Chapter 25 - A Thai Wife and a Lot of Money. Thailand 1985

B finally selects a parking place for his cruise mobile and turns off the engine with a sigh. He'd rather have left his car somewhere he could keep a clear eye on it but five circuits of the block were enough. He leaves the haven of his air-conditioned car and the Thai heat washes over him as he dashes up the steps to Ali's apartment, disdaining the rather dubious-looking elevator. Ali is already in the doorway and he flashes his friend a grin of pearly white.

"Eeeek!" D screams in mock terror. "Where did you get the new smile?"

"In six unforgettable sessions at the local authorized torture chamber." Ali pales over at the memory, "And I am now the proud owner of 100 per cent artificial gnashers. Rust-roof, rot-proof genuine American plastic!"

"Every single one?" D winces, "You had a few left didn't you?"

"Each baby extracted, photographed and soon to appear in school textbooks in the chapter entitled 'why we brush our teeth'."

"So what made you finally consent to treatment?"

"It's all part of the new image of Ali the businessman." Ali beams with a splayed-open smile, show-biz style. "My new associates decided that client might not want to attend meetings with someone who gives a free horror movie each time he opens his mouth. Only trouble is," Ali grimaces, plucking at his plastic set with his fingers, "That when food goes down it feels like someone is doing the eating for me."

B follows Ali in to the apartment to see that all of his friend's belongings have been packed up. They fill one medium luggage bag.

"So you've really found the woman who can make you give up your life as an urban dancing monk?" D asks as he lifts up the window blinds to see if he has a view of his car from here.

"It comes as part of a whole new package." Ali exclaims, "Want children needs wife needs money needs business needs new Ali." He parts his arms with a 'That's all folks' gesture. "So what about your nearest and dearest - The car, I mean."

"Bad. Bangkok traffic has tripled in the last four years. When I first got the BMW it was smooth sailing each way I went. Now I spend all my time in jams edging forwards inch by inch."

"Mmmm, mmmm." Ali sighs in sympathy, putting his hand to his chin, "Say, did you ever consider trading it in for a little moped? Then you could weave your way in and out of the lanes of traffic at will." But D shows no sign of being amused by the jest and parries by returning to his original theme.

"So how come you didn't try for one of the young Go-Go girls? Your wife is about your age, no?"

"She had the biggest breasts on the shelf." Ali announces proudly.

"And that was your guiding criteria for marital bliss?" D asks with a hidden smile, jangling his car keys in his hand, Ali shrugs.

"It seemed as good a place as any to begin."

If time stood still for Ali in the last nine years, then it's about to catch up quick. He now knows that he can entertain himself in happiness for eternities, engaged with little games of his own devising, playing with straws or dancing the passage from dusk till dawn. But while it may be that Infinite Existence is our only companion through life, yet Ali finds to his surprise that he wants to give people another chance. Large-breasted female people, to be precise.

The truth is, folks, that our psychedelic hero has grown lonely in his adventures on the Edge with no one to care if he walks the wire or falls to his doom. The flames of his heart burn low and he needs something to throw on his fire. Even though his instinctive choice to return to the world will cause him more pain than he could possibly have imagined, his enthusiasm for others is rekindled for good.

However, not the best suit and hi-tech teeth in the world can mask the fact that Ali is about as much a born businessman as he is a hair stylist. His new wife seethes inside with loathing for this sweaty Caucasian chump who has somehow fooled her usually infallible scent for wealth. She is stuck with a heavyset American slouch who has somehow survived the '60s without picking up any ambition, power, connections or rich family along the way.

His very eccentricity seemed to be the clue for hidden wealth as she could not have imagined that anyone as crazy as she sees Ali to be, could possibly have survived without a sturdy trust fund backing them up. She feels duped. Unhappily, however, she is not one for keeping her disappointments to herself and is generous enough to ensure that Ali feels the full measure of her pique. In sickness and in health. Till death does him part.

But, despite herself, she cannot give up on him just like that. He is part of her world now and she's too stubborn to write him off too early. More than anything, she cannot grasp just what he does with his life. He watches his business efforts sag, droop to the ground and finally decompose and seems to find the whole thing quite amusing. Through all of this, he continues to live off Coke and cigarettes, depending upon these to be supplied by the profits of her modest cafe business.

When she makes it clear to him that this is unacceptable, he finds a job teaching mathematics to spoilt rich kids in the area for which he gets a wealth of abuse and disrespect and a bare minimum of baht. Stuck with this lowly job, it becomes more and more clear that he has no other real agenda. The ridicule of her neighbours for being saddled with such a no-hoper is enough to put her on the verge of kicking him out. But she still smells money.

Ali is the nigger of the village. He is disparaged and humiliated wherever he goes though fortunately as he makes no effort to lean any Thai, he is spared from understanding the most of it. Even his wife addresses him in front of others with the most insulting forms of third party references, much to the amusement of all and sundry. Ali doesn't really mind any more than he takes the attention of flies personally. Instead he just sits back and watches the third-rate movie in which he somehow finds himself.

He consoles himself that his re-entry into the Real World was bound to be disappointing. He's so used to being dislocated from the common reality, playing in worlds of his own, that he has to do a double take before he can accept what goes on around him as real.

