The Gates of Ivory. Margaret Drabble

has modelled himself rather too consciously on some kind of Easy Rider, but his laid-back grace has a sweetness, an innocence, a deference which takes Stephen in and seduces him. If this young man is playing at being a hero, he is playing with finesse. He seems to know his way around the world. Stephen instantly sees in him a passport not only to the other Bangkok, the city which Miss Porntip disdains, but also to the frontier and the gates of horn.

      And so it proves to be. Konstantin, settling back into his old rooms in the Trocadero annexe, invites Stephen up for a drink that evening. Stephen, leaving his bare dangling bulb and torn shower curtain, his grey bath mat and spartan bed and view of the cooling tower, makes his way along the corridor, up two floors, along another corridor, past a billiard table and a child’s cot and various bundles of laundry and a plate of curry, and taps on Konstantin’s door. Konstantin opens it upon a room that looks rather more like home than most of the pads that Stephen has, over the years, lightly inhabited. There are shelves of books, heaps of magazines, cushions, posters on the wall stuck up with Blu-Tack, a pot plant, a music system, glasses, bottles, a guitar, a typewriter, a rucksack, a small embroidered elephant, and other accoutrements of semi-permanent living. It is a young man’s room, untidy, heaped, busy. Stephen settles into the corner of a settee, and begins to ask questions.

      Konstantin claims to have been based in Bangkok for some months. He is a freelance photographer with a sort of semi-contract with Global International, or so he says. With fitting diffidence, when requested, he shows Stephen some of his work. There are landscapes, trees, temples, mountains, and shots of buildings both whole and blasted, but the majority of the pictures are portraits of people. Single figures, solemnly grouped families, children in a row. The tone is formal, grave, dignified. Peasants in Kampuchea, street people in Saigon and Hanoi, displaced people in the Thai border camps, refugees in Hong Kong stare a little reproachfully at the camera, in suspension, in a prolonged and questioning silence. Stephen gazes at the prize-winning portrait of Mme Akrun. It is a high-quality, 5 x 8 reproduction, without text. Here, she has no caption. She does not here ask, ‘Where is my son?’ She is silent. She speaks. She seems somehow familiar to Stephen, as she will seem also to Liz Headleand and, later, to Alix Bowen.

      He pauses over her image, and is about to ask about her, when there is a knock at the door, and another visitor arrives and is greeted with a beer. Then another knock, and another visitor. News of Konstantin’s return has got around. In his room they gather, the journalists and aid workers, the displaced people of the West, accepting beer and whisky and coffee, nesting down in corners and on cushions, exchanging news personal, news international, news trivial, news professional. Konstantin smiles and welcomes. He is the special friend with the open door. He is the special friend of everyone. The room hums with chatter and laughter, with light background music. Stephen is introduced discreetly, as Stephen from England. Mme Akrun, propped up on the bookshelf, watches them all.

      These are by Stephen’s standards young people, in their twenties and thirties. A Dane, two Americans, an Australian, a woman from Cheshire, a Japanese–Canadian. What has brought them all here? They tell tall stories, they boast and demur. They speak of dengue fever and Chomsky and Lacouture and Oxfam and broken gaskets. They speak of Thai Rangers and border passes and the Leper’s Ball at the Siam Hilton. In-jokes, camaraderie, oneupmanship. It is a pleasant evening, an impromptu party. It makes Stephen feel a hundred years old. Casual drifters, hard workers. They gossip and drink and nod. As Stephen watches and listens and takes stock, he begins to recognize hotel habitués, familiar types and faces. That curly-haired fast-talking small bespectacled American, Jack Crane, surely he is the man glimpsed from time to time in the room on the second floor with the photocopier? And sombre Piet the Dane, the oldest of the group, he has observed drinking with a soldier in the bar. This is a society within a society. Shall Stephen join it? Is he acceptable? Does he carry the right cards? Will these people be of use to him?

