the path of
the tiger
(Thang Suea, 1989)
By the same author :
Blood buds
A traffic-wise couple
Translated by Phongdeit Jiangphatthana-kit and
Marcel Barang
Go to chapter 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - Postscript
preface
When I finished writing this book, I felt relieved. On
the one hand, it seemed that my thoughts were no longer tied down; on the
other, some problems in my life began to recede, even though they were not
necessarily solved. Maybe this is because these days, when I start writing, I
feel the need to talk to others about some topics I have investigated on my
own, to determine whether my analyses are correct.
A dear friend of mine, a
professional writer whose talent is widely recognized, once suggested that,
given our age and experience, we should set ourselves the lofty aim of
addressing the world. For such an insignificant person as myself, to do so
would be highly conceited indeed, yet I have genuine respect both for my
friend and for his suggestion, and I wish that someone will act on it.
The problems I mentioned
above are of a personal nature and common to all ordinary people – being
greedy and selfish, refusing to acknowledge one’s own mistakes and blaming
them on others instead, shirking responsibilities, complaining about trifles,
refusing to face the truth and shying away from confrontation.
Another important factor
that inspired me to write this book is that I spent several years of my life
trekking from the South to the Northeast and then to the North, wading
through countless jungles, mountains and waterways, and this is still vivid
in my mind. Today, time and a technology-oriented urban society are increasingly
compelling me to let go of these memories. The “love” the wild jungle inspired
in me is fast receding. The fear that, before long, all this would disappear
from my memory has prompted me to put pen to paper.
As I have said, this is
only a story I would like to discuss with others. Some may disagree, both about
the thoughts expressed and about the way they are expressed. This is their
right, which I must accept and respect in every way.
In friendship,
Sai Mai, April 1989
1. towards the jungle curtain
The torrential rain which had been pouring before daybreak
as if the heavens were leaking had abated and then stopped, but the
dawn sky was still overcast. Raindrops clung to the branches of the Siamese
sindora tree and tapped on the leaves of the papaya trees by the brook.
Branches and twigs stirred in the universal silence as if the tension from
above wasn’t over yet.
The young man sitting with
his legs stretched across the threshold of the bamboo hut leaned out to look
beyond the eaves at the sky above the brook. He carefully wiped the butt of his
muzzle-loading rifle with a loincloth. A touch of unease briefly blurred the
hope in his eyes. All the things he needed were laid out around him. The rifle
was already loaded with saltpetre and pellets, so he prepared himself to go
out. He took the horn of saltpetre, the tin box containing pellets and
buckshot, and the dry bamboo-fibre tow, and put them one at a time in his haversack
as if he were inspecting and counting them.
“It’s going to rain again…
Hurry back home before you catch cold,” the young woman who was cooking on the
veranda shouted out at him. She got up and came to him, put some rice tightly
wrapped in banana leaf in his haversack and craned her neck to look through the
doorframe at the little boy and girl who slept huddled under a tired blanket
spread out sideways in a corner of the room.
“It’s so cold with all this
rain! You sure the caps didn’t get wet?” the young woman asked, stroking her
arms and looking at the gun. This made him hesitate. He lifted the zinc breech
to examine the trigger, and after a while flipped it shut and placed the gun
down flat on the floor. He took the tin box out of the haversack and inspected
the caps. The flakes of red paper were streaked with rows of black blobs the
size of match heads. He put them out to dry by the fire, just to make sure.
“Take good care of the
kids, with all this rain…” His voice was deep and soft. He adjusted his haversack
and grabbed his rifle, ready to start on his journey.
“If I’m late tonight, wait
for…” He checked himself in time. Hunters have long held that they must always
be ready and on the alert but should never anticipate – it brings bad luck.
The sky strained to bear its burden of pregnant
clouds, which drifted along and clung to the mountain peaks. It was
odd. When you were in the middle of a cloud, you couldn’t see its shape; it was
like moving through fog without seeing it. He was now climbing but was only
conscious of the immediate slope, which was densely covered with a variety
of bamboo groves. A little later, he came to a wide plain carpeted with all
sorts of tall tropical trees tied up in a tangle of vines and creepers.
Although he was not a
professional hunter – he had fled from the village in order to avoid confrontation
with certain people over certain events – his life deep in the mountains for
the better part of a year spent foraging for food had forced him to quickly
learn how to make the best of the jungle. At the beginning of the rainy
season, wild olives turned a ripe yellow and, on nights of heavy rain, they
fell and scattered about on the ground, releasing a sweet, heady fragrance which
enticed the barking deer and made their mouths water. They took great pains
parting the thin pulp from the acid, astringent peel. Once they had
swallowed, the saliva in their bulging jowls was exquisitely sweet. On those
mornings, the ravenous deer would come out and lurk around the olives, and you
had to find a tree to stalk them from for a fair shot.
He was now making his way
through spongy, slimy soil. The cracking leaves of the dry season had gathered
on the ground and were rotting, releasing musty scents on their way back to compost
and plain earth. Hunters preferred the rainy season. When they crept closer to
their prey, they did not have to be as cautious as during the dry months. Then,
they had to hold their breath and try to avoid the tiniest crack of dry leaf or
snap of twig underfoot that would alert the animal. The air was torrid and the
constant breeze carried the faintest smell, even the whiff of a wild rose.
During the monsoon season, ripe fruit, bamboo shoots and young grass lured the animals
to venture out of their prowling grounds. Ferment smells, light scents and the
sustained babble of a brook covered up the approach of the hunter until he saw
his target clearly and could pull the trigger certain that he would not miss.
On the flat ridge, he
slowed down, cautious of where he put his feet, his eyes constantly on the
lookout, sweeping left and then right to widen his field of vision. He was
wary of the slightest shudder of leaves. If a hunter’s weapon is essential, so are
a sharp sight and an ear sensitive to the merest noise.
