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Ghosts (Peesart, 1953-4)

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Seinee Saowaphong

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1

Her lover was an ordinary man. He had no especially attractive feature or noticeable deformity that would have immediately singled him out among other ordinary people. He was neither taller nor shorter than the average Thai man at large, and he came from a family of simple folk who had – to use her own parents’ expression – no blue blood in their veins, whereas she, in the opinion of most, did not stand in the back rows of feminine beauty, and was born into an aristocratic family whose ancestors could be traced as far back as the Ayutthaya kingdom. Yet when these dissimilar man and woman came to meet, befriend and love each other, her father blamed this unforgivable mistake on the modern way of life, which granted women too much freedom. Part of the problem was that women were allowed to study at the university together with male students. Even though access to the various university levels was restricted through high tuition fees and expensive books and services, it was not enough to ensure that only children of families of suitable or at least almost suitable social standing could attend. True enough, as a rule the children of the poor did not get past the gates of academe, but it happened all too often that some of them did manage to sneak their way in, and by mixing and socialising with this lowly lot, the other children developed preposterous ideas and were led astray from accepted behaviour, forgetting themselves, their rank and their dignity.

And another reason was that women were given the opportunity to leave the house to work in offices, venturing out of safe and orderly homes into a wide, wild world full of trickery and deceit.

Her father thought that because she had entered university and studied together with other girls and boys of the same age, some friends of the same sex who were never brought up in good families had put improper ideas into her head. As for the young fellows there who came from lowly families, he thought with contempt that they had no other purpose than to shed their skin and pass them-selves off as gentlemen with these girls of good breeding and high standing through all kinds of artifice and fraud.

Ratchanee’s grandmother had opposed sending her to senior high school because she could not bear the shame of having to meet and listen to these people and she knew that her granddaughter, who was now a fully grown woman, would have to wear shorts and raise her legs and thrust her bosom and wag her behind and squat and jump in public in what was now an adjunct to education they called ‘physical exercise’ or ‘sport’. She had successfully opposed Ratchanee’s elder sisters from doing the same, which explains why they only graduated at secondary-school level and stayed at their grandmother’s beck and call for years on end doing nothing but waiting until a bride’s settlement took place and they passed from her custody to someone else’s. It was Ratchanee’s good fortune that she grew up much later than her sisters, and her grand-mother’s ill fortune that she had aged so much that she no longer had the strength and stamina to prod and poke until her opinion prevailed and became the supreme law enforced over the whole family as was the case in the past. Ratchanee was thus able to escape from her frighteningly strong embrace.

Her mother, who held slightly more advanced opinions than her grandmother because she was born a generation later, just kept her misgivings to herself, maybe because she was too weak to oppose her little daughter whom she loved and had always allowed to have her way, and because she could see that times had changed during her own lifetime.

These were no longer the days of powder and turmeric but of all kinds of goods with foreign-sounding names that those overseas creatures made and sent over to sell, names so odd that a sheltered woman in her fifties could neither catch nor remember them. Her childhood was all topknots and anklets, and her adolescence had meant a belt of splendid brass. She still remembered the ceremony of cutting the topknot, a magnificent and protracted affair which had left her sore and exhausted to the point of collapse. But these days such rites were all gone. Only Ratchanee’s two elder sisters had worn topknots, but the cutting ceremony had been so simplified as to be hardly a ceremony at all. Ratchanee was the only one who had not worn a topknot as a child, and when she came of age she did not show any interest in a copper or brass belt. She was satisfied with a mere leather belt that cost nothing much at all, and simply asked for different colours – red, green, brown, blue – to match the shirts and skirts she wore. Gone were the days of silk robes and chintzes and loose bodices and simple cloth wrapped around the waist or tied at the back; now it was all trousers for men and skirts for women. Gone also were the days of powder and turmeric and beeswax, replaced by creams and lipsticks and hair lotions. Ratchanee’s elder sisters were both married and had households of their own, which was extremely fortunate because it left only this youngest daughter to fuss about, and her mother looked at Ratchanee with constant worry in her heart, silently praying for her, hoping for some kind of miracle which would turn her again into the good girl she used to be, amid all the changes that were going on everywhere…

When they first met, Ratchanee became interested in the young man for only one reason, which is that he did not show any kind of interest in her at all. When one of her friends introduced him, he did not utter a word, not even that he was pleased to meet her, as everybody says upon being introduced. Even though she was old enough to know that the sentence usually carried no meaning and was blurted out automatically for the sake of politeness, she still would have liked to hear it, and she thought with contempt that that fellow had no manners at all. As he sat in front of her, he spoke very little and in a half-hearted manner. She believed it was for the man to strike up a conversation and that the woman should wait before pitching in. So she waited, but he showed no inclination to talk, and both remained silent. She looked at him repeatedly from the corner of her eye and sensed that he felt no less oppressed than she did.

As she went to leave, her friend, who was the owner of the house, and who was busy chatting with the other guests, saw that he was sitting idly by, so she asked him to do her the favour of accompanying Ratchanee to her car, which was waiting at the entrance of the lane.

‘Thank you, that won’t be necessary, I can take care of myself,’ Ratchanee said with a sarcastic undertone when she saw him standing up. He did not say anything and looked as if he had not noticed her tone but he followed her to the door, so she turned around and looked him in the face in a way which meant ‘Didn’t you understand what I said?’

His impassive face seemed to show some sort of concern. ‘…unless it bothers you,’ he muttered.

The fierce glitter in her eyes abated and he must have understood from her expression that she would not object because he went on following her quietly. She was not going to keep her feelings to herself any longer, so she turned to him and asked bluntly: ‘Why are you following me?’

He looked at a loss. ‘Well, I’m seeing you to your car, aren’t I?’

‘You don’t want to know me or even talk to me, isn’t that so?’

