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By Nimit Bhumithavorn English Translation by Chamnogsri Rutnin จาก ความสุขของครูบ้านนอก ในเรื่องสั้นชุด มือที่เปื้อนชอล์ก ของ นิมิตร ภูมิถาวร Illustration: Indigo The villagers call me "Kru Dej." They just don't go for Viradej Bangyom , which is my full name. Yes, I'm an ordinary run-of-the-mill rural municipal-school teacher. It's the status of headmaster --Or "kru yai" (big teacher) as they call it -- that gives me the touch ofglory. Well, ' big' I certainly must be, holding as many jobs in the school as I do - headmaster, staff-teacher, janitor. It's not that I am following the popular practice of hogging all these jobs for my relatives and offspring. The truth to be told is that no one else wants them. Why? Well, may be the morsels aren't big and cheesy enough to trigger the rat-race! Working alone is lonesome, but it has its compensations; one gets to rely on oneself, there are no trouble-maker, and there is no need for know-how in administration and management. The name of my school has a sweet and pleasant ring to it -- Ban Don Prai ….sounds like Don Muang, Don Wang and the like. It was that pretty ring to the name that misled me right from the fatal day I first heard it - the day I applied for a teaching post. The selection of the 'lucky?' candidates was done at the provincial governor's office. There were over fifty vacant positions to be filled and the candidate with the best examination marks had the right to the first choice. By fluke, my name topped the list; the choice was mine! I read through the list of schools. There ware names like Ban Rai, Ban Na, Ban Suan, Ban Lum, Ban Kok . I didn't know any of them, but the names conjured up bleak visions of drab schools isolated by fields and jungles. Then my eyes reached Ban Don Prai , and the sound of it went right to my heart. It sounded so like Don Muang there in Bangkok that I opted for it... blindly .... how blindly! It turned out to be as remote as the end of the world! The remotest of all the fifty-odd schools listed -- 50 to 60 kilometres from Sukhothai , and so deep into the jungle that it was almost sitting on the Burmese border. Now, to its history. It was opened over ten years ago. In all that time it was only once honoured by a visit from 'The Boss' and that was during my early days there. But then who in their right mind would ever want to come! The trip is through dense jungle and during the monsoon you'd have to slog on foot through mud and mire for days to get there. You can make it by bicycle in the dry season, but, mind you, the ground is sandy and slopes upward most of the time. Walking may be easier for those whose calf muscles aren't extremely well-toughened. The compound of Ban Don Prai School is vast and unconfined. It can be expanded as far as you want, no one would care because the surrounding area is bare and unwanted. The immediate terrain is a knoll gently inclining towards the south; after a downpour it dries off fast without leaving muddy puddles like in Bangkok. The school building stands proudly at the foot of a low hill that serves as its backdrop. In front of it different species of bamboos grow in profusion while on either side stand young timbers, survivors of a ruthless deforestation; these young trees will probably be ready for use in half a century's time. No energy need be spent on decking the place with flowering or ornamental plants, for they already grow in great variety and abundance all around the school --- wild orchids flaunting their fragrant blooms, wild ferns sending up bright-green curved shoots, and leaves that move as if on springs. One had only to cover the ground around them with small red and white pebbles to create charmingly natural flower beds. Shedding their leaves, tumca trees show off their colourful fruit -- red, yellow, green -- mixed in wonderful cascading bunches as if some fun-loving fairy had tied together bright billiard balls and hung them up to flirt with the passing breeze. Multi-coloured vines look just like lines drawn by an artist, an aesthetic work of nature that also serves as swings for the children. The schoolhouse itself is put together with the greatest economy, the materials being entirely local. The sixteen pillars are made of timber, debarked but unpaired, leaving the knobs and eyes that give an artistic effect. The frame-work of the gabled roofs is of bamboo; palm fronds stitched together in thick rows form the roof. A lighter of bamboo, cracked and woven into patterned panels, makes walls and partitions that are bright as gold, polished, and ... elegant! In front of the school are railings made of crooked branches, driven into the earth, alternating in zigzag fashion - a valiant attempt to achieve a nouveau art effect. Whether the aesthetic value is appreciated remains an open question. The ground is natural lump laterite with shallow channels dug under the eaves all around the building to drain away any rainwater that may flood the ground. Doing my best to bestir dormant artistry in the little breasts of my pupils, I got them to put colourful stones in two parallel lines in the form of an 'S' - making a natty path leading to the school building Stones, irregular in size and shape, decorate the foot of the flagpole that stands as high or higher than and other in the province of Sukhothai . As high as Chulalongkorn University 's, I'd say. Actually, I wouldn't wonder if it's the highest school flagpole in the whole of Thailand. There's no way the children can break the classroom desks no matter how hard they rock them. They are solid timber as large around as a paddy mortar, sawn into lengths of about a foot, and set up like a pork vendor's chopping block, only thicker. The children sit on them, write on them -- they are multi-purpose. The only thing is to avoid having them fall on your feet. More than sixty children are stuffed into the bamboo structure called schoolhouse - grades 1 and 2 in ' the left wing ,' grades 3 and 4 in the right. It's my routine to start the schoolday by chalking up three math problems on grade 4's blackboard and doing the same thing for grade 3 before rushing on to grade 2 to write Thai and Arabic numerals from 1 to 10. After that I get down to the first graders, writing up some elementary spelling for them to repeat aloud two or three times before I shout the order: "Copy it down." Then it's time to get back to grade 2. The brats have finished copying their 1 to 10 and are carrying on scintillating free-for-all conversations. An imperious bash on the table with the ruler puts an abrupt stop to that, and they queue up to hand in their exercise books. I put a tick on each book with great speed and utter indiscrimination. That never fails to put a smile on every child's face because everyone is right! Then I chalk up three subtraction problems for them to work on and slip back to grades 3 and 4 to write the solutions to their problems on the blackboard, telling them to check their own work. As a matter of routine, there is some chanting of the multiplication tables and a little explanation of the problems, then: "Who has got all of them right?" "Good." "Who has got any wrong?" "Copy the solutions." This is followed by more explanations for those who have made mistakes. The first-graders have by now finished copying the spelling, and have gotten into vigorous fist-fights, with tearful screams from the injured. The cane always comes in handy here and silence ensues, at least for a while. Back to grade 3 with solutions to their problems, but the fourth-graders are talking so animatedly that I have to dampen their spirits a bit by telling them to read the only book they each have for their own - the 'Thai' text book. Now is their chance, and they take it with a vengeance, chanting the poetry loud enough to drive me nutty. "Hey kids, go out and read under those trees." That accomplished, I turn to the teacher's manual that combines every subject in one volume, open it at 'The Principles of Democratic Government,' and write a whole page of it on the blackboard. "Copy it!'' I shout my order and the children obey as meekly as all good pupils should. By this time, my throat is as dry as dust, my head throbs. I gulp down two aspirins with the rainwater from the earthen jar in the corner of the schoolroom, cough a bit to clear my throat, take a puff at my cigarette, and walk back to look at grade 2's math before writing some more spelling on the blackboard for the first-graders to read aloud in unison. Then - "Copy it, kids." Now the time is ripe for Grade 4. I scrawl a part from the Constitutional Freedom and Rights of Thai Citizens on the blackboard. "Copy it down, kids." By the time I get through my cigarettes, it's time for the lunch break. And that's my school morning session. Anyone can call my teaching method hopeless, backward, down-right bad, or anything they like. My own education wasn't all that high or that good. How can I be expected to teach like an intellectual academician? I teach the way my teachers taught me -- what need is there for sophisticated planning for a school like mine? I have lived in Ban Don Prai for nearly five years and sometimes wish I could move to somewhere more urban where I could at least get a good strong oliang (1) to quench my thirst, but they still can't find a satisfactory substitute. You see, Ban Don Prai folks and I get along like ducks and drakes. The style of life led by Ban Don Prai villagers is quite something to be envious of -it's so free from care. About sixty-five houses stand in rows along the foot of the hill. The basic livelihood is rice-farming; and it's the period stretching between the planting and the reaping that makes me think their lives are enviable. They spend their days gathered together to drink, and the way they drink you'd think their throats and stomachs were lined with copper. One can't really call it extravagance because all their booze is home-brewed. Each household reserves a patch or two in their paddy fields to grow sticky black rice for brewing their fiery drinks to be shared by all on such occasions. This is their daily social gathering, their entertainment, and their recreation. It represents their simple society which has little need for treachery or back- biting. What they feel, they say out loud over their drinks, and the worst that can happen would be a Thai style fist- fight. Murders don't occur here because hostilities dissipate like dreams once the drinkers sober up, and revenge is unheard of. After four years I have become something of an addict myself; I can tell by the way my stomach does summersaults and cartwheels when drinking time arrives in the afternoons. It's the result of my own weakness, not knowing how to say no. In the first year, little sips of the liquor was enough to catch fire and burn my throat to cinder. Came the second year I managed to gulp it down-- had to do it to keep the women from hooting and taunting me. By the fourth year I was such a veteran that none of the women dared challenge me to 'drinking duals;' only the hardest drinkers would take me on. Even Ai Dua, toughest of them all, isn't so confident now after a dual that left us both rolling on the ground. Speaking of Ai Dua , he has become one of my staunchest friends. I don't think I like anyone better than Dua in the whole village, and I think he feels the same about me. He is only twenty-two -- five years younger than I, but rural people at twenty-two have the look of forty-year-old townfolk. I don't know if it's the hard work or the alcoholic content of their moonshine that ages them so. Ai Dua is short, his body disproportionate; the distance from the waist up is amazingly long and contrasts ludicrously with the shortness of the lower part of his body, giving his gait the top-heavy clumsiness of a water buffalo. His head is grotesquely large though he hardly ever exercises what is inside it -- well, except for making up earthy rhymes and likay (2) songs for tart and lecherous banterings with Ee Waan. Now, even if Ai Dua 's ugliness is such that even dogs would disdain, it must be known that his power-charged body and his quick tongue have drawn the romantic interest of many a maid and widow. His honest and generous heart is an antithesis to his physical ugliness. He loves me like a parent, ready to lay down his life for me- all because of his gratitude. Note that education has very little to do with Ai Dua 's simple shining qualities, for his reading and writing skill is barely above the line of literacy. Ai Dua probably thinks he owes his life to me ever since the day he nearly died from malaria. You see, all the villagers believe in spirits. The whole village is dotted with small wooden shrines dedicated to various resident Chao Paw (3) and Chao Mae (4) who they think can drive out any evil spirits that cause sickness from the body of a sick person. The way to go about it is to bribe Chao Paw or Chao Mae with tempting offerings, such as a bottle of moonshine with a boiled chicken, or a jar of the moonshine with a boiled pig, or, in case of serious sickness, a whole cow accompanied by five jars of the liquor. These offerings are later consumed by everyone with the greatest merriment and appetite after the Chao Paw or Chao Mae has presumably enjoyed it in an intangible sort of way, conveniently leaving the food and booze apparently untouched. Of course, they only appear untouched to human eyes, which are spiritually unrefined. In the case of Ai Dua , the spirit was damned obstinate despite the offering of two buffaloes and ten jars of moonshine. I couldn't stand it any longer when it became obvious that he was going to die; I fed him some pills I got from the anti-malarial unit that came to Pitsanuloke some time ago. After a few doses of it he got better, for him it was almost like returning from death itself. This, coupled with the fact that Ai Dua never had any real respect for Chao Pwa and Chao Mae made him think I was his saviour, and he has since become grateful enough to let me kick him in the pants anytime I wish to. Other people didn't believe that Ai Dua was cured by those tiny little pills.They said Chao Paw Khao Thong (5) were the ones and Chao Mae Raerai (6) were the ones responsible for his amazing recovery. So two of Dua 's buffaloes were killed and washed down the villagers' throats by ten jars of moonshine -- enough to make everyone drunk for three days and initiate no less than three fights. Pu Yai Plod , the village headman, fell and cut his head. His daughter, Raya , cooked so many pots of rice that she cried with exhaustion. The merry widow, Ee Waan , changed bed-partners five, times in a row. Ai Dua sang likay songs and Pieng Choi (7) in a tart dual of earthy Iyrics with Ee Waan Until he was as hoarse as a dying drake. Pa Yai , Pu Yai Plod's wife, lost her appetite in the excitement, forgot to eat, and fell in a fainting fit on the third day of the festivities. That caused Perm the exorcist and Pa Yaem the spiritual medium to be summoned for consultations on exorcism of the evil spirit that had gotten into Pa Yai . This procedure naturally entailed more bribery to super-natural beings of the upper echelons, requiring on more pig and five more jars of rice liquor. It was, however, decided that the offering of these should be postponed until the following month, presumably because Chao Paw Khao Thong , Chao Mae Raerai , as well as the ghosts of Ta Sa, Yai Mee, Ai Pun, Ai Tui, and Ee Pan had already been stuffed with food and wine to their utmost ethereal capacity! Having gotten used to the life here, I've come to enjoy it in a way. The fly in my ointment is simply the regular trips I have to make to town for meetings and for my monthly pay. These trips are a real pain in the ass, and each round trip takes at least seven days. Today, I got back to Ban Don Prai- seven days after I had left on one of these trips, arriving at the school neither too early nor too late. Saying this, I have to explain that there is no fixed time for starting the school day because the children's homes are scattered far and wide -- mostly several kilometres away from the school. What's more, we have problems about time. On some days I arrive early but the children get here late; at other times it's vice versa. Telling time is rather confusing because we go by the strength of sunlight and the position of the sun. On cloudy days, no one comes to school until nine or ten o'clock, and on sunny days they turn up as early as cock's crow. I have now found the perfect solution; once all the children -- and I, of course -- have all arrived, school starts and goes on until our stomachs start to rumble. That's the signal for me to announce the end of the schoolday. The reason for all this lies in my 'gold' wristwatch, which has a will of its own; it works when it wishes and stops when it wants. If and when I get a raise in my salary, as I've heard rumoured, I shall get a new one. Today, something is wrong. No children are to be seen in the vicinity of the school, not even when I clang an iron rod against a rusty old spade in sonal imitation of a proper school-bell, and send its 'cragg -- cragg' sound echoing through the valley. No one appears though my wrist aches with the force of the effort. "What on earth are you beating that thing for, Kru?" I turn and find Ai Dua standing there, exposing his enormous spade-like teeth in an out-sized grin. "Why shouldn't I?'' I counter tartly. After all this effort to give the children knowledge; here I stand, sans pupils. " The Village Headman ordered the school closed for a whole week,'' Ai Dua replies with his customary good-humoured laugh. "Well, what is it all about?" "Yesterday the children were all here waiting for you. They played until they were exhausted." "But I ordered them to come on the seventh day." "That's none of my business. The Headman passed by on his way to shoot barking-deers and saw that you weren't here. So he ordered the school closed for a week." "Well, the cheek!" I exclaim in exasperation. "Don't you like it? Oh, can I have a cigarette?" I fish out a cigarette from the last package bought during the meeting in town and hand one to Ai Dua . He lights it and inhales deeply, grinning good-humouredly. "Let's go for some fun,'' he says. "Where?" "To Ee Waan's, to take some booze, of course." He takes my hand and leads me away from the school. So here I am with another holiday ahead of me, enjoying life on Government's salary for another week. Well, it's part of the happiness of a rural teacher! 1. A Chinese word for sweet, strong, black iced coffee. 2. A song-and-dance folk drama, known for its witty and lively lyrics. 3. A male spirit. 4. A female spirit. 5. A specific male spirit. 6. A specific female spirit. 7. A folk entertainment performed by a team of men against a team of women, bantering each other by freshly improvised songs with tart and lecherous lyrics.