As he trod past a bush full
of wet leaves, he pushed aside a tangle of creepers and triggered a downpour
of droplets from on high. His clothes were drenched. He was taking care that
his weapon wouldn’t get wet and jam. With his left hand, he kept the muzzle
pointed to the ground, and his right hand was wrapped around the breech, which
protected the trigger and the caps.
A barking deer has the colour
of a russet cow in the middle of a field, the size
of an average Thai dog, the legs and snout of a deer, but horns only two to
three inches long. Its meat is as good as that of a fully grown calf – better
even, come to think of it, given the difficulty in coming by it. And it fills
your stomach meal after meal, he thought with longing.
“Oh, no! What a fool!” he
groaned, confused and incensed at himself. Some hunter! He had come out
meaning to shoot a deer, but had mindlessly loaded his rifle with pellets
instead of buckshot.
It looked as though the jungle
had begun to change again and was breathing. In the dry season, the leaves
turned every nuance of vivid yellow and red, and the ground was strewn with
ochre-coloured ones. Some trees lost all their foliage and bared all their
branches and twigs, only to sprout pale-green buds, as if they had discarded
old clothes to put on a new garb. From the outside and at a distance, the
nature of the change was difficult to assess; trekking through the jungle
brought only perplexity. The flat expanse of the ridge, once bare, was now
covered with ferns and wild grass which had crept down in a wide crescent. It
had been raining on the track, and the leaves and plant growth had almost completely
erased it. The ferns, which disappeared during the dry season, proliferated
as their newly sprouted fronds drank the dew above the ground. The familiar
jungle had changed more than he could recall.
From the walking time and
thanks to some tall trees he remembered, he reckoned he would soon reach the
mountain pass. The wide flat stretch of the ridge gradually narrowed into a
clearly defined crest. Right there stood a huge Indian rubber tree, whose
trunk would have taken three or four men to girdle, next to a dead Siamese sindora
tree, which leaned to the left and projected into the sky its black and rotten
branches. On both sides of the crest, tiny rivulets burrowed down the slopes
and turned into deep ravines further down. When he reached the spot where he
had figured he would find his bearings, he saw that some branches of the
sindora tree had fallen and lay over a tangle of crushed undergrowth.
He chose a stub of rubber-tree roots to sit on and
rest awhile. He leaned his gun against the trunk, pulled out his cloth belt and
wiped the sweat off his face and arms. He got out his tobacco pouch, an old bag
of saline solution, and took a pinch of tobacco and a piece of dry banana leaf
from it to roll himself a cigarette.
“Luck, that’s what I need,”
he mumbled to himself. He slowly exhaled the smoke through his nostrils and
gazed at the blanket of mist that smothered the trees in the distance. He had
shot only one barking deer in his life. Highland cultivation of rice, corn, eggplant,
gourds, cucumbers and chillies left him little leisure, except to hunt for
birds, rats and squirrels and to fish in the brook by the hut.
“The poor creature must
have been blind,” his wife had said in jest as they helped each other cut up
the barking deer.
“No way. Ex-pert-ise!” he
had protested solemnly.
“You bet.” His wife had
looked at him teasingly. Her white, smooth cheeks shone and sweat glistened
through the roots of her hair. She squatted on the floor, her sarong taught on
her haunches. She held the knife firmly and sliced the meat in rhythmic strokes
that made her full bosom shake.
“Well, if it weren’t for my
expertise, how did you get a chance to hug and lull these two?”
“Silly man!” Her cheeks had
taken on the colour of ripe euphorbia.
He stubbed out his cigarette and threw it away. Smiling
to himself, thinking of his two children, his own flesh and blood and fount of
hope. Their innocent vitality led him to hug and play with them time and
again, and he enjoyed himself so much he forgot his own worries, woes and
weariness. They were growing up, and had been eating rice with vegetables
for days, like cows or buffalo. Be patient, little ones, just wait for dad.
A mysterious power swelled
in his chest, prompting him to get up and grab his rifle. He climbed down a
small water gully to his left leading to a tiny brook trapped in a ravine,
broke through a thick grove with sharp thorns and leaves as large as palms and
fought his way out to climb a hillock on the other side. The jungle was dark
and gloomy as at dusk and the weather alarmingly cold. The wild olive tree was
ahead.
He chose a thick bamboo
grove to hide in. There was no wind. He had a clear view of the trunk of the
olive tree and the ground around it. He could see nothing out of the ordinary,
no sudden movement. To wait patiently is the duty of the hunter, who controls
the situation. Preparation gave him superiority in terms of weaponry and location.
He had to quell all tension and let his heart brim with hope and energy as he
waited for the prey to move into the line of fire.
He had no idea how much
time went by. Kept changing his position, standing up and stretching, then
crouching and looking around. His knee joints ached, spasms shook his thighs
and pins and needles crept up to his calves. The drizzling rain hissed on the
leaves overhead. He gazed up and became furious at the empty ground in front
of him. His patience at an end, he made up his mind, took a few hasty steps to
the base of the olive tree and looked around but damn it! even old traces of
the deer were not to be found.
“You sucker! Tough luck,”
he growled at himself.
A web of small raindrops
clung to his arms. Tiny gnats bit into his scalp under his damp hair, making
him feel damn itchy. Their bite was toxic and some spots on his face would
later turn into sores. This made him all the more upset. Today he should have
stayed at home and cut down some bamboo stems and cleaved them into strips to
plait baskets. Why did he have to trek the jungle, getting drenched for nearly
half a day only to return empty-handed? But then, he had the excuse hunters everywhere
console themselves with: the animal he was after wasn’t tied to a tree…
As he was shilly-shallying,
wondering what to do next, a squirrel called out from the bamboo grove in
front of him. He was on to it in a jiffy. The smallish grey animal was racing
up and down the stems, out of fright or sheer exultation he couldn’t tell, its
low-pitched calls resounding in the silence. He placed the barrel against the
tree and held it there with his left hand so that it wouldn’t sway, opened the
zinc bridge to expose the trigger and firmed up the butt against his shoulder.
