mad dogs & co (2)
Chart Korbjitti
8. otto’s footprints
“So I’ve
really got to go back home now, have I?”
Otto looked at the shop for the last time. It
slowly grew smaller and smaller and smaller still. He knew that one of these
days some time in the future, their shop would disappear from Pattaya and a
beer bar would be there instead, making him feel even more sorry for the shop,
so he turned away from it and looked at the road ahead.
He thought about what had happened in the old
days and he was shocked. It was as if it had all happened only yesterday. The
cold water in the deep well at the back of the shop still drenched his heart.
He’d remember forever the time he went there to give up heroin. And the stretch
of sand by the embankment, it was as if he had just been on it last night. But
now he was taking his leave from the shop and before long he’d have to leave
his friends. It was so damn easy.
Damn easy like when Kae had asked Nit: “How much
is the bus fare to Australia?”
“I’m really going there, you know,” Nit
insisted.
“Yeah, I know you’re going. That’s why I’m
asking you how much it costs to get there. I’ll go with you.” Kae wasn’t
through joking, even though he knew his girlfriend had sent him a plane ticket.
“Me too,” Otto told Kae.
“No you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Otto is a German name. You’ve got to go to
Germany.”
Nit was trying to talk seriously with his
friends, but he couldn’t help laughing too.
“Nit, when you go there, you take care, you
hear?”
“What the fuck about?” Nit knew what was coming,
but Kae pretended not to hear until Nit couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Care about what?”
“Because the farangs don’t speak Thai.”
“Heck, you prick. I thought you were gonna give
him good advice,” Rang swore.
“Oh but I am, you know. If it were somebody I
didn’t know, I wouldn’t bother,” Kae continued. His face was always cheerful,
even though he knew that before long his friend was leaving.
“I want to do something for myself.” Nit’s tone
was serious again.
“Don’t get too drunk. When you’re drunk, you
wobble, you know.” Kae was still kidding, to take the stress out of things.
“Think about it: we’re getting fucking older by
the day.” Nit wasn’t amused. “Picture yourself when you’re old still making
leather bags. What kinda sense will that make?”
“Like that damn Kae here, right?”
“I’m not old. It’s only that I smoke a lot.”
That was something Kae wouldn’t let by without
an apology. Otto knew this. He kept a photo of Kae. In that photo, Kae was
riding his chopper on the road, his hair flying in the wind, his eyes reduced
to dots from the strength of the wind and surrounded by millions of wrinkles.
He looked like an old woman riding a motorcycle. Kae had asked for the photo
back and had even tried to steal it, but he hadn’t succeeded. Otto saw it as
one of the few pieces of valuable property that he had. At least when he had
nothing to do, he’d ask Kae, “Does your grandmother ride a bike too?”
“What’s it got to do with smokin’?” Otto asked.
“It makes you look old, didn’t you know?” Otto
shook his head while still smiling, so Kae went on to explain: “When you smoke,
you’ve got to suck in the air, right? Makes your cheeks sunken, so you look
old.”
“Oh ho, then when you suck on a bong, you look
even older,” Rang extrapolated.
“Right, that’s even worse.”
“Then that’s enough for you, or you’ll die right
away of old age.” Otto made to pull the instrument out of Kae’s hand.
“Wait.” He pushed back his friend’s hand. “Only
this much, it won’t make me that much older.” Kae smiled, admitting that he had
made a blunder, then he bent over to strike a match to increase his bliss.
“People like us, we have no education,” Nit said
when he saw that Kae was ready to listen.
“We do,” Kae countered. “But there’s no company
to give us work.” Then he laughed.
“I think we’ve had enough fun as it is,” Nit
said ponderously as if to warn everybody.
Otto had never thought he’d hear that kind of
remark from his friend. He couldn’t think what had moved him to say this now,
even though before getting the plane ticket he had been jolly and nobody had
said anything, or was it—
“Are you fed up?” he asked Nit.