Rong Wongsawan Translated by Chamnongsri Rutnin จาก "หันหลังให้ พ.ศ.2517" ของ 'รงค์ วงษ์สวรรค์ ศิลปินแห่งชาติ สาขาวรรณศิลป์ ประจำปี 2539 Illustration : 51581 Pixabay -1- On a nondescript day belonging to no particular season, she walks by - completely naked. An artificial product of great beauty from the factory of a dirty-minded scientist (who wishes to remain anonymous). Hair of black nylon Brilliance of diamonds for eyes Teeth... a mixture of powdered pearls and tiger fangs Breasts... made of a lush and creamy extraction from jungle plants (so punchable!) Synthetic skin of top-grade fiber treated with sunlight and moon-gleam. She is exactly the woman she should be. A townspeople follow her in curiosity and wonder. Birds perching on trees watch her gaiety with envy, because gaiety has disappeared from the face of the earth long, long ago. The kind that comes in cans on supermarket shelves is far too expensive for poor, or even middle-class, people. She doesn’t flinch at staring eyes or at anyone’s feelings about her because she has no feelings. “Goddamit! I never thought I’d live to see such a thing!” exclaims a car-repair man lying flat on his back. His glance races way up her thigh. “Depraved!” a sex-charged socialite spat her wrath. “Advise me, oh, God-above,” prays a preacher. “Oh no! What are they protesting now?” the district governor asks his secretary while stroking the provocative swell of her hip. “Go! Interview her. Get at least 200 words,” a monthly magazine editor tells his columnist. “A slap in the face for our rivals if we get her story first.” “No doubt about it, this is the capitalist’s propaganda,” the communist mumbles with annoyance. -2- The plastic woman reaches the house that has been rented for her. In keeping with her personality, it is luxuriously endowed. Her life progressed with hectic placidity. Men turn up in torrents to request for appointments - for all the world like rationing in times of extreme scarcity. She is busy day and night. “It doesn’t matter whether we are the first or the last,” the deputy-chairman of the Beggars’ Association shouts into the microphone at their monthly meeting “but we must lay her at least once in a life-time.” “I’d gladly cut the biggest chunk out of my fortune to give to her!” a business mogul growls behind his glass of martini. “The sight of her makes me think of chewing curry tablet while masturbating,” an astronaut confides to his friend. “A hellish trick of the communists,” rages the director of the Department of Anti-Threat to Democracy. “Doesn’t Satan ever respect goodness in mankind? ” a nun moans in front of the candle. “Am I dreaming?” the communist says, mockingly. “This is the signal of capitalistic degeneration.” “Oh, Dhamma ! Is morality coming to its final disintegration?” Fumed an ascetic who has descended the mountains bearing the weight of human sins. Having to wait his queue for several more nights is the cause of his rage. “I am disappointed,” the public relations officer of the Birth-Control Association complained as his hand crept into his pocket to scratch a sensitive organ. "I can’t be of any service to her because she has no uterus!” -3- Her duty is to serve sexual needs of the public, free of charge! Her plasticness has no demands - not for food, dress, sanitary napkins, medication, air-conditioning, stereophonic record-player or encyclopedia. But men’s egotism and selfishness set them competing in showering her with gifts. diamond necklaces cars panties of woven gold government bond shares in international airlines plantations several herds of milk cows mines concessions for transportation of arms to powerful countries oil fields political influence etc. She sells all these love tokens to the society propelled by the turmoil of human cravings. She has become rich! -4- All the flesh women hates the plastic woman. She doesn’t understand their emotion. “Why do they hate me?” she asks the banker. “Because they don’t have what you have.” Men try to explain. No matter what, she cannot understand. A psychiatrist advises “You should hate back. It is always the effective kind of revenge.” But she has no hatred for anything or anyone. “Why are they cursing me?” “Because it is the last thing they can do, beside pleading with the God above.” The plastic woman smiles. She fears nothing and no one. -5- The preacher begins to feel a tendency to hating her, too. “Why? When I am perfectly glad to give time to religion?” she wonders. “Because you are the cause of his realization that he has wasted to much of his life in front of the altar.” -6- The communist reaches the decision that she is an enemy. “But why?” she asks the economist, “I made him moan like a cow last night.” “It’s because you are rich, and because you are partly responsible for the failure of some of his theories.” “I’ve never thought that far.” “But he has. I’d like to advise you to laugh at him sometimes to make things better. It may a little old fashioned but it’s still women’s best weapon.” She isn’t interested in laughing at anyone. -7- Tides of trouble sweep towards her - for reasons that people cannot explain and therefore take her to be devoid of shame, and people in her own era can still find no answer. A policeman, who wallow in old-fashioned views, threaten her with antiquated laws. But finding nothing illegal, he justified his stupidity with some difficulty before begging her to give him the first place in the queue. His selfishness is native to the corrupt system of the past centuries. As usual, she refuses. “First come first served. You have to wait two months,” she flips the pages of her calendar. “Saturday 29th, 30 minutes after midnight” He is angry but he has no choice if he wants to use her to release his lust. “You ought to be grateful. I tell you, you’re the only corporal to down for March. Your inspector has to wait until the end of April.” The editor of a woman’s monthly magazine is also full of frustration. She has been unable to discover the plastic woman’s concept of happiness. Not even though several philosophers have tried to speak for her... not even when at least two famous artists have coloured their canvas with their own ideas of her happiness. “I don’t know what happiness is” That is how she cut short her television interview. -8- Men cause her no end of complications. No matter whether they are clerks or an electronic manufacturing tycoon, a thief or the Director of the Department of Moral Issues, a tinsmith or a gardener, a garbage collector or a researcher in the fields of agriculture... the ingrained instinct for monopoly, that has been handed down through age-old teachings, has made them all speak of their animal lust as 'love' . “And what is love?” the plastic woman asks back. None of the men can answer her. -9- The response she gets is anger. Several of the men leave her for the cradling thighs of women at the clubs (for an ideological revolution) or for Institutions for the liberation of sex slavery. “Was I wrong? Can plastic women ever be better than flesh women?” jeers the wife of the Deputy Director of the Department of Computer Affairs. The preacher shrugs “The church has decided that she is Sin in its newest guise, and must be destroyed.” “Exploitation of the people’s energy!” screams from the pages of The Communist’s Party’s announcement. “Sexual fascism!” The capitalist draws up plans for counteraction. “See her wickedness?” the owner of the cows who supplies milk for her bath is boiling with resentment, too. “Haven’t I warned you?” the public relation officer of the association for birth control says with a touch of sarcasm. “Deep inside her there is a void.” Poets and artists also concludes that she has no substance. “The vile thing,” they complain noisily. “She has never felt how all my words copulate with one another with the ultimate purity of Art.” “Her lust is never aroused by the erotic movement of my colors,” growls the artist. “She only takes. She has given nothing to society,” the hire-merchant vents his rage. The men hurl abuses at her in hatred and disgust. They seem to have forgotten that, not so many nights ago, her thighs were the challenge that they had aspired to climb - the very summit of their desires. In the heart of the men, age-old rottenness remains. Rots and rots! -10- No one saw the fisherman, reeking of fish, enter. He heard almost every word. Neither clever nor stupid, some of his theories have grown out of his knowledge about lives of fish. He shrugs, “Can’t anyone accepts changes where women are concerned?” he murmurs. No one heard him. -11- In the midst of the confusion and denunciation, the fisherman, the last man in the life of the plastic woman, comforts her and tries to protect her - but, it is too late. The people have been turned against her in hatred. The men who once whispered love the most lovingly are the ones who shouts the loudest, and have become the leaders of the protest against her. “You can always play with one man at a time, but never with all of them at the same time,” says the fisherman with a sad smile. He tries using other terms, “You can be a promiscuous woman, but you can’t be a whore without charging your customers.” She doesn’t understand. She still doesn’t understand. The crowd is pouring in, pulling her from her stained bed. The plastic woman doesn’t resist or beg for mercy She doesn’t put up a fight The crowd rips out her limbs Tears at her black nylon hair Smashes the diamonded brilliance of her eyes Burns her breasts with cigarette ends Her synthetic skin is peeled and thrown in the dust “Scoop out her heart!” some one yells, But she doesn’t have a heart “The fiend!” spat a female anti-syphilis activist. “Don’t ask me whether she will go to heaven or to hell, but my prayer has been answered,” the preacher puts on an expression to match his words. “With reason, we have destroyed a part of the evils of capitalism,” the communist waves the sacred texts of Marx and Lenin in triumph. “This is the end of the conspiracy to create sexual turmoil by the evil mind behind the Iron Curtain,” mocks the capitalist. “Our birth-control project can now go on without obstruction!” “Our institute has discovered a new antibiotic to eradicate sin within 30 seconds!” “Congratulations to flesh women for the victory!” etceteras.... -12- The fisherman feels sad, the same sadness as the sea on a certain kind of days, as he collected what is left of the plastic woman’s organs. He drops them altogether in a bag - eye lashes, nails, a few body hair, an ear, nose tip, gum, intestine, liver, lung, anus, lips and clitoris. He isn’t quite sure whether he should let these sweet remnants sink to rest at the bottom of the sea, or to cremate them and keep the ashes for remembrance. “Changes in women are their unchangeability,” he tells himself in tearful whispers. With the bag slung over his shoulder, he walks pass the preacher, the poet, the politician, the butcher, the garbage collector, the corporate chairman, the scientist, the thief, the billionaire, the beggar and others who consider themselves civilized. He moves along quietly until he hears an announcement from the city tower booming out the news that yet another spaceship has reached another distant planet. Only then does he burst out laughing. He wonders how people who lived as long ago as 1974 thought about the Sexual Revolution. “Where is he heading - the son-o-bitch who screws fishes? He heard drunks asking one another on the roadside. Book's cover from: https://pya-insee.blogspot.com/2013/08/2517.html

Vanich Charungkij-anant Translated: Chamnongsri L. Rutnin Short Story from S.E.A. Write Award-Winning (1984) Collection : Down the Same Lane แปลจาก เรื่อง เพลงใบไม้ ในรวมเรื่องสั้นรางวัลซีไรท์(2527) ซอยเดียวกัน ของ วาณิช จรุงกิจอนันต์ Illustration : Indigo Grandma rinsed her bowl after having used it to pour water into the ground as an act of merit-sharing with sundry acquaintances and relatives who had passed away. I (1) Somchao, her eighteen-year-old granddaughter, wandered by to steal a look at Grandma--probably fearing the old woman might black out and drown. The girl had often told the old woman that the bowl could easily be washed in the houseㅡ-that there wasn't any need to come down to the pier to wash it. But Grandma would say that the pier was so close, there was no reason to waste the water in the jar--especially now that the river had risen so high that she didn't even have to go down the steps, making things so easy. Grandma didn't in the least fear what vexed her granddaughter. She wasn't afraid of fainting and drowning, not even when the river was so swollen and the current so swift. So familiar with this river, she was--born from it. In Grandma's young days, the pier wasn't where it was now She remembered having to walk from the house down to the pier. There used to be a sprawling guava tree and a richly foliaged banyan tree growing out there. Now they were all gone-Grandma couldn't remember when. Long ago, it was. The swift current carried off a bit of the bank each year, especially in the eleventh and twelfth months when the water gushed straight into the bank where Grandma's house stood. The land on the opposite side grew and grew. The Suphan River was more winding now than in Grandma's girlhood days. The house that in those days had stood a good way from the river now had the front stilts, which held up the wooden verandah, in the water. One day the house would collapse, Grandma thought. Grandma worried. Where would I Somchao go if the house fell? Grandma walked up from the pier not forgetting to fill the bowl with water for the jasmine that grew beside the wooden steps. The plant had always provided Grandma with white flowers for stringing into 'raggedy garlands' for the Buddha image. 