the story of jan
darra
(Ruean Khong Jan
Darra, 1966)
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This is the writer’s first novel
and he must insist
that his work of fiction
is unsuitable for kids
and most offensive
to sanctimonious pricks.
1
Jan Darra – that’s my name, so let me introduce myself as the owner
of this weird story, as I’m sure we’ll be keeping each other company for quite
a while, unless, that is, something or other happens to me. When I say ‘something
or other’, I mean that there are two or more possibilities. That’s right! At
least two things could happen to me: either madness or death. Death, I say!
Death is worthy of respect. Why do I idly mention it as a possibility? Are
there people who can predict when they’ll die, except perhaps the terminally
ill? In my experience, everybody forgets about death or dies unawares. And yet,
there are; indeed, there are many who can. Theirs is more than a prediction:
they are certain; they have worked out the time of their death within a split
second, even though they are neither seers foolhardy enough to swear that they
can predict the future accurately, nor critically ill patients who have an
appointment with the Reaper and are waiting for it, fully conscious and
cold-blooded enough to ask their evening-shift nurse for a last opportunity to
admire a young woman’s body and soul, and neither are they undertakers greedy
enough to earn a living out of their own corpses. There are, there are for
sure, and there have been plenty of them. Who else, but those who commit
suicide? But I’m getting carried away, when ‘at least two things’ means there
could be more than two. Indeed! Apart from being mad or committing suicide,
there are other possibilities, such as dying of… What! Death again? That’s
right! In this vile world, apart from birth, which perpetuates the life cycle,
is there anything more common than death? Well, besides suicide, there’s death
from natural causes, of which there are many, for example sickness or heart
attack, and from all kinds of accidents. For some who die like this, we say
that they’ve run out of luck. (This statement is somewhat ambiguous: when you
run out of luck, do you go and pay for your sins in hell, or do you enjoy bliss
in heaven? As to the question of who goes where, those who are left behind
should know.) For some, we say that they’ve reached the end of their tether,
which is a great consolation for those who are left behind. Besides death,
there are many other possibilities that might prevent me from staying with you
until the end of this story. For instance, something might happen that could
change my attitude to life in this world so that I’d feel delighted with the life
I’m now leading, and the pent-up feelings that I’m eager to pour out to
someone would simply disappear. There are still many other eventualities, but I
think I’ve given you enough examples already. All the same, I want you to know
that, even though there was a time when I wished to die several times a day,
I’ll never kill myself. I’ve come to understand and thoroughly appreciate the
truth that there’s no way you can escape from all your troubles in life through
such a method. Once you’ve killed yourself, even though you’re already dead,
you still have to go through similar suffering in the world of oappartika*, and must endure torments for I don’t know how many
hundreds or thousands of years before you can be reborn into your next life.
Talking about oappartika, I’d like everyone to be aware of such a world,
because it might be of benefit to our society to keep in mind that none of our
actions, whether private or public, can ever escape the attention of the
so-called oappartika. Knowing that one day soon we’ll be among those watching
the people left behind may make us feel more ashamed when we do evil. Who are
‘those’? Call them deities, ghosts, ghouls or phantoms or whatever you wish:
they are all there in the world of spontaneous rebirth. If we chance to meet
once again some time in the future, I may have more to tell you about these
invisible entities in hell as well as in heaven – especially in hell, which
I’m particularly anxious to find out about since I’m aware that the time is
near when I’ll no longer be able to avoid it.
Death, suicide and now spontaneous rebirth – oh my,
I’m really rambling, aren’t I. But I trust you’ll understand something of my
background from these musings.
All right then, my name is Jan Darra. I was born in
the heart of this great City of Angels. My first name was given to me by the
man I used to call my father. The last name I thought up myself much later and
it’s properly registered in the census. Please don’t pay attention to my
surname, because most of my life has been full of surprising twists ever since
I was born – and even before I was born, for that matter.
I was born when my mother was already dead. Sounds
crazy, doesn’t it? But listen to me first. The midwife who took me out of the
womb hadn’t realised that my mother, who had gone through an unusually arduous
and protracted labour, was already dead. The person that went by the name of my
father was furious at me and has hated me ever since. He never made a mystery
of it, even though he wasn’t normally given to showing his feelings, and
everybody in the district knew about it, everybody except me because I was
still utterly naive. Anyhow, shouldn’t I thank him for going to the trouble of
bringing me up even though he absolutely hated my guts? At first, I was grateful,
in spite of his constant scolding and cruelty to me, but when I was old enough
to know what was what between him and me, I stopped thinking that way.
‘That damn boy!’ That’s how he’d call me, and it became
a habit of his as well as something familiar to my ears as far back as I can
remember. I believe he referred to me like that from the moment I was born. To
tell you the truth, I never felt offended or hurt, probably because I was so
used to it. The phrase stuck to his tongue and to my ears and lost its edge. I
remember that it did rankle a little bit, though. ‘That damn boy!’ ‘That damn
boy!’ When I heard that, sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder why he didn’t
call me ‘That damn son’, because, no matter what, I was his son. If only he had
called me ‘That damn son’ just once, I’d have been more than a little pleased,
but never did I hear him call me so. Apart from his anger and hatred for me, he
also despised me – more than the dogs he raised, which he called ‘his three
sons’. As soon as I was old enough to start practicing the only in-house
athletic game that he was addicted to, something happened that made him change
his mind and call me ‘damned’* for
short as a form of abuse suitable to my age. He used that word with me for the
first time and then threw me out of his house in the middle of the night. But
that’s another weird story, which I’ll tell you later.
By now you must have gathered why I was named ‘Jan’.
You know that when a child is born, the birth must be notified and the child
given a name so that he or she can go to school, do his military service or at
any rate pay taxes, and finally be registered as dead. As I had to have a name,
it had to be thought up for me and that’s usually the duty of the child’s
father who, if he can’t come up with one, will hasten to ask a senior monk or
some other notable whom he respects to help give the child a name. But in this
case, the father named the child himself. The question automatically came to
his mind, ‘What shall I call him?’ The personal pronoun that stuck to his
tongue switched immediately to the specific noun, ‘that damn…’ – ‘How’s that
for a name, Janrai, ‘Damned’? Hell no, the district office will never stand for
it. Well then, let’s call him Jan and be done with it.’ So I was named Jan, and
given his ancient family name, Witsanan – Jan Witsanan.
But had I been named Janrai Witsanan, I’d be more than a little pleased.
‘His Lordship, His Lordship works at the Interior Ministry…’
The song had many lines, but this is all I can remember. It must’ve been
the hit song of some opera when I was a child still playing with toys. Children
all over town were singing it at the top of their lungs, and as I was a thoroughly
modern child myself, I was the owner of the voice that bawled out this song in
the lane leading to our house, but none of the children of Bangkok was more
unfortunate than I in liking this song. I remember one evening sauntering
around the entrance of our compound, a pack of textbooks under my arm, and
singing lustily.
(You must be wondering what kind of school I was
attending that let me go back home so late. Actually, school had been over
since afternoon, but the route that took me back home was somewhat winding. If
I didn’t linger to play marbles, toss pictures or coins, or engage in whatever
other seasonal activity near the quarry at Tha Tian, I went to play football
at Sanarm Chai or else jumped naked into Lort Canal and frolicked in the water
or else went to play with my friends in front of the Barn Mor theatre, and so
on. I’d have a good time and, when I started to feel hungry, I’d return home,
which is why I arrived late.)
I had finished singing the song but hadn’t yet reached
the house, which is in a very large compound, so I started singing it all
over again. I had hardly hollered ‘His Lordship, His Lordship…’ when my head
exploded and blood spurted out. I had been hit by a large porcelain teacup
thrown by my father from the veranda and I hadn’t seen it coming. Not at all
worried about the gash in my head, my father launched into a violent diatribe
and lengthy exposition of the reasons why he had thrown a cup at Master Jan’s
head. I can’t remember the details. In a nutshell, he claimed that I was
singing that song to mock him. I had known for quite some time that he was a
nobleman, addressed as His Lordship, but it was only that evening that the significance
of his title fully dawned on me and that I also realized beyond any doubt how
much my father hated me. I wept only for the latter reason, but nobody was
aware of this.
I knew that my mother had died because she had given
birth to me. Oh yes, it was common knowledge, because my father never let me
forget it when he berated me. He believed that it was my fault and made me
admit to myself that it was so. I couldn’t yet distinguish between truth and
alleged truth. It was perfectly evident to all that I was motherless because my
mother had died in order to give birth to me. Everybody knew this to be true so
I had to believe it as well and admit that it was my fault. Though I was still
very young, I realised how serious such a crime was. I didn’t know the word
‘matricide’ then, but I did feel that my crime was of that magnitude. There was
nothing more terrible than making one’s mother die, and everyone who commits a
crime must be punished; that’s what I was told, but I hadn’t the faintest idea
of how I’d be punished for causing my mother’s death. Even though my father
often proclaimed me guilty in his loud diatribes against me, nobody came to
arrest me, send me to jail and put me to death, like all the murderers that
were talked about in those days, such as Mrs Kim Lai, who had skewered her
husband’s head with a chisel, or Boon Pheng, who had put the bodies of his victims
in metal boxes. As for myself, who had caused my mother’s death, I was still at
large. I was constantly aware of the gravity of my crime and that I should be
punished accordingly. Therefore, at home and at school, however much I was
caned over some misdemeanour or however much my father berated me, I took it
all without crying, and when I really couldn’t stand it anymore, I let the
tears flow silently. Even when I sustained a deep gash down to the bone from
playing boisterously, I could countenance that too. So much so that everybody
said I had a heart of stone, and some went as far as calling me a heartless
child. Nobody knew that I mixed that original crime of mine with every
punishment I received for my mistakes and with each pain I suffered. ‘You
deserve it: you made your mother die,’ I told myself every time.
But when my head sustained a long gash, it wasn’t the
same any more. I was startled and hurt when that cup was hurled at my head, but
I was many thousand times more startled and hurt when I realised simultaneously
the extent of my father’s hate. I knew there and then what my retribution was.
That was it! That was the punishment I thought I was exempted from! In fact, I
had been receiving it all along from day one. The retribution I had to pay for
causing my mother’s death was that I had become a child without a father as
well. While I was standing there with blood gushing out of my head, face up and
weeping loudly, it wasn’t my father I was seeing any longer. Instead, it was
some Lordship or other, who stood scolding behind the railing of the veranda of
my mother’s house.
I must’ve been so scared, so carried beyond myself,
that I lost my mind. From the very minute I realised I had never had a father
since I was born, I did what sporting circles call a marathon: I went on a
weeping marathon, and a noisy one at that, sometimes hushed, sometimes loud,
sometimes only loud enough to be heard in the house, sometimes so loud it could
be heard by the whole neighbourhood, depending on my strength and mood. I felt
my whole body turn into a deep hole, and at the same time all the old memories
of my ‘father’ crowded into that hole and filled it up. The myriad things he had
done to me which I couldn’t understand or had misunderstood kept overflowing
to the point that I almost choked – or almost vomited would be more accurate.
I now understood all that he had done to me and now could clearly see that he
had behaved towards me in ways that showed that he was not my father! I
was startled at the utter loneliness that I felt, as if I had suddenly found
myself alone in the world. Then the nostalgia of my mother, whom I had never
known, completely overtook my heart.
‘Mo–ther!’ I yelled out this one word, and then
refused to do anything but weep loudly and weep nonstop. The more he chided and
threatened me, the louder I cried. He grabbed my old friend the whip, came down
from the house and thrashed me indiscriminately with all his strength. He’d
certainly have thrashed me to death had Aunt Waht not come to protect me by
taking me in her arms. She took me away to nurse my wounds, the gash on my head
as well as the whelps from the whip. I never stopped weeping. I wouldn’t eat, I
wouldn’t talk, I just went on crying, and when at dusk he shouted at me and
threatened to lock me up in the greenhouse if I didn’t stop, I still wouldn’t.
The greenhouse was an empty building near the compound
wall at the back of the main house. It stood apart from the main house and the
rows of smaller dependent houses. All the children in the compound and even
some adults were scared of it. This dim and isolated dwelling used to house the
remains of my mother’s ancestors and I was told that the last time it had been
used was for the merit-making ceremony over my mother’s body.
When he saw that I was bent on pursuing my weeping
marathon, he ordered a male servant and a female servant to grab hold of me and
take me to the greenhouse. I don’t know whether or not he saw it, but I walked
on my own ahead of the servants, still crying all the way.
As soon as the door of the greenhouse was closed and
locked, the evening twilight turned to total darkness.
‘Poor Master Jan…’ I heard the female servant mutter
sympathetically before the two of them left. Though she definitely expressed
her concern for me, it’s possible that I didn’t hear her words clearly or don’t
remember them clearly, but I’m sure of the last expression – Master Jan. Though
His Lordship, my father, despised and hated me and treated me cruelly and
contemptibly, I was ‘Master Jan’ in the house at all times, and there was no
way for him to go back on this. So far as I know and remember, he never
interfered with this title of mine, whether in front of me or even behind my
back. It is strange indeed that he didn’t even think of removing it for good as
it was the only remaining indication that I was the son of the owner of the
house.
There were plenty of children in the house, but only
one other was called Khun*, and
my father had bestowed that title on her himself – but I’ll tell you about this
later.
After the door was closed and the two servants had
left, I groped my way in the dark to the platform where coffins were usually
laid. I collapsed against it and carried on crying. You might think I wasn’t
afraid, but I was almost scared to death, and yet there was nothing I could do
to prevent myself from acting this way. I had been unable to control myself
since I had walked ahead of the servants to this place. Why this was so I don’t
know, just as I don’t know either why I couldn’t stop weeping. Maybe I was
doing it out of a strong sense of denial or compensation or provocation. Let those of you who are experts in psychology make
your own diagnoses.
The greenhouse was entirely made of slats and rails. A
long time ago, I had often climbed the rails to look through them and every
time I had done so had hoped to see my mother and it made me feel at once
scared and brave. At first, when the door was locked, I felt that it was pitch
dark as if I had entered a large box, but after I sat there and cried for a
while, I became used to the darkness and the longer I sat moping, the more my
impression changed as it seemed the darkness was receding to the point that I
could vaguely see the dim structure of the interior, and the longer I gazed at
it, the more I felt it was moving and could turn into something which the
frightened part of my heart didn’t want to see.
That’s when my weeping grew louder. In the dark, the
sound of my own crying kept me company but in my heart it was my mother who
kept me company, as I had never thought of her as a ghost. I always felt that
she was someone I was desperately eager to meet but who happened to have been
absent ever since I was born. But now, even if she was a ghost, I wished her to
come, to be here fast and keep me company before someone else’s ghost arrived.
Previously, though I never had a mother, I still had a father to cherish in my
heart, but now that I didn’t even have a father, I turned to look for my mother
again, hoping from the bottom of my heart to depend on her for everything. I
knew it was wishful thinking, I knew it was a pipe dream, but I still hoped, I
hoped like I had never hoped before and like I’ll never hope again in my life.
I’ve no idea how much time went by till I saw my
mother come in.
Whether you believe it or not is up to you, but Mother
came to see me when I was twelve.
Even if you don’t believe that there are ghosts in
this world, you and I have nothing to argue about, because when Mother visited
me that night, she was no ghost.
There was no warning signal or sound such as the
ringing of a temple bell, the howling of a dog or anything like that. There was
only the darkness and stillness of the night and the peaceful turmoil which
shrouded my heart and my mind. The only sound that could be heard then was my
own sobbing. The darkness and silence which covered me like a thick, black
mosquito net tore into a dim chasm right in front of me, as if someone had lit
a torch and entered a cave and was coming closer yet still unseen. The tiny
light became bigger and clearer till I finally saw the figure of a woman
standing in front of me, like an outline roughly drawn against the glow of a
candle. The only part I could see clearly was the face, which looked exactly
like the face on the picture which hung in the main house. Mother had soft
features, beautiful and sad, framed by hair that went down to her neck.
The mother I was meeting then looked very much alive,
and she could move faintly. She looked at me as if she meant to comfort me or
to ask me to do something, and then vanished. I felt like she had just died
before my very eyes and at the same time my eardrums were shattered by a
deafening roar.
It was my own.
I was calling her at the top of my voice and then I
started to address her, shouting ceaselessly. I told her I felt more sorry than
anyone else in the world that I had caused her death and I also told her that I
now knew she wasn’t angry with me, otherwise she wouldn’t have come to see me
right then. I went on shouting for as long as I could think of things to tell
her. If I addressed her loudly it was because I was afraid she couldn’t hear
me, as I had the feeling that her departure this time had taken her much farther
away than ever before.
How long I talked to my mother in this way I’ve no way
of knowing. I learned later that after I had been quiet for a long while, Aunt
Waht took it upon herself to have someone unlock the door of the greenhouse and
take me out. It was around one in the morning at that time. I was found lying
unconscious and delirious on the mortuary platform, my body burning with fever.
I was sick for nearly a month and spent all of that
time lying in bed and refusing to talk to anyone. I must have entertained all
kinds of crazy thoughts during that time (my vocal cords were rather weak as
well) and from then on I turned into what adults call a broody child without
even being aware of it. I only remember that since that momentous event took
place, the people in the compound and in the lane leading to it were somewhat
in awe of me, not to mention the children, who never missed an opportunity to
show me respect. Not only was sitting and crying alone in the dark in the
greenhouse beyond anyone’s stamina but to meet one’s mother and talk loudly to
her in the middle of the night on the very platform where her dead body once
had been, well, that deserved all the medals of valour you could find! But
whenever children or adults wanted to ask me about what had taken place in the
greenhouse that night, I absolutely refused to say anything because I believed
it was a sacred matter no one should interfere with.
As for His Lordship, he took no interest in me for a
long time, as the ratio of his disgust towards me had greatly increased. It
seems that he had a new strategy in his hate for me. Speaking in the manner of
Chinese chronicles, you could say that he moved to the defensive by building up
an eighteen-level treacherous approach to him in the form of utter indifference.
But I doubt he was in any way aware that I was more than indifferent to him,
because I considered myself a real orphan: Mother had left me forever and as
for my father, he was as dead as the uncremated dead.
Actually, it’s totally inappropriate for children to
think of their father in this manner but in my case the story had already
happened so it might as well proceed, and in any case this isn’t an edifying
tale for youngsters, so I suggest you just keep on paying attention to what
I’ve got to tell.
I was then in the first year of secondary school and
for the first time failed in the final examination. The old people in the
house, one or two relatives on my mother’s side who were still living in the
compound, rightly took this to be a bad omen. They were worried that there was
something wrong, because it was unconceivable a good student like me would
suddenly fail an exam just like that. There was talk of sending me to a boarding
school – at first Wachirarwut and then Barn Somdeit. But as I said before, the
traps my father had set up for me had eighteen levels. ‘It’s his own doing:
nothing I can do about it,’ was the verdict that came out of that treacherous
labyrinth of his. So, I had to go on studying with my friends at the Wat Pho
school and that’s how I began to turn into the oldest student in the
establishment. It took me two years to go through each year of secondary
schooling and by the time I was seventeen, I still hadn’t finished school. In
those days, the Wat Pho school had only three years of secondary studies.
I left before the end of my last year. Another serious
event took place that year. The older I was, the greater the trouble I was in
– and I had to quit in mid term. I’ll tell you about this later.
I’ve mentioned to you no less than twice already that
there were many children in my house and I don’t know whether this has puzzled
you. And I’ve also casually introduced Aunt Waht to you, so I think you may
have some interest in her. Now, it’s time to tell you about the many children
and about Aunt Waht herself, which means telling you the story of His Lordship,
my official father.
But first, please allow me to make a suggestion. Since you already
know that I am what you might call an ill bird that fouls its own father’s
nest, I’d like to suggest that you refrain from scolding me just now because I
still have so many more things for you to condemn. It would be better if you
held back for a while and best of all, I think, if you held back until the
story is over before settling your score with me. This could save much of your
energy because by then you may well have decided to wipe the slate clean.
I’d also like you to notice that the stories I’m about
to tell you regarding my father are stories I’ve pieced together since I was
only seventeen, on the year the second impressive crisis took place in my life.
In the old days, there were few associations and
clubs, and none were developed enough to be acknowledged venues for wedding
ceremonies. Besides, there was no Cultural Council yet. It was thus unavoidable
that the wedding of my mother and father be held at my mother’s house. The
bride was a rich heiress even though she wasn’t quite twenty. This was because
her parents had long passed away, and she was under the care of an uncle. The
groom had only brought with him a few large pieces of luggage besides his
ancient family name and lordly title. He was about thirty at the time. As the
biographies of self-made tycoons are wont to say, he had only a mat and a
pillow with him, except that in his case the bamboo mat was intricately woven
and the pillow made of porcelain. The wedding arrangements were duly approved
by the senior relative – the uncle already mentioned. It seems that it was this
uncle who acted as the matchmaker for the two as well. When my mother died, my
father was extremely sorrowful and expressed his grief in the following manner:
first, as soon as he saw me in the delivery room, which had just turned into a
mortuary, he reviled me by calling me ‘that damn child’; second, he made it
known to one and all in the house that he’d never marry again; third, he
mourned his wife for five years and it was understood that he wanted everyone
in the house to follow suit (the body was kept at the temple for five years
before it was cremated); and fourth, because of his grief he no longer had any
heart for work, so he resigned and lived off a pension at home.
He also undertook to exercise his rights as the
inheritor of his late wife’s estate. Through a variety of psychological
pressures, he forced the old occupants of the house to leave one after the
other, and only those who were subservient to him were allowed to remain – he
did this with everyone, the servants as well as his wife’s relatives, and after
five years the senior relative and erstwhile matchmaker fled back to his native
town of Phijit. (That’s when my father decided to have his wife’s body
cremated.)
Close intimacy should govern the relationship between
the head of a family and its other members, especially the female ones.
Therefore, be they old or new servants or even his wife’s relatives, be they of
age or under age or a little over age, if he fancied them, he’d just go ahead
and gratify himself. When children were born, they were brought up according to
the status of their mothers. That’s why there were so many children in the
compound, and it was taken for granted that any children who weren’t born to
resident couples were his natural offspring.
His other
activity, which seemed to be based on an ambiguous principle, was that he liked
to support destitute children who had no relatives and needed protection –
regardless of their age, but he only chose girls. In some cases, he even
offered money to make sure they came under his care. When these girls entered
adolescence, it was the duty of each and every one of them to be serviced by
him regularly in his private chambers.
It was in such a carnal environment that Master Jan
grew up. Henceforth, if you feel I’m showing myself a little too precocious in
this lascivious playground, may I count on some sympathy from you?
2
Now, it’s time to tell the story of Aunt Waht.
There is probably no need to tell you that Aunt Waht was related to me on my mother’s side. Originally, she didn’t live in this splendid residence. My mother’s family had its roots in Phijit, where it had accumulated its wealth through trade before gradually uprooting over several generations from that faraway northern provincial town to settle down as titled well-to-do in the capital. By the time of my grandfather’s generation, only a few relatives were left there to look after the family interests that accrued from land and various businesses, but regular visits were exchanged every year between Bangkok and Phijit. Despite their old age, the Phijit relatives undertook the long and arduous journey to the capital, and the Bangkok relatives in turn went upcountry to pay them a visit, and this went on until about the time I was born, when the relationship trailed away. If someone thinking idly were to blame me for it, it wouldn’t be wrong, because something did happen and I was part of it, albeit totally unawares. But I’ll tell you about this later.
In any case, regarding the friendly ties between the
relatives in the two cities, it could be said that my mother was the last Bangkok
resident of her generation to visit Phijit, and in my own time Aunt Waht was
the last person on the Phijit side to come to Bangkok. Aunt Waht was about the
same age as my mother, give or take half a year or so, but they were strikingly
different in appearance. My mother was like an elaborate work of art –
white-skinned, delicate and dainty – whereas Aunt Waht was like a sanguine
creation – dark-skinned, sturdy and shapely. Picture, if you will, Laweing
Wanla* and Ursula Andress.
What you should know and remember is that Aunt Waht
travelled from Phijit to Bangkok on her own after she learned that my mother
had died during delivery.
