…Granny has just left my room, together with her (to her) lovely white kitten. Nothing special, you know. She merely came to tell me the same old story. Actually, it was I who told it to her in the first place and I believe it must have given her happiness and hope, so she’s kept telling it time and again tirelessly and finally the story has become hers, that is, she’s been doing the rounds telling it to everyone in the house (and to each of us many times), so that yes, it’s the same story alright, except that she’s changed the sets and props a little, enough to turn it into a new story she keeps repeating ad nauseam.

For my part, I’ve never criticized her for repeating it to everyone in the house. For a start (I’d like to point out) she hasn’t used it to turn it into a book or sell its rights for a movie, nor to obtain remuneration or profit of any kind, so I’ve never thought of asking for a share of it.

Secondly, the (new) story she peddles around has little to do now with the one I told her; she’s added to it her own thinking, her own interpretation, just as you’d spice up a dish to enhance its flavour: it’s still the same dish but it’s got a different flavour altogether. This should be enough for you to realize that, though she got her inspiration from me for some parts, the rest is her own creation.

Lastly, if I haven’t taken her to task, it’s because I can see she’s an old woman, a lonely old woman (deserving of sympathy). Inasmuch as the story provides an old woman with a measure of happiness and hope, I’m happy enough to let her have it, out of compassion, out of human kindness, without my having to forfeit anything.

But then, as you can see, before I let her have the story, I had to put forward no fewer than three reasons, and human compassion comes last.

In any case, for these three reasons, I’ve never let anyone (in the house) know that it’s actually from me that she got it.

She likes to come and sit in my room and tell it to me often, just as she did right now. Today, as it happens, I’m in a particularly good mood, so I showed interest to please her, but if I happen to be in a bad mood when she comes, let me tell you frankly that I don’t want to listen to her. Sometimes I feel like chasing her away but in the end I never do so, except that sometimes I deliberately show her I’m not happy and she soon goes out, off her own bat, leaving the story unfinished. I’d rather not look at her sluggish doddering as she walks out. It isn’t a nice scene – that of a white-haired old woman, short and stooped, shuffling out quietly, listless and disappointed.

Sometimes I call her back. Assuredly I’m not being quite honest. I quickly change the expression on my face and hold her back by saying, ‘Hey, why are you leaving? I want to listen to the rest of the story.’ This bloody stupid sentence of mine is always effective. Sometimes it comes out of my mouth without my even realizing it.

And if you could see her then, you’d feel I’m a wonderful chap who knows how to please an old woman (at the end of her tether).

She instantly goes from sluggishness to eagerness, all traces of disappointment left behind.

The downturned wrinkled lips rise into a sweet smile clearly visible (showing pale brown gums). The eyes welling up with tears sparkle with happiness and the tears trickle down as an expression of joy. And when she resumes her story, her whole face radiates happiness and hope right down to her wrinkles and liver spots.

You should see this yourself some day. I’m not able to adequately describe with words this mixture of tension and happiness which appears to the naked eye.

At those times when I show off my impatience, which results in her leaving my room, I don’t call her back. I tell myself it’s just as well she doesn’t come to bother me often (old people are such a pain!). But after a few days, here she comes again! She must’ve forgotten my reaction then…

Sometimes a new tenant moves in. It happens frequently in this house with rooms to let where the oldest residents leave one after the other and are soon replaced. The coming and going is ceaseless, just as in this world the dead leave and the newborn come to replace them – that’s right, our planet is like a house in which we all live together.

(Well, maybe it isn’t exactly the same actually, I’m making the comparison just like that, don’t be hard on me.)

Whenever new tenants move in, Granny isn’t slow in cosying up to them and very soon, in a matter of days, she undertakes to treat them to her old story without them having any idea of where it comes from. Think about it: you’ve just settled down in a new abode when an old woman comes along to tell you a story about ghosts in the house. Would you think that funny?

I overheard (quite by chance) a couple of newcomers talking about Granny in the following terms: ‘We can’t resent her, old people are like that.’ Two months later, they moved out – I’ve no idea why (and probably neither does Granny).

She and I are veterans in the house. We know what’s been happening all along. We’ve followed the story from beginning to end. Maybe that’s why I alone (in the house) must bear the burden of listening to her, even though on some days I don’t feel like it at all…

But I must, it seems to me, inform you about the latest developments, because if you’re interested in Granny’s old story, it might be good for you to know its origins and ups and downs. But where to begin? (It’s a long story.)

Well, I’ll try to be as brief as possible, so that no time is wasted (neither yours nor mine). I know what we say about time these days: we give it importance to the point of claiming that time is money (would you believe it!). Knowing this, I must endeavour not to waste any.

Ah! I know where I shall begin, so that it’s short and crisp, time being valuable as we’ve just said. The story begins…

…when Granny’s daughter learned she had cancer.

Yes, this is truly where I must begin, because it sums up the story well, it makes it sound interesting. But on second thoughts I’d better go back a little and begin…

…when I moved here, into this house.

I’d been looking for a room to let for days but had found nothing that suited me. I wanted a room that was altogether cheap, close to civilisation and far from the maddening crowd. I might as well have tried to find a needle in a haystack, my good man! For how could I find a room that met those three requirements?

I’d been looking around for so long that, in despair, I was ready to drop the second condition. And then one day a fellow worker tips me off that there’s a room to let near his place. He suggested I give it a look to see if it wouldn’t suit me.

That evening, I followed him inside a maze of narrow streets as dense as foliage on to a lane flanking a monastery and ending on a trodden earth path dotted with small cement slabs to walk on. At the very end, a fairly old wooden house was surrounded by tall trees, some of them entirely cloaked in creepers. It was almost like jungle, dark green and peaceful.

It was a rather large storied house. From its shape (its domed roof was covered with square tiles) and the state of its wood, you could guess it was dozens of years old. At once the image of some old aristocrat’s mansion, or some such personage, fleeted through my mind, but only for a second. To speak bluntly, I didn’t care about its shape or age so long as it conformed to the three criteria I already mentioned. What interested me above all was to know if my income would allow me to rent a room in it. When I found out that the room was cheap and suitable, I took it, that’s all.