'Raggedy garlands' was I Somchao's cynical way of saying that Grandma’s handiwork didn't look anything like garlands. "So what! I'm only a village woman, not a palace lady!" That was what she told I Somchao, and went on stringing garlands in her own style, sharpening one end of the wooden part of a joss stick while cutting a nick in the other end for tying the string. I Somchao told her to use a needle but Grandma said that her poor old eyes couldn't see well enough to thread a needle. But when Somchao offered to thread the needle for her. Grandma refused and scolded her for not minding her own business. Grandma wanted I Somchao to learn her songs but Somchao wouldn't do it no matter how much Grandma urged her. She said Grandma's songs were so crude that she would never dare to sing them. Grandma retorted that it wasn't that she didn't dare , she just couldn't . Grandma had tried to teach her the art of the songs for so many years before finally giving up. The old woman used to begin the song for Somchao to join in. Grandma opened the song with, "Oei (2) ..........the old kaew tree, your branches're heavy with blossoms so white…” and stopped, waiting to see when I Somchao would come out with the next line but the girl would only laugh or simply remain silent. Then, after a while, she would get irritable and say that she would not learn the songs, she didn't like them, and she couldn't sing. The girl actually preferred luk thung (3) songs but she couldn't sing them either. No, I Somchao had never sung any real song, just hummed or made simple little tunes. In fact, she never spoke very much at all. Some people even called her 'dumb Somchao' . Grandma had to continue herself. "Oei….., the old kaew tree, Your branches' re heavy with blossoms so white, close by and upright stands the tall krang tree, scattering its berries all over the ground........” It had been over seventy years, but Grandma remembered these lines very clearly. She was only twelve or thirteen in those days when she used to sneak off from her father's house to learn the art of the songs from Pho Phet (4) at the house with the big fence behind Wat Lao Thong. Pho Phet would open the song with these very lines: "Oei . .., the old kaew tree, your branches're heavy with blossoms so white......." and no one else could think up the next lines except Grandma. In Pho Phet's yard grew a kaew bush full of white blossoms. A big krang tree towered nearby, the ground underneath it was covered with hundreds of its small round berries. That's why Grandma came out with the lines "close by and upright stands the tall krang tree, scattering its berries all over the ground…” Grandma stepped out on the frail wooden verandah that looked down on the river to lay down the large spoon that she used to ladle the rice into the alms bowls of the monks. Beside it, she placed the bowl in which she took the rice to give as alms to the monks each morning, turning the bowl upside down to dry. The weather-worn old wooden flooring shook and swayed when Grandma walked out to collect two brightly colored sarongs that she had hung out to dry overnight. Feeling them still damp, she left them where they were. Tonight was the night of the kathin (5) festival at Wat Pa or ‘the forest temple’. A month ago Mae Khwanchit (6) had told Grandma about it and said that the organizers had wanted to have the i-sdew ( 7) songs. That was why Grandma brought out the two bright sarongs which hadn't been worn for so long. She had sniffed at them and, finding them to be musty, had washed them. Grandma had told Somchao yesterday to be ready for the temple fair tonight. The girl said that she couldn't have forgotten even if she had wanted to because Grandma had told her the same thing over and over about ten times. Grandma wanted Somchao to go with her because she could at least sing the refrain along with the others. Grandma had given up hoping that she would ever become the second or the third in the line of songstresses. If she didn't want to try then there was nothing Grandma could do. These days Suphan Buri River was quiet and serene. Only a few boats passed by each day, unlike last year when motor boats and long-tailed boats created an almost constant ear-splitting din. Since the asphalt roads were built, leading to just about everywhere, nobody wanted to use the motor boats and the long-tailed boats. Only the traders' barges, with their strings of boats and other barges in tow, made their way along the river at infrequent intervals. In the days when Grandma was a young girl, the river was as serene as it was today. Paddle boats were the only traffic. But once in a long while boisterous sounds shattered the tranquility, and those were the times of temple fairs and traditional merit-making it was on those occasions when she had followed the singers to the festivals at Wat Pa that she really became able to absorb the intricacies of the song. In those times, the people of her village would paddle their boats to the main town of the province. Grandma as a little girl would go along with them. They would puddle along in a jolly procession of twenty or thirty boats, singing songs that reverberated along the banks of the river. In front of the riverside mansion of Chao Phraya Yomarat, songsters used to float their paddle boats close together like an enormous raft and sing phleng rua or boat songs for the nobleman of the mansion. The singers of Grandma's village often came home with the prize money. Grandma herself had personally won a fine reward when she was still young but already well-versed in the art. She could still recall that there had been a boat of men from the neighboring province of Ang Thong that had stopped to challenge her boat of women. What the pho phleng or the songster's name was she couldn't remember. What she could recall was the extreme darkness of his skin because Grandma had retorted to his challenge with, "Oei ... , Hearing a voice ever so bright and clear, I had to peer out to take a good glance, oh where's that singing man from Ang Thong, first sight of him almost sent me into the water, oh dear sir so very black are you, is it true that you live at the 'Golden Bowl'? And do you burn charcoal or do you grow rice?" Chao Phraya Yomarat so enjoyed this repartee that he actually gave Grandma the generous reward of five baht. Grandma had 'played the songs' all her life, traveling up and down the country on countless waterways. Ang Thong, Singburi, Uthai Thani, Ayutthaya--she had been through all those provinces. When it came to the game of songs, Grandma wasn't afraid of anyone. Whether it was phleng rua , phleng choi, or i-saew, or any of their special variations, she could sing them all. Grandma went into the kitchen, spooned some rice onto a plate and sat down to eat it using her fingers. She ate the rice with nam phrik , the shrimp paste chili dip she had made the day before. With it there was fresh morning glory and the subtle flavored yellow sano flower, both lightly scalded, and the salted fish made by Somchao. Having finished the meal, Grandma washed the plates, filled a pail with water and took a rag from the top of the steps, damping it to clean the floor. Grandma cleaned the floor by wiping it with the damp rag everyday, morning and evening. She just squatted down and did it bit by bit--it didn't take all that long. Somchao had tried to stop her from doing this chore, to no avail. The girl finally stopped crying, saying that the old woman was like a stubborn child. "I can do it, can't I? This house is only as big as the space it takes a cat to have its dying throes!" Grandma used the time-worn simile to support her point. This little house was very old indeed. Built by Grandma's long-dead parents, it now leaned precariously to one side due to age and the creeping erosion of the river bank. It was where Grandma was born. Her three siblings were now all dead. Grandma had a husband when she was eighteen. It happened chat a young fellow from Ban Makham Lom, a nearby village, saw her when she went to Suan Hong Temple to 'sing the songs'. With the help of his gang of friends he had abducted her. They had a daughter-- I Somchao's mother. But Grandma had stayed with her husband for only two years because he kept insisting that she give up the songs. Her love for the songs was deep and boundless . . . "even whenin the hands of the demon, I went on longing for you, to leave my husband I'm not afraid, I won't be separated from my songs......" Grandma still remembered the song she improvised when singing with her songster friends soon after she regained her single status. Her husband came several times to plead with her to come back to live with him, but Grandma was adamant. No matter what, she would go on with her life of songs. Eventually, the husband took their daughter to his village to take care of her. I Somchao's mother came to live here with Grandma after her own husband died. She soon died, too, leaving I Somchao with Grandma.............. The problem was that she went and took a husband when she was too old, so she died before her child was big enough to be of any use to her--that was what Grandma used to tell her friends. Somchao was about five or six when her mother died. The orphan was raised by Grandma who earned a living from her song. When no one hired her to sing, she picked the guava and the maprang and sold them to earn the money to feed I Somchao. Grandma often felt worried about I Somchao--how would the girl live when Grandma was no longer here! No matter how much Grandma told her to learn the songs, she wouldn't even make a start. If Somchao knew the songs, she would at least have some work to keep her body and soul together. It didn't matter if she became only a second rate songster, because Grandma could ask Mae Khwanchit to make some use of her. As it was, the girl could only sing the refrain----what good would she be to anyone? After cleaning the floor with the rag, Grandma lay down to sleep. Nowadays, Grandma's days were almost equally divided between waking and sleeping. Grandma never went far out of the village except on her singing missions. She had some small savings which she asked Somchao to keep for her funeral. Most of the savings came from her singing but last year the amount had diminished mainly became the four or five maprang trees bore almost no fruit. In the days when all the master songsters and mistress songstresses of her generation were still alive, Grandma earned quite a lot of money. At that time, Grandma didn't think she would remain alive this long, and she didn't know that there was going to be I Somchao to look after. So she spent most of the money she earned in making religious merit like giving alms. Now Grandma had to be very frugal indeed, even refraining from buying a new phanung to wear. Most of the songsters and songstresses of her generation had died- Mae Tuan, Pho Phrom, I Chua, Nai Tom and Mae Ning Only I Thonglo was still alive. The woman talked far too much but Grandma still wanted to see her again. The only times they met were for the songs. I Thonglo must be terribly old by now, like Grandma herself. When Grandma was asleep, Somchao would wander off to some of the neighbors' houses to borrow those filmstar magazines with pictures and stories of the stars. Whenever Grandma went anywhere to sing, Somchao would always accompany her--at least she could be put to use in singing the refrains or marking the rhythm with the wooden clappers or the metal ching (8) or merely by clapping her hands. Somchao deigned to go just because Grandma went; if Grandma couldn't go Somchao wouldn't go either. There was once, the one and only occasion, that Grandma couldn't make it--and that was when she hadn't the strength to stand up. Even though she couldn't stand up, Grandma had insisted that she was going. Somchao, however, wouldn't let her go and went out to ask the people who came to invite Grandma whether they really wanted Grandma to die. Somchao rarely opened her mouth to speak. She had absolutely no interest in the songs. She didn't care how many people praised Grandma as a top-class songstress. The girl liked luk thung songs and had dreamt that she might go and dance in the luk thung chorus. But of course it was just a day dream she wasn't even attractive, and then there was Grandma to be looked after--she rejected the possibility of actually realizing her fantasy. Somchao completed grade four at Wat Manao temple school. She didn't pursue her studies any further, nor did she look for work anywhere. People had asked her if she would like to go with them to work in the factories. Somchao would have liked to go because the luk thung song about Chantana, the factory girl, was a great hit. Grandma wouldn't have stopped her from going, but somehow Somchao changed her mind and didn't go. Maybe it was because some people asked if she really had the heart to leave Grandma who was so old. But Grandma had been the one to tell Somchao, "You go where you want to. Don't you worry about me." That was because Grandma was already resigned to the fact that Somchao would never take up singing the songs. Somchao's routine work was looking after the fruit tree and planting a vegetable garden. Not that there were that many trees, Grandma's land being such a small piece. It used to be much bigger but the river had taken it bit by bit each passing year. Growing in the garden were the four or five maprang tree, one thong dam mango tree, the guava and some lamut trees. When the sapodilla season came around, Grandma and Somchao would pick the fruit, take it to the market in the provincial town and bring back the modest proceeds to buy the necessities of life. The only other income source was the songs, but it was now no longer a reliable one. Some years ago, the great Mae Khwanchit had come to ask Grandma to go and sing with her troupe. That day, Grandma's old eyes had filled with tears of pride. And because Somchao had gone along with Grandma, Mae Khwanchit actually taught her to mark the beats and sing the refrains. Before Somchao's mother had died, Grandma went to live in Bangkok, somewhere in the Nonthaburi area. She stayed with a distant relative and took care of his children. The reason she went was to be near her songster and songstress friends, they could then come together conveniently whenever they were needed at fairs or shows. At that time there were enough occasions for the songs. Grandma was happy to earn money for use in making merit. When Mae Tuan died, followed by Pho Phrom, Grandma began to feel lonely. The friends who used to 'sing the songs' with her died off one by one. Some died before Mae Tuan and Pho Phrom, some after, until almost no one was left. Grandma forced herself to remain at Nonthaburi until the death of Somchao's mother brought her back to Suphan Buri. Back at Suphan Buri, Grandma took care of I Somchao. She had no other close relatives living anywhere else. Even here the relatives of her own generation were all dead and gone, leaving only the younger generations with