As soon as she arrived, she went straight to the
greenhouse to pay her respects to my mother’s body, and then kept it company
round the clock until, after one hundred days, it came time to remove it to the
temple. Once this was done, she looked for me for the first time, and found me
lying on a filthy mat in a couple of old servants’ house. At the sight of me or
of the conditions in which I was being brought up – or because of both, I don’t
know – Aunt Waht gave up the idea of going back to Phijit and from then on
dedicated herself to looking after me. She stayed with me in that couple’s
house until, a year or two later, it was the couple’s turn to fall victim to
applied psychological pressure from my father, and Aunt Waht and I were left
with the full use of the house. Aunt Waht’s status in the compound was somewhat
peculiar. She was a dear relative of my mother as well as the niece of the
senior-most relative in the house who had once arranged the wedding of my
mother and His Lordship (I’ll hereafter call him Grandpa). But because he was
prejudiced against me, His Lordship paid me no heed, and she had to accept to
lower herself to my level and stay in a small house for servants. Nevertheless,
her real status was in no way diminished in the eyes of everyone in the
compound, not even of His Lordship, who couldn’t help but be considerate to
her. It could be said that Aunt Waht was a woman of strong character, and it
may be this very point that caught His Lordship’s attention eventually. He had
probably long pined for her, but out of consideration, had had to wait for the
auspicious time, as befitted the schemer that he was. In the meantime, he laid
siege to every other woman under his roof, young, old or widowed, as I’ve
already told you.
Throughout my motherless infancy, I was deprived of a
wet nurse for these reasons. I only had Aunt Waht and her loving care, and I
survived babyhood thanks to her personal exertions and to Glaxo powdered milk.
And speaking of children and milk reminds me of something right now.
I’ve no idea whether psychologists have paid any
attention to the matter, but it really did happen to me – or am I the only one
to whom it happened? From my own experience, I understand that children raised
on tinned milk in the first few months of their lives crave the warmth of their
mothers’ breasts. If they are boys, they grow up into men obsessed by the
female breast. As for girls, I’ve no idea, but I reckon they have no such
problem since they are the owners of these deeply absorbing appendages. Some
claim that the obsession with breasts may come about for no reason at all, but
in my case, it has always had a strong influence and seems to have played an
important part in shaping my destiny, turning my life around to the point of
making me feel as miserable these days as a brainless monkey. Well, you’ll soon
know about this. Right now, let me tell you a little about how my behaviour was
affected when my hankering for the maternal breast turned into a craving for
female breasts in general.
At that time, I was about thirteen or fourteen. That
night was one of the countless times when my behind had been in touch with my
old friend the whip. For what mistake? A piddling one indeed, which His
Lordship aptly summed up in the usual apothegm: ‘You ungrateful cur!’ And he
said it as if he truly felt concern for me. I was in the habit of wandering out
of the compound at night. Actually, I didn’t venture very far but kept to the
many lanes and alleys in the vicinity. I was well known in the area, so it was
necessary for me to get together with my friends regularly in order to keep
the social scene going. That night, I had enjoyed myself so much that when I
went back home I found the main gate locked, as it was past nine o’clock. So I
climbed over the wall at the convenient, isolated spot I always used. But that
night, it proved to be my undoing. Familiarity made me as reckless as a foolish
puppy. Clutching the top of the wall, I lowered myself along the inner side of
the wall, let go and fell right where His Lordship was passing water. I missed
his head by a fraction of an inch – that close. He lashed out at me with all
manner of indictments: wandering out late at night, climbing the compound wall,
pointing the way in to thieves and nearly breaking his neck. You may be
wondering how it was that a man of His Lordship’s standing, the owner of the
biggest compound in the area, was urinating by the wall at night. Well, it was
part of his nightlife, you see – he was on his way to tightening the screws of
intimacy with one of the female servants living in that part of the compound.
He was probably both angry and embarrassed at finding himself face to face
with me on the way, but he managed to make it sound as if he had caught me
red-handed behaving as an ungrateful cur, and whipping was the retribution that
ensued.
Although Aunt Waht had had to leave me behind when she
was requested to move to the main house quite a long time ago, she still
considered it her duty, either when I was sick or when she saw the whelps left
by the whip, to attend to me in the old small house, regardless of how much
this annoyed His Lordship. I lay naked so that
she could rub in an herbal balm whose formula she had brought from
Phijit. When the balm began to dry, she covered me with a silk blanket and
that’s when I did something under an impulse I just couldn’t control: I sprung
up and planted a kiss on Aunt Waht’s bosom. Her hands stilled and she looked at
me questioningly. Her half-puzzled, half-pitiful expression brought tears to my
eyes for the first time since I had been released from the greenhouse. I was
startled and embarrassed but in the same instant I knew exactly what it was I
was longing for in the deepest recesses of my heart, and I lost control of
myself again. Unable to restrain myself any longer, I hugged and kissed Aunt
Waht, mumbling over and over again: ‘I want to kiss my mother’s breast. I’ve
got no mother’s breast to kiss. I want to kiss my mother’s breast… I’ve got no
mother’s breast…’ On and on and on. Finally, Aunt Waht held me at arm’s length,
shook me and called out my name to bring me back to my senses – the method
we both were familiar with whenever I talked in my sleep or became so emotional
that I lost control of myself. The first instance had happened frequently when
I was still a child sleeping by her side; the latter, since I had begun to know
what’s what. This time around, however, I knew exactly what I was doing and so
I cried out: ‘Don’t go yet, Auntie! Please let me stay close to my mother’s
breast.’ I begged her time and time again, but she finally got up and walked
away. Stunned, despondent and sad, I felt dejection and despair.
Aunt Waht had merely gone to close and bolt the door
and she came back. A thrill of sheer rapture as I had never experienced before
ran through my whole body, as if the sky had torn itself open to make room for
me. Aunt Waht sat down by my side, stroked my head with a most compassionate
expression on her face, then lay down on her side, removed the cloth wrapped
around her chest and held me tight, in the same position as I had seen her when
she breastfed her baby in the main house a long time ago. I heard her murmur, ‘Here,
Jan, have your mother’s breast’. I thereupon turned into a baby suckling her
motherly breasts to my heart’s content. I felt so deeply elated that tears
rolled down my face again and the bosom in front of me was soaked with both my
tears and my saliva.
I thoroughly enjoyed the excitement I was in and felt
as if I was drifting into some distant heaven for a long while. Whether or not
it was a long while, it wasn’t long before I became aware of an abnormal
development taking place in my body. At first, I felt like I needed to pee, but
that wasn’t it. Something was threatening to spurt out and I had no idea what
it could be. It was at once scary and thrilling, but it wasn’t the kind of
bliss I was looking for. My nose and mouth went dead; my whole body stiffened.
The words ‘not that… not that… not that…’ reverberated inside my head. This
wasn’t what my heart had been seeking from the start. It was like a betrayal
perpetrated behind my back. I felt an odd recrudescence of affection for Aunt
Waht. To say it was a new feeling wouldn’t be quite right. In fact, it was a
mixture of old and new feelings, which led to a deeper sense of intimacy with
her than had ever been the case. But in the supreme moment of exhilaration and
exultation also lurked the evil spirit of shame. I flipped my body to the other
side and closed my eyes, like a baby falls asleep as soon as it has its fill of
milk. After a while, Aunt Waht got up and went out. I then felt completely
awake inside and at liberty to try and understand myself.
I lay engrossed in idle thought until I heard the
Indian night watchman in the lane beating the twelve strokes of midnight. I
still understood nothing and just caught myself having spent much too much time
indulging in nothing but musings about the strangest sensation I had ever known
since I was born – that was one thing I was thinking about. And the other was
the jerky squirt which was the most blissful and bizarre phenomenon in the
world. It was so exciting I couldn’t bring myself to believe that all along I
had had a duct for this seminal spring hidden away in my own body. How
puzzling, how fascinating, how enticing it all was! Then my mind began to
recall all the breasts, naked or covered, I had ever seen in this world, and I
proceeded to dwell on those I preferred. In those days, I fancied and yearned
for big breasts. The bigger they were, the more they pleased me. If they
could’ve been as big as the sky, I’d have been on top of the world.
To round up the story between Aunt Waht and myself
that I’ve just told you, I must emphasize most strenuously (in order to help
you analyse my behaviour correctly and avoid sullying the reputation of Aunt
Waht, whom I most love and respect) that she was like a mother to me in a
complex sense, both in terms of gratitude and in terms of social position. In
terms of gratitude, as you already know, she had brought me up since I was a
hundred days old and she had done so out of the goodness of her heart. In terms
of social status, you’ve just learned incidentally that Aunt Waht had a child
of her own and you can guess who the father was. Who else indeed? Aunt Waht was
the only woman who, having a natural child with His Lordship, had been called
to live with him openly in the main house. This made her the unofficial wife of
the owner of this large property. She was respected by everyone in the compound
and was acknowledged by the neighbours as its most powerful figure, second
only to the owner. This affected me in the sense that, since she was known as
my father’s wife, she was considered automatically as my mother, and I accepted
her as such with all my heart. I’d like to emphasise at this point that, among
the cohort of His Lordship’s consorts, Aunt Waht was the only one I considered
as my mother. I had to be strict about this, otherwise I’d have become the
child of countless mothers in the compound, including Phum, the cook, who was
the fiftyish mother of Khein Krathingthong, my friend, who was slightly older
than me.
3
Since I’ve already mentioned that besides me there was another child
called Khun in the compound, I think it’s time to introduce her. Her name was
Wilaireik, a name eighty-four thousand times more radiant than mine. His
Highness Prince Mahitsareit or Something-or-other-reit, whom His Lordship held
in the highest esteem, had helped think it up. Wilaireik Witsanan… The last
part of the name had been bestowed most graciously and willingly by His
Lordship himself, and she was the only natural child to have received such an
honour. As for the others, if their mother had a surname they used that
surname, but most didn’t, and it was another of His Lordship’s hobbies to think
up patronymics during his spare time, which seemed to last longer than
twenty-four hours a day. Miss Wilairek was nicknamed Miss Kaeo. She was
conceived in Aunt Waht’s womb when I was a little over four years old. Miss
Kaeo’s entry into this world was of much interest and concern to Master Jan and
has never ceased to be so even up to now. I’ve always felt that she was born
out of spite, out of spite for one and all – out of spite for me, for Aunt
Waht, for His Lordship, for herself even, and for one or two more persons.
As far as I’m concerned, even to this day I can’t
figure out whether she was born to retaliate against me on her father’s behalf
or for me to take my revenge on His Lordship, my ghoulish father. Father and
daughter always and equally hated me as if we had met and known one another in
a former lifetime. The oldest evidence of this is two old photographs which
have always disturbed me – I don’t really know why. These two pictures stand in
their old frames on my desk right in front of me now. Whenever I cast a glance
at them, I feel that I’m haunted by a ghost, despite their compelling clarity,
though their grain has much faded. As for her, seeing her there …
‘Just as well you managed to hang on to it: you can
look at that bastard mug of yours and laugh.’
… and it was the first time too that I was harsh
enough to slap the lady and send her sprawling to the floor.
These two photographs have exactly the same
background, which shows some multimillionaire’s park somewhere, and you can see
a stately residential building just behind, and right in front of all this is
Aunt Waht, sitting on a high chair and looking composed and unassuming, and on
one side of her is a real dwarf tree growing out of an antique pot and on the
other side a porcelain dog in a crouching position. The only difference between
the two pictures is that one has a girl of about ten standing to Aunt Waht’s
right whereas the other has a boy of fifteen standing to Aunt Waht’s left.
The photo shop, I remember, was on Pahurat Road
towards the Barn Mor intersection. The shop’s name began with ‘Cha-ya’* as was the fashion of photo shops in those days, but
I’ve forgotten the full name, which sounded like Cha-ya Kong Beng or something
like that. Aunt Waht’s original intention even before she took the two children
up the steep staircase leading to the Cha-ya-something photo shop, which was
located on the deck of a two-storey-high shophouse, was that the two
photographs be identical. When it was time to take the picture – just as the
Chinese photographer had organised the setting and the poses of the subjects to
his satisfaction and was diving under the black cloth behind the camera – the
girl Wilaireik, who looked as if she had just thought of something, started to
show her hand. Despite all of her mother’s entreaties, she wouldn’t allow the
boy Jan the honour of being photographed with them. Lest the outing in the
Austin through all of those streets be wasted, the boy Jan had to remove
himself from the scene first. Once Miss Kaeo had had her picture taken alone
with her mother, the boy Jan returned to stand at the previously assigned spot
and had his picture taken alone with Aunt Waht, but a smooth process it wasn’t,
because Miss Kaeo stood crying and fretting about while ruefully remonstrating
and criticizing her mother in all kinds of ways that hurt Master Jan’s
feelings. The last thing she uttered that I remember and will never forget was:
‘He’s not your son, he’s not Father’s son, so why should you sit with him?’
That was too much for Aunt Waht, who rose and went to give her a spanking
before returning to her seat and having the picture taken properly.
That time, as soon as we were back home, Miss Kaeo
hurried out of the car and ran to her father, who was in the anthurium nursery
nearby. Aunt Waht walked unhurriedly, holding my hand, and we could see Miss
Kaeo talking volubly to her father. As soon as we came to them, Aunt Waht
said: ‘I just gave Kaeo a good spanking in front of the Chinese photographer.
She behaved so despicably, I don’t know what got into her.’ Father and daughter
looked at each other and laughed, then His Lordship took his daughter’s hand
and they went into the house without saying a word. On our side, we too
exchanged glances. Aunt Waht looked suddenly sad, but I smiled cheerfully
because I thought the situation funny: ‘They are in this together, Aunt Waht –
I wouldn’t wonder.’ What I said was what I understood, and Aunt Waht took it as
such. She hugged me and said soothingly: ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She froze deep in
thought for a while, then turned to me and said: ‘Change your clothes and then
go back to the photo shop for me, will you.’ She went with me to my room, asked
for paper and pencil and sat writing a letter while I changed from my school
uniform to casual clothes consisting of a polo-neck shirt, a pair of shorts
and an old pair of sneakers. When she was done, she handed over the letter for
me to take to the photo shop together with a ten-satang coin, which could buy a
lot of things in those days, for my service.
The letter was folded width wise and again at the
corners, which was how a letter was closed in an emergency in those days – that
is, just enough for others to have the decency not to open it. As for me, I had
hardly turned my back and taken a few steps before I desperately wanted to read
it, but because it was Aunt Waht’s letter, I forced myself to strictly observe
proper manners all the way to the Cha-ya photo shop. As soon as I handed it
over to the Chinese photographer, I breathed a deep sigh of relief: the letter
was out of my hands and out of my yearning. But the photographer wouldn’t allow
me to leave; he called me back and asked me to read the letter out to him. I
therefore happily obliged him by reading it out loud and clear: ‘Regarding
the picture of the boy and me: please change the order to four copies, at
whatever extra cost. I’ll come and get them myself. Should anybody else come
for them, do not hand them over.’ I couldn’t but wonder at such a brief and
blunt message, so I asked the photographer how many copies Aunt Waht had
originally ordered. I was told that she had asked for three copies of each,
plus one enlarged version of the picture with the girl.
And it so happened that the day Aunt Waht went to
fetch the pictures, I had something to do in the main house and was still
hanging around there when she came back, so I had the opportunity to see all
the photographs. His Lordship ordered a servant to take the enlarged picture of
Aunt Waht and Miss Kaeo back to the shop to get it framed separately as it
would be hung on a wall in the house. As for the postcard-sized pictures, His
Lordship put them on a stool and examined them one by one and then gathered
them in his hand. That’s when Aunt Waht said she intended to send a copy of
each to her uncle in Phijit, but he objected, taking no heed that I could hear
him, that he didn’t think it proper to send a photograph of the boy, for a
reason, which I was then unable to understand, that Aunt Waht should know well,
and before she could reply, he cut the conversation short by giving her one
photograph of herself and Miss Wilaireik and telling her he would take care of
all the others, then he got up and walked inside the house. Aunt Waht didn’t
seem unduly disturbed by not being able to
send the photograph taken of me to Grandpa as she had intended.
Aunt Waht’s attitude neither surprised nor distressed
me, because while His Lordship had been looking at each picture on the stool,
I had counted them and was sure that there were only six, that is three of each
– and I was never to see them again until two years later, when I noticed the
photograph of Aunt Waht with the girl Wilaireik and that of Aunt Waht with the
boy Jan in twin frames of beautifully carved wood propped up on a shelf in
Grandpa’s house in Phijit. That’s where the fourth copy of the picture of Aunt
Waht and me had gone!
I came to learn much later that His Lordship had
burned the three pictures of me on the very day he had claimed he’d take care
of them. Aunt Waht understood his way of thinking well. The whole episode
showed that he didn’t want any trace of me to be left behind in my mother’s
house.
From what I’ve been telling you up to now, you
certainly realise as well as I do that His Lordship wasn’t my real father.
That’s right: he wasn’t my father at all. I had been certain of it in my heart
ever since the day of the incident that led to my being confined to the
greenhouse. Even though it was a knowledge which was shaky because it was
something I had figured out on my own, I had enough evidence to be certain.
Therefore, when the ten-year-old girl let out in so many words that ‘he’s not
Father’s son’, I didn’t feel disturbed. I only felt like something was
screaming inside me: ‘That’s it! That’s His Lordship’s confirmation of what
I’ve been suspecting all along.’ It was only from her father that Miss Kaeo
could have learned bits and pieces of such a dark secret. To me, who was the
victim and her real nephew, Aunt Waht still refused to reveal anything,
although I kept pestering her about it.
Well, by now, you must be starting to wonder what the
indications I had were that pointed to the certainty that he wasn’t my father.
Because he hated, despised and beat me up so savagely? Not at all. My reasons
were much more solid than that: indeed, they had to do with evil. They revolved
around the proof I had that if he hated me so madly, it wasn’t over the
unbearable loss of his wife. He hated me for reasons of his own, that had to do
with his own inner disposition, because if he was my real father and did what
he did in good faith, out of grief over the loss of my mother, he wouldn’t have
behaved in so demented a way to me and Aunt Waht.
His odd behaviour towards me, which kept flooding back
time and time again through the gash that the severe shock I suffered on the
day of the greenhouse incident had created, goes back to the time when I was
four years old.
How many among you are aware of how old you were when
the first event you remember happened? I believe very few people know for
certain how far back their first remembrance took place, and I’m one of those
selected few. My first memory goes back to age four. Oh, if I dare to be so
confident, it’s because I have proof: Miss Kaeo’s age is the authoritative
almanac in this case. Miss Kaeo was about five years younger than Master Jan,
so we can take this as evidence that my first memory goes back to when I was
about four years old. If I can only remember one scene, it’s because that
scene was truly unforgettable, and even if my memory is vague, like the dream
of a man with a fever, I’ve never been able to dispel it altogether.
The most noticeable thing in the world of a child of that age is the
regular succession of days and nights. There is day and then there is night.
When the world gets dark, the child soon goes to sleep; when he wakes up, the
world is bright as usual. Darkness and then light, following each other ceaselessly…
But then it happened that another, unnatural kind of light came and interfered
with the normal cycle of darkness and light. That light was yellow and sort of
dirty, and it had a sound like gusts of wind blowing nearby. I was on my back
looking at the dim light and listening, perplexed, to the sound that was like
gusts of wind blowing now fast now slow, and then I realised that in the
silence there was an accompanying sound, so familiar to the ear I hadn’t
perceived it at first, although it might well have been the first sound I
heard. That sound was the hiss of the winding lamp next to the mosquito net.
Then it meant the lamp was still lit! Then it wasn’t really daytime! Having
thus observed, I further realised that the wind blowing inside the mosquito net
was the sound of breathing… and not just a single sound either, because these
breathing sounds were competing. Who was it? Under the net besides me was only
Aunt Waht. I turned towards her and then sat up at once.
What on earth was going on?
Two grownups, in the state of children taking a bath,
were lying in such a naughty way that they deserved a good thrashing. I had
never seen such a scene and never thought I’d ever see it. This obnoxious sight
made me feel feverish and unwell. My real feeling was like the revulsion at
having to witness two grownups playing at urinating on each other – and these
two grownups were none other than Aunt Waht and my own father.
Aunt Waht was shocked when she saw me sit up and
stare, and she made to stop being naughty there and then, but my father was
unwilling to do the same. Although Aunt Waht whispered something in a scolding
tone, his voice was harsh, the harsher of the two. The words bandied back and
forth I couldn’t understand, only that they were quarrelling, and eventually
Aunt Waht was the loser. She stopped talking and was unable to make him stop
being naughty, even though her body looked stronger than the thin and tall
frame of my father. During all this time, he never interrupted his naughty game
and never took his eyes off me. I could see clearly the whites of his eyes in
the drab light inside the net. He went on with it, and stared at me on and on,
and even though Aunt Waht raised her hand to cover her own eyes and face, he
didn’t pay the slightest attention to her. By now I was feeling sleepy again so
I lay down, and after that I could only see the whites of his eyes. It was then
that Aunt Waht stretched her hand and closed my eyes while she whispered with a
strange voice: ‘Sleep now, child. There’s a good boy. Go to sleep.’
4
It seems that I fell asleep right away.
The next morning I wasn’t sure whether what I had seen the night before was real or a dream, so I asked Aunt Waht, and for the first time she used her love for me to threaten me – if Jan loved his Auntie and wanted her to stay and keep loving him, he must not talk about this any longer nor mention it to anyone else.
Sure. ‘I love you, Auntie. I’m your good boy. I don’t
want you to go back upcountry. I’ll never ever talk about it again.’
But the matter didn’t end there. ‘From now on, you
must get used to sleeping alone. You’re a boy, so you mustn’t be afraid of the
dark. You must sleep on your own so that when you’re older you can be as brave
as Jack, who climbed the bean stalk all the way to the sky to kill the giant
living there.’ I didn’t find the argument very convincing, but her ‘if you love
your Auntie and want her to stay and keep loving you’ was enough to make me
comply.
So it was that from then on I had to sleep under
another mosquito net than Aunt Waht’s. Later, Jan the little fellow had
another opportunity to practise being brave by being separated from Aunt Waht,
for the simple but compelling reason that ‘I’m going up to give you a little
brother or sister’. ‘Going up’ meant moving into the main house. As for me, I
had to continue living in the same small house with a young nanny, one of the
girls brought up in the compound under His Lordship’s patronage. By then, I was
almost a year older and learning fast, so I started to show my hand in a secret
battle with the nanny, who had just come to live with me, on her very first
night.
‘Secret’ meant I wouldn’t let Aunt Waht know about it,
because she strongly intimated to me that even though I now had someone to live
with, I should go on sleeping alone. (She had always had a knack for finding
out things in advance.) But sleeping alone just didn’t appeal to me. Aunt Waht,
as you already know, had all the reasons in the world to make sure I slept on
my own when we still lived together. Yet, I couldn’t see how it mattered that I
didn’t sleep with other people, and Aunt Waht wasn’t telling me why either.
Therefore, I considered myself free to do as I pleased in this matter and I did
so without showing any disrespect – that is, discreetly and considerately so that
no one knew about it. As soon as the nanny had set up the two mosquito nets, I
grabbed the pillow inside the small net, ducked under the large net and lay
down to sleep. Although the nanny protested because she was afraid of being
berated by Aunt Waht, I ignored her and finally went to sleep. From that first
night, it was understood between us that two mosquito nets had to be set up
but we’d both sleep in the large one. I didn’t have the company of the nanny
for very long, though. One night, I woke and stoop up to find myself face to
face with my father once again. My nanny wasn’t alarmed nor did she feel concern
enough to try to stop as Aunt Waht had done. It was His Lordship who turned out
to feel embarrassed to the point that he spun around, lying prone like a ruddy
crocodile, then lunged at me and pummelled my back and shoulders with a series
of punches. He threatened me fiercely to prevent me from crying out and ordered
me to go back to my mosquito net. Being a little child who still thought His
Lordship was his father, I dared not disobey him, so I grabbed my pillow and
ducked out of the net, sobbing all the while. Although he felt embarrassed as
Aunt Waht had been the first time, he didn’t forbid me to spread the story
about, but it was my own decision to keep quiet about it lest Aunt Waht would
learn I had secretly disobeyed her.