“No, how can you be fed up? But to stay like
this, we’ll fucking die laughing. Or maybe not?”
“Right,” Otto admitted. He himself stayed here
without any notion of the time that went by.
“But I’m afraid of the future, that it won’t be
as funny as it is now.”
“Let’s do it this way,” Kae said seriously. “You
go find a lot of money so when we’re old we can be together.” He ended up
laughing and both Rang and Otto laughed with him.
“I’ll rent out the shop,” Nit let out amid his
friends’ laughter. Once he had spoken it was as though he had taken a burden
off his chest.
But the burden bounced back onto his friends’
chests. They were all quiet.
“Yeah, it’s necessary.” Kae was the first to
recover. He spoke with understanding, with sympathy.
Nit could smile, now that his friends understood
him. “You can’t blame me, you know,” he told Kae.
“Heck, it’s your shop. You can do whatever you
like,” Kae told his friend so he would feel better.
“It’s not like that.”
“Yeah, I know it’s not like that.” Kae
understood.
Nit thus didn’t say anything more about the
shop.
Otto was still nonplused. It was as if going
back home you only found smoking ashes. He was bewildered, couldn’t do anything
right. He asked himself what he was going to do. He had never thought about the
future as he was still satisfied with today, thinking mistakenly that he’d stay
where he was forever, stay with his friends. This was his real home where he
was happy. He wasn’t a dependent like at home. His friends were like brothers,
were the same family. And just then, Nit spoke about this.
“Why do you want to rent out the shop?”
“I’d like to have some money to take away with
me,” reasoned Nit.
Rang sat still and kept quiet. His elder brother
had already spoken to him about this but hadn’t yet told Kae and Otto.
“Maybe, if I can find a way, I’ll send tickets
for you too.” Nit told them his dream.
“In time for my kids, do you think?” Kae asked.
The tenseness that was in their midst
disappeared at once with this question, and mirth took over instead. That night
was the first celebration of the imminent departure and there were many other
nights like that afterward.
At first it was still great fun. They helped one
another get things ready for Nit and planned to get everything finished. They
found a way to make a suitcase from a single piece of leather with as little
scraps as possible, so he could unfold it and use it as a display case. He
could also later cut it up and sew it into saleable goods. They even gave him
their silver, all kinds of bracelets, rings, earrings, saying, “For you to
sell,” “Take it, please do,” “This one, you’ll sell it only if it’s absolutely
necessary,” “Just write to us to tell us what you need,” “Don’t write to ask
for snow. I can’t send it to you.” They still joked as if nothing had happened.
The fun stopped one evening when Nit told
everybody, “I’ve rented out the shop.”
That’s when they knew their time here in Pattaya
was over.
From then on there would only be memories left,
but—there was still one night left to add to the memories of this place, so
they decided to get roaring drunk. It’d be a celebration within the family,
without any outsiders.
When the time actually came, it turned out to be
the least enjoyable drunkenness they had ever known together, each sitting
half-dead, and before long they split to go to sleep.
The morning was quiet and lonely. There were no
laughs at one another, no teasing as there used to be. Even Kae who was always
funny was withdrawn as he had never been. They each kept their things without a
word as if they were gathering their own pasts and were afraid the sound of
their voices would scare the past and make it disappear.
Otto didn’t want to believe the truth he was
seeing.
Inside the shop where goods used to hang now
there were naked walls. The shop decorations were put in boxes ready to move.
Bits of leather and other rubbish covered the floor. Whiskey bottles lay about
or hid in the corners and nobody cared.
“Far out!” said Kae in a loud voice, then lifted
the shoulder bag he had just prepared off the floor.
Nit and Rang followed suit. Otto got up too,
picked up his possessions and went out after them up to Kae’s chopper, which
was parked in front of the shop.
“Till we meet again.” Kae waved his hand to
everybody.
