44
Yesterday my mother sent a messenger to the station with samples, for the Colonel and me, of the new T-shirts and tank tops she has designed. The motif is identical in both cases: under the main legend in burning scarlet—THE OLD MAN’S CLUB—the subtext in black italics: Rods of Iron. She employed a professional cartoonist to produce a convincing caricature of senior prurience: stooped but muscular, bald but sprouting pubic hair from his chin, tongue hanging out. The Colonel sent for me to ask what I think. Filial loyalty (read: a childhood of relentless brainwashing and emotional blackmail of the lowest kind) obliges me to opine that it is the work of genius.
He takes the T-shirt in both hands and presses it against me. I have to hold it up as he stands back. “Farangs go for this sort of thing? It’s so . . . so ugly.”
“It’s the way they are. If you give them a traditional Thai men’s club they’ll be intimidated.”
“Really?” For a moment he stands confused, stranded in an alien psychology. “It’s not important that some of the customers will actually look like that?”
“That’s the point. It makes them feel more secure.”
A slow nod of understanding, or at least acceptance. “By the way, your mother and I are giving you ten percent of the shares in the business. She wants you in as a family member, and I can see the advantage of not having you passing heavy judgments on us when you go through one of your devout phases.”
“I’m afraid I cannot accept. Making money out of women in that way is expressly forbidden by the Buddha.”
“So is smoking dope. Anyway, I’m ordering you. Disobeying a superior is also proscribed from the Eightfold Path.”
“Then I accept.”
I take off the T-shirt and fold it on his table. He unfolds it to take one more look, then, reassured—if aesthetically challenged—the Colonel nods and lets me go. After all, Mother is the one who took the WSJ course on the Net. When I reach the door, he calls to me. “Sorry, I forgot. This fax came through from the American embassy a couple of days ago. It’s just one of those dumb profiling things they do in Quantico. I had it translated into Thai, but it’s the usual crap. Stuff you would know just by thinking about it.”
I find a quiet corner of the station. The profile is only three pages long and surprisingly free of technical jargon.
Report from the Department of Criminal Profiling,
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Quantico, Virginia
Category of document: Confidential, for distribution only to interested parties (permission is granted for this report to be shared with the Royal Thai Police)
Subject: Fatima, a.k.a. Ussiri Thanya, a transsexual who underwent gender reassignment in her late twenties, born and brought up in Thailand. Father an unidentified African American serviceman (probably a draftee during the Vietnam War); mother a prostitute of tribal origin in northwest Thailand, a member of the large Karen group who reside in the border areas. Within the Thai tradition, the subject is believed to have been brought up by her grandmother in the tribal area on the border with Myanmar while her mother continued to work as a prostitute in Bangkok . . .
Just as Vikorn said, the report is nothing one could not work out for oneself. I skip to the last paragraph.
Save for those who experience a deep, personal and lifelong craving for gender reassignment, the long-term effect of surgical removal of the genitals is likely to be of the most appalling psychological devastation.
The subject’s suspected reaction in murdering Bradley in an elaborate, sadistic and clever manner is entirely consistent with our expectations. However, it is highly unlikely that the subject’s rage has been assuaged. She turned Bradley into a savior figure, the only human being who differed sufficiently from the others to the extent of being basically benevolent. To him she sacrificed the only possessions to which the world apparently attached value: her genitals. With her betrayal by Bradley she would most likely have ceased to be capable of trust in any form. If to date her behavior (absent the murder of Bradley) has been relatively normal, we believe that she is simply acting from memory, or pursuing a plan of some kind which must be essentially sociopathic. The need to do to the world what the world did to her will be irresistible.