On the following night, when it was time to go to bed,
I knew enough to stay under my own net. Perhaps out of pity for Master Jan’s
trouble to which she had contributed the previous night, my nanny sympathised
with my plight and unbidden came and lay down next to me and kept me company
till I was asleep. This turned into a regular practice and on the nights when I
had trouble finding sleep, Mali, my nanny, would lull me with extraordinary
caresses of her own which made it even harder for me to feel drowsy and got me
addicted to insomnia. Don’t ask me for details of how she managed to lull me to
sleep. I’ll just give you a hint: if she had been my nanny much longer, I’m sure
I’d have lost my innocence much sooner than is customary. In a way, it was
fortunate that she eloped with a driver at the warehouse about one year after
she had become my nanny.
The person who took over from her was selected by Aunt
Waht herself from the neighbourhood. Her name was Granny Muan. To call her
Granny wasn’t derogatory: she was old, real old, much older than Phum, the
cook. She was obviously way past her prime so had no part in the nightly
deportments of His Lordship. And strangely enough, I didn’t care one bit for
her company at night. She went on taking care of me for long years until it was
my turn to sort of take care of her instead. She died of senility when I was
about eleven or twelve, and from then on I stayed on my own in the small house,
still under the supervision of Aunt Waht, who took care of whatever needed to
be taken care of.
At this point, I’d like to insert a remark relevant to
my destiny, which on two occasions had me waking up at night to witness
something unusual. The first time, I saw His Lordship, the man who was called
my father, and Aunt Waht; the second time, I saw him with Mali. This was the
starting point in my life of the frequent repetition of events, especially
those happening between His Lordship and me. I once read about a kind of mental
or neurological disorder which made the patient have hallucinations in the
form of double vision. If you think I read about it in a textbook, you’re
totally mistaken, because I’m not that dedicated. I read it a few days ago in a
novel entitled Catch 22. It’s a biting antiwar satire written by the
American author Joseph Heller. Not bad, wouldn’t you say, for a third-year
secondary student of yore.
‘I see everything twice!’
Pandemonium broke loose in the ward again. The
specialists came running up from all directions and ringed him in a circle of
scrutiny so confining that he could feel the humid breath from their various
noses blowing uncomfortably upon the different sectors of his body. They went
snooping into his eyes and ears with tiny beams of light, assaulted his legs
and feet with rubber hammers and vibrating forks, drew blood from his veins,
held anything handy up for him to see on the periphery of his vision.
The leader of this team of doctors was a dignified,
solicitous gentleman who held one finger up directly in front of Yossarian and
demanded, ‘How many fingers do you see?’
‘Two,’ said Yossarian.
‘How many fingers do you see now?’ asked the doctor,
holding up two.
‘Two,’ said Yossarian.
‘And how many now?’ asked the doctor, holding up none.
‘Two,’ said Yossarian.
The doctor’s face writhed with a smile. ‘By Jove, he’s
right,’ he declared jubilantly. ‘He does see everything twice.’
They rolled Yossarian away on a stretcher into the
room with the older soldier who saw everything twice and quarantined everyone
else in the ward for another fourteen days.
‘I see everything twice!’ the soldier who saw
everything twice shouted when they rolled Yossarian in.
‘I see everything twice!’ Yossarian shouted back at
him just as loudly, with a secret wink.
‘The walls! The walls!’ the other soldier cried. ‘Move
back the walls!’
‘The walls! The walls!’ Yossarian cried. ‘Move back
the walls!’
One of the doctors pretended to shove the wall back.
‘Is that far enough?’
The soldier who saw everything twice nodded weakly and
sank back on his bed. Yossarian nodded weakly too, eyeing his talented roommate
with great humility and admiration. He knew he was in the presence of a master.
His talented roommate was obviously a person to be studied and emulated. During
the night, his talented roommate died, and Yossarian decided that he had
followed him far enough.
‘I see everything once!’ he cried quickly.
A new group of specialists came pounding up to his
bedside with their instruments to find out if it was true.
‘How many fingers to you see?’ asked the leader,
holding up one.
‘One.’
The doctor held up two fingers. ‘How many fingers do
you see now?’
‘One.’
The doctor held up ten fingers. ‘And how many now?’
‘One.’
The doctor turned to the other doctors with amazement.
‘He does see everything once!’ he exclaimed. ‘We made him all better.’
Destiny didn’t make me suffer from double vision as
Yossarian pretended he did and the other soldier actually did before he died,
but the comparison can be considered apposite. I didn’t see a single object as
two separate ones, but I saw events happening twice, giving credence to the
warning of historians that ‘history often repeats itself’. Whatever fate made
his life intertwine with mine in this house, the fate of the same house has led
me to find myself in the position he used to hold, and he’s now paying through
my own actions for the misdeeds he used to commit against me. In the life we’ve
shared, each has had the opportunity to see events repeating themselves with
the other. He had the opportunity to see me fall into the same situation as
his. As for me, I had the opportunity to see myself fall into the same
situation as his and to see him being done by me what he once had done to me.
Therefore, each of us is a reflection of the other. It’s only recently that
I’ve become aware of the fact, I swear.
Swear? Should I go this far? Yes, I can swear that I
never intentionally let things happen twice in order to take revenge on him. I
can really swear as much, except in one case – what he shamelessly did to Aunt
Waht under the very eyes of a four-year-old child in the dead of night. No
matter how much he despised me, no matter how much he looked down on me as a
simple child who knew nothing when compared to a fully grown person, or as whatever
else, he should’ve had some consideration for the feelings of a good woman like
Aunt Waht. True, I knew nothing then. I didn’t understand what he was doing to
her, but he forgot that though I understood nothing, I already could remember
things. The picture of his performance impressed itself on me like a tattoo.
Though the ink did fade with the passage of time, the imprint remained to
reveal its full significance later. In the darkness of the greenhouse, I
suddenly and forcefully recalled the forgotten scene with the understanding of
a child whose experience of the world had been shaped by the school in the Tha
Tian area and his social wanderings in the lanes around the house. Though I was
only twelve, I had enough theoretical knowledge by then to realise that we
aren’t born out of bamboo hollows like goblins. We have an exciting athletic
game a man and woman play together in private and from this game we sometimes
have offspring. I say ‘sometimes’ because it isn’t always the case that you
get offspring from playing that game, and at the time I had no idea why in some
cases you did and in others you didn’t. I was particularly suspicious of those
women who earned their keep by selling their bodies night after night and yet
managed to have no children. Oh, but there was one, though – the mother of a
student friend of mine. Well, I’ll tell you about it later, because it also
played a significant part in my life.
After I recalled what had happened that night, I began
to doubt that His Lordship was my real father. Though I only knew the theory of
that sort of game and had yet to learn its practice, I could sense it was
another instance in which he had acted with me as if he were not my father.
A few years later, I had early practice in the athletic field for the first
time and from that wonderful experience, I became certain that the man
performing in the event that was buried in my mind was not my father, because
when I myself performed, I didn’t want anyone to see me, not even my friend,
who had colluded in the event and was waiting for me outside. I felt terribly
embarrassed by the idea that he knew what was going on. As the years passed, my
anger with His Lordship increased to the point that I could never forgive him.
I didn’t feel angry for what he had done to me but for what he had done to Aunt
Waht. He had vented his spite for me on her. I’ve borne him a grudge
unwittingly ever since and when the opportunity, which I had not sought, came
about, it became a time bomb which exploded in a manner that went beyond my
expectations. Well, we’ll come to this later.
It follows from what I’ve told you so far that Aunt
Waht became pregnant when I was about four and gave birth to Miss Kaeo when I
was about five. And it was during this period that Grandpa could no longer stand the shenanigans of his
nephew-in-law, whom he himself had brought into the compound, so he
gathered his personal belongings and repaired to Phijit. His Lordship had won
hand over fist thanks to his method of applied psychological pressure. He had
killed two birds with one stone, taking possession of Aunt Waht and finally
acquiring exclusive control over the dominion he had intruded into long ago. It
was around that time that the body of my mother was cremated. When I was
twelve, I began to think he wasn’t my real father and was sure of it by the
time I was fifteen – a year in which I had many experiences, including that of
falling in love, which was an entirely different matter from those I faced once
I had landed in the field of athletics.
5
As my experiences during that year involved a great many people,
allow me to introduce them one by one in this chapter. I’ll not only usher
in new characters but also tell you more about the ones you already know, as
all have played their parts in the humble theatre of my life.
Wilaireik
This is
the very Miss Kaeo who meant to me love at first sight and then utter wretched
pain. I fell in love with her when I first saw her as a rosy baby wriggling on
a padded mat. That’s because I thought she was my little sister, but she knew
better – and earlier than I did – so that not only did she not return my
feelings but she has hated me ever since she was a mere toddler. There were
times when Aunt Waht tried to impress on her that she should consider me as her
elder brother, but there were many more occasions for her father to teach her
to see me as a worthless, repulsive creature that didn’t deserve even a glance.
His Lordship, therefore, bested me without even a contest. I, who was ‘Master
Jan’ to everyone in the compound, have been ‘Damn Jan’ to her ever since she
learned how to wear a gold fig leaf*.
By the age of ten, her appearance had come to clearly
reflect a balanced combination of the features she had inherited from each of
her parents: she had her father’s shape of face and fair skin, and the sharp
features and shapely figure of Aunt Waht. But her temperament was
unfortunately modelled entirely on His Lordship’s, including, let it be said,
strong sexual proclivities. One characteristic she had inherited from Aunt Waht
was a strong will, but it was regrettable, especially for me of course, that
she used this good trait from her mother to support all of her nasty
propensities inherited from her father. This was the reason for her
increasingly vicious behaviour towards me, early on and up to now. Being her
father’s favourite child made her arrogant, contemptuous and malicious, and so
selfish that she saw goodness in nothing and was even jealous of her own
shadow, so to speak.
Of course, no matter how evil we are, we all have a
little bit of good in ourselves. Wilaireik Witsanan, too, had a good side, inasmuch
as she sometimes became kind-hearted. She could love and knew how to wish
people well and show concern for others. So, when she fancied someone, she
lavished her love unstintingly, totally oblivious to any other considerations,
and this created no end of trouble for other people.
Saisoi
This seventeen-year-old girl was at once Miss Kaeo’s nanny, servant and close playmate. Originally, her name had only one syllable – Sai or Soi, I forget which. It was Miss Kaeo who coined the two-syllable name and soon everyone in the compound got into the habit of using it as well. It’s generally said that for an intimate relationship to develop, it must be based on common traits, both positive and negative. The more inclinations, good and bad, are shared, the faster the relationship will develop and the longer it may last – a phenomenon as natural as the instant blending of matching colours. If the proclivities shared on the positive and negative sides don’t have the same weight, it’s like colours of different pigments which can still be matched. The only strange, indeed unnatural, thing is a colour that would blend with every other colour in the universe. If you object that white is such a colour, I must remind you that white isn’t a colour: white is the absence of colour; white is emptiness. And if you still insist that white be a colour then I’d classify it as a special colour, because no one is really empty, except Buddhist saints, who are hard to come by. Apart from them, the only empty people readily available that I can think of are the mentally deficient. We can’t take either type into consideration. A colour that matches every other colour has no reality in itself; a person who can make friends with all the people in the world on an equal basis is a person the world must be particularly wary of because it can’t find any sincerity in him or her.
Saisoi was neither beautiful nor ugly. Besides having
nothing unpleasant about her appearance, she actually looked homely. As for her
temperament, no need to mention it here, because she was a born flatterer and
her prurience was a special feature that made her most attractive in the eyes
of lustful people of all ages.
Khein
Krathingthong
This
big-framed, softhearted boy, who was old cook Phum’s son, had had lots of
capers upcountry. At that time, he had recently come to live here together with
his mother. The master of the compound, perhaps because he only had eyes for
Phum, whose charm he was crazy about, or to express his disgust with me in a
new way no one would forget, or for any other reason I know not, had told Khein
Krathingthong to stay in the same house as I.
That evening, I was sitting at leisure on the windowsill in my room upstairs, when Khein, panting over an armful of belongings, walked through the door.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked.
‘Right here,’ he answered in his northeastern lilt. ‘I’m
to stay here. The master tol’ me to.’
‘Whose master? Who’s this master you’re talking about?’
Blood had rushed to my ears.
‘How come? You live here, don’t you? How is it you
don’t know who the master is?’ he replied in such a funny way I could no longer
feel angry with him.
‘The tall, pale man, you mean?’
‘Yeah, that’s the one. He tol’ me to come stay here.’
‘Maybe, but if you want to stay here, you must have this
master’s permission first.’ I pointed at myself and got off the window
sill.
‘I don’t un’erstand. I don’t know what you’re talkin’
about.’ He shook his head.
I was really amused. ‘Do you know who’s the master of
this compound – of all the houses around this one?’
‘That master.’
‘And do you know who’s the owner of this house? I say this
house.’ I pointed at the floor. He was puzzled like a fighting cock being
kicked in the butt. As I had gotten through to him, I pursued my advantage. ‘It’s
me – this Master Jan here is the owner of this small house. And don’t you
forget it! You can stay in the compound if the other master says so, but if
you want to stay in this house…’ I pointed at the floor again. ‘…you’ve got to
get this master’s permission first.’ Again, I pointed at myself.
‘So that’s what Mum was tellin’ me about,’ he said
enigmatically, then turned around and walked right out of the room.
‘Wait!’ I followed him to the landing. ‘Who’s your
mother? What did she say?’
He turned and said ‘Your mother?’ as if in retort.
‘Yes, your mother. Who’s she?’
‘My mum’s name is Nang Mae [Mrs Mother] Phum,’
he said, giving his mother’s full name. ‘She tol’ me to talk things over with
Khun Jan first. I thought Khun Jan was a woman – an adult woman. When I saw
you, I thought you were Khun Jan’s son.’ He added under his breath: ‘Tough
luck, mate!’
‘All right, I allow you to stay here,’ I said out of
the goodness of my heart as rightful master of the small house. ‘Do you snore?’
He smiled broadly and looked like a six-year-old
rather than his actual sixteen. ‘How would I know? Never heard myself. I only
know I often have dreams, and damn enjoyable they are, too.’
‘Well, in any case, I don’t like to share my room with
any boy.’
‘How can I stay with you then?’
‘Come on. Do you think this is the only room in the
house?’
I led him downstairs and unlocked the door of the
small room which I had shared with Aunt Waht after she had found me when I was
a hundred days old. These days it was used as junk closet. I helped him clear
the junk away and tidy the room so that it could be his living place.
And this is how Khein Krathingthong became my close
friend.
Mrs
Bunlueang and Master Khajorn
I’ve
been wondering ever since how it was that His Lordship waited for so
long before he took Mrs Bunlueang and Master Khajorn to stay with him in the
compound around that time. Since Grandpa had rolled up his mat and gone back to
Phijit and my mother’s body had been cremated, he had the right to do as he
pleased, yet he had waited another four or five years. Out of consideration for
Aunt Waht? Probably not. Or had he thought of them only then? I’ve no idea. Nor
did I have any at the time.
I had heard of Mrs Bunlueang even before I saw her or
knew her name. When the greenhouse was taken away and relocated in a monastery
as an offering, this was the signal of the imminent arrival of Mrs Bunlueang. A
medium-sized two-storey house of the latest design began to take shape next to
where the greenhouse used to be. This was a major and most significant event
because it was the first house to be added to the old dwellings in the
compound. I and the other children liked to roam around the construction site to
observe the craftsmen at work and sometimes give them a hand when they asked us
to pick up this or that for them. It was during this period that I learned the
new dwelling was meant for one of His Lordship’s close relatives. Once the
construction of the beautiful house was over and the ground had been cleared
of bricks and planks, the anthuriums nursery was moved from its former location
to where the greenhouse used to stand. The ground between the new house and
the nursery was dug up and the soil prepared in order to grow flowering plants.
A few days after the house was blessed by the monks, Mrs Bunlueang moved in.
To my young eyes, she looked positively ancient,
although her actual age then was about thirty-five. Anyway, she was older than
Aunt Waht, because Aunt Waht called her ‘Elder Sister’. She was devastatingly
beautiful, with a thoroughly fair and glowing complexion and compelling
voluptuous curves. At any rate, that’s how I like to remember her. According to
my perception of her then, however, what I saw was merely a pale and buxom
woman. As to her healthy glow, I thought she must have been flushed out of
embarrassment, which couldn’t be further from the truth. She always looked
everybody squarely in the eye with those sharp eyes of hers and was the
easiest-going woman in the compound, not only in the way she spoke but also in
the way she dressed and behaved. She was the first woman in the compound and in
my life to wear pants so short that I could have a close look at her. Of all of
her exceptional features, what fascinated me most was that she had the biggest
and most exciting bosom I had ever seen in any private or public place, and she
never thought of keeping its glorious spread secret by covering it up as most
women did in those days. Her insouciance went far beyond what you can imagine
right now. Not only were all of her blouses quite revealing, but she did not
like to wear any undergarment, and not only did she seldom wear one, but there
were quite a few times when she didn’t wear anything at home, which regularly
inspired my wrist exertions and wet dreams. I daresay that she was the first
woman who could strongly arouse my passion in a way no other woman has ever
matched.
Two months after Mrs Bunlueang moved into the new
house, Master Khajorn made his appearance. Everyone in the compound only knew
that he was her son, but we had no idea how mother and son were related to His
Lordship. After a while, we learned that Master Khajorn called His Lordship ‘Pa’
– a peculiar word. We didn’t know what it meant so we ventured a guess: since ‘Par’
[Dad] meant father, ‘Pa’ probably meant uncle, paternal, maternal or some such.
Master Khajorn was one or two years older than I, but his demure behaviour,
which befitted his good breeding, made him look much older than his age. He
studied at Wachirarwut School and always dressed smartly like a prince born in
heaven. He only returned home on Saturdays to spend the night with his mother
and went back to the school on Sunday afternoons. When he was back on Saturdays,
I liked to follow him around, because I felt that I, too, could have become a
student with this kind of smart getup, were it not for the opposition of my
damned ghost of a father. At the same time, I tried my utmost to cultivate his
friendship, but it was to no avail. He was aloof, yet not conceited and
arrogant like Miss Kaeo: it’s just that he preferred to be alone. I well
remember what he looked like at the time. He was a tall, slim fellow with an
elongated face, slightly wavy hair, a long, pointed nose, a pointed chin, and
sharp eyes, and he walked with his back straight. In short, his overall
appearance was strongly reminiscent of that of Gary Cooper, who was a Prince
Charming kind of guy in those days. He scarcely smiled at anyone and yet I often
heard him laughing merrily with his mother and ‘Pa’ – these two persons
being the only ones in the compound to whom he was always close.
Regarding the relationship between Mrs Bunlueang and
His Lordship, there didn’t seem to be anything special. Ordinarily, His
Lordship went to have dinner at the new house twice a week. One meal always
took place on Saturday evening, when Master Khajorn was home for the night; the
other had no fixed day. Every time he went there, he’d linger until very late
at night, so late that no one was still awake to find out what time he actually
left.
Once I heard Khein confiding to his mother: ‘Last
night, His Master (he meant His Lordship) went down and shone his flashlight
on the rosebushes to check for worms until late, and then he disappeared into
the new house. Made me wonder if he and Mrs Palueang are really brother and
sister. It sorta bothers me.’ Khein’s tongue had trouble pronouncing Mrs
Bunlueang’s name correctly and he always maimed it this way.
‘Like dogs in heat they are!’ Phum answered angrily
out of resentment of some kind, then realised how inappropriate it was for her
to talk like this and so ticked off her son to cover up: ‘See what you’ve done?
All this naggin’ of yours and I forget to hold my tongue. Anyway, it’s his business.
Don’t you go and poke your nose into it. It’ll only get you into trouble.’
‘Like dogs in heat they are!’ Khein repeated the
phrase with relish and wagged his head as if he couldn’t make head or tail of
it.
I, too, made as though I couldn’t figure it out, but I
didn’t think it was at all funny.
Hyacinth
My dear
Aunt Waht took me to study English almost as soon as I started learning kor
kai, khor khai – the Thai alphabet. It was a special evening class. I
started learning my ABCs with Teacher Suan at Teacher Pui’s School in a garbage
dump of a lane in Barn Mor, the same school where I attended the Thai primary
class with Teacher Nueang in the daytime. Thus it could be said I learned both
alphabets at the same school. After three years of Thai primary school there, I
moved to further my education at Wat Pho School. As for the English class, I
had long finished the course with Teacher Suan, so I went on to learn English
grammar at Teacher Sarlee’s School near Tha Klang, at the Park Khlong [Canal
Entrance] market – yes, another market! In the daytime I went to the school
near the Tha Tian market, and in the evening to the one near the Park Khlong
market. So if you hear me swear like a fishwife and use foul market jive with
more fluency than I ever mumbled my way through my lessons, show me some
sympathy, will you. And if a former alumna of Rarchinee School were to object
that though her school is close to both markets, neither she nor the
generations of alumnae past and present have ever caught the foul-mouth disease
as I did, I’d like to point out that her school is totally fenced in by high
walls and its discipline very strict, to the extent that there was no way I
could have contacted a student there had I wanted to. So how could the foul-mouth
virus ever creep into the premises? Congratulations all the same, dear lady.
In the daytime Thai classes I never went beyond the
third grade of secondary education, but in the English class at Teacher
Sarlee’s evening school, I pressed on to the equivalent of Grade 7, and seldom
did my friends get a chance to snatch the first place from me in the
end-of-year exams.
If I boast like this, it’s only because I’d like to
tell you that this is where I met Hyacinth, my girlfriend – at this very
evening school. She was tall and rather lean. Her dark skin made her look
gloomy; her long, brown hair had amber reflections and reached down to her
shoulders; her eyes looked sad. She was modest and reserved, but when she
smiled – oh, wow! the sky, so clear, so bright, so beautiful, wouldn’t hold a
candle to her, believe me. She was a few grades below me but I found time
before entering the classroom to befriend her, and a few evenings after she
joined the course she allowed me to walk her home. Whenever I think about that
occasion, I can’t but smile with glee at the elation I felt. It was as though
my body and soul were adrift in the air. I walked with her, and nothing else
mattered. In fact, all along the way, we hardly exchanged a word and merely
stole glances and smiled at each other when our eyes met from time to time, but
I was under a wonderful spell, as if I were listening to a rapturous song whose
lyrics I couldn’t understand. When I came to my senses again, I had to grab her
arm to make her stop.
‘Hyacinth! Which one of us is walking the other home?’
She turned and smiled gently as she often did. She
thought I was teasing her, so resumed her walk even though my hand was still on
her arm. I let go and slowed down to see which direction she’d take. When I was
sure of her choice, I quickened my pace and followed her into the lane – one of
the lanes leading to my compound.
The compound was in the middle of an area crisscrossed
by a multitude of lanes and alleys like a net. The lane I entered in her wake was on a side I seldom used as a passageway
as it went through the territory of a few enemies of mine. Now, it
looked as though I was intruding, and I felt uneasy. But then, the power of
love can make us swoon or turn us blind, stun us or make us mad, rash or plain
stupid, dauntless or cowardly. In my case, it gave me a degree of self-control
and calm I found rather puzzling. As I walked by her side, the wonderful song
now gave way in my heart to cold strategic considerations – how to prevent them
from attacking me, how to circumvent them so they’d engage in a man-to-man
fight. Indeed, fighting them one at a time would be preferable to having three
or four or even five of them rushing me, so that before I was beaten black and
blue the news could reach my friends on the other side.
But it turned out that I safely made it through to
Hyacinth’s home, which stood a little past my enemies’ territory.
It seems I let the word ‘love’ slip out just now.
Although I wasn’t aware of all the ingredients of the love potion at the time,
I’m not mentioning love idly. I didn’t know what it was but I did know what it
wasn’t. I told myself every night that I loved Hyacinth, and my heart agreed
and was fully receptive. I never thought of her in a sexual way, though my
passion did take the natural path of sexual arousal on occasion. What was
rising quietly and deeply inside me was unlike any feeling I had ever
experienced. It was like the mood conjured up by the fragrance of flowers, not
the craving triggered by the musk of hair follicles all over one’s own body.
I have thought of Hyacinth in this demure way ever
since I was fifteen up to my present age – a little over forty.
Hyacinth’s home was one of twelve joint one-storey
shophouses. It was situated almost in the middle of the row, and most of her
neighbours were Chinese. Across the lane, which was about four metres wide,
stood the high, thick, dull-white back wall of a nobleman’s mansion. At one end
of the lane, a passageway led to other lanes through which I could reach my own
home. On either side of her dwelling, a few neighbours sat alfresco in front of
their wooden shop-fronts, but most had turned off their lights and gone to bed,
though it wasn’t even nine. The lone shop of a Chinese silversmith at one end
of the row was ablaze with lights, and a street seller of cheap stew had set up
her wares in front of it.
