The Museum of Doubt Read online

  They were digging up the pavement on the big street, toiling with picks and drills in the night. The road was heavy with Japanese cars. Tired Bangkokies were leaning out of the glassless windows of a square old bus caught in the grind, pillowing their chins on the crooks of their arms and staring into the private spaces of the motorists. White shirts of streams of lean students and office folk flickered in the railings of a pedestrian footbridge straddling the traffic. Higher up overhead the sky was concrete, a V-bottomed causeway raised on monumental pillars, roofing the street. They kept themselves awful busy, the Bangkokies. What were they up to? It wasn’t till you went abroad that you realised just how many foreigners there were, and how busy they’d been while there was no-one to keep an eye on them. Working away, building away, more than likely swotting in their spare time. And still they couldn’t spell cock.

  Outside a shopping centre steps led down to street level. Folk were sitting on the steps, groups of Bangkokie students with folders in their hands, laughing, and groups of Europeans. Gordon stood in the middle of the steps with his hands in his pockets and surveyed the flow for Smithie. There were two white people sitting at his feet. There was a boy with a shaven scalp, dark glasses wrapped round his head and trousers with pockets down the sides, and a girl with a tally of silver rings on the rim of her ear, like a sheep of one flock, her wispy blonde hair bound tight with an etched leather clasp at the back. Maybe you could tell the age by counting the rings. They were resting the weight of broad satchels they were carrying on straps slung across their chests.

  D’you know where the red light district is? said Gordon.

  The couple turned round, looked up at him, and looked at each other.

  Do you know? said the girl to the boy.

  No, he said shaking his head and turning away.

  I’m a tourist, said Gordon. Supposed to be here with a friend of mine but he’s gone awol.

  We’re not tourists, said the girl. We’re travellers. What is it tourists do, Harry?

  Sights, said Harry.

  That’s it, said the girl. Seen the sights?

  Sights? said Gordon. He checked the high windows overlooking the steps. Glint of a gunbarrel. Crosshairs on the man in cerise. That’s him, the one with the wad. Take him out. Hands grasping him by the moccasins, dragging him away into the shopping centre, head bumping on the steps, stripped naked in seconds, Mary and the runt collecting on the life policy. Too much to bear.

  You haven’t got a camera, the girl said.

  Too true, said Gordon. It’d hardly be worth their while.

  Whose while?

  The Bangkokians.

  The girl laughed. Bangkokians. So what’ve you been doing.

  Gordon said: I came to get my hole, basically. I was hoping to get sucked off by one of the young Thai girls. The trouble is you can’t enjoy buying a girl at home any more, they’re too bony and depressed, and you can’t talk about it with your pals. Whereas here they’re really into it.

  God, you’re disgusting, said the girl.

  Smithie! shouted Gordon, trotting down the steps. It was him! In the cream-coloured suit, moving comfortably in the crowds on the far side of the street, carrying a shopping bag, looking back over his shoulder. Gordon stood on the edge of the traffic and shouted Smithie’s name. Bangkokites looked at him quickly and looked away. The jam had freed up and the traffic was moving. Smithie! The man had an echo in the mob. Another moving thing was moving with him. When Smithie’s jacket slipped out of sight behind delicate swinging arms in teeshirts, the other thing vanished, and when the linen number emerged, paused darker against the food platters in the window of a noodle shop, a shrunken shadow stood still beside him. Smithie looked down at the shadow, his lips moved. The shadow looked up, it shook its head, Smithie moved on, and the shadow followed. Smithie! Over here! Gordon jogged to the footbridge and peered across the street again. He saw Smithie stop at a turning, by a postcard carousel, and the shadow stop too. It was a boy, maybe 13 or 14. A boy in a striped teeshirt and shorts. Smithie pointed at something in the shop behind the postcards. The boy nodded. Smithie went in and came out a few seconds later with a package. The boy reached out his hand. Smithie laughed in the way Gordon knew, in the way Gordon remembered, even though he couldn’t hear it, he could hear it, the laugh of having the advantage and loving it, that time he’d had the cream doughnuts and Gordon had wanted a bit, he’d had the air gun and Gordon had wanted a shot, he’d had that lovely wee lassie from Manchester and Gordon’d wanted a go. Smithie always gave and Gordon always got but only after he’d followed and waited. Over by the souvenir shop Smithie laughed and walked around the corner into the side street, out of sight. The boy waited for a second and went after him.