Once I’d moved in, I began to observe the goings-on in the house. Altogether there are five rented rooms, three on the top floor and two on the ground floor. The toilets are under the stairs. The shower room is outside, where the clothes are washed.

In one of the two ground-floor rooms lived two young women, one of whom looked like a boy (what her profession was I’ve no idea) and the other must be a student, judging from her dress (on some days). I had hardly any relations with them, even less so than with the other tenants, who as a rule didn’t talk to one another much anyway.

The second room was that of a young married couple. He was a teacher, she a saleswoman in a department store. They’d leave the house together in the morning and come back together at nightfall.

Upstairs, there are three rooms. The one giving out onto the front veranda was occupied by a middle-aged couple, both of them fortune-tellers. They went out or stayed home, depending. On some days, clients came to see them. Sometimes they went upcountry for days on end. They looked rather well off, going by their (colour) TV set, which Granny liked to watch.

Granny’s room is across from theirs. I’m given to understand she’s been living in it with her daughter for a great many years.

My room is next to hers, the smallest of them all (with the smallest rent), but I don’t feel cramped in it (when alone).

As a rule, even though we saw one another every day, we seldom spoke. We lived, so to speak, each in his or her corner, each minding his or her own business. But we also happened to exchange a few words, for example when queuing up in front of the shower room or when we happened to leave the house at the same time in the morning. Nothing outlandish: ‘How hot it was last night!’ or else: ‘My goodness, such horrendous traffic this evening!’ That kind of talk.

The only exception was Granny. She was familiar with everybody. This is partly due to the fact that she’s in charge of the house and of collecting the rents every month to hand them over to the landlord. (For all the time I’ve been here, I’ve never seen the landlord – maybe he’s the old aristocratic type as I’ve always thought.) Yes, that certainly would explain why Granny addressed all the tenants. But to my mind this isn’t enough of an explanation. The real reason, I think, is that Granny is a helpful person, a characteristic inherited no doubt from the past and hardly to be found these days. I’d better give you a few little examples to back up my words lest you accuse me of arguing without proof, of saying any old thing.

Such as… Whenever someone went out after hanging out the washing and it was threatening to rain or a few drops were already falling, Granny would rush out to take the washing to a dry place. If that washing got wet, it wasn’t her fault in any way (it was the fault of the falling rain, it was the fault of the person who’d hung the washing without listening to the weather forecast…). She put the washing still wet to dry inside the house, folded the washing already dry and laid it in a pile at its owner’s door.

I myself on some days fell victim to her ironing of the shirt I’d washed in the morning before going to work. When I came back in the late afternoon, I’d find my shirt freshly ironed on a hanger hung on the doorknob. No matter how I told her ‘Granny, it’s very nice of you to take my shirt back inside, there’s really no need for you to iron it too’, she’d answer with a smile, ‘I’ve got nothing to do, it doesn’t bother me at all.’

So you see how lovely she can be (at such times). What sort of mean customer wouldn’t open his door to kindness when it knocks? I rather think that’s why everybody feels at ease talking with her…

You must be impatient to know more about her daughter. Didn’t I tell you a moment ago that the story begins when she learnt she had cancer?

Indeed, her daughter had cancer. But before that I must go back even further. (It won’t take long, I promise you.) Don’t get impatient – you’ll know everything in a moment, as this disease is linked to Granny’s old story I’m going to tell you.

Nobody had yet moved out. We were all living together in peace. Nothing more frightful ever happened than the occasional tiffs of the fortune-telling couple, which we found rather par for the course: in a couple, you quarrel and then make it up, like kids at play.

And then one evening the event that shook us took place. It started when a stranger went into Granny’s room where, it seems, her daughter was also. I was lying on my bed reading a book. I could hear the buzz of their three-sided conversation but didn’t pay attention to it until the stranger started to talk about something extraordinary and frightening.

‘If you wait too long,’ his tense voice was saying, ‘it’ll eat up all the flesh inside.’

Whose flesh? What is it that’s going to eat up the flesh inside? I couldn’t help but wonder and I began to prick up my ear – listening or looking furtively is no bad manners, believe me (so long as nobody knows).

‘Do you think you can save her, doctor,’ Granny’s tremulous voice was asking.

‘Let me take another look.’

…Silence…

‘Come on, don’t be shy, show the doctor.’

Prolonged silence…

‘Don’t worry. It isn’t too late, but it’s already fairly big because you’ve waited a long time.’

‘Do get her well quickly, doctor.’ Granny’s voice sounded anxious.

‘I’ll come back tomorrow evening with a remedy. You don’t have to worry. I guarantee she’ll recover,’ the stranger said confidently.

The next instant, the floor was creaking under the steps of three persons coming out of the room… As I resumed reading I thought confusedly of the stranger’s words, ‘If you wait too long, it’ll eat up all the flesh inside.’

The next evening at dusk I passed the stranger in front of the gate. He was a middle-aged man, tall, light-complexioned, well dressed and holding a black leather case – that’s all I can remember.

He came back on the following days and I’d pass him increasingly often, sometimes in the house, sometimes in the lane. Eventually we came to exchange smiles (yet never a word). Granny said of him he had ‘Goddess Kuan Im’s flourishing mien’. As he came round almost every day, I finally decided it was no longer suitable to call him a stranger and, along with the other tenants, I got into the habit of calling him ‘doctor’ when talking about him.

During the whole period doctor came to show his Kuan Im-like flourishing mien – and from his very first visit – the (genuine) bright smile on mother and daughter’s faces turned into a worried expression as if the doctor had siphoned off their smile to put it on his own (Kuan Im-like) face, which permanently (or at least each time I saw it) looked replete.

Allow me to briefly interrupt the story of the doctor as I realize I should give you a few details about Granny’s daughter. She indeed plays as important a part in the story as Granny herself (though unfortunately I don’t know much about her, besides what any tenant could learn).

