a dream come true
This novel was published in Thai
in April 2000 by Man of Letters Corporation (Bangkok) under the title Khon
Kham Fan (People making their dreams come true) and nominated for the prestigious SEA Write
Award. It is 355 pages long in Thai. The translated first four chapters cover
44 pages.
Prachakhom Lunachai, born in 1959, hails from Yasothon
in Northeast Thailand. He spent some ten years as a sailor, and after doing
various menial jobs is now a full-time writer in Bangkok. Since 1997 he has
published several collections of short stories as well as half a dozen novels and his work has regularly received national literary awards.
Part One
Chapter One
The first time he saw him step onto the gangway and stand there, Sak was
fairly certain Chap was freshly out of the monkhood. Skirting by him you’d get
the scent of saffron robes and feel the refreshing emanations merit earns in
temples. He was lanky and lean as a herringbone on legs. The hair on his head
had hardly grown back half an inch. His skin was so pale you could see the
sinews.
On the strength of a mere glance, Sak would have staked his life on Chap
never having gone out at sea. Maybe he was some hard-luck Chinese half-breed
whose needy parents had had to borrow left, right and centre to have the apple
of their eye ordained and who now had to wander distressingly in search of a
job to do.
Sak and three or four of his crewmates sat in a group in the wheelhouse,
observing the newcomer who stood clumsily on the gangway. Chap clutched in his
arms a paper bag full of clothes and other essentials he had just bought. Sak
and his friends took turns to comment on his appearance with relish.
“Look at the walking scarecrow,” one of them said, pointing. “Is he
gonna come on board, you think?”
“Of course not. We’re a full crew here.”
“Maybe he’s on hold for boat two.”
Slowly shuffling his rubber thongs, Chap awkwardly stepped into the
boat. In the eyes of the crew, this must be the first time in his life he set
foot on a trawler. While Chap stood swaying to and fro in the middle of the
deck, a long-tailed boat raced close aboard down the canal. The waves from its
trail crashed against the gunwale, the trawler rolled, sending the lanky body
staggering over two or three steps.
Peals of laughter in the wheelhouse answered one another.
“Just as well we’re fully booked,” one of the crew said.
“Almost fell into the drink.”
Someone suddenly popped up and told Chap to go to the crew quarters
below deck. A new sailor like him should lie down there, rather than climb up
and down, risk a misstep at night and fall into the water. If seasick, it was
the place to be to crawl to the gunwale and vomit.
Sila 4 was 18 meters in length. It was the single-net
middle-sized trawler seamen call a soft-timber boat. With its 250 HP engine and
ten deckhands, it was the biggest of Thaokae* Kok’s
boats. It had come out of the shipyard a little over two years before.
Deckhands, engineer, pilot, cook and captain—altogether fourteen lives on
board. The fishing master and his nine net handlers had long been together,
knew their jobs and each other’s minds well. There was no need for extra help.
The old hands were all relieved when they knew for certain Chap was to
be delivered to Sila 3, which was still trawling around Tao Island. They
had no time for a work mate who wasn’t up to it, like a kid they’d have to
mollycoddle the whole length of the outing. If they had to have new friends,
let them be men with tough frames used to working on other boats or who, even
if they were going out at sea for the very first time, wouldn’t be much of a
bother. A tough body was the most important requisite. If they didn’t know the
job they could be taught by the by instead of simpering on their bunks until
the boat returned to shore.
Chap was to be sent to the third boat to replace a greenhorn who had run
away when the boat had entered the Chumphon estuary to sell its catch.
Thaokae Kok’s four boats trawled in areas close to one another. Usually
they would not spend more than fifteen days at sea. But when they went far down
south, the owner wanted to save on fuel while having the boats trawl for fish
as long as possible, so he ordered them to return to Chumphon after trawling
for ten to twelve days, unload some of their fish and shrimp, take on more fuel
and ice, then go on trawling for another seven days and nights on average.
The call at Chumphon meant trouble for the fishing boats. The greenhorns
who couldn’t bear the ruthlessness of life at sea took to their heels on the very
night their boat called to port. Guys like these thought of nothing else but
getting away from the hellish abyss they had every intention of never returning
to. When they reached the coast in one piece and found their two feet firmly on
the ground, even with nothing but the shirt on their back, no money in the
pocket and no idea of what nasty retributions lied ahead, they were fully
prepared to face up to anything.
Each trip a greenhorn or two would make themselves scarce. Some did ask
to leave beforehand, but grovel as they might, begging for sympathy with
distraught faces, the captain, who held supreme power on board, would stand
firm and with a harsh voice insist, You gotta stay on, son, the work ain’t over
yet, the boat must keep on trawling for days. That was the rule boat owners had
set and insisted on having upheld strictly.
The Chumphon estuary had no office for odd jobs on the sly, nor did it
have young stragglers with cloth bags on their shoulders shuffling along
sun-scorched streets looking for employment. The new recruits who came on board
at Mahachai had to return to land where they had started.
The captain relied on the trawl master and those he trusted to keep an
eye on the new hands to make sure they did not take French leave. For all his
exhortations, once the catch was discharged and money apportioned to buy a few
things, the trawl master as well as those others the captain trusted as his
eyes and ears would usually relax their watch, letting the greenhorns who had
it up to here with the sea slip away for good almost every time.
Sometimes the fugitives were corralled again. Then the fate of these
young strangers was no different from that of convicts. They were given a
beating within an inch of their lives and flumped back onto the boats once
again.
Thaokae Kok’s boats were infamous for this, especially boat two and boat
three, whose brutish enforcement methods were known to all.
Chap sat morose in the lower quarters. The deck boss and his team were
setting the fishing gear. No one thought of shouting at him to come and help.
The thin young fellow wasn’t part of the crew, just a parcel that would be
swung over to Sila 3 in a few days’ time.
Chap looked much younger than he was. When he had a good look at him for
the first time in the galley, Sak guessed he must be around twenty (not
twenty-six as he would later on learn was his real age). He had soft, boyish
features, but deep in his eyes a puzzling expression was hidden. Looking at his
appearance, Sak could only sigh ruefully as he thought, Poor skinny devil, how
many tides will you withstand the harshness of the sea?
