I wanted to leave immediately for Bangkok, but Nong said that would not be good — she would lose face if I did not stay for the whole holiday. In shock, disoriented, almost incapacitated by the heat, feasted on by mosquitoes, I stayed for a week of sweaty, near-sleepless nights in the wooden shack where Nong had grown up (the totality of her mother’s belongings was stuffed in bin-liners under the bed). When I could summon the energy in the stifling air, I helped fetch water from the well (there was an electric pump to fill the bucket, but you still had to carry it across the compound) and tried to learn how to tam kao (collect the rice grains from the paddy stalks). Everyone was extra friendly, realizing that their reality was somewhat out of the ordinary for a pampered farang like me. I didn’t mind paying for beer (people in the countryside often survive with no cash at all, bartering for survival in the ancient way), so a group of us spent much of the time drinking beer with ice, throwing water at each other and watching Nong’s nieces and nephews lounge on the broad backs of silver-gray buffalo, which Nong had bought so her family could use them to plow the paddy fields. In sober moments I reflected with irony that I would be 50 come July.

When eventually I reached Bangkok, I realized that Nong had initiated me into the authentic Thailand. I looked with contempt on the three previous drafts of my novel and started over again with a first sentence in the first person. I had found the mind-boggling audacity to narrate the whole yarn in the voice of a Bangkok cop. The rest of the book quickly followed. I sent it to my agent in New York, who said it was the best thing I’d written so far, worthy of the best publisher. It was published as Bangkok 8 .

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