‘I never said that, or if you think I did, then tell me where and when it happened.’

‘Your behaviour is more telling than anything you say.’

‘What!’ he exclaimed, then fell silent. Ratchanee thought that his remark, indeed his whole attitude, was a deliberate and outrageous provocation and she felt utterly offended.

‘You misunderstand my reserve and restraint,’ he said forcefully.

‘Restraint?’ Ratchanee repeated in a loud voice and thought that he was lamely trying to excuse himself.

He nodded. ‘I’m restraining myself in front of you for two reasons. The first is that I know who you are, and the second is that you’re a beautiful woman and you’re well aware of it. You’ve seen enough men fall over themselves in their eagerness to approach you. Indeed you’re beautiful and I don’t deny it, but I’m not one of those men and, as for the first reason, you and I are as different as the sky and the earth.’

Ratchanee blushed deeply, seething inside. She had never heard such infuriating probing.

‘You only know that my name is Citizen Sai and my surname Seema,’ he went on. ‘You still don’t know who I am. Therefore you can’t understand my own restraint. People with different stations in life see everything differently. But this isn’t your fault, and anyway there’s one thing I appreciate in you, and that’s your frankness. When you’re upset, you say so without beating about the bush. That’s something that’s hard to find – I think that once you know me better, you’ll understand me better.’

Ratchanee shook her head brusquely, entered the car, slammed the door and drove away without a goodbye.

That night, Ratchanee could not sleep. She kept thinking of the man called Citizen Sai Seema with a feeling of hurt. He had said he and she were as different as sky and earth. Who was the sky? And who the earth? ‘Am I the sky? If I am the sky, does it mean that I may socialise and talk only with the other denizens of the sky? that I may not talk with the common folk? Or is there something objectionable in me?’ Ratchanee, too, was aware of belonging to the aristocracy, an awareness derived from her domestic environment since childhood. She used to hear her senior relatives refer to some people as ‘commoners’ or as ‘the rabble’. At first, she could not understand what this meant, but when memory took her back to the time when she had been old enough to think for herself, she found that much of what had happened to her since then gave the words a concrete meaning. She remembered that, as a child, she had been strictly forbidden to play with the children of the servants or of the distant relatives who stayed in the house as half servants and half relatives, but she had always managed to do so anyway, because she had no other friends to play with. Her sisters were too old to enjoy playing with a little girl like her. There were times when well-groomed children came to her house in a car with their parents, and her own parents told her to play with those children while the adults talked. But this rarely happened and besides, the children would bully her and lay claim to her toys every time. Ratchanee thus could not help but sneak out to play with the children in the house. Were it not for them, her life as a child would have been very lonely and forlorn. She was aware that she dressed more beautifully and cleanly and had more toys, but these children never bullied her and never tried to take her toys, even though they had practically none of their own. She had a nanny who looked after her day in, day out. Whenever Ratchanee was caught playing downstairs, she would be taken away and given a good scrub and then confined to the house. The more she grew up, the more fed up she grew with her nanny. After she had sneaked out many times, she found that the children were trying to stay away from her as much as possible and looked scared when she invited them to play with her: the master of the house had ordered their parents to forbid them to play with her. This edict proved more effective than trying to keep her confined in the house.

‘I’m now old enough to talk or socialise with anyone,’ Ratchanee thought, and she could not see how someone like her could be objectionable to anyone.

‘If there is any repugnance in social contacts, it’s only from upper class people towards the lower classes,’ Ratchanee thought further. ‘There is none from the lower classes towards the upper class. But I don’t mind socialising with people of a lower social condition so long as they are good people. Isn’t goodness, rather than wealth, rank or lineage, the only yardstick to measure human worth? I have many friends whom I can call dear friends and who are much inferior to me in social standing, and yet I hold them dear because of their goodness. But this man is so conceited!’ Memories of her childhood flashed across her mind. The apprehension of the children in her house who had not dared to play around and be on familiar terms with her made her feel uncomfortable.

‘But then, actually, he looked straightforward and courteous enough, and I have a feeling that he spoke from the bottom of his heart. Perhaps he has been scorned by some arrogant people in the past. There are plenty of conceited grandees always ready to look down on others, but I’m not one of them,’ Ratchanee told herself firmly. ‘I’m educated and modern enough to know what the true value of a person is. Status and money aren’t important to me at all. It is goodness that I respect and use as a yardstick in dealing with people at large.’

‘He looked so straightforward, though. He said I was beautiful and men were falling over themselves in their eagerness to approach me. How dare he make such a sarcastic remark! I’m no movie or stage star, you know. “I’m not one of those men.” Who are “those men”? And then, who are you?’ Ratchanee asked resentfully in her mind and felt sorry to have let anger get the better of her before she could wrangle with him to the end. ‘Wait and see! When I meet you again, I’ll deal with you once and for all.’

‘Oh, what an infuriating man!’

2 Δ

Although she received comfort and convenience in life and was at an advantage over her friends at the university in many ways, Ratchanee could not help but feel choked up by the obstacles that she encountered constantly and that prevented her from acting as freely as she would have liked. Comfort and convenience had come to her as a birthright, along with the feeling of constraint resulting from the old-fashioned thoughts and tradition-bound ways of her family. No one at home had heartily agreed to her entering the university and, as long as she studied there, no one had ever cared enough to ask how she was getting on. Disapproval and displeasure were shown through indifference. Thanks to her cleverness in finding ways to outwit her softhearted mother and circumvent her stern father, Ratchanee was sometimes able to obtain what she wanted, but her parents’ indifference almost discouraged her several times from going on with her studies. The moral support of some of her dear friends and her own fear of finding herself shut away in the emptiness and loneliness of home prompted her to persevere and see her studies through. As graduation time approached, her friends began to talk enthusiastically about finding jobs and planning to do this and that, which sounded both amusing and interesting. But Ratchanee had no such plan in mind, as she was not sure she would be able to leave home and venture into the world of labour, even though, with the faith and sincerity of young men and women everywhere, she was eager to work so that she could make use of all that she had learned.

