carrion floating by
(Ma Nao Loi
Narm, 1987)
The Judgment
Mad Dogs & Co
Time
An Ordinary Story (and others less so)
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1
You
feel like your whole body is hurled against a stone wall
or something just as hard. The force of the collision shakes you all over. In
that split second, a deafening KRASH! fills your ears.
Noise and impact are one and the same thing, tearing
into your consciousness. The sound pushes in deep and fast like a scared animal
in search of a hiding place. It digs its quivering self into that gap.
You
don’t feel any pain, only know that every part of your
body is totally insensitive as if this whole thing about an accident is
happening in a dream.
A
dream which startles you awake with a sense of relief.
You
open your eyes, see several pairs of lights so bright
it hurts. Almost as soon as you see them, you close your eyes in apprehension.
You don’t want to believe that what you see is true, sputter to yourself:
–
It’s a dream.
–
It’s only a dream.
Thrust
this belief with alarm into your mind, try hard to
force your awareness into accepting that everything that’s happening right now
is only a nightmare.
Too
bad that what you feel around you won’t play along. Your body keeps performing
as usual, but you feel as if it’s trying all ways to contend with your belief
that this is a dream. It compels you to open your eyes to confront the world of
bitter reality, the here and now.
Sound
of broken glass raining down. A few breaths later you hear running feet getting
close.
‘Is
he dead?’
‘Not
yet, not yet.’
Inside
your ear you hear the clamour of a throng around you, engine noises, car-hooting everywhere, exclamations of curious onlookers.
‘Better
prise the door open.’
‘Right,
let’s do it. Quickly.’
‘Hey,
grab hold of it right here.’
‘One!
Two! Three! Pull!’
Then
your body is dragged out. Your shoes fall on the car floor. You’re still scared
of the truth, don’t dare open your eyes, but know from the way you’re being
handled that the good citizens pulling you out of the car number no fewer than
three.
Your
back hits a hard slab of cement. They carefully make you lie down flat. The
warmth from the cement permeates your flesh. You’d like to keep lying fully
stretched like that, don’t want to open your eyes to look at anything at all,
thinking all along you’re dreaming, calling for everything right now to be
nothing else but a dream, even though the noises around you contradict your
belief, your secret hopes that it’s just a dream.
‘Don’t
turn your head, sir. Don’t move.’
‘Anybody
got smelling salts?’
…The
reek of smelling salts enters your nostrils. You inhale that smell deep inside
though you’re not sure whether you want such a smell or not and can’t figure
out why you’re inhaling it.
‘Sir,
sir, sir!’
You
hear the call as your left arm is being shaken. It’s like being shaken awake
but you still don’t want to wake up, you still want to keep lying lazily
drowsily in bed.
You
still pretend to have passed out, want others to think you’ve really passed
out. For the time being you don’t dare face up to reality. You deny it. At
least while you’re ‘passed out’ it’s like avoiding real life for a while, so
you still aren’t ready to come to when you’re given the smelling salts.
‘But
look at the blood! He’s bleeding non-stop!’ A woman’s voice, all shook up.
When
your ears hear the word ‘blood’ a searing pain wracks your head at once and
almost at the same time you think ‘hospital’. Those two words are like twins.
When you think of one you think of the other. You don’t know since when those
twin words have been in your mind.
You
feel the headache getting worse every moment and you’re aware of the track of
blood trickling out of your wound. Your nose begins to get the sour smell of
blood mixed with that of the smelling salts. The smell of blood getting
stronger makes you apprehensive.
‘What
about the people in the other cars?’
‘They’re
all hurt. They’ve all been taken out. What about this one? Is he in a coma?
We’d better take him to hospital.’
You
think it’s time for you to dare open your eyes and face reality, the reality
which keeps flowing all the time. No matter which way you turn to avoid it, it
keeps following you and finally when it drives you into a corner, when you
can’t flee anymore, the only option left is to turn round and face it and
grapple with it. You gather all of your remaining courage and open your eyes.
You
see a circle of faces peering down expectantly.
‘He’s
come to.’
‘He’s
come to.’
Even
though it’s now nighttime, the lights from roadside
lampposts and from the cars, which form long unmoving lines, make the area look
as bright as if there was a fair. The people gawping at the cars in the middle
of the road and all around you are crowding together as if they’d really come
to enjoy a fair.
You
slowly hoist your body into a sitting position. A young man comes to help
support you. He’s dressed almost like a soldier, with a round-necked greenish
brown shirt, greenish brown shorts and a crew cut. You try to stand up,
thoroughly puzzled. You don’t know where you are, which road this is. Your head
is in a muddle. You can’t think of anything, except that you must drive to
hospital. You lumber to the cars stalled askew in the middle of the road.
‘Just
go to hospital. Don’t worry about the car. I’ll watch over it,’ the young
fellow who supports you tells you.
‘Get
all valuables out of your car,’ a middle-aged man shouts against the din of
hooting.
