing.” Jaidee lets his fingers slide along the grooves where the ivory beetle did its work. “The farang have so much to answer for, and yet still Akkarat seeks to treat with them.”

“Not with AgriGen.”

Jaidee smiles bitterly and pulls his hand away from the fallen tree. “No, not with them. But their ilk, nonetheless. Generippers. Calorie men. Even PurCal when the famines are worst. Why else to do we let them squat out on Koh Angrit? In case we need them. In case we fail, and must go begging for their rice and wheat and soy.”

“We have our own generippers, now.”

“Thanks to His Royal Majesty King Rama XII’s foresight.”

“And Chaopraya Gi Bu Sen.”

“Chaopraya.” Jaidee makes a face. “No one that evil should be graced with such a respectful title.”

Kanya shrugs, but doesn’t bait him. Soon the bo tree is behind them. At Srinakharin Bridge they disembark. The smell of food stalls calls to Jaidee. He motions Kanya to follow as he makes his way into a tiny soi. “Somchai says there’s a good som tam cart down here. Good clean papayas, he tells me.”

“I’m not hungry,” Kanya says.

“That’s why you’re always in such a terrible mood.”

“Jaidee…” Kanya starts, then stops.

Jaidee glances back at her, catches the worried expression on her face. “What is it? Come on then.”

“I’m worried about the anchor pads.”

Jaidee shrugs. “Don’t be.”

Up ahead, food carts and tables cluster along the walls of the alley, all jammed together. Small bowls of nam plaa prik sit tidily in the centers of the scavenged table planks. “You see? Somchai was right.” He finds the salad cart he wants and examines the spices and fruit, starts ordering for both of them. Kanya comes up beside, a compact cloud of dark mood.

“Two hundred thousand baht is a lot of money for Akkarat to lose,” she mutters as Jaidee tells the som tam vendor to add more chiles.

Jaidee nods thoughtfully as the woman stirs the threads of green papaya into the mix of spices. “It’s true. I had no idea there was so much money being made out there.”

It’s enough to finance a new lab for generip research, or put five hundred white shirts on inspection in the tilapia farms of Thonburi… He shakes his head. And this was just one raid. It’s amazing to him.

There are times when he thinks he understands how the world works, and then, every so often, he lifts the lid of some new part of the divine city and finds roaches scuttling where he never expected. Something new, indeed.

He goes to the next food cart, stacked with trays of chile-laden pork and RedStar bamboo tips. Fried snakehead plaa, battered and crisp, pulled from the Chao Phraya River that day. He orders more food. Enough for both of them, and Sato for drinking. He settles at an open table as the food is brought out.

Teetering on a bamboo stool at the end of his day, with rice beer warming his belly, Jaidee can’t help smiling at his dour subordinate.

As usual, even with good food before her, Kanya remains herself. “Khun Bhirombhakdi was complaining about you at headquarters,” she says. “He said he would go to General Pracha, and have your smiling lips ripped off.”

Jaidee scoops chiles into his mouth. “I’m not afraid of him.”

“The anchor pads were supposed to be his territory. His protection racket, his bribe money.”

“First you worry about Trade, now you worry about Bhirombhakdi. That old man is afraid of his own shadow. He makes his wife taste every dish for him to make sure he won’t get blister rust.” He shakes his head. “Stop being so sour. You should smile more. Laugh a little. Here, drink this.” Jaidee pours more Sato for his lieutenant. “We used to call our country the Land of Smiles.” Jaidee demonstrates. “And there you sit, sad-faced, as though you are eating limes all day.”

“Perhaps we had more to smile about, then.”

“Well, that might be true.” Jaidee sets his Sato back on the splintered tabletop and stares at it thoughtfully. “We must have done something terrible in our previous lives to have earned these ones. It’s the only thing I can think of that explains it all.”

Kanya sighs. “I sometimes see my grandmother’s spirit, wandering around the chedi near my house. She told me one time that she couldn’t reincarnate until we made a better place for her to arrive.”

“Another of the Contraction phii? How did she find you? Wasn’t she Isaan people, too?”

“She found me anyway.” Kanya shrugs. “She is very unhappy with me.”

“Yes, well, I suppose we’ll be unhappy, too.”