whom she had no close ties. Grandma wasn't rich, no one wanted to bother her and she had no desire to bother anyone. Grandma had managed to live on her income from the fruit and the songs. Once in a while, a long while, she went to Bangkok when someone asked her to sing the songs with them. She had even gone on television. Lately, though, she would go whenever Mae Khwanchit wanted her, and sometimes Pho Wai would come and invite her, too. Though Grandma was this old, her wits ewre stilI sharp and her retorts in the songs were second to none---fearless and resourceful they were. Besides, her voice was still clear and resonant. It had always been so, ever since she was a young girl. Grandma woke up in the afternoon. She put the betel leaf and areca nut in her mouth and chewed for a little while before discarding the fiber. She felt that they didn't taste good. Grandma was never particular about her betel and areca. She had always enjoyed it no matter whether the areca was unripe or dried, whether the betel leaf was fresh or pressed. But today she didn't enjoy the taste of them in the least. She tried another mouthful and stood up only to flop down on the floor. Grandma spat out the betel and areca. She felt unwell. She could tell that she was very ill because it was the first time ever that she had failed to enjoy her betel and areca. The old woman felt neither excitement nor fear, for she and death had been close companions for a long time. At her age, most of her friends were long dead. Grandma was familiar with death, she had been preparing for it for such a long time, making plenty of merits to allow her soul passage in the right direction. Grandma thought of her commitment tonight and gathered all her strength to sit up. A good thing that she would be travelling by car--not like the old days when she had to walk a lot of the way. In those days if they were to sing in a hilly area, they would have to walk, and sometimes it took all day. In the eleventh and twelfth months when the water was high though, they would mostly paddle their way on boats. Grandma was annoyed with herself for being ill at this important time. She tried to stand up again but the dizziness in her head sent her staggering into the wooden wall with an impact that shook the old house. She lay down again and closed her eyes, exhausted to the point of feeling as if her heartstring would snap, “Maybe I won't be able to sing the songs with them tonight,” Grandma murmured to herself before falling into a sleep with the thought that everything would be all right because the money she had asked Somchao to keep for her would be enough for the funeral. “Oei..., the old kaew tree, your branches' re heavy with blossoms so white, close by and upright stands the tall krang tree, scattering its fruit on the ground, the sakae has put forth his branches, who was it that cut the tako trunk, and left the stump sticking up among the curly ngon kai , the krang leaves have grown old and dry, not catching people's eyes as they used to, when comes the blowing breeze, the old leaves get blown away . . . blown far, far away…..” Where did the i-saew song come from? It seemed to pierce Grandma's ears, startling her eyes open. She sat up to look toward the top of the house steps but saw nobody. She looked all around the house and still could see no one. It must have been a voice within her ears, and that reminded her of tonight's work. What time was it now? She didn't know. Grandma made a determined effort to rise again, very slowly. She didn't want I Somchao to see any signs of sickness and get bossy telling her grandmother not to go to sing the songs tonight. Grandma shouted to I Somchao and heard her voice answering from somewhere at the back of the house. Grandma called out her orders that Somchao should get ready for the car that was coming to fetch them and take them to Wat Pa, so that they had enough time to stop on the way to pay homage to Luang Pho To(9) . Had Somchao forgotten that they had to go and sing tonight? Somchao called back to ask what was the hurry, it was only one o'clock. That made Grandma sit down and look pensively out at the river beyond the verandah. The Suphan River was flowing with a torrential swiftness, its current twisting into great spirals right where Grandma's house stood. Big clumps of water weeds came floating by at intervals, some of them turning in a circle in front of the house before continuing on their watery way. Some of the clumps were so enormous that had the current thrown them against one of the wooden stilts, the house might well have collapsed. The 'cha-ha-hai' part of the refrains sounded somewhere in Grandma's consciousness, as if coming from that distant bend in river. "Opening my lips to bid goodbye, both my eyes are filled with tears, oh dear heart how I think of you, how I'll miss you dear brother, in the twelfth month of the swelling tide, when the water rises between the banks, though I must take my leave, I am so grieved at our parting, take care paddling home your boat, for if you chose the wrong paddle, you might fall into the river and drown ..." The song sounded disjointed, now clear, now lost. Grandma looked dreamily at the river, smiling to herself. Grandma arrived at Wat Pa, all dressed and well-speckled with powder. I Somchao had tried to stop her from going after seeing her condition that afternoon, but Grandma had insisted "I'm allright. I can go. I want to pay my homage to Luang Pho To, too." Once she had finished dressing and winding the breast cloth around her chest and over one shoulder, Grandma's eyes shone brightly and looked for all the world as if the illness had vanished completely. Somchao, who had kept a close watch on her grandmother felt rather relieved. But, knowing full well that Grandma always seemed fresh and full of life whenever she was about to 'sing the songs' , the girl didn't feel any real confidence about Grandma's condition. Grandma had shown strange symptoms when the car arrived to fetch them at the house. That was when Somchao had tried to wake her from her nap. Grandma seemed to be unconscious. Somchao had to do so much shaking and calling before Grandma could be woken. Somchao had kept so close to Grandma that the old woman had to chase her away to get herself dressed, not forgetting to hand the girl a thin gold chain to put around her wrist. Grandma believed that Somchao, being a young girl, should wear some gold ornaments when meeting people. The old woman told the girl not to worry about her. And so, like Grandma, Somchao got dressed in the only brightly-colored clothes that she owned. Grandma made her way to the front of the stage. The stage Grandma felt, was her birthplace as well as the place in which had grown into adulthood, reached maturity and passed into old age. Everything was familiar no matter where she looked. Dancing and singing songs were so easy and so much fun. Even the specks of dust on the floor were familiar. Yes, Grandma knew every granule of dust on this stage. That was what Grandma really felt. "Raising this tray above my head, I pay homage to the Triple Gems, with lighted candle and sweet incense, to the four directions I rise the bai si (10) in respect to the spirits of this place, to the grace of good angels, to my teacher named Pho Phet, who's made me mistress of songs in Suphan, it was he who taught me the i-saew songs….” Grandma's resonant voice extolled the teachers of the songs. It mesmerized some people into an attentive silence, while those who were not interested in the songs went on chatting and boozing. Grandma hardly ever noticed how many people were listening or not listening to her songs. Right now her entire consciousness was centered on what was taking place on the stage. She listened to the master songster, what was he singing?.. . "Don't you ever leave an opening where I can get at you!" In any case, Grandma didn't want to look towards the audience because her eyes were so blurred that she could hardly see a thing. Grandma forced herself to stand firm and concentrated on the voices of the master songsters and mistress songstresses, waiting for her moment. Then Grandma went out to sing a brief opening kroen song and sang a retort to the master's cheeky approach. When she stumbled into a fellow songstress, the audience broke into an affectionate laughter. They thought that Grandma was clumsy from age, but they were wrong-Grandma's eyes could no longer see. No one on the stage saw anything out of the ordinary in Grandma, not even Somchao herself, because Grandma's old face was wreathed in smiles, her voice as vibrant as ever. "Oh you smiling man of the moon, with your jerky monkey gait, has your head ever been hit, with nice big weighty cane? You annoy me so much, uttering such silly words. How can you be trusted, when your hair's so fuzzed, and your eyes so bulged?” Nobody noticed anything unusual in Grandma, not even when she stepped backwards into a wooden bench. She put out her hand to feel the bench in order to locate the seat and sat down on it, looking as if this was something she normally did. After all, she was too old to be standing for long. That was what everybody thought. Somchao stopped working the clappers to come to Grandma to ask if she wanted anything. Grandma smiled at her and said "I want some betel and areca.” Somchao led Grandma to the side of the stage, eased her into a chair, picked up the betel box and put it on her lap. Grandma arranged the betel and areca, keeping her bright eyes on the master songster who was coming out with strings of razor-sharp words. From the audience, laughter at the battle of the songs between the songsters and songstresses broke out intermittently. Grandma could no longer see anything at all, but she still had strength to put the betel into her mouth. Grandma didn't chew the betel. She didn't know whether it tasted good or not. She could no longer taste it at all. On the stage, Somchao stumbled. She laid down the clappers and danced out ever so smartly. It was during the chom dong --or the admiring of the forest----that the songs reached the part where the man was taking his new wife home. "Oei ....., the old kaew tree, your branches're heavy with blossoms so white, close by and upright stands the tall krang tree, scattering its berries on the ground, the sakae has put forth his branches, who was it that cut the tako trunk, and left the stump sticking up among the curley ngoen kai, the krang leaves have grown old and dry, not catching people's eyes as they use to when comes the blowing breeze, the old leaves get blown away….blown far, far away........." Somchao had got that far with her singing when all the songsters and songstresses as well as all the lesser singers rushed around to take hold of her while Mae Khwanchit, the leader of the troupe, ran towards Grandma shouting her name. Somchao's voice was so unmistakably Grandma’s. (1) Tile used before a woman's first name or nickname, traditionally derogatory but also used with close relatives and friends (2)sound signaling the opening of traditional folk songs (3) popular modern folk music (4)Songster Phet (5)annual festival at which new robes are presented to monks (6) Songstress Khwanchit (7)one kind of traditional folk entertainment (8) Thai cymbals (9) huge statue of the Buddha (10) rice wrapped in a banana leaf, an auspicious ceremonial ornament

Vanich Charungkitchanand Translated : Chamnongsri L. Rutnin Short Story from S.E.A. Write Award-Winning (1984) Collection : Down the Same Lane แปลจาก เรื่อง ผาติกรรม ในรวมเรื่องสั้นรางวัลซีไรท์(2527) ซอยเดียวกัน ของ วาณิช จรุงกิจอนันต์ Illustration : Indigo Several people were involved in this story, but the man who might be pointed out as “the instigator” was an architect, a graduate from one of those universities in the West. He hit upon the idea after having been entrusted with the project - the project of building the grandest Thai-style riverside restaurant in the Bangkok metropolis. But then, it wouldn’t be fair to put the entire blame on him because the owner, too, played a significant role in the affair. The owner was a millionaire in his fifties who felt that too much of his money was lying idle. Consequently, he wanted to invest it in something praiseworthy - and laudable in taste. After some discussions with his friends as to the ways and means, he decided to open a restaurant. It was to be a Thai restaurant... a waterside Thai restaurant with a part of the building extending above the Chao Phraya River - that “river of kings”. He summoned the architect to listen to his concept. It was clear that the capital investment posed no problem as long as the right site was found and things went according to his wishes. One day, therefore, they all boarded a boat and cruised along the Chao Phraya River. It was on this occasion that they found a large mansion - staid and proud - standing on the river bank. Somber green in color and venerable in age, its dimensions were impressive even when viewed from the river at a considerable distance. It was built in the European style which had been the vogue in the latter part of King Rama V’s reign. Everyone in the boat was seized by the same thought. The navigator headed the boat for the mansion. Though the owner wasn’t living in it, the group knew that the mansion had once belonged to a nobleman with the exalted rank of Chao Phraya, and that it was built more than sixty years ago. Every single board was solid teak, as was every tiny wooden component of the building. For ventilation, a clerestory of ornamental openwork in the European gingerbread style ran like a decorative frieze under the eaves along the verandahs all around the house. The house was an office in which a few Chinese clerks were working. Questioning elicited the information that it served as the office of a rice mill which stood on the adjacent plot of land. Ascending the stairs for further inspection, they arrived at the conclusion that the house was exactly what they had wanted, and in fine condition. Some old, broken-down rickshaws and the remains of horse carriages found in the compound bore evidence to the affluence of its past owners. There were altogether twelve rooms, each one beautifully spacious, not counting the verandahs and the pavilion of the kind called sala . The architect made a rough mental calculation that the main building alone could seat no less than a