Your
car is quietly static in the middle of the road, its nose half caught into the
mud of a plantation. A taxi is stuck in front of it, its muzzle appallingly
wrecked. You turn to look at your car. Its condition is hardly different. The
front right mudguard is so crumpled it touches the wheel. The bonnet is all-askew. The right headlight is all smashed in. Bumper and
grille have nothing left of their former condition. Fine bits of glass from the
windscreen are strewn all over the road.
You
forget your pain for a moment, can’t do anything right, can’t believe the
damage you see, can’t believe that what you see is true, as if you were
standing right between two worlds.
‘You’d
better look after the valuables in your car,’ the middle-aged man cautions
again. His voice calls you back to the real world. You turn round to thank him
before walking over to the car’s door…
Lean
over and put your head inside. Pick up your shoulder bag and take it out.
Before pulling out you look into the rear-view mirror. In the light from the
stuck cars you see your face covered in red blood running down your face
entirely. Your heart quakes. You stagger out.
–
Must go to hospital, you tell yourself.
‘Don’t
worry about the car. I’ll look after it. Just hurry.’ The young man helps you
back.
‘Get
the wounded over here,’ another young man also dressed almost like a soldier
shouts out from the roadside. On that side there are two cars parked, the first
a taxi, the other a sedan, blue, with dark film on the windows.
You
scramble into the taxi which pulls away rather fast. You turn round to have a
last look at your car. It’s still stuck in the middle of the road. Behind it
stretches a long line of cars with their headlights ablaze.
‘How
come you crashed?’ a harsh voice asks.
You
turn to the young man whose voice it is.
He
looks at you with only one eye. The handkerchief in his hand covers his left
eye. Even though it’s only one eye, its inimical glare is obvious.
‘I
fell asleep,’ you answer matter-of-factly, not feeling like saying anything
more.
‘When
they pulled you out, I thought you were finished,’ the man sitting in the
middle says, holding a handkerchief over his head.
You
smile at him and lean back against your seat, feel like the blood on your
forehead is changing directions, so you grab your handkerchief and mop at the
source of the stream, then close your eyes and listen to the men on the front
seats talking.
‘Lucky
I wasn’t driving fast.’
‘The
other car must have been going damn fast to be so smashed up. How did it
happen?’
‘Well,
I was right behind the car upfront. I saw him swerve, so I swerved too and
that’s when I was run into at full blast.’
‘How
many cars in the crash?’
‘Three.
The car in front of me also got it.’
‘All
of them hurt, are they?’
‘Don’t
know. But in my car, yes, all of us. Lucky I saw it a split second before, so I
could swing the car to the side of the road. Yet for all that the front got
smashed. What rotten luck. That son of a bitch…’
‘What
a shame. Tonight there’s lots of people out too.
Could’ve been much worse.’
‘That’s
right.’
‘Think
of it as a minor calamity. Nobody’s badly hurt, so that’s good.’
‘Does
the owner know yet?’
‘It’s
my own car. That’s why I say rotten luck.’
‘Who’s
looking after it now?’
‘Soldiers
in the local unit there.’
‘Just
as well there’s somebody to look after it. If not, before the cops arrived,
everything’d be gone.’
‘But
I’ve got nothing in there anyway.’
‘I
wonder if dad got concussed,’ the person next to you starts saying.
‘I
don’t think so. When it happened he was still telling us to keep cool.’
‘Where
were you going?’ the driver’s voice asks.
‘To
a party,’ the man sitting next to you answers.
‘I
heard them say you were going to celebrate the niece’s graduation,’ the man
sitting up front answers.
‘Well,
let’s all go and celebrate at the hospital first,’ the driver’s voice quips.
…The
taxi reduces speed. Tic-tac tic-tac goes the
indicator. You open your eyes and look. On that same tic-tac rhythm the car
sweeps round the bend, whooshes into the hospital grounds and slows down to a
stop in front of the casualty ward. When it has pulled up, a trolley with its
sides down is brought alongside. Everybody gets out of the taxi.
‘You,
sir, the fare,’ the taxi driver demands. All three men turn to look at you.
‘How
much,’ you ask, peering at him.
‘Fifty,
sir.’
You
take your money and pay. The taxi backs away from the front of the building.
‘You’d
better stretch out on this, sir,’ comes the voice of the porter.
You
climb and lie down on the trolley, unable to walk any longer, let it carry you
away, you lie on your back looking at the neon lights on the ceilings passing
by, one after the other, sliding by people milling about, a confusion of
shouts, drunkards yelling they’ll get their revenge, children screaming, wives
calling their husbands. All the wounded of the night have piled up here. You
tilt your head from side to side to look at them, taking comfort in the thought
you’re not the only one to end up here, there are many people to keep you
company. You can’t help feeling smug when you see a man with bandages all over
his head and a shirt soaked in blood. He sits with his gloomy face turned to
you as you pass by. You tell yourself you’re lucky to be less hurt than he is.