‘What are you going to do after you graduate?’ one of her friends asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ Ratchanee replied, sounding dejected. ‘Maybe my parents won’t allow me to work outside.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Kingthian uttered in sympathy. Kingthian was Ratchanee’s closest friend. Both were well aware of each other’s respective background. ‘Your parents are so conservative!’

Kingthian was the daughter of a minor civil servant who had passed away while she was still in secondary school. Her mother had to work hard to supplement her modest pension so that Kingthian could study up to university level. ‘I don’t want you to have a hard life like me,’ her mother had told her, as Kingthian had later confided to Ratchanee. Kingthian did well in her studies. Although she was not brilliant and had never come top, she always received high marks in some subjects. She was interested in all kinds of knowledge and had an analytical and logical mind, so that her friends had taken to calling her ‘the adviser’. If one of them had a problem, she would come to her and always receive useful practical advice from her.

Ratchanee had much sympathy for her friend for having to struggle hard in order to be able to study, which was the exact opposite of her own case: even though her parents had another dozen children, they had had no problem at all supporting them until they graduated from the university, yet no one in her family thought highly of a good education. Ratchanee had gone to Kingthian’s house and had received a warm welcome devoid of any social pretence. She had witnessed love and warmth passing between mother and daughter, and it had made her feel a little sad when she thought about herself. Kingthian studied with dedication and spared no effort to help her mother whenever she had some free time. Formerly, helping her mother had never entered her mind, because she thought that her only duty was to study well. ‘Seek knowledge for yourself so you won’t have a life of hardship like me,’ her mother used to tell her. But one day, after she was already a student at the university, before she went to bed that night, her mother had stroked her small hands gently and said, ‘Your hands are much softer than mine.’ That single sentence had changed Kingthian’s attitude towards work. Even though her mother had probably spoken out of gratification as is in the nature of mothers who love their children dearly and are willing to do everything for their comfort, those words had made Kingthian aware of the duty she had to her mother – not the assistance she would provide once her studies were over and she had an income of her own, but the help she could extend there and then whenever she was free: hardship had to be shared in common. From then on, Kingthian, besides studying, had given her mother a helping hand willingly and proudly.

But when Kingthian in turn went to visit Ratchanee at her house, she came out with a long face. ‘I won’t go to your house again,’ she said bluntly as was her habit. Ratchanee shared this habit too. This was one of the reasons why they were close friends and candid with each other.

‘Why not?’

‘I can’t stand it.’ Kingthian shook her head. ‘How can one ask “Whose child are you?” like His Lordship greeted me? It’s too much, really!’

‘Forget it. That’s the way he is. Don’t mind him. Let’s be ourselves and remain friends forever.’

‘Sure!’ Kingthian replied firmly. ‘But I won’t go to your house again. It scares me.’

‘If you won’t come to see me, I’ll go to see you instead.’

‘I’d rather. This way, we can still see each other after we graduate.’

Both young women walked out of the university building, one thinking about entering the world of labour with resolve and trepidation, the other feeling depressed, hesitant and uncertain.

‘If you stay home for a few years and do nothing, your knowledge will turn to rust,’ Kingthian went on. ‘Then what you’ve learned will be of no use to anyone, not even to yourself, as you’ll become some sort of picture in a frame, or an elephant tusk or an ancient weapon used as household decoration, and later still you’ll be only slightly better than a ladle or a strainer in the kitchen just because you can talk and walk.’

Ratchanee was silent because she did not know how to answer.

‘Anyway, you can’t be blamed for this, because you do mean to make yourself useful, you do want to work, but it’s the power of your environment that forces you down.’

‘Then what do you want me to do?’

‘If you don’t work and have no income of your own, you’ll never be independent and free. You’ll remain a child forever because you’ll have to go on asking money from your parents and you won’t be able to do anything they don’t approve of. Of course, working is less pleasant than staying at home and using your parents’ money. But you’re grownup, you have knowledge, and staying idly at home doesn’t make sense. I think the only path is to give yourself a chance to be yourself.’

‘I agree with you, but I doubt if I’ll ever succeed.’

‘I don’t think there’s a third path for you to choose. If you don’t force yourself to become independent, then you’ll remain weak and submit to your parents’ every command.’

Ratchanee remained silent.

‘But maybe it isn’t as difficult as you think. Have you talked to your parents about it?’

‘Not yet. I’ve sounded them out several times, but it seems no one agrees.’

‘You must try again, seriously and cleverly,’ Kingthian suggested. ‘But there’s still time. Let’s think of the best way you should do it, okay?’

Ratchanee nodded. Kingthian’s voice was full of encouragement and hope.

‘Let’s go to the movies. I don’t want to go home right now. I’d rather watch a matinee film.’

‘No, thanks,’ Kingthian replied.

‘Please! My treat.’

Kingthian shook her head. ‘You treat me too often. I feel bad about it. Besides, I can’t afford to treat you in return.’

‘How can you say things like that!’ Ratchanee chided. ‘You talk as if we weren’t friends. How can you think about petty matters like these?’

‘No, no,’ Kingthian hastened to reply. ‘I’m not free today. I have to hurry home to help Mum bake cakes. Her cakes sell very well. The customers at the coffee shop keep asking for more, and we can hardly keep up with the demand. Some other day, all right?’

