a bamboo bridge over rapids
Some stories seem to be buried stubbornly in our memory. They usually
come back to haunt us on nights of loneliness, at moments when we let our mind
drift with the whisper of the sea or the sighs of the breeze. They return time
and time again like whirling waters and form a sad melody of life, intruding
faintly, regardless of place, whenever we are engrossed in the present.
On the last
day of September 1980, my eight friends and I were walking down a high ridge
and, a little before noon, we reached the upper course of the Kha Khaeng stream. Monsoon rains
had been falling for days on end, at times seeming to split the whole range
asunder, at others melting in a fine drizzle that lasted from dawn to dusk.
Even when the rain stopped, the whole jungle was still as dim and damp as a
deserted theatre. The smell of old leaves and soggy rotting logs had filled our
nostrils along the way.
Taking the
ravine near the source of the Khwae Yai River as our
starting point, we had walked for five full days in the rain, up and down steep
mountain slopes. We were coming from the west, cutting across the common
borders of Uthai Thani, Tak
and Kanchanaburi provinces in order to reach the jungle’s edge at a place
called Sap Fa Pha. Another
day and we would reach our destination, provided we could safely cross the Kha Khaeng rapids. It was the end
of the rainy season, and the water was at its highest level. The stream, turbid
like a sea of boiling mud, had overflowed its banks and spread wide. All along
its course we could see a scattering of half-submerged bushes, which swayed
about like drowning men struggling wildly as they called out for help. Whole
trees – roots, trunks and all – drifted down, and some got stuck on bushes
which the current hadn’t yet torn up.
On the
opposite bank, a little beyond our route, a large monitor lizard had been swept
onto a branch, to which it clung, bobbing up and down under the thrashing of
the current; it was unable to climb up the bank and unable to let go, as it
would be whisked away by the rapids. What a pathetic sight!
It was a fully grown lizard which must have gone through a lot before
being caught in the stream…
Before deciding to leave the mountains at the end of September 1980, I’d
spent more than five years of my life in the jungle. It hadn’t been easy for
someone who happened to be born and lived for nearly two decades in a village
by the sea, and all the more so for someone who had always been conscious that
his parents had hoped he would provide for the family once he had graduated
from university.
I was able
to get rid of the first burden within a fairly short time: it took me no longer
than two rainy seasons to feel at home in the jungle and mountains. But the
second burden was different. During those five years, I shouldered it every
step of the way, day and night, from high rocky ridges through to meandering
brooks.
I still
vividly remember the day I had to leave. I had travelled to Bang Pakong, my
birthplace, to bid farewell to my parents. Father was the only one at home that
day. Mother had gone to a neighbouring province to buy fruit she’d sell at the
market. As I sat waiting for her to return home, I thought about the days of my
childhood, when we still lived together. The more I brooded, the more I felt
she was an angel heaven had punished by making her the mother of someone like
me.
Mother spoke
little and hardly ever had a harsh word for her children. She was nonetheless
one of the proudest women I have ever known. Because she was abandoned by her
father in her infancy, had no relatives and never went to school, she was used
to relying on herself since a very early age. No matter how destitute she was,
she never begged from anyone; even among her own children, she’d never ask for
help to ease her weariness if we weren’t considerate enough to see it
ourselves.
She usually
got up before dawn to take goods to the market and, depending on how much there
was, carried them either by pushcart or in baskets hanging from a yoke balanced
on her shoulder. After selecting fruits for a while, just before it was time
for her to leave the house, she’d nudge me gently awake or call me in her usual
tone of voice; under no circumstances would she shout, because she disliked
making noise and, besides, was afraid to unnecessarily awaken my little brother
and sisters, who were still very young.
One day, she
tried to wake me up three times, but I wouldn’t get up. I was already awake,
but I still wanted to sleep late like any child who was growing fast and
showing signs of puberty. After a while, I began to feel that Mother was
unusually quiet. I got up and saw her busy carrying goods on her shoulder,
holding this, grabbing that, and on her face, which had begun to wrinkle, tears
were streaming down.
“No need.”
She whisked my hands away after I jumped to relieve her of what she was
holding.
Since that
day, I never allowed her to wake me up more than once. This, however, didn’t
mean the end of our sad story.
