I had no say in the matter at all. I was annoyed at Mary for mentioning psychiatrists, but I reminded myself that she was, after all, a barbarian, even though she could speak a human tongue after a fashion. “We’ ll wait,” my grandmother said, “ and see whether your father’s penance will do the trick. If n o t . . well, our stars are bad, that’s all.” I J' uring the weeks to come, my J — ^ b r o t h e r became increasingly odd. He would enter the house without even removing his sandals, let alone washing his feet. When my Uncle Eed came to dinner one night, my brother actually pointed his left foot at our honored uncle’s head. I would be most surprised if Uncle Eed ever came to dinner again after such unforgivable rudeness. I was forced to go into town every evening to dub the movies, which I did in so lackluster a manner that our usual audience began walking the two hours to Ban Kraduk for their entertainment. My heart sank when a passing visitor to the shop told me that the Ban Kraduk cinema had actually installed a projection sound system and could show talkies, not only the foreign films, with sound and subtitles, but the new domestic talkies. . .so you could actually find out what great actors like Mitr and Petchara sounded like! I knew we’d never compete with that. I knew the days of live movie dubbing were numbered. Maybe I could go to Bangkok and get a job with Channel Seven, dubbing Leave ft to Beaver and CharJie’s Angels. But Bangkok was just about as distant as another galaxy, and I could imagine the fun those city people would have with my hick northern accent. One night about two weeks later, Mary and I were awakened by my brother, moaning from the mosquito net next to ours. I went across. “ Oh, there you are,” Phii Lek said. “ I’ve been trying to attract your attention for hours.” “ I was busy,” I said, and my brother leered knowingly. “Are you all right? Are you recovered?” “ Not exactly,” he said. “ But I’m, well, off-duty. The alien’ ll come back any minute, though, so I can’t talk long.” He paused. “ Maybe that girlfriend of yours should hear this,” he said. At that moment Mary crept in beside us, and we crouched together under the netting. The electric fan made the nets billow like ghosts. “You have to take me to that archaeological dig of yours,” he said. “There’s an artifact. . . it’s got some kind of encoded information. . .you have to take it back to Professor Ubermuth at UCLA—” “ I’ve heard of him!” Mary whispered. “ He’s in a loony bin. Apparently, he became convinced he was an extraterre— oh, Jesus!” she said in English. “ He is one,” Phii Lek said. “So am I. There are hundreds of us on this planet. But my controlling alien's resting right now. Look, Ai Noi, I want you to go down to the kitchen and get me as many chili peppers as you can find. On the manus tang dao’s home planet the food is about as bland as rice soup.” I hurried to obey. When I got back, he wolfed down the peppers until he started weeping from the influx of spiciness. Suspiciously, I said, “ If you’ re really an alien, what about spaceships?” “ Spaceships. . . we do have them, but they are drones, taking millennia to reach the center of the galaxy. We ourselves travel by tachyon psychic transference. But the device is being sent by drone.” “ Device?” “ From the excavation! Haven’t you been listening? It’s got to be dug up and secretly taken to America and. . . I’m not sure what or why, but I get the feeling there’s danger if we don’t make our rendezvous. Something to do with upsetting the tachyon fields.” “ I see,” I said, humoring him. “You know what I look like on the home planet, up there? I look like a giant mangdaa.” “What’s that?” said Mary. “ It’s sort of a giant cockroach,” I said. “We use its wings to flavor some kinds of curry.” “ Yech!” she squealed. “ Eating insects. Gross!” “What do you mean? You’ve been enjoying it all week, and you’ve never complained about eating insects,” I said. She started to turn slightly bluish. A farang's complexion, when he or she is about to be sick, is one of the few truly indescribable hues on the face of this earth. “ Help m e . . . ” Phii Lek said. “ The sooner this artifact is unearthed and loaded onto the drone, the sooner I'll be released from this—oh, no, it’s coming back!” Frantically, he gobbled down several more chilies. But it was too late. They came right back up again, and he was scampering around the room on all fours and emitting pigeonlike cooing noises. “Come to think of it” I said, “ he is acting rather like a cockroach, isn’t he?” / I week later our home was in- . X E v a d e d by nine monks. My mothers had been cooking all the previous day, and when I came into the main living room they had already been chanting for about an hour, their bass voices droning from behind huge prayer fans. The house was fragrant with jasmine and incense. I prostrated myself along with the other members of the family. My brother was there too, wriggling around on his belly; his hands were tied up with a sacred rope which ran all the way around the house and through the folded palms of each of the monks. Among