Then
the trolley turns and takes you into a room. When his job is over the porter
rolls the trolley out, leaving you to lie on a bed by yourself. A partition
divides the room into two halves. All around, the walls are lined with cabinets
full of all sorts of instruments and implements. A strong smell of drugs
pervades the room. The tinkle of medical implements dropped on a metallic tray
comes out of the other side of the room.
Left
to yourself, the noise of the crash and the strength of the impact storm into
your conscious mind again, terrifying the scared animal that lies deep inside.
It frantically seeks a hiding place, hopes for a safe place, but there is none,
so it quivers no end.
–
You shouldn’t have, you shouldn’t have, you shouldn’t have, you
really shouldn’t have.
–
Come now, you’re not dead, so that’s okay, you pulled through.
–
Why isn’t the doctor here yet?
–
It can’t be that bad, otherwise he’d be here by now.
You’re
relieved when you think positively like this. You’ve noticed every time you go
to hospital, even though it isn’t often, every time your pain diminishes in the
doctor’s presence, unlike at home when it gets worse all the time. That time
when your back hurt so much you almost couldn’t walk:
you went to hospital and while you waited to get the registration card you
began to feel better even though the doctor had yet to examine you.
Now
it’s the same. You don’t feel very disturbed by your physical wounds.
The
tinkling of dropped instruments goes on and on. After a while you hear
footsteps coming through the door you’ve just been through, approaching and
stopping at the head of your bed.
‘Such
a heavy load tonight,’ a woman’s voice says.
‘I’m
really fed up trussing up those drunkards,’ another woman’s voice complains.
You
open your eyes and look up, see two young women in white uniforms. You smile at
them.
‘What
happened to you?’ the first woman asks as a big bright lamp comes above your
head, its light so strong you have to close your eyes to shun it.
‘Car
crash.’ You don’t want to talk about it again.
Luckily
the two of them don’t ask anything further, maybe because they’re both used to
accidents of this kind so there’s nothing new in it for them. So you only hear them getting instruments ready. Before long the gashes on
your forehead are being cleaned. You hardly feel anything, it doesn’t hurt at
all.
–
Is it numb or are they using some drug to clean it, you ask yourself.
‘Are
you going to stitch him right away? No local anaesthetic before?’ a young
woman’s voice asks.
‘No
need. It’d make his face swell.’
–
Without anaesthetic it’ll hurt, you think with concern for yourself.
‘Won’t
you give me an anaesthetic?’ You come up with a question even though you keep
your eyes closed.
‘No
sir. Usually if you inject the face with anaesthetic it’ll swell. Just bear
with it a little. It won’t hurt, sir.’ Her voice is serious and credible but
you tremble with fear. By now you’ve completely forgotten about the damage to
your car.
The
feel on your forehead tells you the two of them have started their work. It
stings all the time and at times you have to grit your teeth…
‘At
the chin too, here and here.’
They
help each other deal with the wounds until it’s over. Before it’s completed it
feels like it’s been going on for ages while they clean you up, wiping off the
clotted blood on your throat, arms and chest.
‘Does
it still hurt somewhere, sir, where we haven’t stitched you up?’
‘No,
it’s fine.’
‘If
it hurts some place, say so,’ the other voice adds.
‘All
right, it’s fine, and don’t forget to come and have
the wounds cleaned every day.’ And then the light goes out.
You
open your eyes and look at the two of them, but don’t see their faces clearly.
The dazzle of the light is still in your eyes.
‘Thank
you,’ you say before gingerly sliding off the bed.
As
soon as your feet touch the floor, you feel something unusual arising to warn
you. You think of your shoes which fell in the car. It makes you squeamish for
your feet naked on the floor, as if you’re missing something essential in your
life, but for the time being you need to get out of the room, so you put it out
of your mind. When you let your whole weight off the bed, your knees hurt so
badly you can hardly walk. You must stand holding to the bed frame firmly, to
get used to the sprain. After a while you cautiously shuffle on bended knees
out of the room, with the unusual contact of your feet on the cold floor.
‘Get
your registration card outside, sir,’ a nurse behind you tells you as she
collects her paraphernalia.
You
are out of the room together with your shoulder bag. Look around for the
registration counter. People are still milling about in confusion. A trolley is
rushed past you. The patient lies, his face livid, blood all over his belly.
Two or three people troop after him in a flurry. You stand perplexed for a
while, feeling dazed. You’d like to sit down and rest.
‘Here,
sir, he’s here,’ a young man tells the policeman he has come with.
‘Please
go to the police station,’ the policeman tells you.
You’re
dying to tell him to let you rest for a while but seeing how anxious they both
seem to be, you change your mind and accept to follow them. Seeing the manner
in which you walk, the young man comes and helps support you. From the looks of
him, you guess he must be about your own age. He’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt
and a well-knotted necktie. As for the policeman walking behind you holding a register
he must be younger than you but hides this behind an attitude of authority.