I gazed left and right as I stood behind Hyacinth, and
held her textbooks while she produced a bunch of keys on a chain of coins
fastened to her waist and selected one. As she busied herself with key and lock
to open her shop-front, she offered the very picture of loneliness. I was more
and more taken by her. It was as though she had been left behind in a deserted
place – a solitary soul badly in need of a friend. ‘Hyacinth, I’ll be your best
friend in every way till my dying day,’ I vowed in my heart as I stood behind
her.
She undid the hasp and opened one of the panels. Her
body stood out against the dark opening as she turned to receive her books from
me.
‘Go back now, Jan – it’s getting late,’ she whispered
when she saw me standing still. I nodded and sighed, then a thrill ran through
me: I had caught a whiff of her natural scent, like the sweet fragrance of saiyut* flowers that drifted by on some mornings, but hers was
more enthralling even though it was fainter.
I cursed inwardly when I remembered that the gate of
my compound closed at nine. There was little time left and all of it suddenly
so precious I intended to fully enjoy every second of it.
‘Do you always live alone at night like this?’ I had
wanted to ask her this ever since we had reached her door.
She nodded. ‘Every night. Pa usually comes back around
eleven.’
‘Eleven… Hey – what was that you said? Who did you say
comes back around eleven?’ I grabbed her arm without meaning to, and promptly
released it.
‘Pa – Pa does.’
‘Wait.’ I tried to contain my excitement. ‘Pray tell
me who Pa is and how he’s related to you.’
She gave a short laugh and answered: ‘Who else? My
father, of course!’
She had spoken softly but all of her words resonated
in my head. I thought of Master Khajorn. I thought of Mrs Bunlueang. I thought
of His Lordship. Then I burst out laughing. Hyacinth looked so puzzled that I
hastened to explain: ‘No, no, I’m not laughing at you. You’ve just given me a
tremendous piece of information, about the word ‘Pa’, I mean.’ I felt suddenly
buoyed beyond words and on the strength of this jolly mood decided to do what I
had refrained from doing until then. ‘Your Pa won’t be back before eleven so
there’s plenty of time left,’ I told her breathlessly. ‘Don’t go to bed yet,
Hyacinth, I’ll come back to keep you company.’
Whether she made to protest or thank me, I knew not
as, having no time to wait for her reaction, I had darted away.
When I reached my house, I went to Khein’s room, but
he wasn’t there. I went up to my room to drop my textbooks, came down and paced
in front of the house for a while. Khein was probably still helping his mother
in the kitchen or in her quarters. I strayed towards the new house and saw that
the ground floor was ablaze with lights, which probably meant His Lordship was
still talking with Mrs Bunlueang after dinner and he wouldn’t be wandering in
some other direction tonight. It was a good omen for the plan I had in mind. I
sneaked away from the area and headed for the main house. I found Aunt Waht
sitting on the porch rolling wax into candles. She turned to greet me with a
smile when I sat down next to her. Lately, I scarcely visited the place at all.
I answered her greeting with a few words then sat there, quietly watching her
making candles. She kept throwing puzzled glances at me and after perhaps the
eighth, I let out: ‘So, Master Khajorn is also Father’s son, isn’t he, Auntie?’
It was what I had been mulling over in a nutshell.
Aunt Waht’s hands didn’t stop what they were doing.
After a moment, she asked matter-of-factly: ‘Why do you ask if you already
know?’
That meant she knew, as probably did everyone else in
the compound. I must have been the only one kept in the dark.
‘For nothing. I just learned about it, so it makes me
wonder.’ Having answered her question, I went fishing for more information: ‘Is
Master Khajorn also a Witsanan?’
She nodded.
I also nodded. ‘Then, Mrs Bunlueang was his wife
before – before my mother.’
She showed no reaction to this deduction of mine.
‘The confounded sod,’ I said levelly as if complaining
about the weather, and got up to leave.
‘Wait, Jan.’ Aunt Waht stopped what she was doing and
turned to me. ‘Your father had a good reason to remarry with your mother.’
I smiled with heartfelt disdain. ‘Don’t I know that,
Auntie! The more I know, the more I hate him – but then what does it matter?
Don’t worry about it, Auntie.’
‘Wait…’ she called out again. She looked at me rather
uneasily. ‘You said you know. What is it you know? How much have you been told
and by whom?’
I went back and knelt down in front of her and told
her, out of the greatest love and respect I had for her: ‘I figured out by
myself that he isn’t my real father. To know this much is enough for me. More
than enough. I don’t need to know more than that.’
Aunt Waht looked somewhat stunned. She extended her
hand and put it on my shoulder and expressed her concern for me: ‘Don’t you
think you’re overreacting a bit? Suppose what you think you know isn’t true?’
I shot back: ‘If he’s my real father, I’m prepared to
go to hell.’ She was taken aback. I thought I knew what her predicament was, so
I broached the topic for the first time in years: ‘When – Auntie, when will I
be told the truth about my birth?’
She shook her head and stammered: ‘No – not yet, Jan.
You – you aren’t old enough yet.’
I nodded in assent and when I saw she had nothing to
add, I stood up and left.
I had to wait another two years before I was told what
I wanted to know about my origins.
After leaving Aunt Waht, I went straight to the usual
place where I climbed over the wall and went to see Hyacinth. Electric light
shone out of her room through the slightly open door. She wasn’t asleep and I
believe she was happy I was back, but she worried all the same that her father
would return and find us together. I was somewhat uneasy about this as well,
although there was really no reason for us to feel like this since we didn’t
intend to do anything objectionable. Maybe we were overly worried because we
were aware that our behaviour wasn’t quite proper. In all sincerity, I
undertook to pacify her by promising her I wouldn’t stay too long to put her at
risk. From then on, we sat together with a happiness nothing could compare to.
We chatted heart to heart as she did needlework and I revelled in the bliss of
observing her at close quarters for the first time, while learning many things
about her at the same time.
She, too, was motherless, and she had lived alone with
her father for a long time. The two of them had moved from a province in the
South over a year ago. In the daytime, she went to Beinjamararcharlai School.
Her father worked in an icehouse near the Lower Steel Bridge, and he
volunteered to work overtime at night to increase his income. I was curious to
know why she had this strangest name in the world of Hyacinth and what it meant
but didn’t dare to ask, just as I didn’t dare to ask her which language the
word ‘Pa’ came from – Burmese? Mon? Javanese? Malay? – because it might be
trespassing on racial susceptibility and I didn’t see anything wrong in her
being of another race anyway. She was my darling Hyacinth, and this, to me, was
more than enough.
We had completely forgotten about our first worry
until – oh my God! Who was this who had just stepped in and stood looming in
the entrance? The large tall figure was clad in white cloth like some sort of
uniform. He had close-cropped curly hair, a large, square, bony face whose
outstanding feature was the eyes, large, shiny, commanding. I couldn’t quite
figure out the colour of his skin, but it looked to me as dark as a black plum.
I suddenly realised from her father’s appearance what
Hyacinth’s race was – Indian. As to whether she was Malay or Thai Muslim*, I had no idea and anyway wasn’t interested in finding
out any longer. That she was my Hyacinth was more than enough for me.
She stood up and introduced me to her father as a
friend from school that lived nearby. She explained I kept her company because
I had noticed she stayed home alone at night. She was calm, polite and
amazingly natural, and it helped to quickly dispel my own anxiety. I added to
her introduction by stating who I was, who my parents were and where I lived. I
did so fully aware that nothing in my real status allowed me to make such claims,
but I wanted him to feel some restraint in case he meant to scold or punish his
daughter for staying alone with me until so late at night. He had a most
frightening physique, so I felt very worried for her. But it seemed he wasn’t
in the least interested. He um-ed and ah-ed in his throat a couple of times
then disappeared behind the flowery curtain that partitioned the room. Smiling
and nodding, Hyacinth signalled me to leave. I went away feeling like in the
current hit song, that I had ‘left my heart in Hyacinth’s room’.
That night, I had erratic dreams, because my mood
veered between elation and anxiety, and it seemed like an eternity by the time
the evening of the next day came. I went to wait for her at school since early
in the afternoon and as soon as she finally made her appearance, my heart
brimmed with joy and radiated with warmth like a sparkling diamond. She was
neither bruised nor distraught. Her father had only said that if she really
needed me to keep her company, she should tell me to come in the daytime on the
days when we had no class; she shouldn’t have me staying till late at night, as
it looked unbecoming. Just this much gratified me greatly. It meant that his
father trusted me as a friend of his daughter, and from then on I burrowed myself
in Hyacinth’s room from dawn to dusk almost every Sunday as well as every other
holiday. And on the nights when I couldn’t stand pining for her at home, I made
Khein jump over the wall and keep watch for her father at the entrance of the
lane, just in case he came back earlier than usual. I know it was a lousy
assignment but I was forced to demand this sacrifice from him. Khein, however,
wasn’t long in finding his own entertainment out of this boring duty. He
flirted with the vendor of Thai sweetmeat at the entrance of the lane whenever
he felt lonely, even though she was almost one and a half times older than him.
Khein Krathingthong was always lucky with women wherever he was.
But then, one night, he and I had a misunderstanding
which came close to a falling out between us for the first time.
That night, it wasn’t yet ten o’clock when I heard him
whistle the signal on which we had agreed. I hurriedly said goodnight to
Hyacinth, left her and made to run. But he laughed at me as he grasped my arm.
I flew into a rage at the thought that he had made this up to make fun of me,
but the truth was far much worse: he had called me out to open negotiations
with me!
‘I’ve waited and waited but I’ve never heard you offer
this pretty lass to me. Aren’t we friends sharing everything? Or do you intend
to wait till she’s old and grey?’ That’s the way he went about it. I felt like
scalding water was boiling in my chest and thrusting right up my throat. I made
a deliberate effort to swallow to push it down with the fleeting thought that
‘The fellow’s dreadfully mistaken’, followed by a dozen foul expletives. I
began to lift my clenched fist, intending to punch him lightly on the upper arm
to teach him a friendly lesson, but in the same split second my pent-up anger
took over and my fist smashed into the upper part of his chest instead. He
staggered for a few steps and as soon as he recovered his balance lunged at me
ready to strike back, but when he saw that I stood still, arms loose, he
dropped his fists, feeling furious with himself. He asked me indignantly: ‘What
the hell’s the matter with you?’
I swore and told him: ‘Let’s talk about it at home.’
I walked away and he followed me, shaking his head in
worry.
It turned out to be a more difficult exercise than to
explain to a child in a roundabout way how human beings reproduce themselves.
In the poor light of the wick lamp in Khein’s room, I tried to make him see how
different Hyacinth was from the other girls with whom we both had had affairs.
Don’t you ever talk to him about love and worship: it’d only confuse him and
he’d just stop listening, and when he refused to listen, it was more hopeless
than watering a stump to try to make it grow, because not only would he not
stay still but he’d also react impetuously and the whole thing might end up in
bloodshed – not that he’d kill me, but I might kill him.
Weary of his inability to see differences between
women in this world, I tried a new tack to make him understand: ‘I love
Hyacinth and I’d like her to become my wife. If it were you, would you want to
share your wife with anyone?’
‘What kind of crazy talk is that?’ He laughed grandly.
‘Long before it’s time for you to take a wife, you’ll be bored to tears with
the dame.’
I cursed him harshly out of genuine outrage then asked
him to make himself clear.
‘You’re still very young and it’ll be another ten or
fifteen years before you get married. If you sleep with the same girl for ten
or fifteen years, do you think you’ll still want to make her your wife?’
More expletives came out of my mouth. I enjoined him
to get it into his thick skull that I had never slept with her and to get his
evil misconceptions out of his sick mind once and for all. He didn’t believe me
and acted as if he was truly disappointed that I tried to deceive such a close
friend as he. I had to swear over and over again that what I said was true
until he relented and his exasperation gradually subsided. He was still for a
while, then shook his head and gazed at me until he finally decided to speak.
‘What you think and intend to do sounds fine, but it’s
a damn foolish notion all the same. If you don’t grab your opportunities, I’ll
bet by then she’ll have gone to the dogs.’
The expression he used was nauseating, especially as
it referred to the person I loved, but I didn’t have the heart to take offence.
‘Perhaps so. Maybe by then we won’t be husband and wife, who knows.’ I, too,
was beginning to feel dejected. ‘Anyway, I think a man should have one woman in
his life to love and respect so that it makes him feel good all round.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said, forthright as ever. ‘To think
about it and not do it – what’s the good of that?’
‘Why?’ I asked him in earnest. ‘Isn’t it possible for
men to think of a woman in a nice way instead of only wanting to sleep with
her?’
‘Well, why not, if you’re that thick?’
‘Why?’ I went on earnestly. ‘Why can’t we think of a
woman in a nice way, like we used to think of our mother?’
‘Master Jan.’ He seldom called me this. He was looking
deep into my eyes. ‘What you just said sounds to me like a slur on my mum.’ My
mouth fell and my eyes widened before he went on: ‘Me, I can’t help thinking
about sleeping with women, and come to that, my mum sleeps with His Master as
well.’
I sighed deeply. I was in for more explanations. I put
my arm around his shoulders and said: ‘We don’t always make love just for fun,
you know. Sometimes, there are other purposes, and valid ones too. Think about
it. Think about our parents who gave us life, for example.’
I don’t mind if you think I was being too wise for my
age. I was born a brooding child and had grown up amid these kinds of stories
all along.
Khein now acted as if he had a headache. He sighed,
moved out of my embrace and got up. ‘Here we are talking about this pretty girl
and you manage to bring our parents into it. I must hand it to you.’ He gave a
short laugh and went on talking with laughter in his voice: ‘All right, I’ll
let you have this one. I no longer want you to share her with me. But she must
be the only one, you promise? Don’t let there be others like her, okay?’
I had no time to argue, so I nodded in assent, though
I didn’t have to think hard to figure out that the agreement wouldn’t last. You
see, it was like playing track and field together. For now, we were involved in
a relay race, so we had to share the same baton, but when I’d start the sack
race, I doubted he’d want to share my sack.
6
Just then, there was a knock on the door, which Khein had closed, and we
heard a feminine voice calling him in a whisper. In the same instant, dextrous
and swift, he had blown out the lamp. ‘Do you have a date?’ I whispered to him.
‘That’s Waen, and no I don’t, but with this girl,
there’s no need for dates.’ From his tone, I fancied I could see him grinning
in the dark. Then he offered: ‘Stay here. We’ll do it together, or I’ll let you
have her first.’
Knowing who she was and hearing what he was
suggesting, I felt all my hair stand on end. ‘No thanks, but suit yourself,’ I
said and quietly exited through the window and went back to my room upstairs.
Waen was one of the girls under His Lordship’s
patronage, actually one of the very first. Now she was about sixteen but was
skilled in the game way beyond her years. I remember how a few months earlier I
had climbed the wall back home at about eleven one night and passed Khein’s
room, which was totally dark. I stopped and knocked on the door as usual to
find out if he was in. The two of us had agreed on a series of signals
involving light and darkness in Khein’s room. If the light was on, it meant he
hadn’t gone to bed yet; if I wanted to talk to him, I could just open the door
and walk in. If the room was dark, there were two or three possibilities. If I
wanted to know what he was up to, I had to knock three times and then two. If
he didn’t answer, it meant he was asleep, and if he didn’t sleep and was in the
mood for talking, he’d get up and open the door for me, but if he coughed or
cleared his throat, it meant he was busy doing what we jokingly referred to as ‘bliss
building’.
That night, he got up, opened the door and let me in
but showed no sign of lighting the lamp. I was struck by his unusual behaviour
and on the spur of the moment slid my hand under his mosquito net, only to palm
warm naked flesh giving out muffled giggles. That’s when Khein did me the
honour of letting me take the floor with Waen for the first time while he went
to wait outside. Wasn’t I thrilled! Once done, I opened the door, intending to
give him well-deserved thanks, but instead I almost burst out at him in anger
at the sight of three or four boys who were waiting just outside. As I stood
flushed in the doorframe in full view of these boys, I was so embarrassed I
almost felt they could see me as clearly as in plain daylight. I grabbed Khein
by the throat and dragged him under the shorea tree near the house to
berate him in private. At that moment, I felt like killing him seven times
over, but he deftly found enticing arguments to wriggle out of trouble. ‘Don’t
you know that’s the way she likes it? There’s no limits for her. So why not be
broadminded about it? This way, these kids will respect us even more.’ That’s
what he said. I felt as if I had fallen head over heels from the sky into a
sewer and was left at once nauseated and eager to shed my skin.
I was angry
with him for days. There was no way for him to understand my annoyance. He
didn’t even know that the very idea that only he and I knew he had introduced
me to the game embarrassed me for days when I was in his presence.
I seem to have alluded to this episode earlier on, so
let me dwell on it at length now, since it marked the opening up of my life to
the pleasures of biting into raw lust at the tender age of fifteen. By the time
I was seventeen, merely two years later, I had become so proficient in this
field that I can confidently state I was more expert than any older young man
such as Master Khajorn or even Khein Krathingthong himself.
As you know, Khein and I became close to each other
very quickly. A few nights after I helped him turn the junk closet into a room
for himself, he began to tell me about the extensive sexual goings-on he had
known in his hometown, not just his own but those of his friends and
neighbours, and even folk tales. How many of them were true I had no idea, but
they were all new and strange to my ears and so exciting that I listened to
them with bated breath. And when I retold them to my friends at school, I had
no trouble grabbing the title of champion in dirty story telling from Bai of
Mill Landing, even though the fellow was much older than me. Khein hadn’t been
in the house for two months before he began to demonstrate his practical
skills to me with Eeat, his mother’s helper in the kitchen. The show was
exciting enough, but it made me uneasy because Eeat had had a natural child
with the master of the house who was my playmate. But it was like a cloudburst
– sudden, heavy and soon over – a mere experiment. A month later, he
managed to lure Miss Kaeo’s favourite nanny into his room. I thought she was
too much for him to handle, so cautioned him against her, because everything
closely related to Miss Kaeo was risky as it was bound to lead to trouble
sooner or later. But he was so fond of Saisoi he wouldn’t give her up, and it
turned out Saisoi was the fuse that took two smouldering years to reach the
powder keg. The resulting explosion broke up my life so effectively that it was
‘like the work of the devil’, as popular fiction used to say in those days.
Not only did Khein pay no attention to my lengthy
warnings, but he prompted me, ever so glibly, to join him in igniting the fuse.
He began by asking me whether I had ever tasted the pleasures of sexual
intercourse other than in my dreams. Though I knew he already knew, I answered
in such a guarded way as he could figure out by himself that, well, no, not
yet. Making it clear he had received a negative answer, he undertook to show
his mastery: ‘Then, it’s time for you to do so. I’ll find you a good teacher to
coach you till ding-dong come.’ He made the story more exciting by keeping mum
about the identity of the teacher in question. For my part, I played along by
pretending to be eager to know. He was very pleased to seem to be torturing me,
though he knew I already knew.
Then the right opportunity came one night when Khein
arranged a two-on-one date with Saisoi without telling her. Promiscuous as she
was, Saisoi wasn’t as perverse as Waen, whom the boys in the compound had
nicknamed ‘Miss Hole in one’. When she ambled into Khein’s dark room, I was
standing in the darkest corner, across from the door, and went on standing
there as Khein began to negotiate with her.
‘Saisoi, I need your help.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ she complained as she
unselfconsciously took off her blouse out of habit.
‘Let’s talk now because I need your help right away.’
‘My help? At this time of night?’ There was irritation
in her voice. I heard a silver belt drop to the wooden floor and all of a
sudden felt my heart racing so fast I became alarmed it would abort tonight’s
plan. But it did no such thing.
Actually, the trepidation of my heart travelled all
the way down to the soles of my feet and my alarm shifted to the possibility
that the wooden floor would begin to shake as well. For this reason, I wasn’t
in the mood to listen to the latter part of the conversation, though I did catch a snatch of Saisoi’s
protestation: ‘…but he’s just a kid!’ and it was this that made the
valiant blood of a well-bred gent of recent vintage boil over, clearing
instantly the chilling-hot feverish fear of a moment ago. I was now ready and
eager to leap belly first into the gamely trough. Right then I heard Khein slapping
and thrashing the girl in a way no budding gent could countenance. I stepped
out and yelled at him: ‘Why the hell are you beating her up?’
Saisoi, who lay on Khein’s musty bed sheet, ejaculated
in fright something like ‘oh!’ and ‘ouch!’ combined and instantly flipped her
body to face the wall.
‘Everything’s fine, Master. You can do as you please
now,’ he said formally, then went outside and closed the door behind him.
Saisoi still lay on her side facing the wall. Her
naked body looked dead white in the dark. Master Jan – a new face in the ring
of the most ancient contest on earth – went to sit by the edge of the bed – a
sheet spread over a mat on a low rattan platform. And how was he feeling now?
Calm, determined and fairly excited. In tones even hoarser than his already
breaking pubescent voice, he told the girl’s long back enticingly stretched
under the cheap mosquito net perpetually hung at four corners and now rolled
up: ‘I say, Saisoi, if you don’t want to, well…’ And then stopped because the
blurred body turned to lie flat on its back while both hands went up to cover
the eyes. The mouth, which was as naked as the rest of her, began to urge in
impatient tones: ‘What are you waiting for, Master Jan? Anyway, I…’ She didn’t
finish, but I understood all that she meant to say. Saisoi wanted to be quickly
done with me and hurry back to Khein. She looked down on me as a mere sapling
while lusting for Khein’s sturdy timber. If it were any other kind of game, I’d
have quit, turned on my heels and left the room out of pride, but this was
nothing if not a challenging opportunity I had long coveted. I decided to pay
myself back in kisses, only in those areas that could be construed as allowed,
and this made me feel relaxed enough to start digging for the hidden treasure
promised by the clues waiting in front of me.
Yes, Saisoi was like clues helping me search for a
hidden treasure, but only grudgingly so. That is to say, I did jump and have
fun in her trough – a trough that was full of sludge. It was fun in the sense
that it was outlandish, something I had never known before. When compared to
what I had expected, however, it was so-so. The spice was in my own excitement
rather than in anything else. After that first dive, I sought Saisoi’s science
a couple more times to hone my skills then desisted, because I felt competent
enough to hold my own among the women young and old who were in plentiful
supply within the walls of our compound. Since His Lordship had already suffused
the atmosphere with the fishy smell of lewdness, it wasn’t difficult for me to
follow in his wake, but I stuck to one imperative rule, which was to never ever
touch any of the illegitimate daughters of the person known as my father. As
Aunt Waht had said – what if what I thought I knew turned out to be wrong? I
was scared of sin in such quarters, and whenever I think about it now, I can’t
help but feel sorry.
Khein’s room was the place where the two of us and
other boys in the compound used to reach heaven. We had made it a rule to share
equally and considered it good manners to do so. We considered it good manners
also to insist on the sharing; whether there was anything to receive was
another matter altogether. There were even some adult couples who came to ask
us to let them use the place, and in such cases the sharing was by way of
peeping at them without their knowledge.
Whenever I recall Khein and his bed, I think of a fat
pig wallowing in filth – perfectly happy by the look of it, as if its body
were only skin-deep. No matter how deep it wallows in it, there’s no way the
filth can reach its real self, which is a tiny dot buried deep inside. Khein
always slept soundly on his couch soiled by the evidence of his own
promiscuity.
7
In my haste to tell the tale, I’ve rashly overlooked the importance of
one small yet meaningful titbit, so allow me to go back a little. As I said,
the fun I had after I jumped into Saisoi’s slushy trough was a bit of a letdown
compared to what I used to picture in my mind. Actually, there was another
reason for it besides carnal enjoyment. While I bobbed and dived in tune to my
newfound craving, a dark bubble seemed to be striving to come up from the
bottom of my mind. It was in fact a long-forsaken sediment of memory shaken
loose by the swirling force of the wave of emotion, which was at once turbulent
and turbid. The blurred picture in the dirty light that flashed at the back of
my skull gradually focused until it assumed a tangible shape as if projected on
the inside of the occipital bone – that of Aunt Waht using both hands to
cover her face, her body trembling below gleaming eyes that were staring at me.