His left knee pressed against the tree to prevent his body from swerving as he
stood on his taut right leg. The rifle’s sights were merely a circular piece
of iron stuck above the muzzle. It wasn’t that easy to pull the trigger with
the right index and hit the target. You had to wait for the prey to calm down
and stay still.
He was lucky that he had
loaded his rifle with pellets. Pellets are suitable for small targets, as they
disperse over a wide area, whereas buckshot can tear off more than half of the
body of a small animal. Even a little meat and some bones was better than
nothing. Their fishy smell and sweet taste when boiled into a broth with some
gourd would make it easy for the kids to gorge themselves on rice until their
bellies bulged.
The squirrel had calmed
down and clung to a bamboo stem, flicking its head hither and thither. He
aimed the barrel at the bushy-tailed target. He had it well in his rifle’s
sights, but as he held his breath and began to pull the trigger, the cooing of
an imperial pigeon resounded from the valley to his right and blew his
concentration.
His rifle was still aimed
at the target, but the expression in his eyes had changed. Squirrels are full
of bones, and to make them palatable, you have to chop and pound them into tiny
pieces. An imperial pigeon is almost as big as a fully grown chicken. Its
breast is a big chunk of white meat and its taste far superior to that of a
squirrel. Stir-fried with liberal doses of salt and chilli and served with
steaming hot rice… Or should he take care of this one first? The shot would
wake up the whole jungle and send all of the animals scurrying.
“Lucky you,” he mumbled,
with a nod to the squirrel. He lowered the barrel and moved away from the tree
in a crouch. He carefully put his feet down sideways, the outer part of his
soles supporting his body weight, and stealthily progressed towards the cooing.
There seemed to be more
than one bird. After listening carefully, he could tell there must be two of
them. He thought loosely of the parable of ‘killing two birds with one stone’,
and hoped they’d be wooing and cooing next to each other in loving oblivion.
The pellets would scatter in a wide circle of thrusting steel and swiftly fell
the birds. One would be fried with chillies, the other chopped into spicy
minced meat. His eyes widened and his heart swelled in his chest.
Right there stood a banyan
tree whose thick bushy leaves and dangling vines were a curtain for the rifle
barrel and roving eyes of a hunter. He reached the shield of a cycas palm tree.
The dark-brown birds hid somewhere in a dim recess. He inspected the branches
and twigs one by one as if he were counting the leaves. How could they possibly
have escaped?
Suddenly, there was a
fleeting motion and he was instantly aware of it. He strained his eyes to try
and distinguish the birds from their hiding shadow, then raised the barrel high
up and placed it in the fork of a palm. Just right! But what the h-- It was as
if the Lord of the Jungle was playing tricks on him, for now came a
high-pitched pek-pek call which echoed throughout the valley. The call
of a barking deer!
He stopped to listen and
knew roughly that it came from the high ridge in front of him. He smiled
brightly. Delight prompted him to stride in the direction of the trunk of a
banyan tree, the path which offered the best cover. Excitement made his heart
pound and his chest expand. Joy made his blood course and his ears burn. He now
had to choose: climb up to find the deer or entice it into the path of his
rifle. In a frantic flapping of wings, the imperial pigeons fled in fright. He
had completely forgotten about them: they did not have even half as much meat
as a single leg of a barking deer.
Finally, he chose the trunk
of the banyan tree as his place to wait.
The pek-pek call
meant that it was a female. A male’s bark is more raucous, something like poak-poak.
He plucked a young leaf and put it under his tongue. With the tightly pressed
thumb and index of each hand he stretched the corners of his mouth and blew
through the leaf, producing a piercing peep-peep sound which was a convincing
imitation of a fawn’s call.
A mother deer might think
her fawn had got lost, and generosity, the common bond of all species, might
also prompt a virgin female deer to come out. Experienced hunters, especially
the Hmong, often use this method, and it often works. Nothing can fool the
heart to death more effectively than the lure of caring love – a beautiful
feeling universally acknowledged, a chain wrought over time with myriad ties
of gentle warmth. In moments such as these, alarm, suspicion, even the
survival instinct are forsaken.
It seems cruel to use such
a method, but what kind of hunter is it who will not use tricks and stratagems
to lure the prey into a snare of death and instead will take time to ponder
‘Thou shalt not kill’ before trying his hand?
The faint sound of leaves
being rent and munched and of wet twigs snapping on the ground came from way up
there, gradually moving down and growing louder. He smiled widely and had to
prevent himself from laughing out loud – it was so unexpectedly easy. He
grabbed his rifle, carefully searched for a clear line of fire and aimed at
the approaching noise. Small bushes shook here and there in a row. He cocked
the trigger, which clicked into place, and waited. When the russet colour came
into view, he blocked his rifle against his shoulder and held the barrel
firmly. He closed his left eye tightly, and with the right still saw the breast
of the animal above the rifle’s sights.
The deer was as big as a
fat Thai dog. He wondered whether the small pellets would be powerful enough
to down the owner of such delicious meat. In his excitement, he had made a
blunder, failing to notice one of his feet rested on a rotten branch, and in
the very second he began to worry, the branch broke. The deer swung its head
up in fright. This was his last chance. His right index promptly pulled the
trigger.
The gunshot ripped the
silence and reverberated endlessly throughout the jungle in humming echoes
that swirled around among the trees like rolling waves. A curtain of blue-grey
smoke spread and blurred his vision. In the diffuse light, he saw the barking
deer totter and collapse, only to leap up and dart for dear life back to the
ridge.