Ratchanee knew that Kingthian was careful not to rely on anyone else in any matter and was proud and very forbearing about this. Ratchanee wanted to help her friend out of genuine generosity, but Kingthian never talked about her troubles, never asked for help, never received help from anyone either. Unlike other people, she didn’t like to see films often, and thus set herself the rule that she would not see more than two films a month. If she had some time to spare, she would read in the library. As for Ratchanee, if she found herself free in the afternoon, she would usually go and see a film. She was in no hurry to go back home because she had more freedom outside of the house, and so she ended up inviting Kingthian to the cinema every time.

‘I’ll bring you a baked cake tomorrow. The way Mum cooks them, they’re delicious.’

Ratchanee looked a bit disappointed. As they were about to walk past the university’s main gate, they met Saengsoam and Danai, who were standing there.

‘Where are you going?’ Saengsoam asked.

‘Nowhere in particular,’ Ratchanee replied.

‘Then let’s go to the movies,’ Saengsoam offered. ‘We were looking for company.’

‘I invited Kingthian, but she won’t go.’

‘I have to hurry home today,’ Kingthian replied.

‘Then how about you, Ratchanee?’

‘Miss Ratchanee won’t go with us if Miss Kingthian isn’t going,’ Danai said as he saw Ratchanee hesitating. It was known among friends that Kingthian and Ratchanee were each other’s shadow: you never saw the one without seeing the other.

‘Do come with us,’ Saengsoam pressed. ‘Kingthian is always a goody-goody.’

‘I don’t want to be in the way,’ Ratchanee teased.

‘Bah!’ Saengsoam blushed.

Ratchanee turned to look questioningly at Kingthian.

‘You go, Ratchanee. You’ve nothing to do.’

‘Miss Kingthian will never go with us,’ Danai said.

‘Right! She once berated us for being loafers,’ Saengsoam added sarcastically. ‘She keeps burying herself in books. If she doesn’t let her hair down, I’m afraid she’ll go mad.’

‘I’m going, all right?’ Ratchanee told Kingthian, because she felt bad about leaving one friend in order to go with another and because she still did not want to go home, more than because she agreed with Saengsoam.

Kingthian nodded.

‘Let’s grab the chance while we can, because before long we’ll be dead anyway,’ Saengsoam said before the three of them started to walk away.

Kingthian returned home by bus. Tomorrow, on the balconies of the lecture hall, her friends would chat about the films they had seen the day before – the same story or others that were being shown in Bangkok cinemas at the time. Moving pictures had become the students’ daily topic of conversation. Those who had not seen them had to hurry to do so in order to have something to chat about with their friends, so much so that the feeling grew that those who did not go to see films were not with it, unlike those who attended every film programme. Saengsoam was of the latter breed.

‘We have different interests,’ Kingthian thought. ‘We all have twenty-four hours a day at our disposal, and each of us has the right to spend those hours as he pleases, but for all that, the environment has a powerful influence over our perceptions.’ Many friends who did not like watching films often now had become dedicated film buffs.

When Kingthian arrived home, her mother said, ‘You’re back early today.’

Kingthian smiled at her mother, who was kneading cake dough next to Aunt Maen, a middle-aged distant relative who had lived in the house for years. After she placed her books down and changed clothes, Kingthian walked over to the earthen jar and washed her hands. She looked at her own hands as she soaped them. She did not keep her nails long as young women did these days, as it prevented her from helping her mother kneading dough and doing other household chores. ‘Those who grow long nails probably want to show they have no need to work,’ Kingthian thought. But that may not always be the case. She knew a young office typist who often got on the same bus as she did. That young woman kept her nails long and had them painted too. Although they were not so long that they curved downward like a cat’s claws, she probably took pains to type with the fleshy underside of her fingertips, which was more tricky than typing with the nail-lined tips as was the correct method. Women kept their nails long because they believed long nails looked beautiful, and they thought them beautiful because it showed their owners had no need to work hard!

‘I have to do well with my studies and my hands must be as coarse as Mum’s,’ Kingthian resolved. She raised her hands, which she had already rinsed and wiped clean, and stroked her cheeks gently as if to test their texture. They were not as soft as before, and the realisation made her happy and proud as she walked over and sat down beside her mother to help her knead dough.

That night, Kingthian stroked her mother’s hands for a long time. She would have liked her mother to comment on her hands once again, as years had gone by since her first remark. But her mother had probably forgotten her passing observation, which had been so significant to her, so she didn’t say anything, even though she endeavoured to massage her mother’s hand for a long time.

3 Δ

As far back as he could remember, he had always lived on a lowland bordering a canal whose stagnant water was unaffected by the tide of the river, which, his father had told him, used to make its level rise and fall daily, but now that gates had been built at both ends of the canal the water in it had ceased to flow freely. The edge of the canal was overgrown with atap palm, sea holly, thickets of giant reeds and clumps of pampas grass, seablite bushes and cajuput and firewood trees, which seemed to have taken over the land everywhere, with knot grass, lalang grass, nut grass and garlic growing so thick in between that they left no gap for the earth to be seen. The place was infested with mosquitoes which came out at dusk in such numbers that more bit you than you could swat. The few farmers scattered along the bank had to light smoky fires to keep them at bay. He remembered that he liked neither mosquitoes nor smoke, because mosquito bites hurt and smoke irritates the eyes and makes one retch and suffocate, but he had no other choice than the one or the other. Thus he, or rather, the farmers in general chose smoke over mosquitoes. At night, the place was dark and felt utterly forlorn. There was only darkness and stillness, and the only thing visible was the dim lights from the torch or coconut oil lamp of neighbouring houses, the nearest of which was just within shouting distance. They flickered feebly like the pulse of a newborn.

The firewood forest, besides being a breeding ground for mosquitoes, was the dwelling place of cobras, vipers and kraits, and there were monkeys and crabs in it as well. The latter species was, it seemed, the only useful animal: crabs were edible – indeed delicious when preserved in salt. They were plentiful in the forest, in which the farmers went and cut firewood for use and for sale. The pungent smell of preserved crabs made your mouth water when you were hungry. Rice and salt crab had been his staple diet as he grew up.