hundred diners were it to be turned into a restaurant. An old man came up and told them that he was the caretaker, so they asked him the ways to contact the present owner. All went well at the start - and that point in time at which they succeeded in negotiating with the heir of the nobleman who had owned the house, could well be counted as the start of the story. Even though they had not been able to persuade him to sell the title deed, they did manage to obtain a long-term lease of the property, which was quite satisfactory. It brought the millionaire’s project close to reality. The architect with the western university degree went back again and again in order to make a thorough survey. He visualized how the marble-lined terrace by the river together the green house (he subsequently called it “the green mansion”) would appear after it had been renovated and redecorated as a restaurant. He felt that the whole thing would remain incomplete and fall short of the magnificence that he would have liked to achieve. In his mind’s eye, he envisioned the warm grace and opulence of the bygone past that he so wanted to recreate. He thought that there was something lacking... something still missing. Something that would make it a complete whole - as he saw it with his inner eye. The architect spent several more days cogitating before coming to the conclusion that a big Thai house was needed. And this was exactly where we can pin the blame on the architect. He did not want a modern Thai house but a genuinely old one. He respected the venerable grace and grave dignity that gave the airs of antiquity to the green mansion. He did not want the kind of Thai house that would spoil the mood of the guests who might set foot in the compound with the feeling of something new and tasteless. And the Thai house that he wanted was not a Thai house in the meaning of a residence, because such a structure would not be suitable for a restaurant, but rather something in the way of a pavilion, like sala karn parien , spacious and open. The millionaire fell in with the architect’s line of thought. The two sent out agents to comb the provinces of Angthong, Ayutthaya and Supanburi for Thai houses in the style of the central plains. Nothing of the kind was to be found. They were to be found only in temples, according to some people. “Which temples?” No one could answer the millionaire’s question. Meanwhile, the architect had driven northward with a friend. As their car rolled past an old monastery, his eyes caught an aged northern-style structure standing there in the compound. At the architect’s request, his friend turned the car into the monastery grounds. The architect told himself that this was ‘it’ . This was precisely what he was looking for. It was a wooden sala , an open pavilion-like structure traditionally used for religious rites by rural monks and lay villagers in the manner of their counterparts in the central region, though it was smaller and without the raised floor. The sala appeared to be in a decrepit state but its look of decrepitude could only delude superficial eyes. After a sala karn parian brief survey, the architect was convinced that it was strong and complete despite its lopsided stance and a collection of holes in its roof. In addition to its fine proportions and spaciousness, the architect was impressed by the finely carved floral-motif gables as well as the lotus molding that formed the capitals of the pillars and the beautiful fretwork that graced other parts of the structure. The important fact was that the whole pavilion was built of solid teak with admirable workmanship. The architect asked to speak with the abbot and learnt from him that the sala was well over a hundred years old, the villagers called it “Sala Hoi Khao ”. The architect then expressed his fears the old sala might collapse one of these days while the villagers were gathered on it for some religious ceremonies of merit-making. The aged abbot agreed, saying that there was nothing he could do as there wasn’t enough money for repairing it. The architect was able to understand the thoughts and feelings of the old man. After bidding goodbye to the abbot, he proceeded to photograph the sala from every side and at every corner, not forgetting the details of the wood carvings and fretwork that ornamented the building. The architect returned to Bangkok earlier than scheduled. He enlarged the photographs that he had taken and showed them to the millionaire and all those concerned. He described to them the beauty and the antiquity of the teakwood sala . He made sketches to show how it would look if it were to be put together with the green mansion. What he made was a very clear presentation of the way the old sala would be joined to the green mansion to make a magnificent riverside restaurant. It was unanimously agreed that the century-old sala would have to be dismantled and brought down to Bangkok. The saying that money had the power to bring about the realization of one’s wishes may be true, but it had proven to be wrong in certain places and circumstances. To move this aged, close-to-collapsing sala was not as easy as they had thought. There remained villagers who were not completely ignorant and blind to the beauty and the values of old architecture. When the architect returned to the temple for the third or the fourth time, voices of dissent began to make themselves heard. The man who opposed the move most strongly was named In , a man whom his fellow villagers called “In Jaang” or “In, the Builder” . “In” was the name his parents gave him, “Jaang” was the indication that he was a builder of houses. It was surprising that no one called him “sla” or craftsman. In Jaang was over sixty years old. He had an understandable reason to be against the dismantling of the sala - his grandfather had built it with his own hands. Ever since he was born, he had seen this sala . His whole life revolved around it - he had sat on it, lain on it, walked passed it, worked on it---his whole life revolved around it. In fact, he loved it and was more attached to it than to his own house. The sala was grandfather’s handiwork. His father had told him this and often repeated it to him. The governor of the province had told his grandfather to build it. It was his grandfather’s work, his father’s pride, and In Jaang's own heart and mind. This sala had put him on his life path and made him a builder like his father and his grandfather before him. In Jaang’s father had impressed the fact that it was born out of his grandfather’s craftsmanship - it was a fact that had been imprinted in his memory through frequent repetition. In Jaang had spent his whole life with this “Sala Hoi Khao”. He knew every post, every board, and every motif in all the ornamental designs that enriched it. He had been the sole repairer of this building during all these years... though he had done all he could, the sala still looked as if it might soon fall down. “What if it falls? What if someone dies? What would we do?” The abbot asked In Jaang. “I could mend it, Tu Poh. It wouldn’t fall.” In Jaang insisted. Yes, he was sure that he could repair this sala and that it would not fall down. “How much money to mend it? “Where to find the money?” To the abbot’s last two questions In Jaang was at a loss to find an answer, as were the five or six villagers who were his fellow dissenters. Money was an essential requirement if the repair was to be done, but where was the money to be found? Money might not be able to effect every change, but when the money came with the governor of the province every change could be facilitated with much smoothness. The governor was a friend of the millionaire. Within a few days, the framed and neatly colored plan of the new sala, designed by the architect and considerably larger than the old one, was hanging on the wall of the abbot’s kuti(1). The governor called a meeting of all the villagers to make an announcement in reference to the age and broken down condition of the century-old sala , followed by an assurance that as soon as it was taken down, a larger and more strongly-built sala would be put up in its place. The replacement would be completed within three months and would come with the addition of a large Buddha image. The villagers were happy, but In Jaang had to turn his face to brush away his tears. The architect brought workmen all the way from Bangkok. No one wondered why he did not have the sala taken apart by the local builders. No one had asked him, but the architect knew in his own heart that he was preventing possibilities of error. If he had used the local builders to take it down, he would have to take them all to Bangkok to rebuild it. According to his plans, it would be his own workmen who dismantled it and would reassemble it later. The task should not be a difficult one because not a single nail was used in this sala . If there had been one other reason for not using the local craftsmen, it might have been the fact that he had already met In Jaang, had known who In Jaang was, and had sensed In Jaang’s hurt and sorrow in regard to his beloved “ Sala Hoi Khao”. The architect had glimpsed the shining reflection of tears In Jaang’s eyes on the day they began to take it apart. The architect had tried not to pay any attention and not to glance in the direction of In Jaang. If he had allowed the local builders to help, it was certain that In Jaang was sure to be among them. Looking at it from the point of view of humanity, according to his own ideas, the architect had thought that would be inflicting too much unkindness on a rural villager like In Jaang. No one thought of the difference between jaang prung ruen(local builder) and jaang pang huen(Bangkok builder). Not even In Jaang himself. They took apart the components of the sala with great care, packed each piece into a box or a crate which was securely fastened with nails prior to being conveyed to Bangkok in three big trucks. For pieces with wood rot, they constructed special boxes to take them either to be repaired or to have replicas made. No part of the sala was left behind except for the tiles from the roof. These were scattered in abandoned piles because the architect had already taken a few samples to a ceramic factory in order to make molds from which copies were to be baked using identical forms and colored glaze as the originals. One month passed. Sala hoi khao took shape on the bank of the Chao Phraya River. The sight caused no small wonderment in those who saw it from adjacent plots and from passing boats on the river. This was the one and only of its kind. This was the only restaurant in Bangkok to be able to boast of a beautiful sala of the northern Thai architectural style of genuine antiquity. Such magnificent grace and craftsmanship. The architect could not help thinking a somewhat self-congratulatory thought that it had an air of age that went so extraordinarily well with the green mansion. He felt proud that the marble terrace could set off the majesty of the northern-style sala and green mansion to such perfection. Even though they did not know the meaning of hoi khao, they continued to call it hoi khao just as the villagers had done. Though there were similarities in the form of sala hoi khao and the standard ordination hall of the Department of Religious Affair, it was notable that sala hoi khao was not as tall, wider in proportion, more squat in shape and unencumbered by the busy intricacy of openwork patterns which were usually covered with glittering decorations of mirror mosaics. Sala hoi khao ’s roof was double-tiered. The finials, shaped like the mythological serpents called naga, pointed straight up at the sky in the architectural style typical of the north unlike the gracefully curved finials so familiar to the eyes of Bangkokians. They looked stiff but dignified. The slopes of the roof were wide and gentle, one roof tier above the other. Looking at the sala directly from the front or from the rear, one could see four rows of teak pillars. Those in the two center rows which took the weight of the gables were larger than the ones in the two side rows. There were altogether four pillars that supported the gables and the pediments - two at the front, and two at the rear. They were, like the smaller pillars, standing trunks of teak trees - round, each one large enough to be encircled by a man’s arms. They were entirely without any jointures, being the trunks of single trees. The architect often stood beside these four pillars stroking them with a sense of happiness and exultation. They were the most beautiful teakwood pillars he had ever seen in his life - aged, smooth, gleaming, straight, and round. The lotus-motif capitals were carved into the very wood of the pillar. Often, the touch of these venerable columns made his skin creep with a strange awe. In point of fact, he felt like putting his palms together in the traditional wai to these four pillars - not in homage to the lumber but to the craftsmen who had carved and turned them to such perfection making the pillars identical in texture, color, smoothness, and size. The publicity campaign for the restaurant was a resounding one. The construction of sala hoi khao was finalized. The gilt on the carved floral motif of the gables and on the blossoms in the openwork around the sala gleamed so brightly that it looked as if the whole structure was ornamented with flowers of radiant gold the brilliance of which was further set off by the scarlet of the wooden beams beneath the eaves. The newness of the gold-colored roof tiles sparkled richly with reflections of sunlight. And on nights with a bright moon, there would be a glimmering pool of silvery light in the middle of the roof. The pool of light would shine the brightest on full moon nights. They - the architect, the millionaire and those who had any hand in it - were proud of this sala. Even the stately green mansion was overshadowed. The press began to trickle in for news and interviews, or to take photographs and taste the food. One and all were impressed and full of praise - oh, what a worthwhile investment! The millionaire was the proudest of all. He was filled with satisfaction. This was what was needed for the remaining years of his life - not wealth, not honor, but the distinction of being the preserver of a priceless work of architecture by not neglecting it to fall into decay. The