      When he gets up to leave, Konstantin follows him to the door, and lays a hand on Stephen’s arm. It is an intimate, soft, placatory gesture, a pledge, an apology for the intrusion of others, a promise of more exclusive future meetings. ‘I’m so very pleased to have met you,’ says Konstantin, with impeccable good manners. ‘Thank you so much for coming round.’

      Stephen stands there in the doorway and smiles at his host.

      ‘Thank you for inviting me,’ he says.

      Konstantin smiles, and brushes back his hair. His eyes are a very pale, light, clear grey blue. They insist on looking. They insist on eye contact. They instantly establish complicity. Why is this attention so flattering? The hand on the arm lingers into meaning, into a special relationship. Stephen allows himself to be enchanted. He is overcome. He submits. He departs to his dull and empty room.

      The enchantment lingers, and Stephen, to his own surprise, finds himself watching and waiting for Konstantin and news of Konstantin. Konstantin is, it appears, a local hero. Stephen picks up allusions, rumours, Chinese whispers. Konstantin is a multimillionaire. Konstantin is the most brilliant photographer of his generation. Konstantin has entered zones that none has ever penetrated. Konstantin has visited the secret base of the Khmer Rouge and photographed the mad wife of Pol Pot. Konstantin knows not fear. Konstantin is a mystic. Konstantin has the ear of kings and princes. Konstantin was left as dead on the battlefield and rose again.

      Rumour speaks no ill of Konstantin. Stephen wonders at this marvel. Has he enchanted and seduced the whole of Bangkok’s aid-worker society? Has he laid a hand on every sleeve? Or is it the free-flowing beer, the open door, that has subdued them all? To know Konstantin is a privilege, a blessing, a rare piece of luck. He spreads good fortune.

      Konstantin’s own version of the legends surrounding him is modest, prosaic, but none the less seductive. Over dinner one evening he admits to Stephen that he has private means and does not have to worry about money. His grandfather left him a small fortune, which was, says Konstantin, ‘unsettling’. He had been unsettled, and had been through a period of profound depression, during which he decided he didn’t care whether he was alive or dead and nearly got himself killed in Korea. ‘It’s quite easy to be a hero,’ says Konstantin, ruefully, ‘if you don’t care if you die.’ Recovering from the near-death and the depression, he took up Buddhism and photography, and now considers himself a properly reconstituted person, working more or less regularly as commissions come up in South East Asia. He says he is particularly interested in Kampuchea. Why? Because he likes the Khmers so much. Because it’s all such a bloody awful mess. Because it’s there. Because I watched Blue Peter with my kid sister when I was still a kid myself. Because it’s so difficult to get people interested in it these days. After all that excitement in ’79, all that holocaust and famine talk, says Konstantin, now nobody wants to know. But I do, I still want to know.

      Konstantin’s answers to Stephen’s questions are not very ideological. He is much less ideological than Miss Porntip or than Stephen himself. He seem to be a holy innocent, without side or guile. People gaze without fear into his lens and speak secrets to his receiving ear. Unlike Miss Porntip, he is a good listener.

      Stephen does not mention Miss Porntip to Konstantin. He keeps her in another compartment.

      Konstantin has a whole network of acquaintances in Bangkok. Stephen meets them, becomes part of them, pondering as he does so the way in which Konstantin keeps everybody happy. There are no outbreaks of jealousy or possessiveness, for everybody believes himself or herself to have Konstantin’s own private personal attention. Stephen believes this himself, although he knows it cannot be true. Is it some sleight of hand, some trick? Or does this magic well from some more profound, more generous source? Stephen even finds himself buying a couple of books on Buddhism, as he searches for clues to Konstantin, but they are not very helpful, though he is quite taken with the imagery of The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

      Stephen is half in love with Konstantin. Stephen tries to keep this to himself. It gives him pleasure to talk about Konstantin to Jack Crane, the American who works for the ICRDP (whatever that may be), and to Jack’s friend Piet the Dane who works for the Red Cross tracing agency. They tell him stories about the border camps and the war. They both love Konstantin. He is a special person, says Jack Crane, a very special person. This is a phrase that usually infuriates Stephen, but he finds himself nodding in