That picture now superimposed itself on the one I was dimly seeing on the
screen of darkness in front of me – that of Saisoi using both hands to cover
her eyes as she lay beneath me. And this is when I suddenly realised that that
was what the adults had been doing before my very eyes! How wonderfully weird
indeed! And now my turn had come? Hooray! Long live the spreading of knowledge!
From there, I idly asked myself: ‘If I knew someone
was peeping right now, would I keep at it? No way! And if someone came and sat
down to watch? Absolutely not! What if it were my parents? You must be crazy!
Then how can one do it deliberately while one’s own son’s watching? Hence, he
can’t possibly be my father!’
It was thanks to this almost objective test that I had
finally found the answer to the question that had burdened my mind for so long.
Reflections of this kind went on dimly behind my
drunken excitement and threatened to scatter my current mood, and I was about
to lose heart. Fortunately, I had something to buoy me up right away –
something that had often come in handy for me and could take over
automatically. What else but the conspicuous figure of Mrs Bunlueang, the
mistress of my perennial dreams.
How utterly volatile the primal instinct was, that it
only perked up thanks to my trump card? It had just shot a new bud but, having
no real root, how could it reach full bloom?
Perhaps because my first experience was held in such
inauspicious conditions, none of the games I pursued over the next couple of
years brought me much satisfaction. No, it wasn’t a question of omen at all: it
was merely that I had gone ahead half-cocked. I was too much of a greenhorn
then, too much of a weakling for such a sky-high undertaking. I needed time to
put on brawn and build through good care till I was fully grown.
And fully grown I was by the age of seventeen, getting
manlier by the day. It was then I reached the triumphal arch of sexual bliss
for the first time in life and went through it with a man’s pride tinged with
delight and dignity.
It was also at the age of seventeen that Mr Jan
Witsanan’s life faced a violent, multi-layered crisis which left him penniless.
No – worse than penniless: I lost everything, including my own self, even
though I, having been born, was still alive somehow.
My life had had an erratic course ever since its
inception. Though only seventeen, I had gone through a lot. Let’s have a quick
rundown: I was born in the matrix of death, had witnessed something at an
inappropriate age (my first memory coming too early), learned things at an age
I wasn’t supposed to (being too precocious), acted before my time (going
half-cocked), and what you will learn next is that at seventeen I reached the
turning point traditionally attributed to the age of twenty-five – an age of
drastic change and major unforeseen events, according to ancient wisdom, which
held it to be the most important transition period in the life of man. And if
you lend credence to such an old belief, then you’ll agree that my life had
reached such a decisive turning point truly and cruelly seven or eight years
ahead of time.
The devastating explosion of the time bomb I’ve already mentioned was
triggered by Khein and Saisoi’s long ordained if transitory pairing off. The
burning of the fuse took place in two separate stages before the explosion blew
my life to smithereens at the age of seventeen.
The first stage.
Let’s say that it was both usual and unusual for Khein
and Saisoi to be engaged in a long-term affair. Saisoi was well aware that Khein never stopped enjoying his favourite hobby,
regularly brought his conquests to his filthy bed sheet and was in the
habit of climbing over the wall to go gallivanting in the vicinity. As for
Khein, don’t worry, he knew better and more thoroughly than anyone how long
Saisoi had been serviced by His Master and to what extent, and he was sure as
well that, besides His Master and himself, Saisoi couldn’t help making herself
of use to a number of men both inside and outside of the compound on a casual
basis. Her random partners in the compound were mostly casual labourers who
took care of the gardens, supplied water or chopped firewood, and who never
stayed for very long. Ironically, the young lady occasionally took her extras
to build bliss in Khein’s room. How could Khein not know, since he had
informants everywhere who took turns sharing favours in his lair? There was
never any display of jealousy between the two of them, though, and they managed
to keep their union as fresh as if they were newly wed. In the eyes of the
members of the bliss club on the ground floor of my small house, Khein and
Saisoi were perfectly matched both in latitude and in longitude.
This wasn’t surprising if you knew Khein and Saisoi
from every angle as I did. Khein was above average in everything related to
sex. I say this in comparison to myself. The special attention I’ve always paid
to these matters made me afraid at first that my own level was much higher than
that of the common man, but after I took a close look at my friend Khein’s sex
life, I felt relieved at finding myself to be very much in the norm. Not only
wasn’t I below par, but I was rather above, yet still maintained a fair
average. I was someone who ate whenever there was something to eat but wasn’t
worried when there wasn’t. Besides, I had regular opportunities to purify my
mind whenever I found myself alone with Hyacinth. When I was with her, I never
thought of sweet or spicy side dishes; my heart was so pure I could have sat
down and written reams of poetry. For Khein and Saisoi, though, it wasn’t like
that. (I’m only telling the truth; don’t accuse me of belittling my friends.)
There is more to releasing passion than releasing matter, and more to savouring
than consuming. It’s like breathing, which can’t be done without fresh air.
Show some sympathy. Who wants to die before time? This young couple had most
suitable table manners. When they got used to eating together to the point that
their food lost its fine flavour, they sought to change the atmosphere in order
to rekindle their appetite. And it was I, their close common friend, whom they
chose as instrument of change eventually. They both dropped clear hints that
they wanted me to be the third person in their private abode, and not only did
I have no objection, since I understood their motivations, but I rather liked
being in that kind of atmosphere. So they found Master Jan sitting reading a
book or doing homework or just hanging around while they were at it, but I only
joined in the atmosphere, not in the activity itself. As I told you before, I
was very shy in these matters. The closest I came to joining in was in dragging
a chair and sitting down next to them to study the anatomy of the Gemini
configuration, which I hold to be an art as natural as nude sculpture or a
representation of Hanuman and the siren*.
You certainly remember that Saisoi was Miss Kaeo’s
favourite nanny. Miss Kaeo was so utterly crazy about her I really wondered if
she wasn’t under a spell of the same kind as the one my dear Mali had put on me
when I was a child. It was only a suspicion, mind you. Even if I had known the
truth, I could have done nothing about it. Miss Kaeo’s wishes were like orders
nobody dared to infringe upon, not even her own mother, because they were
firmly backed by her father, His Lordship. Furthermore, Miss Kaeo, at the age
of ten or eleven, was already a child of many tricks, who got her way in everything
if she really put her mind to it.
All the time Khein and Saisoi were enjoying themselves
in their hideaway, Miss Kaeo was keeping her eyes on them from a distance, her
heart burning with resentment. She knew as everybody knew what was going on between
Saisoi and her father, and she also knew as
everybody knew that more of the same was going on between her and Khein. She
realised how damning the latter relationship would be if news of it
reached her father’s ear. If she felt like it, just a flicker of her little
finger and he would know all about it. Then, both Saisoi and Khein would be
thrown out of the compound. But she still needed Saisoi, so it was impossible
for her to do so, and in order to keep Saisoi, she had to keep Khein as well.
This was a thorn in her flesh. She hated Khein and resented him for daring to
take Saisoi away from her, and hers looked like the spite of an envious child,
but in fact – damn it! I came to realise later that it was the slow incubation
of full-blown jealousy. Do you understand what I’m saying? The jealousy arising
from the bounds of love tying one to a person of the same sex. True, it was
still in the early stages, but whatever found its way into the heart of a child
like Miss Kaeo and brooded there came to hatch in no time. And believe me,
though she couldn’t get rid of Khein then, she never gave up the idea, but
merely bided her time.
While she brooded and waited, however, something she’d
never have thought possible happened: Saisoi became pregnant.
Women getting pregnant without husbands of their own
was a natural occurrence that had been taken for granted in the compound for a
very long time, but this particular pregnancy was so odd that we, members of
the bliss club, made it a topic of deliberation among ourselves. Saisoi was an
old hand at the game, and almost every time she tried for a new flavour besides
His Lordship and Khein we were aware of it. She had never shown any sign of
getting pregnant, however, and all of us had come to forget that women behaving
like her could indeed get in the family way. So, whose trick was it? Who was
the father? We chewed the fat with great relish. Khein, who was the first
concerned, looked more perplexed than anyone else. The only thing he was sure
of was that it wasn’t his handiwork. After he thought it over for a while, he
expostulated, ‘I’m sure Hao Kuang did it!’ He was referring to Kuang, a Chinese
senior bachelor who owned a goods store in the vicinity. It sold liquor,
medicine, coffee, shrimp paste, fish sauce as well as cheap clothes and
cosmetics; even second-hand motorcycles were on sale there. ‘I arranged it for
him myself,’ he confessed, though no one had asked him anything. ‘I did it
because there’s so much we want from his store. Just lost a little in
exchange for all those goodies of his. If that one hadn’t gotten herself knocked
up, I reckon he’d have gone bankrupt pretty soon. No way – I think I’d better
let him know.’ And when he was back, he was all smiles as he reported, ‘That
fellow Hao Kuang is delighted. He says he’s ready to accept the child, but only
if it’s a boy.’
As for His Lordship, the owner of the compound, he
went about thinking up a name and surname for the child without a fuss, out of
broad-mindedness or stupidity I can’t say, so bare is the thread that separates
the two conditions.
But then, after being a source of puzzlement, Saisoi’s
pregnancy finally turned into big news. At first, when she learned that Saisoi
was pregnant, Miss Kaeo showed no reaction at all, but as months went by, it seemed
she could no longer stand to see her favourite nanny’s belly growing bigger by
the day. She couldn’t bear to witness the awkward looks of pregnancy, and her
former fondness turned into dire hatred. Finally, she went about flicking her
little finger by getting her father to throw Saisoi, who was six months
pregnant, out of the compound forever. As Saisoi had no relatives, His Lordship
took her to stay at a friend’s house temporarily. Later, after some search,
Khein found out where she lived and paid her occasional visits, out of sympathy
or merely out of curiosity I don’t know. And then one day he came to us,
smiling widely as if he had a trick up his sleeve, and reported, ‘Saisoi has
given birth. Hao Kuang’s the father, no doubt about it.’ And when we showed our
curiosity – ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ – he put up a tantalising smile for a
while and then answered: ‘He looks real Chinese.’ I believe all of us felt
great then, because if Kuang the Chinese was true to his word, the child would
have someone to depend on. We pressed Khein to get on with the rest of the
story, and it turned out it was even better than we had expected: Kuang had
agreed to take care of both mother and child. Things went on very smoothly.
There was no ceremony, except that Kuang asked Aunt Waht to negotiate with His
Lordship, who was Saisoi’s guardian. When everything was settled, Saisoi took
her child and clothes to go and live with Kuang at his store. Though we all
agreed Kuang had put himself in no end of trouble by accepting a woman like
Saisoi as his wife, we were all pleased that mother and child had found such a
secure place to rely on.
Not very long afterward, Kuang took his child and wife
to live at a new store in Lart Krabang, south of Bangkok. The reason? Strictly
between us, we came to the conclusion that Kuang probably couldn’t stand
Khein’s indiscriminate ‘squeeze’, as it’s called these days.
Maybe some of you are wondering why, having gotten rid
of Saisoi, Miss Kaeo didn’t by the same token get Khein expelled as she had long
meant to. Well, whether you wonder about it or not, I’d like to tell you that
when she had it in for someone, she wasn’t going to forget or forgive for the
rest of her life. She didn’t seize the opportunity then because she intended to
take her revenge more thoroughly later.
And for this very reason, the devastating explosion
had to wait for another period, which lasted about one year.
8
The last stage.
When I was a little over sixteen, His Lordship was
about forty-seven and Aunt Waht around thirty-five. As for Mrs Bunlueang, she
was two to three years older than Aunt Waht. I don’t know how old Master
Khajorn was; I only remember that he had almost finished secondary school and
intended to enter the police academy. For Miss Kaeo’s age, just subtract five
years from my own. If I’m totalling up everyone’s age, it’s to prepare you
before we reach the major turning point in Jan Darra’s life, which isn’t far
ahead.
A man of His Lordship’s age can be considered
middle-aged, but to call such a man old would be excessive. In His Lordship’s
case, however, it wasn’t. Though he had never fallen sick like most people, his
health had clearly deteriorated. The powerful lust that had long driven him to
morbid passion had drained his body of all liquids and left him dry before his
time. He had the kind of fair skin which in the old days was thought to be the
prerogative of the genteel, but time had given it the dull, pale-yellow shade
of excellent straw paper. In case you can’t visualise the colour of such
first-grade toilet paper of yore or have never seen it, I’ll try to offer you
another comparison. I hope you’ve seen well-formed foetuses or prematurely born
babies kept in jars full of chemical liquids over a long period of time. Well,
his skin was exactly like theirs and looked exceedingly dull. The lust in which
he fermented had clearly bled on his skin. His hair also had discoloured
prematurely. Instead of turning grey as with most people, it had gone yellowish
with brown touches. It had thinned and he wore it combed flat across the top of
his head. His eyebrows were of the same colour as his hair. Even his brown eyes
seemed to have turned somewhat yellow. Only his well-groomed moustache was
still dark. Though his hair was receding, his facial features were still as well
chiselled as in his youth, and his tall and well-turned figure looked as smart
and spry as ever. As for his vital energy, among those not directly involved in
his private life only Khein and I realised how much it had dwindled. We deduced
this from the fact that without even trying we found a growing number of
opportunities to help quench the thirst of his partners of all age groups.
Later, I heard a theory according to which men can be compared to guns: all of
us are equally endowed at birth with five thousand bullets; the more profligate
we are, the faster they disappear, and when they’re all used up there’s no
supplying unit anywhere in the world that can replenish our stock, be it
through extracts of monkey glands or hormones of any brand. If such a theory is
true, then at forty-seven His Lordship’s bullet chamber must have been close to
empty. The various targets on which he used to practise were left vacant and
forlorn. Those who didn’t worry about the interruption would take advantage of
their enforced leisure to take a rest, but those who did would grow restive,
and this presented the members of our club with the opportunity of welcoming
growing numbers of them, old faces as well as new.
His Lordship’s declining health later made me
understand one truth, which is that lust tempts all men to feed on their own
flesh and blood.
As for the new house – Mrs Bunlueang’s house – seen
from outside at a distance, nothing seemed to have changed. His Lordship still
went there for dinner twice a week. There was a small, incremental change in
that lately Miss Kaeo joined the dinner table every Saturday evening. The four
members of the various branches of the Witsanan family – His Lordship, Mrs
Bunlueang, Master Khajorn and Miss Kaeo – sharing the same table must have
formed a heart-warming picture not a little pleasing to the eye. And the
atmosphere would no doubt have been warmer to the point of suffocation had the
fifth member of the Witsanan family been there as well! This sarcastic thought
crossed my mind unbidden and after lingering there for about four seconds,
produced a flash which started a new train of thoughts in the head of the fifth
member of the Witsanan family.
You already know how much interest I took in the
attractive figure of Mrs Bunlueang. When it turned out that His Lordship’s
lapses allowed me to take over several rooms in the outer wings of his heavenly palace, I became daring enough to
entertain the thought of somehow flying my way into its inner sanctum.
Formerly these were snatches of an illusory dream, but now that the germ of a
plot had suddenly come to me, I became more daring. Even though the hope was
futile, it was better than sitting stock still moping away.
I went to consult Khein about my idea.
Mrs Bunlueang’s house had no resident servant, only
daytime servants from other houses in the compound, each with his or her own
duties. The older ones were assigned to keep the upstairs rooms tidy, while the
younger ones looked after the rooms downstairs. A few servants took turns to
handle these duties. Besides, there were a couple of children around to run
small errands. Come evening, Mrs Bunlueang would find herself alone again, as
was her wish. As for meals, the food was prepared under Aunt Waht’s close
supervision in the main house, and it was Lamiat’s duty to bring it to the new
house and take care of the service until the meal was over. For Saturday
dinners, which were special occasions, a couple of children would come and give
a hand to Lamiat. And it was one or another of these special meals that I
intended to use to prepare my flight towards the inner sanctum.
Lamiat was also a girl under His Lordship’s tutelage.
To ask for her cooperation was difficult because she wasn’t one of us. She was
one of those disused targets who didn’t worry. She was quiet and well behaved –
the hallmarks of Aunt Waht’s coaching – as well as neat and quite attractive.
The trouble was that, apart from not playing with us, she made it clear she
despised us.
Nevertheless, the obstacle wasn’t beyond Khein’s cunning
to overcome. At first, he thought of using a magic potion he was familiar with
to get rid of her. ‘How about givin’ her menstrual fever?’ he said jocularly,
while looking dead serious. Whether or not he could have done it, I had to
object right away. So, he sought less drastic solutions and finally found one.
Phum, his mother, had supreme control over the kitchen and he was one of her
important helpers. He took advantage of his own role and thorough knowledge of
kitchen proceedings to keep Lamiat tied up there until she was late in taking
food to the new house. And it so happened that Master Jan had some business to discuss with Aunt Waht right then.
Normally, I liked to keep myself clean as Aunt Waht
had taught me to, but that Saturday evening I made a special effort to be
squeaky clean, and I looked unusually spruce as I carried a food tray into the
new house, followed by a retinue of helpers.
When everyone saw who it was that was bringing the
food, here are the reactions that followed. His Lordship glowered resentfully
at me but found himself at a loss for words, which seldom happened to him.
Miss Kaeo looked at me the way a genteel little lady looks down on flunkies.
Master Khajorn’s face registered mild surprise for the briefest of moments. Mrs
Bunlueang was the only one who greeted me with a smile. ‘Well, well, how very
kind of you to bring us the food,’ she remarked as she helped me place the food
on the table to show her goodwill to a new servant. This increased my
admiration for her so much that I was tempted to erase the pictures of her I
had stored away in my mind, but another part of myself was even more eager to
show my gratitude by providing her to the best of my ability with what I
believed would gratify her most. Wasn’t it a sincere way of showing my good
intentions towards her?
Indeed it was, believe me. This was the first time my
fancies involving Mrs Bunlueang took a positive turn and became a clean,
unadulterated sexual desire. My feelings of love and respect were like mixed
solvents entering the main stream of lust that kept thrusting forward in me,
and I shall never forget the new sense of accomplishment it gave me.
‘And where is Lamiat?’ His Lordship had just found
something to say. ‘This is none of your f – (He checked himself in time and
changed quickly to a gentler tone.) – er – none of your damn business.’
I stopped everything I was doing and turned to answer
him, speaking clearly and with a politeness I’m sure I wouldn’t have shown had
I been with him alone: ‘I do not know, Father. Aunt Waht was worried it was
getting past mealtime, so she asked me to bring the food instead. I haven’t
dirtied anything, now, have I?’
I had spoken the last sentence in an undertone only
for Mrs Bunlueang to hear. She laughed gaily, then tried to cover up her
reaction by addressing His Lordship. ‘Oh let him be, dear. Let him come here so
we can get to know each other. After all, he’s like my own son – like a
relative, isn’t he, dear? Right?’ ‘After all, he’s your own son, hence my
relative, isn’t he, dear?’ is what she meant to say, I believe, but I
couldn’t tell whether she was sincere or merely wanted to lead him on. I saw
him sitting back stunned as if thunderstruck.
‘Thank you. I’ve been wanting to come for a long time,’
I whispered to her again, hardly moving my lips. She glanced at me with a
smile, but didn’t answer.
Right then, Lamiat appeared, bringing more food and
looking flustered, which gave His Lordship another chance to vent his anger. ‘Where
the heck were you? You’re pretty worthless these days, you know.’
‘I was tied up with Mrs Phum in the kitchen, sir.’
Lamiat was shrewd enough to use Phum as her shield. His Lordship seemed to be
left with nothing more to say, so he turned to bellow at me instead.
‘Your place isn’t here, so get out, you d – dumb boy.’
He had almost let slip the word ‘damn’. I wonder why he still bothered to
suppress it since everyone around the house knew what he always called me.
At that very second, Mrs Bunlueang sent an electric
discharge into the air. ‘Promise to come and see me again, so we can get better
acquainted. I’m your aunt after all, I’ve been here so long already and yet I
hardly know you, Jan.’
My aunt! Wow! How independent the woman was! She dared
to claim me as a relative to the face of the lord and master of the premises,
the man who most hated my guts, and by the same token she was showing her
strong position in the house, at least on a par with him, because I saw him
blanch in frustration – and so did she, because she added in as sweet a voice
as she could muster to assuage his feelings, ‘I’m asking for your permission,
dear. I think I can help you take care of him.’
His Lordship cut her short to free himself from the
annoyance. ‘Whatever you want him to do, just order him about, B, but don’t
bother taking care of that … brat!’ I think you’ll have no trouble finding a
suitably stinging expletive to fill in the blank.
Mrs ‘B’ turned to give me a most friendly smile and
said: ‘Well, you heard. Now you have one more aunt. So don’t stay away as you
used to.’
I raised both hands to my forehead and bowed deeply to
her out of genuine respect. ‘Thank you so much – Auntie. If it were only me,
I’d come here every day.’ I uttered the last sentence as softly as I could
while gazing at her expectantly. She gave me a puzzled look, smiled slightly
and nodded imperceptibly. ‘You’re welcome – my nephew.’
From that day on, I gave up nearly all of my
activities at the bliss club on the ground floor of the house where I lived.
Usually, when I returned from school at night, if I didn’t stay with Hyacinth,
I went straight back home to visit Mrs Bunlueang without even stopping at my
house to drop off my textbooks. Our usual meeting place was her library, which
was located on the ground floor at the back. She stayed up late and rose late
as well. Almost every time, I found her sitting or reclining in that room
reading a book. She was a compulsive reader, and what commanded respect from me
was that she read in two languages, Thai and English. In fact, I had seen His
Lordship reading foreign books since I was a child (I understand it was those
rows of His Lordship’s foreign volumes that had prompted Aunt Waht to have me
learn English almost as soon as I tackled the Thai alphabet.), but to see a
woman avidly reading hefty tomes in English was a lot more fascinating. She
read mostly exciting adventure stories like H Rider Haggard’s novels and
mystery and suspense works like Edgar Wallace’s. Besides, she also read large
numbers of gold-embossed hardcover books which I couldn’t grasp and which
seemed to me to be kept for display more than anything else. The book which
fascinated me most and which I wanted to read more than any other was The
Cautious Amorist, by Norman Lindsay, the hottest erotic novel at the time.
It interested me more than any other because it had riveting pen-and-ink
drawings. Most of them showed a scantily clad heroine who sometimes wore no
clothes at all as her ship was wrecked and she found herself alone with three
men on a desert island. I remember these illustrations well because they
titillated me long before I could read the book or understand any of it.
Unsurprisingly, though I couldn’t help being surprised when I picked up that
very same book to have another look at it recently, I found it as dull as a
textbook.
A textbook? Well, come to think of it, it really was a
textbook for me. It was the first thick foreign book I ever read in my consequential
reading life. I remember well how it happened. At first, Mrs Bunlueang was
amused to see me trying to fight my way into it. Later, when she saw I wasn’t
going to give up, she began to look at me thoughtfully as if she were weighing
matters in her mind. Initially, she made as if to forbid me from reading it,
but when I took the risk of approaching her and, swallowing my pride, asked for
her help with a passage I just couldn’t fathom, she gave me a luminous
explanation and proved willing to help me further. Her suggestions led me to
think of sex in a positive way, which was new to me – to think of it as pure
and valuable as some object within reach in
a dream, or as my own desire, roused by the sweet fragrance of her body
in those moments.
Let it be said as well: Miss Kaeo also played a part
in prompting me to read English books with great determination. At that time,
she had moved from Benjamararcharlai School to Convent School off Seelom Road,
and since she had changed to a new school, whenever I saw her in or around the
house, she always had a book in her hand. Even in the early morning, when one
of the servants took her to wait for the school bus at the entrance of the
lane, she’d be whiling away the time reading. I liked to study English and had
thought of joining a foreign school after there had been talk about Wachirarwut
and Barn Somdeit boarding schools. I even had Aunt Waht act as my ambassador in
negotiations over the matter, though we both knew they would come to nothing.
Therefore, every time I saw Miss Kaeo with a book, I couldn’t help feeling sore
about my own misfortune. She, however, seemed intent on putting on airs just to
spite me.