“Hey, wait—” Otto called out, proffering the
photo Kae wanted so much to get back. Kae took it and looked at it, then
laughed. “You fucker—you keep it.” He handed it back, then started the engine
and drove out of in front of the shop without turning round.
Otto looked at him until he disappeared and
couldn’t help but think of the first time he had met him in Patpong. More than
three years had gone by since then. He had never changed. Still the same damn
Kae. He smiled at the photo of the old woman riding a motorcycle before putting
it away safely.
Rang motioned to a passing minibus to stop. It
stopped close by and the three of them put their gear at the back. They left
the shop behind in the distance, in the growing distance.
“So I’ve really got to go back home now, have
I?” Otto asked himself.
Otto
stepped out of the taxi with his heart in his mouth. He stood hesitating in
front of the house, feeling as if he was standing in front of someone else’s
house, not daring even to lift a finger to press the bell button. Maybe it was
because he wasn’t used to this house or because he thought it was his
mother-in-law’s. He wasn’t sure but he knew that all the way here he hadn’t
felt at ease.
He looked through the wrought-iron gate, hoping
to see his father but there was no one in sight. He stood waiting for a while
then, gathering his courage, pressed the bell.
The bell hadn’t finished ringing when his
father’s youngest daughter came out running and when the little child saw his
face, she shouted out, “Brother Hippy’s here!”
“Open the door for him then,” the
mother-in-law’s voice told her.
The little child slowly approached him. Otto
looked at her with understanding. She was probably frightened by his unkempt
appearance, his moustache and beard, and hair flowing down his back. Besides,
the clothes he wore looked weird too. When she had pulled the gate lock open,
she rushed back inside. He smiled fondly then entered the perimeter of the
house, walked past a cart parked next to the fence. When he entered the house,
he put his shoulder bag on the living-room table then walked into the kitchen.
“Hello, Auntie,” he said without raising his
joined hands and bowing.
“Hi,” she said in acknowledgment before turning
her attention back to the spicy fried chicken in the pan.
As she had turned to him, Otto saw that her face
was shiny with sweat. He looked at the pan on the stove. There was much more
fried chicken than a small family could eat and there were also several pots of
soup on the table.
“Dad isn’t back yet, Auntie?”
“Not yet. Have you eaten yet?”
Then they were silent as if there was a chiasm
between them and the voices asking questions had to travel a long way before
reaching the other.
“How come you’re making so much food?”
“I sell it at the entrance of the street—so
you’ve come to visit your father?” She lifted the pan and poured the fried
chicken onto a tray.
“Yes—no. An isn’t back from school yet, is she?”
“Not yet—well, I have to go out and sell now,
otherwise I’ll miss the people leaving their work. Are you going to wait for
your father or will you be leaving too?”
“I’ll wait.”
“Then you take care of the house. I’ll take a
shower first.” She moved past Otto as he stood in the kitchen door.
“What did you bring?” she asked when she saw the
shoulder bag on the table.
“Clothes. I’m thinking of staying home.” He
tried to answer confidently, meaning to emphasize his right to stay in this
house, even though he had no confidence at all.
She was startled a little but didn’t say
anything and went up the stairs.
Otto hadn’t been back in a long time so he
didn’t know that his mother-in-law was selling food in the evening to find
supplementary income for her family and he didn’t know either that usually she
washed in the downstairs bathroom. If he had taken the liberty to go up and
see, he’d have seen her lock herself in the bedroom.
When she had finished washing, she came down.
“It’s good you’re back with us. Your father
won’t worry anymore. He’s always complaining about you.” She sort of smiled at
him before going into the kitchen again.
Otto helped his mother-in-law to lift the pots
and the tray of food onto the cart and he watched her push the cart away, her
daughter in her wake.
What he saw made him feel better. At least she
didn’t rely on his father to eat, as he used to think. He stood watching for a
while then went back into the house.
‘If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you.’
