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decreaseThe next day found me in a car again. But this time heading south.
The countryside, surrounding Highway-3 as it ran down toward, was like a place out of time. The road’s urban uniformity, cast in miles of concrete and asphalt, and bordered by tapioca plantations, cut a vulgar slice of twentieth century through rice farms, water buffalo, and bamboo structures that hadn’t changed for hundreds of years. Fuckin’ eh!
“Where do you suppose he’s going?” I asked my driver as we followed the taxi carrying Jerry Tonnage.
“Me no know, sir. Maybe he go to Trat. Or maybe Chantaburi. Road branch inland at Chantaburi. Can go south or go east. Me no know.”
Telling the driver that I was following Jerry in the other car was a chance I had had to take. Sure he might talk. Word might get around to Jerry that he had a tail on him, but frankly I already had lots of footage of him and his little boyfriends. I really just wanted to see a bit of the country.
We had left early that morning. Jerry had left one of his lover-boys behind at the hotel and had only brought the clothes he wore.
Just a day trip, I figured. Or maybe Jerry had another lady-boy secreted away down south somewhere.
“Who cares really?” I muttered to myself as thickening tropical jungle passed by my window, “I sure as hell don’t.”
Fact is, I still couldn’t get my mind off...‘my other case’. I thought of it as that now, and Sorkan was my partner on it. This notion amused me to no end. Frankly, my heart wasn’t really into following a fat, middle-aged old dandy around. Not when the events of the previous night were so fresh.
As we entered Chantaburi it became clear that it was the destination. I could see Jerry directing his driver down one back street after another.
“Chantaburi very famous for ruby and sapphire,” said my driver as though I had hired him as a tour guide, “All these shops, gem shops. Gem cutter, gem buyer, gem seller. Very famous all over world.”
Oh great, I thought sarcastically, Jerry's actually down here on business. What the hell am I doing here?
Finally we ended up on a secluded back-street lined with beat-up old concrete shop-houses.
Jerry’s car stopped and we parked a discrete distance away.
The shops were rundown bunker-like places that looked like ancient stone artefacts hastily converted into places of business. The jungle grew right up to their backdoors. Protruding bits of rusty re-bar blended naturally with the jungle as branches and vines twisted themselves around it. Neighbouring these structures, at the border between town and jungle, were palm-thatched sheds containing decrepit old motorcycles and rusty bits of machinery.
Though I could detect no store-front signs--certainly none in English anyway--it was obvious that these were places of business from the crap I could see in the windows. They all contained similar machines for refining gemstones. There were microscopes and spyglasses of all kinds.
I watched through the glass as a young Thai girl facetted stones with the swift sureness of an old hand. I figured it was pretty cool, kinda hypnotising. She sat hunkered over an unfinished wood table. It was tiny, almost child-size, but of stout chunky construction. The thick four-inch beams which formed it's legs and frame gave it a Gipetto’s workshop look. An inverted U-shaped frame, also made of thick lumber, rose from the table’s top. A long thick spindle hung from it and extended down through the centre of the table to a solid wood pulley near the floor, which was in turn, driven by a dusty electric motor via a worn old leather belt. At table level, a flat steel grinding plate, just over a foot in diameter, spun on the spindle.
The girl had a pair of steel pincers with an old wood handle in her skilful little hands. A simple wingnut held the pincers clamped to a small steel rod that had a raw sapphire stuck to the end of it with wax. She facetted the gem by gliding it across the spinning surface of the plate with short gentle strokes. With deft flicks of her dainty fingers, she loosened wingnut, rotated the gem to the next surface, and retighten the nut in a blink of an eye; all in one smooth, practised stroke as she drew the gem away from the wheel and prepared it for the next pass. In this way, she shaped the gem, giving it the multiple flat surfaces that I was used to seeing in finished jewellery.
“Amazing.”
She looked up and smiled at me. She was beautiful. Blood started to pump. My thoughts drifted back to the Parrot and the feeling of Lek pressed warmly against me. I love this country. My driver pulled me out of my trance by pointing to something near the bush.
Behind one buildings lay a rusty old single-spar mining derrick. Beside it was an antique paraffin engine with frayed drive belts extending to a home-made gravel washer. Crab grass sprouted here and there from shallow indents in the powdery burnt-orange rust.
“When was the last time they mined here?” I asked my driver.
“Long time. But Chantaburi still major centre for gem market. Most sapphire and ruby come here from mining concessions in now.”
I poked the video camera out the rear window of my taxi and filmed Jerry as some short Thai guy greeted him and showed him into one of the shops.
"What are you up to now, Jerry?" I mumbled.
Adventure of the Blue Carbuncles will continue next week.
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