Sak had been with Sila 4 for nearly two years now. At first he had
given himself the aim to be its pilot. It turned out the boat needed a cook—a
position everyone said was harder to fill than that of captain even. Jiang knew
he could cook some, so he had pleaded with him to take the job for the nonce.
He had been on boats since he was fifteen. Almost eleven full years at
sea had thus gone by in a life of vagrancy, tough work, and destitution on
trawlers of various sizes, sometimes opting to work on other types of craft.
Everything had gone by like in a dream. Besides his scar and physical
deformity, there were only painful memories that were truly his.
Sak had hoped to work his way to important positions onboard. Several
times it seemed he would. He almost made fishing master on several
occasions. With perseverance, he’d make first pilot. But finally such hopes had
vanished.
They were crushed in an instant. Their debris smothered his feelings,
decayed with time and evaporated in the mercilessness of life. Sak at first
raged and raved against one and all, venting his resentment on the lowliest
crew, pouring out all of his bile onto others. When he eventually cooled down,
he’d smile derisively on life, used by then to breathing listlessly. What else
could he hope for? What else could he want? The position of cook was too fancy
already for someone the heavens had nothing to give to. One day at a time he
ate his fill and slept soundly, saw to the green supplies, responsible as he
was over the welfare of all stomachs on board, and was “Gimp” to Thaokae Kok.
The life of someone with a limp like him had already reached its peak.
Fate must have drawn the line for him just there.
The year Chap set foot on the boat, Thaokae Kok was sixty-two years old.
He was the proud owner of four trawlers—as many as the sons his wife had borne him.
The eldest was on the fourth boat, the youngest on the first, the second oldest
on boat two, the third oldest on boat three. When the fourth boat came out of
the shipyard, one of his neighbors teased him with, Surely that’s enough for
you now, you ain’t gonna build another, are you, unless you’ve got a minor wife
stashed away somewhere who’ll give you another son in your old age?
Thaokae Kok neither smiled nor laughed. With a blank face suited to his
total lack of humor, he gazed out at the canal bank where his boats were
moored. If anything, his plump face betrayed his pride at having all of his
sons as captains. Besides, he was probably also proud of his latest
acquisition.
Sila 1 has fostered Thaokae Kok’s fortune. Jiang, his eldest
son, had captained the first boat of the family for a total of twelve years. He
had moved to Sila 4 when it came in commission, making way for his
youngest brother, Priang, who had just gotten over his drug addiction. After
his father had copiously threatened and mollified him, going as far as boxing
his ears repeatedly, Priang had been forced to take to the sea as captain of Sila
1, with the pilot, a seasoned middle-aged man, to coach him.
Of Thaokae Kok’s four sons, Jiang was the kind one. He was reserved and
circumspect, cool as custard and not foul-mouthed as seafarers usually are, and
he had never laid a finger on any of his men, not even once. He stayed mostly
in his cabin and in the pilothouse. Once in a long while would he walk up to
the prow and let saltwater sully his fine skin.
The crew gossiped in his back, saying things like they doubted he was
the son of Thaokae Kok and Mrs. Jaem Ratsamee, who was known as Granny Cheng.
He must have been adopted as a baby to be so different from his father and
three brothers, whose behavior and his were as unlike as black and white. But
someone as conciliating and loathe to falling out with anyone as Jiang
sometimes made the men under him unhappy just the same.
Almost all sailors in the Sila company wanted to sail with Jiang,
because they were certain they wouldn’t be reviled by their captain the way
they were on the other boats, wouldn’t be harmed physically as well as
mentally. When truly angered, Jiang would only show his feelings on his face,
which turned a deep red like an oversized bird pepper, or he would down a half
bottle of liquor in one sitting. It wasn’t often you heard swearwords out of
his mouth, merely a “You damn so-and-so, you ain’t worth the rice you eat!” For
those deckhands who were used to all kinds of abuse and rudeness, the cusswords
on Jiang’s lips were like refreshing puffs of breeze wafting across their
faces.
The galley was dead quiet. Along the partition wall of the wheelhouse
was Pilot Phoo’s bunk. He had lined up eight boards side by side, covered them
with a double layer of gunny bags and propped a much squashed much
sweat-stained pillow against the sill of the starboard porthole. At close to
one hundred twenty kilos, Phoo was the heaviest man on board. After his watch
at the helm, he’d lie peaceably like a pig in its sty. On slack-water days, the
portly swine would stew in his juices, snoring to high heaven. Next to the
wooden bunk, there was a stretch of wooden floor. On the funnel side three bags
of rice were stacked, and next to them there was a wide-board storage space
where tools were kept.
As the boat eased away from the harbor, Sak sat massaging the instep of
his foot and looking at Chap, who, squatting chin in hand, stared out the
porthole. Lights from the houses along the canal glittered in the dark. He must
be missing home, or else impatient to see the wondrously huge expanse of the
sea. He must have heard his friends say the sea at night was beautifully smooth,
faint phosphorescent mother-of-pearl scales showing off in emerald-shaded
tinsels beyond both gunwales. Maybe he was waiting to see the row of shore
lights recede like hundreds of stars dangling on a line that would slowly fade
away swallowed by darkness.
The iron funnel that shot through the two floors of crew quarters and
through their common roof was getting hot, as was the wooden partition above
the engine. That was the reason why deckhands didn’t like to sleep in the lower
quarters. Sometimes the five or six boards of the floor were so hot you
couldn’t put your back to them. The engine roared all the time, making
conversation difficult.
Unhurriedly Chap picked up his paper bag, took out a pair of Chinese
trousers and a brand-new shirt that would be his work clothes and put them by
his side. Thaokae Kok had treated him as he did all new workers, giving him a
three-hundred-baht advance to buy himself a few things before going aboard. He
had bought a large tin of talcum powder, a pen and a write pad. Must be a
letter writer who worried about home and family, a model son forced to leave
his parents for the sake of money, who had come over with tears of longing he
was doing his best to keep inside before anyone could notice.
A big bottle of shampoo and a big cake of soap were next to each other
in a plastic bag. Seeing them, Sak chuckled to himself. ’Poor scarecrow, you’ve
prepared everything to keep yourself spick and span.’ The few tanks of
freshwater of a trawler wouldn’t give him much of a chance to use those
articles as he pleased. He probably wouldn’t use the soap and shampoo he had
bought more than a couple of times.
