“ You foo l!” my grandmother said. “Your own son has become possessed by demons. . .and it's all because of your sexual excesses.” My father stopped and stared at my brother. Then murmuring a brief prayer to the Lord Buddha, he retired, cowering behind the shop counter. "What must I do?” His wives came marching out behind him. Elder Mother hastened to succor Phii Lek. Younger Mother took in the situation and said, “ I haven’t seen anyone this possessed since my cousin Phii Daeng spent the night in a graveyard trying to get a vision of a winning lottery ticket number.” “ It’s all your fault,” Phii Lek’s mother said, turning wrathfully on my father. “You’re all too eager to douse your staff of passion, and now my son has been turned into a monster!” The logic of this accusation escaped me, but my father seemed convinced. “ I ’ ll go and bua t phra fo r three months,” he said, affecting a tone of deep piety. “ I’ ll cut my hair off tomorrow and enter the nearest monastery. That ought to do the trick. Oh, my son, my son, what have I done?” “Well,” my grandmother said, “ a little abstinence should do you good. I always thought you were unwise not to enter the monkhood at twenty like an obedient son should. . .cursing me to be reborn on earth instead of spending my next life in heaven as I ought, considering how I’ve worked my fingers to the bone for you! It's about time, that's what I say. A twenty year old belongs in a temple, not in the village scouts killing communists. Time for that when you’ve done your filial duty. . .well, twenty-five years late is better than nothing.” Seeing himself trapped between several painful alternatives, my father bowed his head, raised his palms in a gesture of respect, and said, “All right, khun mae yaai, if that’s what you want.” I / I / hen my father and the V V older females of the family had gone to pack his things, I was left with my older brother and the bizarre American woman, in the antique shop in the middle of the night. They had taken the truck back to the village (which now boasted a good half-dozen motor vehicles, one of them ours) and we were stranded. In the heat of their argument and my fa th e r ’s repen tance , they seemed to have forgotten all about us. It was at that moment that my brother chose to snap out of whatever it was that possessed him. Calmly, he rose from the floor, wiped a few foam flecks from his mouth with his sleeve, and sat down on the stool behind the counter. It took him a minute or two to recognize us, and then he said “Well, well, Ai Noil I gave the family quite a scare, didn’t I?” I was even more frightened now than I had been before. I knew very well that night is the time of spirits, and I was completely convinced that some spirit or another had taken hold of Phii Lek, though I was unsure of the part about my father being punished for his roving eyes and hands. I said, “Yes, Khun Phii, it was the most astonishing performance I’ve ever seen. Indeed, a bit too astonishing, if you don’t mind your Humble Younger Sibling saying so. I mean, do you think they really appreciated it? If you ask me, you were just fiddling for water buffaloes.” “ The m o s t am a z in g t h in g is this. . .they weren’t even after me!” He pointed at Mary. “They’re in the wrong brain! It was her they wanted. But we all look alike to them. And I was imitating a woman’s voice when they were trying to get a fix on the psychic transference. So they made an error of a few decimal places, and—poof!—here |,am!” Pen baa pai laew\" I whispered to Mary Mason. “ I heard that!” my brother riposted. “ But I am not mad. I am quite, quite sane, and I have been taken over by a manus tang dao." What's that?” Mary asked me. A being from another star.” Far frigging out! An extraterrestrial!" she said in English. I didn’t understand a word of it; I thought it must be some kind of anthropology jargon. “ Look, I can’t talk long, but. . .you see, they’ re after Mary. One of them is trying to s e n d a m e s s a g e to A m e r ica. . .something to do with the Khmer ru in s . . .some kind of a r t ifa c t.. .to another of these creatures who is walking around in the body of a professor at UCLA. This farang woman seemed ideal; she could journey back without causing any suspicion. But, you see, we all look alike to them, and—” “Well, can’t you tell whatever it is to stop inhabiting your body and transfer itself to—?” “ Hell, no!” Mary said, and started to back away. “ Native customs are all very well, but this is a bit more than I bargained for.” “ Psychic transference too difficult. .