He didn’t feel familiar with this house as he
had in the house where he was born. He hadn’t stayed overnight more than ten
times since his father had moved here. Being alone now, he felt all the more
estranged, uneasy as if all the walls had eyes watching him. Luckily there was
still a large picture on one of the walls. It was a photograph of a beach with
an empty sea. It helped to dispel his unease to some extent. His father had
told him that picture had come with the house, he had had a choice of views and
he had chosen the view of a beach.
He thought his father occasionally must rest his
eyes upon it. At least there was the sea to look at, to forget the stuffiness
of the small room for a while, because the house didn’t have a view of trees
and fields like the old house did. Here there was only a small yard up front.
What could you do with it when even a cart was more than enough to fill it? But
his father had planted a creeper around the fence to make it look pleasantly
green. It was a pity he had to come to live in a small place like this.
‘And all because of me.’
Yes. If he hadn’t made trouble, his father
wouldn’t have had to sell the house to settle the case against him and move to
the townhouse. He didn’t know how many more years his father would have to pay
installments before he became its owner. His father would have to keep on
working and scrounging to meet the payments on the house. Because of him alone.
Otto thought that if his mother-in-law had to go
out to sell food, it was probably because of him. Because of him alone
everybody was in a bind.
But he could only think of it, he didn’t know
how he could help. He didn’t even know what to do with his own life. With no
other place to stay, he had to come back home, to be a burden to his father
again.
Since his departure from the house many years
ago, he had been a vagrant and in and out of jail, but eventually he had to
come crawling back with nowhere else to go.
‘And what did you get from it all?’ he chastised
himself.
The question made him feel depressed. No
strength, no hope in life. Exhausted, he did not know how to console or cure
himself.
Right then, his heart was seized with cruelty
against himself, digging up all the vile things he had done, turning them into
weapons to hurt himself with, as if it wasn’t his own heart, to wrestle with
melancholy, looking at himself as a bad person, as someone worthless,
despicable. In his head, there were the words ‘should’ and ‘if’ going around in
circles over scenes that couldn’t be called back.
‘You should’ve been willin’ to learn.’
‘If only you hadn’t shot him.’
‘You should’ve believed your father.’
‘If only you didn’t hate your mother-in-law.’
His feelings now made him think of the first
night he had spent in jail. It was still very vivid in his memory. That night
he had slept in his tears. The only difference was that now he couldn’t cry.
‘You bastard, why do you torture yourself like
this?’
‘Why? How much are you prepared to suffer? Don’t
you love yourself at all?’
‘You still hate yourself. Then who will you ask
to love you?’
It was that voice that called on Otto to stop
hurting himself.
‘You prick, why are you afraid of life?’
‘Say that again, will you. That you didn’t get
anythin’ back. That day when you left the house, you hardly had any money. How
much have you got now that you’re back? How many clothes did you have when you
left? Now you’ve brought back a whole shoulder bag. When you were out of the
house, how much did you spend on your food? You were able to take care of
yourself, weren’t you? You’ve known people, you’ve known their characters,
you’ve had real friends as well; then what else do you want? You’ve got plenty.
You didn’t steal, you didn’t cheat, you didn’t extort anythin’ from anyone, but
you managed by yourself. Plus, you learned how to make bags for a livin’. Why
don’t you look at things in this light? You only think negatively, minus, minus
all the time. Sure there are some minuses. But there’s nothin’ that’s only
negative. At least you got back some experience. Believe me. Start all over
again.’
Then the dam of dejection burst into an overflow
of confidence and energy.
‘Yes, I have to start all over again.’
Otto thought he should start again by making
bags, start again with something he knew how to do; he didn’t have to ask for
anyone’s help.
He heaved a sigh of relief that he had got over
that hurdle. He thought he’d like to take a shower to feel nice and put on new
clothes, but as he was about to take a towel out of his bag the bell rang.
Otto left his bag, went out and saw his father,
who stood smiling. He went straight to open the gate of the fence then raised
his hands and bowed.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi.”