  Gordon ran up the stairs of the footbridge. He lost his wind halfway up. He leaned back against the railings, gripping the metal with his hands, the sweat dribbling over him, letting his head settle. He crossed the bridge slowly, keeping one hand on the rail. He paused halfway and looked down at the hosts of cars changing their grounds in the populous night world. They moved in a kind of tunnel, made by the tarmac under their wheels, the causeway overhead and the heavy hanging signs in gold and dull paint and neon, in English and Bangkokish letters. Gordon came down off the bridge and looked in the window of the noodle shop. There were a couple of dozen bowls in rows in the window with plastic samples of dishes, fanned hands of sliced meat and dumplings and greens on beds of noodles. Gordon was hungry. He could smell a twisted braid of food scents, a sharp green herb, dark gamey meat, limes, something sweet and the essence of fish. He walked away and entered the McDonald’s on the next block for a quarterpounder with cheese, large fries and a cup of tea. You could feel it going down into you square, marked and filling the space, like the falling bricks in the Tetris game Kenneth used to kill time with. The poor old Bangkoksters, they must have been grateful when Mr McDonald came along with good dry, solid, guaranteed rounds of bread and meat, food that wasn’t slippery, wasn’t bobbing up and down and wasn’t festering with spice. It was enough to bring tears to your eyes, if you were a poof that is, otherwise you took the grief of things and you stowed it away in that space just about where your stomach was, if you were a man. Gordon always had a lot of grief stored in there. But that was the thing about grief, it didn’t take up space, it was space. It was tricky carrying all that empty space around inside you without losing your balance. That was the advantage of quarterpounders. They dropped right into the space. Mr McDonald knew there was nothing else you could do with that grief, you either let it out and had everyone thinking you were a soft case, or else you filled it with something heavy, bulky and cheap, i.e. the quarterpounder. Gordon ordered another one.

  Outside the McDonald’s two policemen stood by their motorcycles. They had white crash helmets with raised black visors, skintight grey uniforms and tight-fitting jackboots. They were lean and fit like deer and everything shone in the lamplight, the helmets, their badges and buckles, the chrome on their bikes.

  Which way to the red light district? said Gordon.

  The policemen watched him. They were still. They stared and their faces didn’t move. They blinked, but seldom.

  Which way to the red light district? said Gordon.

  One of the policemen turned on his heel and stepped into the road. He raised his arm and held it stiff in the air. With his other white-gloved hand he took a shining whistle and blew a single note. A taxi stopped. The policeman leaned in to speak to the driver.

  Good lads, said Gordon.

  You go where driver takes you, right? Don’t go running around. He’ll take you to a nice place.

  Gordon settled into the cool yielding interior of the cab and closed the door. The car murmured up to speed.

  When they slowed down Gordon saw lights of many colours in the windows. In the doorways the girls’ white teeshirts and stockings and dresses reflected ultraviolet. The driver pointed Gordon towards a place with a front made of black glass and a vertic
al blue neon sign saying 4-U-2 Knight Klub. A grey light washed the doorway. A man in dark clothes sat astride a wooden chair outside, chairback between his legs. He held the chairback in his hands and rocked backwards and forwards, softly singing a country and western song in Bangkokian. There were two girls behind him, one in a pale green sleeveless dress coming down to her ankles and the other in a tight white sports bra and leggings. The man called to the driver while Gordon was getting out and the driver said something back. Gordon approached the club. The man on the chair grinned and nodded and waved him past, chairlegs beating his Loretta Bangkok Lynn time on the pavement. The two girls bobbed and pressed their hands together and bowed their heads and smiled and held out their fragile arms to the interior. Gordon went inside.

  The scent he entered was thick, blurred and promising, dried whisky, oversweet perfume, cigarettes, grass, incense and a chemical palette to stop the lower forms of life multiplying without discouraging the higher ones: disinfectant, air freshener, incense, nail varnish, mothballs, mosquito coils, shampoo, roach syrup. Gordon couldn’t make the music fit together, but he understood it was music. Short fanfares, repeated, like warning sirens that the place was about to explode, and a steady battering, a pneumatic drill in slow motion. It was good music. It put clothes on words that were best not spoken bare. It was a grand place, with a bar, and young Bangkokie lassies in short skirts and tight tops dancing with steel poles, and a few couples in the tables in the shadows, and ceiling fans two yards across.

