Catching the Sun. Tony Parsons
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A stain on the wall. Some kind of food smeared across the ceiling.
‘Excuse the mess,’ Jesse said.
The gibbon – Travis – was in the kitchen, having a beer. He squatted by the sink, glugging down a can of Singha, staring thoughtfully around the little room with those huge black eyes.
‘He likes his brew, does old Travis,’ said Jesse, and laughed shortly. ‘He likes a beer at the end of a long hard day of scratching his arse and smashing up my flat.’
‘No,’ said Rory, and I didn’t need to look at him to know how hard he was trying not to cry. ‘He has just forgotten,’ he said. ‘He’s just forgotten, that’s all.’
Travis looked at us out of the corner of his eyes, and I was suddenly very scared of him, and thought how stupid I was to bring my boy in here.
‘Forgotten what?’ Jesse said.
‘Forgotten that he’s a gibbon,’ Rory said. ‘He just doesn’t know he’s a gibbon any more. Can’t you see? He doesn’t understand how to act like a gibbon. Somebody probably stole him from his family when he was a baby.’
The three of us watched Travis slurping his Singha.
‘A beach photographer had him on Hat Patong,’ Jesse said. ‘Then they got him for the bar.’ We watched the gibbon contemplate his soft brown fur, pick an insect from it, pop it into his mouth. ‘But I don’t know where the photographer got him from,’ Jesse said.
The pink cowboy hat was gone, but Travis still looked like a creature of the No Name Bar, like something from the Bangla Road night. He rolled his shoulders and contemplated his beer and narrowed his eyes, as if sizing up his opportunities, as if ready for action.
‘They shouldn’t keep an animal like him in a bar,’ Rory said. ‘That’s so wrong. They shouldn’t keep any kind of animal in a bar. They do it for fun and it’s so wrong.’
I looked at my son but I heard my wife. Rory had the clear-eyed goodness of Tess about him. Both of them could look at something and tell you if it was right or wrong, even if you hadn’t asked. I loved them for it, though it frightened me.
The gibbon stared at us, as if suddenly aware of our presence.
‘Settle down now, Travis,’ Jesse said. ‘We’ve got guests.’
Travis had soft brown fur with a snow-white trim around his black face. He had those perfectly round eyes, moist and black and bottomless. They seemed full of what I can only describe as pain.
Jesse picked up an open packet of cheese puffs and held them out to Travis. The gibbon snatched them from his hand and began stuffing them into his mouth. Flecks of orangey-yellow cheese puffs sprayed out of either side.
‘He loves his Cheesy-Wheezy Puff-Puffs,’ Jesse said quietly. ‘They always calm him down.’
Rory did not take his eyes from the gibbon by the sink.
‘Gibbons eat some insects and small animals such as tree lizards, ants, beetles, butterflies, crickets, stick insects, maggots, Asian leaf mantis,’ my son said. ‘Things that gibbons don’t eat include Cheesy-Wheezy Puff-Puffs.’
Travis wiped his mouth on the back of his arm and picked up a bread knife. With one bound and then another he was across the kitchen and in our faces. His teeth were bared. The knife was in his hand and the knife was at Jesse’s throat.
Then Rory reached out and placed his hand lightly on the gibbon’s arm.
The gibbon froze.
He stared with shock at the small dimpled hand of the child resting on the brown fur of his left arm, just below the elbow. For a long time, neither of them moved. Then the gibbon pulled away, totally subdued, moving very slowly and very gently as if afraid a sudden movement would disturb my son. None of us moved. But the gibbon hopped across back to the sink where he paused to examine the nails of his fingers.
‘Where the bloody hell did you learn to do that?’ Jesse asked my son.
Rory did not bother to reply but I already knew the answer. He had read it in a book.
‘I keep thinking we’re going to be struck down,’ Jesse said, looking at me.
‘What?’ I said, wrapping my son in my arms.
‘I keep thinking that some lightning bolt is going to strike us,’ Jesse said. ‘To punish us for the way we live here. For the lies we tell. For the rules we break. For the things we do.’
‘Shut up, Jesse,’ I told him, annoyed. ‘This is crazy talk.’
‘I know I’m stupid,’ Jesse said, looking at Rory now. ‘I know I did a bad thing bringing him here. A stupid thing. But he was drinking beer till he puked in the bar and he didn’t like the flashing lights and they had filed down his teeth and they were giving him stuff to make him stay awake until closing time. And he doesn’t like being made to wear a hat.’ Jesse hung his head. ‘And I thought it would be a bit of company.’
‘No,’ my son said, and he placed a hand on Jesse’s arm, as he had on the arm of the gibbon. ‘You think you did a bad thing.’ He smiled up at us and for a second it was as if he was the grown-up. ‘But don’t worry,’ Rory said. ‘I think you found him just in time.’
6
Up in the ring, Jesse was in trouble.
He was limping, and his mouth was twisted with pain, a thin stripe of blood on his lower lip.
He towered over the small Thai youth in front of him but every time Jesse stepped forward, the Thai kicked him with his shin. Always the same kick. The gleaming thin brown shin lashed out hard and high on Jesse’s plump milky thigh, and the pain in my friend’s face registered as clearly as if he had been given an electric shock.
Farren leaned into me and shouted something in my ear, but I didn’t get a word of it. Near midnight the noise in a Muay Thai stadium is deafening. There’s a live band, tucked up somewhere high in the rafters, so hidden that they could be some kind of mad radio, and as the night goes on they build in intensity, their pipes, drums and cymbals – you notice the clash-clash-clash of the cymbals most of all – sounding like a commentator who has lost control, echoing and encouraging and urging on the violence in the ring. I had never heard such a racket. Farren had to put his arm around my shoulder and pull me closer to make himself heard.
‘Look at that,’ he shouted. ‘There’s the reason why the Thais were never colonized – right there. There’s the reason why, out of all the nations of Asia, only the Thais were never ruled by the white man from the big bad West. Because they have a mean streak.’
Directly above us, Jesse reeled on the ropes, the sweat flying from his body. The Thai kid seemed to be moving in for the kill. I found that I was shouting Jesse’s name. It did no good.
On the other side of Farren, I saw the Russian jump up and laugh. I had driven him from the Amanpuri resort in Surin all the way south to the stadium in Chalong, his big meaty arms wrapped around my waist all the way. The Amanpuri was the most exclusive hotel on the island but, unlike a lot of clients I was sent to pick up, the Russian didn’t complain about being picked up by bike.
Farren often did business at night. Phuket had two seasons – wet and dry – but the heat was always with us, and in the day it could kill you. So business was often conducted in the cooler, darker hours, when it was easier to work, and think, and sell, and dream.
‘A mean streak,’ Farren repeated. ‘A lovely people who are capable of extreme cruelty if you push the wrong button. Just like the Brits.’
It wasn’t a criticism.
‘Come on, Jesse!’ Farren laughed. ‘Murder the little bastard!’
Leaning against the ropes on the far side of the ring, Jesse gamely motioned