Along
the way lots of eyes stare at you. You’re beginning to get used to the
situation, thinking you’re in the wrong, you’re the
one who caused the accident, getting other people in trouble. What you have to
face from now on has to do with the law, with regulations, and you have to
accept the laws and regulations as we’ve made them.
The
young man unlocks the car door and sits down in the driver’s seat. He unlocks
the doors for the policeman and you. You get in on the back seat. The policeman
sits down beside the driver.
‘How
is it? Are you badly in pain, sir?’ the driver asks as he turns round to back
out of the parking space.
‘I
can bear with it.’
‘When
you fold your knees it must hurt,’ he tells you once the car is out of it.
‘What’s
the story?’ the young policeman turns to ask.
‘I
fell asleep at the wheel,’ you answer. The face of the young policeman smiles
gently in the dimness. You don’t want him to ask any more questions, so you
turn away to look through the window.
The
car turns into the main road. You try to adjust to the environment, encouraging
yourself not to get panicky, but every time the car brakes you can’t help
feeling alarmed. You try to calm down, look at the things moving past, think comfortingly that nobody’s been seriously hurt, but it
doesn’t work. Your mind is aware all the time that you’re trying to deceive it,
to deceive yourself, so it switches to following what the other two are saying
in order to forget what you’re brooding over.
‘…lots
of people on the road.’
‘Tomorrow
is a holiday for office people.’
‘Everybody
complains they’re poor, that the economy’s bad, but from what I can see people
keep going out,’ the young driver adds, his eyes on the road.
‘What’s
your line of work?’ the young policeman turns to invite you to talk.
‘I
work in an advertising agency.’
‘Does
it close tomorrow?’
‘It’s
closed for three days. It’ll open again on Monday.’
‘Working
in an office isn’t bad, right? Christmas Day’s off, and the weekend too,’ the
young driver chimes in, sounding as if he’s talking to himself.
‘And
what about you? What do you do?’ You’d like to talk idly too, talk about
anything but the car crash.
‘I’m
a doctor at the hospital where you were just now.’
‘Hey?’
the policeman exclaims sotto voce then laughs. ‘What have you got to do with
him, then?’ he asks with a smile.
Your
heart starts to beat in alarm when the policeman brings back the topic you
don’t want to hear about.
‘I
went to a friend’s wedding and gave him a lift on the way back. I’d never come
this way before, mind you… I saw his car about to collide with mine, so I
swerved hard but not enough, he got me a little at the back and the front of my
car went to scratch the back of the one in front. So I got it back and front.
You’re lucky, though, you know. The car I scratched, the driver didn’t want to
make waves. I saw him stopped, looking at the damage. He must’ve thought you
were badly hurt, so he drove away. Maybe he didn’t want to waste his time…’ the
doctor says, so you can piece things together more or less. ‘…never came back
this way…’ His voice trails away as if he’s talking to himself, but you can
hear it.
You
also feel like telling the doctor that your friend invited you to stay with him
overnight. He pressed you to. If you’d done as he suggested nothing would’ve
happened, but the thought strikes you that even if you say so it’s already
happened, there’s no way it can be changed to something else, so you keep
silent, unwilling to speak.
‘Tonight
there’s been lots of car crashes. Three already since I took my shift. I don’t
know yet if there’ll be others. The first two were able to agree, nobody got
hurt. Yours is a bit more serious, with some people injured but just as well
nobody died.’ He turns to you smiling to comfort you. You merely smile back for
his kindness.
And
then there is silence, because talking about this doesn’t make you feel like
joining in. You go back to looking through the side window again.
‘Turn
into the street to your left right up there,’ the policeman says, with a
flicker of his hand.
Once
in the street the policeman keeps pointing the way until you get through to
another main road, turn left and enter a police station. The doctor stops the
car before the main stairs in front of the building. You shoulder your bag and
step out of the car. Your knees murder you again. Pain shots up as if the bones
inside are cracked. Your hands shoot out to grab the top of the car tightly but
when the car moves away you have to let go.
‘Wait
for all the plaintiffs to be here and then come to an agreement between
yourselves,’ the policeman says to you before walking up the stairs, and then
he must’ve thought of something because he turns round.
‘Go
and have a look at your car if you want. Take everything out of it, sir,’ he
orders and then goes up and disappears inside.
You
turn round and slowly walk away from the stairway, trying to gradually get used
to the pain, gritting your teeth with every step, every step. Nevertheless you
still miss your shoes to tread the gravel which hurts your feet. As you walk
towards the parking area for vehicles involved in accidents, the doctor who has
parked his car comes back to you and helps support you.
‘Get
your knees x-rayed tomorrow,’ he tells you as you walk. ‘But I don’t think
there’s anything much, because you can still walk. Just normal sprains.’
You
feel somewhat better. ‘They must’ve knocked against the dashboard during the
crash,’ you surmise. The doctor agrees with you and nods.
The
parking lot is lit by a moonbeam from the top of a pole. There are five or six
cars parked in a row, all of them totally bashed up, like as many corpses ready
to be taken to the cremation ground. Yours is one of them, the only one
surrounded with onlookers as though curious of a freshly dead corpse.
