Nong sits and watches while the nurse changes my dressing. She holds herself together while the nurse is in the room, then bursts into tears. Drying her eyes: "The person who did this to you will not make a good death."

        I'll have to explain that, won't I? Look at it this way: you're facing old age, your sins have been mounting steadily, but you cannot for the life of you see how you could have reacted differently, given the pathetic cards Fate handed you at birth, and now you have to consider the inevitable karmic bill: you think this lifetime is tough? See that legless guy on his atrocious trolley begging on the sidewalk? Last time around he wasn't nearly as bad as you've been, why, he was a saint compared to you.

        With us the lifting of the egoic veil at the moment of death reveals the working of karma in all its pitiless majesty: see that clubfoot in your next life, that's from when you fouled your best friend on the football pitch; see those buckteeth the size of gravestones, that's your cynical sense of humor; see that early death from leukemia, that's your greed.

        To make a good death is to proceed gracefully into a better body and a better life. The consequences of a bad death are hard to look at. You will not make a good death is a power curse; it makes fuck you sound like a benediction.

        John Burdett, Bangkok 8