of
time and tide
(Thalei
Lae Karnweila, 1985)
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Mother, I brought you some flowers. They are the kind of cannas you liked so much and used to plant behind the house. I’ll prop them up by the niche in the wall that bears your name. It has been exactly ten years since you left us and it is only now that I have come to visit you. Nothing much of you is left, but it is the only memento I have to remember you by, so I have come to see you here.
Will you accept these flowers, Mother? The wind blowing from the sea will wither them before long.
Ten years is a long time. Your name was coated with
dust and I had to wipe and wipe again with my fingers to clear the dust away.
The pavilion by the temple entrance where I sit has a sweeping view of the sea.
The old wooden structure with stairs on two sides that was here on the day we
brought your relics has now been rebuilt, like the buildings beside the joss
house*. The large dormitory for monks that was shaded by
mango trees and surrounded with discarded spirit houses was completely dismantled
and new quarters have been built in long rows which look like the shophouses at
the marketplace.
Everything has changed, Mother, and changed fast, too.
Yesterday I met Noi; she is a woman now.
You remember Noi, the young girl with a dirty face who
told you the winning number of the underground lottery more than ten years ago
and you bought her a doll to play with? She remembered me and greeted me even
before she switched off the engine of her motorcycle. She got down and stood
talking to me.
‘This your daughter?’ I said, casting a glance at the
child who had come with her on the bike and looked exactly like her.
‘From my first husband,’ she said with a
self-conscious smile. ‘I’ve gone through three hubbies already. They’re all
dead, even the one who’s made me pregnant again.’ She pretended to laugh as she
pointed to her belly. ‘They say I eat them up. Do you think it’s true?’
Noi is just past nineteen. Her skin is brown and
burnished, her eyes are as clear as the sea over a cove of rocks, her face is
pretty and innocent-looking, and she has already had three husbands, she has
one child and is pregnant again.
Noi put the relics of her three husbands all in a row
in niches on the western wall of the monastery, across from yours – each of
them the age of your children or nephews. Life is uncertain indeed and goes up
and down like the tides of the sea.
And so it was for our family as well, which once had
been so happy together but fell on hard times which made your life so full of
sadness, Mother.
The sea swallowed all our wealth away – all the gold
and ornaments, and even the land we were born on sank into it without a trace.
Our family went through many losses. What was it you lost, Mother? Necklaces,
bracelets, even ancient gold rings and jewellery acquired since the time of
your grandparents left your strongbox until none was left, and gone too were
several plots of land and, what hurt you most, our last home, where you gave
birth to all of us your children.
The last part of your life was steeped in pain and
sickness and in remembering old hopes which had all vanished, as if you were
looking at a rainbow faded away by the fog.
Noi wore jewellery all over, from her thin wrists to
her slender neck. She invited me to her house, which is built like a small
bungalow. She opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of ice-cold water
for me, switched on a huge fan which blew strongly ever after and turned on
her colour TV for me to admire. A widow as young as Noi should be happy, all
things considered. She is still in the early stages of her pregnancy and raises
her three-year-old without any problems, together with Granny Chaem, her old
mother, who is as nimble and sharp-tongued as ever.
But Noi lives burrowed in the past like an old anchor
deeply sunk in sand. She lost three husbands over a very short span of time.
The sea claimed the first two, who were sailors and departed amidst cries of
sympathy and words of consolation. As for the last, he died ostracised by Noi’s
neighbours and relatives.
‘After I lost the first two, I gave up any work that
had to do with the sea. When I moved in with this last one, I thought I was
doing fine and we’d stay together forever.’ Noi still cries a lot when she
mentions this much beloved husband.
‘He was so good to me in every respect. He gave me
everything you see here. He said it was for me and the child, but the people
in the village hated him.’ She was sobbing.
She didn’t just lose a beloved husband, but also
almost all of her relatives and neighbours by the sea. Yet she may have a long
life ahead of her and still be the owner of many valuable things – unlike you,
Mother, who lost everything.
Noi or you – I’m not really sure who is the worse off.
Mother, we sea folk live with the wind, the waves and
the vagaries of the weather. We are used to seeing the wind still and the waves
gentle, and then the sky rumbling, the rain falling hard, the wind blowing
fierce and the vicious monsoon throwing wave after wave to the shore – all in a
very short time. This kind of uncertainty is frightening and daunting. But are
the swift transformations that come to the life of the people of the sea these
days any less scary than the wind and waves and thunderstorms?
The picture of Noi’s last husband, who died only two
months ago, smiled cheerfully in its wooden frame on top of the television
set. He was a very handsome young man indeed in his beautiful khaki uniform.
Noi’s third husband was a police officer!
Sommai
When I was a little boy, I
remember, the little canal north of the village ran with thick, cloudy waters
and it was in this turbid yet clean flow that my friends and I would play from
dawn until dusk. The more boats bobbed there sheltering from the wind, the more
we liked it. We turned the canal into a deep-sea battlefield by pretending to
be pirates ransacking ships, and punched and shot at one another till we fell
into the water and it was great fun.
