Smoking Poppy by Graham Joyce (the read aloud family .txt) 📕

As we sat drinking and smoking, more beautiful children with deliquescing black eyes appeared silently from out of the dark, drawn into the circumference of illumination cast by our car-battery light. Behind them their mothers, hovering at the edge of the table. Clearly we had become the evening’s entertainment. One of the braver women tried to peddle us embroidered friendship bracelets and other trinkets. Mick bought one for each of us. He put his on: he was looking more like a fucking hippy every day. Phil strapped his on, too, but I resisted. They looked like the kind of things Charlie’s boyfriends used to wear. But one of the boys insisted on tying it to my wrist.

Another boy tried to lift up my shirt. Coconut, who sat a little apart from all of this with Bhun, but who watched everything with a critical eye, said, ‘They wan see you hairy man.’

Because the Thais, and the Lisu and the other hill tribes presumably, had little body hair, the children were fascinated by the appearance of these three ape-men. Both Mick and Phil being pretty hirsute, they rolled up their shirts to give them a squint at the tobacco crop. The children giggled and leapt backwards, as if it was a monstrous sight. The women too clapped their hands and cackled and spoke rapidly to one another.

I dandled one little boy on my knee, making primate noises and slapping the top of my head with the palm of my hand. More hilarity.

‘Here they eat monkey,’ Coconut said.

I thought about my green curry. It had left a taste in my mouth that even the beer wasn’t washing away. I tried not to think about it, and did some more monkey business for the kids. An elderly woman, with a cataract or some other degeneration of her left eye, pointed at the empty beer bottles and spoke to Bhun. Our guides had a debate. ‘I not know what she say, exactly,’ Coconut said, ‘but she wan know this what beer do to you.’

Mick and I laughed, but the fixed expressions of the Lisu women indicated that they considered it a serious question. They thought perhaps we were drunk.

‘They don’t drink beer?’

‘The women? Never.’

The woman with the cataract then leaned across the table, proffering a waxy cube of black substance, a piece the size of my thumbnail. So this was it.

‘This’d be the stuff,’ Mick said, accepting and inspecting it.

The guides watched us with great interest. I felt angry. I didn’t even want to touch it. ‘Give it back to her,’ I told Mick.

‘I’m just looking.’

‘Give it back to her.’

‘Keep your hair on! I want to know what it looks like.’

Phil, watching this dispute closely, put in, ‘It’s not in the stuff, Father. It’s in the desire for the stuff.’

I waved my hands, palms outwards, at the woman. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Very bad.’ She glanced over at the guides and I saw Coconut shake his head, very slightly.

Then two of the younger women, each with a liquorice-eyed baby slung on a hip, offered us a massage apiece, in return for the price of one of the kid’s beers. That sounded like a prize way to close the evening, so Mick and I assented. The two women passed on their babies to their own mothers, one of whom was the opium dealer, and we went inside the hut.

They placed candles around the hut, creating a peaceful orange ambience. The only thing to spoil the mood was the cluster of mothers, grandmothers and children at the door, who seemed to regard the massage as a spectator sport. We shouted for Coconut to get rid of them. After a few words from him they drifted away. Only Phil remained, gloomily watching the proceedings. ‘Tell me something Coconut,’ I said as I lay face down on the rattan. ‘Do you smoke the opium?’

‘Never.’

‘And Bhun?’

‘Also never. I agree you. Bad thing. I glad you not buy opium.’ Then he waved a hand at Phil saying, ‘You make sure your friends keep they pants on. If they fuck, then you must pay lot of money to they husband.’

Phil wrung his hands nervously, and Mick vented an unnecessarily deep sigh of pleasure.

21

We were up and on our way early the next morning with no farewells to the villagers. There was a military air to the expedition in the way Coconut marshalled us along. I’d had a dreadful night, and so had the others. Mosquitoes like flying piranhas had savaged lumps out of us and the quaint rattan pallet was as comfortable as a bed of Welsh slate. It got shockingly cold in the night, too, and the two thin blankets we each had over our sleeping bags were inadequate. We spent half the night talking rather than sleeping.

Or arguing rather than talking. It started when I saw Mick swallowing a pink pill while performing his ablutions. At the hotel we’d taken it in turns to use the bathroom, so I hadn’t noticed Mick’s nightly rituals. Here the washing facilities comprised two drums of water outside the hut: one for washing your body, and one for sluicing your arse.

‘What’s that about, then?’

Mick washed down the pink pill with a swig of beer. ‘Malaria.’

I hadn’t thought about malaria. My doctor had consulted a list which declared Chiang Mai malaria-free. At that time I had no idea we might be venturing into the jungle.

‘You telling me you haven’t been taking malaria tablets?’ Mick said.

I explained what my doctor had said. ‘Moron!’ Mick exclaimed. ‘You’re supposed to be an intelligent person.’

‘You should have anticipated this,’ Phil said helpfully. He, of course, had his own supply.

‘I didn’t realise what was in store for us.’

‘Didn’t realise? You might have made provision! Do you want someone to wipe your arse for you as well?’ At which point he glanced down at water bowl number two.

‘Well, I didn’t.’

These little midges could bite a cow to death, and you’ve got nothing to say about it?’

‘All right. Just drop