Sak wondered about cigarettes, which were important convenience goods on
board. Eight of the ten deckhands were chain smokers. When there were no more
cigarettes to be bought or borrowed, the sills of the portholes became treasure
troves where they’d look for the butts they had stubbed out and dumped there.
The sill groves were narrow and deep. They used strips of wood to retrieve bits
of paper and cigarette butts one by one.
Chap didn’t smoke. There wasn’t even a pack of cigarettes or a pouch of
tobacco among his gear. Sak stared at Chap’s sallow face and stubbly head—must
have just disrobed right at the end of Lent, a good man who knows no vice and
has never gotten anywhere near all those dens of iniquity.
The sea has no need for good men, Sak reflected. Chap was to be
thoroughly tested. For the next three to four months, the weather out there
would be fierce. Tomorrow he’d get a hangover that needed no liquor to make him
puke.
Chap put his things together then eased himself down, his arm supporting
his crewcut. He turned his head to look briefly at Sak with an impassive face.
Didn’t seem at all excited by the sea that awaited him.
Chapter Two
Sila 4 had been plying gentle seas on its way south for
eight hours, dropping its first net in the darkness before dawn. Shortly thereafter,
the first rays of a new day greeted the sky. The southbound trawler dropped the
net another three or four times, then turned to meet the other boats of the
group. On every side, all was water and sky. Not a single island in sight. An
electric-powered boat was anchored in the distance, its flanks shimmering with
reflected lights.
The damn scarecrow wasn’t seasick, contrary to the expectations of many
deckhands. Chap had gotten up to help with the net every time, but his behavior
was no different from that of any greenhorn. He stood clumsily, not quite
knowing what to do, sometimes standing in other people’s way. Several times he
was roundly shouldered away.
He staggered and almost lost his balance when the boat turned sharply
round to get to the net from the rear. He rose to his full length only to be
sent reeling against the ice grinder to whose feeder he clung. Astonished, he
looked at the net which a pulley with two warps working alternately was hauling
off the water a few yards at a time. The wires and rollers of the heaved-up net
landed on the deck with a clatter. The boat listed under the weight of the net
as if it were about to turn turtle. At times the starboard gunwale was almost
level with the water surface.
Jiang stood ordering the moves by the wheelhouse door to starboard,
intently watching the net’s bulging cod end emerge slowly from the water. The
stretched warps of the pulley shrieked and shook. Gradually the net found
itself gathered in the middle of the deck. Then the cod end was lifted, a knot
opened in the bottom of the net and a mass of mud-plastered fish came gushing
out.
Jiang briefly took stock of the catch, then turned to order the pilot to
steer south. Three or four deckhands helped one another swing the net over the
gunwale and ease it into the water bit by bit. A new trawl was beginning, the
boat still heading south.
A few hours later, an island appeared to the southwest and became
increasingly visible as the boat inched closer. After the next trawl, Sila 3
hauling to the wind made for Sila 4 and came alongside.
Chap gathered his belongings, walked out to stand and wait by the side
of the boat. He looked briefly at Sak. Sak smiled at him by way of
valediction—Have a good trip, mate. I hope you won’t suffer too much.
Sak was a hundred-percent sure he’d never see the scarecrow again.
Greenhorns sent to work on Sila 3 in the past, if they didn’t vanish at
Chumphon, bided their time until they landed at Mahachai. From there, they took
the faint smell of seawater and the rashes on their bodies on a search for some
other kind of work.
The sea was almost dormant. Chap was lucky that the two boats could stay
cheek by jowl; he crossed over easily.
The crews greeted one another. The pilot of boat three came over to get
the books he had asked Jiang to buy for him, sat talking with Phoo for a while
then crossed back. The lines were released, the two boats slowly parted.
The disappearing Sila 3 was about to set its fishing gear. Dorm,
the deck boss, towered at the prow, his tall body cram-packed with bulging
muscles, his bare shoulders chunky like the humps of a gaur. He was past forty,
but his powerful built was still that of a much younger man.
Three days went by. Sap forgot Chap completely. Chap was like hundreds
and thousands of greenhorns that just came and went. Every year, Sila 4
used no fewer than fifty or sixty such workers, each coming for a short spell.
These guys had no more value than a drop of water in the ocean.
Sak took his watch at the helm after the evening net was hauled up. It
was an extra job for which Thaokae Kok paid him eight hundred baht a month. He
sat watching the helm and the compass for six hours, alert to any possible
mishap such as stalling when the net dragged in sand or got caught on an
underwater wreck or was burdened with something heavy like fish-trap rocks or
thick logs. Sixty, eighty meters down below, there weren’t only the shrimp and
fish they wanted; all sorts of unwelcome things were hidden there. It was often
that underwater rock or sandy soil made one of the wire lines towing the net
snap.
In the hours when all lives were resting under star-studded skies and
the sea moaned and groaned in the dark, the trawler was like an alert animal.
It was perpetually hungry, growling as it crawled on the skin of the water.
Deep down, two beams were dragged along the earth and mud of the sea bottom.
The rollers whirled and bumped along the seabed, stirring the mud, turning the
waters thick and murky. Startled schools of fish fled in confusion. The gaping
mouth of the net sucked and swallowed the unlucky prey down its pouch every
second.
With up to thirty trawlers plying the same waters back and forth and
crisscrossing each other, the pilots had to keep their distance from neighboring
craft to avoid net lines or beams getting entangled. When that happened, the
deckhands had to scramble up on deck to pull up the nets in a hurry. Nobody
liked such emergencies: they were both a waste of time and a waste of energy.
The lantern on the roof of the boat flickered in the darkness. Way out
there some boats were ablaze with lights. The nets being hoisted threw
pitch-black shadows across the decks.
These were magic hours. Sak kept informed of the moves of the other
boats by two-way radio. Some pilots were talkative, always found something
funny or self-serving to entertain their friends with. The one hundred and
twenty channels of the black-ant radio brought news from the land—political
news, parliamentary election results, world boxing title fights, and murders on
solid ground.