Those days are gone like funnel smoke puffed away by
the wind …
You said, Mother, that Anchor Row Canal Village or
Eekueng Canal village was where, when the wind fell in the morning, the fishing
boats came to shore to drop their anchors in the sand in long lines. During the
cool season, when the sea was cold, you could see shoals of eekueng fish
swimming about in the little canal. They stung like hell. They were small and
tough, and had barbs like catfish. Some people who were allergic to their sting
would lie groaning and moaning in pain for three days or more. You did threaten
me with them, didn’t you, Mother, when you forbade me to go and play in the
canal.
By the time Noi ripened into adolescence, the little
canal in front of her house had long turned murky and almost dry as the wind of
time had brought in sand from the seashore and all kinds of rubbish from the
vegetable market joined forces to fill up the canal and make its waters shallow
and putrid. It is the largest breeding ground for mosquitoes in the village
now.
‘I often went to play around your house and still
remember Grandma.’ Noi meant you, Mother. ‘She was small and plump, and
white-skinned all over, and wore silver-rimmed glasses. She liked to sit by her
betel tray. She was to be pitied, you know – she had lost everything.’ That’s
what Noi said to me, and it was clear from her attitude that she really felt
for our family.
The wind from the sea doesn’t reach Noi’s bungalow,
which was built recently behind the railway line. The smell of brine seems to
stop at the main district road, which goes by the market and the movie house.
This road looks like it has split our district into two halves and into two
worlds since its inception. It goes up west to the railway line and then abuts
the hills, lined with dwellings of people who have no dealings with seawater
fish, quite unlike the eastern side where all houses and people seem to be
steeped in salt.
This reminds me of you, Mother, when you had to move
the family and rent a shophouse behind the road, far away from the sound of
waves and wind, a most disheartening letdown before you left us.
I can understand the feelings of those who, like you,
had to go and forsake their roots to live far away from the sea, just as I can
understand why Noi came here to build a house away from it as soon as she
hooked a cop for a husband. Noi didn’t want to be close to anything that would
remind her of the past and the deep wounds she twice sustained.
Noi thought it was an auspicious new start and in
order to forget past evils launched on a new course, like when the waning moon
goes waxing, and she turned from fisherman’s wife into the spouse of a police
officer.
‘My ’Mai was from Turtle Mountain.’ Noi meant Police
Officer Sommai, her much beloved third husband.
Turtle Mountain Village, which is located some thirty
kilometres away from the district town, is set amidst pomegranate orchards.
When Sommai was in his third year of secondary school, he saw no way of
studying further beyond watching over pomegranate trees like his father.
In a tiny, old, much bruised notebook which Noi
preciously keeps, he had scribbled a record of a short time in his life. After
reading it, I felt utterly nostalgic and forlorn.
‘Took the police entrance exam, don’t know yet
whether I’ll pass, but chances are good because they take many students.
‘Hope I do make it. To be a cop would be great and I
like to box and fight as well. Am afraid of no one.
‘Poor dad! Plantation work is such hard work. The
money he gave me for the fare to go take the exam, he had saved up over a long
time. If can’t make it into the police academy, don’t think can study anywhere
else. Will have to hire myself out as caretaker on pomegranate plantation like
dad.
‘If I pass and graduate and he sees me in police
uniform, dad will be very happy.
‘Everybody is afraid of cops. When am one of them,
will be able to rake in quite a lot, I’m sure. Dad will get some much deserved
rest. Won’t allow him to break his back in the plantation no more.’
Police Cadet Sommai did graduate and he did put on a
uniform for his dad to see for only three days – a landslide smothered the
pomegranate plants and his dad’s life as well.
I cast a glance at him again in his plywood frame and
felt sorry about all the valuable possessions in this house he should have been
allowed to enjoy much, much longer than he did.
Life is uncertain, Mother. As I said, Police Officer
Sommai, instead of dying like his father amidst orange pomegranate blossoms in
the caretaker’s hut on the Turtle Mountain plantation, died on the beach
bordering the long dried-up little canal, his face buried in sand, blood oozing
from his brain.
He died of a gunshot.
Siu was a naughty boy in
your eyes, Mother, a dour little rascal and a mean rogue to boot. You once
chased him out of the house and forbade me to see him, but I was his friend,
and unknown to you I would sneak out to hang around with him.
He was two years older than I was, so he was both my
friend and my senior, which I could never have made you understand.
See there! The kite wind has begun to blow. The sea is
all soft waves. High in the sky the wind blows strong. Siu comes to see me at
home.
‘Have you got enough to buy paper? I want to make a
bird kite,’ he whispers.
I take out what is left of the money you give me to
buy sweets, which is always rather more than I need. I give him enough to buy
cellophane sheets and glue to fix them onto the wooden frame he has shaped up
as a big bird. For a whole day we take turns sending the finely coloured bird
soaring high over the treetops.
