The Thai Amulet

Chapter 6

If defeat in our attempts to subdue Chiang Mai and Setthathirat was unfortunate, it was nothing compared to what was to follow.

I remember very well the fateful day on which everything in my life changed. While it ended most horribly, I recall the early hours with pleasure, as perhaps the last carefree day of my life.

That day, as we waited for the return of the king, I had taken Yot Fa and his younger brother, Si Sin, to see the royal elephants in their enclosure. They are magnificent beasts, elephants. I have always had a fondness for them. The light that day was preter-naturally clear. There were storm clouds on the horizon, yet for us the sun shone.

“Soon I will ride with my father into battle on one of these elephants,” Yot Fa said. “And you will be with me. I will be a great soldier, just like the king.”

“You must learn to be more than a soldier,” I told him, “if you are to follow in your father’s footsteps.”

We made our way back to the palace slowly, as boys that age do, generally making a nuisance of ourselves wherever we went. After the noise and heat of the elephant compound, the palace was strangely silent on our return. I heard, though, an ominous sound, what I took to be a distant wailing of women.

My mother rushed to greet us at the outer gate. “The king is dead,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “What will become of us?”

I cannot recall the exact moment I became convinced Will Beauchamp was dead. And not merely dead, if one can use the word mere under the circumstances, but dispatched from this world by an unseen and malign hand. Certainly there was no blinding flash, no stunning revelation. Rather there was a growing sense that no matter who I talked to and what I asked, the answer was always the same. It was as if Will had held a Fourth of July party and then walked to the edge of a cliff, watched by numerous people who turned away the second before he went over the side. Except one of them had to have seen, had to have been complicit.

Perhaps the reason it took me so long to reach the inevitable conclusion was that I was two people while I was in Bangkok. As one, I was an antique dealer trying to find a fellow shopkeeper who’d decided to disappear. As the other, I was struggling to redefine my role in Jennifer’s life, as someone who was perhaps a parental substitute. Unfortunately, I succeeded at neither. It was as if my right brain and left had been severed somehow, so that I was trying to be too rational on the one hand, too emotional on the other.

Both sides of the brain were functioning. The connections were not being made.

“Hi,” a voice above me said. I turned down my newspaper. “It’s me,” Jennifer said quite unnecessarily. “I’ve come to help you find William Beauchamp.”

Her nose was a little pink and her eyes rather puffy. “Have you had breakfast?” I said, signaling the waiter.

“I’m not very hungry,” she said.

“You’d better eat anyway,” I said. “Finding Will Beau-champ requires stamina. You have to climb trees and everything.”

“What!” she said.

I told her about my visit with Robert Fitzgerald, and finally she smiled.

“Get something from the buffet and then tell me what happened,” I said.

“Chat and I had a fight,” she said. “A big fight. He isn’t the same person when he’s at home.”

“Few of us are,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “It hasn’t escaped my notice that I revert to being a little girl when I spend a lot of time with Dad. But there is something funny going on in that family. There is so much tension it gives me a headache, and I don’t know why. You’re going to tell me I’m crazy.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not. But what did you and Chat fight about? If you want to tell me, that is.”

“I’d tell you if I knew, but it was one of those stupid things that aren’t worth fighting over. He wanted to do one thing; I wanted to do another. We’ve always managed to work these things out before. But this time, it just blew up into a big argument, and I said something I shouldn’t have. We all flew back to Bangkok first thing this morning. The rest of them have gone back to Ayutthaya. I came here. I hope that’s okay.” She looked as if she was going to cry again.

“Of course it is,” I said in a soothing tone.

“I’m sure I wasn’t being fair to Chat,” she said. “There seems to be some big problem with one of the family businesses. Everyone was in a really foul mood. And Yutai! He tries to boss me around, tell me where to go, when to go. I’m not Fatty, you know. He can’t run my life. He acts as if he owns the place. I really think there’s something going on between Wongvipa and Yutai. Funny business, you know? I wasn’t planning on mentioning it to Chat, but when we started arguing, I did. I shouldn’t have. He got so mad. It was stupid of me to say that. It’s his mother, after all. I must have been imagining it, mustn’t I?”

“Not necessarily,” I said. Of course she hadn’t, but I didn’t think it politic to say so.