And that was a major reason why my concentration in my
studies dissipated so dramatically, as if I was bent on self-destruction in
order to fulfil Miss Kaeo’s longing. Why was this? Not long after that, Aunt
Waht and I discovered that Miss Kaeo had insisted on going to Convent School
only to make me suffer. She claimed that much herself the day she was scolded,
after the school had reported on her poor performance and asked her parents to
give her a good talking-to. It reminded us of the time two to three years
earlier when Aunt Waht had taken me to see His Lordship to seek his permission
for me to change schools. Miss Kaeo had been present then and had witnessed the
intense disappointment I was made to suffer. She had made a note of it and seen
it as a way of hurting me further. In fact, she didn’t care at all which school
she went to.
On that occasion, Aunt Waht learned a lot about her
daughter’s real character. As for me, I had long figured her out, so I thought
it was no big deal, and shifted all my attention back to reading foreign
novels.
At night, Mrs Bunlueang’s library was like a new abode
of peace and bliss for me. Sometimes, we hardly spoke to each other. She’d be
engrossed in her book while I struggled through mine. The real enjoyment
derived surreptitiously from her reclining position on the sofa. She liked to
dress lightly and casually at home, and usually wore thin, loose-fitting
clothes. And it was in those moments that she helped me collect deep insights
into the art of nudity which would overwhelm me later. On some nights after she
had gone to bed I remained there alone until very late. It was in her library
and in this way that I got my first inkling of domestic life.
On days when there was no school, I sometimes went to
help her by volunteering to do heavy chores such as fetching water or weeding
the flowerbeds in front of her house. I didn’t exert myself for nothing. Even
if she hadn’t rewarded me with glasses of soda pop or lemon juice, which she
always did, I had plenty of opportunities to admire her body in the daytime,
which offered a different kind of beauty from the one she displayed at night.
In the usually sweltering heat, she liked to wear shorts and a thin blouse with
nothing underneath. Whenever the weather was unusually hot, she’d take off her
blouse and stay in her room, but there were times when she’d move by the window
or the door and whenever I caught sight of her then, it was like a heavenly
vision. She had once told me she was old, but in truth there was not a single
part of her that looked old, and I had told her so. She had been pleased and
had thanked me with a smile, then said I only thought this way because I was
too young.
But please do believe me: although the children of my
age usually saw adults like her as terribly old people, I never felt the least
bit like that with Mrs Bunlueang. To me, she was ageless. When I had first seen
her, I had found her excitingly beautiful. Several years had passed and my
feelings hadn’t changed. It was like looking at the stucco statue of the nymph
that stood in the flowerbeds. I had seen its face, breasts and arms
continuously since I was a child, and nothing had changed. This is exactly what
I told her once we had become more intimate, and she had burst out laughing in
delight.
‘So you want me to be another two-thousand-year-old
woman, is that it?’ At the time, I had begun to read Khroo Liam’s translation
of Haggard’s novel*, but
had merely started. A remarkable thing about us was that she no longer called
herself ‘Auntie’ nor did I, and this had brought us even closer, as we would
have felt awkward calling each other ‘Auntie’ and ‘Nephew’.
And yet, there were still times when she referred to
herself as ‘Auntie’. She did so whenever she wanted to get my complete
attention to what she was saying. If we weren’t cross with each other, it could
also mean that one was urging the other on, which was also the case when I
called her ‘Mrs B’.
Anyway, I had once raised my joined hands to my
forehead as a sign of respect for her on that evening when, mustering all my
courage, I had taken myself into her house for the first time. Some seven or
eight months later, I had to make the same gesture to her, again out of genuine
sincerity. The only difference was in my motivation this time, which was so far
out that you could never make the right guess.
Between ourselves, we used the familiar or polite
pronouns for ‘I’ and ‘you’ or else called ourselves by our own names (Jan, Mrs
Bunlueang), and we have kept doing this to this day, up to the very moment that
I am writing these lines. But it happened once that, in a wild moment, I made a
slip of the tongue and called her by a different pronoun.
Near noon that day, I took refuge from the heat of the
sun blazing over her flowerbeds under the eaves of her house. I was flushed,
and drenched with sweat. With eyes still dazzled by the strong light, I turned
into the corridor on the ground floor groping my way to the bathroom to take a
shower.
About an hour earlier, I had seen Mrs Bunlueang going
upstairs holding the new book she was reading – Body and Soul, by
Vladimir (or something like that; my memory is failing me these days) – and she
had gone on pacing the large porch at the front of the house back and forth.
That day she wore creamy white shorts and a bright-red short-sleeved shirt of
rough satin. Though I saw her from a distance, with a little imagination
sharpening my vision I could see that the satin fitting the contours of her
full bosom enhanced its up swell and crowned its tapering domes with
well-delineated cherry pits. Her big breasts, beautifully curved as two fully
ripe banana hands, heaved and shook with her every movement, and with each
shake it was as if I could smell the sweet aroma of newly cooked rice, so
enticing it made my mouth water.
She liked to take a nap after lunch – ‘siesta’, she
called it. ‘It’s good to take a siesta,’ she often asserted. ‘Makes you feel
hale and hearty for the rest of the day.’ I figured that by now she was sound
asleep and enjoying her dreams. I had never been upstairs in the new house, but
my imagination had taken me there many, many times, including then. I’d have
liked to tiptoe to her room and watch her in her sleep. I imagined her daytime
rest was like another form of art that would be priceless to my heart. As to
her sleep at night, I was reluctant to dream of it, because every time I did
His Lordship intruded and spoiled the artistic effects I was so carefully
trying to achieve.
As I stood in front of the bathroom door, which was
slightly open, I kept my eyes closed to try to get rid of the annoying coloured
particles that flickered in the daze induced by the sunlight. Then I pulled the
door ajar and stepped in. My heart sank with a plop as I let out a shout,
something like ‘Wow!’ or ‘Oho!’ or ‘Holy cow!’ How would I know? What made my
eyes widen instead of the annoying light particles was Mrs Bunlueang – Mrs
Bunlueang in the creamy white shorts and bright red satin shirt I had seen her
wearing a while ago. She stood in front of an earthen jar, presenting her
profile to the door. With her arms raised, she was pulling up her shirt and it
got stuck all around her head. Her torso was as white and tapering as a fresh
jasmine petal in the dim light of the bathroom. What tantalised me mercilessly were
the outstanding globes held up before my goggling eyes. They shook and quivered
along the movements of her arms as she tried to get the neck of the shirt past
her head. What I saw clearly now was the cherry pits, the size of the tip of a
little finger, on their rather large round bases. Brown on pink, stiff and
fully shaped, they looked intimidating as I had always pictured them. Where my
breath had disappeared by now I couldn’t say. A constriction had seized up my
throat and blocked my glottis. Torn between exultation and incredulity over
such an unexpected treat, I was so excited and disturbed I felt my heart would
burst or my chest break open.
‘Mrs B!’ I jerked out, almost as soon as the shirt got
unstuck from her head.
Mrs Bunlueang threw down her hands, which were still
stuck in the sleeves, in front of her, with such a distraught expression that
she looked like someone whose hands were tied as she turned in the direction of
my voice. I felt my shout had been very loud, louder than the roar of ocean waves,
louder than the clap of thunderbolt that had stricken my heart asunder – but of
course it mustn’t have been as loud as all that.
Mrs Bunlueang now faced me and was looking at me
impassively. Only her eyes and eyebrows registered some surprise, but not
much, as if she had turned to see a squirrel gazing at her in some place where
it wasn’t supposed to be.
‘What did you call me just now? I don’t think there’s
anything wrong with my ears,’ she started saying in an even voice while she kept her face impassive. I tried hard to swallow
the chunk of hardwood that was struck in my throat. While she went on
speaking, she freed one hand from the shirt and put her arm across her
breasts merely for form’s sake, it seemed, as I could still see most of her. ‘‘Mrs
B’! Don’t you realise you called me the way your father does? My dear boy, it
seems to me you’re no longer a child now,’ she said and chuckled. I chuckled as
well, nervously, and because of this irrepressible chuckle I began to shudder
and feel my legs almost give in at the knees. My incredulity had all gone, and
uncertainty turned my exultation into such delight I could hardly control
myself. The chunk of wood was no longer there, but I had nothing more to say to
her, and all I could do was stand on trembling legs, dumb under her spell.
I wish I could have seen myself then. My face and eyes
must have betrayed my craving and she must have seen it, because she exclaimed:
‘Now then! Don’t stand gawping like a retarded child. Come on, go wait outside
so that a lady can take a shower.’
I let out a ‘Sure’ so hoarse and fuddled it almost
didn’t sound like human language, ducked out of the bathroom and stood leaning
against the wall next to the door, which I forgot to close. I managed to
control some of my emotions, but let the rest run pleasantly wild.
‘A retarded child’ – these words of hers slightly
offended me; they were the words my classmates used to tease me for being much
older than they. I had no idea what she meant and didn’t intend to find out,
because by then my interest was on something else. Without realizing it, at one
point I had turned to lean against the doorframe and was now looking at her as
she bent down to scoop up water and went about pouring it over herself. Her
showering done, she stood up, turned around and saw me, and I found myself
dumbstruck again. She unfolded her satin shirt, covered her bosom with it and,
holding it in place with both hands, walked to the door.
‘Enjoying the show, aren’t we?’ she teased. ‘What do
you think will come of it, you silly child?’
I liked the friendly way she teased me in a situation
like this, and it made me love and want to thank her so much more, and there
and then I opened up in a torrent of words. I spoke at length but the message I
wanted to convey to her was merely that I hadn’t meant to intrude; if I did, it
was only because I didn’t know she was in there; I’d seen her taking a book
upstairs and thought she’d gone to have a nap, so I went in. Then I began to
apologise profusely, but she cut me short, saying: ‘Come off it, you aren’t
feeling the least bit sorry, now, are you? In fact, you’re rather pleased about
it, right? Isn’t that so? Come, come, there’s no need to blame yourself. Well,
since you’ve seen most of me anyway, there’s something I want you to help me
with. Take a shower and wash your hands with soap. Once you’re done, come and
see me in the library. Er – no, make that upstairs. Yes, upstairs’s better. So
scrub your feet as well.’
She walked past me and away, and my gaze followed her.
Drops of water clung to her skin, which was as white as the core of a banana
bole, and made it sparkle all over. The back of her shorts was soaked, forming
an inverted triangle that plunged into the cleavage of her bottom. I watched
her till she disappeared from sight then went hurriedly into the bathroom. I
dared not guess what she was about to request of me, yet couldn’t prevent
myself from making all sorts of wild suppositions; so, instead of just washing
my hands with soap, I soaped myself all over, then, still dripping, walked up
the stairs.
The situation seemed to be about to fulfil my
expectations concerning Mrs Bunlueang, in the sense that I had tied her up to
me in my mind, even though, as I already said, I had never intruded on the
upper floor of the new house. The first room I ventured into was a bedroom –
beautiful, luxurious, paradisiacal and, to me, not a little aphrodisiac. At
first, I thought I had come to the right place, because this couldn’t possibly
be Master Khajorn’s bedroom, but there was no Mrs Bunlueang waiting. She was in
another room in which she slept or sat in privacy whenever she felt like it.
The room had many doors and windows, all opened wide. She lay prone but
slightly at an angle on a long rattan couch, her face cushioned by one arm. I
didn’t quite dare yet to gaze greedily at the exposed parts of her body and
whether out of my instinct for survival or sense of guilt, my eyes swept
through the various doors and windows and I was relieved to find that nothing
could be seen from the surrounding houses, and from the main house in
particular.
I wasn’t aware she was watching me until I heard her
asking me drowsily: ‘Are you worried about my body on my behalf, young man?’
Dumbstruck, I walked up to her and kneeled down beside the rattan couch, next
to her naked body. My eyes must have been feverishly active though, because I
saw her looking at them and smiling teasingly, before she turned her head in
the general direction of a small table at the top of the couch. ‘Please take
some ice in that bowl to rub my back with.’
I got up and fetched the metallic bowl, chose a chunk
of ice that fitted my hand and placed its smoothest side on her firm, pulpy
back, which I went about stroking at length. She complained about the bathtub
she had ordered but was still waiting for and said that as soon as it arrived,
she meant to lie immersed in it for ages. Almost all of her personal items such
as clothes, shoes and miscellaneous accessories, including books, she bought
on order. At first, I wondered which shops she ordered them from, because
deliveries were seldom on time. I learned later that everything came from
Penang and Singapore.
After complaining for a while, she closed her eyes,
allowing me to concentrate on her back to better effect and wider wandering. At
first I used only one hand rather daintily, not daring to let it touch her
skin, a privilege I left to the piece of ice. But when the ice began to melt, I
decided to use my other hand to wipe the trails of water, and when the hand
that held the ice went numb with cold, I changed hands and kept alternating
their respective tasks. After three chunks of ice had melted away, the hand
that wiped the water slid down to one of her breasts, which bulged out on
either side of her from the weight of her body. Though my hand was frozen, the
touch was like a jolt from heaven. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I
pulled out and instead tightly clasped her back. But I knew what would happen
to my body if I persisted in touching and watching her for just a little
longer. I raised my clenched fists and shut my eyes tight. What an exquisite,
tantalising torment! O God Almighty! And you, angels! And you, spirits of all
ilks, help me! What had happened? What had inspired her to allow me to see and
touch every inch of her naked body? But then why, on the strength of it, wasn’t
I inspired to dare do what I was dying to?
To hell with it all! One day, maybe, if there was
going to be such a wonderful day – or so did my wishful heart answer anyway.
I don’t know how long I sat with eyes closed and fists
clenched until I heard Mrs Bunlueang’s drowsy voice say: ‘Well, Jan, that’ll do
for today. Thanks.’ Strangely enough, her order to stop, instead of
disappointing me, made me feel overwhelmingly relieved. I stood up and left the
room immediately, almost before I thought of opening my eyes. I went back
downstairs to sit in the library in order to calm down and enjoy digesting that
most enthralling experience. If I may borrow a foreign phrase to describe my
state then, I was like a dog licking its wound with relish – the wound caused
by the painful knowledge that, no matter how long I would stay, I wouldn’t dare
to do what my heart so desperately hankered for. And it was for this reason
that I felt so relieved to be able to escape that torment. It was better than
bearing it, fully aware that nothing would come out of it in the end.
In any case, I didn’t forget that her parting words
had left me with a comforting hope. ‘For today’ meant that there would
be another day, a wonderful day which I had a hunch would come sooner or later.
Less than seven days went by before the second
wonderful occasion came to be. This time I was a little bit more daring. After
four chunks of ice had melted, I told her, ‘Please allow me.’ She asked idly: ‘Allow
what?’ Instead of answering, I grasped the edge of the rattan couch on both
sides and buried my face against her plump back, which was as cold as marble.
Mrs Bunlueang jerked, then laughed and said: ‘Your face’s real hot.’ I kissed
her back all over without saying a word. She let me do as I pleased for a while
and then told me to go. Though her tone was as even as usual, this time there
was no bonding word like ‘today’ and it made me feel deeply sorry and sad
before I pulled back and left.
I avoided her for three or four days and even when I
returned to stay with her in the library as before, I was still embarrassed and
dared not meet her eyes. That night, the heat was oppressive. She kept
fidgeting for a long while and finally put down her book, got up and went into
the bathroom. A moment later, she was back, no longer wearing her thin,
flower-patterned blouse. Instead, she had retied her sarong over her bosom. Her
body was wet and the cloth damp. She didn’t resume her reading, but told me to
follow her upstairs. ‘Don’t turn off the light,’ she instructed and left
without waiting for me. I was so excited I hardly knew what to do. I partook in
the events that followed as if I were sleepwalking.
She was lying prone with her face on her arm as usual,
waiting for me. Her sarong was now almost down to her coccyx, leaving her
white, tapering back exposed. This time, after more than half of the first
piece of ice had melted, I made it slip out of my hand and it went to nestle
beneath one of her breasts. She raised herself up a little to allow me to
retrieve it, but my hand deserted its task instantly to grab hold of warm flesh
in a greedy grope. At the same time, I was slobbering all over her back and
outpouring all that was hidden in my heart. She let me do as I wanted for a
while, like she had the first time, and then – at first, I thought she was
struggling to free herself, but she was merely turning to lie on her back to
have a full view of me. Her face looked at once fearful and serene.
From then on, I was even more of a sleepwalker.
Everything that happened before my eyes became blurred and, at first, left me
no chance to recover my composure. I only knew that I was mingling with heaven.
The part I remember most vividly was when – Has it ever happened to you? Being
jolted by a searing pain as you slide your foot into a shoe and a scorpion
stings your big toe? The jolt I received from Mrs Bunlueang’s sting was of the
same magnitude, except that it resulted in no end of amazement and delight.
When I had followed her upstairs, it was about eleven
at night, and when I returned alone to the soft light of the library it was
about two in the morning. Thoroughly stunned and gratified as I was, I kept
wondering whether it hadn’t all been a dream, even though it was still so vivid
to my eyes and tangible to my body. I kept suspecting that every feature of her
whole body, nearly every nook and cranny I had seen and touched just now after
having dreamt of it for ages, was but a figment of my imagination. By the time
I recovered my calm enough to be certain of where I stood, it was past three in
the morning. I got up, closed all the windows, turned off the light, then left
the room, closed the door and made straight through the trees for home. As I
reached the staircase leading to my room, I suddenly remembered an important
scene, and only then did I understand its full significance. My legs felt so
weak I had to sit down on the steps.
Before I left her room, I had turned to have a last
look at her. Her milky white body was still stretched languidly on the rattan
couch. Right then, she opened her eyes and held my gaze. She burst into a smile
as if to give me the friendliest greeting in the world. Then and there I was
choked up with a rapturous emotion so priceless and intense I couldn’t possibly
keep it to myself. I went back to her, knelt down by her couch, raised my
joined hands and prostrated myself onto her generous bosom, which was soaked
with sweat.
‘Oh dear!’ Mrs Bunlueang moaned, and hugged my head. I
embraced her body tightly and tears came to my eyes from a sweeping feeling of
contentment. Then I heard her whisper: ‘You know – let me tell you something –
I’ve been thinking of leaving your father – He – that is, I – But now, I don’t
think so any longer – thanks to you. You’re a young man now, a real man, you
understand? Now, I have to rely on you…’
As I recalled her words, I felt stunned: had I been
slow in making a move, Mrs Bunlueang may well have left before I could fulfil
my dream! She hadn’t told me why she was thinking of leaving His Lordship, but
I already knew, and I had steadfastly committed myself to make good her hope of
relying on me, because I was already determined to repay my debt of gratitude
to her with my life. For all that, I came to realise how close I had been to
losing the opportunity of knowing her in this life, and this is why I was
feeling weak-kneed.
That night, my thoughts were such a jumble that I
couldn’t sleep. The next day, I was informed by the district office that my
name was on the conscription list and on such-and-such a year I’d be drafted
into the army. That’s how I remember I was seventeen when I passed through the
triumphal arch with masculine pride, as signed and certified by Mrs Bunlueang.
From that time onward, the relationship between Mrs
Bunlueang and me turned into a deep and complex intimacy shared in secret. Our
common love of reading had brought us together as close friends despite our
difference in age, and now that we were intimate with each other, our ties grew
stronger and we felt nothing could compare to them. Life in the library went on
as usual and our amatory pursuits improved our physical wellbeing. For Mrs Bunlueang,
they came as the normal substitute for what she had been lacking; for me, they
were something entirely new in my life. Sure, I was the one who demanded more
and more out of craziness and gluttony, but I did adjust to her rule, which she
had inherited from His Lordship, of a single night per week. Whenever His
Lordship went to have dinner at her house, it meant my life would be empty for
the next seven days. It was a good thing that he didn’t feel up to calling on
her very often, because lately, the older he became the more he preferred
greener grass despite the diminishing number of meals he could stomach. The
proportional share that accrued to me was thus fairly constant, and although I
received not nearly as much as would have fully gratified me, I found the
arrangement very satisfactory and furthermore – ah well, I prayed it would go
on forever.
My intimacy with Mrs Bunlueang had strange
repercussions on my true feelings for Hyacinth. The more carnal pleasure I had
with the first, the more I thought of the second, and since I had never
associated Hyacinth with the musk of lust I found so heady then, she was like
an angel in paradise for such a hedonist as I. During this period, I poured out
my innermost feelings to her in bouts of verbal and written confidences, and
although she didn’t return my feelings by word of mouth or by putting pen to
paper, the expression on her innocent face and in her deep eyes spoke the
language of the heart more eloquently than any language in the world. We loved
each other – such was the message our hearts exchanged with every beat.
Our common hope for the future tied us together, though we knew not what the
future held. More important, Hyacinth looked happy, happier even than I, though
her only assets were of the heart, but alas, this was to be as high as her
happiness would go in the whole of her life on this earth.
Khein by then had turned into a fully grown young man
and was nearing the age when he would have to return to his hometown to get
drafted. The discreet activities of his bliss club went on as usual and he
personally took a more decisive part in them than ever before. Actually, you
could say it had become his main occupation, because the demand had increased
in direct proportion to the deterioration in strength of the ageing herd leader
from the main house, and he was the only savvy, well-limbed male around willing
to oblige whoever came to ask for his help. What he once did for kicks out of
youthful exuberance was now a source of private income. You could say he had
become a male prostitute – in other words, Khein was the unofficial second
in command after the owner of the compound. As for me, I had washed my hands of
the whole business. I must, however, commend him for helping me to strictly
impose the moral injunction forbidding any of His Lordship’s natural children
to sleep with one another, be it inside his bliss club or outside. He was very
strict about this rule and no one dared disobey him. This was the meritorious
deed he performed for this compound: he prevented it from degenerating into the
lowest level of depravity.
I never thought for a moment that Khein would be
unaware of my discreet relationship at the new house, although he never let out
that he knew about it – for all his muddle-headedness in some matters, he did
know how to treat me with respect. I was aware of his good side, and yet
managed on one occasion to misunderstand him grievously due to my own
recklessness.
A long time passed. Everything was going smoothly for
everyone in the compound, except for Miss Kaeo and those directly in charge of
her – the succession of nannies her parents had to find for her time and
again once Saisoi was gone. By now, it was the end-of-year vacation and she had
plenty of spare time. She made a nuisance of herself so often that her latest
nanny packed up and left less than a month after she had moved in. While there
was no one to replace her, Miss Kaeo had even more time to make even more
trouble, and it was then the fuse which had been smouldering all along finally
reached the powder keg.
The new house was closed then. Mrs Bunlueang and
Master Khajorn had gone to visit relatives and take a holiday in Penang, as
they always did whenever there was a school vacation short or long. The house
was dead quiet even during the day because the children didn’t like to stay in
the compound. That day, I took a long nap and awoke in late afternoon. When I
came down from my room, I saw that the door and window in Khein’s room were
shut. I wagered he must be inside, busy building bliss with some girl. I felt
like finding out if I’d win or lose my own bet, and if I won, I wanted to know
who he was with – an old or a young one. These two elements put together could
only mean one thing: I missed him and wanted to fool about with him as we used
to, and I even wagered he’d want to urge me to join him, again as we used to.
I tiptoed to the window and put my ear to the shutter,
but could hear nothing. So, I went to the door and was about to knock according
to our agreed code when the sound of someone talking and then laughing came
through. It wasn’t Khein’s voice but some girl’s. Next I heard Khein mumble
something I couldn’t catch, and again the girl laughed and talked some more. I
remembered that voice and refused to believe my own ears!
Forget the code! I banged heavily on the door, which
was bolted from the inside, and right then heard a voice screaming: ‘Help!
Whoever’s out there, help me!’ It was the same voice that had burst out
laughing a moment ago – the voice of a twelve-year-old girl whose nickname was
Miss Kaeo.
The door wouldn’t open. My head was spinning in alarm
and fury. I had no time to think properly. The only thought that crossed my
mind was, ‘That damn Khein with Miss Kaeo!’ Over and over, until I flew into a
rage. I knew the latch on Khein’s window was loose. I rushed to the window,
jerked it open and hoisted myself through the frame into the room. Thanks to
the light now pouring in through the window, I saw Miss Kaeo stretched on
Khein’s bamboo platform. Her clothes were scattered about. Her hands were
fastened to the top legs of the platform. As for Khein, he stood stunned by the
door, as if he was about to unlock it and flee. He was clearly relieved when he
realised it was me, but how mistaken he was! I lunged at him and punched him
squarely in the face. He looked both frightened and dumbfounded. He shouted
something I couldn’t catch because my ears were ringing with my own rage and
the din of Miss Kaeo’s high-pitched screams. I only saw his mouth opening wide
and punched him again, making his face jerk to one side, but he didn’t think of
fighting back or even of protecting himself. His arms were stronger and longer
than mine, yet he let them hang by his side as if they were paralysed. This
incensed me even more and I sent him crashing into the door with a single
uppercut from my right fist, which then hurt as if a bone in it had broken.
