Whisper of a Bangkok Ghost
Karima Alavi
As if filming a scene from a bad war movie, we spread our map across the kitchen table and divide Bangkok into zones, noting places where Ron might be found. My son, Jason, lifts his head, and our eyes connect. “I’ll let you check the temples,” he says.
“Hindu or Buddhist?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Jason pulls a pen from his backpack and circles several places. The map billows under a warm breeze that groans through the window, and I press it down, trying to push away the thought that we may have to explain to the American Embassy that our friend, a Vietnam vet, is missing. I picture stern glares from bureaucrats whose laws Jason flaunted by listing Ron as “Dependent Family” and skipping the part about helping him slip away from a New York homeless shelter where he claimed that spirits of disembodied Vietcong soldiers were eating him at night.
The air grows heavy with the weight of an incoming storm. When a melancholy rumble snakes through the neighborhood, I move to the window, stopping short of closing it when I realize that this sound is coming from temple bells, their beat more urgent that usual.
“Someone died,” I say.
Standing at the kitchen sink is Jason’s wife, Pen Chan, who takes this opportunity to remind us of her repeated warnings against becoming too involved in Ron’s life. Her words cut above the angry noise of a fork scraping rice from a dinner plate. “You never listen to me.” A dish slams into the sink so hard I cringe, waiting for the shatter. Instead, I hear her voice taking perfect aim at my son. “Now you get us into trouble!”
I shrug at Jason in a She’s-Got-a-Good-Point kind of way. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”
“He needed help. What was I supposed to do? Besides, you didn’t fake his documents, I did.”
“Yeah, but I knew.”
Our conversation turns to Thai visa and extradition laws, allowing our words to dance around the subject of possibilities—of secluded alleys, and things that happen to frail old men on Bangkok streets. The tightness in my stomach relaxes when I recall how easily Ron makes his way through the back roads of this city, silent and invisible, like the “Soul-stealing Ghosts” who wander popular Thai legends. His years as a U.S. Army sniper in Nam and Laos taught him how to vanish at will once his target lay dead. Now we’re witnessing his disappearing skills first-hand. He’s gone off on his own before, only to show up a couple days later filled with dubious tales—my favorite being the one about sharing a casual lunch in a restaurant with the Prime Minister’s driver. This time, however, Ron’s making us nervous. It’s been five days since we went to his house to pick up his cat after a neighbor called about its constant howling.
Jason folds the map, tucks it into his back pocket. “Check the guys on the sidewalks.” There’s fear in his voice and I know he’s thinking the same thing I am—Ron may have gone over the edge this time, may have joined the other American vets who’ve never escaped the pull of Asia with its mixture of exoticism and terror that gave them an adrenalin rush in Nam—no competition for the deadly boredom back home. Those who end up on the streets of Bangkok are always alone, dotting the city’s sidewalks where they smell of piss and sweat, and if you don’t manage to look away fast enough, they follow you with hollow eyes that bore into your back as you retreat.
It’s time to go. I run upstairs to kiss my sleeping granddaughter. Her round, half-Asian face looks like those of the cherubs tucked into Renaissance paintings, little angels hiding among clouds. Somying trembles when my lips brush against her cheek.
Walking quickly, we make our way toward the Sky Train that will take us to the strip of whorehouses and bars where American soldiers came decades ago for R&R—short breaks from the Vietnam War. “You can wait for the train that stops at the temple,” Jason says. “I’ll take the one straight to Patpong.”
For a moment, the humidity gets the best of me. I stop on the cement steps leading to the platform and catch my breath until I can speak to Jason’s back: “If I can’t find you at Patpong, I’ll meet you at Soi Cowboy.” One of the milder of Bangkok’s infamous Red Light districts, we have more chance of finding Ron there. But we’re close to Patpong now, so it makes sense for Jason to head there first.