Otto felt like he was a child again because of
his father’s hand ruffling his hair lightly. Even if it was for a brief moment,
it filled his heart with warmth. This feeling told him his father was welcoming
him back home with love.
“Auntie told me you were back for good.”
“Yes,” he answered softly before unlatching the
gate.
“That’s good. Stayin’ together. I won’t have to
worry anymore.” He smiled at his son then walked up to the house.
“How are you, Dad?” Otto asked as his father
took off his shirt and hung it up.
“Fine.” Satisfaction showed on his father’s
face. “How about you, Ort?” he asked as he walked to sit down on the sofa
across from Otto.
“I’m fine,” Otto answered with reserve. He
wasn’t sure “fine” had the same meaning for his father and for him but he told
himself he wasn’t fibbing to his father because in Pattaya he had been fine as
he understood it.
“How are your friends at the shop?” There was
concern in his father’s voice.
“They were okay, Dad, but now we’ve gone our
separate ways so I don’t know how they are.”
“Separated? Why’s that?”
“My friend who owns the shop is goin’ abroad, so
he leased out the shop and took the money to invest over there.”
His father nodded, but he was still suspicious.
“You didn’t quarrel, did you?” he asked earnestly.
“Not at all. We’ve never quarreled over this.”
Otto knew what his father meant.
“There’s nothin’, Dad. We got along well,” Otto
repeated.
“Well then. Friends, you know, shouldn’t fight
over money. It isn’t worth it.”
Otto didn’t understand why his father kept
insisting on this, why he felt so strongly about it.
“How long has Auntie been sellin’ food, Dad?”
“Five or six months, I think.”
“Is she doin’ well?”
“Well enough. It pays for food and for sweets
for your sisters.”
Otto noticed that his father’s voice tired as he
talked about this, so he didn’t ask anything more about it but he didn’t know
what else to talk about. If he were to tell him about his life in Pattaya, his
father probably wouldn’t get the picture, and if he were to ask his father
about his work, he knew nothing about that. If they were to talk about the
family, it’d bring back the past again. It made him feel that both his father
and he lived each in his own world, so far apart that communication was
impossible.
“And what about you? What are you gonna do,
Ort?” his father asked.
“Er—I’ve got some money left. I think I’ll make
bags to sell.” Otto answered his father with confidence. It was lucky that a
few minutes ago he had found the answer for himself.
Tonight
was the first night slept alone away from friends. There was no chatting and
joking about as there used to be. And tonight there was no alcohol or marijuana
to lull him to sleep easily. If he was still with his friends, at this time of
night it’d be still early. They’d sit by the embankment and go through as much
booze and dope as there was. Thinking about it, he felt he was missing
something.
‘Grass.’
Now it was as though there was a signal coming
out to warn him, telling him it was time, that today his body hadn’t received
its share of this kind of food. It was a soft warning to begin with but it soon
grew louder to the point that it became the only sound in his head. It told him
that if he took a toke or two as he lay listening to music it’d be much more
enjoyable, he could distinguish the sound of each instrument, become at one
with the rhythm and enjoy himself until he felt sleepy and fell soundly asleep.
He became irritated when he thought he should
have some before sleeping.
All the time he was in Pattaya, Otto told
himself that he wasn’t addicted. It was merely to go with the booze. When he
had enough of the boisterous drunkenness of alcohol, he’d go to it to impede
drunkenness and smooth it over to make it judicious and reflective. On nights when
he wanted to be energetic, he didn’t go to it. He didn’t smoke it every day as
if his life depended on it. Compared to the others, he still thought of himself
as an amateur.
But he had never thought the amateur would want
it now at a time when there was none. It might be because when there was some,
he thought he might have it any time so he didn’t feel irritated and want it.
He thought about going out to buy some booze to
subdue his craving and get rid of the feeling for good, but when he reminded
himself that he had told himself earlier that evening he had to start all over
again, he decided he should start with this.