It was the same for other games. Siu gave me more than
he ever received from me. Out of a piece of ebony, he made a spinning top for
me to twirl, caught a big fighting fish, all puffed up and striped in vivid
colours, and put it in a bottle for me to take care of and wonder at.
At the Eekueng Little Canal, we young ones would play
pirates plundering ships. Siu was bigger and stronger than most of us and
always landed the part of pirate leader. He’d crouch on the sandy beach
alongside the canal and his mouth would blast us with such sharp gunshots that
we scampered in fear.
Every time, he’d be shot dead in the end, fall into
the water and pretend to float along with the current.
It seems that comic books of flying supermen and toys
such as peacocks which, when you released a coiled spring, spread their tails,
were what prompted him at first to hurry from his home at Eekueng Canal to meet
me every evening. He’d cling to the fence of our house until I came out to him.
‘Is your mom here?’ he’d ask first off, and it became
a password between us till we were grownups. He revered you as the owner of a tangkei* fishing boat, and even after that image had capsized
for good, he was still as respectful as ever.
On nights when the moon was waxing, the milky sky over
the district and the sea spread itself thin as far as the eye could see. There
was a shadow play using a screen set up on the sandy bank at the far end of the
village. Siu led us children to it and we made such a ruckus that the local
lads got annoyed.
When they faced us on the white sandy bank behind the
shadow play screen, the taunting would begin.
‘You bastards! Anyone you want, come on, take your
pick!’ Siu challenged them.
One of the local children, seeing that I was small and
frail, pointed at me.
‘Not him! He isn’t well enough to fight,’ Siu shouted
protectively. ‘Try me instead.’
But I fought.
We hadn’t been at it for long when my nose started
bleeding and my lips were split.
Siu threw himself between us and floored my opponent
before anyone had time to realise what was going on.
‘That wasn’t fair!’ the local lads protested.
‘So what?’ said Siu before turning his back on them to
look after me.
He took me back home even though he was scared of your
scolding, and that was the night you drove him out, shouting at him never to
come play in the house again, and you forbade me to see him as well. I was only
sorry I couldn’t explain to you what had happened.
Siu had lost his mother and grown up with his father
and he had had to help himself in almost everything. Hailing as he did from
Eekueng Canal, which knew neither school nor books, he was like the fish that
swim in endless circles in the ocean of life, and he’d find himself today on a
coaster, tomorrow maybe way out at sea on a fishing boat, and the next day
perhaps he’d hire himself out as a pearl diver in the southern sea.
So it wasn’t surprising that what were evil things in
the eyes of others came naturally to him in his risky wanderlust of a life.
His hefty build was fit for hauling up long nets from
the deep, and his harsh brogue for triggering brawls. He was caught up with
roguish friends, booze, hashish, opium, prostitutes and gambling. Our two lives
were like the land wind and the sea breeze, which blow in opposite directions,
but we were friends, though with hindsight, I feel that all those years he was
my senior even more than my friend.
You were afraid he’d lead me into evil ways. Far from
it. It was the opposite, actually. In those days, Siu protected me from the
evil that surrounded him.
When we were in a circle of friends smoking hash and
the joint came to him, he bypassed me.
‘Hey, that’s enough for you, damn it. Enough to know
the taste,’ he’d say.
We’d drink together a little, then Siu would send me
back home, or else, when his eyes glazed over, he’d pick a fight with someone
but always turn round and tell me: ‘Get out now; you don’t want to be in no
trouble.’
What delighted me and I must tell you, Mother, was
that at one time when I was studying in Bangkok and was totally hard-up, he
sent me three hundred baht. Every time I think of it, I am reminded of the
sweat on his ruined swarthy face.
I haven’t met him in a long time. They say he’s a
heroin addict and a pirate waiting to pounce on the refugees who drift into the
Gulf of Siam. The rumour is that every time he comes back home, his bag is full
of golden ornaments and other valuables he sells for a dime and a song.
‘To think I did him the favour of buying a ring from
him – that damn bastard Siu.’ Noi was crying again as she told me about Siu,
the junkie pirate who had gone back home to Eekueng Canal in the middle of a
public row. Siu was suspected of having shot dead Police Officer Sommai.
‘That damn bastard Siu, he was the only one who had a
gun, you see. So who else do you think could’ve fired the shot?’ Noi told me
adamantly and full of resentment.
The case isn’t closed. Siu is still at large. He has
disappeared again, like a fish plunging back into water, his life still
running.
I quietly hope he won’t die easily, as when we played
thrilling games of pirates long ago.
1
No one can piece together a
long-lost picture and restore its shape and sharpness, yet I’ll try to bring it
back to life from the deep memories that remain.