Most of the dwellers were not native to the area but settlers from other places who had cleared the forest and laid claim to the land many, many years ago, and there was still a steady trickle of migrants moving in, while some of the first settlers opted to move out to new pastures, forsaking their hope of ever settling down on this land because of its impenetrability, intractability and isolation, but for all the wilderness of the surrounding lowlands and highlands, there was no dearth of men who believed in the power of their muscles to make the place their home and who, with the faith of pioneers, set out to clear paths through the wild and to level the ground for cultivation, all thanks to the sweat of their own exertions.

He hated crab-eating monkeys very much. They played no small part in his childhood recollections. He had always seen them when he rowed his boat in the canal. They lived in troops in the trees and always squalled. They disappeared a few years ago, along with the forest, which was cleared and replaced by a sea of paddy fields that left them with no place to live. He used to encounter them time and time again when he went with his father and elder brother into the forest to cut firewood. The forest gradually receded from the edge of the canal and of the village, as the villagers kept chopping down trees for firewood for their own use and for sale to boatmen who sold it in turn in distant places. No one gave a thought to keeping or preserving the forest: everyone needed land to grow rice. Chopping firewood for sale was an important occupation for all the settlers in the area while they waited for the first crop on the land they had tilled. As the forest receded, they had to row or punt further and further away to find wood for chopping. Going back home for lunch would have been a waste of time, so they took with them bowls of rice and jars of water, and troops of monkeys would always sneak in and pilfer the food while the owners were busy cutting wood at some distance from their boats. The monkeys were a nuisance for woodcutters, who had to go without lunch and never managed to catch or circumvent any of the smart and naughty animals, until one day…

He remembered that, at the time, his mother had just given birth, and his father, his big brother and himself had gone to cut wood in the forest. He was still very young and could not do anything much besides help to drag small pieces of wood, one by one, and pile them up to make it easy to carry them back to the boat. That day, they forgot to close the lid of the water jar. It was one of those preserved garlic jars brought from China that the villagers used to keep water in. When they went back to the boat, they found a gang of the little devils in a state of agitation as one of them had dunked its head into the jar and could not get it out. Other monkeys big and small, no doubt the victim’s relatives and friends who had conspired to steal the food, were making an awful racket in the nearest trees. It was a funny scene he remembered well. For all its cleverness, the little fellow had been foolish. He tried to keep it as a pet for a while, taking good care of it at first like a child who has found something new, but eventually he tired of it, because the two of them could hardly get along. He had teased it by giving it shrimp paste, which made it even madder at him, so his father had released the poor creature and let it go back to its former haunt in the forest.

Cutting firewood contributed not a little to the history of the local dwellers, as it led to disputes between them and villagers from other areas who entered the forest to cut wood as well. In truth, nobody owned the forest, but the local settlers held that they had been the first to stake their claim. Though they had not put out boundary markers, they took it for granted that the forest was divided among themselves. They would only cut wood in their own patch. When all the trees were felled, they would move deeper into the forest and apportion it anew. The bounty of the forest and the profits to be drawn from it lured villagers from other places to move in in numbers to cut wood also, leading to perennial quarrels which finally degenerated into a confrontation. He did not witness it himself but was told about it by his brother, and it was this very event which earned Mr Chom the love and respect of the locals so that he was later appointed kamnan*. His own brother was very much taken by the courage Mr Chom, whom the boys of his age called Uncle Chom, displayed during the confrontation.

It seems that Uncle Chom had been a fearless fellow and a bit of a hoodlum when he was in his teens. He had migrated from Khlong Song and settled down to a quiet life of toil, so that no one was aware of his former streak until the dispute over woodcutting grew serious and he thought it was time to stop outsiders from forcing their way into the forest once and for all in order to discourage future intrusions. So he called on all the local dwellers that went regularly to cut wood in the forest to join forces to repel the invaders. That day, the villagers gathered at the mouth of the canal leading into the firewood forest. Each of them carried machetes and whatever other weapons they owned – mostly the choppers they used to cut wood. Some had swords and some, fishing spears. As for Uncle Chom, he had a shotgun.

Uncle Chom laid a bamboo pole across the canal, which was so narrow that only punting boats could slip past, and the villagers gathered and waited behind the bamboo pole. When a boat of outside woodcutters arrived, Uncle Chom announced, ‘Whoever removes this bamboo pole must die. Nobody can cut wood in this canal, except the villagers here.’

A sturdy, energetic man got out of the boat and stood on the ground, then the other men followed suit, each holding either a chopper or a sword. ‘Can’t we share the cutting with you, Chom?’

Uncle Chom looked the speaker in the face. ‘It’s good that you know me. You must know I’m true to my word.’

‘Wood in this forest has no owners. Anybody can cut it.’

‘Who told you this forest has no owners? Here are the owners.’ He held out his hand towards the villagers standing behind him.

The man walked closer to the end of the bamboo pole on the ground. ‘Suppose we want to get it for our use…’ He left the sentence unfinished.

‘You can’t. If you want one, buy it from what’s been cut, or from what hasn’t been cut yet.’

‘Suppose we go cut it ourselves. This wood has no owner.’ The man stepped forward and trod on the end of the pole.

Uncle Chom cocked his gun. ‘Cross over the bamboo and I shoot you,’ he said with obvious determination. The villagers moved a step closer to him as if in support of his words. ‘I had given up behaving like a hoodlum, but now everyone wants me to be one again, so I will. Whoever thinks he’s smart, let him cross over.’

The others equivocated for a while, seemingly to appraise the weaponry of the other side and its manpower against theirs. They had not a single gun between them.

‘Can’t we share with you at all?’ The tone was more conciliatory.