Despite the battering of his face, he kept trying to mouth out something.
I struck his body once with all my might and then my
arms fell to my sides. Khein’s back slowly scraped the door panel as he flopped
to the floor. I raised my foot to kick him good but in the same instant felt
ashamed of myself, and in that very second I finally made out what his pleading
voice was saying, despite the yells for help that came nonstop from behind me.
‘Master Jan, listen to me first!’ This is what he had
been trying to shout at me repeatedly, and it was enough for me to figure out
what had happened – how a peal of tickled laughter had turned into screams for
help when I banged on the door.
I knelt down in front of him and took him in my arms. ‘Oh
Khein! You poor bastard!’ I remember moaning in this way, as tears came to my
eyes. They finally rolled down when I heard what he was trying to explain
through his swollen lips.
‘Miss Kaeo came to see me – led me on – tried a
hundred tricks – she – she ordered me to bind her hands and do it to her – or
else – she’d scream – scream and ruin my good name.’
I told him to stop speaking. I told him I believed
him. I asked for his forgiveness, and we hugged each other like two wet puppies
lost in the wild. We had both been tricked by a twelve-year-old brat. But what
was Khein going to do? Because I had no doubt His Lordship would only believe
his daughter.
‘You’ve got it coming to you this time, friend,’ I
muttered to him. He tried to smile and said, ‘Never mind. You believe me and
that’s enough.’
‘But he’s going to get you jailed.’ I tried to think
of the worst to see if we could do something about it, but Khein just sighed,
shook his head and went on repeating, ‘Never mind’.
Suddenly, someone began banging on the door and
shouting to open up. It was Old Phum, Khein’s mother. I still had no idea what
to do, except to try to comfort him a little. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be your
witness,’ I told him, then grudgingly got up to unlock the door.
The door burst open and Aunt Waht stalked in and was
onto the bamboo platform in a jiffy. In the same instant, a thunderbolt struck
me down!
‘Mummy! He’s the one who did it! That damn Jan fooled
me into coming here and bullied me.’
Aunt Waht stopped dead in her tracks and stood
perplexed, then slowly turned to face me. She appeared much more worried than
before and looked at me in amazement. I returned her gaze as I tried to gather
my wits. I knew Aunt Waht couldn’t bring herself to believe what her daughter
had said, but she was too confused to figure things out right then. I merely
looked at her and shook my head from side to side, as a way to back her own
doubt, then walked past her to the head of the platform and stood looking at
Miss Kaeo. I wanted to have a close look at her. I wanted to see how long
someone who had just told such a monstrous lie could keep a straight face. But
do you know what I saw? She looked up and stared me in the eyes, and her face
turned into exactly what her part required – a mixture of anger and hate
and – I’ll be damned! This girl had never shown anything remotely resembling
fear of me, and here she was exhibiting fright and disgust to perfection, as
befitted the spontaneous reaction of a virgin freshly raped by a ruffian – and
so did her next scream, pregnant with fear and arrogance: ‘Go away! How dare
you show your face to me now? You – you scum! You’re evil. He tried to help me
but you wouldn’t stop beating him…’
I heard Old Phum commiserating loudly over her son’s
plight, then Khein crying out indignantly: ‘Keep out of this, Mum!’
I turned around and whispered to Aunt Waht as I walked
past her, ‘It’s no use’. Khein was trying to get up. I knew he would argue on
my behalf, but I had made up my mind I couldn’t let him do it. I grabbed his
arm and pulled him out of the room.
From what I had just seen, Miss Kaeo was more than a
great pretender: she could deceive even herself. The expression on her face and
in her eyes while she vented her fury showed she believed every word she was
saying. This was beyond the abilities of any actress; nor was it something an
ordinary person could possibly do. Actually, it was insanity. Angry people
sometimes behave nastily because they forget themselves, but those who forget
themselves to the point of doing something so outrageous out of sheer hatred
can only be insane. And indeed so was Wilairek Witsanan at the age of twelve.
Her uncontrollable hatred inspired her to switch targets from Khein to poor me
at the last moment, and no one could stop her, not even her own mother. The
only one who would believe her unquestioningly was her father. And where was he
now? I soon found out he wasn’t home. He had gone out on some business before
noon.
I took Khein to sit quietly under the dense foliage of
the shorea tree next to the house. We waited until everyone had left and then
went back to his room. I tried to convince him there was absolutely no point in
telling the truth to exonerate me. Not only would His Lordship, our lord and
master, never believe a word he said, but he and his mother might also find
themselves without a roof over their heads. As for me, no matter how severe the
punishment would be, it couldn’t possibly be much worse than what I was used
to. As Khein was still reluctant to believe me, I forced him to solemnly vow
that he would do nothing to counter Miss Kaeo’s allegations.
To Khein, a vow was a commitment that didn’t require
any particular reason. His dread of vows was even stronger than the terror of
the sky among primeval tribes. The funny thing about it, though, was that once I
got him to make a vow, not only would he observe it, but he’d figure out its
every implication with the most wildly inventive imagination. My only role was
to determine a degree of solemnity commensurate to the nature of the vow. This
time, I made it such a binding commitment that even I felt my hair raise in
horror as I heard myself speak. The reason why he was willing to make vows, I
understand, was that it was a way for him to make his life secure: so long as
he didn’t break a vow, he took comfort in the idea that he wouldn’t have to
face the music he had sworn himself to. This was why his sworn promises were
always reliable.
I then sat down to await my fate, which was ever so
slowly creeping closer. I expected it would
come in various forms of violence. I quavered at the thought he might
send me to the police.
But when it actually came, it was much worse than
anything I had feared!
His Lordship returned home at dusk. He hadn’t even
changed his clothes when the little plaintiff was there to present her complaint.
Lamiat was the one who came out to fetch me. She called me repeatedly from the
front of the house. She stood about six yards away from Khein’s door and
behaved as if she were holding a six-yard-long pole and prodding with fear and
loathing at a dying snake.
I shouted I’d heard her and stood up. To cover up any
outward sign of the anxiety I felt, I turned to Khein and told him in jest: ‘Khein,
if you can shove it in to Lamiat, I’ll give you a reward.’ Actually, I learned
three years later he had tried his best to get her, but had failed. Unlike most
women in the compound, Lamiat was not sex-mad, even though she was the owner’s
playmate. It was thanks to her, to Aunt Waht and to several others like them
that my mother’s compound could still uphold its claim to respectability in the
days of His Lordship.
When I reached the main house, I overheard Aunt Waht
speaking in a firm and fearless tone she hardly ever used: ‘…You can’t just
listen to one side of the story. Yes, I know she’s my daughter. You don’t have
to hammer the fact into my head all the time. I know my daughter well. I know
how bad she really is. And frankly speaking, it’s you – yes, you who’ve been
spoiling her rotten and turned her into a monster.’
Now Miss Kaeo, who sat leaning on the silk-upholstered
back of her father’s favourite ebony chair, rose to the occasion by shouting
angrily: ‘How dare you accuse me like this!’
‘You little bitch!’ It was the first time in her life
Aunt Waht had used such a rude tone with her daughter. She lunged for her,
intent on giving her a mighty smack, but His Lordship grabbed her arm and
stopped her in the nick of time.
‘Now don’t, Waht,’ he said evenly. ‘Don’t be angry
with her. She’s just frightened. And besides – I’d like you to show more
sympathy to your own daughter, a lot more than you give to that devil of a boy.
He isn’t even your real nephew. I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a long
time. So let me say once and for all that I’m not happy about it. And don’t you
forget it!’
‘What you’re saying just isn’t right.’ Aunt Waht
wasn’t giving in. A real tigress! ‘I came here for my sister’s sake.’ (She
meant my mother.) ‘And it’s also for her sake that I’m staying here, because
Jan’s more than my nephew. He’s more than my own child, I’ll let you know. I
don’t have a child any more. You stuffed this vicious brat into my belly by
force and I pushed her out of me long ago. So, my duty’s over. Enough’s enough.’
Honest-to-goodness song and dance, that! Hearing it made me love my dear auntie
even more.
‘You don’t know what you’re saying – this is
preposterous!’ His Lordship’s voice was subdued, as if reeling from an
unexpected blow. But in the next instant, he was back on his feet. ‘I think I
must once again hammer the fact into your head, as you put it, so you won’t
forget, that I’m the master in this compound, even though it once belonged to
your so-called sister.’
I didn’t want to hear His Lordship using offensive
language with my dear Aunt Waht, so I decided to show myself there and then.
Miss Kaeo looked up and saw me first. She shouted: ‘Dad, here he is! That damn
beast’s here now.’ My ears rang as I stepped in, completing the quartet in the
room. I forced myself to smile a little to comfort Aunt Waht and we stood
looking at each other in deep mutual understanding.
I had failed to notice that my old friend the whip was
waiting, until His Lordship finally turned to glance in my direction, and there
it was, quivering at the end of his arm. But this wasn’t why I quavered. I was
certain my punishment would be more than just a beating, and I was most eager
to find out what lay beyond it.
‘Don’t beat him, listen to him first,’ Aunt Waht
pleaded. His Lordship whirled round to look at her and then turned to me again,
with a look that said he wanted to skin me alive.
‘What have you got to say for yourself?’ His voice was
stern and insincere. So much for the mercy of the kangaroo court! ‘How dare you
do this to my daughter, you scum?’ This was the first time he acknowledged that
I was fully grown, by dropping his customary ‘damn child’ address of the past
seventeen years. He then assessed the extent of my felony. ‘If Phum’s son
hadn’t intervened, my daughter would be completely defiled by now.’ I almost
let out that, ‘She’s my sister, how could I do that to her?’ But I kept my
mouth shut, as an objection came to me instantly: ‘If he’s my real father, how
come he didn’t think of that?’ So I went on behaving like a mute defendant, and
my silence seemed to incense him so much that finally, he let out the secret of
my birth for the first time: ‘You son of a criminal! No way you’ll ever escape
that legacy!’
Hardly had he said this than Aunt Waht shouted at him:
‘Don’t! Not that!’ My curiosity sparked, I turned to her.
‘Why should we keep concealing the fact?’ His Lordship
bawled at her. ‘Now’s the time – let’s get it over with. I’m fed up with this
comedy – let him know once and for all – I’ve had it! He’s destroying himself –
what can we do? He should be thankful to me for not dragging him into jail, and
you still want me to keep on pretending I’m his father? No way. Besides, I’ve
seen him around for far too long. How can anyone stand raising the child of a
wild beast? I won’t have him anymore. I’ve had enough! Out he goes.’
So here it was – the harshest punishment for me,
totally beyond my wildest fears. The dreadful realisation that I was going to
be without a home made my head reel so much I could no longer think straight.
My last hope was Aunt Waht. The possibility of being thrown out of my own house
had never occurred to me, and now that the fact was so brutally hurled at me,
it was beyond my ability to remain calm. The world outside that I could vaguely
imagine then was huge, dark and desolate, and it frightened me.
I walked to Aunt Waht, the last person in the world
whom I could depend on. Suddenly, I was empty inside and my heart was so heavy
I felt like bursting – like bursting into tears as I hadn’t done in public in
very many years, especially not in front of that vicious girl. I tried to
swallow till my throat ached, but couldn’t prevent myself from letting out a
sob. Aunt Waht drew me close and put her arm protectively around my shoulders,
then turned to address His Lordship in a cold voice: ‘Would you be so cruel as
to throw him out on the streets? This child has no one, as you know very well.
I never thought that –’
‘A child?’ His Lordship exclaimed, forcing himself to
laugh. ‘He’s big enough for me to feel jealous, seeing the way you fuss about
him.’
‘You’re disgusting!’ Aunt Waht hissed.
Upon hearing this sarcasm plucked from his own field
of expertise, I disengaged myself swiftly from Aunt Waht’s warm embrace. His
words hurt me and made me worry instantly about my relationship with Mrs
Bunlueang. I was seized by a dark foreboding and at the same time was stunned
like never before. Was it true that I’d have to leave her? I felt myself
wither. I forgot all about my fear of the outside world and turned to yearn for
Mrs Bunlueang’s serene bedroom, for Mrs Bunlueang’s breasts, for her whole
body and, most of all, for its apex – her generous bushy mound hiding an
inexhaustible supply of wonders. As I was immersed in this gloomy reverie,
something seemed to awake and resound in the vastness around me –
Hyacinth!
‘I’m asking you where you intend for him to go.’
Hyacinth…
‘Up to him. Even dogs know how to fend for themselves.
Er – or let him go back to the boondocks to search for his father’s ancestors.
Why not indeed?’
I heard his voice faintly, but loud enough to pull me
out of my daydream and back to the most important matter I kept deeply buried
in my heart: my father! my father’s ancestors!
So, what I had surmised all along wasn’t wrong: this
man was not my father. Furthermore, he wasn’t even related to me. I felt
immensely relieved as if a heavy burden had been taken off my chest. I was
truly and totally free now. Nothing was holding me any longer, and what was
particularly pleasing was that I had no debt of gratitude towards him, not even
for his behaviour as the most vicious beast of a father. It was he who was
indebted to me for the merciless way he had been treating me. At that moment, I
determined to find a way to make him pay one day, no matter how long I’d have
to wait.
I remember heaving a deep sigh, so loud that everyone
heard it. Aunt Waht must have caught its full import, because she called me to
her with utmost kindness in her voice and in her eyes.
‘Jan…’ She stared at me for a few seconds, then said
slowly: ‘Tell me the truth. Did you do what Kaeo is accusing you of?’
I looked at Miss Kaeo thoughtfully. Aunt Waht knew
perfectly well that I had done no such thing. She wanted me to have the
opportunity to defend myself by telling the truth. She had the tiniest hope I’d
be able to find mitigating circumstances, as she was most worried I’d be thrown
out onto the streets. For my part, I desperately wanted to reveal the truth
even though I knew it wouldn’t help me in any meaningful way. But I had already
resolved not to do it. I had muzzled Khein, my trump witness. Why had I taken
such a decision and why was I sticking to it? Was it because I felt concerned
over Khein’s and his mother’s welfare, which was the reason I had used to
convince him? Of course not. I wasn’t such a good person that I’d sacrifice
myself so totally: I wanted to take revenge.
You may think this funny – and indeed, it was a
laughable kind of revenge. It was my very own brand of derisive vengeance, too
subtle in its implications for anyone to see, but I was satisfied it was as
cold-blooded as it comes. Well, I’ll explain it to you, and you don’t have to
agree with me. This is how it went: leaving aside Khein, my erstwhile witness,
there were only Miss Kaeo and I who knew the truth, and she was by no means
certain she’d succeed in distorting all of the facts, but, since it was such a
serious matter, she was confident I’d be in big trouble as a result of her
deed, and this gratified her immensely. The bigger my trouble the more I’d
suffer, and that was the ultimate aim of that wicked girl. Therefore, if I
accepted the suffering resulting from her deeds without protesting or writhing
in agony in front of her jubilant eyes like an ox led to slaughter, she’d be
disappointed and frustrated. The more she wished to see me in torment, the more
disappointed she’d be. Then she’d be the one to suffer out of her own
frustration, and she might even fall sick: the mental health of people like her
is so fragile! Such would be the immediate outcome of my idea of replying tit
for tat, as it were.
The ultimate outcome of my subtle plan for revenge
would take time, and may even come to nothing in the end. I was sort of
convinced at the time that it wouldn’t fail, however, because I believed in the
law of karma – a matter I actually knew little about then. The person who
played an important part in her spiteful manoeuvres against me was her own
father, and she had to lie to him, even though he was always on her side, in
her quest to hurt me. Thus you could say she had enticed her own benefactor to
collude with her in doing evil, of which both were equally guilty in my view. How
and when they’d suffer retribution was of no interest to me: to stand watching
father and daughter committing sin against me was satisfaction enough.
All I had to do to take revenge was to behave in a
submissive way and play this role as well as possible, because no matter what,
I had nothing left to lose.
Right then, Miss Kaeo’s glare challenging me was like
a tightly wound spring ready to jump forward as soon as I revealed the truth.
But the spring stayed put for a short while and very likely sprang backward
deep into her chest when she heard me tell Aunt Waht: ‘It depends on who you
want to believe.’
Miss Kaeo was both startled and astonished. Aunt Waht
looked flummoxed and even more miserable. His Lordship snarled: ‘And you still
have the cheek to claim your innocence! You cunning little bastard!’
Then the moment he had been waiting for for years –
perhaps since the moment I was born – finally came. Holding the whip in his
hand, he proclaimed that my status in my mother’s house was terminated: ‘Damn Jan!
From now on, you and I are no longer related in any way. A scoundrel like you
is beyond redemption. You show no respect. And now you even have the gall to do
this to those who’ve brought you up. Therefore, I won’t have you stay under
this roof any longer.’ Again, these words hurt. I had stopped worrying about
finding myself without a home, but I thought I still had the right to stay in
the compound if I so pleased. ‘One more thing. You’re too lowly to share my
surname. I won’t allow you to use it any longer. Use what the devil of a
surname you want. But let it be understood that from now on, you have no more
connections with this place.’
‘Hold it!’ I thought I should say something, though I
wasn’t too sure what. ‘About the surname, I don’t mind. I don’t care if it’s
Jan What The Devil as you say, or whatever else. But this is my mother’s
compound and no matter – no matter what, I’m my mother’s son.’ I turned to
consult Aunt Waht. ‘Mother’s still my real mother, right?’ Talking about Mother
deeply disturbed me and I felt my throat tighten and my voice shake. I was
sorry I had mentioned her and thus shown my weak point to my opponents for the
first time, but I tried to suppress my emotions, because I was eager to know, ‘Then
– why – can’t – I – stay – in – my – mother’s – compound?’
He laughed grandly out of impudence or whatever. ‘Sorry,’
he said pleasantly. ‘You can’t stay here any longer because – I – won’t – allow
– you – to! Because – I – am – throwing – you – out – of – my – own – compound!
D’you hear? I said my compound. Maybe you want to know why. Do you
really want to know? Then, you must know first why you turned out to be born
the son of –’
‘Don’t!’ Aunt Waht shouted so loud I almost started. ‘I’ll
talk to him myself.’
‘Good,’ he said mockingly, with such an expression on
his face I wanted to go up to him and rip it off with my bare hands. ‘So I
leave it to you then to make him understand where he belongs, and then make
sure he leaves my property presently.’ He laughed scornfully, raised up his
hand and went on: ‘Oh, and don’t forget to agree on a new surname for him, so I
can get it changed at the district office when I get him stricken off the house
registration. And may I suggest you don’t allow him to use the surname of that
sister of yours either. I’d feel duty-bound to object, and I’m sure you’ll
agree it wouldn’t be proper.’
Aunt Waht didn’t answer him. She took my arm and
whispered, ‘Let’s go,’ and I followed her promptly. You no doubt realise I was
most eager to hear the story of my origins.
Hardly had I taken a few steps than a shout at my back
stopped me dead in my tracks. ‘Not so fast, damn you. You can’t just leave like
that. You must have a taste of the whip to cleanse you first. I can’t let you
off that easily.’
I had been trying hard to keep my composure, which had
already been thoroughly tested once. This time, it was shaken so hard that it
broke into pieces. ‘Damn it!’ I swore forcefully. I told Aunt Waht to wait and
returned to face him, while Miss Kaeo yelled with glee: ‘Good! Good! Thrash him
for me, Father, or else I won’t have it…’
I stood right in front of him and looked him in the
eye. He took a step back hastily then raised his whip, readying to lash it down
on my chest or perhaps on my face. How could one be so vindictive and cruel?
I hadn’t come back to be castigated, however. He
looked more surprised, even frightened, when I moved close enough to touch him
and plucked the whip out of his hand. And there was more coming to him that he
didn’t expect.
‘Have you forgotten?’ I told him evenly and clearly
enough for him to hear, ‘we are no longer related.’ Having said this much, in
the same lowly language he had used with me a moment ago, I couldn’t help
swearing at him with the strongest insult there is in any language, and he
stood transfixed to the spot as if under a spell. Then I returned to Aunt Waht.
I had already left the house and thrown the whip that
stuck to my hand into a nearby bush when I heard his voice again – deafening,
furious and shrill like a madman’s. The gist of his rambling was that I must
leave the compound that very night or else he’d shoot me down like a dog.
At my small house, Khein was waiting for me in front
of the door to his room, which was unlit. When he saw I had come with Aunt
Waht, he propped himself up and stood hesitating for a while, then followed us
to the bottom of the stairs. Before I could think of what he’d do next, he went
to Aunt Waht and knelt down on the ground in front of her.
‘Milady…’ he told her. I laughed in my heart. Khein’s
formal language was always straightforward but quaintly archaic.
‘What is it, Khein?’ Aunt Waht was more interested in
what he had to say than intrigued by his form of address. But he was still
bound by his vow and could only say once again, ‘Milady!’ He prostrated himself
at her feet, mumbling something unintelligible, then got up and walked away
sluggishly.
‘He came to apologize for – for what happened,’ I
explained as we climbed the stairs.
‘But he didn’t say a thing,’ she mumbled to herself,
then suddenly turned to me. ‘You mean –’
‘That’s right. It wasn’t me, but it wasn’t Khein’s
mistake altogether. Miss Kaeo forced him to – she wanted to pull his leg.
Unfortunately, I barged on the scene and – and I was blamed instead.’ I wanted
Aunt Waht to know what had happened, but with as few details as possible, and
it seemed she understood, because I heard her heave a sigh, then she was
silent.
I turned the light on in the room and prepared a mat
for her to sit on. We sat in silence for a while, and finally Aunt Waht said: ‘Jan…’
She spoke with difficulty. I smiled to encourage her. ‘It’s time for you to
know the truth.’ Then she was silent again.
‘Who’s my father? Please tell me,’ I asked, straight
to the point.
‘Jan, it isn’t as simple as what you’re asking.’ She
looked at me painfully as if she were confiding her own secrets. ‘It’s vile and
– and shameful.’
Read on now: here comes the prologue to the story of
my birth.
9
Four or five months before
marrying His Lordship, my mother, who was then eighteen years old, had gone with her
Bangkok elders to visit senior relatives in Phijit, as happened every two or
three years. She had travelled to Phijit regularly when she was a child but had
stopped going in recent years, so that when she went there this time, people
could hardly recognise her. By then, she had turned into a young woman, and one
of the most beautiful by all reckonings. To brighten her prospects even more,
she was known to be considerably wealthy in spite of her youth. So, her name
was all around town in Phijit. Men young and not so young, including rich
merchants and government officials, nurtured hopes and pushed themselves
forward.
The notoriety of her beauty and fortune was in no way
confined to the town but spread among young men in the surrounding areas –
country bumpkins, as we’d say today, who thought her charm and good looks
weren’t beyond their reach. Her appeal was so devastating it seemed to derive
from black magic. It made some of these young lads so crazy that they forgot
themselves and were ready to die. Thus, a totally unexpected and terrible event
took place when she and her elders went to visit other relatives and old
acquaintances in the fields outside of town. Aunt Waht, who was one of the
relatives living in the area, had been close to my mother ever since they were
children. Aunt Waht herself was a star among the local clods. Her family was
rather well off. At the time, she already had a boyfriend, who lived in the
same village. When my mother arrived there and stayed with her family – Aunt Waht
recounted – ‘All of a sudden, it was as if I’d never lived there: everyone only
had eyes for your mother, and I was left in peace for a change,’ she recalled
with a smile. ‘It felt like being on a holiday, which was fine, even if it was
only for the duration. No one knew I had a sweetheart. We had to keep our dates
secret because he was poor and besides, he was something of a hoodlum. As
nobody knew, men kept coming to woo me, but as soon as your mother came,
everyone stopped paying attention to me and I could do as I pleased. That’s
when I went to see him on his farm every night. And you know what? One night,
for the first time he didn’t keep our date. He wasn’t at the place where we
usually met, and that’s because that day, your mother had gone with Grandpa to
inspect some land in another subdistrict, and Jorm and two of his friends had
ambushed them on the way back and absconded with your mother. It took the
better part of a month for the police and district officials to find her.’