You
gingerly slip through an empty space between them. Their interest shifts to
you, maybe because of your bandages and the way you walk which isn’t that of
the average individual.
‘Were
you the one driving?’ one of them asks.
You
nod and smile at him. Even though you can’t see your own smile, you know it
comes out yellow because distilled by sorrow.
‘Oh-ho!
Unbelievable! We were just saying the driver must be dead…’ he praises you.
‘That’s
right. The car a terrible mess and he can still walk. Unbelievable!’ seconds
another.
‘Seeing
that the steering wheel’s broken I thought it did you in.’
‘What
kind of amulet do you wear? Let me see.’
‘I
wear none,’ you answer truthfully.
‘Come
off it, when you’ve got something good, you don’t want to show it,’ one man
tells the man who asked.
‘Is
the taxi driver hurt?’
‘I
don’t know yet,’ you can’t help answering.
‘He
must be okay. His car isn’t in such a mess as this one.’
‘Where
was it you crashed?’
You’re
most reluctant to answer that string of questions. They seem so curious you’d
think they were all reporters. You lean over into the car. The first thing you
want right now is your shoes. Your eyes search every corner but you can’t see
them, even though you clearly remember they fell in the car before you were
hoisted out of it. You think about the other things in the car – the royally
designed shirt you bought to offer your father, a new pha nung for
your mother, the English course tapes your little sister asked you to buy.
Those things you’d placed on the back seat, but there’s no trace of them left,
not even the bag for the shirt. Furthermore, the glove compartment is still
wide open, with papers all over the place. You can guess that the search was
done in a hurry.
You’re
sorry, you regret those things, and then you become angry. You’d really like to
know what the hearts of those who took the things are made of.
You
come out of the car, hoping to tell the doctor about this dirty trick, but the
doctor is nowhere to be seen. You don’t know when he went away. So you just
stand touchy and clumsy among the ring of eyes, feel like asking who took your
things, feel like telling them folk about it. But it’s too late to tell, too
late to ask.
–
The soldiers who volunteered to guard the car.
–
The people who took the car to the police station.
–
The folk standing around it here.
You
can’t figure out who could have taken those things. Since you didn’t see
anything with your own eyes, you don’t want to accuse anyone.
–
Better take care of what’s left, never mind what’s lost, you tell yourself to
put it out of your mind, knowing full well you can’t.
You
think of a way to gather the remaining items in the car properly. There’s still
the spare tyre and the jack in the boot at the back. Before they disappear you
should find somebody to watch over your car but who will do this? When there’s
no other way you decide to find a taxi to come and watch over your things for
you.
You
cut through the assembled people. In the absence of someone to support you, you
walk like an old man suffering from arthritis. Awful as it is, you still manage
to reach the main road and call a taxi. You tell him how things stand and offer
to compensate him for the time wasted waiting for you to be back. He listens to
you with a sympathetic, understanding face and then tells you all right even
before agreeing on a fee.
Once
you’ve put all the things together you hobble away with the intention to go
back and wait in the police station. You see the doctor stroking his car right
where you scratched it, think you’ll stop by to have a look but then change
your mind. You don’t want to see the traces of your mistake. So you make for
the front stairs.
Inside
the station it’s about as chaotic as in the hospital. Inmates in the jail shout
out at their friends to go get their dads. A young woman stands in a corner,
her face bathed in tears. Policemen go back and forth in confusion. In this
chaos many pairs of eyes bear on you. You take shelter by sitting down on a
bench in front of the duty officer’s office. An old Chinese woman sits at the
other end of the bench. She shakes her head as she peeks around all the time
like a bird watchful of danger. It seems she’s startled when you sit down on
the same bench as her, so you look away, you don’t want her to panic. Then you
take out a cigarette and light it, letting time go by. You think of your
friend. By now he must be happily resting. You’d like to call him up to come
and keep you company at this venture but on the other hand you don’t want your
happy friend to wake up and learn something sad. You consider and decide this
is something you yourself caused and you’ve got to handle it yourself and try
to have nobody else suffer because of you.
–
Huh, I shouldn’t have.
The
doctor comes up and looks around. When he sees you he comes to you and sits
down on the same bench. You know he’s pissed off at having to wait from the way
he doesn’t quite sit still but gets up and paces then comes back to sit, moody
and clumsy, grumbling that dressing the wounds should be well over by now.
…Finally,
the others arrive, eight of them altogether. The bunch of them comes straight
at you, one man leading, anger in his eyes as if he’s found his sworn enemy. He
points to you in the face.
‘Just
you wait, you sod. If something’s the matter with my dad, you’ll see.’
You
don’t answer or show any reaction as you can’t figure out yet if it’s just a
show or if it sincerely comes from his heart.
‘Stop
that, there’s no need, take it easy, believe me.’ A
woman in her forties takes him by the arm and pulls him away.
You
sense that none of the eyes of the people in that bunch are friendly towards
you. You sense the oppression from the surrounding atmosphere.