There was a
time during which my mother had no money to buy fruit to resell or pay the rent
for her stall at the village market. She earned five to ten baht a day from
selling shaved-ice with syrup and toasted bread at the parking bay for the
minibuses that ran between Bang Pakong and Chonburi. During that period, my
father had gone looking for jobs in the South and my eldest sister and elder
brother were earning their living in other provinces; thus I was the oldest
child in the house. With my three younger siblings, it meant Mother had many
mouths to feed day in and day out. She had a plaster piggy bank, made in the
shape of a horse, in which there were more than ten coins in various sizes and
a five-baht banknote. Any day when she didn’t earn enough from her sales to buy
food, she’d take the coins to supplement whatever she had, and whenever she had
one or two baht left, she’d slip them into the piggy bank. Things went on like
this for a long time.
One day, she
came home looking utterly exhausted. She grumbled that there had been no one at
the parking bay all day. After resting for a while, she took out the
horse-shaped piggy bank, turned it upside down and inserted a hair clip to
retrieve the five-baht note she badly needed to solve her current predicament.
In no time
her face grew tense and she suddenly burst into tears.
“To have
come this low, and still have them doing this to me,” she said between sobs.
I sat stock-still
and stole glances at the tears on her weather-beaten cheeks. I had the urge to
hug her and say something, but I felt that, for people like us who’ve only had
sad parts to play since the day we were born, it would be overreacting. I knew
she didn’t feel sorry about the money but was disheartened that we were harming
one another at a time when society at large was wilfully tearing itself apart.
That day –
the day of my departure – I sat waiting for her until it was near dusk, but she
didn’t come. Father, who didn’t know why I had come home, tried to get me to
stay the night, but I had to refuse. An appointment had been made that could
not be missed – an appointment with my destiny which was tightly linked to the
future of the country.
Father
hobbled to see me off at the end of the alley leading to our house. As I walked
away quietly, I didn’t dare turn around and look at his face again for fear he
might catch on to the fact that this time our separation could be final.
Besides, I knew he didn’t like to see any of his children cry.
And
certainly not his sons.
While we stopped for lunch, we argued among ourselves about the best way
to cross the rapids. One member of our party was my lifelong soul mate, and she
couldn’t swim, so we had to discard the option of placing our knapsacks on our
heads and letting ourselves drift to the other bank. But even if she could
swim, I doubt we’d have gone ahead with that method. We had no way of knowing
what could be submerged beneath these fast-flowing waters. I once heard the
story of an able-bodied man trying to swim across some jungle stream only to be
impaled through the neck by a piece of wood. I myself had once waded chest-deep
through a flash flood, and besides having to fight against the current with all
my strength, had to step with both feet on bamboo thorns underwater; by the
time I reached the bank, I was in pretty bad shape. Our eyes couldn’t assess
the danger of such waters.
One method
we thought might work was to ask the strongest among us to tie himself to a rope
and swim against the current to the opposite bank, then fasten the rope to make
a line for the rest of us to cling to as we waded across. To test this theory,
one of my friends, who had been acting as my bodyguard along the way, tried to
enter the main watercourse to check its depth and strength of current. In the
twinkling of an eye, his big, tall body was swept away as if snatched by a
ghost. I saw him toss and tumble in the current for what seemed like ages and
by the time he managed to grab a branch near the bank, he had been whisked
fifty metres downstream.
The test had
been conclusive. Even if we were able to throw a line across the rapids,
clinging to it to reach the opposite bank was not a sensible thing to do. If
one of us were to let go of the rope under the pull of the current, the rest of
us would have to spend days looking for the body, and at least one more day
digging a grave for it, not to mention the eons it would take us to get over
our sorrow.
So, there
was only one option left: we had to build a bridge across the torrent.
While my
wife and I took turns using the only spoon we had to scoop the rice, two or
three men who had already eaten went to look for long stems of bamboo among the
clumps that lined our path. We were lucky to have a couple of Hmong brothers as
our guides. During the past five years, I had never seen anyone use a knife as
deftly as the people of this tribe, especially when they used it to cut wood in
the jungle. Cutting bamboo stems from their clump is highly skilled work for
jungle dwellers. They’d pay for a mistake with their lives, as offerings to the
Lord of the Jungle. Stories of chests pierced, throats gashed and main arteries
slashed by bamboo stems were common in the mountains. Once, I saw a friend of
mine knocked down for the count after a bamboo stem he was cutting had swung
back and hit him right on the forehead. Only an expert could tell how the top
of the stems intertwined and in which direction they’d swing when you hacked
them at the base.
I had hardly
started to roll myself a cigarette in a leaf after lunch than the hacking of
bush knifes on bamboo stems started up. It resounded above the sizzle of the
rain on the treetops and the roaring of the rapids, forming an odd rhythmic
tune only its composer could fully appreciate and understand.
‘Even on our
way to defeat, we still have to overcome obstacles,’ I thought as I puffed
clouds of smoke into the air.