What I know, for instance, is that she was rather pretty. I’m not sure her prettiness has anything to do with the story, but I must mention it, because it was what struck me from the outset. And then we must talk about her age. She was between thirty-six and thirty-seven years old. At that age, normally (especially in the case of a woman), you’d long have been married, but she was still single. Let us (you and I) not affront her by calling her a spinster or anything like that. It’d be a dire blunder, because she had a lover, who came to see her often. (I might as well let you know this right away so that you don’t misapprehend that what I’m telling you is going to turn into a love story between her and her young cotenant.)

I was given to understand that, if she didn’t get married, it was out of concern for her mother, who was already very old and didn’t seem to have any other relatives (none who came to pay her a visit at any rate) unless she and her lover had other reasons I’m not privy to.

I don’t know whether my superficial deductions are in tune with the truth, but do not let this stop you. Nowadays, ‘truth’ is no longer very much in vogue; it is ‘existence’ that’s sought after. Ah, don’t get carried away and think I’m philosophizing. I mean to say ordinary existence, with no reference whatever to the fashionable concepts of ‘existence’ and ‘essence’.

Let’s state plainly she never got married, and leave it at that. No need to rack our brains over motivations.

We’ve mentioned her age. Now let’s turn to her profession. We hear all the time the question ‘What are you doing in life?’ which can be hurtful (when you’re on the dole). But, given that everybody is interested in that question, I might as well tell you that she worked in a dressmaking shop. Regrettably, I was never nosey enough to find out which one, but at the time, you know (and even now, actually), women’s dressmaking was the least of my worries. But never mind, what’s past is past, feeling regret is no use and besides, even now, I don’t feel like knowing more about her than I already know.

That’s it. I think I’ve provided you with all the details I have about her. Let’s go back to the story of the doctor.

It was while he was coming round to treat her every evening that I learned that Granny’s daughter had breast cancer. Before that, according to what her mother told me, it was a small tumour under the breast. At first they thought nothing of it, they thought it’d go away by itself, but after some time, as the tumour kept growing, they resigned themselves to go to hospital where they were told it was cancer.

When you know you have cancer, I think that, poor as you might be, you try to get cured at all costs. And so it was with Granny’s daughter. She must have struggled to find a cure day in day out until a woman coming to the shop for a new dress told her one of her relatives had had cancer this doctor had cured and other patients could vouch it wasn’t his first success. According to the doctor himself, the properties of his remedy were such that the Cancer Foundation had asked him for the formula, which he had refused to reveal as he hadn’t been granted enough consideration.

I had asked Granny why her daughter wasn’t being treated in the hospital where she’d gone to be examined. She’d answered me that cancer patients died more often than were cured, and in hospital you died faster than at home, because with x-rays and surgical operations cancer spread throughout the body and she had yet to see anyone going through the ordeal unscathed. Furthermore, for breast cancer, you must take out the breast, and her daughter didn’t want to (have her breast cut off). Not only that method wasn’t the right one but hospital cost an arm and a leg, whereas the doctor’s treatment consisted in a medicated plaster which reduced the tumour gradually and eventually got rid of it without it being very painful and without any need for surgery: it was a lengthy procedure and her daughter preferred it.

I couldn’t tell you whether Granny had pondered about all this on her own or whether she got it from the doctor, but it was definitely through her that I learned about it. I suggested right away she take her daughter to hospital, pointing out the progress of medicine and modern methods, but my arguments were powerless to dent the certainties of the two women. To be quite frank about it, I didn’t try very hard to convince them, because it dawned on me at the time that I shouldn’t allow myself to be dragged into a catastrophe. If Granny happened to believe me and something terrible happened to her daughter (due to treatment in hospital), wouldn’t I be blamed for pointing the way to disaster? If something like that happened, how could I keep looking Granny in the eye? I’d have to put myself to a lot of trouble finding new lodgings.

Wasn’t it better indeed to leave things as they were? After all this was no concern of ours. Let’s merely observe quietly what’s going on, like a good old spectator while the play is unfolding…

Doctor was proceeding with his treatment. I don’t know where he’d got it from, but I was given a few precisions on his method (by Granny). The remedy consisted in a slab of black rubber exuding oil which doctor, who followed the process closely, changed every three days. This rather strange treatment was assorted (if memory serves me right) with numerous bans dealing mainly with food. No meat. Only fish was allowed. No treatment by any other doctor for as long as he was in charge, lest he could no longer guarantee recovery. And, outlandish yet absolute, no attending of any funerals.

All around this black remedy the inflammation spread from day to day, like a big dark-red wart, congested with blood, which made the surrounding skin glisten. By the third month the bloated head ripened and burst. It’s incredible, Granny said, you can see the tumour inside, a chunk of dark shrivelled flesh, as big as the tip of her little finger. Finally, the doctor took the tumour out of the breast, leaving but a deep open sore to be cauterized.

I never saw that sore with my own eyes. It would’ve been difficult for me to ask to see it, especially in that location. Besides, as I already told you, I wanted to be a mere spectator.

Once the tumour had been rooted out, it looked as though Granny and her daughter were reviving, as if that bit of dead flesh incarnated Evil: take it out and what remains is only happiness, plenitude. Granny didn’t have to say it: not only was her face beaming but she kept singing the praises of doctor even though he hardly came round any longer.

When we learned her daughter was cured, we (the spectator-tenants) began to talk to each other.

‘Isn’t it great she’s cured… such a pitiful sight she was.’

‘Heartbreaking indeed.’

‘She’s lucky to have had a good doctor.’

‘If she’d gone to be treated elsewhere, goodness only knows how it would’ve ended.’

Such were the comments we exchanged. But very soon we dropped that topic to go back to the old usual formulas (when it was deemed necessary to address each other): ‘This morning, I almost didn’t make it to work. Such traffic!’ Or else: ‘I say, it’s getting nippy all over again, isn’t it.’

That we had so soon stopped talking about her didn’t surprise me, because during her disease nobody had paid any attention to her, each of us remaining in his corner as usual, and Granny herself was no longer playing her part (of a charitable person) with us, as if she’d taken her distances, and it was through no fault of ours.