  A Bangkokite woman in a tight black dress and patent leather ankle boots left the bar and took Gordon’s arm. She asked if he’d like a drink.

  Aye, said Gordon. Scotch’d be very nice, Grouse if you have it, with a fair measure of water. I can’t stay long though, I’m on my way to the red light district.

  Oh! said the woman, laughing. Funny. On your way!

  Have you seen a man in a cream-coloured suit? Friend of mine? Mr Smith?

  Mr Smith? Mr Smith! The woman pulled in her shoulders, leaned her head back and laughed, slapping Gordon gently on the chest. You’re funny.

  Was there one in a cream-coloured suit? Sly-looking?

  If he comes, we take care of him. What’s your name? Gordon. I’m Cindi. You not going to buy me a drink? Oh, very kind of you. Cheers! American? Ohhh!!! Scot land!!!!!!

  Gordon drank. He asked how come the lassies were dancing with the poles. Were there not enough men in Bangkok.

  You like them? said Cindi. She looked pleased. Which one you like? Tell me.

  Gordon pointed to a girl in a checked pleated miniskirt and a denim jacket, open to show a black bra. She was wearing a silver wig.

  Girl with silver hair? said Cindi. She’s called Donna. Oh, she is very nice. You like her?

  She’s got a good arse, said Gordon.

  Cindi went over to fetch Donna and left them. Gordon bought Donna a Coke. Donna had sprinkled glitter on her body. She smiled at him without saying anything, swivelling on one stiletto, and let the rim of the glass slide over her teeth. She started stroking Gordon’s chest with her fingertips. Gordon stared down at her sparkling breasts. Donna looked up at Gordon from under her eyelashes and traced her fingernails over his crotch. She asked him if he wanted to fuck.

  As long as it doesn’t take too long, said Gordon. I’m trying to reach the red light district.

  We be quick, said Donna. She took Gordon’s hand and led him through a bead curtain to a narrow corridor with doors placed close together. In the corridor the light was red. This was how it should be. This was how life should be. When you just walked into a place and the lassies were available. You didn’t have to go with them, you didn’t have to buy them flowers, you didn’t have to talk to them. There was nothing about love, clothes or children. When it was over, you walked away without saying anything. Heaven had to be along the lines of golf interspersed with bouts of oral sex.

  Donna put her ear to one of the doors, tapped on it with a single knuckle and opened it. She led Gordon inside. The room had no windows and was lit by a dim yellow bulb in a scorched lampshade drooping from the wall. A fan on a stand scanned the room jerkily from a corner. There was a bed neither single nor double covered in a white sheet, a bedside cupboard, a wicker basket, a fridge, a plain wooden chair and a basin. A box of tissues waited on the cupboard. Gordon sat on the bed.

  You want a beer? said Donna.

  No, said Gordon.

  You want a talk?

  No.

  It’s good, said Donna, taking off her jacket. Oh, the moment.

  Wait, said Gordon.

  What?

  Do that again.

  OK, said Donna. She lifted the jacket off the chair where she’d draped it, put it on, and shucked it off, slower this time.

  Again?

  Gordon nodded.

  Like a video, said Donna. Rewind!

  Gordon watched her take off the jacket and put it on about twenty times. Each time he saw her bare arms and shoulders emerge to frame her breasts it seemed new for an instant, and then lost forever.

  Maybe that’s enough now, said Donna.

  No, said Gordon. Do it some more. I like it.

  You want a make a video? We can make a video, said Donna.

  Gordon shook his head. Donna did the jacket thing a dozen times more. Then she left it on the chair and came over to sit beside Gordon. Gordon stroked the place where her breasts met the stitching of her bra, where the flesh was squeezed a little. His fingers delved inside the fabric and his knuckles rubbed against her nipples. He tugged at the bra and Donna unfastened it behind with a rapid move of her wrist. Gordon covered her warm breasts with his hands. To see and feel perfect smooth skin between his mottled hands, where the white skin was scored and rumpled and ridged with veins. It was no more than he deserved, no less than he wanted, which was the same thing. He was deep, deep inside the club of men, rooms and corridors and doors and passwords and signs away from the breasts of Mary and from girls who wouldn’t.