He jumped out of his hiding
place and ran as fast as he could after it, lest it should move out of sight.
Heavy rains pummelling the mountain slope had made the earth soft and loose,
and he slipped and lost his footing and tumbled time and again. When he finally
reached the top of the ridge, he realized that his rifle was unloaded and no
more harmful than a stick. Signs of the deer’s injury were plain to see: the
ferns it had trampled were crushed at ground level, and the slanted clumps of
grass showed the way it had taken… Well, let’s see how good you are!
He carefully loaded his
rifle with saltpetre, taking his time, then selected buckshot. This time, he
wasn’t going to miss.
2. in high spirits
“Where could it possibly escape to?” he said and smirked.
His eyes followed the track of bent clumps of grass and splotches of blood on
the wet blades. He stood panting, tired, his face flushed with elation.
Given that he was now an
owner intent on taking hold of his property after investing so much effort in
the chase, he couldn’t allow anything to deflect him from his aim but had to
go straight for what he was hankering for and then hold on to it. In this
situation, his peerless superiority gave him the upper hand. The animal was
injured, fleeing mindlessly, and furthermore it had no claws. The agility
bestowed on it by nature to ensure its survival was now impaired, and the signs
of its flight from death were in evidence all over the crushed leaves.
There was no time to stop
and assess everything in sight. He left behind the concentration, memory and
ever-watchful eyes of the jungle trekker as he hastily strode along the trail.
From the ridge, he went
down to a small water trough and skirted it upstream until he reached a mass
of huge trees. The slanted wild grass still showed the path of flight. He held
his rifle tightly and thought of juicy, tender meat and the smiles on his
children’s ruddy cheeks as he cut across the flat, airy ridge. The sky above
was wide but the ground was smothered with dwarfish bushes of smelly composite
plants. His eyes searched for the trail hid amid the bushes. He drew his pocketknife
out of its sheath and began to cut his way through. It looked like the injured
animal was now smart enough to slow down his progress.
‘There should be a place
where it collapsed and stayed to rest awhile.’ He began to get annoyed at the
thick wild bushes, which extended downward with no end in sight. ‘Or maybe it
wasn’t wounded critically?’He’d hate to find himself in a position of
inferiority which would leave him totally hopeless.
Gathering his strength, he
went about thrashing wildly at the composite bushes. The fresh trail of bloodstains
which were stuck to their leaves encouraged him to move ahead tirelessly. When
he had extricated himself from the maze of composites, he walked across a
grove of wild banana trees and then skirted a teeny gurgling brook which
disappeared into a jumble of pinnate palm trees and ferns. The damp earth was
covered with curly-tipped polypody and thick-fronded fern. The trail was still
clear and cut right across the bushes of yet another ridge.
The certainty of possession
and the way to secure it were his final goals, which washed away his weariness
like rain sweeps away topsoil. Although his breathing was laboured and his
throat gave out raspy grunts, his two legs still strode ahead firmly. How much
time had gone by, how many brooks, how many ridges, he didn’t give it a
thought.
The high ridge he now
scaled bore a thick jumble of trees. Round fruits plated with sharp, thick
spikes lay about on the ground over a wide area. The green leaves, twigs and branches
of each tree stretched out and intertwined in a tight cluster which looked
almost like a roof. Even the rays of the sun couldn’t seep through and reach
down to fondle the ground, which grew only tiny grass and a few creepers. Vines
as big as his arms clasped and coiled round the trunks, whose spotted bark had
streaks of green moss. Climbers thrust up as high as they could.
He was panting heavily and
his whole body was trembling. His eyes and rifle were searching for the
trail, which had begun to fade. He felt suddenly dejected, but when he looked
up, the russet-coloured creature was leaning against a tree in front of him at
some distance. It too was panting out of exhaustion, its flanks heaving
furiously, its ribs well outlined.
The trigger was cocked with
a click. Survival instinct made the animal swirl around. His hands were
trembling and the barrel shook as he raised it to aim. A mere glimpse at him
and the deer darted out at full speed. The failure made him fume as he
carefully released the pressure on the trigger and went staggering after his
prey.
“You bitch!” he growled,
jaws clenched.
Injured animals usually
choose to escape by cutting across a ridge and romping down some ravine
instead of stampeding along the crest. Pursuit demands much energy from the
hunter, who may end up with disjointed knees. Clambering down the squishy,
slippery slope made him lose his footing and stumble, and he had to grab at
tree trunks and branches to recover his balance. His legs wobbled and pain tore
at his ankles. He awkwardly tried to prevent the muzzle of his rifle from
getting stuck in the ground but it wasn’t long before the barrel was clogged
with mud.
The slippery slope led to a
large stream whose turbid water rumbled forth and crashed against rocks and
pebbles on both banks, with beds of gravel and stone stretched out in a wide
crescent. The trail was definitely lost. The weight of an animal of that size
isn’t enough to leave marks or imprints, except in the dry season, when a prey
coming out of the water onto the scorched rocks would leave behind telltale
drops. But in times of downpour or drizzle like now, everything is wet and
there are no such clues.
He stared wild-eyed like a
lunatic, took a few steps, bent down and searched hither and thither as though
sniffing the ground, dashed into the water and waded across to the other bank,
where he rushed madly about for a long while, before crossing over again
empty-handed. He let himself slump to the ground and stretched out his legs,
exhausted, then looked up resentfully at the drizzling rain.
“You asshole!” he cursed
himself at the top of his voice, completely drowning the rumble of the stream.
The mountain jungle answered back “asshole”, “asshole” in gradually fading
whispers.
“Get lost!” he shouted
again. To be insulted back was unbearable. He tucked his head between his
knees and pressed both of his arms tightly against the back of his skull.