It didn’t
take long to gather the amount of long stems we needed. The strongest man in
our group was chosen to walk some distance upstream in order to drift back with
the current and grab a branch of the nearest treetop in front of us. As we
extended the first bamboo stem from the bank, his duty was to fasten it to one
of the branches slightly above water level. The second stem was then held out
parallel to the first and again my friend tied it tightly to the branch. Our
makeshift bridge was beginning to take shape.
One of us
crawled on it and sat astride the stems, helping to put in place two more big
bamboo stems so that they reached the next bush further out in the stream. We
used the same method to place stems from one bush to the next, tying them up
securely with rope or creepers while some of us waited in the water to grab the
stems and coordinate all the work. We all helped one another and did whatever
had to be done as best we could. Boisterous shouts kept resounding and
sometimes those who had to stay in the water for hours on end would complain
about the cold. The rain was still falling and the current kept flowing
furiously.
Before dusk,
the bamboo bridge over the rapids was finally ready. Its width was that of two
stems laid across the stream in a zigzag course of four or five segments. It
stretched just above the water and kept wobbling with the swaying bushes we
used as poles. At waist level, along the whole length, we had tied a thin rope
for our balance, to grab and pull as we walked across.
We gathered
our weapons and personal belongings and started to cross one at a time. It was
only then that we noticed that the big monitor lizard stuck on a branch on the
opposite bank was no longer there. In its struggle it must have been whisked
away by the current while we were busy building the bridge.
I learned about my mother’s death in November 1977, almost four months
after she had died. I was then staying on the Hin Rong
Kla mountain range. The letter reached me, long after
the sun had set behind the ridge, as I sat in a meeting with several of my
friends. I unfolded it and read it under torchlight; when I was fully
acquainted with its contents, I slung the rifle over my shoulder and left the
hut quietly to walk alone on a small jungle path under the sparse light of the
moon and stars filtering through the branches.
I don’t know
how long I sat against a tree trunk, my face pressed against the barrel of the
rifle. I only know the tears that ran down the barrel to the chamber of the
assault rifle glistened in the dark and seemed like they would never end.
Near dawn, I
found myself in the hut, gazing mournfully at the fire
we had built to protect ourselves from the cold. The flames were blurred as if
the fire stood behind a sheet of clear water. When I blinked, they heaved along
with the folds of the water curtain. My soul mate was stroking my arm as if to
let me know that no matter what, we still had each other and I wasn’t alone.
I knew that,
yet I couldn’t help but recall that horse-shaped piggy bank. I would have liked
to have told Mother that I had never thought of taking advantage of her or the
three young ones. If I had taken the five-baht note to play cards with my
friends at the back of the market, it was because I thought it would be a way
out of the situation we faced. I never intended to make Mother grieve; I had
only forgotten to think carefully enough, that some solutions may make a bad
situation worse.
The sun began to set very rapidly. I lifted the knapsack which only held
the manuscripts of short stories I had written and slung it over my shoulder. I
took one end of a piece of rope, tied it around my waist and used the other end
to do the same for my companion, who was waiting to cross with me. For this
trip, I only had a pistol with me, which wasn’t much of a load to carry. I tied
my slippers to the knapsack so that my bare feet could move along the bamboo
stems with maximum efficiency. After standing still for a while, I started to
step forward. My companion gripped my back with one hand and followed me step
by step without saying a word.
Our combined
weight made the bamboo stems bend, touch the water and even dip slightly into
it at some points. The bridge vibrated under the force of the current; I felt
the vibrations running through the soles of my feet, up my legs, right to my
heart. If we failed, we would die together, but at such a critical juncture,
how could we possibly cross separately?
Right then,
the width of the Kha Khaeng
torrent seemed limitless. I felt it was taking us an eternity to reach the last
section of the bridge, which sank into the water deeper than at any other
point. The extremely cold current rushed past my ankles as if to snatch me away
as soon as possible. At the same time, the bridge was swaying as though it
despised the steps of the defeated. But we finally made it to the opposite
bank. Somebody had already built a fire and was drying his drenched shirt by
it.
As we sat by the fire, I kept turning to look at the stream we had just
crossed. All kinds of thoughts were rushing through my mind with the force of
wild waters. The very next day, I would relinquish my arms officially, as well
as my hopes to create a world in which horse-shaped piggy banks would not be
necessary.
I had no
idea how long I’d be bound to the stream of memories, which is much scarier
than the current of the Kha Khaeng
rapids. I only knew that, from then on, I’d have to struggle to build bridges
alone.
First published in this translation in the February
1994 issue of the Bangkok magazine Caravan