I myself went to see her daughter two or perhaps three times (I don’t know any longer). Understand me. My room was next door. The least I could do was to call on her. The other tenants did likewise once or twice each: sharing the same house without minding your neighbours is simply not right.

From time to time she had visitors, but I didn’t pay attention to them (they must have been friends of hers). She also had an almost daily visitor – no, not doctor (he came only to do his job) but her lover, who came to keep her company and take care of her. When she was struck by misfortune, he too looked miserable, and when happiness returned, his face was as beaming with joy as those of the mother and daughter.

Jealous of his happiness, me? Not in the least – honestly. Happiness, misfortune: that was up to him. Nothing to do with me. I had enough on my plate.

If I were to stop here, you could well think all is well that ends well, but the story actually is far from over. The following month, the daughter’s symptoms took a turn for the worse. The open sore, which (on several occasions) had seemed about to close up, began to get infected again. In a matter of days it became huge and very deep, and doctor’s ointment was no longer able to prevent its growth.

Once again, all I’m telling you about the sore I didn’t see; I have it, like the other tenants, from Granny, who was worried that the lips of the sore might well be dead flesh.

Doctor came back. He informed Granny that the sore was no longer reacting to the treatment but he was going to change the latter and she should trust him. We wondered if, this time, his expertise would be up to par. We could see that Granny’s daughter had to keep to her bed, which hadn’t been the case during the first treatment, during which she could come and go and work a little. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I could hear moans coming out of her room, which betrayed the pain of whoever was uttering them.

I won’t tell you how much those disgusting moans upset me. On some nights, I couldn’t sleep a wink before dawn. Those moans even disturbed my boss at work. He had me called up to complain I was sleeping in the workplace. He enjoined me to ‘correct’ myself or else I’d have to ‘reconsider’ my own employment – he couldn’t care less what was happening to me.

Sometimes, when I heard those moans, I can’t tell you what it felt like. When I let myself go, it was as if I suddenly realized they emanated from a fellow human being. They didn’t call for help outright, but they expressed distress and pain. They were the moans of a human being, not of an animal. And what of me? Had I gone to help her as would be proper between human beings?

But this was merely a bout of (fake) clear conscience (triggered by my neighbour’s moans) which didn’t last as I eventually succeeded in (craftily) coming to terms with her moans: I made them hardly audible by stuffing my ears with cotton wool. Even if this was somewhat unpleasant during the first nights, I finally got used to it and could sleep soundly again and work as before, without nodding off at my desk.

We (the tenants) went on looking at the play (Act II) in which doctor, Granny and her daughter and the latter’s lover were performing. Doctor was still exercising his profession with diligence; the lover came visiting every day without fail; and Granny kept a watchful eye over her daughter, making her drink and eat and washing her as she would have a baby…

After about a month of this state of affairs, the fortune-teller left his spectator seat to enter the scene in a role suited to his talent, that is to say, as Granny reported to me, ‘The seer tells me that in four months’ time my daughter will be out of the woods.’

I don’t know what made him give them such a hope. Did he believe in the doctor’s competence to the point of risking such a prediction? Or had he really seen in the stars she’d be cured four months hence? In any case, to my mind he was taking awful risks involving his job in the story, unless he was eager to be one more actor in the drama. I’m not sure, though. It might be that Granny had insisted that he ‘find out for me, please’ and he didn’t know how to refuse or give her bad news, convinced in any case she wouldn’t want to hear anything of the kind. Thus he gave her a four-month reprieve, linking his prophecy to doctor’s expertise. This might well be. Not bad at all, actually… At the very least a touch of comedy was being added to this part of the show: the fortune-teller tying his fate to the talent of a quack…

Thinking back to that period, I can’t help asking myself whether, when he drew the patient’s horoscope, the fortune-teller had gone to see her or not. I myself had done so once when her illness resumed (as I told you, it would’ve been terribly bad form not to show some concern) and I could tell without the need of any divination method that by going on with this sort of treatment she’d be hard put to be out of the woods within four months.

Besides, I’d also noticed that doctor (our cancer specialist) was no longer coming every day as he had before. I don’t know if Granny had noticed it. Maybe she deliberately avoided talking about it. ‘Why isn’t doctor coming as often as he used to?’ I asked her to show my concern. ‘He’s very, very busy. He’s got many other patients to look after,’ she answered with conviction in her voice. Be that as it may, I reckon that no-one beside himself knew what doctor thought or was up to… I for one suspected he was withdrawing progressively before disappearing altogether. But it might well be, after all, that he was busy perfecting a new treatment for his patient or that he had many other patients under his care, as Granny had explained…

Three months after the famous prediction, I showed my face once more next door. Granny’s daughter was still lying in bed and when she saw me she tried to sit up but I forbade her to do so, afraid her sore would get worse. Her pale body, very much thinner, almost desiccated, had hardly any trace left of her previous beauty. She complained she could hardly swallow any longer. She’d have liked to eat beef or chicken curry but that was out of the question: she had to make do with vegetables and fish, fish and vegetables, and that took her appetite away.

I thoughtlessly told her, ‘But go ahead and eat, eat what you like. Eating a lot will help you recover your strength. If you eat little, your body will become weak and won’t be able to fight the disease…’

‘It’s my mum: she doesn’t want me to eat,’ she answered me in an accusatory tone.

‘Come now, darling, you know very well doctor’s forbidden it. What can I do? I’d like you to eat. Indeed I would...’ Granny said, on the verge of tears.

I corrected myself (on time, luckily) by telling myself I was no actor and didn’t have to enter the scene. If I forgot myself and persuaded Granny to give her daughter what she wished to eat, in the doctor’s back as it were, and she got worse, I’d be partly to blame as well. So I went back to my seat (as a spectator), feeling relieved that nobody had seen me about to enter the scene in the role of the well-intentioned adviser who’s a useless interloper.

The four-month prediction was patently false. I could plainly see there was no sign of improvement.

