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.Soon, the flow of vehicles slowed to a faltering wallow of great metal beasts wheezing and honking their frustration.Within half an hour we’d ordered a third bottle, the better to enjoy the freshening air, the relative cool.We had our feet up on little metal stools; a torrent some inches deep washed through the cafe, carrying, among other things we noticed, an empty Lipovitan bottle and a plastic sandal.The waitresses were cheerful, glad of the break in their routine.Barefoot, sarongs hiked up between their legs, they laughed and bantered with those of us customers marooned by the storm.“Are you going for a test as well?” I’d asked Ernest.“Hell, no! There’s no reason at all to think I might have AIDS.That’s whatl toldNoi.Christ! I’m not a homosexual.I’m not a hemophiliac, a heroin addict, or a Haitian.I don’t screw around.I don’t take bargirls home, especially since I met Noi.If I’ve got AIDS, I told her, then that’s really bad luck — that’s like bad luck on the magnitude of somebody getting hit by a meteorite or bitten by a rabid platypus.If I’ve got AIDS, I told her, then I got it from her, and that would be some kind of miracle, wouldn’t it, since she says she’s never slept with any other man in her life.Jesus Christ!”If you could believe the authorities, there were fewer than a hundred people in all of Thailand who’d been infected with the virus thus far.It would’ve been bad luck even for one of those sporting gentlemen who frequented the massage parlors.That’s if you could believe the authorities; it would be a shame to spoil the tourist trade, after all.“Anyway, what good would it do to have a test supposing you did have AIDS? Like I told her, we’ve been together almost a year, now, and if I’ve got it, then she’s got it.So then we find out we’ve got it, what are we going to do? First off, I’m going to get deported, and it’s no more Ernest-and-Noi-what-a-sweet-couple.Then we wait to die, and we can’t even comfort each other, living on different continents the way we’d be.”“You told her all this?”“Oh, yeah.And she cried and wailed ‘Oh, no’ and said she’d never let me go.And then she went ahead and took the test.”And now she had gone to get the results.It wasn’t even as though there was anything wrong with her, Ernest told me.It was nothing but the power of suggestion.Her suggestibility and the irresponsibility of the authorities in publicizing AIDS in the way they had.“Superstition.That’s all it is, basically,” Ernest told me.“I’m a farang and us farang brought the disease to Thailand.The government has called it a foreigners’ disease, and Noi has been sleeping with a foreigner, which bothers her anyway, deep down on some level, since she’s a ‘nice’ girl; and consequently she has AIDS because she’s practically supposed to have the blasted thing.I guess.I really don’t know how it works.She’s just about the closest thing to a Roman Catholic you’re ever going to find in a Buddhist.It’s nothing but some kind of guilt trip.”Ernest looked at his watch and then looked out through the deluge at the traffic.All that was moving by now were the motorcycles.They were coming up on the sidewalks, out of the deeper torrent on the street, weaving past the few pedestrians who were wading along, shoes in hand, trousers rolled up to the knees.Ernest sipped earnestly from his glass, and shook his head.“Look at that: not one of them’s got an umbrella.That’s Thais for you.And here it is the rainy season.“They probably figure if you’re wearing an amulet, or you’ve got a couple of lucky tattoos, then no problem.Or maybe their fortune-tellers told them they wouldn’t get wet.That’s most likely it.”Needless to say, Ernest had his umbrella with him.I’d forgotten mine.I guess I’d been in Thailand longer than he had; maybe I was going native.Anyway, who needed umbrellas when you had noodle shops and cold beer?“She wakes me up in the middle of the night, and she announces ‘Ernest, I’ve got AIDS.’ She’s been crying, because, she says, she doesn’t want to die, and she’d wanted to live a long and happy life with me and have children, especially a little boy just like me, just like how I used to be.She almost had me crying myself, except I was so pissed off she’d woken me up to lay this nonsense on me.“’How do you know you’ve got AIDS?’ I ask her.“’I just know”’ she says.“’I can feel it.’”To hell with it”, Ernest said, and he ordered another beer.Usually he was a very moderate drinker.What about Sunantha?” he asked me.“Does she worry about AIDS?”Sunantha was my proper Thai ladyfriend [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]