We arrive just in time for Jason to hop on the first train. He turns to salute me before the silent glide of glass doors seals him within. “Good luck,” I yell, waving as the train vanishes into a black tunnel. I pause there for a moment, confident that Jason’s path will cross Ron’s again, repeating the kind of predestined connection that always looks so random when it happens. Like that day in New York when Ron first wandered into the coffee shop where Jason worked, and fate slid beneath the surface of our lives without the slightest hint that the earth’s axis was about to shift toward the east.
On the platform is a stone bench with one spot left. I sit next to an old man who looks more Burmese than Thai, speaking with such fury, he seems to be telling himself off. Yellowed fingers tremble around his mouth, shoving an unlit cigarette in and out of his lips. On the ground is a crushed cigarette pack. Krong Thip. Ron’s favorite brand. A stranger stops to give the man a light, and I close my eyes to block the smoke that drifts toward my face.
Leaning against the back of the bench, I follow my thoughts to the day I first met Ron.
Jason had told me he had been giving a homeless man free coffee and muffins. There were so many of these guys wandering the neighborhood that most of us learned to view them as a normal part of the urban landscape. So why this one?, I wondered while staring into the café through a window streaked by the afternoon sun. Once inside, I slid into an empty seat at their table—neither of them acknowledging my arrival—and watched Jason drink in every comment his friend made. The two of them leaned toward each other, one hungry for stories of a war that took its time killing the father he never knew, the other hungry for an eager young audience. Ron’s story that afternoon was about a red rain that fell after his friend stepped on a landmine. “Bouncing Betty,” he said. “Once we heard that clicking sound beneath his foot we knew the poor son-of-a-bitch was dead.” He drew on his cigarette, releasing the smoke in a slow, meditative whisper.
So this is the sniper, I told myself, staring at the 1950s kids’ cowboy hat that tilted across Ron’s head. Made of purple felt, it had a picture of the Lone Ranger on the front. His left hand sported a tattoo that belied the former life he was describing—one letter on each knuckle: L-O-V-E. I shot a quick look at the knuckles on his other hand: H-A-T-E.
He stared at something beyond the window, drawing breaths in quiet gasps as he floated between two worlds, his eyes sending out clues that indicated how far he had gone and when he’d found his way home again. Jason turned to me and nodded, then waited for Ron to come back. There was a connection that rose in the space between them, and kept me out. At that moment I realized that this bony, frail man, half his teeth missing, was filling a gap in my son’s life, a gap I had unwittingly created by shoving my ex-husband into a place that lurked around the edges of my past—a place reserved for things we don’t talk about. Like Vietnam vets who return home looking like zombies or heroin addiction, hepatitis, and a slow, yellow death that sneaks up from behind when you least expect it.
The man on the stone bench is yelling again, telling himself off in even angrier tones, and I wish he’d take his argument elsewhere, but it doesn’t matter because a slow rumble in the floor announces the approach of the next train. The car is so crowded I’m forced to slip my hand into an overhead ring that’s already occupied. I look to my right to see whose hand I just shoved aside and the two of us burst into laughter—it’s Lace in his sequined high heels and green dress, the get-up I refer to as his Emerald City outfit.
One of Bangkok’s many Katoeys, or “Lady Boys,” Lace’s golden skin and wistful singing make him a popular cabaret performer. I recall the Thai belief that Katoeys bring good luck and, as if reciting a silent prayer, move my hand closer to his. Like many Lady Boys, Lace is saving up for the surgical procedures needed to finally release him from the realm of phuying praphet song, or “The Second Kind of Woman.” Until that happens, he is still a He, stuck in that world between Him and Her, now and whenever, his heart aimed like an arrow straight for the time that he calls Someday. Meanwhile he navigates his world as best he can, proud that his work as a high-class hooker enables his family to hang on to their farm near Chiang Mai.
When I ask Lace how he’s doing, two spaghetti straps bob up and down with a sigh that’s audible even within this crowded train. That’s when I notice a bruise on his neck. His smile wilts toward an awkward grin before his lips begin to tremble.
“Who was it this time, Lace?”