“Hey you, beanpole,” Tiang shouted, “step aside. Can’t you see you’re in
the way?”
Chap got a new name as soon as he went to work on deck on his first day
with Sila 3. Tiang’s moniker for the new deckhand with the gangly body
was instantly adopted by everyone.
Chap only stood looking at other people working. Dorm glared at him
several times while the net was being hoisted. All the important tasks were
taken by the old hands. Chap thus escaped being berated. Once the fishing gear
was set again, he was made to shovel the fish onto the line of hold hatches
running the length of the deck for others to sort out. He who had never had a shovel
in his hands stood tottering. The winds of mid October whipped the sea into
demented waves over every square inch. He worked sluggishly, slipping the blade
of the shovel under the mass of fish and coming up with a few fishes at a time.
Shoveling fish is work that demands only strength. It doesn’t require
any special knowledge or ability. The deck boss always assigns the task to
greenhorns, who may know the names of only a few fish species and are in any
case unable to tell them apart.
Chap kept being abused by the other deckhands, who urged him to work
faster. The four piles of fish on the hold hatches kept disappearing so fast he
couldn’t keep up. It was hard for his scrawny arms and thin hands to work
deftly and vigorously. It wasn’t long before he started gasping for air. The
shovel was getting terribly heavy and the fish harder to scoop up with every
heave.
Dorm went straight at him, knocked him on the head once. “Don’t be so
goddamn lazy. Get a move on or you slow down the whole process.”
After getting through the big heap of fish, Chap held the hose for the
old deckhands to wash the fish now sorted out in large baskets. They took a
basket by its handles on both sides, stiffened their wrists and shook for the
fish underneath to come up on top. There was a knack to it and it was no
greenhorn’s game, so he was put to hold the hose instead.
Once the fish were washed, some of the deckhands opened the ice holds
and prepared to line up the fish in crates. An inexperienced worker like Chap
was put to grind the ice. Turning the wheel with his hands soon drained him of
all strength. The others pulled him out and took to doing the job themselves.
He was put to lift the baskets of ice and pour the ice blocks down the
mouth of the grinder. His arms were getting weaker all the time. He had hardly
brought up a basket to the mouth of the grinder when a big wave crashed against
the boat. He lost his balance, slipped and fell. The ice blocks scattered
about.
“You jerk!” Dorm shouted, coming straight at him at once.
Chap was leaning forward to get up. Dorm knocked him on the head once
again, hard this time, so that the thin body fell back on its bottom. Dorm
stepped closer and standing on his left foot lifted his right foot for a
devastating kick.
The foot slammed into something hard.
Not the nape of Chap’s neck—Chap had averted his head in time. Dorm’s
foot missing its mark had crashed into the ice grinder with all its might.
Dorm withdrew his foot, bent down, put his hand over his knee and squeezed
it strongly, jaws clenched. Blood gushed out of the instep. He stood rigid for
a moment trying to master his pain, made to walk but his one good foot wouldn’t
allow him to return to his cabin. The tall big body staggered on the verge of
collapse. Three of his men rushed forth to support him under the arms.
In front of others, Dorm was unyielding. Tears fell, blood gushed all
over the instep—he didn’t even grunt. As soon as he had left and sat nursing
his foot alone at the stern, his mouth opened and he screamed.
The engineer was the one who stanched the blood and applied an ointment
to the wound. The metatarsi of Dorm’s right foot stuck out for all to see. The
engineer checked his condition, then told Dorm, “You won’t be walking normal
again for quite a while.”
After the work over the current catch was done, five or six old hands
set upon the goddamn beanpole. Sustained thumping went on for almost ten
minutes. When the engineer and the pilot came out to put a stop to it, it was
too late. Chap was sprawled out on deck, mouth full of blood, eyes puffed up
and black.
That very afternoon he was sent over to Sila 2 and exchanged for
another greenhorn.
Chap at this stage in life was in for bad trouble. Even though he had
done no harm by himself, the very fact that by averting his head he had made
Dorm kick the ice grinder was enough for Dorm to convince himself Chap was the
cause of his wound and pain. Men like Dorm never blamed themselves. They were
always ready to judge others guilty of their own sins. His ill will was known
to all.
On Sila 3, second to Captain Tiang’s, Dorm’s decisions had force
of law on all matters. He was both trawl master and first pilot. His knowledge
of the sea was vastly superior to Tiang’s. If he was his second, it was only
because it hadn’t been his good luck to be born a son of Thaokae Kok’s.
Wherever he was born, Dorm had come to stay with Thaokae Kok since he
was a child. His resilience and loyalty to his boss had made him a trusted
favorite of his. The other boat owners in the neighborhood would often pull Thaokae
Kok’s leg on the theme—You should build another boat for your fifth son.
Sometimes, Thaokae Kok got the joke and answered good-humoredly. “I’m thinking
about it. This man Dorm, you know, he’s tops in everything.”
The four Sila boats had come into being with Dorm. He went on
board and left, was in and out of the wheelhouse, turned the radio on and off,
moved the compass at will on each boat as if he owned them all. Even though his
official job was only as fishing master, he could pilot and ease into port
better than any of Thaokae Kok’s sons. He knew his trawl and how to run a deck.
As rumor had it, if Thaokae Kok got himself a new boat, no way the position of
captain would go to someone else.
Countless numbers of new recruits had fallen afoul of his foul temper.
Some had had their skulls split open, others their arms or legs broken. Many
were left in such bad shape they had to be fed rice soup a drop at a time. It
wasn’t just his fists, feet, knees, elbows: anything close at hand—rakes,
shovels, lines, hooks—became a ready weapon for Dorm to harm others with
anytime.
Only a few months before Chat came on board, a lanky young man had
returned ignominiously to land with a gaping wound on his head, gone straight
to the police station, told his tale and demanded the arrest of the man who had
done this to him. The wound had not been stitched, the physical pain had yet to
subside, but the pain in the heart was even fiercer—he wanted the one who had
broken the law to be punished. Five police officers went along with him to Thaokae
Kok’s house, but they didn’t go after the guilty party. Instead, they talked to
Thaokae Kok on the sofas downstairs, and that was all there was to the story.
