Free Opium by Colin Falconer Page B

money left. We can't stay here forever. I have to know what you want to do.”
    “You want to know what In want? I want my own airline again.”
    “Airline? One Cessna and a bag of spanners?'
    “It was a beginning. I was doing all right until your father ruined everything for me.”
    “You want to spend the rest of your life chasing clouds?'
    Baptiste downed his Pernod, closed his eyes in bliss. “So what are you suggesting?'
    “I don't know, but we can't run away forever.” The moon rose over the tamarinds, floating against wisps of white cloud. “My father needs a man like you, Baptiste, he just doesn't know it yet.”
    “Your father put me in hell.”
    '“But if we run away, he'll find us.”
    “I don't want to talk about this no more. Tonight we celebrate. Tonight there is just me and you. Tomorrow I will fight the world.”
    “All right. But tomorrow we have to decide. All right?'
    He shrugged and grinned. “Okay.”
     
    ***
     
    It was a dimly lit room, no more than three paces wide and five paces deep. There was just one window, with a shabby curtain drawn across, the only light the eerie glow of the opium lamps.
    The air was pungent.
    There was a row of bunks, like a school dormitory. Two middle-aged Chinese were squatting on one of the wooden platforms doing business, sipping tea, their pipes laid to one side. On another, a gaunt Chinese, bare to the waist, lay with his head on a wooden head-rest, his sunken eyes glazed with the effects of the drug. A naked Chinese girl lay beside him, her arms around him. He ignored her, held his opium pipe over the flame of a spirit lamp. As the opium cooked, he inhaled the sweet smoke.
    It had been Baptiste's idea to come here. Noelle had never been in an opium den, and she was curious. “You have to try it, even if it's only once in your life,” he told her. Opium helps you stand at the gates of heaven and peer through.”
    Opium! After all she had done since she come to Saigon, defying her father, trading her body, giving herself to Baptiste‚ opium was the last shackle to be thrown aside. She was spinning off the edge of the world now.
    The two Chinese businessmen had returned to their pipes, their business done; the old sailor had dropped his pipe and was lost to his dreams. The Chinese girl was going through the pockets of his trousers for money.
    There was silence except for the gurgling of the pipes.
    She examined the one they had given her. It The pipe was a bamboo rod, just over a foot long, with a bowl set a few inches from the end. The bowl was round like a ball, with a small hole in the top. The Chinese proprietor prepared it for her. He brought over a packet containing the treacle-like opium, scraped off a small portion and put it over the end of a needle, then held the needle over the flame of a spirit lamp. Once the pellet was bubbling on the end of the needle he rolled it into the aperture of the pipe bowl.
    She lay down beside Baptiste on a raised wooden platform.
    “Suck it deep into your lungs,” he whispered. “Hold your breath as long as you can.” The first time she tried, she almost choked. Baptiste grinned. “Perhaps don't breathe in quite so hard until you are used to it.”
    Noelle tried again. The black bead of opium bubbled gently. The blue-grey smoke drifted towards the ceiling.
     
    ***
     
    Noelle did not remember how they got back to the hotel. After a half dozen puffs of the pipe, the pellet was gone. She remembered she had been disappointed; it had had no effect on her at all. So she had three or four pipes, was aware of nothing more dramatic than a growing sense of calm, a warm glow that sloughed away her terrors. The whole world became a wonderful place and her worries evaporated.
    She had wished her father had been there; she could have told him how much she loved him. She knew now that everything was going to be all right. She even felt a growing affection for the two Chinese businessmen in their undershirts. They were her