See here! Several turtles are awkwardly crawling over
shells and white coral caught in a green grid of woolly morning glory. This,
here, is the wide expanse behind the house with bamboo hedges. It has a row of
bulky water jars and a palm-roofed shed to dye seines*, which doubles as a
temporary bunk for young sailors. Beside it is a flower display with pots of
euphorbia** and spider plants***, whose sprigs Mother used to sheathe in red silk and
girdle with incense sticks for her offerings.
And over there! Clumps of cannas**** are blooming with red-sprinkled yellow flowers,
waiting for Mother to pluck them for her devotions at home.
There is a zebra dove in a cage hanging by a steel
hook to the roof beam of the house – a propitious bird.
‘Mark my words: if it coos in the morning, eldest
sister, take it from me, by late morning the boat will be in, flags ahoy,’ a
farming relative who brought the dove to her had eagerly vouched.
Fishing boats in Mother’s days were quite a funny
sight. They set sail to hunt for fish in the same way ancient armies went to
battle – waiting for an auspicious tide, offering sweetmeats to the
guardian spirits at the prow, and lighting firecrackers amidst cheers; and they
were gaily decked out with strings of multicoloured flags. Furthermore, they
had to sail around close to shore three times before they put to sea and
eventually disappeared behind rippling waves.
On their return to shore, there was another sacred
ceremony when they flew flags to proclaim their glorious catches, and no
mariner had a mind to joke about such displays. The rows of flags that were
hoisted were pregnant symbols of prosperity.
The one-story house had a wide tiled roof that
stretched over three living units, grounds of green concrete, and a raised
landing of gleaming boards. In one corner a showcase of richly carved teak
displayed ancient bowls and jars and silver trays and various sets of cups and
glasses. The beautiful cage of the zebra dove hung above the showcase in
matching dark tones. And there Mother sat, beside her snuff, her betel tray and
whatever neighbours came to visit.
How often and exactly when the dove cooed, and whether
her boat was always rigged with flags when it returned to shore, I have
forgotten. What I remember is the day the dove died.
A snake slithered from the roof beam down to the metal
hook and bit the bird in the cage. When Mother woke up at dawn, her shout shook
the house and she kept gazing at the carcass of the propitious bird with a
ghastly face.
Later in the morning that day, her boat returned to
shore like part of a battered armada that had lost a war.
Father told her amidst the gloom of the assembled
sailors that our net had got stuck and had torn and sunk to the deep bottom of
the sea, but buoys had been laid out to mark the place, and divers would be
hired to retrieve it from the deep.
Three or four naked divers, holding their breaths,
amazingly used long bamboo stalks to reach the sea bottom. They were the only
human beings able to hold their breaths for so long, as if they had been born
like fish with eyes and ears able to withstand the painful pressure of the salt
water. They dived several times that day before they shook their heads in
defeat. Some undertow had set the net loose and adrift.
Mother sat listening to the terrible news by the teak
showcase, and let the wind from the sea buffet her pallid face and hopeless,
vacant eyes.
She had to put the boat ashore on rollers and use
substantial sums to buy white cotton thread and hire people to spin it and
weave it into large meshes that stretched right out of sight and earshot.
Afterward, the net had to be dyed with bark to tighten it and make it last for
months. All the crew had to stay at the back of the house and be fed; it would
be months before they put to sea again. Each day and night that went by saw her
wealth dwindling in bottomless expenses.
To invest in a fishing boat in those days was strange
in the sense that those who did so were like hard-pressed gamblers throwing
piles of betting money in front of them. Cash and valuables were dug out of
Mother’s strongbox only to be gobbled up by the sea before our very eyes.
We fought nature, which held no certainty; fought the
creatures of the sea, the waves born of the wind, the storms from the sky;
fought all that which for her went by the name of fate. What didn’t come was
gone. What wasn’t won was lost and spelled disaster.
But Mother did fight back – as of the first catastrophe
that came visiting our family with the demise of the zebra dove.
2
A mild, constant wind
kneaded the sea few days after the heavy rains and storm had cleared. The sky
was vacant, cloudless and virgin white in that moment of dawn when the sun had yet
to come up.
A seabird swooped down upon a fish at water level, not
far from a heap of wet clothes that looked like a clump of weeds pinned to
shore by the tide. As it snatched the fish, the bird craned its neck and
glanced towards the heap in mild alarm before spreading its wings and making
for the yonder pier.
The body had just emerged from the deep after three
days. It had just returned to land, so far from Eekueng Canal, its birthplace,
and ended up here, by Stone Pass Beach. There was fine white sand and mounds of
jagged rocks, and tourists came here to bathe. How strange that when he was
still alive he hardly ever came here at all.
Noi was woken up near dawn by the arrival of her
friend the sailor. Actually, there was no need to wake her up, because she had
slept only fitfully during the three nights her husband had been gone.
‘They say they found Phorn’s body. You’d better go
have a look. Er – take a blanket with you. Must be all bloated by now.’ Her
friend the sailor spoke in sadness. He didn’t look Noi in the eye but walked
out ahead of her.
