A monk is sitting in an old plastic chair in the bedroom next to mine. He is chanting, low and hardly a change in tone. On the floor, in front of him and at the foot of the bed, there are four figures - the house owner, her brother-in-law, her sister who has never been the same since the tsunami tore her 12-year-old daughter from her grip, and me. We sit, our legs and feet folded behind, our hands together in Buddhist prayer.
We are mourning a young Finn and helping his spirit on its way in a land crowded with tragic spirits from the 2004 tsunami. Three hours earlier we had watched him die, his face almost purple with some kind of seizure, his strong young body straining and his bloodless white hands gripping the air like claws.
The owner and her sister were raising the alarm as I returned. He was on his back on the bed, looking very ill, and his bag was half packed on the floor - he had been found because he had not checked out for his flight home.
As we waited, watching him, watching for help, he gave one last strained spasm and just stopped breathing.
The rest of the owner's family started to arrive, then a Scottish tourist doctor, trailing her teenage daughter, who felt for his pulse and said quietly to her daughter, by then being pushed out of the door: "He's dying." They made their escape.
Every minute, more people came, crowding the first-floor outside walkway to the three rooms. We all kept looking in at him, as if he would move, and I followed the repeated descriptions in Thai supplemented with grimaces and expressive hands, nodding my agreement.
Then the paramedics arrived, bringing their yellow trolley in expectation of a dash to hospital, but they could do nothing. A little later the hospital team arrived in their ambulance, sparkling white uniforms and an urgent air of efficiency, but he was long dead, maybe half a hour.
A policeman came next, examining the body and talking to the witnesses. A Scandinavian tour rep arrived, phoned in his report, talked briefly to one of the paramedics and to me about the dead man. He went away so upset that he had to have a look at the house for sale opposite …
Another family member and his lovely little spaniel joined the throng and the spaniel caused a panic by running off the walkway and on to a roof and then on to a nylon awning, all of us expecting him to crash through, but he made it back.
Six more police arrived, led by a clever type with scene-of-incident equipment and a standard revolver on his hip. We all took it in turns to peer in to see what they were doing... A little later, his No 2 emerged for a friendly chat with the family... he wanted to know where I was from and the family beat me to telling him. Then he asked my age, squeezing my arm investigatively and saying something that drew nods of approval.
More distant family were squeezing in and a neighbour, European or something similar, came for his five minutes and left... a small knot watched from over the road, making the most of the manicured house-for-sale lawn.
Then, gradually, the crowd thinned. One of the sisters said something - it was in Thai but it sounded, in tone, just like "I can't do anything here, so I might as well go" and a few minutes later she rode off, side-saddle, on the back of her husband's motorcycle.
Eventually, there were just a few of us and we began to melt away, the owner to seek help from the monks and me to my room, a few pages of The Nation, the English-language political paper of Thailand, in the luxury of the fan.
But then the owner's sister, a kindly woman, raked me out for the monk's service. He sprinkled holy water on the deathbed, and splashed it round the door before the final service in the room. On the corner of the bed, nearest to the monk, was a cheap plastic lighter that had belonged to the dead man... a possession that linked the living and the dead.
When the monk had finished, the young man's spirit was at rest and the bad luck had been purged from the room and the building.
"I think he would like to die here," said the owner.
First published in VISA 80 (Aug 2008)
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