His total stillness, which
made him akin to the rocks nearby, was shattered when the rain suddenly poured
down in a thick curtain. Raindrops slapped against his nape with a sting. Herds
of low, black clouds rolled in fast and thick, almost scraping the treetops on
the ridge. Shivering, he stood up and looked for some kind of cover. At the
very least, his rifle shouldn’t get soaked. One bank was carved off a steep
cliff, with a boulder overhanging the stream and a cavity deep enough to take
shelter in.
The rain was thrashing down
furiously, adding its din to the roar of the current against the rocks. Treetops,
branches and leaves swayed and shivered in the blurry curtain of rain. Tiny
grooves formed down the ridge as water washed off topsoil, rotten leaves and
rubbish in thick, turbid flows that crashed into the rocky stream and turned
it the colour of mud, as if discarding shattered hopes.
How long was it since he had left home? The thought
came to him for the first time. How weird! His stomach hadn’t complained for
food. By now, it must be noon or well past noon, judging by the aches in his
legs and cramps in his calves due to the trekking. He couldn’t tell anything
from the sky, which was dark and mean like a mantle of gloom. The cold made his
arms shiver and his teeth chatter uncontrollably. The rain pummelled down with
no end in sight. He took a pinch of tobacco from his pouch and rolled himself a
cigarette, then stood against the rocky cliff, arms folded across his chest,
watching the stream swell up alarmingly fast. He slowly exhaled coils of smoke
which melted in the air.
“And where am I anyway?” he mumbled
to himself. His eyes swept in all directions in search of some familiar landmark,
but nothing triggered his memory. He tried to figure out where he was, frowning
in concentration until his eyebrows touched, but to no avail. There was
nothing that could tell him which direction was which, and he began to feel
anxious.
“Come off it: no real
hunter is scared of getting lost in the jungle,” he said with a forced smile
to quell the unusual feeling growing within him. Finding his way back wouldn’t
be easy. The rain didn’t look like letting up, time was creeping by ever so
slowly, his body had lost much of its energy, and the path he had cut wasn’t
exactly a public thoroughfare. He’d have to look for a way back. Whether he’d
be able to return home before nightfall became a matter of real worry. As he
stood there waiting, there was nothing better for him to do than to feed his
stomach in order to recover some strength, so he took out the packet of rice
and began to eat.
‘What a lousy day this is!’
he thought ruefully. Anger constricted his throat and he found it difficult to
swallow his rice. His wife would make a fuss of welcoming him back and he’d
have to put on a brave face to hide his disappointment in order to make her
happy, and his peeved kids would have to keep surviving on tasteless gourd
broth for a while longer.
To hell if the sky didn’t
play tricks on him! As he was about to shoot the squirrel, the imperial pigeon
had offered itself instead, only to have the barking deer make a pathetic fool
out of him, and he had wasted all this time like a cretin cutting across the
jungle and taking cover from the rain.
It looked as though the
wind was rising. He could see the treetops swaying and bending over. Rain
clouds were being swiftly swept out of the gloomy sky. Before long, the rain
began to relent. The water in the rocky stream kept rising and overflowing in
a thunderous uproar which resounded throughout the jungle.
He came out of his shelter
and looked for the place he wanted to reach and then down. It wouldn’t be easy.
The thrashing rain had completely erased the trail he had made as he had
slipped and tumbled. No matter what, he had to find his way back up to the
ridge that he remembered was crowded with huge trees and had round, spiky
fruits strewn all over the ground; from there he could work his way back. The
slope he was climbing made him wonder. The ridge looked incredibly steep: he
doubted he had clambered down this way.
Or was it that hopelessness
made him see everything out of utter exhaustion? The mysterious power that
had made him stride about in earnest was now well and truly gone, as was his
sense of ownership, and the strong expectation he had been unable to control
had given way in his heart to overwhelming sorrow.
“I shouldn’t have to put up
with this kind of life. I should’ve been a teacher, but you poor bastard you…”
he mumbled to himself, disheartened.
The forest looked totally
unfamiliar. It was raining heavily again. The clumps of grass were trampled
and he could no longer see the trail of the fleeing deer or his own in hot
pursuit. The rains turned the jungle the same dark green in a wild smothering
of plants which made old landmarks disappear almost without trace.
“There must be a way, there
must be.” He stuck out his tongue to lick his dry lips and let his eyes wander
about idly as he tried to rekindle his memory. He could only recall that he
had crossed the ridge down to a brook, up another steep slope and then down
through the ravine to the stream. At times, he had fought his way through thick
growth, but he had no idea where he was then. He had been so concerned with
catching his prey, so taken up with his own elation that he had forgotten to
spot landmarks whenever he had gone up or down or changed his course.
“Take it easy, calm down,”
he tried to tell himself as he slowly climbed along the ridge. The jungle was
still dark and dense. Dewdrops on branches and leaves kept falling on his head
and shoulders, annoying him. There was one spot he had to find, though, where
he had used his knife to cut his way through bushes of composites. No matter
how much rain had poured out of the sky since then, the slashes of his blade
wouldn’t have disappeared.
He decided to go down the
mountain slope to his left and fight his way through a maze of tall wild grass
flattened by the rain. Then he came to a wide expanse of thick clusters of bamboo
and wandered among them for a very long time but still couldn’t find a way out.
Was he walking around in circles? A pang of fear sent tremors through his mind.
He drew his knife and made notches on bamboo stems as he started in a new
direction. This time, he chose to go down the slope. A long while later, he
came out of the bamboo clumps onto a stretch of pinnate palm trees and feathery
ferns. He had a vague recollection of seeing something like this before. His
brain was so tense he couldn’t think straight anymore. Again, he wandered this
way and that for a long while, his usual quick temper building up in his chest.
He was about to open his mouth to let off some steam when he noticed a small
stream cascading by in front of him. The tension in his eyes subsided.