them was my father, who looked rather self-conscious and didn’t seem to know all the words of the chants yet. . .now and then he seemed to be opening his mouth at random, like a goldfish. “This isn’t going to work,” I whispered to my grandmother, who was kneeling in the phraphrieb position with her palms folded, her face frozen in an expression of beatific piety. “ Mary and I have found out what the problem is, and it ’s not possession.” "Buddhang sarnang gacchami,” the monks intoned in unison. “What are they talking about?” Mary said. She was properly prostrate, but seemed distracted. She was probably u n com fo r ta b le w ith o u t her t ru s ty notebook. “ I haven’t the faintest idea. It’s all in Pali or Sanskrit or something,” I said. "Namodasa phrakhavato arahato—" the monks continued inexorably. At length, they laid their prayer fans down and the chief luangphoh doused a spray of twigs in a silver dipper of lustral water and began to sprinkle Phii Lek liberally. “ It’s got to be over soon,” I said to Mary. “ It’s getting toward noon, and you know monks are not allowed to eat after twelve o’clock.” As the odor of incense wafted over me and the chanting continued, I fell into a sort of trance. These were familiar feelings, sacred feelings. Maybe my brother was in the grip of some supernatural force that could be driven out by the proper application of Buddha, Dharma, and S a n g k h a . However, as th e luangphoh became ever more frantic, waving the twigs energetically over my writhing brother to no avail, I began to lose hope. Presently, the monks took a break for You and your brother, whose wits have been addled by exposure to too many American movies, think in terms of visitations from the stars; your grandmother and I, being older and wiser, know that ‘alien ’is merely another word for spirit. their one meal of the day, and we took turns presenting them with trays of delicacies. After securing my brother carefully to the wall with the sacred twine, I went to the kitchen, where my grandmother was grinding fresh betel nut with a mortar and pestle. To my surprise, my father was there too. It was rather a shock to see him wearing a saffron robe and bald, when I was so used to seeing him barechested with a phakhoma loosely wrapped about his loins, and with a whiskey bottle rather than a begging bowl in his arms. I did not know whether to treat him as father or monk. To be on the safe side, I fell on my knees and placed my folded palms reverently at his feet. My father was complaining animatedly to my grandmother in a weird mixture of normal talk and priestly talk. Sometimes he'd remember to refer to himself as atma, but at other times he’d speak like anyone off the street. He was saying, “ But mother, atma is miserable, they only feed you once a day, and I’m hornier than ever! It’s obviously not going to work, so why don’t I just come home?” My grandmother continued to pound vigorously at her betel nut. “Anyway, atma thinks that it’s time for more serious measures. I mean, calling in a professional exorcist.” At this, my grandmother looked up. “ Perhaps you’ re right, holy one,” she said. I could see that it galled her to have to address her wayward son-in-law in terms of such respect. “ But can we afford it?” “ Phra Boddhisatphalo, atma's guru, is an astrologer on the side, and he’s says that the stars for the movie theater are exceptionally bad. Well, atma was thinking, why not perform an act of merit while simultaneously ridding ourselves of a potential financial liability? I say sell out the half-share of the cinema and use the proceeds to hire a really competent exorcist. Besides,” he added slyly, “with the rest of the cash I could probably obtain me one of those nieces of yours, the ones whose beauty your daughters are always bragging about.” “ You despicable cad,” my grandmother began, and then added, “ holy one,” to be on the safe side of the karmic balance. “ Honored father and grandmother,” I ventured, “ have you not considered the notion that Phii Lek’s body might indeed be inhab ited by an ex tra te rres tria l being?” “ I fail to see the difference,” my father said, “ between a being from another planet and one from another spiritual plane. It is purely a matter of attitude. You and your brother, whose wits have been addled by exposure to too many American movies, think in terms of visitations from the stars; your grandmother and I, being older and wiser, know that ‘alien’ is merely another word for spirit. Earthly or unearthly, we are all spokes in the wheel of karma, no? Exorcism ought to work on both.” I didn't like my father’s new approach at all; I thought his drunkenness far more palatable than his piety. But of course this would have been an unconscionably disrespectful thing to say, so I merely wa/-ed in obeisance and waited for the ordeal to end. My grandmother said, “Well, son-in- law, I can see a certain progress in you after all.” My father turned around and winked at me. “Very well,” she said, sighing heavily, “ perhaps your mentor can 20 Clinton St. Quarterly
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