The police took the plaintiff rather than the accused back to the station and
didn’t enter the complaint in their log.
Out of the goodness of his heart, the officer on duty that day told the
deckhand with the broken skull: “Go back home, buddy, get that wound on your
head treated. And don’t you dare risk jail again by making false reports. You
know damn well what it was you bumped your head into. Don’t cast aspersions on
other people.”
Dorm got away with it nice and easy for the five-hundredth time. Every
time his evil ways brought police contingents to the house along with his
victims, Dorm sneaked out and put himself to pasture for a while. The police never
got anywhere near him and the stories ended in Thaokae Kok’s guestroom every
single time.
Besides Dorm, the other members of the crew knew that crime and the hand
of the law had walls within walls between them, so that nobody wanted to argue
with Dorm, everybody let him have his way—sometimes to excess, no doubt. If
they couldn’t countenance it, they walked away quietly—walked away from Thaokae
Kok’s house without making a hue and cry over what had been.
Chap was the first to make Dorm hurt badly. His best foot had suffered a
deep wound. It had to be wrapped in gauze and he could hardly walk. Within
hours, the news of his plight was all over the other three boats of the
company.
Chap went over to Sila 2 as a refugee. Tiang in his kindness
didn’t want him to be set upon further, never mind the rights and wrongs of the
case. Tiang was not a clever man who thought things through and he had no
particular sympathy for Chap; he just wanted the incident to be over. As it
happened, the second boat offered an easy way out. It had a greenhorn ready to
be exchanged and it trawled nearby. It didn’t take twenty minutes to reach it
and heave to.
Boat two was no secure place for Chap. Son, the trawl master, came from
the same village as Dorm. Besides, it was Dorm who had taken Son to work with Thaokae
Kok, who had sponsored him and trained him so he could work his way up to this
important post.
Son was handsome, ten years younger than Dorm, swift and nimble, and all
of one hundred seventy-five centimeters tall. Every time there was a brawl with
the crews of other boats, Son was in the thick of it. He was no less partial to
a fight fair or foul than Dorm was.
On port calls, Son’s waist would wear a nylon cord instead of a belt,
with a lead ball half an inch thick attached to one end. It was his weapon of
choice. He used it expertly and with deadly accuracy. When the lead ball at the
end of the cord was sent spinning by a hand and arm powered by ten years of
hard work, it flung to the target with speed and might. If it struck legs, the
other guy fell; higher, it broke an elbow or a forearm; higher still, it could
burst heads open.
Son was Dorm’s deathly shadow—a loyal bodyguard, always ready to protect
his flanks. When boat two and boat three happened to call to port at the same
time, cruelty was in the air and dimmed the land.
Chap went over to the other boat in a parlous state. Dry blood left
splotches and streaks at the back of his shirt. His lips were swollen, his eyes
black and blue.
Winds and waves gradually increased in strength. Chap could hardly walk.
He wasn’t seasick, had never ducked out of it. Even though he couldn’t help his
mates very much, he came out to work on deck every time he heard the bell ring
and went back to lie down together with the others.
Son knew what had happened aboard Sila 3, but he bided his time.
He was a rather cautious man not much given to rash decisions. If he was to
bash a deckhand out at sea, he had to have good enough reasons to explain to
the captain what it was had provoked him beyond endurance. It wasn’t the same
with brawls on land, where any pretext was good enough and sometimes wasn’t
even needed.
Usually Son was a jolly good fellow, who liked to fool around with his
men after work, kicking them in the ass for fun, grabbing one and throwing him
overboard, laughing and bantering boisterously with his favorites.
Son was like a slack sea but with vicious undercurrents. His number-one
buddy, his mentor, his senior was in pain because of Chap. That bastard had
made Dorm lose face and walk without grace. Son stole glances at Chap and
waited quietly for his opportunity.
When Chap came over, the deckhands were on the point of exhaustion. The
boat had been out for many days; there was no longer any fun on board: no more
horsing around, no more jostling or wrestling each other on deck after work.
Faces were scowling or sullen. Chap helped cheer them up a bit. He was
something funny to laugh at, a target on which to work off their frustrations.
He was the latest and weakest recruit at the end of the line whose very
presence raised some of the deckhands a notch, made them feel they had gained
in importance.
For the first three days, Chap was a regular joke. Many ragged him,
laughed when he slipped and fell or when a blue swimming crab pinched his hand
and he grimaced with pain. His little miseries generated guffaws from everyone
around him every time.
After that, the invectives from various mouths were meant for him alone.
Some kicked him in the butt playfully then went on to knock him on the head
once, threw seawater at him, grabbed a rotten fish and threw it at his back.
Chap kept quiet, reacting to no one.
By the fourth day after Sila 4 left port, the boat rode dazzling
white waves, rolling under their ramming. It was almost time to sell the catch
and take on more ice and fuel at the Chumphon estuary. The heavy load helped
the boat fight the waves to some extent. That night, just as Sak took his watch
at the helm, Pilot Oot of Sila 2 was calling for him to get in touch. He
asked him to switch the radio wavelength to one particular channel. Then he
told Sak excitedly: “You know what? Something happened I never thought would
happen. Never on my life, I swear. Nobody’s noticed the look in the dingo’s
eyes. He’s got eyes like he’ll yield to no one. A brave if there’s one, I say.”
Some deckhand had thrown mud smack into Chap’s face. The mud mixed with
seawater stung his eyes. He couldn’t see for a while. He put down his shovel,
walked over to the gunwale to spit and retch. It took him two or three minutes
to get rid of the muck in his mouth. As he scooped seawater to wash his face,
one of Son’s buddies suddenly fancied he felt pity for Chap—the greenhorn was
seasick and pouring his guts out. He moved close to him and started to stroke
his back, but instead of his hand, he used his foot clad in a rubber boot.
There he stood in his splendor, hands on hips, grinning regally to his friends.
Chap raised his head and looked over his back. A wave crashed on the
gunwale. He slipped and fell hard on his bottom. The rubber-booted foot kept at
his back, stroking now with increasing strength. Suddenly the spindly body
sprung up, catching the foot owner unawares. Chap’s fist smashed half into the
mouth half into the nose, sending the thickset body sprawling backward.
