Now that my girlfriends apartment is free from ghosts (see previous entry "Voodoo Dollhouse"), we settle in for a night's sleep. The air conditioner is humming, and the toilet is belching every time a neighbor flushes theirs. This building is a monastery for the study of the arcane. It's inhabitants move along like apparitions in the hallways and elevators, not speaking to each other. This is a lower class workers hovel. The only place my girl could afford when I met her.
As my girl and I lay together in bed she makes a face as though she hears something foreboding.
"Never open door past ten o' cok" My girl says. Her face is full of fear. "I hear lady come home in next apartment. She always fighting with husband. He get mao mak (very drunk) and he hit her every night."
"He hits her?"
"Yes, Nothing can do. Just don't open door past ten o' cok"
We are watching a Thai variety show. Say what you want about lazy American's glued to the television. TV watching in Thailand is a national sport. My girl's apartment is a fairly shitty one room affair. She cooks on a hot plate on the floor and has a small fridge. Cockroaches pop up now and then, but I have lived in worse places in the States when I was younger. The walls are paper thin and we can hear her neighbor crying. Sure enough, the hits and epithets start flying within the hour.
"Hia! (cunt)" The man yells. His voice is hoarse, and he coughs deeply between bouts of psychosis.
"We have to do something. Call the police." I tell my girl.
I know this is disturbing to my girl, but I think she is afraid to get involved with the violence next door. She is under 100 pounds and can't defend herself. Up until now, she has been alone through these episodes. The yelling, and slaps, and ensuing crying gets louder. I try several times to go out into the hall to knock on the neighbors door, and straighten out the asshole who is beating his wife but my girl holds me back. Part of me is thinking of hitting the guy myself, but then the other part, the one that says "Don't get involved." is starting to win.
"Let me just look into the hallway." I tell my girl
I look at her face. She is genuinely afraid. It's a bullshit, no win situation for both of us, but I can't sleep, knowing that some asshole is kicking the shit out of his wife in the next room.
I open the door and look down the hall. Almost every door is open, and all of the neighbors are doing the same thing I am. Just peeking out of their doorway and listening to the violent lullaby. I make eye contact with another male neighbor, who's wife is also holding him back from acting in some heroic way. We nod to each other and then shake our heads every time the man yells out Hia! in Thai. My girl is holding my wrist like an anchor, to prevent me getting involved, but I shake her loose and step out into the hall. Like a meek herd of buffalo who slowly gain courage to chase off the lions eating their young, some of the men in the building, even ones from upstairs and down, are coming to the wife beating party. The faces say it all. What to do? My girl tells me that she thinks the wife beater is a policeman, so calling the police to help will be of no avail. I tell her to call them anyway, thinking that this piece of shit next door would be an embarrassment to the Thai police if he actually kills her.
In my own country this would be solved quickly, but I am a farang, in Thailand, and they play by different rules here. I knock on the neighbors door anyway.
The crying stops, and the room is silent. The herd of buffalo in the hallway waits for several minutes and no further sounds come from the room. It's as if your neighbor had his TV on too loud and you knocked on the wall, and he just took it as a sign to keep the volume down, and did so accordingly.
I hesitate to knock again. If he is a cop, then I don't want a gun to my face when he opens the door. We wait some more and there is nothing happening inside the room. I look at the rest of the neighbors who have gathered and we all go back to our apartments.
Back in our room we begin watching TV again. Now the wall to our room is getting knocked by the tell tale signs of a beds head board and the creaking of its springs. Maybe the beating was just his form of foreplay prior to spousal rape...I don't know. A few minutes later, the ghetto fights and orgasms die down, and the night envelopes us in it's peace.
My girl turns to me in bed and looks me in the eyes.
"You never do the same to me?" She asks.
"What? Hit you? Never. Why would I ever hit you?"
"I don't know. Just asking. My boyfriend before hit me sometime." She says to me so nonchalantly, as though it was an expected part of the relationship.
"I promise i will never be like that guy next door. OK?"
"OK. Thank you honey." She says. She kisses me goodnight and puts and arm over my chest. Soon after, she is sound asleep.
Nice dating a girl with such low standards....
I stare at the ceiling, and watch the lizards run across the walls. The TV show has turned into a Thai soap opera, in which, during the opening credits, there is a montage of women crying, and getting slapped by their men. The age old question of Anti-mimesis crosses my mind. Now this room has lost it's comfort for me. It no longer feels like a home. I can now understand why my girl wanted the ghost doctor to come and cast away it's bad vibes. I see this room as something sinister now, and decide to relocate to a new place for the both of us. Maybe something with a few less roaches, a place where you don't have to cook on the floor, and a place where ghosts aren't born by the actions of madmen in the next room over.
At 3am, I am awakened by the sound of someone messing with our door. I try to wake up my girl but as I know from previous experience, once she is asleep, it is next to impossible to wake her up. I grab one of her large butcher knives and wait by the door. The door knob is turning slowly back and forth.
"Arai Na?" I say loudly. It means what? In Thai, but with the right intonation it sounds more like "What the fuck do you want?". The door knob stops turning, and after a log pause, I hear footsteps slowly dragging down the hall. Then it is quiet.
I have never seen the man or woman next door to this day. I try to picture their faces, if they have faces at all. For now, they too, are simply ghosts in my memory,
My girls words repeat over again in my head..."Never open door past ten o' cok...never open door past ten o' cok..."
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