inaugural celebration of the restaurant was a grand affair in which sala hoi khao played the leading role. Every important guest wanted to be seated in it. And, in keeping with the regional style of the architecture, the softly rhythmic nail dance of the north was performed with melodic interludes of songs from that particular kind of northern guitar called sueng . Every table was lit by large red candles. The entertainment in the green mansion was Thai dances and music of the classic genre. Members of the high society turned up in force. Arrangements had been made to convey guests from the parking lot to the riverside by rickshaws and horse carriages. The opening celebration of the most opulent restaurant on the bank of the Chao Phraya progressed into the night to the great enjoyment of everyone. The architect was the person who received the most credit. He answered endless questions about sala hoi khao without any signs of boredom or exhaustion. In the midst of the festivities, a strange sound could be heard... and sala hoi khao seemed to sway very slightly. Not many noticed the sound or felt the sway. None paid any attention. Some thought the sound was of the musician’s tuning the sueng , yet others thought that the sway was caused the impact of a riverine wave on one of the posts or the weight of a heavy truck on the road behind the compound. The gaiety of the atmosphere and the vivacity of the conversation prevented thoughts of anything more ominous. No one wondered how powerful a wave had to be to cause an impact on such a solid structure, or how a truck could be speeding through a parking lot packed with cars. The inauguration party passed with great success. The riverside restaurant was as elegant and profitable as anticipated. One month went by. No one in the management noted anything unusual but the employees who remained after the closing of the restaurant each night began to noticed certain anomalies. In the stillness of night, they would often hear loud creaking noises like the shrinking of wood in the winter. No one paid much attention at first. But as the sound became more frequent, they began to look at one another with questioning eyes. No one was sure where it came from because it resounded so piercingly throughout sala hoi khao and the green mansion. Sala hoi khao swayed frequently but they only thought it was because part of it stood above the water. They failed think that it stood steel and concrete pilings which were driven deep into the river bed and were far too sturdy to be the source of the swaying. Then it came, late into the silence of the night ... While the employees were making their final rounds before retiring to their rest, a long and blood-curdling wail of some unseen thing sounded... from sala hoi khao for certain, there was no doubt about it this time because it was very loud and clear... like the twist and breaking of a great piece of wood. Then, all of a sudden, came a high long drawn sound like wood cracking. Sala hoi khao shuddered as if shaken by a giant’s hand. Roof tiles fell and shattered on the paving. Even the green mansion shook. In a moment, everything was still. Everyone was terror-stricken. At first, they thought it was an earthquake, but why did it affect only sala hoi khao ? The roof was repaired without difficulty. There was no other damage. All the employees were instructed to keep the strictest silence - nothing was to leak out to outsiders. But the incident went on recurring - it was fortunate that it only occurred after the restaurant was closed for the night. Nevertheless, it grew more and more frequent each night to the point that the millionaire and the architect decided to come and stay overnight in order to investigate the matter - partly because several employees had become so nervous that they refused to remain after work. And it really happened... the noise and the tremor were such that the millionaire and the architect had to rush out of sala hoi khao for fear of it collapsing on them. Then, one night... a ghost buster from the old city of Ayutthaya, whom we shall from now call “the witch doctor”, came after the nightly closure of the restaurant. It was the only solution the architect could think of after he had carefully inspected every detail of the structure and could find nothing that could account for the phenomena. The witch doctor’s rite took several hours in an eerie, ghostly atmosphere. As the witch doctor mumbled his mysterious mantra while holding a large bunch of lighted incense sticks, a long, hair-raising sound erupted - the same cracking, screeching wail that had become familiar of late but much more long-drawn than ever before, so long drawn that had it been emitted by a human-being it would have taken at least two deep breaths to accomplish such a lengthy wail. The witch doctor said it was the scream of the takien ghost, the female ghost who resided in one of the four teak pillars that held up the gables. The words struck deep fear in the hearts of all present, especially because what had gone before seemed to bear evidence to them. The wailing stopped at the approach of dawn. The witch doctor claimed that he had captured the takien ghost. He put the earthenware pot into which he imprisoned it into the cloth bag that he slung over his shoulder, pocketed his fee, and went home. Everyone felt a sense of relief even though the employees continued talking about the whole nerve-racking affair with some relish. While all this was passing in Bangkok, the building of the new sala was completed. It was a big concrete sala, beautified on all sides with silver-painted iron grills which enclosed it on all sides. It was no longer the open sala that used to stand here in the old days. No matter where one looked, there were the angels with hands held on their chests like lotuses - these angels being the motif of the design of the iron grills along the sides of the sala. These, and the celestial door guardians that were the motif of the grills at the front and the back. In Jaang looked at the sala with a desolate heart. He thought of sala hoi kham , of the lifework of his grandfather, of the structure in which his father was so proud, of what was like his own life and soul. The new sala was like a stranger from an alien land - someone he didn’t know and didn’t want to greet or to converse with. After the witch doctor had captured and taken the takien ghost away (according to his claim - he had also declared that he was going to set it free in the forests near Ayutthaya), the strange wailing sounds ceased for two whole days. Everyone was noticeably happier. The architect was relieved; so was the millionaire. The latter, however, was bothered by the increasingly expanding gossip about the power of the takien ghost which had not yet reached public ear due to various tactics which were devised by the millionaire himself. On the third day after the witch doctor’s rite, a strange phenomenon occurred - this time at an utterly wrong hour. It came about at nine o’clock Friday night when sala hoi khao was packed with diners and when the waiters and waitresses were at their busiest with orders and dishes. All of sudden a long drawn screeching wail pierced the chattering voices of the dinners who, together with the waiters and waitresses, looked up at the ceiling from which the sound seemed to emanate. Silence fell. The sound was heard even by those seated in the green mansion. Silence fell. One by one the diners there also stopped talking. Many unconsciously stroke their own arms on which goose pimples were rising. After the sound had come to a stop, and someone was just beginning to laugh in the face of the blank silence, the hair-raising sound started all over again. Its loudness was such that it seemed the vast sala might crumble all at once. The four big pillars twisted creaked, and swayed in a horrifying manner. The gables, both at the front and the back, screeched for all the world as if pulled by a number of elephants. Pandemonium broke out. The terrifying sound not only would not stop but grew increasingly louder. The sala leaned and settled on the left side. It was filled with noises of chairs falling, and people yelling and screaming in terror. Several diners jumped into the water. Those in the green mansion caught the panic, and everyone rushed out to the riverside terrace or to the parking lot at the back. Many fell and could not regain their feet because of the number of people running past. The roof tiles fell crashing in every direction as though clawed by a titan. Several people shouted “Earthquake!” If it were so, why did the tremor affect sala hoi khao ? The green mansion did tremble enough to send dishes falling without any part of the structure being the least damaged. Though this incident caused no fatalities, it resulted in a good number of injuries, in several cases severe. The restaurant was closed. The front and the back of sala hoi khao were twisted towards each other by the weight of the inward leaning of two of the large teak pillars. The left side settled in an alarming manner and all the smaller pillars twisted and leaned along with it. The surprising thing was that none of the wood components were broken or fell down though almost no tiles were left on the roof. The uncanny fact was that the strange noise persisted intermittently, at times in short, broken rhythm that sounded almost like the human sobs. The consensus to dismantle sala hoi khao was unanimously reached. Another exorcist and a medium came to perform the separate rites at different times without any positive results. The new ghostbuster insisted that there was no evil spirit of any kind in either sala hoi khao or the green mansion. The medium invoked spirits with utter lack of response from any incorporeal beings, at least not until the spirit of a child who had drowned in the river in front of the rice mill came - no one knew how. A long conversation with the child ghost preceded the final realization that it knew absolutely nothing about sala hoi khao. The dismantling of sala hoi khao caused deep regrets. Though no one knew what to do after it was accomplished, but they knew that the sala could not be left as it stood because it could collapse at any time. One day before they embarked on the dismantling the sala, In Jaang and a few villagers followed the abbot down to Bangkok to buy a Buddha image for their new sala - the funds for this purchase being the proceeds of none other than the barter involving sala hoi khao . In Jaang had seen photographs of sala hoi khao in the newspaper and had told the abbot that they should go and take a look at their old sala - people had been saying that it was haunted and was about to be pulled down because it was on the brink of collapsing. The abbot and the villagers didn’t really want to go because they felt it might embarrass the present owner. In fact, the abbot himself felt guilty - it was as if he had taken advantage of the new owner who had built such a grand and lavish new structure for the monastery in exchange for such a derelict, crumbling old building about to be taken down. But In Jaang wanted to take a look. Some deep urge was prompting him to go and see his sala, his grandfather’s sala, his father’s sala - the sala that was his very heart and soul. In Jaang wanted to know how and why the sala was falling down. In Jaang missed sala hoi khao - and he believed that the sala missed him, too. His single-minded determination overrode the others' reluctance. Besides, the abbot had always felt considerable guilt about the barter where In Jaang was concerned. In Jaang, the abbot and the villager friends of In Jaang arrived at the riverside restaurant in the afternoon when the builders were trying to find the best way to take down sala hoi khao . The architect was there, so was the millionaire. Both felt awkward at the sight of the abbot and In Jaang - part of the awkwardness was embarrassment. They couldn’t quite explain why, nor towards who more embarrassed them more, the abbot or In Jaang. They invited the abbot to take a seat and told him the story. In Jaang looked at sala hoi khao. He gazed sorrowfully at the sala of his heart and life. It wouldn’t have come to this if it had remained in the monastery. It wouldn’t have been so bent and twisted. In Jaang walked round and round the sala, touching every pillar, every openwork panel that he passed. He felt such sorrow for the sala that his eyes brimmed over with tears. He thought of his grandfather, of his father - of how his grandfather used to touch, his father used to stroke every pillar and every panel, just as In Jaang himself always did. Every lovingly-carved flower was like a long-loved friend or a deeply-revered relative. The sala was nearing its end. They were dismembering it, and it was most likely that it would not ever be assembled again. In Jaang thoughtfully felt the grains of the pillars with his fingers, his eyes shining with tears; but when his hand touched the big pillar that leaned low inward at the front of the sala , In Jaang sensed that something was wrong. He walked around towards the back and stroked the other big pillar that leaned and twisted inward. He ran his palm up and down the pillar before quickly making his way to the abbot. “The pillars ’re paired wrong, Tu Poh!” Excitedly, In Jaang told the abbot that the big pillars were paired wrongly. The architect didn’t quite catch what he said. He looked at In Jaang with genuine sympathy. He was a craftsman himself, so was In Jaang - therein lay his respect for this villager. He had never looked down on the fact that In Jaang was a rural builder. At this moment he actually felt guilt and embarrassment towards In Jaang - definitely towards In Jaang than towards the abbot. “We are going pull it down, uncle,” he said sadly to In Jaang - mainly because he was at a loss to find anything else to say. “Yes, take it down...” In Jaang told the architect “...and put it up again with the pillars paired rightly.” “Why, uncle? Are the pillars paired wrongly? But what difference does it make?” The architect felt a rising excitement. “They have stood together for a hundred years, how can you have the heart to go and separate them?” In Jaang replied with a tremor in his voice and tears running down his cheeks, as he turned to look at sala hoi khao with an inexpressible pity spreading through the depths of his heart.

