find us a decent exorcist. But none of those foreigners, mind you,” she added pointedly as Mary entered the kitchen to fetch another tray of comestibles for the monks’ feast. I he interview with the spirit doctor JL was set for the following week. By that time the wonder of my brother’s possession had attracted tourists from a radius of some ten kilometers; his performances were so spec tacu la r as to outdraw even the talking cinema in Ban Kraduk. It turned out to be a Brahmin, tall, dark, white-robed, with a long white beard that trailed all the way down to the floor. He wore a necklace of bones—they looked suspiciously human—and several flower wreaths over his uncut, wispy hair; moreover he had an elaborate th ird eye painted in the middle of his forehead. “ Narayana, Narayana,” he said, with the portentousness of a paunchy deva in one of those Indian historical movies. This, I realized, was a sham to impress the credulous populace, who were swarming around the stilts of our house. One or two children were peering from behind the horns of water buffaloes, and one was even peeping from a huge rainwater jar. The Brahmin had an acolyte just for the purpose of removing his sandals and splashing his feet from the footwashing trough, an occupation of such ignominy that I was surprised even a boy would stoop to it. He surveyed my family (which had been suddenly expanded by visiting cousins, aunts, uncles, and several other grandmothers junior to my own) and inquired haughtily, “And which of you is the possessed one?” “ He can’t even tell?” My grandmother whispered to me. Then she pointed at Phii Lek, who was crawling around the front porch moaning “ tachyon, tachyon.” “Ah,” said the exorcist. “A classic case of possession by a phii krasue. Dire meaThe main pagoda of the temple had seemed on fire for a few minutes and they’d called in a fire-fighting squad from the next town. “Who’d have thought of it?" m y grandmother was complaining. "A demon visits Prasongburi— and makes straight for my own grandson!" sures are indicated, I’m afraid.” At the mention of the dreaded phii krasue, the entire family recoiled as a single entity. For the phii krasue is, as everyone knows, a spirit who looks like a normal enough creature in the daytime, but at night detaches its head from its body and, dragging its entrails behind it, propels itself forward by its tongue. It also lives on human excrement. It is, in short, one of the most loathsome and feared of spirits. The idea that we might have been harboring one in our very house sent chills of terror through me. Presently, I heard dissenting voices. “ But aphiikrasue can’t act this way in the daytime!” one said. “ Anyway, where’s the trail of guts?” said another. “ This fellow’s obviously a quack. . . never trust a Brahmin exorcist, I tell you.” “Well, let’s give him the benefit. See if he comes up with anything.” The Brahmin spirit doctor took a good look at us, clearly appraising our finances. “Can he be cured?” Elder Mother asked him. “ Given your very secure monetary standing,” the Brahmin said, “ I see no reason why not. You can take him inside now; I shall discuss the—ah, your meritmaking donation—with the head of the household.” My grandmother came forward, her palms uplifted in supplication. “ Fetch him a d r in k , ” she muttered to my mothers. My mother said, “ Does the than mo phii want a glass of water? Or would he prefer Coca-Cola?” “A glass of Mekong whiskey,” said the spirit doctor firmly. “ Better yet, bring the whole bottle. We’ ll probably be haggling all night.” ince Phii Lek was no longer the ^ ^ c e n t e r of attention, Mary and I obeyed the spirit doctor and brought him inside. He chose that moment to snap back into a state of relative sanity. We knew he had come to because he immediately began demanding chili peppers. “All right,” he said at last. “ I’ve been authorized to tell you a few more things, since it seems to be the only hope.” “What about that monstrous charlatan out there?” Mary said. “ He’s only going to delay your plans, isn’t he?” “ Not necessarily. I want you to insist that he perform the exorcism at the archaeological dig. Once there, I’ ll be able to home in on the device and get rid of the giant cockroach at the same time. You know, that exorcist wasn’t far wrong when he said I’d been possessed by a phii krasue. Would you be interested in knowing what my alien overlords like for dinner?” “ I take it they’ re scavengers?” Mary said. “ Exactly,” said my brother. “ But no more of this excremental subject. You have to convince that exorcist of yours. Unless the device is returned, there will be awful consequences. You see, the aliens were here once before, about eight hundred years ago. They planted a number of these devices as. . well, tachyon calibration beacons. Well, this one is going dangerously out of synch, and some of the aliens aren’t ending up in the bodies they were destined for. I mean, this psychic transference business is expensive, and the military ruler of nine star systems doesn’t want to get thrust into the body of a leprous