This was not Pattaya. This was his father’s
house. Think about how his father would feel if he went out of the house at
this time of night to get some booze and returned drunk while everybody was
asleep.
Maybe his father wouldn’t say anything because
he was a grownup now and he had earned his money, but Otto was sure his father
would be unhappy to see him like this.
He had made his father unhappy enough in the
past as it was.
‘There isn’t any, for fuck’s sake!’ Otto shouted
at it.
But it still wouldn’t believe him and kept
bothering him. The more he paid attention to it, the more it went on demanding,
like a child pestering with endless questions, and it was only when his heart
stopped listening that it quieted down.
Tonight Otto fell asleep because he was truly
sleepy, not because of drunkenness like all the nights before.
But he had reason to wake up before dawn. A
stomach upset kicked him out of bed to rush to the bathroom in the nick of
time, drowsy though he was. As he sat in the toilet, he asked himself why this
was. He had eaten ordinary food the previous evening, and it was well-cooked
and there shouldn’t have been anything foul to force him to get up like this.
Once out of the bathroom, he shuffled back to
the bedroom and went back to sleep without having found an answer.
He woke up again when he heard a knock on the
door, staggered to it and opened it, and saw his father already dressed for
work.
“Take this, in case you need it.” His father was
proffering a five-hundred-baht bill.
“Enough, Dad. I’ve got enough.” Otto pushed back
his father’s hand.
“Keep it, in case you need to buy somethin’
extra.” His father was still insisting.
“I’ve got plenty.” Otto would not accept the
money. His father should spend the money on the family. “You keep it, Dad. If I
haven’t got enough, I’ll let you know.”
“If you need somethin’, you tell me, okay?” His
father looked at his son fondly.
After his father had left the house, Otto
prepared to go out and buy things. He decided that in the afternoon he’d start
working but just after he had finished eating, even before he stepped out of
the house, his belly started aching again.
.‘The fucking ganja, what else?’ he told
himself.
His body had started protesting its needs. At
this point, if he was weak with it, it’d become his master. If his mind wouldn’t
allow it, it wouldn’t have the power to pressure him more than this. So he
stopped paying attention to it.
He went out to buy leather and the tools he
needed, then went back to try his hand at making a bag in the afternoon. It was
needle work that didn’t require the use of a machine. He went about it the way
he had learned and didn’t have any problems.
Otto took over part of the living room as his
working area. There was a small radio to keep him company. Now there were no
stories about who had done what the previous evening, there were no bursts of
laughter, there were no friends.
Inside the house, even though his mother-in-law
was there, it was as if there was no one there. The house had been split into
two parts. The first was Otto’s domain; there was a piece of leather on a
chopping block and a cutting board spread out to delimitate his area. The
second was inside the kitchen, which was the domain of his mother-in-law. These
two domains were next to each other, but it was as though there had been no
contact between them for a million years.
There was only the sound of the cutting tools
talking with the sizzle of the food being cooked. Neither of them asked “Ort?
How come you go to the bathroom so often?” or “Auntie, what are you cooking
today?”
Finally Otto had to intrude into the domain of
his mother-in-law.
“Auntie, is there something I can eat?” he asked
uneasily.
“See for yourself,” she answered coldly.
He felt embarrassed because the food was his
mother-in-law’s but hunger compelled him to help himself to some, which he went
to eat in his own space. True, this was his father’s house but it didn’t mean
he could claim the right to help himself to her food because she had to buy it
with her own money.
Otto decided that if he could sell the bags,
he’d put some of the money aside to pay for food. In this way, at least he
wouldn’t feel embarrassed every time he opened the lid of the rice pot. But for
the time being, he had to pay her back with his own labor.
So he helped her put the pots and trays of food
onto the cart without her having to ask and opened the gate for her, as if they
had never been on bad terms.
“Take care of the house too.” She smiled at him.
This was the first time he saw her smile since
he had stepped into the house.
“I will,” he answered with unprecedented
politeness. He closed the fence door then went back inside to work.
