Chapter 21

Touching the man seemed to be disrespectful, but could think of nothing else to do; he braced himself to lean over when out of a dark doorway, off to the right, came the unmistakable sound of the walking stick, striking the stone surface of the floor. Crack, crack, crack, and the bandy-legged old woman materialised in the doorframe, her tight-skinned face broken open by a fierce snarl. She cupped a hand around her left ear and pointed with the stick at the old man; she then flayed the wood silently through the air, as if chasing away mosquitoes. At this the old man jumped up, aware at last that he was wanted. The wizened old woman banged her stick into a sign stuck on the counter, clucking and rolling her eyes as the attack echoed off into the building.

Kreeger ignored the hag’s rudeness and turned back to the old man. He briefly fumbled for words in a vain attempt at communication. Hopefully, he raised his right hand to his ear, thumb and forefinger outstretched. ‘Yes?’ he asked, opening his face as if it were an unravelling scroll of parchment.

The old man took his moist eyes beneath the counter, where he rummaged for a moment and then lifted up an ancient Bakelite telephone; its internal bell rang out as he dropped it in front of Kreeger.

The doctor lifted the receiver; at least the antique was connected up: he heard a dialling tone. But his joy had been borrowed and was quickly repaid when the number he dialled broke off into the sharp tones of a computerised message. ‘Wrong codes,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Operator?’ he asked the man. ‘Uh-mer-i-ca?’ He stared into the magnified pools that were the old man’s eyes and got no reflection. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘no more futile questions.’ The man dropped back onto his reed-mats and newspapers.

Often in the capital he had seen phone-booth stickers advertising an English-speaking operator; he had never used the service, but remembered its number. He dialled. The number didn’t work. He had Lee’s number in his pocket but even by the slow clock on the wall behind the counter it was too late. Call Filcher; why not? Filcher had an outstanding and ever-increasing debt with the doctor and late or not he would help him get a call through to the States. His number? Kreeger cursed: it was neither in his pocket nor his mind and even if he struggled all the way back to his room for it, he couldn’t be sure that a call from this backwater would get through to the capital at one o’clock in the morning. He bit his bottom lip as he pushed the heavy telephone back over the counter towards the bespectacled old man, who was grinning in what Kreeger took for apologetic embarrassment. A tear gathered at the corner of the man’s left eye, magnified beneath the pebble in his glasses.

As Kreeger made for the stairs, a crack from behind him caught his attention, and by the time he had turned, the door was shaking in its frame. The old woman shrieked from somewhere inside the dark room and within seconds, in a seeming defiance to her manifest disabilities, she was back at the counter, having tottered across the intervening stone floor like a precocious baby making its first dash after the house cat. She rested against the counter for a second or two, crying out again at whoever was outside, and then started off again through the half-light on her bent knitting needles.

The unbolted door revealed two twittering young girls, who hopped in like starlings chasing thrown crumbs. When they saw the tall foreigner standing near the stairs they quickly looked at each other, grinned, and exchanged rapid comments. The old woman stopped them with a squawk and a crack from the shaft of her stick as she struck it into the floor. This made the taller girl, standing closest to the old woman, drop her hand-bag in surprise. Her shiny, tight trousers made the bend to pick it up look uncomfortable to Kreeger, who was for a second mesmerised by the two newcomers. As she regained her height, she flicked away a strand of long black hair that had fallen across her creamy face. She stared across at Kreeger with a sheepish grin that stretched out her painted lips. The other girl nudged her with a fleshy arm that was naked all the way up to her neck—she wore a strapless wraparound top that probably restricted her breathing—but she too threw a suggestive glance at Kreeger. The old woman yelped again and handed something to the taller girl who quickly put it in the bag she had just dropped on the ground. The other girl passed something over to the old woman, who snatched it away, swayed unsteadily, and then started back for the sturdiness of the counter.

The doctor made nothing of the proceedings and thought only of Jon Lee’s evocative term night-flower; he turned back into the stairs. With his heavy steps up the first flight he counted off some of the more gruesome examples of venereal disease that he had seen ravaging the corpses laid out on his slab, deadening any incipient lust that might have been brewing. Monogamy had always been a course dictated by a survival instinct rather than a love for his wife.

Kreeger’s corridor was quiet again; he paused outside of room 49 and listened, wondering what had happened to the weeping woman.