One afternoon… I remember very well it was a Sunday, as Sunday is the only day of rest I have (in the week). I was enjoying myself listening quietly to a song on my transistor when a shout came out of the next room, spoiling this moment of leisure.

‘Ah-ouch!’ It was a piercing, scary cry triggered by unbearable pain.

‘Not so loud or your mother will hear you!’ a woman’s voice told her off.

‘Don’t be so heavy-handed.’

‘If I don’t, it’s useless.’

After a moment, my neighbour started to shout again. At the same time there was the sound of a fall as of someone losing her balance and the floor shook. I decided to go out of my room (to see what the matter was). As I was opening the door, I saw Granny storm out of the fortune-tellers’ room and rush to her own, the couple in her wake. At the door, she found herself face to face with a middle-aged woman of wrathful mien.

‘I’ve had enough. I won’t massage her anymore. She says it hurts,’ the woman blurted out furiously as she dived into the staircase.

Granny rushed into her room with unexpected vigour for someone as old, still followed by the seer and his wife. I was about to join them but stopped by the door when I heard her daughter crying. I turned round and stole back into my room. Nobody had been aware of my manoeuvre. Granny had eyes only for her daughter, and so did the fortune-tellers.

If I made myself scarce, it wasn’t because of my role as a spectator but for a personal reason: I don’t like to disturb someone who’s crying. I hold that tears are something personal in which a third party has no right to interfere. They express a mood, and reasoning has no hold over them. It’s a language which doesn’t need words to be understood, the language of personal temper. Being aware of this, how could I get involved in the business of someone crying when I’m no close relative?

If I didn’t go in that time, don’t think I don’t know what happened. I do know, but there’s no need to mention my source.

You see, as her daughter was in pain all over and couldn’t stand it (maybe because she spent too much time in bed or her diet was deficient, I couldn’t say), Granny had gone to find her a local masseuse and then left them alone while she went to watch (colour) TV in the stargazers’ room. The masseuse was excessively heavy-handed. Granny’s daughter gritted her teeth until she couldn’t stand it any longer and uttered a shout. As the masseuse kept at it with the same vigour, the daughter finally kicked her away (with her free foot), which caused her to fall to the floor. That’s the whole story. The noise of a fall we heard then was the masseuse sent sprawling. No wonder she looked furious at the door.

Under the torture of pain she’d just been through, the daughter kept complaining to her mother, telling her things like ‘You don’t love me, you don’t take care of me as well as I took care of you when I was well...’ Granny confided to me she’d never have thought things could reach such a stage and, had she known, she’d never have left her daughter alone with the masseuse – but then, how could she know?

It can be stated that this incident was a turning point (for doctor, for Granny, for her daughter and for her daughter’s lover, and even for the fortune-tellers).

When doctor learnt Granny had called on the services of a masseuse for her daughter, he wasn’t happy at all that she hadn’t consulted him beforehand. He explained to her the massage led to the tumour getting into the veins and arteries, which was detrimental to the patient and made treatment more difficult. This being so, he could no longer guarantee its result, he claimed, but he’d do his best nevertheless. I’m not qualified to say whether his diagnosis was correct, but his patient was increasingly in pain in her muscles and nerves and was soon unable to get up. Granny was distraught over her unfortunate initiative and accused herself of selfishness for considering only her nice little pleasure watching (colour) TV.

When I learned that my neighbour could no longer leave her bed I went to see her. I’m not about to forget that scene. (The more I try to forget it, the more it predominates as if to haunt me, but of course I don’t believe this at all: it must be some psychological thing, and in any case let’s drop the subject.)

She was lying on a mat in the middle of the room. She didn’t show any sign of improvement. Far from it. She’d grown so thin you could only see skin over pointing bones. The shape of her cranium was clearly visible. All the exposed parts of her body were covered with yellow shrivelled skin wrapped around the skeleton like sheer plastic around some goods. There was no longer any trace of her former beauty. Furthermore, if you compared her with her own photograph hung on the wall, you’d believe they were two different persons. But let’s not talk about human beauty, that illusion, which has nothing to do here and would only make us waste time.

But then again we should, as I couldn’t help asking myself how her lover could still come and see her when she was no longer pretty (desirable) at all. Odd chap, that.

‘Aren’t you working today?’ she asked me when I sat down beside her. Even the way she spoke had changed. She spoke slowly and with difficulty, a little like a child.

‘No, today’s Sunday,’ I answered. (Her dark pupils were smaller than usual, lost in the huge white of her wide-open eyes.)

‘Uh, I didn’t know,’ she said, articulating each word, and looking like a talking skull.

‘How are you feeling?’ I could see I shouldn’t have asked such a question, but I didn’t really know what to say to her. She shook her head. ‘I’m not feeling well at all.’

Allow me to interrupt my story for a moment. Each time I recall that scene I’m not my usual self. Not that I’m afraid, no, but I couldn’t tell you what it is exactly I feel. Pity, then? No, it isn’t that either. Lately, recollecting that scene, I’ve asked myself whether I wasn’t feeling guilty – and concluded I wasn’t, without being able to explain to myself either why I felt like this. Maybe it’s a feeling of human solidarity, as they say. (But I’ll probably forget all about that before long.)

From the moment she could no longer get up, changes began to take place in the house. (Maybe I’m wrong and it was only a coincidence.) All the tenants knew she was ‘resting’ (waiting for…) but nobody minded (and neither did I). Actually, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. I must beg your pardon. Some of us did show some concern but no-one (among the spectators) dreamt of intervening to help her. That’s the way we all are.

Don’t go and accuse us (us, the tenants) of being hard-hearted, of being barbarians, savages, misanthropes… Good gracious! Show some understanding. Each of us was caught up in his work, in his own responsibilities. How could we have found the time? In addition, Granny wasn’t really a relative, not our real grandmother. Even you, if you were in the same situation, I’m not at all sure you’d chose to be an actor rather than a spectator.