  Donna pulled down his flies and rummaged for his cock. She fished it out, soft as an unbaked bap, and went down on it. Gordon stroked her bare back, lifted up her skirt, put his hand inside her panties and fingered her cleft.

  Good lassie, he said. It’s a shame you’re an oriental cause you could teach the girls at home a few things about the right way to behave when it comes to their elders. Where I come from they keep the lassies at school too long and teach them not to touch men. Normal men, I’m talking about. It’s no wonder the country’s full of perverts and child molestors when the girls don’t want to do the business with anyone over fifty. They end up with someone like my son.

  Donna sat up, tossed back her hair, gave Gordon’s fingers a hard clench, closed her eyes, moaned, smiled and began pulling off his ghost of a hard-on.

  You have a son? she said. She kept panting and making moans all the while she talked. She was brilliant.

  I do have a son, said Gordon. But he’s a wanker.

  What is that?

  It means he’s kind of disabled.

  Oh! Donna shut her eyes and squeezed Gordon’s fingers so tight he felt them go numb. She opened her eyes. Disabled. I am sorry for you. I know this. She relaxed her grip, stood up and let her skirt fall away. She began taking off Gordon’s clothes. My family in Laos has same problem. Where we live American bombers came before I was born. Everywhere was bomb bomb bomb, and my mother, my father, they were small and hid in shelters. Then they marry and start having children. In whole village it’s same. First child, it’s me, OK. Second child very weak, dies after few weeks. Third child bit stronger, maybe few years. Fourth child disabled. My brother. Born – no arms, big head, like a melon. Hates the sun.

  Aye, those bombers did an amazing job, right enough, said Gordon.

  Father fixed that I come here and send money home to help my brother. And learn English. Think maybe when I’m fifteen I look for another job. Foreigners don’t like it when we get old.

  You want to watch out
for foreigners, said Gordon. Bangkok’s full of them.

  Maybe they let me go next year when I’m fifteen. Maybe not. Depends on money. Few thousand dollars is enough.

  You’d be better staying here, said Gordon. You get off with all these men. Must be nice for you. Probably a tab behind the bar too, and your tea. Out there are all the young guys, that’s the trouble. Then you get old.

  I get tired, said Donna. Three, four, maybe six men a night. Some they don’t treat me so well. Last night a foreigner, he was fat and hairy, like a big monkey, he was sick on back of my head while I had him in my mouth. Made me finish.

  Donna laid naked Gordon down on the bed, took off her panties and straddled him. She began tugging at his cock again. Is it serious, if you are a wanker? she said. Is it like our problem in village? Your son got a big head?

  Yes, said Gordon. He’s got a big head all right. And this growth on his upper lip. And whenever you see him he’s this purple colour.

  Oh! said Donna, biting her lip and bending down to kiss Gordon’s cock in sympathy, it’s same with my brother. He lies on a bed in the back of the house, he can’t move, his head is in a what, harness. Father wrote to say brother is blind now, head grown too big for eyes to see. He just lies there and listens. Sometimes he screams. Sometimes it’s hard to keep the chickens off him. You getting nice and hard now. Donna fitted Gordon with a condom and eased herself onto him. She tossed her hair back, clamped his half-erection bravely with her inside muscles and began to toil.

  Poor mister, said Donna, I do my best for you. Relax. I know you want to forget about your son for a few minutes. I know.

  And my wife, said Gordon.

  Oh! said Donna. Poor mister. Your wife as well! You a very good man. Your son a wanker, and your wife a wanker, and you look after them both. Donna’s eyes became moist and she summoned all her skill. It took half an hour to bring Gordon to climax. Gordon smiled as he remembered how easy and right it was to be happy and victorious. He opened his eyes and gazed at Donna, the sweat and glitter shining on her little belly as the muscles there quivered with the sudden rest, her mouth open, her breasts rising and falling with her quick breathing. To think they could all be this way if they wanted, and happiness would be on tap.