A Nail Through the Heart: A Novel of Bangkok by Timothy Hallinan

Author:Timothy Hallinan [Hallinan, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Suspense fiction, Bangkok (Thailand), Travel Writers
ISBN: 9780061257223
Google: HgTGXX1mJS8C
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

¬ 26

Don’t You Think Holiness Can Be

Cumulative?

small man, Heng has enough energy for three

large ones. He bounces up and down on his toes as

he listens, eager for the chance to reply. When he

talks, he makes large,

empty gestures that look to Rafferty like Nicolas

Cage playing an

Italian. Surrounded in his Khmer antiques shop by

carved, immobile

faces, his own face is never in repose. He goes

through more expres

sions in ten minutes than Rafferty uses all day.

“I’m completely straight now,” he informs Rafferty

without being

asked, his eyebrows bouncing up and down like a

pair of bungee

jumpers. “No more smuggling, papers all in order,

keep a clean nose,

observe all the international conventions. It’s a

new world we’re liv

ing in, Poke, a global village. We’re all citizens of

the world. What

goes around comes around.”

When it is clear Heng has exhausted Bartlett’s

Familiar Quotations

for the moment, Rafferty says, “Do you mind if I

write that down?”

Heng pounces. “A Boswell,” he says. “What every

really interest

ing man needs. Have you ever stopped to think,

Poke, how much good talk is wasted on just one or

two people? Similes, metaphors, unexpected turns

of speech, puns, insights, revelations, fresh

perspectives? All of it gone, used once,

disposable, tossed into the air like confetti,

frittered away on a few people who probably

won’t even bother to remember. New ideas,

perhaps even new religions, lost to the ether. Who

was Samuel Johnson, anyhow? A blowhard with a

Boswell. We need more of them.”

“You’re the only person I know who thinks the

world is short of talk,” Rafferty says.

“Good talk,” Heng says, holding up an admonitory

fi nger. Since the finger is in the air anyway, he

waves it back and forth. “We’re drowning in dull

talk. No wonder our children are in trouble.

Nothing to fire their imaginations. They hear dull

talk all day long, this, that, blah, blah, blah, fact,

fact, fact, cause, effect, pallid adjectives, the

occasional timid speculation. That’s why we live

in the Age of the Concrete Slab. We might as well

be mute as fish. There’s no feeling for language, no

appreciation for how it can be stretched, Poke, to

weave that elusive net of words that can be thrown

over, that can capture, the most ephemeral—”

“Heng,” Rafferty says.

Heng stops. His eyebrows go up again, inquiringly

this time, to demonstrate that he is listening with

his entire being. For a moment Rafferty thinks he

will cup his hand to his ear.

“This man, Heng,” Rafferty says, holding out the

photo of Claus Ulrich, which is becoming dog-

eared with use. “Do you know this man?”

Heng takes the picture and scans it avidly, as

though it is the fi rst photograph he has ever seen

and the technology dazzles him. He does

everything except turn it over to see whether the

image goes all the way through to the back. When

he is finished, he reverently hands it back.

“I might,” he says. He waits, bouncing a little.

It is the shortest sentence Rafferty has ever heard

him speak.

“Well,” Rafferty says, “why don’t you tell me

about it. Just a summary, Heng, sort of a caption.”

“I said I might, ” Heng says. Cataclysmic doubt

floods his face.

“When and where might you have seen him?”

“It’s a small community, Poke,” Heng begins, but

Rafferty holds up a hand.

“What’s a small community?”

“People of taste,” Heng says with nicely

modulated awe.

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