Ussiri Thamachote The S.E.A. Write Award 1981 Collection : Khunthong, You Will Return at Dawn Translated: Chamnongsri Rutnin จาก เรื่อง เธอยังมีชีวิตอยู่ อย่างน้อยก็ในใจฉัน ในรวมเรื่องสั้นชุด ขุนทองเจ้าจะกลับเมื่อฟ้าสาง ผลงานรางวัลวรรณกรรมสร้างสรรค์ยอดเยี่ยมแห่งอาเซียน ปี 2524 ของ อัศศิริ ธรรมโชติ Illustration : Indigo The political situation had been growing more and more critical since the end of September. People were saying that October was the month of bad omens, that it would bring endless turmoil and an inevitable eruption of violence. Everyone was predicting and discussing the situation the way they predict a downpour when dark clouds thicken the sky. In that period of budding democracy, various activist and pressure groups were vibrant with movements and expectancy. My own feelings were different. I saw dejection in the faces of passersby, and sensed depression in the air around me. The beginning of October signaled the end of the rainy season, but the air was stifling, as if an invisible fire was raging all around. Rain fell like drops of tears sliding down a young girl’s cheek, adding to the atmosphere of desolation and sadness. I rolled a couple of sheets of paper, stuck them in my pocket, walked out of my rented house, which was not much bigger than the charcoal burner that my cat used as its den, and strode purposely forward, like a man with a job to tackle. I had been assigned to cover the movement of people who had gathered at a university campus – a sizeable number. I had to be there in the morning and monitor the crowd’s movements, note its size – whether it had grown bigger or smaller, take note of what the protestors said, what their next move would be, what statements they would announce to the opponents of the protest. I had to report all this information hourly to my office. “Let’s hope it won’t be like the last time. Whatever will happen, let it be better than the last time,” the friend who shared the rented house with me had said before I left that morning. “That’s what everyone hopes… except for a few,” I told him. The usually deserted soi [1] that led from my house to the main road was as long and narrow as a railroad. It had no buses like other sois, so I – like all the others who lived in it - had to walk down it to get to the main road. Despite its length, there were few houses. Most of these few stood in the middle of orchards and vegetable gardens. Four or five, as small as a cat’s den like mine, were rented out. Thoughts of the ominous situation ran through my mind as I walked towards the main road. But, suddenly jolted into the present by sounds of running feet, I looked up and stopped in my track. A girl, young and slender, ran towards me. She was clearly frightened. She stopped in front of me, breathing hard. There was nobody behind her, but her fear transmitted itself to me. “What’s wrong?” I asked. She looked first at me, then behind her and said. “Some people were chasing me.” “But there’s nobody behind you. Perhaps they’ve lost you,” I said, wondering what was going on. I took a good look at her. Her right hand, beautifully shaped, was sticky with glue. A thick wad of printed sheets was tightly held between her left arm and her body. The face, bare of make-up, shone above the black shirt that she wore over a pair of stained jeans. A cloth bag slung over one of her shoulders, and she wore a pair of dirty white sneakers. I gave her a friendly smile and asked to see the posters under her arm. With an embarrassed smile, she handed a few of them to me. The face of a former politician, bordered in black, was printed on them. Under the picture, angry words were splashed – sentences full of jargons of that period of ‘democracy’. They were posters calling on the people to expel this once-powerful former politician from the country. “Now I know who has been chasing you! They don’t want those posters on the walls,” I said as her trouble became clear to me. “They have been hired to stop us putting up the posters. They were beating us with cudgels, so we scattered and ran,” she said, on the verge of tears. “It’s all right now. Come with me, but…” . I looked at the posters. “Leave those in that pile of garbage, so you won’t get into trouble again.” She nodded and threw away the whole sheaf. The morning seemed normal and quiet as we walked towards the main road from which she had run to escape her pursuer. I asked her about the state of things at the university campus which was the centre of the protest against the repatriation of the former politician. She explained the situation to me, expressing her views of the current condition of the country in a clear, concise and logical manner. Here confidence in her convictions was as clear as her sincerity in expressing it. “Are you a student there?” I meant of the university where the protesters gathered. She gave a bright smile showing white teeth. “And you? Where do you work?” “I am an ordinary citizen. Not at all important,” I made it sound like a joke. She smiled again….. “No. You are ‘the people’.” I saw her off at the bus stop. She put her palms together in a gesture of respect and thanked me; and before her slim form disappeared into the crowded bus, she gave me her name as if it were a souvenir of her appreciation for my small favor. I walked into my customary coffee shop, sat down and wrote her name on one of my sheets of paper. I memorized her words -- such ordinary words: “We must help create righteousness and justice in our country!” A few days later, I was assigned to office duty at the news desk. Reports that foreshadowed the end of democracy came in one by one. Conflicts within the government sounded the first notes of the finale. Certain elements of the mass media joined in. The cacophony crescendoed with voices of the numerous pressure groups. The protest against the repatriation of the former strongman was drowned out by the echoes of matters that concerned the national institution, echoes that sparked indignation in the majority of the people. The finale was swelling towards a climax. It was unfortunate that our government at that time was plagued with indecision. It deepened the shadow thrown over our democracy. As the situation deteriorated, the original cause was swallowed up by the confusion which ballooned out of all proportion. I no longer wanted to interest myself in the election government of that time, nor in the various pressure groups, not even in the mass media of which I was a part. I wanted to wipe them clean from my thoughts….. I kept thinking of the slender hands sticky with glue, the fresh young face above the black shirt and faded old jeans, of the movements that showed genuine look of fear. I thought back to our chance meeting on the empty soi that morning. I wondered if she knew what the future held in store for her….. It was like the breaking of a storm – furious, merciless - after the portent of black brooding clouds. It was like raging flames that burnt to cinders everything in the path of its wrath. The reports I received that morning reeked of death and tears in every line! It was several days after the return to normalcy that I received the list of those who died in those two days of anarchy. Her name was on it -- the girl with the sheaf of posters who had stopped in front of me one morning not so long ago in the quiet soi that was as long and narrow as a railroad. The girl who uttered those simple words, “We must help create righteousness and justice in our country.” She was about the same age as my youngest sister. Her crime lay in the strength of her idealism. It had proved fatal. I am not in a position to make judgment on her actions, but I shall always believe the sincerity of her thoughts. With certainty, I know that they were as pure and guileless as her gestures and smiles that morning. I felt a morbid urge to go to the hospital morgue where her body lay to see for myself where she was wounded….to see whether her body was still clad in the black shirt and those faded jeans, or if she had changed into something else….to see whether her graceful hands were still stained with glue, and whether the left arm that had held the sheaf of posters was unmarked, or was it broken and marred beyond recognition….. And to see whether the bright smiling face, void of make-up, was it marked with pain and fear? These were the things I wanted to know! But I could only sit there, staring at the name I had written down that morning in the coffee shop. The piece of paper was crumbled but still white and clean. I inked a red line across her name, but wrote after it the words, “She is still alive, at least in my heart.” A reporter like me was too much of a coward, too ashamed, to do anything more than that. [1] lane

Ussiri Thamachote The S.E.A. Write Award 1981 Collection : Khunthong, You Will Return at Dawn Translated: Chamnongsri L. Rutnin จาก เรื่อง บนท้องน้ำเมื่อยามค่ำ ในรวมเรื่องสั้นชุด ขุนทองเจ้าจะกลับเมื่อฟ้าสาง ผลงานรางวัลวรรณกรรมสร้างสรรค์ยอดเยี่ยมแห่งอาเซียนปี 2524 ของอัศศิริธรรมโชติ Illustartion: Indigo Unhurriedly, the man paddled his empty boat homeward against the current. The evening sun had sunk behind the uneven outline of treetops above the banks of the klong( 1), but its portent of night seemed lost on the paddler; for he continued to keep his boat moving with the same slow, tired strokes. His spirit was leaden and inert even though he felt a dull longing to be home before nightfall. The man had been downhearted from the moment he pushed away from the market pier. His full boatload of heavy, green watermelons had brought him a sum so pitiful that he couldn’t bring himself to buy the cheap lace blouse that his wife had asked him to bring her from the market - not the blouse, not even a plaything for his little daughter. Already he could hear himself telling his waiting wife, ‘Wait till next time….we didn’t get enough this time.” Sad and disheartened she would be, as always, and he would have to allay her sense of disappointment as best he could, perhaps telling her: “Let’s save some for a rainy day.” He had made countless trips to the market pier to sell his watermelons to the wholesale buyer, and each time he had been left with a sense of futility, a sense of wasted labour. His toil -- and his wife’s -- had seemed as worthless as the sweat that evaporated at the touch of a sultry breeze or dripped and dissolved into the ever-moving current of the klong , leaving only its moist and sticky residue that oppressed rather than vitalized. But that was the way things were -- the one buyer monopolized the watermelon market. As soon as the man’s boat moved alongside the pier, other melon growers whisper to him in a kinship of defeat, “Better to sell at his price than letting them rot.” “We’ll just have to grow more, maybe two or three times more. Then you can have something new to wear to the temple and the little one can have dolls like other children.” That was what he would have to tell his waiting wife. He couldn’t see any other way of earning enough to buy all the simple things that they dreamed of enjoying. Of course, meant more back-breaking drudgery, more stoic patience, and, above all -- more waiting. But then the woman was no stranger to waiting; it had become part of her life. She had always waited for things she wanted -- a cheap transistor radio to bring music into her drab life, a thin gold chain she could show off to her neighbours. These were the kinds of gifts he had promises before she came to live with him. Just above the horizon of the darkening paddy fields, homing birds flew in flocks across a sky gloriously bathed in the gold and orange rays of the sunken sun. The trees on both banks darkened and grew patches of deep shadows that spread with a gradual ominousness. Ahead, just where the klong widened and curved, thin curls of white smoke twisted softly upward from behind a dark clump of trees and disappeared into the fast paling sky. As the man paddled on in the stillness of the evening, a motorboat approached from the opposite direction, passed him, and was gone in a rush of roaring speed, churning the quiet water into a commotion of foaming trails and ruffled waves. As he guided his lurching boat to the bank for shelter, the rushing after wash of the motorboat rammed against its bow a mass of floating refuse and the light craft tossed and rocked precariously. The man held his paddle still and stared hard at the offending mass of flotsam; caught in it was a rubber doll bobbing to the rhythm of the disturbed water. The man used the paddle to push away the floating garbage and picked the sodden doll out of the water for a closer look. The little toy was there in its entirety, not a part of it was missing --- a naked female baby doll with red smiling lips, pale rubber skin, and big, black-painted staring pupils that somehow suggested cold eternity. He moved its limbs back and forth with great satisfaction. This little doll was going to be a companion to his lonely little girl, who would no longer be ashamed of not having a doll to play with like other kids in their neighbourhood. He cheerful imagined the joy of her bright-eyed excitement and was suddenly impatient to be home with this precious gift for her. The brand new doll came with the current. Who its owner was was beyond his interest and speculation. The klong had made its meandering way through so many villages, fields, and towns before it had reached this point. Who knew how many eyes and hands it had evaded as it drifted with this collection of refuse past countless other paddle boats and wooden piers that led down from waterside houses. He couldn’t help imagining its little owner crying over her beloved doll as she watched the water carrying it irretrievably away. He could see the pathetic childish helplessness that he had seen in his own little daughter when she once dropped a juicy piece of watermelon on the dust-covered ground, and he felt a flutter of pity for the unknown child. With a heightened sense of urgency he skillfully manouvered his way, avoiding the vines and branches that trailed into the water. Motorboats that monopolized the center path of the waterway sent waves of agitated water towards the dark banks on either side. Occasionally he had to stop paddling and hold the paddle against