Madeleine's Drug by Bryan Murphy - HTML preview

 

Now read Bryan Murphy’s short satire, Yama's Travels.

 

 

 

Yama’s Travels

 

The Puzzling Experiences Of A Thai Lecturer In England.

 

 

The taxi-driver stared at his palm in disbelief.

Yama checked again. Yes, the fare had been 18.35 English Baht, and the coins added up exactly. The taxi-driver closed his fist over the money and looked at the younger man with contempt.

“Fucking wanker,” he said as Yama opened the door and drew his slight frame out of the taxi to tread the unnaturally natural grass of Brighton Buddhist University for the first time.

Isn’t wanking what you do when you haven’t got anyone to fuck? Yama wondered, as he pulled his suitcases out of the boot.

The puzzled look on his face gave way to one of pleasure as he surveyed the low-rise, green and brick campus. Brilliant idea, he thought, a campus without students.

A shower of gravel interrupted his reverie as the taxi roared off. Yama picked up his two suitcases and lugged them towards the shimmering golden dome of what he assumed was the University’s central office.

 

********

 

An hour after collecting his keys and surveying his allotted accommodation, the young Thai lecturer was back in the central office, facing Mr. Grice (pronounced to rhyme with the French city of Nice), the Head Porter. Grice took off his peaked cap to express surprise at seeing Yama back.

“Wozza matter? Can’t you sleep?” Grice laughed even though he had said nothing funny.

“Room too big. No heater; no TV. Too quiet.”

“Well, it’s all we got, sunshine.” Grice put his cap back on to express finality.

“But another lecturer I just met told me you got nice small, small rooms in another part of campus. With satellite TV and central heating and canned noizak.”

Grice sucked in his pallid cheeks and tutted. “Oright, oright. It’s true. But you can’t move.”

“Why not, if you got the rooms?”

Grice motioned Yama closer, leaned forward and spoke quietly into his ear.

“First, it’s too much trouble. If you moved, I’d have to fill in two new forms, and I’m too damned lazy. Second, the noizak company didn’t pay me anything to have their system installed, but in the end the monks chose it, so I don’t want it to look popular. See what I mean? And thirdly … I don’t like your face.”

 

**********

 

 

Yama stood outside his Head of Department’s office and gently knocked on the door. There was no answer. He pushed the door ajar. Dr. Sleeve’s shaven head lay on a pillow on her desk. She raised her wan face from the pillow and slowly opened her eyes.

“Oh, come in, Yama,” she said, yawning. “Stretch out on the couch or something. How do you like the place?”

“Very nice. So much space. No fences. No cars. Very peaceful and good for meditation.” In reality, Yama found it unbearably dull and boring, but he would make merit for himself by increasing Dr. Sleeve's happiness.

“Yes, you’ll find most of our students are heavily into meditation. Mind you, the monks are not so keen.”

“Why monks not keen?”

“They say it’s a waste of time they could be using to make money.”

Yama thought he had mis-heard.

Dr. Sleeve continued. “Now, what are you here for today?”

“Is my first class. You are introduce me.”

“Oh, yes. So I are – am.”

At that moment, a velcro-coated alarm clock on the Head of Department’s desk began to ring softly. Dr. Sleeve absently-mindedly picked it up and threw it at a wall. It stuck there, silent.

“Now,” she said, yawning and stretching, “the important thing for you to remember is that here in the Thai Department, we don’t use Thai during Thai lessons. In fact, it is banned.”

“Yes, you tell me in your e-mail. Frustration approach. Get students worked up not being able to speak Thai, so once they leave classroom, won’t want to do anything else. Does it work?”       

“Well, it means we don’t have to bring in Thai teachers all the time, so it keeps the monks’ profits up.”

“No, I meant if it works for students.”

“Well, depends how you look at it. Our team of statisticians is still working out the product moment coefficients in the double-bind experimental out-of-control group, but I think they’ll show something. Especially if we eliminate the ones who had nervous breakdowns. I mean, they eliminated themselves really. At least, three of them did. But it’s worse over at the TLC.” Dr Sleeve yawned mightily.

“Pardon?”

“The Theravada Language Centre. They’re our rivals in a way. They take a rather different approach.”

“Oh, what’s that?”

“It’s a more traditional approach. Yeah, they base everything on silent perusal of the sacred texts, interspersed with choral chanting.”

“Aren’t sacred texts written in Pali language?”

“I don’t think the students notice the difference.”

“So they don’t learn much Thai, then?”