“The power the damn beanpole packs in his punch is no joke,” Pilot Oot
went on telling Sak gleefully. “The mother had glazed eyes and a bloody mouth,
but the beanpole didn’t have time to admire his handiwork. Son and five
deckhands fell on him there and then. He fought back without blinking. They
punched and kicked him, sent him reeling, knocked him down. He got up and next
found himself sprawled all over the fish with blood all over his face. He
leaned forward to get up and fight on, wielding shovels awkwardly and rakes to
fend off the kicks. Several shovels and rakes ended up in the water. Then he
stuck his back against the ice grinder, protecting himself as best he could.
Neither Son nor his men could get him without getting hurt, they all got their
quotas of punches that put them on their asses one after the other.”
By the time Thiang and Pilot Oot came out of the galley to stop the
fight, Chap lay unconscious by the pile of fish.
When he had been revived, he was sent over to Sila 1. He was
badly bruised. He’d have to lie down for days before he could do any work
again. He was so badly hurt that, if the boat had put in at a port, he’d have
had to be rushed to a doctor and would have ended on a hospital bed, destitute
and out of work though he was, with neither next of kin nor money nor insurance
scheme to pay for his treatment. But that would have been better than lying
moaning and groaning below deck ignored by everyone.
The other boats were eager to find out what had happened. It helped
relieve boredom while you sat at the helm. Friends from the other boats
questioned Pilot Oot on how the little prick was doing. Was he conscious yet?
Was he back on his feet? Could he work? He’d been sent back to land, right?
Pilot Oot stalled for quite some time before he let out, He’s been sent on to Sila
1.
Some who didn’t listen to how the fight had started concluded it was
Chap’s fault. He was a bad number, and that’s what had led to the fight.
Provoking others like that, he’d deserve to be thrown overboard and done with.
Sak sat listening to the criticisms while stroking the scar on his
instep. He felt sorry for the poor scarecrow, and was relieved to learn Sila
1 was about to return to shore—there was only one hold of ice left. He’s
still lucky after all, Sak thought.
One afternoon, Sila 1 came close by while still trawling. Sak
looked over and saw Chap standing shovel in hand by the pile of fish on deck.
So he’s still around and apparently happy enough to be on this new boat, Sak
thought with satisfaction. In a few days, the poor devil will go ashore. As
soon as his feet touch the ground, I bet he’ll run away from these parts as
fast he can.
But Sak had guessed wrong.
The captain of boat two forbade Chap to go ashore. He had made several
shovels and rakes fall overboard; he’d have to work on for some time to come to
compensate for the losses.
Before Priang took Sila 1 to shore, Chap was ordered to transfer
to boat three.
Sila 3 was just out of Mahachai. Dorm’s right foot must have
much improved by now. Maybe he’d want to test its ability to kick once again.
Chapter Three
When Sila 4 put in at Mahachai, Sak learned that the stories
about Chap that had spread by word of mouth were so outlandish they bore little
relation to reality. In the telling, he had become an archfiend who had managed
to put several men out of work. Thaokae Kok and Granny Cheng were incensed.
They admonished their children, and Jiang in particular, Don't you let the
bastard on shore yet, let him have a rough time of it for a few months.
Sila 4 was at anchor for three nights, then left to ride the
waves southbound. It was getting to November, the beginning of the worst season
for sailors. Nobody liked the big waves that brought cold and pain and fever to
those who had been with the sea all their lives, who had gone through dozens of
monsoon seasons. If they had a choice, they’d want the sea to have but gentle
waves and even gentler winds to keep them cool.
The boat left port in the morning, and soon after sailing past Cha-am
there was a looming mountain range and when that was left behind, after another
three hours of cutting through the waves, Sila 4 met with Sila 2
which was returning to port. There was one parcel Thiang was to send across.
The boats couldn’t come alongside. The end of a thick line was hurled across to
receive the parcel.
Sak hobbled out and went to stand by the gunwale, saw Chap come out and
stand at the prow of boat two: he was the parcel. Sak realized then Chap had
been sent over to boat two again, back among the old foes he had fought once.
Clinging to the line that dipped into the water, Chap progressed hand to
hand toward Sila 4. Master Keut and two deckhands put out their arms for
him to grab. Keut’s sturdy arms lifted the dripping body out of the water and
laid it down on deck. Chap looked like a skinny cat under wanton torture. His
wet hair, which had grown longer and pliant, stuck to the skin of his skull.
His left eye was swollen and there was a gaping wound high on his forehead from
which blood had begun to ooze again.
He had been dumped like a rag as the two boats passed each other. Boat two
grew distant in the rear until only its mast was visible. Phoo revved the
engine, taking Sila 4 toward the south. The deckhands went back to their
quarters.
Chap raised his head and sat up and then stayed still as a dark shadow
devoid of feeling. Waves flushed over the prow relentlessly, dousing and
pummeling his body. He slowly rose, stood up unsteadily.
Uncle Nui emerged from the engine room and stood looking at Chap for
quite a while before stepping up to him. “Why don’t you give yourself a shower,
young man? Then go lie down in the galley. If you fell overboard, no one’d
notice.”
Uncle Nui stood looking at Chap shower with freshwater. He followed him
to the stern then called out, “Hey, Sak, take care of this guy, will you?”
Sak nodded. Uncle Nui crawled back down to the engine room.
Chap was left with only torn clothes. He took off his mud-splattered
trousers, hung them over the wire of the stern pole outside, stepped back into
the galley naked but for the briefs he wore, sat down hugging his chest, his
back to the bags of rice, slowly closed his eyes and drifted into sleep.
Sap sat looking at Chap and thinking of how it was it had all gone wrong
for him. It was his fault to begin with that he had decided to cross the
threshold of Thaokae Kok’s house, Sak thought. With this wrong first step, the
next steps could only be worse and sink him deeper into torment, turning him
into a defendant deprived of any means of defense.
An enormous wave rammed the boat, which shook all over. The emaciated
body slumped against the bags of rice was started awake. He raised his head and
looked around, arms tight around the chest, lips aquiver.
“If you’re cold, move over to the funnel,” Sak suggested. “It’ll warm
you up.”