No, don’t think I’m being aggressive, that I’m not showing you proper respect, that I feel only disdain for your sense of humanity. If I speak like this, it’s because I often see someone lying on a pavement or an overpass. People come and go but nobody stops, nobody pays attention to him, nobody takes the time to check whether that body is alive (or somehow if it is still breathing). People walk by as if before a rubbish heap – some don’t even see him. To me, this is an ordinary story (in our urban society). That someone would stop to check or help out, that indeed would be extraordinary. I’m not sure you’d be among those who’d stop by – not sure at all.

I was telling you about changes taking place in the house: some tenants began to move out. The teacher and his wife were the first to leave. He’d just, he explained, made a down payment towards the purchase of a house – a townhouse – and it was ‘necessary’ for them to settle down there. Such a purchase (one might think) would spare him having to pay rent month after month without recovering outlay. When opportunity knocks, one must give oneself a base or, at the very least, a security for one’s future children. Such was the reason of his departure.

That day I helped him shift his belongings. I take it to be a little mark of attention one would expect between tenants. (They moved out on a Sunday, you see, and I was stupidly at home. How could I have remained idle in my room and not given them a hand?) We told each other goodbye by the rented car.

‘When I have some spare time, I’ll come and visit your daughter, Granny. Thank you very much indeed for being always so kind to my wife and me.’ The couple bowed to her. ‘Thank you very much to you too, sir. When I’m free, I’ll come and see you.’

We shook hands and they left. I never saw them again, not even once. Never mind. Maybe they’re really busy…

After only a few days, their room had a new occupant, a young bachelor with a bright face and sweet manners. He went out almost every evening and, on some nights, one of his friends shared his room (we met in front of the shower room in the morning). He didn’t pay attention to anyone in the house and probably even ignored the existence of Granny’s daughter – but that wasn’t his fault, was it?

Our lives went on as usual (happily enough).

One evening, as I got back from work, it turned out that the fortune-teller and his wife had moved out without letting me know beforehand. (Just as well: no need to tire myself out, no need to shake hands and say goodbye.) They’d left quietly.

I had some sympathy for the seer. If rewards for the show were being handed out, I’d have nominated him for the prize of best supporting actor. His removal, it seems to me, was linked to his prediction. For all he’d said, after four months Granny’s daughter wasn’t out of the woods so it was left to him to get out of them. (This being said, he could very well have pretended to be indifferent or declined any responsibility regarding his prediction without anyone finding fault with him.) It must have been his own oversensitivity that had made him assume responsibility for his prediction and left him unable to look Granny and her daughter squarely in the face. I think he took his professional duty seriously, which is more than can be said about some politicians (judging from what I can read in the papers).

So it was then that the fortune-teller put a full stop to his role (in this story) and perhaps drew an important professional lesson from it. Well, that’s not for sure. After all, maybe he had an altogether different reason for moving.

After him, the old tenants left one after the other as if the smell of death was spreading and stinking up the whole house, driving them to seek happiness elsewhere.

Why didn’t I move out in turn? Good gracious me! Where would I have found another such convenient room? Besides, as I already told you, none of that had anything to do with me.

Even though my neighbour’s moans were getting increasingly loud, my (fake) conscience was peacefully asleep. It occasionally woke up at dead of night but I’d bribe it back to sleep; I’d deceive it by thinking of the day I’d get a raise or a promotion and it’d believe me, it’d go back to sleep like a baby with its bottle stuck in its mouth.

While the others were making themselves scarce (is this really the right word? They each went their own ways for reasons which might’ve had nothing to do with my neighbour’s illness), her lover (that man I don’t understand) kept calling on her, and increasingly often, practically every day. ‘What a nice man!’ Granny kept repeating. As for me, I have no opinion.

Two brothers settled in the fortune-tellers’ room. The elder worked, the younger was still going to school. The first was small, thin and misshapen like someone who doesn’t eat his fill. His brother, on the other hand, was taller and more corpulent than the average, albeit still a secondary school pupil.

One day the elder asked me about those moans coming out of the next room. I told him briefly, but he didn’t seem to be much interested. All he wanted to know was the source of those moans (whether or not they came from a ghost). He seemed to be relieved by my explanations. He’d never allowed himself to enter Granny’s room. It would’ve been totally inappropriate for him to do so. I think he didn’t want to trouble his mind with other people’s affairs. Seeing his expression, you’d have thought he shouldered half the world’s misery. On some nights, guitar notes seeped out of his room along with shy humming.

There was at the time an uneasiness in the air I wouldn’t know what to compare it to – unless I got to thinking too much, as we all lived as usual, without any particular anguish. Like before, there was no noise coming out of the two young women’s room. Joyous peals of laughter at times rang out of the bachelors’. As for me I was fairly happy. (I always left early for work.) Some evenings the laments that continually came out of Granny’s room mixed with guitar chords from the two brothers’ room…

In this atmosphere, doctor made himself scarce and discreet, like a snake creeping through grass, silent, elusive, so that you don’t notice its presence (the result, no doubt, of long training). Maybe the task he’d undertaken (even today I’m still wondering what he was up to) was too much for him. Granny had gone round to his place (several times) but would always come back disappointed when it transpired he ‘had to’ go and treat patients at the very bottom of the country.

I met him (the man with the flourishing mien à la Kuan Im) only once – in a dream. We said a few words to each other but I don’t remember what about. Since then, I’ve never seen him again. His honorariums and the cost of medicine amounted to more than twenty thousand baht. (When I was a child, I used to wonder whether snakes smile when they creep.)

For Granny’s daughter, the end was getting perilously near. Her mother and her lover looked increasingly glum. Her symptoms had worsened. She was now half-paralysed. The bottom half of her body had become insensate. The sore at the breast had deepened and stank. Furthermore, lying night and day for months, she had developed back sores; the slightest movement hurt. (I went to see her: for all clothing, she had a thin blanket.)