*

Back in his empty room he thought about a shower, but no sooner had he stood under the thick streams of cool water than a knock came at his room door. He struggled with the ancient faucet, managing only to reduce the flow of water, not stop it, wrapped a stringy towel around waist, and called out. But the only answer he got was another knock, louder this time. Leaving the bathroom, he shot a glance at the door. The bolt was undone and he cursed under his breath, feeling the adrenaline start to wash through him. In four strides he was close enough to the door, his arm outstretched for the bolt; but as his fingers wrestled with cool metal, a tender voice purred through the woodwork, soft and feminine. He stopped, losing his urgency, and listened again to the velvet words. He asked a few questions through the door, who was she was and what did she want. Her reply, however, fell victim to his gross ignorance of the local language. He thought for a moment as her soft, muffled words continued to permeate in; and when he was sure that she was by herself he slowly opened a crack in the door.

‘You lone mista?’ She was suddenly speaking English, which took Kreeger by surprise; but by her flowing black hair and gaudy makeup he instantly recognised her: she was the lithe girl who had ran up the steps ahead of him when he had first got back to the hotel at midnight.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I am very tired.’ He opened the door no further than the initial crack.

‘Very good massargee,’ she informed him of her services.

‘Sorry,’ Kreeger said again, closing the door on her tepid resistance.

Those scorched corpses reared their ugly heads again, showing their sores and rashes, swellings and disfigurements. Why had he opened the door? His worn-out body would not have performed even if he had wanted it to. ‘Massargee, indeed!’ he said to himself with a shudder of revulsion.

Turning back to the bathroom, he shuddered for the second time, as a black omen of a sexless future swooped and settled onto his mind. Maria had always been there for him, even when . . .

He flicked his head, as if he could fling out the thought, but it stuck, shrouding everything else that was to come. He trudged back into the bathroom, stood in front of the basin, and stooped forward to see himself in the mirror (a lesser inconvenience borne of being tall in Asia). He stared, shook his head, then turned and threw himself under the still-trickling shower. The water was cool and after such an encounter with a girl it might have deadened a younger man’s lust, but Kreeger was empty of such feelings, had nothing to kill—he needed the water only to wash his tired body.

*

Ten minutes later, Kreeger dropped the towel on the floor next to the small table and flopped down on the bed. His body had at last given up on the day and rested. He thought back to the previous night, the torturous way in which he had been deprived of sleep (bumping, rattling, and jarring on a wild-chicken bus through the darkest hours), and accounted for his tiredness. For all his bodily exhaustion, however, his mind would not so easily lie down and rest; it raced ahead of him and then behind him, throwing up images of dread and regret.

He drifted. A glow from the street filled his room; and as he was telling Maria for the hundredth time that he would soon be home, the noise of a motorcycle vibrated the windows as it screeched off into the night, like a hungry owl flying after a kill. Seconds later, just long enough to give Kreeger time to ignore his wife’s desperate pleas, a second engine awoke and screamed, as if howling a reply to the call of the first; it quickly followed its mate, swooping away into the darkness in hot pursuit.

After a few more scares from the nocturnal life outside his window, some images of his lonely future (one of which had the doctor lying alone in a similar, but much colder, bed back in Norfolk, Virginia), and one firm knock on his door, Kreeger reached for the television’s remote control. It didn’t work. He crawled to the end of the bed (on his still-sore knees) and reached across for the switch. It made a sound (more electrical than human, he thought) but produced no picture. He moved into a sitting position at the foot of the bed and waited. Still nothing more than a blinking red light to indicate that the power was on. He slapped the side, only once but with force. The screen lit up then quickly died. He tried again and this time the picture stayed; it shook and wobbled and disappeared every few seconds, but at least it was a picture. After a few moments Kreeger realised that the picture hadn’t moved, and although it showed a beautiful mountain stream and a small waterfall it wasn’t what he wanted. The next channel must have also stopped broadcasting for the night and didn’t even have a beautiful scene from nature to calm sleepless, late-night viewers; it showed only the letters PLTV in bright colours.

The last channel was more animated, but barely; and as Kreeger took in the slow-moving countenance of the man that filled the screen, he gave a start of recognition. He rubbed his eyes and sat back a little to get a better view. The man sat at an immense hard-wood table, staring directly into the camera, speaking slow deliberate words; with each word he counted off one of the black beads that were strung around his neck, hanging over his purple-and-black tunic. Snaking vapours wafted in front of his rippling lips, rising from a bronze, jewel-studded incense-burner sitting at the side of the table. His fingers were long and slender and weighted with gleaming gold rings—they worked the beads with grace.

Kreeger’s mind went back to the bus station, the taxi, as he reached forward to increase the volume. He sat back once more and let the soft, hissing tones wash over him. Waiting; then, slowly reaching behind him, without taking his eyes from the screen, he adjusted the pillow. As his head sunk down into its softness, he began counting off the beads with the reverent-looking man: one . . . two . . . three . . . At the tenth slithering bead he returned to one again, heavy-eyed, but still gripped by the hypnotic image. One . . . two . . . three . . . mesmerised, as the flickering face of Abbot Fang worked its magic.