Jaidee has seen these ghosts as well, walking the boulevards sometimes, sitting in the trees. Phii are everywhere, now. Too many to count. He has seen them in the graveyards and leaning against the bones of riddled bo trees, all of them looking at him with some irritation.

Mediums all speak of how crazy with frustration the phii are, how they cannot reincarnate and thus linger, like a great mass of people at Hualamphong Station hoping for a train ride down to the beaches. All of them waiting for a reincarnation that they cannot have because none of them deserve the suffering of this particular world.

Monks like Ajahn Suthep say this is nonsense. He sells amulets to ward off these phii and says that they are nothing but hungry ghosts, created by the unnatural death of eating from blister rust-tainted vegetables. Anyone can go to his shrine and make a donation, or else go to the Erawan shrine and make an offering to Brahma-perhaps have the temple dancers perform for a little while-and buy a hope that the spirits may be put to rest to travel on to their next incarnation. It is possible to hope for such things.

Still, the ghosts are all around. Everyone agrees on that. The victims of AgriGen and PurCal and all their ilk.

Jaidee says, “I wouldn’t take it personally, about your grandmother. On the full moon, I’ve seen the phii crowding the roads around the Environment Ministry, too. Many dozens of them.” He smiles sadly. “It’s really impossible to fix, I think. When I think about Niwat and Surat growing up with this…” He takes a breath, fighting back more emotion than he cares to show before Kanya. Takes another drink. “Anyway, the fight is good. I just wish we could get hold of some AgriGen or PurCal executives and throttle them. Maybe give them a taste of blister rust AG134.s. Then my life would be complete. I could die happy.”

“You probably won’t reincarnate, either,” Kanya observes. “You’re too good to end up in this hell again.”

“If I’m lucky I’ll be reborn in Des Moines, and bomb their generip labs.”

“If only.”

Jaidee looks up at Kanya’s tone. “What’s bothering you? Why so sad? We’ll both be reborn somewhere beautiful, I’m sure. Both of us. Think of all the merit we earned just last night. I thought those Customs heeya were going to shit themselves when we burned the cargo.”

Kanya makes a bitter face. “They’ve probably never met a white shirt they couldn’t bribe.”

And as quick as that, she kills his attempt at good humor. No wonder no one likes her at the Ministry. “No. That’s true. Everyone takes bribes, now. It’s not like before. People don’t remember the worst times. They aren’t afraid the way they were before.”

“And now you dive down the cobra’s throat with Trade.” Kanya says, “After the December 12coup, it seems as if General Pracha and Minister Akkarat are always circling one another, looking for a new excuse to fight. They never finished their feud, and now you do something to further anger Akkarat. It makes things unstable.”

“Well, I was always too jai rawn for my own good. Chaya complains about it, too. That’s why I keep you around. I wouldn’t worry about Akkarat, though. He’ll spit for a while, then he’ll calm down. He may not like it, but General Pracha has too many allies in the Army for another coup attempt. With Prime Minister Surawong dead, Akkarat really has nothing left. He’s isolated. Without megodonts and tanks to back up his threats, Akkarat may be rich, but he is a paper tiger. This is a good lesson for him.”

“He’s dangerous.”

Jaidee looks at her seriously. “So are cobras. So are megodonts. So is cibiscosis. We’re surrounded by dangers. Akkarat…” Jaidee shrugs. “Anyway, it’s already done. There’s nothing you can do to change it. Why worry now? Mai pen rai. Never mind.”

“Still, you should be careful.”

“You’re thinking of that man at the anchor pads? The one Somchai saw? Did he frighten you?”

Kanya shrugs. “No.”

“I’m surprised. He frightened me.” Jaidee watches Kanya, wondering how much he should say, how much he should reveal that he knows about the world around him. “I have a very bad feeling about him.”

“Really?” Kanya looks distressed. “You’re frightened? Of one stupid man?”

Jaidee shakes his head. “Not afraid so that I will run and hide behind Chaya’s pha sin, but still, I’ve seen him before.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I wasn’t sure at first. Now I am. I think he is with Trade.” He pauses, testing. “I think they are hunting me again. Maybe considering another assassination. What do you think of that?”

“They wouldn’t dare touch you. Her Majesty the Queen has spoken in your favor.”

Jaidee touches his neck where the old spring gun scar still shows light on his dark skin. “Not even after what I did to them at the anchor pads?”