It is said of the dying that they’re about to sink and before they do they grasp at anything. Some bloated corpses resurfacing fiercely hold on to a fistful of weeds…

The last time I suggested to Granny to send her daughter to hospital I was no longer sure, given her condition, that any hospital would take her. She was at death’s door, had no more strength, no more heart and maybe no more financial resources either (and yet I did make my suggestion). I couldn’t tell you what came over me, but I can guarantee you it had nothing to do with the desire to be an actor. Maybe it was a (slight) reaction to the environment. If I didn’t show some sort of concern, my (fake) conscience would no longer be at ease.

About sending her daughter to hospital, it seems Granny had come to the same conclusion as I had. She also feared being told it served her right for trusting a quack. She’d resigned herself to her fate, she told me, from the moment she learned her daughter had cancer, but she’d never ceased hoping she’d recover (as if by magic) – and now, no matter what she did, even that hope had vanished, she was ‘letting go’.

Letting go: I think this expression has hardly any meaning in normal conversation, but in this case it carried the strong meaning of ‘leaving it to fate’. That torment of having to ‘let go’, she felt no doubt more painfully than we (you and I) could imagine. For her, it wasn’t just a case of ‘letting go’ and ‘leaving it to fate’, but she was aware she had to ‘let go… of her daughter’ who was slowly fading away and she was to give her up for the rest of her days, for all eternity.

But I think Granny wasn’t telling the truth, as I could see her doing her utmost to cheat fate through whatever means. At the time, doctor no longer came round and she’d gone in search of some other specialist. When her choice fell on a healer (who, in fact, lived round the corner), I wasn’t surprised: wasn’t that to be expected of someone drowning?

I’m sure you remember the three criteria I had defined for the choice of my room. The second was proximity to the civilized world – I haven’t explained to you yet where the house was located. I simply told you the entrance to the lane flanked a monastery. I didn’t think then it’d be important to the story but at this point I realize (now that we’ve met with the healer) a few precisions are necessary to give you a clear picture.

From our house (surrounded by jungle of a kind) it doesn’t take a quarter of an hour following the meanders of the lane to reach the main street (where cars move bumper to bumper). It’s a business area right in the heart of town where you can find all those things that make civilisation – one first-class hotel, three first-class movie houses, four massage parlours, two bowling alleys, Thai, Chinese, European, Japanese, Korean and Indian restaurants, a bookshop, a library, a clothes shop, a supermarket, a polyclinic, a nightclub, several banks, a large parking lot, and glamorous folk right out of fashion glossies. There’s also a shopping centre which includes offices, a stock exchange and various types of boutiques, an antique shop, a jewellery shop, an art gallery, a gift shop, a souvenir shop, a leather shop, a barbershop, a hairdressing salon and a cocktail lounge. The atmosphere inside the building is perfumed (and cool); the people are handsome; there are lifts, escalators and other signs of progress… Coming out of the lane is like breaking out of the jungle to emerge in the heart of a fairy-tale city, except that all of this exists, it’s tangible.

And the meeting of Granny and the healer is a meeting in the jungle next to the enchanted city. Isn’t it strange that jungle and city share the same district (not to say the same precinct) separated by a mere fifteen minutes’ walk?

Sometimes on Saturday evenings when I’m fed up staying shut in, I’ll go for a stroll in the enchanted city. I might see a movie or restrict myself to looking at its posters outside and when the money in my pocket allows it, I treat myself to a beer while listening to songs (in some smoked-filled bar). The lights, the laughs, the animation of the enchanted city – what a difference! And yet, these two worlds are so close to each other… When I go back at night, my head swimming, sometimes I laugh at myself – isn’t it funny indeed?

Thinking hard about it, however, all of this isn’t so extraordinary. I read in the paper that recently, in Indonesia, an island was discovered whose natives lived in the barbarian age under a system called ‘communal family’. Women were family heads and community leaders – at a time when a given country endowed with modern technology succeeded in walking on the Moon many moons ago. So it isn’t strange, is it, that these two countries should share the same planet.

This recourse to a healer had to do (it seems to me) with the end being close at hand. (The poor devils always snatch at whatever floats by when they drown.)

Granny told me the healer had long been aware of the matter and had paid her calls (out of concern) on several occasions, sometimes manifesting himself in the form of a big blowfly buzzing around the room. ‘You even chased me away!’ (he reportedly reproached her).

‘Just thinking about it, my hair stands on end,’ she added. ‘For the life of me, I never for a moment imagined it could be him!’ (Indeed, who would? Certainly not me.)

If someone came to tell me this story as I’m telling it to you, I can guarantee you I wouldn’t believe a single word of it. But I saw it with my own eyes, I heard it with my own ears, so that I must accept that’s how it actually happened. For all that, I’m amazed Granny would give credence to this sort of thing, even though she watches (colour) TV and the civilisation this TV set stands for should make her aware of technological progress in today’s world. But perhaps it’s quite possible for someone who no longer knows whom or what to turn to, who worries herself sick – or perhaps it’s a confrontation between civilisation and barbarity. I seem unable to understand what motivates Granny’s credulity. Never mind. (In some cases, motivations are superfluous.) She believes what she believes – what is it to me? (Once again, I’m meddling with something that’s none of my business.) After all is said and done, I know too much about her and her daughter. Maybe because now there’s no-one left among the former tenants (except the two young women in the room downstairs) for her to pour her heart out, so that I’ve become the main confident with whom she satisfies her need (to confide).

Not only do I know the story through and through but also it makes me realize that after all I won’t be found lacking in compassion. Listening to Granny’s boring old story is all in all helping her reduce her inner tensions. But of course my compassion has its limits as I’m only ready to help her so long as it doesn’t disturb me. By way of contrast, I’d say it isn’t I who is doing her a good turn (when she confides in me): it’s her in fact who is doing me a good turn by providing my (fake) conscience with an alibi, which is that I, too, am useful to her: isn’t this obvious?

