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A Novel
by Mischa Berlinski
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But we were there for the fish family. All of the other vendors were
ordinary, Josh said, nothing special, run-of-the-mill, the kind of stuff you’d
find outside the market of any two-bit town from Isaan to the Malay border. But
the fish lady and family, boy howdy, they were something else. “The prime
minister’s nephew told me about this place,” Josh said, gesturing at the fish
stall. Rows of silvery fish sprawled on a bed of ice, black-eyed,
rainbow-gilled, and healthy-looking, as if they had just swum up minutes ago and
were only resting; and below them massed ranks of clams, mussels, oysters, and
ominous black anemones. “It’s better than the Oriental Hotel.”
We sat down, and Josh ordered for us. Twice our waiter walked away from the
table, and twice Josh called him back to order still more food. Josh was at ease
in his domain, leaning back in his chair like a pasha. It was August, the
trailing end of the rainy season, when everything oozes. Josh pulled a piece of
toilet paper from the roll on the table and gently blotted his face and hands,
then opened his satchel and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Johnny Walker
Black.
Josh was a natural raconteur, but he wasn’t much for the old give-and-take of
normal conversation: he asked after my day and listened to my reply with a
distracted air, nodding occasionally, until he could be patient no longer.
“That’s just great,” he interrupted. He took another slurp from his drink. “You
know, I’m glad you’re in town. I need someone who really knows the up-country.”
This was Josh’s subtle way of forming a segue from conversation to monologue:
in all his years in Thailand, Josh had come to know the north far better than I
did. There was hardly a corner of the kingdom that Josh didn’t know, where he
wouldn’t be greeted by the abbot of the Buddhist temple - or by the madam of the
best bordello - with a huge smile.
I waited to hear what Josh had to say. He paused for a second, as if
gathering his strength. He leaned his heavy forearms on the plastic table. He
pouted his heavy lips and flared his nostrils. He strained his round neck from
side to side. Then he launched his story. There is no other way to describe it:
a Josh O’Connor story is like a giant cruise ship leaving port, and when you
make a dinner date with Josh O’Connor, you know in advance that you are going to
set sail. It’s part of the deal. It’s a design feature, not a bug.
“Do you remember Wim DeKlerk?” Josh began.
He didn’t wait for me to reply. In any case, I did remember Wim: he was a
functionary at the Dutch embassy, and a drinking buddy of Josh’s. The last time
I was in Bangkok, I took Josh and Wim home from Royal City Avenue in a taxi,
both of them singing Steely Dan songs at the top of their lungs. They were
celebrating a stock tip that Josh had passed on to Wim from the prime minister’s
nephew. Apparently, Wim had made a killing.
“Well, about a year ago, I got a call from Wim. Some lady in Holland had
called him, asking if he knew anybody who would go and visit her niece up at
Chiang Mai Central Prison. This woman—the niece, not the lady in Holland, the
niece is named Martiya, her aunt is Elena, both of them are van der Leun, are
you following all this?—her uncle had just died, and the niece, Martiya, has
inherited some money. Wim tells me the aunt wants somebody to go up there and
take care of the details, you know, look this Martiya in the eye, explain what
happened, make sure she understands everything. The aunt is about a zillion
years old, doesn’t want to travel, the niece won’t reply to her letters, so she
wants somebody to take care of this in person. Wim asks if I want to do it.”
The story didn’t surprise me: I remembered Wim telling me about his job at
the embassy. Every day, he had told me, a worried parent called him from
Amsterdam looking for a detective to help track down a child lost in the island
rave culture; or a textile importer from Utrecht would call, asking him to
recommend a crackerjack accountant to go over a potential business partner’s
books. Offering advice to Dutch people on how to get things done in Thailand was
his specialty. Once, he told me, he had even helped a circus in Maastricht get
an export permit for an elephant.
Excerpted from Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski. Copyright © 2007 by Mischa Berlinski. Published in February 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.
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