I think you can guess what happened next. Yes, what
you suspect is correct. When she was back in Bangkok, she was pregnant with
me. Because of this, the story had to be kept under wraps as much as possible,
and Grandpa made it his business to find a spouse for my mother so that she
could give birth without offending custom. He finally found His Lordship. How
he got hold of him, I’ve no idea. The only thing I know is that my mother’s
side had to agree to the conditions that all her properties would go to him as
compensation and that they’d be married in name only until she gave birth. But
then, as you know, my mother had to surrender her life as well as all of her
wealth in exchange for giving birth to me, and all that as a result of a mere
accident.
Learning the truth like this made me feel even more
grateful to my mother and I couldn’t refrain from crying. At the same time, I
felt utterly estranged from her. It was as though we were hardly related to
each other and I wasn’t even sure I had ever received any maternal love from her
at all. It was a troubling question which no one in the world could help me
give a definite answer to. I felt terribly lonely, even more so than when I’d
been locked up alone in the greenhouse.
But then within the paralysis that numbed the inner
core of my self, a glimmer of warmth tried to assert itself – no doubt the
ancient instinct of man (or was it animal?) that made me rejoice over knowing
at last who my father was, even though he was that type of a father!
His name was Jorm (which sounded so much alike Jan it
was uncanny!). He had committed great evil, and to His Lordship he was nothing
but ‘a criminal’. The only dignity I could find in him was that he once had
been Aunt Waht’s boyfriend, though he had ruined that relationship. If anything
of him was left with Aunt Waht, it could only be in the form of an annoying
ghost, but even so, to me, he was an interesting kind of ghost worth finding
out more about.
Where was he now? If he had been jailed over the
abduction, he must be free by now. Maybe he had gone back home. At this point,
His Lordship’s sarcastic remarks came back to me. ‘Up to him. Even dogs know
how to fend for themselves. Er – or let him go back to the boondocks to search
for his father’s ancestors. Why not indeed?’ On second thoughts, it wasn’t
such a bad idea. I knew now where I’d go when I left this compound, but I dared
not tell Aunt Waht because it sounded like a preposterous idea. I didn’t even
know what it was I was going to go there for.
‘Auntie, have you given some thought to where I should
go?’ I asked to test the waters. Actually, it was natural enough for me to ask
such a question, but I felt like a trickster asking it.
Aunt Waht nodded. ‘You must go to Phijit.’
‘Phijit!’ I exclaimed. The expression on my face must
have misled her because she hastened to comfort me: ‘I don’t like the idea of
you going so far away either, but you don’t seem to have a choice.’
Hearing this made me feel guilty over what I’d been
plotting, so I let out an embarrassed laugh. ‘Don’t worry about me. Actually,
I’m most eager to go to Phijit.’ Aunt Waht sighed in obvious relief. I couldn’t
help sighing either, then asked: ‘Where will I stay? At your house?’
She nodded, beaming happily. ‘You’ll stay with
Grandpa, of course.’
‘What!’ I almost let out, ‘Is he still alive?’ because
I took it for granted he was dead. Still doubtful, I enquired: ‘But isn’t
Grandpa very old by now?’
She smiled. ‘Not at all. He’s only sixty and still
going strong.’
‘How about your parents?’
‘They’re both dead.’
‘How about your brothers and sisters? Don’t you have
any?’
‘I do, but some of them have died as well.’
‘How is Grandpa related to you?’
‘He’s my uncle – my father’s elder brother.’
‘So what is he to my mother?’
‘The most respected relative.’
‘What about Jorm, then? Is he still there?’ The
questions came out truly unbidden, to my own amazement. As for Aunt Waht, she
was stunned, but then she seemed to understand and sympathise with my curiosity
and did her best to answer calmly.
‘No, he isn’t. Nobody knows which way he fled. He
hasn’t been seen since and to this day no one knows if he’s dead or alive.’
Then she gave me a few details about what had happened. When the police and
district officials were hot on their trail, the criminals had started shooting
and in the ensuing gunfight were shot dead and fell into the river. But only
the bodies of Jorm’s two underlings were recovered from the water. As for Jorm,
the ringleader, nobody knew whether he died or managed to escape.
Now then! Here was a mystery with several clues to
ponder that was more entertaining than many a whodunit. I had already thought
of a hundred and one ways of meeting that stranger named Jorm, but they all led
to the same dead end. Did I want to take revenge on him for what he had done to
my mother? Was I to strike up an acquaintance with him and then prostate myself
at his feet out of gratitude because he was my father? Or should I keep
watching him quietly from the sidelines, whatever kind of life he led? And so
on and so forth. None of this would get me very far.
When Aunt Waht told me to hurry to pack my belongings
if I didn’t want to be shot dead like a dog, I wondered how I could possibly
travel to Phijit that same night.
Hyacinth!
Aunt Waht explained that she’d take me to stay at a
friend of hers for a while. That house had people coming and going between
Bangkok and Phijit all the time and she’d ask them to take me there.
Hyacinth – I must find a way to meet her before I
left.
As we were gathering a few clothes and other
essentials in a bundle, I remembered His Lordship’s other important
instruction. ‘I still have no new surname, Auntie.’
Thus reminded, Aunt Waht stopped what she was doing
and thought for a moment, and then said brightly: ‘How about this one –
Darra? Jan Darra? It’s most apposite and sounds nice as well, don’t you think?’
Darra… Jan Darra! It sounded so great that a thrill of
pride and joy went through me, and I realized right then no other name in the
world was as sweet sounding as ‘Darra’, my mother’s name.
Jan Darra… It was a marvellous matronymic, which
raised me way above the position I merely owed to the chance outcome of a
seminal chemical reaction.
Before she excused herself to change into a dress
better suited to going out, Aunt Waht grabbed my shoulder and said: ‘Now tell
me, Jan – what was it you told His Lordship that made him so mad he threatened
to kill you?’
What I had done was ugly, so I had some explaining to
do to try and make her sympathise. ‘As long as I thought he was my father, I
endured everything from him. But now – he himself said we’re not related in any
way, so I won’t let him treat me badly ever again. Besides, I resent him for
despising me since – since I was born, maybe, though it’s not my fault, really:
I was never told anything. And even now – now that he’s told me – I still don’t
know who I am, except that I’m a human being. No matter what, he keeps
despising me. What kind of a man is that? So I –’ I couldn’t go on, not because
I was angry but for fear of offending her ears.
‘So you what?’ Why did she want to know so much?
‘I was rude to his mother.’
She sighed, and it made me wonder why.
She told me to go out first and wait for her at the
entrance of the lane, then she went back to the main house. Bundle in hand, I
went down the stairs of the small house in a dejected mood I tried to suppress.
I dropped the bundle at the bottom of the stairs and went to see Khein. He sat
dispirited in front of his door, face bruised, shoulders hunched, looking as
disheartened as a toad long deprived of water. I sat beside him quietly.
Each of us was lost in his own gripes for a while,
then Khein broke the silence: ‘It was my fault, but you’re the one being booted
out. I think that isn’t fair.’
‘I made a mistake too: I was born in the wrong place,’
I said to comfort him.
‘Then let me tell you somethin’.’
I nodded.
‘His Master, he’s treated you as if you wasn’t his
son.’
I laughed heartily. ‘Some sharp eye you’ve got! I’ve
only just found out myself I wasn’t his son.’
‘How come!’ he exclaimed. ‘Then how did you get born?’
Khein was slow-witted; he only understood one thing at
a time. What didn’t go through his head went through his tail. He knew I
definitely had a mother and she had died giving birth to me. Since my father
was my mother’s husband, my father, according to him, could only be His
Lordship. And since it turned out His Lordship wasn’t my father after all, it
followed I didn’t have a father – then how could one without a father ever get
to be born?
‘A ghost must have stuffed me in there,’ I said,
annoyed.
‘Don’t joke about those things.’ He was frightened
because it was what he was inclined to believe.
‘Oh come on. Anyway, I’ve got to go. We must say
goodbye now.’ My heart was heavy as I said this. I remembered the clumsy way
he’d barged into my room on the day of his arrival, and today it was my turn to
leave him just as awkwardly.
‘Don’t say that. Makes me feel bad.’ He turned to look
at me incredulously. ‘Far as you’ve got to get outa here, I bet you won’t be
outa reach.’
Perhaps he thought I was leaving the way Saisoi had and
no matter what he’d find it in him to come and visit me. I put my arm around
his shoulders and said, ‘Khein, listen carefully. I’m not pulling your leg. The
place where I’m going is very far away. I’m going to Phijit, a town way up
north, and I don’t even know if I’ll ever be back again in this lifetime.’
I felt my heart wince as I said this. As for Khein,
the damn fool cried out loud and whinged: ‘Why? But why? Why does he have to
send you so far away?’
He made me feel dismayed and I thought again of Hyacinth.
I slapped him on the back and scolded him, warning: ‘Khein, you pig head!
What’s so strange about it? You did come all the way from the Northeast, didn’t
you? Well, it’s the same, really.’
He quietened down, but couldn’t help moaning: ‘It’s
not the same – not the same at all…’
I hugged him again and told him in earnest: ‘Khein,
listen to me carefully. There’s something important I want you to do for me.
Please go and see Hyacinth some time tonight or tomorrow and tell her ‘Master
Jan got into trouble at home and had to leave for Phijit, but he won’t go there
right away. He’ll be staying somewhere else first and he’ll come to say goodbye
in the next couple of days for sure.’ Tell her also I miss her very much and
will never forget her. Can you remember all this?’
He set about retelling the main points of my message
and I helped him by having him repeat every word several times until I was sure
he could remember everything. And then he said, in a low and quiet voice that
resounded like thunder in my ears: ‘How about the other one? Haven’t you got no
message for her? I mean, the Mistress at the new house.’
Goddam Khein! The exclamation came to my mind just as
I thought of that forgotten item. I felt like cursing him and yet didn’t curse
him. I felt like cursing him for being aware of what was going on between Mrs
Bunlueang and me, as he had now made obvious. I didn’t curse him because he had
reminded me of her for the first time since I had known I was being thrown out.
The mere thought of her, added to the strength of my longing, aroused me
powerfully. I wasn’t sorry I had forgotten her during these vital moments of my
life, and neither was I sorry for the strong yearning I felt as soon as I
thought of her. The powerful sexual urge that burst forth didn’t trigger any
kind of regret either, even though choice scenes of our blissful intimacy shot
eerily through my mind then. My strong feelings at the time ran the thin line
between acceptance and commemoration, and that was how it should be, because I
had found in Mrs Bunlueang so fulfilling a sexual gratification it seemed to
have taken over every nook and cranny in heaven. And now that the time had come
for me to lose her, it meant the end of what passed as the most wonderful
fulfilment in the world. There was nothing left for me to crave since I had
already received it all from her. Sexual arousal was merely an enticement to
remember with yearning the intimacy we had known, as when one must leave a
beloved friend and relative to whom one feels indebted.
I patted Khein on the shoulder again and told him, ‘Wait,
I’ll give you something for Mrs Bunlueang.’ Then I went back upstairs to my
room, turned on the light and looked for some paper to scribble a note on. I
sat down and removed the cap of my favourite ‘Watermann’ fountain pen and got
ready to write. I had plenty to confide to Mrs Bunlueang, but the time was so
limited that I felt cramped.
So this was the parting of the ways for us! I thought.
I had a mother and yet didn’t have one. (I had Aunt
Waht instead. Without her, I wouldn’t even be a human being by now, but more
likely some tiny creature born out of a bamboo hollow. Oh yes, this reminded me
I had yet to thank her for everything before we finally parted.)
I no doubt had a father, yet didn’t have one either.
So you could say I was most unfortunate to have been born without parents.
I had Aunt Waht as my second mother.
Then how about Mrs Bunlueang? Aunt Waht was my second mother, but it was Mrs Bunlueang who had
single-handedly ensured my second birth, to the world of the senses.
Just like the first, this second birth was achieved out of lust, though, unlike
the first, out of sexual wont only. My first birth accidentally brought me into
this world; my second birth gave me the certainty I really existed in it. Mrs
Bunlueang’s sexual mores were like Phanthurat’s magic well, in whose waters Phra
Sang* had partaken of the magic. The immaculate radiance
of his golden body marked the rebirth of Phra Sang, who had been born a conch,
just like sex-anointed manhood marked the rebirth of plain Jan, who had been
born a toy critter.
There was no way I could fully show my gratitude to
Aunt Waht because I was too much indebted to her. But in the case of Mrs Bunlueang,
I had already done so through my constant willingness to gratify her till the
very end. That end had now come unexpectedly, and if I felt sorry it was over
this, rather than for any other reason. I was sorry I no longer had the
opportunity to gratify her forever as had been my intention.
For all that, I felt less sorry than worried. Mrs
Bunlueang’s life would be incomplete without sexual compensations. I wasn’t
worried that she’d separate from His Lordship as she had once planned. It was
her health I was concerned about.
I thought briefly of Khein in this context, but soon
discarded the notion, not because I was jealous and wouldn’t let him play in
the same sack as I, but because it struck me that the sack in question was Mrs
Bunlueang’s exclusive property.
Thinking about it, I found myself in Narinthibeit’s
situation, when the poet couldn’t make up his mind to whom or to which element
he should entrust his beloved.*
All of this fed the turmoil in my mind, but all I did
was to sigh and write down the following words: ‘Dear Mrs Bunlueang, I am in
deep trouble, much more serious than I could have ever feared. I must leave the
house presently. I am to stay with my grandfather in Phijit. When you return,
whatever you are told, please do believe that I am still the good boy you have
always known. I must go now as Aunt Waht is waiting for me. I shall never
forget Mrs B in my life. Thank you for everything.’
I extracted from Khein the promise he’d keep the whole
matter secret and when I followed him to make sure he kept the letter in a safe
place, I enjoined him to deliver it only when he was sure the coast was clear.
‘You and me it’s like death’s parting us forever,’
were the last words I heard him speak, right from the heart.
When I walked out carrying my bundle, I turned to say
goodbye to the shorea tree, which had stood by my house since I was born, and I
couldn’t help casting a last, sorrowful glance at the house itself. The last
picture of it I remember was of Khein sitting despondently in front of the
door to his room, in the same position as before – like a toad long exiled from
its pond.
What he had said about death parting us forever must
have been true: I haven’t seen him again since that day.
The house of Aunt Waht’s friend from Phijit which she
took me to was in the Phaya Thai suburb. It was so far out we became afraid the
Chinaman who pulled our rickshaw would never reach it. Along the way, I thanked
Aunt Waht for all her kindnesses as I had planned.
Although she had so much to tell me and so many instructions and we went on
talking until we no longer had anything left to say to each other, we
still hadn’t reached the place. I still remember well the pleasant coolness of
the air that night. I even remember the Chinaman’s steady panting in rhythm
with the slap of his feet on the ground and the shrill whir of cicadas, the
loudest insects I’d ever heard, while the speeding line of trees along the way
allowed only fleeting glimpses of the full moon.
I don’t know to whose destiny I owed the fateful
coincidence: people from Phijit had been staying at the house for days and were
preparing to go back on the morrow, which left me with no time to go about
doing all I had meant to do. My life in Bangkok was coming to an abrupt end.
…Hyacinth!
That night was the most forsaken and frightening low
point in my life. Unfamiliarity with a place surrounded by the dead quiet of black jungle, combined with anxiety over the
clueless future stretching ahead of me, turned the house in the Phaya Thai
wilderness into a departing station for another world. Loneliness:
whoever invented the word, it described my feelings at the time perfectly. I
lay in tears below an eerie din of dewdrops. Underneath the shroud of silence of that forlorn night, turbulent thoughts whirled
on themselves… Hyacinth!… Hyacinth! … Khein… Mrs Bunlueang… His Lordship and
Miss Kaeo… Hyacinth!… Mrs Bunlueang… Aunt Waht… Mother!… and the man named
J–o–r–m!
I fell asleep within such loneliness.
And the next morning, after the train for Phijit had
left the Bangkok station, my life as Jan Witsanan came to an end. The young man
sitting dejected in that northbound train was travelling towards the life of
Jan Darra.
10
The train stopped at the Phijit station late at night. The town at first
sight was a succession of dim or grey fragmentary scenes in total darkness I
can sharply recall even now. It was the most expansive darkness I had ever
seen. The chill of the night made me feel alternately hot and cold, as if a
sultry haze also hung in the air. In fact, it must’ve been my emotional state
that made me react to the cold weather in this way. This was the first time I
found myself in the countryside, after a very long trip, and furthermore, this
was only the second night since I had been thrown out of the shelter I had had
since I was a child; I was nothing but an innocent at large.
I spent the rest of the night in the house of the
Phijit citizen who had kindly accepted to take care of me at Aunt Waht’s
request. The next day, the man took me to see Grandpa, who lived way out in the
fields. This time, it was a journey in the true sense of the word, as we had to
walk all the way. Before we left the small town behind in late morning, we
crossed two local roads. They looked dead quiet and forlorn, although I could
see a few people going about. The whole town seemed to be waiting for something
to happen. It reminded me of a similar atmosphere I had known before, but I
couldn’t remember where or when. I do now, though: it was like the atmosphere
in Bangkok in the late morning of 24 June 1932. Most commoners were still
confused about the events that had just taken place, even though a so-called
coup had been carried out in their name, albeit without their knowledge, to
change the political system. We have all had to suffer the consequences ever
since.
During the three years I spent in Phijit, nothing
impressed me, except Grandpa, who was the one and only person I found truly
remarkable.
We walked for hours and by the time we reached Aunt
Waht’s former house, it was early afternoon. The house was big and set on large
grounds dotted with animal pens, haystacks, and puddles of mud which buffalo
could wallow in. It was the largest farmhouse I had seen that day and would
ever see during the whole three years I was to live there. As we reached the
house, my companion told me to sit down on a bamboo platform in the shade of a
big tree and wait for him there. He then went up to the house alone. I didn’t
object. It was the longest distance this city dweller had ever walked, and
instead of sitting, I lay down. I listened to the exhausted beat of my heart
within my ribcage and enjoyed the throbbing of my blood as it coursed past my
temples, and before long I was sleeping, gently caressed by the breeze.
When my companion shook me awake, I sat up to find
myself surrounded by a dozen staring children. I had no idea where they had
come from. I hadn’t seen them when I arrived. In fact, they all belonged to the
house and later turned out to be my closest friends, although, apart from
Grandpa, I lived all by myself – a situation which Grandpa and I had agreed
upon and which I readily accepted. I was happier on my own, living somewhat
like a vagrant, rather than staying in the house, whose atmosphere was poisoned
by covetousness over Aunt Waht’s share of the estate.
My guide took me to freshen up by the side of the
house. We then went to look for something to eat in the kitchen, where no one
paid attention to me. After we finished our meal, he took me to see Grandpa. He
didn’t say a word; he had gone up to settle everything with him privately
beforehand. His task now complete, he prostrated himself in front of Grandpa
and took his leave. He wanted to start on his way back to town immediately.
Putting a hand on my shoulder, he wished me all the best before standing up and
leaving the house. I didn’t know what to say, so I bowed to him respectfully,
thanking him in my heart for all he had done for me. He was a good and obliging
man, so rare these days. I was never to see him again – it was as if he had
been born for the sole purpose of taking me to Phijit!
The house, built in traditional Thai style, had twin
roofs that met in the middle, leaving an airy, shady space between the two sets
of rooms of the upper floor. When for the first time I ventured into that
middle section, I found the place cool and dark and made out the dim, imposing
figure of Grandpa, who sat alone on a high veranda on one side. When my eyes
got used to the poor light, I noticed how wide the space crisscrossed by a
tangle of beams under the tapering roofs was. My first impression was that I
had entered a prayer hall made entirely of wood. As for Grandpa, whose figure I
now saw clearly, he reminded me of one of those senior officials of the old
regime with high-sounding titles such as Jao Phraya Phra Sadeit and
others I can’t remember. He had a big body, broad, muscular shoulders and a
square face with a wide forehead and prominent jaws. A shock of grey hair
parted in the middle looked like wings above his closely cropped nape. Bushy
eyebrows arched over harsh eyes. His fine moustache was still black, unlike his
eyebrows and hair. He sat cross-legged among his paraphernalia, while I stood
staring at him from the central landing below.
‘Come here, Jan.’ There was a strange note of kindness
in his gruff voice. I climbed the high wooden steps and went to sit at the same
level, then crawled to him and prostrated myself at his feet.
‘Hmm…’ he said, while looking at me closely. ‘You’re
fully grown now, son of my niece Darra.’
This delightfully quaint address made me feel so
deeply elated I almost burst into tears.
‘We have much to talk about,’ he went on. ‘Your Aunt
Waht left it to me to decide about your position in this house. People around
here, including the man who brought you in, don’t know who you are. I never
thought you’d be forced to come here. But since you’re already with us, I think
you’d better stay in such a way no one knows who you are, because I want
everyone in this house to forget all about what happened to my niece Darra,
your mother. We should let bygones be bygones.’ Having said this, he asked, by
way of confirmation: ‘You already know the story of your birth, don’t you?
That’s what Waht says.’ He held out a rumpled letter for me to see.
I nodded wearily, feeling dejected. I realised that,
even here, I’d have to live like a man without roots. I suddenly felt the urge
to find the man named Jorm. But, assuming he was still around, how was I going
to do it?
If I stayed on for a while I’d probably find a way, I
reasoned. To ask Grandpa about it would no doubt be useless. To investigate on
my own would probably raise suspicion and go against Grandpa’s wishes. So, I
decided to bear with it and play for time.
After being silent for a while, Grandpa finally said: ‘I’ll
tell everyone you’re here because Waht asked me to take care of you. This way,
no one will think too much of it and you’ll live here without any problems. But
then, you’ve got to earn your keep. You look strong and healthy. So, work hard!
Working the fields never killed anyone. On the contrary. So, you think you can
do it? In case you…’
He didn’t complete his sentence. Later, I understood
what he had meant to say – if one day I chose to settle down there as a farmer,
the share of property Aunt Waht still had would probably be left to me. Grandpa
knew well I was more than a son to Aunt Waht. It was only later that he told me
the whole story.
So it was that I stayed on, placed under Grandpa’s
care for three years. I worked hard for the rice that sustained me. I laboured
in the paddy fields and willingly took on the odd jobs that needed to be done.
I no longer knew what the future held in store for me, but didn’t care. The
only thing to do was to try to forget about what had happened and live one day
at a time. This would never have been possible if I had lived a comfortable
life. So I set out to toil away and was soon the hardest working man in the
village. This in turn ended the suspicion that I was after the wealth of the
people in the house. The modicum of happiness I enjoyed during this part of my
life derived solely from hard work. Frankly speaking, I thought of myself as
some kind of ox or buffalo. It was as if I wished to atone for sins I had been
a party to.
All this time, I learned nothing more about the man
named Jorm. It took me about a year to find out where his land was located, but
it turned out the people on it knew nothing about him. Had he really vanished
without trace, or was it that, as I dared not ask direct questions about him, I
got nowhere?
The only person with information was Grandpa, whom I
became increasingly close to. Even if he refused to tell me anything, I had
nothing to lose by asking, and I decided that one day I’d do so. But when that
day finally came, I discovered how wrong I had been. Instead of being
enlightened, I found myself completely in the dark, and regretted I had ever
struggled to find out the truth.
The secret I discovered made it impossible for me to
know who I really was.
Before we come to the most dreadful part of my story, I must keep
my promise and tell you about the prostitute who had a child, something I
found very strange. I found it strange because I had never seen or heard of a
prostitute who could have children like other women – and that, too, was rather
strange in itself. Women of the night receive far more attentions from men than
your average housewife does, so you’d expect them to have children year in and
year out like my friend Erp’s mother, the food vendor in the lane leading to my
house, who produced children as regularly as trees bore fruit in season. And yet
prostitutes didn’t. This had convinced me that they couldn’t have any – but
then, at Wat Po School near Tha Tian, I had a friend who was the son of a
brothel’s madam.
When I first mentioned this story, I said I’d tell it
later because it was relevant to one part of my life; we’ve now come to that
part.
At the age of eleven or twelve or was it thirteen? Well, around that age, anyway, whenever I was too lazy to go out and play or felt depressed and bored, I’d wander about the streets wherever my feet would take me, venturing near or far depending on my mood. Sometimes, I’d follow the lengthy route the teacher would take us along when we’d stay overnight at the Sapharn Soong monastery in Bangsue, as part of our boy-scout traini