He went straight to the
brook, scooped up some water to drink and wash the film of sweat off his face
and neck, then decided to scale the high ridge ahead. Travelling back in a
state of hopelessness, with a mind burdened with fright, made distances appear
to stretch endlessly. So much time wasted, so much energy dissipated, and not
a trace of the target he had set out to hunt. Anxiety weighed down his feet and
made each step a drag.
Amid the thick, wild growth
on the ridge, he hesitated, in search of the trail again. How screwed up can
you be! He hadn’t taken any notice of large trees, logs or any other landmarks
of the jungle. He looked up at the sky, which was still overcast. There was
nothing to reckon on, nothing that could help him find his bearings. He was an
insignificant speck of a man in the vast embrace of the jungle. The deathly silence
and dreary atmosphere made his hair stand on end and forced him to amble to and
fro until he decided to go back down the steep slope to the stream. After a
long while, he found himself amid bamboo groves and walked through them for
some time until he noticed a freshly cut notch on a stem. His knees gave in and
he let himself down and sat on the ground.
“Am I really lost?” he
moaned hoarsely. His whole body and clothes were drenched in a mixture of rain
and sweat.
He remembered some advice
he had come by on previous jungle treks: if you get lost, stop walking or you
might get further astray or just go round in circles, wasting precious time and
energy; take a rest and think calmly to find a solution – there is always a
way out.
Actually, this part of the
jungle wasn’t really very far from fields and plantations and quite a few
people came out to till their land. He should be able to meet someone or at the
very least find traces of a human presence, such as an old campfire, signs of
cooking or some temporary shelter. Everyone knows that, on nights of heavy
rain, the animals come out roaming about for food, and that’s the right time
for hunting them. If the worst comes to the worst, there are plenty of
mushrooms popping up all around bamboo groves, and so many bamboo shoots
sprouting off the ground that you can’t collect them all.
“There must be someone.”
Hope lit up his eyes.
Those who earn their living
from highland farming and jungle hunting have weather-beaten skins, grow
hands and feet as calloused as bear’s paws, and are more afraid of hunger pangs
than of rainstorms or jungle ghosts. With such an opportunity for game
hunting, who among them would confine themselves between the thatched walls of
their huts for fear of catching cold?
There must be someone who could
help him.
But how should he go about
starting to search for people? Old fires, rough shelters, he hadn’t found any
on his way, not even some rotting poles of former huts. Or could it be that the
area was too deep inside the jungle for anyone to settle down in? Surely not.
These days, almost every nook and cranny of the jungle was being trespassed,
and there wasn’t a secret left anywhere. Then he thought of something, raised
his rifle, aimed at the sky and pulled the trigger.
The explosion ricocheted throughout
the mountain in ever weakening echoes that drifted far away. He hoped it would
reach someone’s ears. He followed this up with a yell so loud and shrill that
his eardrums throbbed and his throat hurt.
“Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!
Yoo-hoo!”
As he was reloading his
rifle, an answer echoed back – an eerily sluggish ululation jarring to the ear
like the howling of a wolf in the dead of night.
3. a rude awakening
True, he was no professional hunter, but he was behaving
as a complete moron scared of losing his way in the jungle. The fear he felt
was unwarranted. It wasn’t as if he had never got lost in the jungle before. He
worried too much about the impending darkness. Hadn’t he ever stayed overnight
deep in the jungle? It was simple enough: find a flat area, cut down two small
trees with forked trunks, turn them into poles and stick them into the ground
some four yards apart. Cut and trim a bamboo stem and place it as a beam
between the two forks. For rafters, use straight pieces of wood with one end on
the ground, the other fastened to the beam; cover them with overlapping banana
leaves and you have a roof. There are usually plenty of tall, thin, thorn-less
bamboo stems around to make a platform on which to lie down. A slapdash
shelter like this would protect you well enough from dew or rain. Gather some
dry hardwood and bamboo twigs to build a fire so as to keep away the cold, mosquitoes
and gnats as well as animals with fangs or tusks.
There was nothing to be so
worked up about, really.
If only he had some
uncooked rice, he’d cut down a thorn-less, hollow bamboo stem less than a year
old – of the kind that still had crispy sheaths around its top joints – and use
it instead of a pot to boil water and parboil the rice. Then he’d cut a
two-node section off another stalk, carve out the inner fibre of the top joint
to make a hollow container and fill about one third of it with water; plait
bamboo strips into a tiny grid and insert it about half way up; pour the
already parboiled rice on top of the grid, and place the makeshift container
so that the fire burnt its lower section and boiled the water inside. After
some time, the smell of steaming rice and burning wood would make your mouth
water. Indeed, it wasn’t necessary to rely on a rice pot at all. Now, however,
he had no rice, either cooked or uncooked, but why worry about going without it
for a meal or two: the sweet, crisp cores of some palm trees or reed sprouts
cooked beneath fragrant embers would be enough to stay his hunger.
He compressed saltpetre
into the muzzle, added a single lead buckshot and some dry tow, which he
pounded again to make sure it was tightly packed. Felt better as he inserted a
cap into the slit on one side of the trigger, then slowly pulled the cock down
until it rested on the cap and flipped the zinc breech shut to prevent the
load from getting damp.
“You can sleep anywhere
when it gets dark, you know,” he told himself to firm up his mind. He held the
rifle in the hook of his right arm and pressed it tightly against his chest as
he started to walk. It was drizzling lightly again but the rain no longer
seemed to scare him. His eyes were roving about, figuring out the way ahead.
“Come on, give us all
you’ve got,” he mumbled defiantly as he gazed up. Deep down, he felt that if
he had to spend the night in the jungle and the rain kept pouring, by morning
the sky should be clear enough for him to spot the sun, and then he could head
south and it wouldn’t be long before he came to some field or plantation.