‘How ’bout me going instead? Ye take care of the
child,’ Chaem, her mother, offered.
Noi looked at her mother, then shook her head. ‘I’ll
go myself.’
She closed the gate and went after her friend. The
light of dawn was still blurry in the distance. Back there in the house, she
could hear her mother bursting into tears.
Amidst the smell of death gently spread by the breath
of the sea at dawn, Noi sat still on a boulder some distance from the corpse
while her friend the sailor went to look for the undertaker. There were people
coming down the beach. Before long there would be crowds of onlookers and all
of them would turn to observe her. What should she do? Cry? But she had no
tears. Only this dryness deep in her chest – and she wasn’t truly sorry anyway.
She gazed at the distended dark-green hand sticking
out on one side of the blanket and thought of the many places he had slapped
her with it. And even those swollen feet that stuck out of there as well, she
couldn’t remember which was the one he used to kick her till she collapsed time
and time again.
‘Hell and tarnation! If ye don’t want to stay with her,
just get the hell outa here. What kinda man are ye who uses his woman as a
punching bag and kicks her whenever he feels like it?’ Granny Chaem, all
stomping feet and fists on her hips, was prancing boisterously. ‘Yeah. Come
kick me if ye dare.’
Phorn turned quarrelsome when he drank, but he was in
dread of his mother-in-law because, besides the overwhelming favours he owed
her, there was Siu, Eekueng Canal’s hoodlum, who was her nephew.
‘Sure, you always take her side. When she insults my
mother, what am I supposed to do? Kiss her ass?’
‘Ye shouldn’t talk back to her. How can ye lay a
finger on her? What d’ye think she is? Some kinda cow? But then, when ye fought
in the ring with those guys, I never saw ye win even once.’
‘Let sleeping dogs lie, okay?’
‘Ye bet I won’t. Ye’ll never come to no good. A failed
boxer, and ye won’t even go to sea, though ye’ve got yer own boat.’
You could say Phorn had grown up on the concrete pier
at the harbour where both of his parents hired themselves out trundling fish
from boat to land. His life was like one of those rubber tires hung all along
the pier that by accident falls into a boat. He became a hired hand on board
trawlers and resented having to work hard day and night. He wasn’t cut out for
sea jobs, yet endured them for a while. Then the fancy took him to have a go at
boxing. The whole of Eekueng Canal went out to root for him but came back
crestfallen. Phorn fought three times and each time a kick knocked him down for
the count. So he had to go back to earning his living from the sea, instead of
the ring he had dreamt of.
Granny Chaem had put the finger on Phorn’s weak point.
He left the house that evening, full of resentment.
‘I’m going alright! Enjoy yourselves in the meantime,’
he hollered.
‘Sure! Go die someplace else,’ Noi shouted back,
before her mother, her mouth already open, could say anything, and this was her
farewell to Phorn, her first husband.
Phorn started the boat’s engine, revved it up through
the rain and wasn’t seen alive again.
People had begun to crowd around the corpse, both
relatives and neighbours close and near. The story of Phorn’s death would no
doubt be told and retold for many days to come, along with expressions of
sorrow and pity for Noi’s bad luck as well.
‘I’d warned him the radio had announced a storm. He
wouldn’t listen to me,’ one boat-owning friend remarked dolefully.
‘You can’t blame him for it. Who’s ever believed them
radio warnings? Those sonzabitches and their goddamn celsius. Never made any
sense to me.’
When this other friend had spoken, muted laughter
rippled over the body covered by the blanket, just as the sun peeked over the
horizon and rumpled the expanse of navy blue with streaks of dazzling sparks.
3
In those days when the
beach wasn’t soiled by the footprints of strangers, our district was just a
small village which resounded with the cries of crows in the morning and was
full of vultures flocking to fight over the carrion washed up to shore during
the monsoon season.
The junks, sails unfurled, cut through flocks of
seagulls to slowly reach the shore every morning.
The search for fish took place mostly in the waters
close to home. The life of the men on board was in harmony with nature and
followed the flux of the trade winds. The course of the stars, the colours of
the sky, the build-up of the clouds formed a whole and to forget it could mean
tragedy.
The master of the junk, who stood holding the
lion-tail-shaped tiller of the rudder at the stern, was attuned to the various
natural elements surrounding him, just as the mast of his boat was ready to
have its sails lowered or unfurled at a moment’s notice to match the strength
of the wind and waves, which he read like an open book. He always knew where
his home stood from the twinkle of one particular star; and when the sea was
still and the midday sky turned yellow going on red, the wind that brought no
rain told him a great storm was coming and he must hurry to take his boat and
five- or six-man crew to the nearest shore.
When Father took command of his first junk, he was
like those friends in the past: he became at one with the elements.