“Nah. But it keeps their aggro levels down. Excuse me.” She yawned again, long and loud. “OK, let’s go, if we have to.”

 

Dr. Sleeve opened the door to the lecture hall, pushed Yama in, and followed, rubbing her eyes. In the vast hall, thirty English students huddled together in front of a white sheet hanging from the ceiling. Yama was happy to feel all their eyes on him until he noticed that they were nudging each other and sniggering. Dr. Sleeve fixed Yama with one bleary eye to see what was the matter.

“Oh, for Siddhartha’s sake, get that bloody tie off. Where d’you think you are? Buckingham Palace?”

Burning with embarrassment, Yama removed the offending article, while Dr. Sleeve sketchily introduced him. Rubbing his neck, Yama felt half-naked as Dr. Sleeve shuffled out of the room, wishing him a perfunctory “Good luck” on the way. As the door closed, a student called out, “What do you think of old bedroom eyes, then, Yama?” and everybody laughed. Except Yama. He gave the student a hard look.

“Please call me ajaan. It’s only polite. I am your teacher.”

The room fell into an uncomfortable silence.

The student who had asked the question was the first to get over the shock. “This ain’t Thailand, mate, this is bleedin’ England. We don’t use them silly titles here.”

Yama lowered his gaze, and his voice: that always worked. “But it’s only polite.”

“Sorry, sunshine, we call our lecturers by the first names here. That’s our culture. You can’t change that.” Seeing the distraught look on Yama’s face, he softened. “Besides, ajaan is Thai, innit, and we’re not allowed to use Thai in class. Bad for our anxiety, right?”

Everyone laughed.

“Right,” said Yama, forcing himself to smile. This cross-cultural stuff was going to be harder than he had anticipated.

 

Actually, the lesson didn’t go too badly. They obviously wanted him to project the images onto the white sheet in the middle of the room instead of the banks of Thaiyundai Zentium hi-fi computer screens lining the walls, but at least the link with Udon Thani was good. In fact, it seemed the console responded before his fingers hit the keys. Despite a couple of tears in the sheet, and the occasional stain, the resolution of the images from Northern Thailand was so clear that, as he surveyed the pictures of young smiling people from the north of his home country, it was actually quite hard for Yama to remind himself that dark peasant faces were inherently ugly.

He turned his attention to the students in front of him. Their eyes were transfixed to the screen. He really found it hard to tell the boys from the girls among them. Men and women, he was supposed to call them here. Oh yes, Western men often had beards. Two of them here did. And all of them seemed to be getting worked up over the pictures from Udon Thani, drooling with excitement – he’d clearly bought the right peasants for English tastes – but it wasn’t always the English students who looked most like men who were salivating most profusely over the Thai girls, nor was it the English students who looked most like women who were salivating most profusely over the Thai boys.

That’s all right. Each to his own, thought Yama. The important thing was that frustration and general arousal levels were clearly rising, as the charm school from Isaan produced their most captivating smiles and postures and words, and the English students could not understand a word or say anything in return. It wasn’t just that they were banned from speaking Thai: the Thaiyundai connection had been doctored to make it one-way only. So when Yama finally ended the class and opened the door, there was a stampede of young people bursting with hormones and frustration desperate to find someone – anyone – to whom they could express their longings in Thai.      

Two hours later, as he walked back to his hut through the exotic drizzle, Yama was struck by the unmistakable sound of his own language. Delighted, he followed it to the campus's temple moat, where one of his students – not a star learner – stood at its edge, looking into the water and speaking earnestly in Thai before falling to his knees and plunging a hand into his own reflection.

 

******

 

Yama sat in the University's Soyamilk Bar with a chocolate drink in one hand and a spliff in the other. Alcohol was kept off the campus, of course, for religious reasons, but since the repeal of England’s anti-dope laws, the monks had come clean about the main source of their funds and indeed actively encouraged students and faculty to consume their product. Yama's Australian colleague, Brine, sat opposite him nursing a bowl of yoghurt and a hookah. Yama was pleased to notice that behind Brine there was a couch that had been set out and reserved for their head of department, in case she felt like a having a snooze away from the distractions of her office. Brine was trying to explain to Yama the decline of gender distinctiveness among the local youth.

“The late Queen’s got a lot to do with it, fyask me. Curraged her grankids to go gay so they wouldn’t end up in the divorce courts. Least, not for their own divorces.”

“It’s different in my country,” Yama pointed out. We keep homosexuals out of teacher training colleges, for instance.”

“Owdja do thet?”

“Government decree.”

