Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

"Usual stuff. Mystery meat and salad." She laughed. She seemed sure of herself, and here she was, alone in an empty railway station on the Thai-Laos border on a hot afternoon.

"You from the States?"

"Missouri. But I live in Khon Kaen."

Another one. I didn't say anything for a while. I was content. I'd just had some noodles across the road from the station, and the Thai noodle seller had said I should stay, live here, lots of farangs had done that and were happy. Eating noodles on the border in a shady open-sided restaurant, waiting for the Bangkok train, was a kind of bliss. Plenty of women here would want to move in with you, he said, promising me romance too. Now I was on the platform with the fat woman from Missouri as she gnawed at her sandwich.

Nong Khai was perhaps the cleanest of any railway station I'd seen since I left London. Not a speck of litter on the platform or on the tracks, no one spitting, no graffiti, no one in rags, no beggars, the whole place swept and mopped, gleaming in the afternoon light.

This order, and the politeness and efficiency of the ticket seller, put me in an optimistic mood. Really, this seemed to me an almost unimprovable society of happy families and good roads and people in clean clothes. And their self-respect and innate propriety meant that they did not have to be tyrannized and fined in order to be tidy.

The woman was still noisily chewing, in a way that would have shocked a Thai. She was sweating in her tight jersey, her hair had come loose, she had a drop of mayonnaise on her nose and a smear of it on her cheek.

"What do you do in Khon Kaen?"

"Officially, I don't do anything"

She looked at me meaningfully, still chewing.

"Unofficially, I'm a missionary."

"Spreading the word?"

"You got it."

"Quoting Scripture?"

"Absolutely."

"'The letter killeth,'" I said. "Who said that?"

"Paul. Corinthians. 'The spirit giveth life.'"

"They have plenty of spirit."

"Not Christian spirit."

"Like they need lessons in piety in Thailand?" I said, my voice cracking with impatience. And I thought of all the Thais I'd seen bringing flowers and incense to temples, their crouching and their prostrations, their faces glowing in the light of candle flames, the special quality of their beauty when they were in the act of praying.

"They need Jesus."

I took a deep breath and said, "What is it with you people?"

She just chewed defiantly.

"They need Almighty God"

I said, "If Almighty God had been an immense duck capable of emitting an eternal quack, we would all have been born web-footed, each as infallible as the pope—and we would never have had to learn to swim"—a quotation from Henry James's father that I find useful on these occasions.

Her eyes popped from her big mouthful, and her whole face was in motion as she chewed. She swallowed and said, "I have a mission," and it was no longer a Christian mission at all, but pure greedy appetite, as she took another bite, wagging her head, working her jaws, like an oversized mongrel worrying a bone.

Soon after that, the train to Bangkok pulled in. I found my compartment. I sat for a while. An old man joined me, and as though a living reproach to the missionary, he meditated for a long time, looking beatific. His name was Vajara. Night fell. He took the upper berth. He was gone when I awoke in Bangkok.

NIGHT TRAIN TO HAT YAI JUNCTION

SPECIAL EXPRESS

AN ENORMOUS MULTICOLORED portrait of Rama V, the great innovating King Chulalongkorn, hung above the waiting room at Bangkok Central—Hua Lamphong Station, built in 1910, the year the much-loved king died. He was the moving force behind the modernization of Thailand, introducing political reform, improving education and roads and the railway too, in 1891. He was also the king portrayed in the book that inspired the plonking musical The King and I, both book and musical loathed by all Thais, who see them as insulting falsifications poking fun at their revered monarch. Thais regard the king as semi-divine and Rama V (rightly) as especially benevolent and far-seeing, not to be spoken about casually, much less demeaned or criticized as a risible Siamese royal, waltzing or dallying with an intrusive farang.

On my previous trip I had asked an idle question about the present king. I had been in a sampan with a young Thai man and a Thai woman, the man a photographer, the woman a journalist. The man was teaching me how to scull with one oar, like a gondolier. We were in a klong, a canal sixty feet wide, not near any other boat or person. My harmless question produced a silence so deep it was as though I had not spoken at all.

Then the Thai woman looked down at the deck of the long boat and made a chirruping sound in her pretty nose. It meant uh-oh!

"You say one word about the king," the Thai man said to me, in a voice more fearful than censorious, "and it's your neck."