Kanya bridles. “I’ll assign a bodyguard.”

Jaidee laughs at her fierceness and is warmed and reassured by it. “You’re a good girl, but I’d be a fool to take a bodyguard. Then everyone would know that I can be frightened. That’s not the way of a tiger. Here, eat this.” He scoops more snake head plaa onto Kanya’s plate.

“I’m full.”

“Don’t be so polite. Eat.”

“You should have a bodyguard. Please.”

“I’ll trust you to guard my back. You should be more than enough.”

Kanya flinches. Jaidee hides a smile at her discomfort. Ahh, Kanya, he thinks. We all have choices we must face in life. I’ve made mine. But you have your own kamma. He speaks gently. “Go on and eat more, you look skinny. How will you find a special friend if you’re only bones?”

Kanya pushes her plate away. “I don’t eat much these days, it seems.”

“People are starving everywhere, and you can’t eat.”

Kanya makes a face and scoops a sliver of fish onto her spoon.

Jaidee shakes his head. He sets down his own fork and spoon. “What is it? You’re even more glum than usual. I feel like we’ve just put one of our brothers in a funeral urn. What’s bothering you?”

“It’s nothing. Really. Just not hungry.”

“Speak up, Lieutenant. I want straight talk from you. It’s an order. You’re a good officer. I can’t stand having your sad face. I don’t like any of my people to be sad-faced, even the ones from Isaan.”

Kanya grimaces. Jaidee watches as his lieutenant mulls what she will say. He wonders if he was ever so tactful as this young woman. He doubts it. He has always been too brash, too easily angered. Not like Kanya, dour Kanya, all jai yen all the time. Not sanuk at all, but certainly jai yen.

He waits, thinking that at last he will hear her story, her full story in all its painful humanity, but when Kanya finally summons the words, she surprises him. She speaks in a near whisper. Almost too embarrassed to form the words at all.

“Some of the men complain that you don’t take enough gifts of goodwill.”

“What?” Jaidee sits back, goggles at her. “We won’t participate in that sort of thing. We’re different than the rest. And proud of it.”

Kanya nods readily. “And the newspapers and whisper sheets love you for it. And the people love you for it.”

“But?”

Her miserable look returns. “But you don’t get promoted anymore, and the men who are loyal to you get no help from your patronage, and they lose heart.”

“But look what we accomplish!” Jaidee taps the sack of money between his legs that they confiscated off the clipper ship. “They all know that if they have a need, they will be helped. We have more than enough for anyone in need.”

Kanya looks down at the table and mumbles, “Some say you like to keep the money.”

“What?” Jaidee stares at her, dumbstruck. “Do you think this?”

Kanya shrugs miserably. “Of course not.”

Jaidee shakes his head, apologizing. “No, of course you wouldn’t. You’ve been a good girl. You’ve done great things here.” He smiles at his lieutenant, almost overwhelmed with compassion for the young woman who came to him starving, idolizing him and his years as a champion, wanting so much to emulate him.

“I do what I can to squash the rumors, but…” Kanya shrugs again, miserable. “Cadets say that being under Captain Jaidee is like starving of akah worms. You work and work and get skinnier and skinnier. These are good boys we have, but they can’t help but feel ashamed when they have old uniforms and their comrades have new crisp ones. When they ride a bicycle two at a time, and their comrades ride kink-spring scooters.”

Jaidee sighs. “I remember a time when the white shirts were loved.”

“Everyone needs to eat.”

Jaidee sighs again. He pulls the satchel out from between his legs and shoves it across to Kanya. “Take the money. Divide it equally amongst them. For their bravery and hard work yesterday.”

She looks at him surprised. “You’re sure?”

Jaidee shrugs and smiles, hiding his own disappointment, knowing that this is the best way, and yet saddened immeasurably by it. “Why not? They’re good boys, as you say. And it’s not as though the farang and the Ministry of Trade aren’t reeling at this very moment. They did good work.”

Kanya wais deep respect, ducking her head low and raising her pressed palms to her forehead.

“Oh, stop that nonsense.” Jaidee pours more Sato into Kanya’s glass, finishing the bottle. “Mai pen rai. Never mind. These are small things. Tomorrow we’ll have new battles to fight. And we’ll need good loyal boys to follow us. How will we ever overcome the AgriGens and PurCals of the world if we don’t feed our friends?”