Tears streak with mascara while he tells me about a tourist who assaulted him after having spent an evening partaking in his services. “They always act so shocked. Not until they’re done with me, of course. Then it’s like, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ As if they didn’t know when they first picked me up.” Lace rolls his eyes. “Give me a break,” he says, impressing me with his command of American slang, something he probably picks up from his highest paying customers. “Have you heard my voice?” When the tears are over I use my sleeve to wipe streams of black from Lace’s cheeks, then ask if he’d like to help me look for Ron.
“If you can stand me,” he says, flicking his hand in apology, one of his many habits I love.
“Stick with me tonight, okay?” My words come out as though I’m doing him a favor. As though we both don’t know how much I need him to stay at my side in case we can’t find Ron. Or in case we do.
By the time we jump off the train, Lace’s smile is back. We head up the street, ignoring the stares. Beyond the crowd I see a large Hindu temple where Ron and I often escape the city’s noise and traffic. Leaning against marble pillars, eyes closed, we cling to our shared silence and feel the song of each brass bell, its poetry lingering above us like a mist, while other people wander past statues that offer a promise of salvation.
“I suppose we’re going there first,” Lace says, gazing at the strings of green and orange lights that swoop down from the tower rising above the inner sanctuary. Ron’s favorite pillar is in the center of that prayer hall.
“Let’s take a peek. If he’s not there, we’ll head straight to the bars.”
Lace comes to a halt. “I was going to light candles for my grandmother.”
“But you’re a Buddhist.”
He clicks his tongue. “Whatever.”
We agree to make a short stop at the temple. I place my shoes next to Lace’s stilettos in the pile outside the temple door, and step over the threshold where the coolness of marble seeps into my feet. Breathing in the heavy scent of sandalwood, I check out Ron’s usual pillar. Empty.
Behind me, Lace bows before a series of statues, lighting candles and incense along the way. A little girl with bony knees and a runny nose stops following her mother through the room when she sees Lace. On her face is a mixture of tenderness and pity, and I can tell she’s already been indoctrinated with the other side of Thai beliefs about Lady Boys—that their lives, often a mixture of glamour and misery, are the result of transgressions during past lives. She steps forward silently, easing her way next to Lace who’s bowing and rising, bowing and rising. With a move so subtle that Lace doesn’t notice, she rubs a hand against the shiny black hair that cascades to the floor every time Lace presses his forehead to the ground, and I can see that she’s not sure if this exquisite creature is real.
On the way out the temple door I’m quiet, my mind wandering until Lace’s voice cuts into my thoughts: “What are you thinking, honey?”
“Do you think we’ve lost him this time? That maybe it’s finally happened?”
“He’s not that bad.” Lace’s brow wrinkles. “I guess.”
“I wish we had some way of knowing if all his crazy stories are true. Like having lunch with the Prime Minister’s driver who was so drunk he could barely walk.”
“And then giving that guy his Lone Ranger cowboy hat!”
We giggle at the absurdity of it all, fully aware that in a place where political coups are treated like a national sport, the Prime Minister would hire the best defensive driver this country has to offer, and that would exclude the person Ron had described. My laughter stops when I remember another story, this one of bamboo stalks bending in the wind, and walls splattered with blood. Dark stains ooze across a teakwood floor where two bodies lie, Ron’s Vietnamese wife and their three-year-old daughter.
“Revenge,” Ron had said to us, making clear the connection between what he did in the jungle—Operation Phoenix, he called it—and what someone had done in his home. “Thought they’d be safe in my wife’s village.”
“That story about his wife and child,” I say to Lace. “Do you think it really happened?”
Lace shivers, then leads me through an intersection.
“Ron insists he has no family left,” I add. Through a wall of silence, Lace is distancing himself from where my mind is going.
Ron’s words find their way back to me, so desperate on the day Jason spoke of his plan to move to Thailand. “No one except you,” Ron had said. “You’re all I have.” His face read like a travel brochure to the Hell that was about to become his future: life in a New York homeless shelter.