“Nah, I mean, owdja tell the homos from the heteros? Can't just ask them, 'cos they'd lie to save their jobs if they had to, wouldn't they? Stands to reason.”

“Well, it was hard to find a foolproof way, but we did it in the end. With subterfuge.”

Yama took a long drag on his spliff, wished he hadn’t mixed tobacco with the mariajuana as the smoke burnt his throat. He held it for an instant, released it, coughed and launched into his triumphant tale. He had rehearsed it many times.

“What the Ministry does now is to recruit two prostitutes, one male and one female, for each would-be teacher.” Brine looked pleasingly shocked. Yama continued.

“The Ministry pays the hookers well to offer their services to the applicant, for free. Now, if the applicant turns away both the male and the female prostitute, we send them to a re-education camp on the Lao border. If they accept only the services of the hooker of the opposite sex, then they are obviously fine upstanding heteros and can enrol at the college.”

Brine stared at him in disbelief. Yama went happily on.

“And if they get a good report on their performance, we might even excuse them an exam or two. Well, if they only accept the services of the same-sex prostitute, we bar them from the college. In fact we usually send the men into the army and the women to prison. I know it sounds a bit harsh, but at least they’re with the sex they prefer.”

“Blimey,” said Brine. “And what about those who take up both the male and the female prostitute’s offer?”

“Well, they’re not fit to teach, obviously, but the business college snaps them up as students.”

“Blimey,” said Brine. “Bit homophobic, innit?”

“Nah,” said Yama, picking up the lingo. “We ain’t got no irrational fear of sameness. We ain’t even got no irrational fear of homosexuals, neither. Jes don’t like the buggers.”

At that moment, Yama was again struck by gravel, coming at him through the window opening this time, seconds after a screeching of brakes announced the arrival of the Venerable Thaiga Vus, head of the rival Theravada Language Centre.

Thaiga was a fruit of the Diaspora, the son of a Thai kick-boxer and an American gospel singer. The University had paid good money to lure him from Manchester Muay Thai Meditation Centre. It was apparent from the way he strode off into the distance, the only monk allowed to wear boots, leaving his car badly parked under the half-built statue of Khun Sa, that he was very well aware of his superior status.

Yama had only spoken to Thaiga once, and that had brought him a lecture on etiquette. “Look, man,” the monk had said, sipping his tea through a straw, slightly over-compensating, “these guys are dead touchy about some things. You gotta watch yo staip. Take their royal family. King Charles, now.”

“Isn’t he very sympathetic to Buddhism?”

“Check. But, but, but. You can’t point that out to them. Worst thing you can do. They go berserk anytime anyone says anything good about any single member of the royal family. You can think it, though. Believe you me, son, lot a them Anglos love their royals. But they keep their praise strictly to themselves. And boy, you better do the same. You read me?”

 

*********

 

A tall young man with lank blond hair and thick glasses strode into the bar, two lit cigarettes in one hand and a walking cane in the other. He ordered a nice cup of tea and a plate of biscuits, and hurried over to join Yama and Brine. Brine introduced the newcomer as Mick, who Yama had already heard was on the run from a Mafia contract and several paternity suits in Eastern Europe. He was delighted to find Yama.

“I say, I hear you’re from Bangkok, old chap. Wonderful city, don’t you know? Myself, I just love it.” He lowered his voice. “Do you think you could possibly get me a job there?”

Yama thought that unlikely, but saw no merit in saying so.

“Well, there is a new university opening in Buriram.”

“Oh, good heavens no! That’s absolutely miles from Bangkok. Full of trees and stuff, and clean air.” Mick took a deep lungful from his two cigarettes. “I hate to talk politics, and especially of course to criticise, but I do rather think it’s a little bit off the way your government is chopping down forests in Cambodia and Laos …”

Yama felt his cheeks burning. “I know. Many of us are deeply ashamed – ”

“ … when it has still got so many trees of its own in Thailand to clear out of the way.”

 

******

 

“Well, yes,” said Dr. Sleeve, “you could teach on our retreat course, on Holy Island, if you fancy a trip to the North East.”

Six of her secretaries flustered around, one of the men smoothing her pillow, another massaging her feet.

“Or,” she said, as the door opened and two muscular secretaries backed in carrying enormous piles of manuscripts, “you could spend a few days marking exams.”

Yama eyed the growing paper mountain in the middle of the floor with some trepidation.

“It’s all right,” his boss continued, “you don’t actually have to read them – you might find that a rather disturbing experience in view of our frustration-based methodology. No, just borrow one of my secretaries to get a rubber stamp cut for you, and then supervise him stamping them.”