‘We didn’t go very far away from the village. Just
putting to sea and coming back each time was hard work. Whenever we ran into a
storm, we had to run for shelter and sometimes waited for days for the wind to
abate. It wasn’t easy like it is nowadays,’ Father said. ‘The sea these days is
full of instruments and gadgets of all kinds.’
True, Phorn didn’t have all those modern instruments
and gadgets to go out to sea as Father mentioned, since he only had a small
boat which hugged the shoreline like the junks in the old days. But he did have
a net of nylon thread that didn’t need to be painstakingly sun-dried and
bark-dyed as in Father’s time. He took his modest boat to sea all by himself,
to where he thought there were fish aplenty, and then let the net go down into
the deep. After that, he’d sleep and get up to haul the net towards dawn.
The life of fishermen like Phorn, with the help of
modern conveniences, gradually estranged them from the forces of nature around
them.
‘The sea in the Gulf of Siam will have rain or
thunderstorms almost everywhere with heavy rainfall in some areas. There will
be rain over seventy percent of the area, south-western winds with speeds of
eight to sixteen knots, and the sea will have small to medium-sized waves …’ Fishermen of the new generation like Phorn had an
important aid when they went out to sea that didn’t exist in Father’s
time – the meteorological reports on the radio.
The new generation, estranged from nature by the use
of their instruments, gradually became alienated from the sea, and the mistakes
which resulted from their carelessness led to disasters in their lives.
‘Who would know the sea better than sea people?’ the
old folks who liked to reminisce about the good old days would grumble in
groups about their sea-going offspring, who had little time for nature – the
stars, sky, clouds and wind patterns that they themselves had watched almost
all their lives.
‘These days, whoever cares to go to sea can do so and
they don’t have to train since boyhood as we did,’ several of the old folks
would say, deprecating the fishermen’s cushy life that they witnessed every
day.
‘Even Phorn, who wouldn’t believe what his own radio
said, if he’d known his waves he wouldn’t have died as easily as that. They haven’t
got what it takes, let me tell you.’
The fire that had burned Phorn’s body had died out
together with the whispers. Noi had listened to them gossiping about the
husband that was no more, and she began to think for the first time of the
confused life of those who now sought their livelihood from the sea. It had
already changed, like the beach of virgin sand soiled by the footsteps of
strangers.
4
The young boy gambolling
within the walls of a temple in an ancient isolated town was promised to a life
of craft: ornamenting with moulded lime the tall pagoda of the temple like his
forefathers, or else dabbing colours on pictures, or even chiselling out vines
in flame-like patterns to decorate the walls of the temple, which was a centre
for arts of this kind.
When he grew up some, he thought it would be fun to
try his hand at the long drums or have a lark with the brass band of a few
friends of his age, but he abruptly changed his mind and went down the
Phetchaburi river all the way to its estuary at the Bay of Barn Laem, where he
found the sea.
The wide expanse of deep-blue water was creased in
folds of white which came gliding to the shore from afar, all the time sending
out loud sounds like greetings from an old acquaintance.
He wasn’t bothered long by the briny smell that was so
strange at first, just as his seasickness went after only the first few times
at sea, and he began to feel at one with what he felt was nature.
He was a ship’s boy on board a sloop with a big white
sail, which for the most part roved around floating catches in the open sea,
and capes and bights close to home.
He began his training by learning how to use a stick
to beat the water to make the fish in the bamboo pens scatter and scamper round
the fences before the net was thrown in to scoop them up. When the season
didn’t allow the boats to take to sea, he helped the men dye the net with
red-man-grove bark or find kapok wood to make buoys.
Later still, he was taught how to make sharp, tapering
needles to darn torn nets, learned the wind, waves and stars, and how to read
the sky and its colours, which changed with the season. It could be said he
knew the moods and ways of the sea, which made him one with its environment and
accepted by his friends who shared their lives with him on board.
A young man now, he moved up to the highest trade on a
sailing boat: he was the one who stood at the stern holding the lion-tail
rudder, and everyone called him master.
Many is the night he thought of the temple walls in
the ancient town as he stood at the stern, plying with listless sails across
darkened seas. He’d think of the hands and eyes of his forebears engrossed in
making mouldings along the temple walls, around the chapel peristyle and on the
top of the tall pagoda, and every time it reminded him of the wounds his own
sweaty hands suffered as he held the rudder.
Some people had remarked to him that the job he was
doing was a devil of a way of earning a living, which was unlike that of his
forefathers, who had an easier time, as their work only required expertise and
attention to detail. Whenever he thought about it, he couldn’t help feeling
amused at the idea that if he had fled from home to a life at sea, it was
perhaps because he had no heart for a job that demanded skill.
But didn’t he use skill of his own in his work? His
eyes had to scan the wide expanse of water and tell the difference between the
reflection of the starlight and the quicksilver, glittering swathe of fish
shoals. And what of his ears? They had to stay tuned to the wind at all times,
so that as soon as it shifted its course, he’d move the rudder for the sail to
catch the most of the gust and for the sloop not to roll and lose its bearings.