- .additional expenditure of energy impractical at present stage. . . but message must get through. . . . ” Suddenly, he clawed at his throat for a few moments, and then fell writhing to the floor in another fit. “Can’t get used to this gravity,” he moaned. “ Legs instead of pseudopods—and the contents of the stomach make me sick—there’s at least f if ty whole undigested ch ilies down here—oh, I’m going to puke—” “ By Buddha, Dharma and Sangkha!” I cried. “ Quick, Mary, help me with him. Give me something to catch his vomit.” “Will this do?” she said, pulling down something from the shelf. Distractedly, I motioned her to put it up to his mouth. Only when he had begun regurgitating into the bowl did I realize what she’d done. “You imbecile!” I said. “That’s a genuine Ming spittoon!” “ I thought they were all fakes,” she said, holding up my brother as he slowly turned green. “ We do have some genuine items here,” I said disdainfully, “ for those who can tell the difference.” “You mean, for Thai collectors,” she said, hurt. “Well, what can you expect?” I said, becoming furious. “You come here, you dig up all our ancient treasures, violate the chastity of our women—” “ Look who’s talking!” Mary said gently. “ Male chauvinist pig,” she added in English. “ Let’s not fight,” I said. “ He seems better now. . . . What are we going to do with him?” “ Here. Help me drag him to the back room.” We lifted him up and laid him down on the couch. We looked at each other in the close, humid, mosquito-infested room. Suddenly, providentially almost, the air conditioning kicked on. “ I’ve been trying to get it to work all day,” I whispered. “ Does this mean—” “Yes! Soon it will cool enough to—” She kissed me on the lips. By morning I had “ arrived” in America several delicious times, and Mary was telephoning the hotel in Ban Kraduk so she could get her things moved into my father’s house. I he next morning, over dinner, I tried to explain it all to my elders. On the one hand there was this farang woman sitting on the floor, clumsily rolling rice balls with one hand and attempting to address my mothers as khun mae, much to their discomfiture; on the other there was the mystery of my brother, who was now confined to his room and refused to eat anything with any chilies in it. “ It ’s your weird western ways,” my grandmother said, eyeing my latest conquest critically. “ No chilies indeed! He’ ll be demanding hamburgers next.” “ It’s nothing to do with western ways,” I said. “ It’s a manus tang dao," Mary said, proudly displaying her latest lexical gem, “ and it’s trying to get a message to America, and there’s some kind of artifact in the ruins that they need, and they travel by some kind of psychic transference—” “ You Americans are crazy!” my grandmother said, spitting out her betel nut so she could take a few mouthfuls of curried fish. “Any fool can see the boy’s possessed. I remember my great-uncle had fits like this when he promised a donation of five hundred baht to the Sacred Pillar of the City and then reneged on his offer. My parents had to pay off the Brahmins— with interest!—before the curse was lifted. Oh, my karma, my karma!” “ Shouldn't we call in some scientists, or something? A psychiatrist?” Mary said. “ Nothing of the sort!” said my grandmother. “ If we can’t take care of this in the home, we’ ll not take care of it at all. No one’s going to say my grandson is crazy. Possessed, maybe. . everyone can sympathize with tha t. . . but crazy, never! The family honor is at stake.” “Well, what should we do?” I said helplessly. As the junior member of the family, 00000 THE SPECIALTY STORE EXCLUSIVELY FOR YOU FASHION MINISTRY TUES'FRI h7pu 2510 SECLINTON SAT 9-6pM Breakfast & Lunch 7-3 Monday through Friday Breakfast 7-3 Saturday, 8-3 Sunday 28 Southwest First Avenue 243-2109 Third Floor of the new Skidmore Building, by the Trolley Tracks Clinton St. Quarterly 19
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