Tiny black gnats, which
usually plague the eyes of animals, were now buzzing round his head and often
threw themselves at his eyelids. Annoyed, he tried to whisk them away
repeatedly but the stubborn creatures wouldn’t leave him alone, so in the end he
let them enjoy themselves and keep him company. Their buzz brought some solace
to his solitary soul.
Rotten leaves had piled
thickly in deep, damp, musty troughs, whose sandy soil was so soft and spongy
it sank when he stepped on it. Various kinds of ferns spread wildly above the
ground. Their fronds, long and sharp as knife blades, were festooned with small
leaves of the brightest green. Bunches of polypodies, vines and creepers
intertwined in messy tangles below a smattering of tall trees with large,
palm-like leaves. He suddenly noticed small brown creatures slightly bigger
than matches, which stretched their boneless bodies and projected their heads towards
whatever came near. They could find their way unerringly even though they had
no eyes, as if they had supernatural vision focused on their prey. Their
dark-brown bodies were soft and springy and had lots of pale-yellow stripes
running from end to end. Their craving for blood made them quiver and crawl towards
their target from all directions.
“Oh, shit! I’ve strayed into a leech area,” he shouted
as he rolled his trousers up to his knees. He took a pinch of his sticky,
pungent tobacco, spit on it and rubbed it until dark juice came out, then
stalked hastily away from the damn place. Some of the creatures had glued
their sucking heads into his calves, which he rubbed with tobacco juice to get
them drunk; they curled up and dropped off. The way they crawled and stuck
their suckers up by the hundreds was revolting. If he ignored them and let them
cling and draw his blood out, they’d suck until they ballooned and became so
weak they had to let go. They left behind a substance that made the spot haemorrhage
and to stop the bleeding wasn’t easy.
“A good thing these aren’t
green leeches!” he mumbled to himself. “Them mothers would crawl up to my head
and ears.”
Green leeches love to creep
as high as they can and before you are aware of anything, they have slipped
under your eyelids or glued themselves to your gums. Some people who witnessed
such viciousness said the victim wouldn’t feel a thing until he smiled and they
could see the creepy green slug sticking out above his teeth. More often, they
crawl their way up your trouser legs and bite your private parts, suck your
blood on the sly until they are bloated and leave the wound bleeding nonstop.
You are soaked in blood from the crotch down and look like you are
menstruating.
It’s weird how these
bloodsuckers go on living without any inkling of how long it will be until
they can gorge themselves again. Amazingly, they disappear during the dry
season, when huge forest fires spread in raging floods of flames that scorch
everything in their path and leave the earth thoroughly charred. How do these
leeches manage to hide themselves so well that they proliferate again come the
next rains?
Unable to stand the loathing that made his flesh
creep, he hurried up the hill again. As he was battling his way through arches
of rattan, he could hear a flock of birds squawking in alarm nearby. He gently
shifted his rifle in his hand. His fighting spirit had returned. He hadn’t
quite broken through the rattan when the birds took off in fright. He looked up
at the treetops and saw brown-and-black birds with starkly white crests and
throats flying across the sky and out of sight.
“Hey, these are laughing
thrushes… Maybe there’s someone up there,” he said and hurried on, his eyes
still roving.
“Yoo-hoo!” he yelled to
signal his presence. If there were other people around, they would wait and
wouldn’t mistake his crashing course through the bushes for the approach of a
wild boar.
Laughing thrushes of all
types sound the alarm to warn other animals that something unusual is happening
somewhere in the vast expanse of the jungle, like sentries on lookout. Some
Hmong refugees who had once come by his place on their way north to the
watershed that marks the border had told him a funny tale about laughing
thrushes.
Once upon a time, the
Yangtze and Mekong rivers were husband and wife, and both of them had to travel
to the sea to find a magic pearl to be presented to the God of the Mountains.
The Yangtze was a male, so he could travel fast, but as his path went through a
maze of mountains, he left first after agreeing to meet the Mekong at a certain
place. When he reached that place, however, he had forgotten about the meeting
and just sped on his way. The Mekong river came later but couldn’t find him at
the agreed meet. The only creature she could see was a white-crested thrush
perched on a branch, so she quizzed it and learned that indeed the Yang-tze
had come by but hadn’t stopped. She asked how long ago this was, and the bird
replied with a straight beak, “Just think: my crest was pitch black then but
now, as you can see, it’s turned all white.” Upon hearing this, the Mekong
felt deeply slighted, so she turned round and flowed straight south instead,
and this is why the two rivers have been ignoring each other ever since…
Those damn birds may well
be fooling him as they had the Mekong. The narrow ridge wore a layer of low,
thick shrubs of flax stitched with reams of creepers. For all his careful
watch, he could see no sign of any living thing. His eyes slowed their search.
The atmosphere was depressed, the air nippy, and it was so quiet he could hear
his own breathing. He felt rejected, and he broke away down the left slope. A
large log had fallen at the bottom. Time had peeled its bark off and turned its
wood a deep black. As he was climbing over it, he noticed a series of white
scratches on the wood.
The scratches, so deep the
wood had splintered, could only have been made by tremendously powerful and
very sharp claws. He bent down to look at the slivers scattered on the ground
and saw footprints on the soft soil. There were plenty of them about, each with
four heavy imprints set in a circle the size of a small soup bowl. The animal
must be as big as a calf.
“A tiger!”
His voice was hoarse and as weak as a whisper. He
hastily retreated to the shrubs of flax and stood thigh-deep in them, holding
his rifle at the ready. The marks were so recent the raindrops had yet to dampen
the wood inside them. Perhaps his shout had made the tiger flee in panic or
else alerted it to his presence and it had gone into hiding to get ready to
pounce on him and shred him to pieces as it had the wood.