janitor from Milwaukee. That is precisely what happened last week, and the diplomatic consequences happen to be rippling through the entire galaxy at this very minute. Anyway, if the beacon is sent back posthaste for deactivation, guess who gets it?” “You?” I said. “ Worse. They call it a preventative measure. They randomize the solar system.” “ I think that’s a euphemism for—” Mary began. "That’s right, Beloved Younger Siblings! No more planet earth.” “Can they really do that?” I said. “They do it all the time.” My brother reverted for a moment to cockroachlike behavior, then jerked back into a human pose with great effort. “They might not, though. All the xenobiologists, primitive cult fetishists, and so on are up in arms. So it might happen today. . . it might happen in a couple of years. . . it might never happen. Who knows? But Galactic Central thinks that no world, no matter how puny or insignificant, should be randomized without due process. But. . .1 don’t think we should risk it, do you?” “ Maybe not,” I said. The theory that my brother had contracted one of those American mental diseases, like schizophrenia, was becoming more and more attractive to me. But I had to do what he said. To be on the safe side. Mary and I left Phii Lek and went out to the porch, where the spirit doctor had consumed half the whiskey and they had lit the anti-mosquito tapers, whose smoke perfumed the dense night air. “ Excuse me, honored, grandmother,” I said trying to sound as unassuming as I could, “ but Phii Lek says he wants the exorcism done at Mary's archaeological dig.” “ Ha!” the exorcist said. “One must always do the opposite of what a possessed person said, for the evil spirit in him strives always to delude us! ” His sentiments were expressed with such resounding ferocity that there was a burst of applause from the crowd downstairs. “ Besides,” he added, “ there’s probably a whole arm of phii krasue out there, just waiting to swallow us up. It’s a trap, I tell you! This possession is merely the vanguard of a wholesale demonic invasion!” I looked despairingly at Mary. “ Now what’ ll we do?” I said. “Sit around waiting for the earth to disappear?” It was Mary who came to the rescu- e . . . and I realized how much she had absorbed by quietly observing us and taking all those notes. She said, speaking in a Thai for more heavily accented than she normally used, “ But please, honored spirit doctor, the field study group would be most interested in seeing a real live exorcism!” The spirit doctor looked decidedly uncertain at being addressed in Thai by a farang. I could tell the questions racing through his mind; What status should the woman be accorded? She wasn’t related to any of these people, nor was her social position immediately obvious. How could he respond without accidentally using the wrong pronoun, and giving her too much or little status—and perhaps rendering himself the laughingstock of these potential clients? Taking advantage of his confusion, Mary pursued relentlessly. “Or does the honored spirit doctor perhaps klua phii?" “ Of course I’m not afraid of spirits!” the exorcist said. “ Then why would a few extra ones bother the honored spirit doctor?” Mary contrived to speak in so unprepossessing an accent that it was impossible to tell whether her polite words were ingenuous or insulting. “ Bah!” said the spirit doctor. “Mew phii krasue are nothing. It’s just a matter of convenience, that’s a ll. . . ” “ I’m sure that the foundation that’s sponsoring our field research here would be more than happy to make a small do- n a t io n tow a rd a m e l io r a t in g the inconvenience. . . ” “Since you put it that way,” the exorcist said, defeated. “ Hmpf!” my grandmother said, tr iumphantly yanking the half-bottle of whiskey away and sending my mother back to the kitchen with it. “ These farangs might be some use after all. They’re as ugly as elephants, of course— and albino elephants at that—but who knows? One day their race may yet amount to something.” I he whole street opera of an exor- cism was in full swing by the time my brother, Mary, and I parked her official Landrover about a half hour's walk away from the site. It had taken a week to make the preparations, with my brother’s moments of lucidity getting briefer and his eschatological claims wilder each time. By the time we had trudged through fields of young rice, squishing knee deep in mud, several hundred people had gathered to watch. A good hundred or so were relatives of mine. Mary introduced me to some colleagues of hers, professors and such like, and they eyed me with curiosity as I fumbled around in their intractable language. Four broken pagodas were silhouetted in the sunset. A water buffalo nuzzled at the pediment of an enormous stone Buddha, to whom I instinctively raised my palms in respect. Here and there, erupting from the brilliant green of the fields of young rice, were fragments of fortifications and walls topped with complex friezes that depicted grim, barbaric gods Clinton St. Quarterly 21
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