Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller

16

The day is endless.

The river of people continues to flow past her, sometimes in full flood, sometimes at a trickle. Occasionally the people arrive in knots and tangles, as though they were snarled in the branches of a floating tree. People are most likely to give when the river is trickling. They can see her from farther away then; they have time to make up their minds, to fish out the money so they can drop it into the bowl without slowing. No one wants to slow. Most look no further than the upraised bowl, as though it were floating unaided above the sidewalk. A few glance at her very quickly and then look away, embarrassed.

The tree-trunk man in the blue shirt is always somewhere nearby. Every time someone drops paper money into her bowl, he is there, snatching it.

Da has begun to keep a count in her head, just as something to do. When she was small, she discovered she was good with numbers. She did the math, mostly subtraction, that spelled out her family’s finances. She is surprised by the amount of money that has fallen into the bowl. Counting Helen’s 1,500 baht, it comes to 3,200, plus the coins that she hasn’t counted yet. So say 3,500 baht.

The man in the office said they took 40 percent. That means she keeps 60 percent. To do the math, she divides by ten-let’s say that’s 350 baht-and then multiplies by six.

More than 2,000 baht.

There were twenty or twenty-five beggars in that building. If all of them take in as much as she, the man in the office is making something like 28,000 baht a day. There are probably other beggars in other buildings. He is probably making…she works out the answers, but she has to stop and double-check the zeros in her head. He is probably making more than a million baht a month.

Da’s father earned less than 13,000 baht a year.

Still, she thinks, they have people to pay. Money to the police not to chase the beggars away. There are businesses behind her, their front doors opening onto the sidewalk. The business owners probably get paid something, too.

Someone drops a coin into her bowl, and she looks up to see a little boy of nine or ten, scurrying away as though he’s done something he’s ashamed of. He is the first child she has seen since morning. That means school is out. It’s after two-thirty, perhaps three. At four o’clock it will be over.

They have to pay the drivers, she thinks, the man in the blue shirt. Maybe rent for the half-finished building they sleep in. The vans, the gasoline. Expenses.

Still, it’s a lot of money. It’s the most money she’s even thought about in her life. She sees again the shoes the man in the office had worn, shoes that looked as if their soles had never left a carpet.

Maybe he has a hundred beggars. Maybe two hundred.

Peep makes the rising sound that means he wants her to look at him. She drops her eyes to her lap, and sure enough he is gazing at her, the gaze that makes her feel he can see right through her. She feels the smile spread over her face, and then a thought chases it away.

Did they have to pay for him?

How much do you pay for a baby? Do they all cost the same? Are they priced by the pound, like meat? Do beautiful ones cost more than ugly ones? Is there an extra charge for light skin, like Peep’s, or a discount for dark babies? Do children of different ages cost different amounts?

Different ages.

The oldest undamaged child she has seen is the skeletal boy of four or five. Where are the older children?

“How are you doing?”

It’s a woman’s voice, and there he is, the skeletal boy, and behind him is the woman from the van. The child looks at nothing, clutching the woman’s sleeve in a hand that’s all knuckles.

“Can we go now?” Da asks.

“Another hour. Kep has gone to eat something. He does this every day. We’ve got half an hour before he gets back.” The woman shakes her sleeve free, but the child immediately reclaims it, without even glancing at it. His dusky skin is stretched tightly over his bones and his eyes have the unblinking luster Da associates with the simple-minded.

“Kep?”

“The one in the blue shirt.” The woman puts her folded blanket on the pavement and sits on it. The boy immediately sits beside her. He puts an open hand, dark and elongated as a monkey’s paw, on her leg, palm up. “How much money has Kep taken from you today?”

“More than three thousand baht.”

The other woman raises her eyebrows. “Good day.”

“One woman gave me fifteen hundred.”

“The farang with the metal hair?”

“Yes.”

“Lucky you. She comes every day. She works somewhere down there. One of the buildings.”

“Does Kep tell the truth about how much money he takes?”

“No. He’ll put a thousand in his pocket and pass the rest on to Wichat.”

“Wichat? The man in the office?”

“That’s Wichat.”

“He doesn’t make enough money without stealing from me?”

“For these people there’s never enough money. They’d eat the world if they could get their jaws wide enough.”

“It isn’t fair.”

The other woman laughs. The sound draws the skeletal child’s empty gaze, but then his eyes drift downward again. “Fair,” the woman says. She laughs again.

“Well, it’s not.”

“No,” the other woman says. She fans herself halfheartedly. “You’ve had a good day,” she says, “but it was luck. I’ve been watching you.”

Da is looking at the boy’s eyes. He seems to be gazing at a point four or five feet in front of him, about as high as the center of his chest. Da says, “Am I doing something wrong?”

“You don’t move around enough. You need to get their attention. Push the bowl in their direction, get up on your knees so they can’t pretend they don’t see you.”

“But if I get up, it wakes Peep.”

“Who?” the woman asks.

“Peep,” Da says. “The baby. If I get up, it-”

“You named it,” the other woman says. She looks at Peep and then averts her eyes and shakes her head as though in distaste. “You shouldn’t do that.”

“Why? He needs a name.”

“You shouldn’t,” the woman says. “But you already did, didn’t you? So why talk about it? Anyway, move around more. If you don’t make good money, they treat you badly. Kep especially.” With a grunt she gets to one knee. “Not much longer,” she says. The boy rises to his feet and extends a hand to her, but she pushes it away, not ungently, and gets up unaided.

“Wait a minute,” Da says. “Why shouldn’t I name him?”

The other woman says, “You’ll find out soon enough.” The boy grabs the back of her blouse and knots it in his hand, and she rests her hand on the nape of his neck as the two of them wade into traffic, zigzagging through it as though the cars and motos and tuk-tuks are an elaborate mirage. Only when they are safely across does Da take her eyes off them, and when she does, she realizes that someone is standing beside her.

She looks up. It is the boy with the tangled hair.

He leans down, and she is startled by how clean he is. His clothes are filthy, but his skin shines.

“When you want to run away,” he says, “turn your bowl upside down and put it in front of you.”

“Run away? Why would I want to run away?”

“Just turn the bowl upside down,” the boy says, backing away from her, his eyes scanning the sidewalk. “Don’t look for me. Just turn your bowl upside down.”