“It doesn’t much matter either way,” she said. “I don’t think I can go back.”

“You haven’t spent much time in Bangkok, have you?” I said.

“None,” she said. “Chat and I were planning to do some sight-seeing, but with the trip to Chiang Mai, we never got around to it.”

“So I think we set Mr. Beauchamp aside for a few hours and just do the town.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Where is your stuff?”

“I have an overnight bag with me. I left it with the concierge. My big suitcase is still at Ayutthaya, unfortunately.”

“We’ll deal with that later. Now let’s get going. By the way, if you’re in Bangkok tomorrow, we have been invited to a very special party, a moving in party for a house, complete with blessing by priest.”

“Sounds good to me,” she said.

We had a really fine day, one I will always remember with fondness, despite how it ended. Far from the Chaiwongs, we reverted to our old relationship, sort of girlfriends, despite the difference in our ages. I think we both felt freer than we had since we’d arrived. We marveled at The Grand Palace with its Emerald Buddha, Wat Po with its huge reclining Buddha covered in gold, Wat Arun, or the temple of dawn, its every surface covered with decorations made from broken Chinese porcelain. We hired our very own longtail boat to tour the Chao Phyra and the klongs, stopping to see the magnificent royal barges that are still used by the king on ceremonial occasions, and watching the antics of children playing in the water.

We ate Thai green curry and sticky rice, served to us from a sampan on one of the klongs, the woman cooking it on a little burner right before our eyes. We had gat yang, or grilled chicken marinated in coconut milk, garlic, and coriander, at a food stall in a street market, along with som tarn, a spicy green papaya salad. We had pork dumplings— sakhoo sai moo—further along the way. Then we finished it all up with khao taen, rice cakes rolled in palm sugar, for dessert. We laughed at our efforts to make ourselves understood, at the curious questions from minicab drivers—like “How much do you weigh?”—and we just enjoyed being tourists for several hours.

Our official Bangkok tour came to an end at Wat Ma-hathat, the largest and oldest wat in the city. As we exited the gate, we found ourselves on a really crammed little side street. There was a market on one side and across the way many shops selling everything from shoes to medicinal ingredients. On the sidewalk, several vendors were displaying small objects that were being very carefully considered by several people.

“What are those things?” Jennifer said to me. We went over for a closer look.

“I think they’re amulets,” I said, looking around. “You know, I think we have happened upon an amulet market.” I took a couple of steps toward the place, already reaching into my handbag to get Will Beauchamp’s amulets out. But then I stopped. No, I told myself. This is Jennifer’s day, not Will’s. She needs to have fun, to forget the fight she’s had with Chat, to just hang out.

“What?” she said. I looked at her. “I know you’re hesitating about something.”

“No, I’m not,” I said.

“Yes, you are. Tell me.”

“It’s nothing, really. Will Beauchamp sent two or three amulets to his wife, and the place made me think of that.”

“So let’s go,” she said, heading into the market. “Do you have them with you?”

“We really don’t have to do this now,” I said. “Why don’t we go for tea at the hotel or something?”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “You know you want to. You’ve got them with you, haven’t you?”

“Okay, yes. I’m looking for something resembling these,” I said, showing them to her.

“It’s hopeless,” Jen said a few minutes later. “There must be hundreds of stalls here, millions of amulets. How would we ever know where these came from?” She was right. We were in a covered market that seemed to sprawl over at least a city block. Everywhere you looked, stalls were piled high with amulets. The aisles were crowded with people, even monks, carefully considering the amulets.

“I agree with you. It’s hopeless,” I said. “I have a picture of a monk, too, but every stall seems to have one of those. I guess it’s the monk who blessed the amulets. I think hopeless is the word, all right.”

“What you need amulet for?” a woman at the stall nearby said. “For stomach?” she said, rubbing hers. “Eyes? What you want?” She held out several amulets.

“Have you seen any like this?” I said, handing over Will’s amulet. She looked at it for a moment.

“This no good,” she said.

“What is not good about it?” I said.

“Bad,” she said.

“Bad yes, but how bad?” I said, trying to make myself understand.

“Very bad,” she said.