Wasn’t that a job that demanded attention to detail, and expertise?
Beneath the dark night sky, squalls and rain came
forth all of a sudden. He had sailed the sloop too far away from home to be
able to go back against the stubborn gusts that kept pushing her south. He had
to tack back and forth, searching for the wind to get her closer to shore, yet
avoiding the waves that buffeted her incessantly, and this went on from dusk to
dawn until he finally could see the land and break for the shore.
He took the sloop into the eekueng little canal of
Anchor Row village.
At some distance upstream, there was a wide expanse of
fresh water where the few dozen families in the village went to bathe and draw
water. The village girls woke up before dawn to go fetch water which they
brought back in buckets balanced on long poles across their shoulders. They
walked in a group, chattering away carrying their water pails, and trudged past
the sailing boat which had taken refuge from the wind in the canal at the break
of dawn that day.
Sitting idle on the sloop which had just lowered her
sail, he looked at the last girl in the group, smaller and frailer than the
rest, yet as radiant as if she were walking on her own.
By late morning of the same day, he met her again in
the house of the headman of Anchor Row village. The squalls of the dark-sky
night had blown him towards her.
Mother’s love, when the sea was
unchanged, began beautifully – very much unlike Noi’s.
5
‘This word sent on a crystal
stand
Once read, my pet, let no one see
Let neither of your parents
On this forbidden pamphlet lay their hands’
Mother’s love at first, once the sloop had visited and
then left the little canal, feasted on amorous poems received over a whole year
from near and then from afar. And after that what was there? if not the wedding
cheers over the betel-tray ceremony, and the dazzling red of ribbons around the
offerings of sugar cane and bananas and joy-luck cakes, and around the pig’s
head, amidst the flower scents that heavily suffused the village headman’s
home, which was packed with close and distant relatives.
That same sloop woke up on the shore on the auspicious
day with her main mast turned into a rainbow of paper tassels that fluttered in
the fresh wind of the open sea.
But for Noi, her first love was like out-of-season
rain, which left her drenched without warning.
To Noi, initially, Phorn, her first husband, had been
a young, uninspiring neighbour of the same age – the age of a sea flower in
bud. In her eyes, he was just a stupid fellow, reckless and rash. Worse still,
when he took off his shirt, exposing the tattoos on his chest and back, Noi had
to turn her face away as she felt nauseated. He was an immodest son of the sea
who wore his hair down to his shoulders, dressed foppishly, and had begun to
drink and gamble even before he had reached his teens.
He liked to act up and sing love songs to her often.
Whenever she heard him sing, it reminded her of a dog howling and it set her
teeth on edge. Yet, when without warning the out-of-season rain drenched her
that paramount night and Phorn was drunk as he sang a folk song she had often
heard, he sounded so sad and forlorn that she was moved to pity.
Through his blurred, drunken drone, the song told of
the despair of a young country lad ignored by the next-door lass. Noi actually
could sing this song, as she heard it often on the portable radio her mother
had bought so she could listen to the soaps while she sliced cuttlefish, but
tonight she was pricking up her ears to see how he’d get through the lyric. His
voice came from the beach at the back of the house.
In her mind, she saw the boxer’s battered face and
heard the laughs and jeers from their seafaring neighbours.
She walked out of the house and went to him on the
beach of white sand dimly lit by the starlight falling from the dark sky.
‘Hey! Noi,’ Phorn called out. ‘Where ye goin’?’
‘Comin’ to see you, what else,’ Noi said. ‘With all
this racket you’re makin’, there ain’t no decent folk around that can get a
wink of sleep.’
He looked up at her, so close in her round-necked
blouse that left her smooth brown shoulders exposed to the caress of the
late-night breeze, which also ruffled her hair. His eyes were full of wonder
for a while, then he shouted for her to sit down and keep him company.
And it wasn’t long before, out of drunkenness, he
burst into tears as he told her how slighted and hurt he felt. Noi had never
realised he was so frail, and it made her tremble.
She didn’t love him but must have felt deep sympathy
for him, or else she wouldn’t have allowed him to trespass so far that night
under the dark sky. Noi breathed the stench of his liquor, and saw the tattoos
on his chest as clearly as the starlight allowed, as it hit the still waters
and glowed on the white sand lulling her into a dream.
6
The railway changed the
whole outlook of our seaside village, and the pier also brought new life to our
sailors.
‘There’s one! A boat’s in.’ The teenager who kept Phorn
company over glasses of iced black coffee nudged him and pointed at a blinking
blob of light in the dark sea. They both stood up at the ready.
‘Be careful now: you’ve got a sprained ankle,
remember?’ Phorn warned his friend before the two of them rushed out to the end
of the pier.
To tease the group of teenagers who sought their
livelihood there, some called them ‘the night brigade’, which through a mere
switch of consonants made you think with a smile of a famous military charge.