‘Are
you all there?’ the young policeman comes out and asks with a smiling face
friendly with everybody, including you.
‘Are
we all there?’ the doctor now asks, obviously in a big hurry.
The
newcomers all nod.
‘Please
go inside then,’ the policeman says before turning round and going back in.
The
doctor is the first to follow him, with all the wounded in tow. Their relatives
wait outside the room. You’ll learn later that the reason why they’ve come late
is because they phoned each other and waited for one another at the hospital
and only when they were all there did they come to the police station.
‘Let
me see your driving licence,’ the young policeman tells you.
You
take your wallet out of your back pocket, pick up the driving licence and hand
it over. He takes it and begins to fill in the details in his register. He
writes rather fast as if in a hurry to be done with the case, sometimes stops
to read back and then lowering his head goes on with the writing. At one point
he opens the drawer of his desk, takes out a ruler and draws three rectangles.
You can guess that the rectangle which is heading for collision is your own
car.
He
reads the whole thing over again before turning the register upside down and
putting it in front of you.
‘Please sign here.’
Like
a docile child, you sign without reading and then return the pen to him.
‘Please
sign here, doctor.’
The
doctor takes the register and reads through, then takes out his pen from his
shirt pocket and signs in the appropriate slot.
‘The
injured party, please sign here too.’ The policeman smiles and hands over the
register to the oldest-looking person in the group.
‘My
goodness, I haven’t got my glasses, just couldn’t find ’m. Just now I had my
son look for ’m in the taxi but they weren’t there. Don’t know what happened to
’m…’ he grumbles loudly as befits a corpulent person. You guess he must be in
his fifties, with rarefied hair on his head and two pieces of plaster stuck on
the top of it.
‘You
read it, little one.’ He hands over the register to the young woman sitting
next to him, while instructing her, ‘Read carefully, you’re the lawyer,’ then
turns to address the young policeman.
‘This
is my niece. She’s just finished law. Got herself her graduation certificate
this very afternoon. I’d just arrived from upcountry. I planned to celebrate
with her and we were on our way but then we got unlucky…’
The
young woman in question sits reading. She must be a little over twenty. Her
face is plain, with nothing outstanding to be remembered, apart from a clean
white bandage behind her ear and around her throat.
‘…came
with my sons. They’re afraid something might be the matter with me. Now I’m the
only bulwark, you see, my wife passed away just last year. And I…’
Two
men whom you understand are his sons sit on the next chairs. They look alike,
down to their frizzy hair, but you can see who the elder is and who the younger.
The elder has a bandage round his head, the younger a piece of plaster above
his left eyebrow. They were the ones who rode with you in the taxi on the way
to hospital.
The
taxi driver sits on the chair at the end of the row. He’s rather small, with a
sorrowful face as if bearing a heavy burden at all times. He has no bandage or
plaster on his head, even though you remember he kept complaining to his fellow
taxi driver on his way to hospital that his head hurt.
Altogether
there are five people injured besides you.
All
five sign their names and then hand over the register back to the young
policeman.
‘Well
now, gentlemen, tomorrow at ten come back to agree on damage costs. For
tonight, go back and take a rest…’ he says in a loud voice as if to proclaim it
all round. Everybody leaves their seats and files out of the room.
‘Don’t
forget to come with your money ready,’ he says to you privately, with a ready
smile as if to comfort you:
–
It’s no big deal, don’t be alarmed.
‘How
much?’
‘It’s
not for me to say. It’s up to the injured parties, because they are casualties,
so it’s hard to say. If it was just one car, you’d call the garage over to make
an estimate and that’s it, but there are people injured. I don’t know how much
they’ll ask for. Get a lot ready just in case, sir…’ he tells you in a low
voice before you step out of the room.
…The
old Chinese lady is still sitting on the bench as before, still wary of danger
as a bird out of its nest.
You
carefully go down the stairs step by step and as you do you hurt much more than
on flat ground. You slowly walk over to the taxi that’s waiting for you.
‘We
can leave now, it’s over.’ You tell him in detail where you’re going.
…On
the empty road
Hardly
a vehicle from the opposite direction
Lights
by the roadside yellow and dim
One
lamp after another after another
Cold
wind flailing at your face
You
try to forget your troubles…
‘What
time is it, sir?’
‘A
few minutes past two.’ You withdraw your eyesight from the outside.
…The
taxi slows down and stops in front of your flat. The driver gets out and opens
the hatchback, lifts out the spare tyres, jack, gallon
of motor oil, bottles of distilled water, brake fluid and fan belt and takes
them to the front of the building.
The downstairs guard walks up to have a look
and when he sees you merely exclaims, ‘Oh, it’s you!’
‘Help
me take those things upstairs, will you?’ you tell him in a familiar tone of
voice, then turn to the taxi and ask, ‘How much? Including waiting time, of
course.’
‘Fifty,
sir,’ he answers as if he has already figured it out.