“Not how,” I said. The woman looked perplexed. “What is wrong with this? Why do you say this is bad?”

“It is… I don’t know English word,” she said. “Buddha not do this.”

“Do what?”

“Stand on world,” she said. “Buddha for peace, not to stand on world.” I looked at the amulet. It was true: the Buddha was standing on a globe.

“What about this one?” I said, taking the broken pieces and more or less fitting them together.

“Bad also,” she said. “Buddha with alms bowl, not world.” I peered at it. “Come,” she said. “I show you.” We went into her stall, and she went through piles of the amulets and placed a few on the table in front of us.

“Buddha has maybe sixty hands and feet,” she said. “You understand me?”

“No,” we said in unison.

“This is Buddha stop flood,” she said, standing with both palms facing up and out, then pointing to an amulet that showed that. “This Buddha calling for rain,” she said, standing with both arms down at her sides, palms against her thighs. “Buddha sit also, also lie down like this. She leaned sideways and put her right hand under her head. ”This waiting for Nirvana. Stop fighting is Buddha sitting down, right hand like this,“ she said putting her right hand up with the index finger pointing down and the left hand flat. You understand?” she said. “Many different hands and feet of Buddha.”

“I understand,” I said.

“This one,” she said, pointing to the broken one. “Like giving alms. Hands in front to hold bowl. See this one.” I looked at the amulet she showed us. It did have Buddha standing with his hands cupped in front of him, holding a bowl. “Now you here,” she said, pointing to mine. “Buddha holds world. You see?” I saw.

“Now this one,” she said, pointing to the unbroken amulet, “Buddha standing on world. Buddha not stand on world. This is…” she paused. “No have English word.”

“Blasphemy?” Jennifer said.

“Yes,” she said, pointing to Jennifer. “That is word. Very bad. Where you get this?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “A friend had them.”

“Bad for friend,” she said.

“Perhaps it was,” I said. “Thank you for helping me. Would you happen to know this monk?” The woman looked at the picture.

“Sure,” she said. “Everybody here know.”

“Can you tell me where I could find him?”

“Come,” she said, beckoning us. “Come,” she said again, as we hesitated. We followed her up and down the aisles until we were near the back. She stopped in front of a stall and called out. A rather large man, built like a wrestler, came out, spoke to her for a moment, and then led us into the back of his stall. A very elderly man sat there. I took a quick peek at the photo and then back to him, and I suppose it might have been the same person, but I really couldn’t tell. If so, the photo had been taken a very long time ago.

“Is this the same person?” I asked the woman.

“No,” she said. “His father.”

“Now that I’m here, I don’t know what to ask him,” I whispered to Jennifer.

“I will translate,” the woman said. “You ask me.”

“Would you ask him where his son is?”

“I no ask,” she said. “Son is dead. Two years.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “Then would you just ask him if he recognizes these amulets, the bad ones.”

The woman took them and gave them to the old man. She had to move a light over so he could see them, talking away to him as she did so. Finally she turned to us. “He has seen these before. A man talked to him about them. A farang. He doesn’t know him, has not seen him since. He told the farang what I have told you. These are very bad.”

The man whose stall it was joined us and peered at the amulets, too. “I will take these,” he said. “No good. I will give you in exchange two with much good power.”

“Thank you,” I said. “But I would like to keep these.”

“Three, I give you three for these.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I think I’ll just keep them.”

“Very bad,” the man said, reaching out for the amulets. For a moment I thought I was going to have to arm wrestle the man for them, but I got there first. I rather firmly put them in the plastic bag I’d brought them in and stuffed it in my shoulder bag.

“Thank you for your concern,” I said. “But I’ll take my chances.”

“Where you staying?” the man said. “Hotel?”

“Yes,” we said.

“Which hotel?” he asked.

“The—” Jennifer started to say. I nudged her.

“The Oriental,” I said, interrupting her. “It’s lovely.” There was something about this man I didn’t like, not his size, perhaps, but his attitude.

“What is your name?” he said. “I send very good amulet to your hotel for you.”

“Helen Ford,” I replied. “What’s yours?”

“Goong,” he said.

“Means shrimp. Very funny, yes?” the woman said. “Big man named shrimp.” I wasn’t finding him funny at all, frankly, but if the name I’d given meant anything to him, there was no indication of it.

