Like a lot of Thais, Detective Sukum has never spent much time in the Nana area, although he has passed through it often enough and reads about it almost daily in the newspapers. Perhaps we got the idea of invisible screens from the Chinese, before they kicked us out of their country about fifteen hundred years ago. The invisible screens in this case produce a kind of psychological enclave for the benefit of farang men-men like Frank Charles, for example-who do not know how to be discreet, and so we have to be discreet for them, letting them get away with poor public behavior in a restricted area in the hope it will not corrupt our kids. Therefore I deliberately stop the cab at the Sukhumvit/Soi 4 junction and walk Sukum past the stalls that line the pavement where you can buy DVDs of the latest movies, some of them clearly marked as being for the eyes of the Oscar committee members only. (Not only DVDs, farang: designer clothes, fake Rolexes, and every martial-arts weapon of the kind strictly prohibited in your country, including nunchakus, bokken, tonfa, focus mitts, kick shields, and full-length swords in scabbards you would kill for, which you won’t be allowed to take on the plane, not even in your checked luggage-but then you know all this already; it’s all there especially for you.)

When it comes to buying, Sukum and I both examine our consciences-no, not in the way you are thinking, farang (I wish I could get hot under the collar about designer fakes the way you do): I mean we have to decide whether to reveal that we are cops and thereby get the DVDs for free, or whether we bring good karma to the case by letting the poor Isaan hustler, in this case a young woman with a disfiguring harelip who is also deaf and dumb, have her hundred and fifty baht. It’s a no-brainer because Sukum, when not suffering from the vice of ambition, is a good Buddhist. I direct him to buy The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. When the woman with the harelip shows him the lurid covers of her porn collection, the good detective actually blushes. Well, I guess the covers are pretty raw if you’re not used to that kind of thing. Then it happens, as I suppose I knew it would.

They are a perfectly ordinary young couple, she Thai, he farang, of the kind you see often in this area. It’s their son, about six years old, who throws me. He bears only a passing resemblance to Pichai, but that’s enough. I feel my lips quivering and something happening to my lower jaw. Sukum has only just finished buying his movies and is shocked to see the transformation of my mood. May Buddha bless him, he’s able to make the connection with the kid who just passed us and touches me gently on the elbow. I say, “I’m sorry, I better sit down for a moment.”

In Starbucks I order a cold mint mocha, medium size, and a mineral water for Sukum. He politely avoids looking at me, waiting for me to recover. How to explain that at times like this it is not merely grief that gnaws at my guts, but Tietsin’s mantra as well? I see his blade wheel vividly, as if it were a physical object, its tiny spadelike edges whirring and ripping through the illusion of identity.

“D’you want to go home?” Sukum asks doubtfully. The idea of visiting the Rose Garden alone is pretty daunting.

“I’ll be okay,” I say. I do not add, I wish I could light up a joint.

The moment passes, as such moments do, leaving me purged and strangely light-headed. Relief even brings a sort of wan joy. Sukum has been watching me in wonder, and I think he has decided I’m totally psycho. I understand. He is a simple man who got upward mobility in a limited form and doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He is the only cop in District 8 who bought a car out of his own salary; he cleans it about five times a week. Nobody has seen it in anything less than mint condition, and it forms a large part of his conversation. He is also famous for his underarm deodorant and for cleaning his teeth three times a day; we know all this because he is obliged to carry out these ablutions in the men’s room at the station. According to Lek, who, when not urging me on to Buddhahood, can be a terrific gossip, Sukum also has a problem with flatulence, which he deals with through an elaborate exercise involving his stomach muscles and a great deal of inexplicable swallowing. Lek sits near him and frequently bears witness to tiny, nearly inaudible ziplike farts emanating from under Sukum’s desk. To top it all, Sukum has adopted the Chinese habit of extended hoiking first thing in the morning, to chase away the throat demons. I’m not telling you all this, farang, to be malicious, but rather to reveal the flaw in my own perception, for now Sukum shocks me with his penetration.

“I don’t know how you feel. I can only imagine. If my son was killed, I would resign and go to a monastery.” I stare at him. “I know what you think of me, I know you laugh at me, just like all the others, especially your katoey assistant. I didn’t choose the smallness of this lifetime. Don’t you think I also would like to live a bigger life? Why do you think I want promotion so much? But it’s my karma, what can I do?” He adds, “I often wish I hadn’t married and had a child.”

“Your home life is not entirely what you hoped for, Khun Sukum?” I ask, rather disingenuously; the detective’s fights with his wife are legendary.

“You know very well it’s not. Let’s face it, this is the age of the booby-trapped pussy. If I tread on her toe, I’m violent. If I smack the kid, I’m a sadist. If I look at another woman, I’m a sex addict and she starts talking about HIV. If I don’t want to go to the filthy beach at Pattaya fifty times a year, I’m stifling her and the kids. At the same time I get it in the neck for not standing up for her when she gets into an argument with the neighbors, and if I don’t dominate her ruthlessly in sex she can’t reach orgasm. Then there’s always the threat of bankruptcy if she files for divorce.”

He gives me a glance. “Go ahead, laugh.” He shakes his head and glances around the coffee shop. Out of the corner of his mouth: “If I could have held out against the sex instinct for a little longer, I might have gotten mature enough to be a monk. But I couldn’t, and what can I do now? My whole mind is cramped; there’s nothing I don’t worry about, and I have no idea where the worry comes from. I don’t like my social identity. I don’t like identity. I hate having to be somebody, it’s so burdensome.”

My jaw has dropped, and for a moment all I can manage is a high wai to honor his wisdom. On the way, now, to the Rose Garden, with Sukum holding his illegal DVDs in a green plastic bag, I’m thinking, Hold out against the sex instinct, hmm.

I was too rushed to describe the bar properly to you before, farang. It’s a great barnlike structure of the type used to house small modern industries and supermarkets-basically a tin roof on an iron frame with walls added and a great oblong bar in the middle of the enclosed space. What I have always admired is the way the strict Buddhist owners have preserved a sacred ficus tree, which somehow rises through the roof and is the primary source of luck for the girls, who rarely fail to bring lotus buds and wai the tree before they sit at the bar and work on being irresistible. I’m a little embarrassed that at least half of them know me and say hi and wai me as we walk in, but the good Sukum again shows his generous side. “I know you have shares in one of Colonel Vikorn’s brothels. I know your mother runs it and also has shares in it. You must know lots of working girls.”

“Let’s be frank, Detective-my mother was on the Game. That’s the only reason I got enough education to be a cop. It’s the only reason I’m still alive.”

At the words on the Game, Sukum snaps his face away from me, leaving me the back of his head with its crop of spiky ink-black hair. I’m thinking, I’ve really done it now and maybe he wont be able to work with me anymore, I’m just too weird, when he says, still looking away at the tree shrine, “How can you say that? How can you just come out with it like that, as if it doesn’t matter?”