Chap turned to look at Sak briefly, lowered his head, closed his eyes
and tightened the hold on his chest. His hair, dry by now, stuck up like
quills. The blood had stopped flowing from the wound on his forehead and begun
to coagulate into dark-red blotches.
Sak lied down on the floor next to him at about arm’s length. This was
the sleeping area of the boat’s cook, next to the stove and the pantry. Sak was
used to the smell of vegetable oil, of smoke from the fire, the smell of onion,
garlic and soy sauce, which mixed pungently with the wafts of engine oil and
grease from the room below.
Uncle Nui too was used to this medley of smells. He had been close to
Sak for the past two years. From time to time he’d emerge from the engine room
to come and sit down, roll himself a cigarette and prompt Sak to talk. He’d
grin and guffaw genially.
A dour smell of sweat came from the body that slept huddled against the
bags of rice. Chap’s eyes were shut tight, his breathing even. His shoulders,
arms, chest and stomach were covered with small wounds and scratches and
bruises. He had been beaten up many times while onboard Sila 2.
Though he was in pain, Chap was like an animal toughing it out. He felt
no concern for himself, went out to work with the others as usual. He no longer
had to shovel fish: this was now the duty of two greenhorns. He sat sorting out
the fish with Master Keut. Night-trawl catch was easy to sort out. It was
mostly chickenfeed and tiny sand shrimp. There were only a few sorts of quality
fish to put aside into crates.
Chap worked quietly, hardly talking to anyone. Once the sorting-out was
done, he stood up, took a shovel, filled the crates with fish, pulled them in a
row and waited to shake them clean under the hose.
Keut was a strong man of forty-seven. He never yelled at his men, let
everyone work at his own pace. Sila 4 had almost no history of deckhands
being bullied by their boss. There were hardly any quarrels. Keut had been
there a long time and got along well with Jiang. Both had made Thaokae Kok’s
fourth boat a heaven of peace and quiet.
Before that, Pilot Phoo was the one who was fierce. He was the only one
to swear at the deckhands in the foulest language. Lately, he had gone into
trade to supplement his income, buying all kinds of foodstuff and other
essentials to sell onboard. As everyone was now a dear customer, he had taken
to smiling and being considerate. He’d only curse when he wasn’t paid in full.
Chap’s skin began to be sunburned. His face was weathered, his back full
of peeling scrapes. His hands, once so thin you could see the sinews, couldn’t
quite fold into fists these days, swollen with corns and cracked as they were.
After five or six days on boat four, the wound on his forehead had begun to
heal. Much of the bruises and scratches on his body had gone.
He was incredibly tough. More than thirty days it was now that he hadn’t
seen the land. He had gone through several rounds of bashing that had left him
in critical condition, but he still put up with his fate without complaint,
without opening his mouth even once to beg for sympathy.
When it was time to eat, he went on with his meal quietly. Sak observed
him closely. His own mother used to tell him you can find out much about people
from the way they eat. You can see the hungry. You can see the gluttons, see
those who eat like they don’t know the value of food, those who eat in order to
live and those who swallow their food as they do their sorrow.
Chap ate as if it was a duty of some kind, without gusto, as though he
didn’t know the taste of what he ate; each mouthful like dry straw stuffed into
a bamboo tube. Sak watched him silently and couldn’t help but sigh.
Several days later, he noticed that Chap did not dare dump his plate in
the big basin he had put out for the deckhands to leave their crockery in when
they were finished eating. Chap would walk to the gunwale, scoop up seawater
and clean his own spoon and plate.
Sak washed everybody’s plates, and charged each man ten baht per trip as
a way to supplement his income. He knew Chap was being considerate, aware that
he wasn’t going to stay on the boat forever and might not have the opportunity
to pay his share.
One of the net beams caught one afternoon. The deckhands were ten
minutes into their meal when the bell called them up on deck. Full or not, they
had to rush to their respective stations at the prow. Chap stood up plate in
hand.
“Put it in the basin,” Sak told him. “I’ll wash it with the others.
Hurry back to work. If you’re late, you’ll have the master on your back.”
Chap let the plate slide into the basin as he was told, looked up and
held Sak’s gaze for a moment, opened his mouth slightly as if to smile, but his
eyes weren’t in the least cheerful.
Several nights went by. Sak and Chap slept side by side amid the
throbbing of the engine and the snoring of Pilot Phoo when he wasn’t on duty,
amid the smell of engine oil and grease, and the smell of brine which the wind brought
in through the portholes.
The smell of salt and fish that came out of Chap’s body was getting
offensive. He stank like someone who hadn’t had a shower in ages. His head was
white and shiny with fish scales and streaks of mud ran down his backside.
“Hey, mate,” Sak finally told him. “Why don’t you give yourself a good
scrubbing for a change?”
Chap sat still, his back to the bags of rice, looking through a
porthole, motionless as if he was fully caught up in the magic of the waves.
“You’ve been at sea for more than a month, you know.” Sak turned up his
nose. “You should know how to clean yourself properly.” Still not a word from
Chap. Sak tried again. “When the work is over, you use seawater from the hose
to drench yourself and get rid of the scales and mud entirely, and then pour a
few scoops of water over yourself. No one will see anything wrong with that.”
That’s how the deckhands washed themselves. There was enough freshwater
in the two wooden tanks in front of the quarters if it was used sparingly. At
Chumphon, the tanks were refilled at the ice factory. It wasn’t as bad as on
some boats where you had to boil ice to cook the rice.
The most health-conscious deckhands covered themselves in scented talcum
powder before they turned in and stretched out contentedly. If anybody in the
top quarters smelled as foul as Chap did, that cramped box in which up to ten
men managed to sleep would stink like a hen house.
Come the next trawl, Sak waited until Chap had finished his work and
came back from the prow to beckon him over. He had prepared everything for
him—a sarong, an old pair of Chinese trousers, a shirt, a piece of soap and a bottle
of shampoo. “Here, mate, use these. Go wash yourself, so you smell good for
once.”
Chap took the proffered items and walked back to the prow. Some twenty
minutes later, he was back with a sparking-clean body, his hair still wet. He
wore the threadbare Chinese trousers Sak had forsaken for him. As soon as he
sat down, Sak handed him a box of cooling talcum powder. “Take this, you’ll
smell even better.”