As we left, the old man gave Jennifer a photo of the monk, the same one Will had sent Natalie. “Father very old now,” the woman who’d brought us there said as we made our way back to her little stall. “Stays with his son during afternoon. He will die soon. His son has amulets, too, but not like this. Now you throw bad amulets away. Bad for you, too. I give you amulets for protection.” She searched carefully through the pile on her table and solemnly handed us each one.

“Can I pay for this? I mean I would like to make a donation.”

“No,” she said. “I give to you. You need for protection.”

“Thank you,” we said.

“Better have a close look at those amulets Chat’s mother gave us,” Jennifer said. “See if she’s trying to put a curse on us.”

I laughed.

“Who is Helen Ford?”

“Just a name I made up,” I said. “I didn’t like the guy. He made me nervous.” I also didn’t see any point in telling Jennifer at this very moment about the woman who was supposed to have murdered her husband and child.

“What do you think that was all about?” she said. “Why would Will have had bad amulets?”

“I have no idea,” I replied. “The only thing I can think of is that Will, for whatever reason, decided to collect anomalies. People do that, you know. For example, sometimes coins are issued with a mistake, postage stamps as well, and they very quickly become collectors’ items. Perhaps Will was collecting the amulet equivalent of that, although if there is a market for such a thing, I haven’t heard about it. Perhaps it was just a little idiosyncrasy of his. He may have found the monk the same way we did.”

“I thought it was sort of scary,” she said. “Nothing compared to what lies ahead, though.”

“What might that be?” I said.

“I think I should go back to Ayutthaya and get my stuff. I don’t suppose I could convince you to come with me for moral support. I would just pack my bag really fast, and tell whoever is there I’m moving, and then come right back with you.”

“You could phone and tell them you’re with me, and we could go and get your stuff tomorrow.”

“I think I’d like to get it over with.”

“Okay. If you’re sure this is what you want to do, then of course, I’ll come with you.”

There was a voice mail message from Tatiana Tucker asking me to call her as soon as possible, but I decided that taking care of Jennifer was more important at that moment. We booked a car and driver from the Regent. I told the front desk I would be covering the bill from now on. I didn’t feel right accepting the Chaiwong family’s hospitality under the circumstances. The hotel was rather finer than one I would usually stay in, but I decided Jennifer and I could stay a few more days.

We saw only the doorman on our arrival. Jennifer still had her key for the elevator, and we went up to the guest floor. She packed quickly, as she had promised. “Do you think we could just leave without saying anything?” she said.

“No,” I said.

“Well, could I leave a note?”

“Look, I’ll go up with you. You have to thank them for their hospitality. If there’s no one there, then you can leave a note. You shouldn’t be intimidated by them. You are your own person, and you can do whatever you want. What they think about it doesn’t matter in the slightest.”

“Okay.” She sighed. “I just hope I don’t run into Chat. I can’t bear to talk to him right now.”

The family floor was very silent when we emerged from the elevator. We looked in the dining room. The table was set for dinner, but there was no one there. We went into the living room. Dusk had fallen, and the light was rather dim, with only one lamp lit. The room was absolutely silent.

“No one here, either,” I said. “I don’t know where else to look. You may be right about leaving a note. Wait a minute! Now this is interesting,” I said, walking over to the two Fitzgerald Senior portraits. I looked very closely at the one of the two brothers, Thaksin and Virat.

“Aunt Lara,” Jennifer said.

“Look at this,” I said. “The sword the younger brother is holding.”

“Aunt Lara,” she said again.

“You know, I think I own that sword,” I said. It was identical, I was sure, to the one I’d bought at the auction: the same bone handle, the same silver decoration on the scabbard. “It’s back in my room at the hotel! Come and see. I’ll show it to you when we get back. There couldn’t be two exactly the same, could there?”

“Aunt Lara, please!” Jennifer said. I turned to her at last. She was standing in front of one of the large wing chairs. She looked very, very pale. I went to stand beside her.

“I don’t think he’s breathing,” she said.

Khun Thaksin sat propped up in the chair, his eyes wide open, head flopped to the side, his hands clasped in his lap. He hadn’t been breathing for some time.