But when they performed their duties, the whole bunch of them did look like
warriors risking their all in combat.
They had to leap from the high pier onto every boat
that came alongside. From a distance, it looked like children jumping for fun
into the water. Not so – it was one of the best-paid jobs of the sea in the new
era.
Seashore folk in the old days would wait for the boats
to return at dawn. If it were a sloop, they’d hear its buffalo horn lowing its
greeting from afar, but if it were a powered fishing boat, they’d listen hard
to pick out the sound of the engine in the roar of the waves and bet amongst
themselves on whose boat it was. In the past, our seaside village community
would assemble every morning at the shore, where waves broke into white foam
while groups of people indulged in the benign pleasures of neighbourly
chitchat.
But now had come the era of trawlers, big modern boats
which from dawn to dusk hauled in nets full of sea creatures from the deep.
Working at night created a new breed of people who no longer had to wait for
the waxing and waning of the moon as in the past. At sunset, the boats came
back alongside the pier, making the fish market on it hectic. Sometimes there
were so many vessels they looked like an armada surrounding some strategic
cape.
The trawlers shifted the meeting place of the seaside
folk from the white beach to the concreted pier, where they talked from dusk
until the wee hours.
This new marketplace had liquor joints, restaurants
and sweet-food stalls, which kept selling until daybreak, while jukeboxes
brayed non-stop. These businesses didn’t only welcome the new breed of sailors
who had been toiling since late morning, but also fish-truck drivers,
fish-trolley pushers, fishmongers, harbour officials, casual passers-by and
most important, wholesalers, to whom all of the above-mentioned paid respect.
The job of buying and selling fish was always only done through these
middlemen, who were few in numbers on this pier.
Amongst themselves fishwives would carp at the
wholesalers, complaining that their hearts were harder to read than the monsoon
winds. Nobody knew at what price they reserved the fish for themselves nor when
that price would change, yet hundreds of fishmongers bought from the
wholesalers at the quoted price, and they just had to trust it was fair. As
soon as they saw a boat coming alongside, the middlemen would rush to the head
of the pier and compete with one another over the fish in the hold.
Trawler crews would sort out the fish and other sea
creatures they caught into separate small crates that were stacked up high in
the boat like crates of soda-pop bottles.
Each of the fishwives hired teenage boys on a regular
basis, who waited to jump from the high end of the pier onto the gunwales of
the boats, which rocked and reeled under the impact of the waves, bobbing up
and down like spooky shadows on the water. These boys had to jump onto the
boats as fast as they could and rush to reserve the best fish for the fishwives
who hired them. They formed the ‘night brigade’ of the joke, charging to
reserve fish crates.
Phorn, Noi’s first husband, was one of the night lot.
When he witnessed the tragic end of a close friend, he lost his wits so badly
he thought that, from that day, he’d give up any job that had to do with the
sea.
The night-brigade jumpers were vanguard fighters in
the war of extermination carried out against sea creatures. The excited gleam
in their eyes was like that of animals suddenly caught by torchlight in the
dark, but instead of fleeing, they rushed into the glare with wild abandon.
The blinking lights of a big, modern boat pierced the
darkness of the midnight sea, and as the boat drew closer to the head of the
pier, you could see the waves of white foam parting against its prow in tapering
folds. The hundred or so people on the pier milled about excitedly like festive
crowds watching fireworks exploding against the sky. They waited expectantly as
the coasting boat swerved to come alongside.
For the members of the night brigade, every part of
their bodies had begun to tense up as soon as the light had appeared in mid
sea. They all had the same look of metal springs wound up taut about to be
released and sent flying with hidden strength off the head of the pier, which
was resounding with the uproar of people and the roar of boat engines, and
shaken by the impact of the waves on its pillars.
The first thing the feet of the night-brigade jumpers
had to do was to get a hold on the gunwales soaked in seawater that bobbed and
pitched and rolled, slippery as hell. Next, they had to jump again, land firmly
on deck and immediately run for the piles of wooden crates stacked to way above
their heads, in order to reserve against the competition the most expensive
species or those fish that looked fresher than the rest. They made their
choices in two blinks of an eyelid.
And when an accident happened, it happened fast, like
a sudden strike of lightning that didn’t leave time to think and was over so
quickly only fear remained.
There was a thud on the boat and a splash in the water
as something heavy fell off the head of the pier and the waves closed in a
flurry of foam.
‘I can still see it in front of my eyes, Noi, you know,’
Phorn said. He closed his eyes and there was the face of his friend, with whom
he had shared iced black coffee that night.
‘It was as loud as a mighty blow from an axe on gunnels. I was already standing in the boat after we’d jumped together, and when I turned to him, he’d already gone under. He didn’t utter a sound. Must’ve landed on fish slime, so he slipped. Hurt in the foot he was, too …’ Phorn spoke in hoarse gulps. He told Noi the accident had scared him away from crazy fish