‘The wood is reserved by the villagers here. If you want wood, go get it from somewhere else.’

One by one, the outsiders turned round and went back to their boat reluctantly and looking none too friendly.

‘This is my ultimatum: from now on, no one can come here and cut wood at all,’ Uncle Chom added for good measure as the boat was leaving.

From then on, it seems that there were no more large groups of intruders coming in to cut wood, although there were surreptitious forays at night by some for the same purpose now and then.

He loved his big brother very much, because they were playmates. His brother often took him to catch fighting fish with scoop baskets in a small swamp whose torpid water was hairy with grass and which their mother kept forbidding them to go to because she was afraid they might be bitten by cobras. Their mother’s fears were well founded, because death from cobra bites was a regular occurrence. In those days, the various marsh plants, mostly wild and useless, had been cleared over a wide area, some stretches of land had been levelled, and his father had bought a water buffalo, called Kang* because of the unusual spread of its horns. His brother and him went along and helped cut grass for Kang and took the opportunity to catch fighting fish. They shared the fish they caught and put them in bottles or basins, and his brother always let him choose first. When they had raised them long enough, they got them to fight, and his fish mostly won. ‘That’s because you always get to pick the best,’ his brother would say while throwing his defeated champion back into the water.

Across the canal from his house at an angle, another house came to be built by people who had migrated from Rangsit. It was a small family – father, mother and daughter. The girl seemed to be about his own age. The two brothers watched the construction of the house with interest. It was a thatch-roofed farm shack merely squatting on a mound erected as a precaution against flooding. Inside, a small platform of rubber wood over raised ground formed the sleeping area, and the sitting platform was made of bamboo as in farm shacks everywhere. The house had several roosters, which crowed melodiously before dawn. As the houses were only separated by the canal, it was not long before the two families came to know each other. One evening, a tiger cat stole a rooster from the neighbour’s coop. The whole house was in uproar. The little girl cried louder than anyone, out of fear or out of sorrow for the rooster nobody knew. He was startled: it wasn’t just a cat, it was a tiger cat! His father and his brother went over to help, but nothing could be done, they could not catch the tiger cat that time. However, to prevent further raids (several farmers in the area had also been attacked), they put the roosters in a cage as a lure and kept watch together over several nights, and eventually the tiger cat was caught, which pleased both households very much. On that crucial night, he had been sound asleep since early evening, unable to stand further sleep deprivation after staying awake for most of the previous nights, but he too had shared in the happiness as if he had triumphed over a major danger in his life all by himself. From then on, the two households had close relations. The parents would visit each other regularly and the children would cross over to play with one another, which meant he had a new playmate.

The forest was cleared. The uneven ground was levelled and turned into fertile paddy fields bristling with verdant sprouts, but he could see that such changes took a long time – year after year of toil as the settlers used the strength of their bodies and shed their sweat, many hundreds of millions of drops of sweat, with endurance and diligence. He liked the rainy season when the lowlands were inundated and he was able to row his small boat to fish in the fields. The water was so clear he could see the fish with his naked eye. During the rainy season there was an abundance of fish and water plants. He set fish traps in the ditches and visited them every morning. They yielded gourami, barb, climbing perch and catfish without fail. Frog’s-bit, water mimosa and water primrose were at their crunchy best. The lotuses in the ditches bloomed. The luffa climber which covered the whole roof of the house with a profusion of leaves broke into yellow flowers which took on a breathtaking glow in the morning sunshine. But as soon as the gourds were kept, his father cut the luffa and threw it away and wouldn’t let it creep up all over the roof again. His father told him that it made the nipa and bamboo strips of the roof rot quickly, because when the rains fell, it prevented the sunshine from seeping through and the roof was never dry. His father replanted the luffa on the knoll near the house, which already had clumps of lemon grass, kaffir, chilli and basil, and provided it with a bamboo grid to creep over. But when it flowered he felt it didn’t look as beautiful as it had when it had spread all over the roof.

The rice-ripening season was another harrowing time, as he was busy chasing weaverbirds, which came down to eat the grain in large numbers. He saw some weavers make theirs nests by the canal, nests that were more beautiful and intricate than those of other birds. He often went and stole the eggs, so that in later years there would be less birds and those that were left made their nests high up in bamboo groves out of reach, but there were few such weavers. It was the jungle weavers that came to eat the rice. They flew in in droves and did quite a lot of damage. You had to pack mud at one end of a clump of lalang grass to use as a projectile, then sit idly in the paddy field from dawn to dusk ready to throw it to scatter the birds whenever they came to eat.

Harvest time was another period of heavy work. There, as everywhere, the farmers relied on one another to harvest. Many people came to help harvest the paddy field of one household then went to another house’s, depending on whose rice was ripe first. Even though their hands had been roughed and calloused by years of heavy labour, they still managed to get them hurt with the scythes, which drew blood. The rice stalks bound in sheaves bore traces of the farmers’ dry blood. Women and men and even children old enough to work helped one another toil away and paid no attention to the blood seeping from their hands, and the scars would still be visible when the time came to grab the ladle to make an offering of rice to the monks on New Year’s Day.

When the threshing was over and the grain stored away, Chinaman Heng’s fast dugout would turn up at the bottom of the stairs in front of the house. He remembered that in the old days, Chinaman Heng had been the first to set up shop in the neighbourhood, selling dry foodstuffs and odds and ends. Every day Chinaman Heng would row his small sampan full of all kinds of petty goods he bought in town – from coconut oil, kerosene, betel, tobacco, condiments, onions and garlic to such delicacies as popped-rice cakes, slabs of jujube, palm sugar biscuits and small sugar dolls in green, white and pink. Chinaman Heng’s status changed fairly quickly. His small shop expanded and had more goods to sell. Besides selling goods as before, Chinaman Heng became a moneylender, advancing money against future paddy, as well as a middleman buying rice from the farmers and selling it to the rice mill. Before long, he gave up rowing his trading boat and left that duty to one of his helpers. When rice growing in the area expanded and proved rewarding, Chinaman Heng would only row his rice boat to collect paddy from the farmers who were in his debt and to buy rice from others as well, which he kept in his barn before selling it to the rice mill. And it was not long either before he left the duty of rowing to someone else and was content to sit in his big-bellied boat supervising the collection of rice from the farmers.