Please excuse me for letting myself go to pouring my heart out. Maybe I’m wasting your time…

The patient’s health improved – as if by magic – after she swallowed a single potion prepared by the healer. ‘Oh, but she’s much better than before! Before, she didn’t manage to do pooh-pooh. Sometimes ten days would go by before she could produce a turd (small and black, hard and stinking). Now she does her business without any problem…’

I apologize once again but I must say a word about my help to Granny and her daughter. (You can see now, can’t you, that I’m not as bad as you thought.) Granny entrusted me with a small image of the Buddha to keep in my room. She couldn’t leave it in her own because it was offensive to the healer. ‘She’s my daughter,’ he explained to her (meaning by this that her daughter couldn’t revere anyone else, not that he intended to make Granny his wife). Granny’s daughter becoming the healer’s, the Buddha image was transferred from her room into mine. I’ve no idea what he had against the image but I didn’t object. At least, the Buddha wouldn’t prevent me from breathing. On the contrary: it gave me yet another alibi (my compassion for the human kind).

This healer I never met, whether under the form of a medium or under that of a blowfly – or else, in the latter case, near the rubbish heap in front of the house. And even then, go figure which one of those blowflies was the healer!

Us lot, the tenants, we lived on as usual (happily enough), as I’ve already told you, or so it seemed from the outside. I’ve no idea how happy the others were. Sometimes the expression ‘as usual’ doesn’t mean one is always happy: if you compare Granny’s life (in her room) with that of the others, maybe you could say that Granny was unhappy as usual…

Before long, the two young women moved out. Their departure had probably nothing to do with the arrival of the healer or the impending death of Granny’s daughter. Perhaps it merely had to do with the fact that the (soft-mannered) young man’s friend, by now staying there permanently, had lost the (tomboyish) young woman’s sympathy by making sheep’s eyes at her friend the schoolgirl. (A few days before their departure, they’d quarrelled and I’d heard them crying.)

Their room hadn’t been empty for two days when it had new tenants – a little like the bus (at peak time) where as soon as a passenger makes to get up those who’re standing get ready to take his place. The quickest or the nearest finds a seat (according to the tenet of musical chairs). These days, city folk lack space, in the manner of passengers standing in a bus.

Those who took the room were a couple. The man was a driver, the woman a conductor, of city buses, precisely. Most of the time, they went out before dawn and returned at dusk or sometimes much later – I hardly paid attention to them. I’m not sure they knew Granny’s daughter was seriously ill and a recluse in her room. I never saw them upstairs. Actually, they had no business there, since their room was on the ground floor as were the shower room and the toilets. Suppose they’d gone upstairs: that would’ve been interesting, regarding their motivations. In any case they were members of the household just like the other tenants (thus I should mention them).

A moment ago I told you that, according to Granny, her daughter’s health had improved (miraculously). Granny had added that sometimes her daughter’s body bore the mark of the healer (a mark I never saw but would very much have liked to see, just to be clear in my mind about it). Let’s set matters straight: I’ve never believed in this kind of nonsense. But, on second thoughts, why would she have deceived me? She didn’t stand to gain anything from it. Similarly, why would her daughter deceive her, what would she have gained from it? I think she was telling me the truth as she perceived it but that, behind that truth, something else could be conjectured, some manifestation of a change in energy linked to the patient’s physical and mental health. A strictly personal supposition.

‘…As soon as the healer arrived, she set about thrashing the floor with her arms so hard I really feared she’d break her bones. Usually, whenever she moves, she suffers agony. But as soon as he came, she perked up noticeably… He told me, “Your daughter’s a good girl. She took care of you. If you hadn’t had her, you’d be much worse off… The powers above wanted her. I told them, ‘She’s my daughter, leave her to me, she’s never done any harm, leave her on earth for some more time…’” While he spoke he was running his index finger over her gums, teeth and tongue. He was dabbing some potion on them, he said. After that her mouth was all clean, her tongue pink like a child’s. She couldn’t get over it. She said that up until then her tongue had been dirty as if full of hairs… The powers above, he went on saying, stated that mother and daughter were unfortunate because of sins in a previous life, but we shouldn’t worry, my daughter’s going to recover, she’ll be pretty again, she’ll marry, her lover’s such a good man, they’ll be united, nobody will be able to separate them. If they weren’t meant for each other they’d have grown apart long ago, her lover wouldn’t be staying here like a fool and would’ve gone looking somewhere else… He told my daughter to think about him when something troubled her, he’d come to her help, she shouldn’t be afraid when he comes, he’d come and talk to her from time to time, he knew she was shy, if he came often she’d end up being scared of what people might say. That’s what he told her. When she’s very much in pain, she thinks about him. Sometimes he comes in the form of some wind, a gust and then nothing and she no longer hurts. But on holy days, he doesn’t come, he’s warned her to beware because he can’t come, he’s got to present himself to the powers above. He told her to be very careful on the evenings of holy days, as monasteries free the malign spirits who come and go at the whim of the wind and might catch hold of her, but she’ll be protected by his cabalistic signs at the windows and door…’

Granny told me many other things about the healer (I’ll spare you the details). Lucky he didn’t tell her everyone in the house was evil and cruel! In that case, Granny and I wouldn’t be on such good terms.

So apparently mother and daughter (and the lover as well probably) had fallen into the vortex of credulity. Never could I have imagined the story would take such a bizarre turn – and neither could you, I suppose. But wait! There are still many other happenings beyond your and my imagination, such of Granny’s daughter’s weird dream.

‘…She dreamt someone was taking her to an old house and leaving her at the entrance to a large drawing room packed with people. A woman with a fierce appearance was coming forth, a sword in her hand, pointed it at this one and that one and at once beheaded them. My daughter at first was startled. She asked someone near her who that woman was. She was told, “All of us here in this drawing room must die. She selects those who’ll go first.” Hearing this, she got scared and stealthily took refuge in a dark corner while she kept watching the woman who pointed her sword and struck her victims. The latter uttered terrifying screams. She was terrorized and tried to find a way of running away but the very idea of fleeing pinned her down. Petrified, she could do nothing but watch the woman. After a while, the latter stopped sundering bodies and turned to look in her direction. She understood she was the one under her stare. She recoiled into her corner trying to look as small as she could. She heard a very close voice saying, “Why are you trying to flee?” She looked up. The woman stood right before her and all of a sudden raise