There's little avoiding the fact of his wife's unexpected pregnancy, though and the excitement of this is enough to rekindle memories of his dream life with family in Morocco, many aeons ago. Faced with a vacuum of affection from his wife, Ali compensates by pouring his love onto her, elevating her in his mind on all kinds of wobbly pedestals, attaching angel wings to her back so that she can fly above and piss down upon him. Because the more devoted to her he becomes, attentive to her slightest caprice, the more she runs him into the ground by demeaning him on any level where he can be hurt. With her hands around his balls, it's not long before his beard turns white.

He thought things might have improved with the birth of their child, a baby boy whom he names Mustafa: Mister Fa to everyone else. But whilst his doomed love for his spouse continues to earn him little but abuse, it has at least resulted in a miracle of a smirking babe. Maybe at the back of his mind he guesses that he's not the father but his recent Buddhist studies have taught him that children choose their parents; souls coming to rest in the right place for them.

Now he understands why he had to endure the humiliation of the past year or two. He has been booned with the chance to live again: through the love of a child. Ali shares again in the unaffected simplicity of an infant, harmonizing with a heart untwisted by the politics of others. Even as Mustafa ages, the joy grows as Ali finds a friend who relates to him with what he perceives as the unspoilt characteristics of the original Essence. As when he finds himself in the wrong one day and watches with overcome disbelief as Mustafa strains with all his might to throw Ali's suitcase out of the front door. He approached his boy and asks:

"Ah, Mustafa - I'm sorry! Will you forgive me?"

The four year-old looks up at the criminal with shrewd, appraising eyes and shrugs:

"Okay!" And his smile is back, ready for play.

Ali is doing his best to make a legal wage but find that he's spoilt by almost twenty years of being handed cheques or bundles of dollars, simply for making an air flight with a loaded suitcase. He's too used to this relatively easy money to feel comfortable in his position at the canning factory, which is how the brats he's teaching make him feel.

But while dope runs may be easy money, they are not always such easy work. Sometimes the fear of the consequences can disturb his sleep, interrupt his visions of the future with the sound of clinking manacles or make him dread the moments in which he lives until the appointed time of make or break.

And it often takes a clarity of purpose that is hard to summon out of nowhere. When he's been lying back for months at a time in distant dream worlds, lounging about in idle bliss, it's not an easy transition to make when the demands for payment grow in volume enough to shake him into action. He has to know what he's taking and from whom, to whom in what place, how to take it and how to look, and whether the profits will buy him enough moths of freedom that are worth the risked amount of time behind bars.

Right now, his wife has squeezed him so dry that he doubts if he has the resolve to carry out any kind of plan at all. Each day at work is a slog of more tedious moment s than he knew could be juiced out of daylight. With each passing grain of sand, Ali feels everything slipping away. It's likely that Mustafa will one day grow cold to him too, once he's old enough to acquire a sense of shame. This movie has gone on too long and he thinks that he may have lost his self-respect for good.

And just when he really does begin to feel like the lowest of the low, the fool who throws away the keys to whichever paradise he stumbles upon, he has a dream. D is standing before him, dangling two hotel room keys in his hands with three digit numbers inscribed on each. They are making a bet. As he awakes he intuitively perceives that it must be the winning number for the lottery. But in the hectic early morning routine of the running of a cafe, the notion slips away to lazier sections of his memory. A few days later, his wife asks him in the lull of the hot part of the day:

"Were you serious about that dream?"

It's too late for the official lottery so they enter a bet on the black competition. It comes in exactly thus and Ali and his wife find themselves rolling in wealth.

Of course, Ali's popularity undergoes a rapid transformation from village schmuck to local soothsayer. His past history is instantly thrown into a new perspective and everyone tries to remember when they first noticed the touch of Divine Blessing on the foreigner's brow. Soon neighbours are popping in as though they always did, bringing gifts of pickles and desserts. There are evenings of laughter and jokes as if it were always that way. Before they leave they invariably bow to Ali and whisper:

"Say, if you have any more dreams - You'll be sure to let me know, right?"

It's also quite clear to Ali that it's more than a little problematic to leave the village, now. Everyone feels they own a little chunk of him. He is public property all of a sudden. The burden of choice now falls upon him and he spends many sleepless nights attempting to evaluate his new situation. He needs a change of scene but he feels committed to his family responsibilities. He ought to leave his wife but she's still the object of his fantasies.

But as it turns out, this predicament is not destined to bother him for long. Shortly thereafter, his wife runs of with her secret lover, taking all the money with her. He learns that his wife's boyfriend is the blood father of Mustafa, who is dispatched to the extended family living close by. Ali is left alone in the house with only his poverty to talk to once more.

Lied to, conned and robbed, Ali has every right to feel like a discarded contraceptive. Fabulous wealth lay in his hands and he had the chance to exercise some real influence in life, to set sail with his wife and family in whichever direction she thought best. He had power, respect and the envy of all who know him. And now it has all been snatched from his hands by a wife who can be trusted to blow it all by the end of the year in ways and agenda he cannot imagine.

And so what? He has been given the calling card of angels to let him know that he is not forsaken - And yet been spared the calamitous potential for fucking up that great wealth would have entailed. He smiles, then chuckles, then laughs with deep chest booms and tears rolling down his cheeks. His in-laws listen at the door and shake their heads as they hear Ali cracking up - Before they could even get any serious betting going on the timing of his break-down.

Ali gives thanks for his deliverance and prays that his wife and her lover have a good time with the money. He resumes his seat at the table to await the next hand to be dealt by the Card-Sharper in the sky.