He still remembered the fun of the Thai New Year celebration each April, when the villagers in their best clothes assembled at the temple and made merit with food offerings to the monks for three days running, and finally a Buddha image was bathed with fragrant water, then more scented water was poured on the hands of the elders while the young men and women doused themselves by the bucketful and the children joined in the fun as well. The nights resounded with Mae See and Phee Ling songs. In the neighbourhood, there were four or five families who had migrated from Park Lat and they had several young women. They had brought over the game of Saba* and made it popular among the local folk. Around their houses, the night was brightened by pressure lanterns, and the young men had gone and assembled there. In the first few years when saba was played, the young men always lost because they were still unfamiliar with the game, so they had to dance for the young women instead of the other way around. Besides saba, there was the Mae See spirit game. The medium was a young woman. Blindfolded, holding an incense stick between her palms joined in front of her chest, she sat on a mortar for pounding rice, her feet placed upon pestles lined up in a double row, the heads of the pestles turned towards her heels. She lit up the incense stick and stuck it into the ground. Then there was a merry clapping of hands and clatter of bamboo sticks as everybody sang.

‘O Mae See Mae See bonny lass in bud

Raise your hands and to the Lord bow

That your beauty be hailed

In the curve of your brow

And the round of your neck

Do cover your ravishing breast O bonny Mae See O’

The song was sung again and again until half of the incense stick was consumed. The medium sat still. The song being sung changed to an invitation to the spirit.

Come down O Lords of the Four Directions

Let the most powerful take form

Into the body of your slave the medium

Do come down, O white-green Lord

Ride the one-tusk elephant and take the maid with the black eyes

Tonight come and play Mae See O

The singing of this song went on for a while. When the incense stick was burnt entirely and the medium was seen swaying to and fro with slightly trembling hands, it meant that the spirit had entered her. The singers sang louder to a fiercer and faster clapping of hands and bamboo beat.

The spirit has entered ho! the spirit has entered ha!

He didn’t crawl under the branch as he entered

The jujube thorns scratched his face and he ouched

The betel nuts are in the box the betel leaves are in the box

Raise the box and the golden bowl up to his face to clean it

The spirit has entered ho! the spirit has entered ha!

Now that she was possessed, the blindfold was taken off her, then men and women sang courtship songs in alternation, Mae See dancing all the while until it was over.

As for him, when he was still very young, he was not really interested in Mae See, but what he liked was Phee Ling. It was real fun and had the thrill of danger, but before you could play you had to sing the invitation to the phee ling, the monkey spirit, till you got yourself hoarse.

Hey little loris come munch a crunchy rice cake

The two kiddies have come to pluck the ace of club

Marquess Dove and Marquess Watercock

Mouth a cowry, chew some rice O Lord Loris

A round coconut a jambu sweet

Mouse-faced Glass has a lover in the palace

Tiddledy-dum tiddledy-do and a rope round her neck

At the morgue rat-a-tat-tat boom-boom

Phook was the first to be entered by the monkey spirit. He crouched on a couple of pestles, blindfolded, a stick of incense between his raised hands. He had a piece of chequered cloth around his waist for his minders to grab so that nobody would get hurt when he went after someone and he would not just dart away, as the rumour had it that some of the men possessed by the monkey spirit had run away into the jungle and some had even turned into monkeys; sometimes they disappeared for days before the spirit left them and they returned home, and some disappeared for good. But those were only rumours; nothing of the sort had happened yet around here. After the song had been going on for some time, Phook began to tremble more and more. When his minders saw that he was possessed, they removed his blindfold. Phook pounced after people at once like a vicious monkey, prompting the circle around him to break in fright. In the commotion, someone threw him down belly up. His head banged on the ground. The shock was so sudden he did not feel the pain. He scrambled off to below the house, because he had heard the advice that when he was cornered he should take refuge under the house since the monkey spirit would never follow him there. He sat looking at the monkey spirit that had entered Phook chasing people in an uproar, his two sturdy minders hardly able to keep up with him. When he felt himself again and ceased to be afraid, he came out from under the house to tease the monkey for fun. That’s when Phook ran headlong into a huge pole. The spirit left there and then, with Phook holding his swelling forehead and groaning in pain and panting in exhaustion.

The curious went to ask him what it had been like. Phook answered that he had felt as if he had been sleeping. At first he heard the singing but that had gone away, then he thought he saw something dark like a cloud of smoke suddenly whooshing into him and then he felt nothing any more until he had this pain in the head. ‘I don’t know why I’m so tired,’ he grumbled. ‘Get me some water.’

‘Chasing people all over, of course you’re tired,’ someone told him.

Phook looked perplexed as if he did not believe it was true.

Many agreed the monkey spirit had really entered him, yet some were still unconvinced and wanted to have it done all over again and asked for volunteers. Fatso, Old On’s son, readily agreed.

The old ceremonial began again. The monkey spirit entered Fatso before long. Fatso’s behaviour was almost exactly that of Phook. He went after people for a long time, mostly in the direction of the group of women who fled shrieking. At one point, as Fatso chased people, his minders just lost their hold on him. Many people exclaimed in fear that he would disappear into the forest. Yet, Fatso went on chasing people, his minders behind him. The man Fatso ran after, seeing himself cornered, went up a haystack to its very top. Fatso climbed after him, but somehow as he was scaling up, he lost his grip and he fell tumbling down. Yelling in fright, people ran to him at once, afraid he’d broken his skull or his ribs or his arms or something. But no. Fatso was having a good laugh. His trick was up. The women protested weakly that he had been cheating and he almost got kicked by the older men for chasing people around without being possessed.