“I’ll get you out of here,” Jason promised. “Set you up someplace close to me.”
Lace, to whom I’m still attached, jerks me to a halt so he can tilt his head back and enjoy a gentle drizzle that has begun to fall. In the distance the roll of thunder promises relief from the muggy heat that bears down on the city though it’s almost midnight. I take a deep breath and raise my face to the sky, feeling people make their way around me. That’s when I realize that my long-gone husband may have wandered these same streets at one time. May have felt the same caress of a Bangkok rain brushing his face.
I feel as though Jason should be somewhere nearby so I look around, half believing I can conjure him walking toward us with Ron, wrapped in their own private world, oblivious to everyone around them. They’re nowhere to be seen. When I phone Jason, he tells me he’s already at Patpong, working his way through the bars.
The street scene picks up, and American music, mostly throwbacks from the 80’s, blares from every joint. We pass women dressed in pink Madonna dresses, luring customers into a nightclub called Material Girl. Ahead is an AIDS clinic with a small shrine behind it where Ron likes to crash. When I turn up the alley to check it out, Lace yanks me back. “You must be kidding.”
“Ron could be right there.” I point into the darkness where candlelight flickers out of the shrine, casting a golden glow along the damp pavement.
Lace stiffens. “Ghosts,” he says.
Reacting to my puzzled face, he tightens his grip on my arm. “Spirits! They travel in straight paths.” He looks toward the brick wall at the end of the alley. “There’s no way for you to get out of that place!”
I’m surprised to see how much of Lace’s village upbringing is still settled deep within him, as if seeds of his childhood days have set down roots in places that even he’s not aware of. He eventually agrees to let me go while he watches from the sidewalk and I rush into the mouth of the alley before he can stop me. A few feet in, a bitter breeze wraps around me. I’m working my way toward the light when I catch the glint of a hypodermic needle and step over it, almost tripping on the feet of a man who’s passed out against a wall. A sigh comes from nowhere, a cold whisper that chills the back of my neck and all I can think of is making my way to the entrance of the shrine. When I get there, I stiffen, unable to take another step. My arms reach out to grasp the wooden doorposts. Instinctively, I turn away and stare at my shadow that lies across the ground. I have to look inside once more, because I know I’ll never make it down here again. This is my last chance to see if the cause of that stench coming from within the shrine is Ron.
Seated on the floor before me is a petite woman in black tribal clothes, her skin weathered with ancient lines. An emaciated young man who shares the same high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, rests his head on her lap—his face gray and lifeless. His mouth, gaping open, seems stuck in an eternal scream. She’s passing an incense stick over his head, and it creates a halo of smoke that swirls around the two of them. I check the corners. Nothing there except blackened aluminum foil and burned matches where Yah Bah addicts have been “Chasing the Dragon.” I rush toward Lace who looks worried, but still won’t enter the alley. He loops an arm into mine. “You all right?”
I lie and say I’m fine. Before I can say anything else, Jason phones. He has made it down one side of Patpong and is heading toward us on Silom Road so we can go up the other side together. Lace and I are hurrying along the street when my foot slips on a newspaper. I try to move on when a section of the paper, wet from the rain, clings to my shoe. I pull it off and look at the photo on the front page that shows the Prime Minister arriving at the royal palace. A driver, stiff in his elegant uniform, holds the car door open.
“Holy crap!” I bring the picture closer and squint. There’s something familiar on the dashboard: the Lone Ranger cowboy hat we haven’t seen for months. I shove the paper toward Lace who examines the photo.
“No way.” He begins to tuck the dampened paper into his purse, then hesitates, keeping it in his hand instead. A moment later, Jason shows up and we offer to show him the photo. He’s not interested, making it clear to us that he doesn’t need proof that Ron’s stories are true. Every one of them.