He turned pale and then
purplish. Beads of perspiration sprouted all over his forehead. His lips
shivered uncontrollably. His heart was beating so wildly it seemed to be about
to leap out of his chest. He had the spooky feeling a pair of eyes were
watching him, and his own eyes bulged and goggled frantically about. He
backtracked quickly to the middle of the hillock, then turned round and darted
out for dear life, running, leaping, swerving to avoid the trees. From the
hilltop, he rushed down a ravine and then clambered up a ridge again. Abject
fear had swiftly overtaken him and there was no room for anything else in his
mind right now. He panted heavily but the rasp of his lungs was drowned out by
the pounding of his heart.
In the middle of yet
another ridge, he forced himself to move more slowly, grappling to control his
panic. He had drawn out all of his energy in one desperate flight for survival.
His knee joints, his whole legs, were stiff as logs. He was gasping for air,
his lungs heaving in spasms, his ribs a tight cage. He used his hands to lean
on a large Indian rubber tree then let himself collapse to the ground. He had
rolled up his trousers above his knees and both of his exposed shins were
covered with scratches and long gashes inflicted by thorns, and blood was
oozing from most of them.
His breathing gradually
eased and he stood up again, his bulging eyes still looking left and right. He
pressed himself against the tree trunk as if to melt into it. He had only seen
footprints, yet danger could be lurking anywhere. Everything was still. He
soon felt his body was getting so big that the trunk, which three persons would
have been hard put to begird, was no longer large enough to protect him.
He had no idea when it had
stopped drizzling. He felt terribly cold, as if he was running a fever. Dull
pain shot through his legs from his shins, his knee joints hardly bent and he
had to drag his feet every step of the way. Going for broke this time had
ripped his body and clothes to tatters and left him with the mere dregs of
life.
Oh no, it couldn’t be! In
the narrow water trough further down, he found more footprints. Was he being
hunted or was he just walking into them?
No time to examine how old
the footprints were and whether they pointed up or down. He just turned round
as if his brain had switched to automatic, and broke into a limping lope,
dragging his pathetic legs across the ridge to the wide depression on the other
side, to get as far away as he could from these terrible signs of danger. His
teeth were clenched to breaking point, his saliva had long dried and his throat
was parched. He kept moving until he came to a steep ravine and let himself
tumble down to the small brook below, hectically scooped up water in his hands
and drank so greedily it splashed all over his face and into his nose.
On the other side of the
brook were more tiger footprints…
I’ll be damned! Was it
actually blocking his ways of escape? What kind of unearthly creature was it
that could outguess his every move? Or had his sins from some former life
caught up with him? His brain was so confused it couldn’t hold on to anything.
Fear overcame him so thoroughly it seemed to be about to pour out of his
mouth, nose, ears and even hair, and fear was ordering him to get the hell back
up! He struggled painfully up the high, steep bank back to the flat expanse,
where he finally sat down, banging his back against the trunk of a large tree,
and he stayed there, legs stretched out, arms limp by his sides as if his bones
had melted. The rifle on his lap seemed to have lost all power to harm, as if
he himself was about to give in to his fate.
The sky was rapidly growing
dark. How odd! The insects of the night were not unfurling their wings to lull
the jungle to sleep. What a depressing, gloomy day it had been! Darkness
devoured the jungle and it was soon pitch black. It was now beyond doubt that
he had to stay overnight in the jungle. His idea of building a shelter, a
platform and a fire had completely gone out of his mind.
Time passed and everything
fell silent as it did every night. His body began to recover. After a period of
rest and of deep breathing to relax his lungs, he felt his strength coming
back. His legs were no longer as numb, a spark of hope had returned to his
eyes, and he was holding his rifle firmly, ready to shoot at any time.
He mustn’t die in a place
like this, alone in the middle of the deep, desolate, scary jungle. Who would
witness his death? Besides, his wife and children were still waiting for him.
His children… It was as if
his loving care for them was just the lure that may yet fool his heart to
death. If he had stepped out of his home, it was because of his two kids, for
no better reason than they were his own flesh and blood and he had to take
care of them – and of his wife as well, who had once been a stranger to him,
living in another village. They had become lovers and he had to take
responsibility for the ties that ensued and bear all consequences. It was
indeed because of his wife that he had had to leave his own village. She lived
in a village some six miles away from his own. He had met her at a merit- making
ceremony and had fallen in love with her. He had arranged to meet her through
young guys he knew in her village and finally had married her. One day, a buffalo
in his village disappeared and his friends in her village were arrested and the
buffalo was recovered. He was taken for interrogation because of his
friendship with the young men. Even though there was no evidence against him,
quite a few of the villagers were convinced he had been involved in the theft
and would have nothing to do with him any longer. The village headman blacklisted
him as a hoodlum, although he had never harmed anyone. He had once been ordained
over Lent, was neither rude nor rough and knew right from wrong, even though he
wasn’t particularly religious. There was only his curt, harsh way of talking
and his reputation for being a smart ass that the villagers could hold against
him, which they did, and it got to the point where he could no longer stand the
distrust of the people around him.
“Whoaah!” A mighty roar pierced the silence. It was at
once exultant, dominating and oppressive. Its sheer volume startled the
jungle into subservience and its reverberation ended brusquely, like a proclamation
of superiority, absolute power and almightiness, forcing every creature to
grovel on the ground.
He had no idea where the
roar came from, how far or near it was, yet it seemed to be coming from all
directions at once. He had the distinct impression it was so close that his
ear-drums throbbed, as if someone was breathing warm air down the nape of his
neck. His heart probably missed a few beats. Terror propelled him to the nearest,
cubit-thick tree and, slinging his rifle over his back, he scrambled up all the
way to the very top. Gasping, he sat astride the tallest fork and hid in the
cover of darkness. He began to breathe deeply to recover his senses.
He had been hounded and didn’t
even have some ground to set his foot on. Down there, it looked like death had
swallowed everything. The only safe place for him was these forked branches
that thrust up into emptiness.
He had been hou