“Do you mean … all the students pass?” Yama was horrified.

“Could happen,” Dr. Sleeve said drowsily. “It’s up to the computer. We let it generate random numbers and stick ’em on the exam papers. Haven’t had many complaints so far. Wonders of modern technology. Now, if you’ll excuse me. By Sakyamuni, why can’t humans just hibernate?”

With that, she snuggled under the blankets covering her, while a secretary put on a tape of the BBU choir reciting the Lotus Sutra, to smother the snores that would soon emanate from the couch.

 

*******

 

Yama was having trouble with his class. They seemed to be going off the South-East Asian physique. This morning, half a dozen of them were fighting over an African edition of “Playboy”, while a further couple were breaking all the rules by whispering to each other in Thai.

“Bloody hell, you lot,” Yama finally burst out, “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to learn?”

Silence fell. An uncomfortable silence.

Yama insisted: “Why the fuck are you here? Eh?”

All of Yama’s students stared at him, their faces registering disbelief rather than hostility. A girl who spent the lessons constantly rubbing warmth into her bare feet finally broke the silence. “Why the fuck are you here, Yama?”

Yama decided to be completely honest. “Because the monks pay me an awful lot of money to be here.”

The students eyed each other. Some broke into laughter. The girl got up, swayed over to Yama, put her arm around his shoulder, kissed his ear and said into it. “Same with us, my darling.” Then, seeing his look of astonishment, she kissed him lightly on the mouth and asked “Didn’t they tell you?”

 

*********

 

“Yeah,” said Brine, as they staggered back from the bar past the moat. “Had to recycle that money somehow, so when New New Labour privatised the old new universities, they bought the Sussex campus lock, stock and barrel. Couldn’t buy the students from the government, though, so they offered them money to stay. Some did, some didn’t. And of course there was competition for students. But when the drug laws changed, business boomed and the monks could outbid almost all their rivals. Now I think only the International Olympic Committee’s Universities of Physical Education pay more.”

“But why are there so few students around?”

“Some they pay to attend, some they pay to stay at home. It’s the numbers what’s enrolled what counts, what gits you to the top of the performance table.”

Despite the smoke in his lungs Yama was starting to appreciate the subtleties of the English system. Concentrating on the metaphysics of money-making, he nearly tripped over two figures lying on the wet grass. They looked to him like a large, fat hairy man and a small, skinny, hairless boy, engaged in Ugandan relations. Brine pushed Yama on. Yama turned back to stare. “Come on,” said Brine, “Wossa matter with you?”

“Did you see that?”

“Course I saw it. It’s only Pete O’Fail and his catamite.”

“Is - is that allowed?”

“Course it is. Well, should really be under a light at this time of night, but you can do anything on this campus. As long as it’s in the open, that is, and not behind closed doors.”

 

**********

 

There was one exception, as Yama discovered a few days later when, on his way to the refectory for lunch, hobbling along the gravel with his shoes in one hand and his spoon in another, he observed a crowd milling around a local teacher’s assistant. The young woman appeared to be having her long blonde hair shaved off, and not to be enjoying it. Yama saw Brine on the edge of the crowd, and hobbled over to him. “What’s going on?” he responded to Brine’s “G’day, mite.”

“Ritual punishment.”

“What on earth for?”

“Forbidden word.”

“What?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“Nah, mate. Ingot a clue.” Yama’s English was really developing.

Brine leaned close to Yama and whispered as quietly as he could manage, his normally strong voice trembling, “Or-or-oriental!”

“Oriental?”

“Shhhh!”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“He said it about a Thai.”

“But Thais are – ”

“Shhh!”

“Wossa problem?”

“It could make a Thai feel that he or she was a member of an out-group distinguished only by imprecise geographical origin, with physical and cultural implications.”

“But if she said it in private, how did anyone find out?”

“She said it in front of other people, including monks!”

“Doesn’t that make it OK?”

“Some things are just too awful to ignore, even when they’re done openly. Right?”

“Er, right,” said Yama, uncertainly.

************

 

They cremated Yama in the main campus Temple and scattered his ashes over the grass of the Library slope. The newspapers made a lot of money out of his death from a heroin overdose in the Soyamilk bar, by keeping quiet about it. At the closed inquest, his closest friends at Brighton Buddhist University testified that he had become increasingly distraught because, even after two months of trying, he couldn’t get any of his colleagues who assembled there in the evenings to talk about work.

The coroner recorded a verdict of suicide.