By the end of the afternoon, the first bag was
finished. With a little decoration on the front, it would be ready for sale. He
hung it on the wall and didn’t pay any more attention to it but instead busied
himself cutting out a new one. He had decided to make all the bags first and
then to decorate them all in one go.
When his father came back he saw the bag and
took if off the wall, turned it this way and that as if he couldn’t believe his
eyes. Otto stole a glance at his father, wondering what he was thinking.
“You’re good, son.”
By the way his father was looking at him, Otto
knew he hadn’t spoken lightly. That one word was so easy to use. Others would
think it didn’t mean much at all, but for him right then it meant a lot. What
was also important was that it was his father saying so. At least, the time
that had gone by had not been wasted, as he had thought.
Otto went on working and he had the impression
that his father was observing his every move.
His father picked up an awl and asked, “What’s
this for?”
“To make holes with.”
“How much does one cost?”
His father began to learn by asking many
questions and in the following days his hands began to help sew and braid under
the son’s instructions. Some nights, his father sat keeping him company until
late, eager to see his son’s work finished.
It had been a long time since Otto had been
close to his father.
If he hadn’t wasted his time in Pattaya, he
wouldn’t have had the opportunity to spend his time warmly as he did now.
Thinking about it, he felt like thanking Nit for making Pattaya go bust. If
not, he’d have been sorry afterward when he found out that in life there was
time like this as well.
He didn’t want his father to break his back
working with him. His father should be resting and taking it easy because he
worked all day already, but he insisted on helping out. Eventually Otto stopped
working in the evening, but his father wouldn’t give in and kept asking every
night, “Is there anything to sew?” “Is there anything to plait?”
Within less than two weeks, Otto was close to
his father as he had been in his childhood. The image of his father as he had
understood him while he was still immature was gone for good.
Otto began to get used to the new house, to
adjust himself to a new life. Everyday now he woke up early, feeling bright,
not fuzzy or hung over, no longer partaking of intoxicants, whether booze or
dope, even though he yearned for them sometimes but not to the point of doing
whatever it took to get them, and lately his diarrhea had gone and he was back
to normal again.
But the one thing he still missed was his
friends. He thought about them every night.
He decided that if he could sell the first batch
of bags, he’d go and spend one night with Kae, to ease his nostalgia.
“This is
excellent, you know, taokae*. All sewn by hand. Handmade,
that’s what the farangs like.”
“I no want. My shop sell to Thai only.”
“…”
“Why don’t you use a sewing machine? It’d look
more regular.”
“…”
“These days hand-sewn is out of fashion. Where
have you been, young man?”
“…”
“I can’t. If I took ’m, I couldn’t sell ’m.”
“…”
Shop after shop refused his bags. Everything he
had hoped dissolved. He wouldn’t go to stay at Kae’s house. His mother-in-law
wouldn’t get any money for his food. He had thought he’d bring money back home
for his father to feel proud, and here he was, a country bumpkin taking his
bags back again. He didn’t know what to do next, now that he had cut all the
leather he had bought to make bags of the same style.
But what hurt him most was when a shop owner
asked him, “Where have you been, young man?”
Back home, he buried himself quietly in his
room, feeling ashamed and unwilling to see anyone, afraid of being asked about
the failure he had suffered all day.
Even though when dark came his back rested on
his bed, his eyes wouldn’t shut, as he felt worried about the future. By now
his investment money was gone and he was left with only a few baht in his
pocket. He had no way of turning around and starting something else.
He compared himself with Thai, before Thai
opened his food shop. The last time he had come to see them in Pattaya, he had
a structure, he had a definite plan, he knew how to bide his time, but he had
no such thing in his head. He wished he had studied the situation before
starting to work, so he wouldn’t be in such confusion now.
He had only thought that what used to sell would
still sell forever. This was another place altogether, the customers were
different.
It served him right to be asked, “Where have you
been, young man?”