You
give him a hundred baht. ‘Keep the change.’ You know that what he’s asked for,
even without compensation for the time wasted waiting,
is far too low.
‘Oh,
no, sir, I can’t. You’ve suffered enough as it is.’ He pushes your hand away.
‘Take
it, my friend. I can afford it.’
‘I
think fifty’s enough, sir. One hundred’s too much. You’ve got such bad luck
already, I couldn’t accept,’ he persists.
‘I
haven’t got enough small notes.’ You open your wallet for him to see.
He
nervously fumbles into his shirt pocket. There are a few tattered banknotes. He
gathers coins in his hand, pulls out the notes – three tens – then opens his
hand and counts the coins and places the whole lot into your hand.
‘That’s
all I have, really. I’m not trying to short-change you.’
You
feel obliged to accept his generosity. ‘You’ve wasted so much time for me.
Thanks a lot. Thanks truly.’
‘No
sweat. We help each other out.’ He smiles at you before going back into his car
and driving away.
You
stand looking at the taxi until it turns by the gate and disappears…
The
downstairs guard helps you carry the things to the lift and goes up with you to
your room, meanwhile asking you about what happened. At times you’re irritable
and don’t feel like answering. Even though the two of you are on friendly terms
and greet each other every day, tonight you feel like he’s a stranger to you.
…Late
into the night, you toss and turn, close your eyes,
close your mind to sleep, but it’s like there’s someone with you keeping your
eyes open. You try everything you know to go to sleep but aren’t feeling sleepy
at all. Besides, the sound of that crash is spooking you.
–
You shouldn’t have.
–
You shouldn’t have.
–
You really shouldn’t.
2
You open your eyes, wake up and see slabs of clear dawn sky.
Every morning before getting out of bed you like to lie looking at the sky in
those frames. It’s like realistic pictures painted by a top artist. Their
borders are the red frame of the window, rather than the individual frames of
the pictures hung on the white wall. The three pictures are at the bottom of
your bed. The first two are partly obstructed by the mosquito net. The third
one is of clear glass. This is the one you prefer. You’re able to see clearly
the changing colours of the sky, be it at dawn or at dusk on those days when
you come back before it grows dark. In some seasons the pictures of the sky in
these red frames are partly blurred by the rain whipping against the panes.
Thinking
of what happened last night depresses you right away. Though your eyes are
looking at the bright sky, your mind is full of sorrow, thinking in circles
only about what happened. You feel with your fingers the wounds on your
forehead and chin. What a shame! What a pity! The more you think the more
depressed you are. Your head is pulsing as if it would explode.
–
Why think about it? It’s already happened. Thinking if I hadn’t done this, if I
hadn’t done that, nothing would have happened, what’s the fucking point?
You
heave a deep sigh, decide to cast off the blanket from your body, get up, fold
the blanket and put it over the pillow, smooth out the sheet, reach out to turn
the radio on and search for songs. Your knees are still as painful as before.
You also feel pain at the front of your chest as a bonus.
You
cautiously go about doing everything you do in the morning until you come face
to face with yourself in the bathroom mirror, and feel like a stranger to
yourself. The face in the mirror looks haggard, pallid, the eyes dull. Your
whole forehead is hidden away in a big bandage. On your chin a long piece of
plaster runs from the right corner of your jaw almost to the left.
–
You should’ve slept at the agency.
–
Eh, what’s the point of thinking about it again?
You
try to force yourself not to think. As you finish washing yourself, the news on
the national radio station of Thailand comes on. The water’s boiling. You
unplug the kettle, make yourself a coffee and drink it.
Usually
at this time of the morning you’re already out of the flat on your way to work,
but today you still remain seated playing for time and thinking of ways of
finding ready cash. On the one hand you’d like to call up your friends and ask
for their help, but for the same reason as last night you don’t feel like
picking up the phone. You’ve made this mess all by yourself, why get your
friends involved when they’re having fun? You have cash you can withdraw by
ATM. You also have a necklace. You think you can gather enough money for
today’s outlay, so you give up the idea of calling anybody.
Having
thought of a way out, you sit drinking coffee, smoking and looking through the
sketches you must lay out for presentation to a client on Tuesday, but you
can’t concentrate enough to think things through.
…The
radio says it’s eight a.m. If today you’d come back home before dawn, by now
you’d be driving past the junction into the countryside.
You
get up and dress without hurrying and when that’s done you check your identity
card once again. It’s still in your wallet as usual. As you’re about to step
away from the wardrobe, there’s a knock on the door, impatient by the sound of
it. You think it must be someone knocking at the wrong door because usually if
it’s a friend paying a visit the downstairs guard must phone to inform you
first and once you’ve talked to your friend by phone and certified to the guard
it’s a friend of yours he’ll allow him to come up. Must be the next-door
neighbour, you think, but you’ve never socialized with him except for
exchanging ordinary smiles.
You
open the small square peephole. The flat manager and a maid are standing out
there, so you open the door for them.
‘What’s
up?’