Chap powdered his armpits and his neck, his left hand flat on the wooden
floor, all five fingers inflamed. The nail of the index finger was torn off a
dark-red wound. A murex shell had sliced deep into the fleshy part of his arm.
Sak walked over to the wheelhouse, opened the pharmacy and took out a
small bottle of iodine and a pack of cotton.
Chap sat with his legs spread out. Sak put the iodine and cotton down in
front of him. “Rub some of this over your wounds, you’ll work the easier for
it,” he said. He took Chap’s left hand, turned it over to have a look. The hand
was still slim and light, with only early stigmata of work.
“Did you get into fights again on boat two?” Sak asked. Chap nodded
slowly, bent over as he tended his wounds. Sak said: “Dorm has always been like
this. And Son too. You shouldn’t argue with the likes of them, just put up with
it no matter what.”
Chap looked up and smiled briefly. “How much is a shovel, do you know?”
Sak laughed. “Just a few baht. And a rake too, right? Not even a
hundred.”
Chap lowered his head, went on massaging his arm, frowning hard as he
figured out his debt and wages and how long it’d be before he went to shore.
Sak turned his face away with a wry smile—it wasn’t a question of a few rusty
shovels and rakes. Thaokae Kok had ordered his sons to teach the troublemaker a
lesson by keeping him at sea.
“How much does a worker get?” Chap asked, staring at Sak, waiting for
his answer.
“Maybe nine hundred?” Sak said. “That’s the minimum rate. If you work
better than this, know how to repair a net, say, you’ll get one thousand two to
one thousand five.”
Chap turned to look through the porthole. White-crested waves kept
chasing one another madly with groans and crashes and hisses. He eased his back
onto the bags of rice and stayed sitting in that posture for hours on end.
The boat jerked up and down with the waves, surrounded by darkness. Chap
and Sak lied down to sleep. Chap lay still, staring at the ceiling. Sak noticed
it and figured he was probably thinking of the land—thinking of home, of his
return. The sea was too ruthless for him. There was nothing good in it for
him—cruel crewmates, the Thaokae behaving to him without the least compassion,
the four boats jailing him like a convict.
Chap wasn’t the first deckhand to go through such an ordeal, but in his
case it was particularly trying as he was being punished more than the others,
Sak concluded.
Sorrow and torment were nothing out of the ordinary for greenhorns.
Often it was they couldn’t sleep even though they were dog-tired and hurt all
over. Their work on deck over, their mates turned in and were quiet, but they,
with a full load of misery in their hearts, came out to mope by a gunwale,
staring emptily at the gray mass of an island on the eastern side, letting
tears flow, sobs unheard, sight lost in the distance—across the sea, beyond
mountains, toward the land they missed so terribly.
Chap looked obdurate. There was something strange in his eyes. Whatever
he was thinking with such a look on his face, there was no way anyone would see
him cry. If there was any weakness in him, he kept it well hidden deep within
himself, looking for a way to solve his problems by himself, or maybe he was
thinking—
Sak lay recalling two greenhorns from the North. About two years ago,
they had come aboard for their first trip. As soon as they were no longer
seasick, they wanted to be sent back to land and go home. They walked in
concert to the pilothouse, asked to talk to Jiang, implored him to have the
boat return them to shore: their hearts were heavy with sorrow; they didn’t
like the hard and dirty work; they couldn’t stand the confined space and the
food—no soft mattress or soft pillows, and on top of that they were woken up in
the middle of the night to work in the rain. They couldn’t stand this kind of
life any more, not even for a single day. Here there was no entertainment, no
place to relax; there were no days off. This world without land was no place
for refined folks like them.
With a flick of his hand, Jiang showed the dainty duo the door. “What a
pair of fussy troublemakers you are! No way I can take you back to shore, it’d
be a waste of fuel and a waste of time. This isn’t a cruise: we work for a
living. Since you’re here you must work till the end of the trip. The Thaokae
paid five hundred baht to the agency for each of you, and another three hundred
to buy yourselves a few things, and then you come and won’t work? Get out!”
The pair of youngsters, crestfallen, went away to stand forlorn at the
stern. For another two days, they put their nose to the grindstone. On a night
when the sea was fast asleep under a starlit sky, come the night trawl they
were nowhere to be seen. A search of every nook and cranny didn’t raise even
their shadows. They hadn’t become so careless as to both fall overboard but
must have been determined to reach the shore, Keut maintained to Jiang,
pointing to the buoys strung out in front of the quarters—there were a dozen
missing.
What a crazy way out for them sissies to choose! They’d rather travel
back to their homeland at the peril of their lives than stand a work they didn’t
like and a way of life that gave them no happiness.
Not a few deckhands disappeared in this way. It was a minor chronicle
that went with the open sea and was told and retold, tales to fight boredom on
long nights. Some foolhardy lad would put his life at the mercy of a fistful of
buoys until some other trawler rescued him. Plied with questions, he’d soon
find himself sent back to the original boat—back to the hell he had failed to
escape. The oath of allegiance to the sea was too sacred to be broken just like
that. Still the fellow was luckier than were many others boats picked off the
water as floating corpses.
Sak cast sidelong glances at the man lying next to him. Chap’s long neck
bent, his head fell from the bags of rice to rest sideways on the wooden floor,
fast asleep out of exhaustion.
Poor scarecrow, Sak mused with compassion. I don’t know how far away you
are from home, but I hope you won’t be shortsighted enough to decide to return
to shore on buoys. If you do, you’re likely to buy your freedom with your
death.
Chapter Four
It was as if a small glimmer of hope was heaving into sight at the end
of the tunnel: Sila 4 was to enter the Chumphon estuary tomorrow
morning. Sak smiled at Chap to show his delight before he told him the news.
Chap would see the land for the first time in almost two months, feel
its warm breath and with a firm tread stand fully erect, calling back to
himself confidence and faith in life. The land had many other attractions. A
full-blooded young man like him would feast his eyes on the multicolored
apparel of young women, their joyful smiles bright like flowers in bloom, their
perfume heady in a world the soles of his feet would be able to pace every
which way they pleased.
He’d taste a sherbet in a small stall