We follow the swarm of people heading toward the entrance to Patpong. Its flashing signs beckon thrill seekers onto a street lined with strip-clubs, porno shops and fast food restaurants. At the far end, shining like a beacon, is the red and white glow of a Kentucky Fried Chicken sign. Turning onto a short crossroad, we make our way to the Casanova Lounge where Ron sometimes stops for a drink. An Australian bouncer greets us at the door and nods when we tell him who we’re looking for.
“The old guy,” he says. “Small, wiry. Saw him a few nights ago.”
Lace, Jason, and I bristle with excitement.
“Hate to bust your balloons,” the bouncer adds, “but he looked like shit. Different. Like he wasn’t all there.”
“Do you know where he went?” I ask.
“No idea.”
The moment we arrive at Soi Cowboy, lightning flashes and a blast of thunder vibrates the space around us. Our mood lifts as a deluge pours from the sky and we make a run for a place called The Devil’s Dive, where we join a noisy crowd gathering out front. The bar is one of those open-front places with little lighting except for electric beer ads and the maze of white twinkle lights woven through a bamboo overhang that stretches above the sidewalk.
Toward the back several men hunch over the bar, awash in the glow of a television. My vision adjusts to the dark while I pick up sounds of French, Japanese, and German. Then I hear something familiar. There’s an emaciated man at the end of the bar talking to no one in particular.
“The ghosts are Vietnamese,” he yells above the noise of the crowd that’s already dispersing back into the street.
Jason plows past me and through the bar, stumbling into chairs because he hasn’t waited for his eyes to adjust.
“Vietnamese!” the voice calls out again.
I recognize this story—the one about ghosts who visited Ron in the New York shelter. “They sit on my lungs until I can’t scream anymore. Then they devour me.”
As Ron’s voice wanders, Lace and I move toward him just in time to hear another wave of words tumble from his mouth in a toothless blur: “I hurried home that night. Too many omens.” He looks at the ceiling as though some sign of forgiveness might be hiding up there in the shadows. “My wife warned me. Told me what to listen for. You should have heard the sounds of the bamboo grove! It moaned. Then it wept.”
Jason places an arm over Ron’s shoulder. “We’re here.”
Moving like a slow-motion film, Ron touches his neck. “Throats slit.”
“We know,” Jason says.
“Those beautiful little feet,” Ron mumbles. “So perfect in those little silver shoes.”
I try in vain to push away details of an image that has hidden in the back of my mind since Ron first placed it there: His wife sprawled across their little girl in a final protective move. His daughter’s legs sticking out from beneath her mother, two tiny feet still wearing the silver shoes Ron had given her for her last birthday.
Finally, he acknowledges us for the first time: “You guys don’t believe me, but that’s okay.”
“Actually, we do,” Lace says.
Ron breaks down and sobs while we gather around him, absorbing his sorrow until the gravelly cigarette-voice of a woman behind the bar interrupts us.
“Everybody like number one papa. I take care of him. Give him food. Three days.” She holds up some fingers and frowns. “He never eat.”
Another figure walks toward us, a tanned, husky man who looks American. As he approaches, I notice the banner on the wall behind him—black, with gold letters: Soldiers with a Mission, it says. In the center, an American flag. The words, Bien Hoa, 1968 are written at the bottom. He reaches over the bar to give Jason a powerful handshake. “Ned Ryan,” he says. “I own this place.” He nods toward Ron. “You know this guy?”
We find out that Ned had wanted to call the American Embassy, but Ron talked him out of it. “He spent the last three nights sleeping on the couch at the back of the bar. Not sure where he was before that. All I can say is that he sure didn’t look good.”
Jason’s voice grows shaky. “Thanks, man.”
Ned pulls in closer to us. “None of my business why I wasn’t able to call the embassy. It’s just that I can’t keep him here forever. When I close down tonight, everybody’s gotta go.” He glances back at Ron. “We gotta help our own,” he says, and walks off.
Once we move to a table, Ron slips into silence. Bony knuckles rise across his hand as he grasps his beer bottle and taps the bottom of it on the table with a nervous twitch. I stare at his tattoo, my eyes drawn to the faded spidery letters that creep into his skin. This is the hand with H-A-T-E written on it.
