FEATURE
Playing the Lute & Committing Pretty Murder
Memories of a Bangkok landlady and her son
BY SAM OGLESBY
What’s an 82 year-old
to do in COVID-stifl
ed New York City
when he is confi ned
to home after undergoing surgery?
The answer, of course, is — meander.
As in wander through shadow
fi lled corridors from the past,
recalling hard-to-believe things
and remembering unreal people,
escaping the boredom of suffocating
masks and unfriendly social
distancing.
And therein hangs the tale of my
landlady in Bangkok and tasteful
murder.
I lived in the City of Angels in
Thailand for fi ve years from 1973
to 1978. It was a dreamlike time
spent on the banks of the Chao
Phraya River in a house by the
Thewet boat dock. My residence
defi ed easy description. The best I
can say about my dwelling is downat
the-heels-genteel New Orleans
mansion crossed with tattered Javanese
fl op-house. A brass plaque
on the pillar by the compound’s
entrance was engraved with Baan
Ban Thomsin, ancient Thai language
for “peaceful by the water.”
The house was literally a stone’s
throw from the river and the pungent
smell of the Chao Phraya
blended with the hooting, wailing
sounds of fl oating water life, a language
unto itself.
During half of the year, the house
and its compound were fl ooded, as
the river’s tide crept into my garden
so that the grove of old mango trees
in my backyard, heavy with sweet
fruit during the season, came to
look like fairy wands shooting out
of the sea.
And there was my landlady, the
Khunying (Thai for noble lady),
an ancient shriveled creature who
lived in an elegant, about-to-collapse
pile across from me. She permanently
stationed herself at an
upstairs window overlooking my
entrance where she surveilled my
every nocturnal coming and going.
If I was late or inebriated, the faceless
voice in the dark would chastise
me, her gravelly chain-smoker’s
Quiet by the water: my old home in Bangkok had seen better days.
croak a cross between cackle
and growl, a nagging fog-horn accusing
me of crimes yet to be committed.
It was not until years after I
moved into her house that I actually
met my landlady face to face.
It’s that way in Asia. Arrangements
are made in mysterious ways.
There was a lease and rent was
somehow paid, but it all seems a
blur to me now.
Deciding to bury the hatchet —
which might eliminate the Khunying’s
hawk-like prying eyes and
nocturnal squawking — I invited
her to lunch. The occasion was a
birthday celebration for an offi ce
colleague, a lovely Thai woman
who spoke English with a posh
British accent. There were a dozen
or more beautiful Thai ladies of her
type who composed the party, all
dressed in fl uttering pastel gowns,
their laughing voices tinkling softly
like the distant temple bells across
the river.
A clatter at my rickety gate signaled
the arrival of the Khunying,
by that point in her late 70s, a nondescript
fi gure clad in shimmering
Thai silk. But her dumpy plainness
somehow disappeared as she
mounted the porch steps, the folds
in her dress rustling like the sighs
of His Majesty’s court maidens. I
will remind you at this point that
Thailand is a monarchy with a
king who occupies God-like status
in a country where lèse–majestéis
very serious crime. Most remarkable
was the Khunying’s complexion
which, even with age, radiated
a luminous, ivory glow superimposed
on a weathered face with
more than a bit of mileage on it.
It was only after watching her
smile and speak very little that I
SAM OGLESBY
realized her Thai was not fl uent,
very “fi sh-fi sh, snake-snake” and
rather “yap” — crude — as the
Thais would say.
Glancing at the birthday girl
for whom the party had been organized,
I noticed her jaw drop
when she saw the Khunying. Later
as the party was ending, Venika
came up to me, eyes rolling, and
said, “I have something interesting
to tell you, but it will have to keep
until tomorrow!”
The next day at the offi ce, I got
an earful about the Khunying. According
to Venika, whose father
had known her back in the day,
the Khunying, by now known as
Lady Chalao Anirudtheva, arrived
in Bangkok with her sister an impoverished
immigrant from China.
They were barely teenagers and
➤ BANGKOK, continued on p.19
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