‘My
goodness! What happened to your face?’ he asks when he sees you. From his
expression, his question is spontaneous, not one he’s prepared before coming
up.
‘Car
crash,’ you answer listlessly.
‘Oh,
what a relief! I thought it was something bad…’
‘What
do you mean something bad?’ you ask back rather moodily.
‘Oh,
nothing, nothing. Well, it’s like this…’ His tone mellows as if he senses
you’re upset. ‘The maid came to take away the trash in front of your room and
found a shirt and trousers full of blood. She was shocked and afraid something
bad had happened in your room so she came to me for me to come up and find out.
We were worried about you, you see, nothing else…’ He smiles at you.
‘I
threw them away myself,’ you tell the maid.
‘Who
was at fault?’ he asks, changing the subject.
‘Where
did it happen?’ the maid asks at the same time.
‘If
you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the police station.’
They
both look disappointed as they leave when you close the door.
3
You
step out of the pawnshop then call a taxi to take you to the police station.
…This
morning inside the station there isn’t the same chaos as last night, maybe
because people aren’t yet up to cause mayhem.
You
go and sit down on the bench in front of the duty officer’s closed door where
you sat last night. The old Chinese woman is still seated there in the same
attitude, a plate of eaten rice beside her.
‘Where
do you live, old mother?’ You smile at her.
Her
eyes show alarm as she huddles against the pillar. A flood of Chinese comes out
of her and you wonder whether anyone who knows Chinese can understand what
she’s saying. So you look away. You don’t want her to take fright.
…Time
passes until it’s a quarter past ten and there’s no sign of the injured
parties. Waiting irritates you. Many times are you faced with delayed appointments. It seems to have become a national quirk. You
think of what you read somewhere about appointment time for us being rooted in
farmers’ culture. Farmers have their paddy fields in front of the house. They
go there when they feel like it, a little late in the morning won’t matter, the paddy field isn’t going anywhere. That’s contrary to
western industrial culture, which has to deal with machinery, with time, with
machinery starting time, and workers have to hurry to be on time otherwise
they’ll be courting disaster… You think further about western civilisation as
it has come to us: very few are the good, useful traits that we’ve adopted.
Your
eyes see last night’s young policeman coming in. When he sees you he smiles at
you. You smile back. He walks in from the left wing of the building, wearing a
round-necked white shirt slipped into kaki trousers, and shiny black leather
boots.
‘You’re
early, aren’t you?’ he greets you when he comes to you.
‘Well,
you told us ten last night.’
‘Are
you very much in pain?’
‘Worse
than last night, actually.’
‘It
must be the bruising. Oh, I say. Excuse me, don’t think I’m being disrespectful
or anything, but were you high last night?’ His tone is polite with no
suggestion of aggressiveness.
‘High,
lieutenant? I don’t understand.’
‘Drugs,
this kind of thing? Did you take any?’
‘Not
at all. Just exhausted, so I fell asleep.’
‘What
a shame!’ he says. ‘By the way, have you got a garage coming with you?’
‘No
I haven’t.’
‘In
that case I’m afraid you might be in trouble.’ He looks concerned for you. ‘If
the others bring their own garage people and they inflate the costs, you’ll
have no way to know they’re cheating you.’
‘Is
that so? I know nothing much about this myself.’
‘Don’t
you have a regular garage? Don’t your friends?’ He looks greatly concerned.
‘I
do, but nothing regular. I’d get my car repaired wherever is closest at the
time,’ you answer truthfully.
‘In
that case let’s do it this way: I have a garage that can be trusted. I call
them over often. I can guarantee they won’t do anything slipshod because they
depend on their business here. I suggest calling them over so that you use them
in case you need to haggle over the costs. Do you want me to?’
‘Just
as well. If you vouch for them, then call them over.’ You accept his kind offer
almost without giving it a thought.
He
excuses himself to go and phone the garage owner. You follow him with your eyes
and see him enter the duty officer’s room. You can’t help thinking about the
image of police that you have. From what you’ve read in the papers or heard
from others, the picture of policemen at the police station that you draw is
full of violently angry attitudes, yells and threats, but you haven’t witnessed
any such things so far. On the contrary, this young policeman is courteous and
kind and even ready to help out underdogs like you…
‘Done.
He’ll be here in a moment.’ The young policeman smiles at you and then walks
away towards the right wing of the building, leaving you sitting there with the
old Chinese woman.
The
doctor has arrived. He comes up the stairs together with a couple, both
middle-aged. The man is rather swarthy, neatly dressed as befits his age; the
woman is dressed younger than her age as befits her rather heavy makeup. You
raise your joined hands and bow to them.
‘Good
morning. If something’s the matter with my son, you know, there’ll be trouble.
Before he could graduate as a doctor and find a practice…’
‘Now,
now,’ the man says in a low voice, his face proper and calm. He looks like a
man of few words.
‘Yes,
I must apologize for putting your son and you in trouble. I didn’t mean to do
so at all. Who would want something like this to happen, right?’