Suddenly Ron blurts out stories non-stop and we’re taken on a tour of the chamber of horrors he’s been living in for decades, ending with the tale of a man’s heart that lay on the ground, still beating after someone launched a grenade at him.
“I swear, it’s true.” Ron’s gaze wanders around the room in a mad swirl before he continues. “Just for a couple of seconds. Before it figured out it was dead.”
As the night moves on, Ron lets more stories burst out like bile that’s purged from a body right before it dies. The more he talks, the further he’s pulling away—even from Jason, the one person who has always been able to lead him back.
Jason takes Ron by the shoulders. “Stay with me, Ron. Try to remember New York. The coffee shop. All the talks we had!” His words sound desperate, clingy, like Ron sounded the day Jason told him of his plan to move to Bangkok. Jason’s still trying to fit himself into Ron’s life, but I know it’s not going to happen. He’s become a detour in the wrong direction. Something that’s no longer part of Ron’s journey, and has to remain behind. I turn to Lace, hoping to find help. He won’t stop staring at the floor.
Then Ron leans toward Jason and delivers the final blow: “Somying picked out silver shoes the other day. Glittery fucking silver shoes.”
I know the ones he’s talking about, the shoes my granddaughter chose when Ron, Jason, and I took her to the outdoor market. He seemed mesmerized at the time. Kept staring at the way her feet glistened in the sun as she skipped through the aisles, displaying her shoes to anyone who would stop to admire them. Not once did I think of his wife and child. On that bright summer day, Ron’s stories of little feet in silver shoes were as distant from me as all his other tales of Vietnam.
The look on Jason’s face matches the way Ron has described soldiers, right after they’ve taken a hit and can’t believe it. That moment when they stand deathly still, their shocked gaze locking into the eyes of comrades who don’t know what to say. Then they drop.
“Ron can crash at my place,” Lace says.
The air inside the bar, thickening in the damp heat, closes in on us. Jason gets up to leave. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Lace reaches for Ron’s hands. Elbows on the table, they lean forward, pressing their foreheads together, and I have the same feeling that came over me the first time I met Ron in New York—the feeling that I was little more than a vapor, permitted to hover around two people who care deeply about each other, yet unable to penetrate their world. There’s a look of recognition in Jason and I know that, for the first time, he feels it as well.
Before we head down the street, I turn back one more time and see Ron and Lace encircled in the white glow of a candle. I know we’ll find Ron again when we need to. We’ll even try to bring him home with us. Eventually he’ll take his place among the other lost souls who’ve disappeared into the Bangkok nights, living off bits of kindness they can find in the temples, the bars, and from old friends who can do little more than watch them fade away.
🙞
Ron once told us that when death catches up with him, he wants it to happen in Asia. He made us promise to cast his ashes into the Mekong River. I can picture the waters swirling around him, the river dragging his gray dust toward the darkness, pulling him into her womb, the same womb that once engulfed the remains of his wife and child. I know that at that moment, he will have found his home. After the last of his ashes have drifted away, I’ll still feel him near me, in the air, weaving between the molecules. We’ll meet again—perhaps the next time I sit against a pillar in the Hindu temple. Near me will be Lace, bowing and rising, while Jason lights a candle for a lost friend. I’ll breathe in the alchemy of incense and bells, listening once more to the only time Ron has ever broken into our silence the day he claimed: “This is the square root of life,” his fluttering hand sweeping before us like a bird in flight.
*
An American convert to Islam, Karima Alavi participates in interfaith dialogues that bring together educators of diverse backgrounds who seek understanding and unity in a world that is increasingly dark and divided. She has presented more than one hundred workshops for organizations such as the Library of Congress, the National Council for Social Studies, and the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery. Though she frequently travels to Thailand, Karima lives in Abiquiu, New Mexico, where the howl of coyotes and the prowling of skunks inspire her to stay inside at night and get more writing done.
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