He was especially interested, wanting to know if the spirit had really entered the medium, so he whispered to Fatso, who was still panting: ‘Hey, Fatso, were you possessed or not?’

Fatso took him by the hand and went to sit on a log away from the others. ‘I’m telling you: don’t say a word about this,’ Fatso enjoined. ‘I just faked it. No goddamn spirit entered me. I just pretended, all right? Thought it was fun.’

‘Then how come you were shaking?’

‘Koz I was tired, damn it. I thought I’d wait him out and let him in to make it look good, but I couldn’t stand it, I got so goddamn tired, so I had to pretend to get possessed a bit too soon.’

‘Why did you fall off the haystack?’

‘I was tired to death. If I didn’t chase ’m and stayed put, I’d break my teeth laughing. That’s when I got afraid I’d be found out. So I had to keep on the chase. Couldn’t stop. I was so tired, you know, and the minders, they kept pulling on the cloth so I could hardly breathe. If I fell, it’s because I didn’t quite grasp the straw: I just didn’t have any strength left, and when I fell I couldn’t help laughing.’

‘Do you believe Phook was really possessed?’ he asked further.

Fatso shook his head. ‘He used the same trick as I did, I reckon.’

He had three brothers and one sister. His elder brother had gone to the temple school three years before him, then his father had sent him there to learn as well, and the two brothers rowed the boat to the school together. His father told the neighbours, ‘Let ’m learn their ABCs so they ain’t as stupid as we folks. Primary school’s enough: we’ll need them at home after that.’

He was too young to know the importance of learning. His father had sent him to study, so he went on with his studies. If he enjoyed going to school, it was not because he wanted to learn but because there were many more friends to play with. In the daytime, they were only able to play a few children’s games as so many enticements, but whether by fate or whatever, something happened that was to result in a complete change in his life.

The monk who taught him and the other children at the temple told his father one day, ‘I’m going to Bangkok. You have several children. I’d like one to go with me. He’ll be able to study in Bangkok as well.’

His father thought for a long time and, after consulting his mother, agreed to let him go. ‘Chao is old enough for us to rely on his labour. Let his younger brother go.’ This was his parents’ joint decision.

His little brother Bai was only four years old then and quite innocent. His sister Yen was only two, and the last boy, Khuen, had yet to learn to walk. It was agreed that he was the one his parents would allow to be at the monk’s service in Bangkok.

He cried on the day he left home, his parents, brothers and sister, the windy, sun-drenched paddy fields and everything he loved and was used to. He did not know how far Bangkok was but suspected it was way, way away.

His mother, holding the last-born in her arms, looked at him with empty eyes as he held the monk’s shoulder bag and boarded the boat to Bangkok. His father and the other two younger siblings stood together at the top of the stairs at the landing.

‘You go now, son. We’ll meet again in the next dry season,’ his mother said softly and, turning to the monk, insisted: ‘You must let him come back for the New Year celebrations next year.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll have him back home every year. The school holidays last for more than a month. He’ll come and see you every year.’

‘Maybe I’ll come to see you at the beginning of Lent,’ his father offered as a consolation.

Such had been the childhood, up until the switch to urban life, of the young boy Sai Seema, son of Mr Thiang Seema, rice farmer.

4 Δ

Ratchanee sat reading a weekly newspaper in the small pavilion raised above the water of the garden ditch. In the shade of the vines that crept all over the wooden laths of the roof, Ratchanee felt unspeakably lonely. University life had already come to an end and she had a sense of loss over what had been her routine – over the lack of activity, of meetings with friends and, worst of all, of any expectation about life and the future.

Ratchanee looked at the blue-and-white porcelain pots and at the plants in the pots, which were placed at regular intervals around the lawn and were kept properly trimmed by Father, who spent hours each evening taking care of them. ‘My life is the same as those plants,’ Ratchanee thought.

A large sedan glided into the compound. A glance told Ratchanee that it belonged to Darunee, her second eldest sister. As the car drove past the pavilion at the bend of the lane leading to the main house, Darunee looked through the window and waved at Ratchanee, then instructed the driver to stop the car at once before it reached the front of the house.

Darunee opened the door and stepped out at the same time as Ratchanee got to her feet and walked towards her.

‘Lek, is Mother home?’

Ratchanee nodded for an answer.

‘How about Father?’

‘He’s here too. Inside.’

‘I dropped by to visit them,’ Darunee explained.

‘How are you?’

‘Fine. Lek, wait for me. I’ll go and see them first, then I’ll be right back.’ Before turning her back, she said, ‘I’ve many things to talk to you about. You must wait for me, okay?’ she reiterated.

Ratchanee went back to the arbour and seated herself on the bench as before. Darunee had been married for years and had two children. Her husband was a very wealthy trader. Actually, he used to be a mere clerk in a Western firm in Bang Rak but he had prospered very quickly during the war and even more so afterwards.

After Darunee got married, Ratchanee did not see her often, as her sister seldom had time to come for a visit and when she did come, Ratchanee usually was not at home. Ratchanee had no idea what her sister wanted to talk to her about.

Darunee’s marriage, from what Ratchanee could remember, had taken place because her suitor was well off. If truth be told, neither was in love with the other beforehand; they had met only a few times, but the decision to get married had been easily taken. One reason was that Darunee, like most women of her time, had no opinion of her own regarding love and marriage. If there were other reasons, Ratchanee did not know and did not want to venture a guess.