the unsettled water to steady the boat, but it caused him no anger or resentment. Home was not so far away now, and the rising moon would soon be high enough for him to make his way more easily. He continued to keep his boat close to the shelter of the bank, even when its overhanging vegetation had been swallowed by the velvet blackness of night. Now and then his movements startled nocturnal birds from their klong -side thickets. With harsh piercing shrieks they rose in agitated flight, flapping their wings over his head, and disappeared into the darkness of the opposite bank. Their stirring scattered airborne congregations of fireflies, which flashed like intermittent sparks from a kindled fire, before settling behind dark clumps of klong -side reeds like soft luminous shower. Whenever he drifted too close to the bank, the drones of the myriad of waterside insects sounded to his ears like plaintive wails of human miseries; and an aching loneliness would sweep over him. In a timeless moment of solitude on the lightless klong with no passing boat to keep him company - a timeless moment in which the moving water made soft sounds like the breath of a dying man -- he thought of death and suddenly realized that the quiet klong breeze brought with it the smell of putrefaction. A rotting carcass of some animal, he thought. A dead puppy, or perhaps a piglet, that klong -side inhabitants would never hesitated to throw into the waterway, relying on the current to bear it away while nature completed the process of decay and water finalized the disintegration of the once-living flesh. There …..there it was… the source of this nauseating smell held by that mass of floating garbage under the shadow of an overspreading banyan tree. A momentary glance, and he was about to navigate his boat away from the stinking repulsive thing when something about it caught his attention. His unbelieving eyes were drawn back to it -- a rotting human corpse floating there with that mass of lifeless garbage. He was frozen with shock and fear, his paddle held in mid-stroke. It took him more than a few moments to gather his courage and with his paddle push aside part of the floating garbage so that the pathetic nauseating object could move closer. With the help of the pale moonlight that glimmered coldly through the banyan leaves, he scrutinized the lifeless body with morbid curiosity. Like the doll that he had just picked out of the water, it was a nude baby girl about the same age as his daughter. Not a part of the pitiful little dead thing was missing, yes -- like the doll, except for the absence of the doll’s fixed smile and black vacant stare. The child’s body was horribly bloated and, in the palor of the fugitive moonbeam, had taken on a nauseating tinge of green. It was hard to imagine what this little girl had been like in the freshness of life, what bright innocence must have been hers before she became this festering corpse in the course of the sad, inevitable process that would finally make her one with the ever-moving current of this klong. The man was sharply conscious of the poignancy of the sadness and loneliness of man’s individual destiny. He thought of the child’s parents, of their reaction to this cruel turn of fate. What could he do to let them know? He started to turn his boat this way and that to call for help, covering his nose with the palm of his hand to block out the sickening stench of the corpse that became unbearable each time a breeze moved from its direction. Turning away to look for a passing boat, he involuntarily glanced back and caught sight of a glint that made his eyes widen. Almost entirely buried in the bloated flesh of the dead child’s wrist was a slim chain of yellow metal. The sight of it in the moonlight inflated his heart and made it miss a beat. “Gold!” he cried inwardly, stretching out his paddle to move the pathetic swollen little body closer. The sudden roar of a motor-boat and the light from its kerosene lamp made him jump with guilt. He turned his boat so that its shadow fell on the corpse, hiding it from view, and waited until he was alone again in the silence that followed. It would have been a gross injustice, an unforgivable stupidity, to let someone else take the prize away from him. He would not let anyone take advantage of him now as they did when he sold his watermelons. After all, he was the discoverer of this treasure, he had suffered the dreadful company of this bloated corpse, he had borne its unbearable stench in this moon-blanched darkness. Even if the fortune weren’t that much, it would still be worth more than what he was paid for his boatload of watermelons; and the current had bore it here to this spot to be found by him. He was elated by visions of his careworn wife wearing the lace blouse she had so long waited for; perhaps he would even buy her one of those prettily coloured panung2 from the north to go with it, and he would get clothes for their child and for himself. For the first time he would enjoy the happiness of spending without twinges of pain that always came from the parting with hard-earned money. What did he have to do to earn it but paddle home against the current which he had to do anyway? The happiness that would light up the drained face of his wife and the eagerness that would shine in his child’s eyes, short-lived and transient though they might be, were blessings as precious to his joyless life as a shower to a drought-parched paddy field. The moonlight lay like a rippled silver sheen on the moving water, and the seemingly interminable hum of insects now resembled prayers chanted for the dead. He held his breath and, with the thin blade of his melon-knife, cut into the soft swollen flesh of the fingers and hand of the dead child. Piece by piece the decomposing flesh fell away from the white bones and was carried away by the drifting current, gradually exposing the bright chain of gold that it had almost hidden from view by its ghastly swelling. The stench was so strong that he gagged for air; and by the time he had the prize in his hand, he could no longer refrain from retching. The horrible smell of death clung to his knife, his hand, and his entire body. Vomitting copiously into the water, he washed his knife and his hands, letting the water carry away every disgusting trace of what he had done, just as it had carried away the pieces of the dead child’s flesh. The corpse, freed with a push from the paddle, was drifting slowly downstream, further and further away, in silent finality. The man pushed his boat away from the bank, guiding it to midstream. The doll lying face up in the middle of the boat caught his eyes. It was lying there with the fixed smile on its red lips and the blank stare in its painted black eyes, its hands stuck up in the empty air as if begging for pity. “It’s haunted! It’s that little girl’s,” he thought and hurriedly pitched the doll into the water so that it drifted away in the same direction as its owner. “So what!” he thought, his heart filled with elation. He could buy another one, or even two such dolls, for his daughter to play with and amuse herself. He was no longer depressed with what he had thought was a futile trip. Thinking of his wife and child who were as yet ignorant of their unexpected luck, he paddled as fast as he could with new-found energy until the lights from his home come in sight from behind the bushes not so far ahead. He no longer had any time for thoughts about the poor little corpse. He no longer cared where it came from or whether the parents would learn of their child’s fate. The little human tragedy receded to the back of his mind where only a trace of it lingered. The man quickened the strokes of his paddle with unaccustomed vigour and exuberance. 1 canal 2 Thai version of the sarong

Ussiri Thamachote The S.E.A. Write Award 1981 Collection : Khunthong, You Will Return at Dawn Translated: Chamnongsri Rutnin จาก เรื่อง เมื่อลมฝนผ่านมา ในรวมเรื่องสั้นชุด ขุนทองเจ้าจะกลับเมื่อฟ้าสาง ผลงานรางวัลวรรณกรรมสร้างสรรค์ยอดเยี่ยมแห่งอาเซียน ปี 2524 ของ อัศศิริ ธรรมโชติ Illustration : Indigo Our cart is crossing over a stream. I know from the whispering of the water. It is soft and dreamy like my mother's song when she sings me to sleep. I hear it now ... drifting, drifting from ... I wonder where.... When the wind brings rain the wood's fragrance sweetens the streams where bright flowers dream along with leaves of dark, deep green.... "Are you singing, Mother?'' My eyelids are so heavy that I have to force them open to ask my mother. Mother shakes her head and holds me even closer in her arms. The eyelids close with a will of their own. Tired....I have no strength...it is like being in a dream. With my eyes closed, I can see my village shining in the big valley --my village with the meadows and the irrigation canals... with the whirlwheels of the wooden water pumps moving in the wind. whirlwheels whirling round and round when wind brings rain the scent of wet grass and fragrance of steaming earth perfume the land -- our home. I know this song. I know it by heart. I am thinking of my teacher and my friends at school. There... I am standing with them in front of the flagpole, singing the National Anthem. Our voices mix and swell... echoing, spreading over the paddy fields. We fix our eyes on the faded flag that is flapping and billowing in the high wind. But somehow my eyes are now on a whirlwheel turning in the middle of a patch of tall green grass. It turns slowly, then faster... and faster still, until it looks like a circle.. ...now it isn't one circle, but many and many of them. Ten, twenty, thirty whirling circles make my head spin. My eyes are blurred. I am going to fall..and fall. ''Teacher, Teacher, where are you?'' I call. ''Here, I am. Beside you. Here.'' I force my eyes open once again and see Teacher's face bending close. It looks pale and sad. The loud mooing of the ox, the tinkling of the ox bell, and the creaking of the cartwheels break the silence of the sleeping woods. I feel a gust of strong wind sweeping past. Noisy rustling of shaken leaves follows loud and long in its wake. 'The wind!'' Mother's voice says softly. "The clouds look mighty thick,'' Teacher's voice growls. I can hear Father's voice shouting at the ox and the sound of his impatient whip against the ox's back. The cart shakes and rolls on the rough, uneven road. ' 'Where are we going?'' I ask my mother. ''To the doctor," Teacher's voice replies. "The doctor in the white dress who used to bring us medicine, the kind doctor at the district clinic. She will make you well again, and the pain will go away." With the word 'pain', the agony comes flooding back... the hot fierce pain racing ward from my ankle, rushing up to my brain. I am so cold, as cold as if I have been soaking for hours in the rain in the winter. And hot, now it is like being trapped in a forest fire. Cruel…so cruel. I writhe and scream in my mother's arms. I can hear my mother trying to comfort me amidst the creaking of the stumbling cart and the frenzy of my agony. My heart grows weightless. It floats up and up, randomly. Now it sinks right down into the depths. And, in those depths in which I have no control, the doctor is standing up there wearing a gown so white and beautiful. She looks like an angel in the sky above the far horizon. I run on the muddy uneven ground trying to reach her, falling, getting up and falling again. Nature is desolate and cruel. I call to her -- she laughs and comes closer. Now she stops above me and looks down with exquisite kindness. ' 'Here I am,'' she says, and I fling myself, weeping, into her arms. "Come, don't cry,'' she soothes me. ''Look, it's very beautiful." I look down from the sky at the school, the water pumps with the whirlwheels, the wildflowers with their bright colours and sweet perfumes. ''How pure nature is here,'' she says. ''You live with so much beauty around you. You are much luckier than I am." When I stop crying, the angel in white sets me on the ground, rises up into the sky and floats out of sight. Now I am conscious again. The cart is still stumbling onward. Far ahead, I can see the mountain range. Dark grey clouds hang against it like curtains. The sky is brooding. Teacher and Mother are silent, their faces sadder than the sky. My mind is clear and I can think back. I was bitten by something...a snake, I think. It bit me on the ankle while I was with Teacher, netting fish. ''Teacher, let me come with you," I called when I saw him striding along in his loin cloth holding a dip net pole. "No, I'm going home," he shouted back, stopping me in my tracks. But as I watched him, he turned and beckoned. ' 'There's school tomorrow. Don't blame me if you get sick," he said, giving my shoulder a kindly push. It was when Teacher lifted the net on which several muddy fish were jumping in final fights for their lives, that I felt a sudden stab of pain on my ankle and shouted without exactly knowing what had bitten me. "Snake.... It bit me...'' Teacher flung the net away and lifted me in his arms. My ankle hurt. The pain tightened like an iron ring around my heart. My breaths were disjointed. My mouth was full of water, but my throat was like dust. From the pond to the house, from the house to the ox cart and to this moment in my mother's arms, I have felt terrible pain, emptiness and peace in a seemingly endless cycle. When the wind brings rain the wood's fragrance..... Here it comes again...drifting from I don't know where. The wind is really bringing rain. I can hear the sky echoing with cracks of thunder mixed with the loud mooing of the terrified ox. The cart swings and stumbles on in the midst of the noise of the wind with its heavy drops of rain. The raindrops are as cold as dew in the winter. I shiver with coldness and fright. I am afraid of the moans of the woods which was lashed by the ruthless wind and stinging rain. They are like the wails of the ghouls that are gathering in a hideous circle around my heart and my body. ''Rainstorm,'' Teacher moans. He is crying. Father is shouting curses at the wind and the rain. I can hear the blows of the whip on the ox's back and the cries of the beast. Mother covers me with the blanket, her arms around me are tight and warm. She is murmuring close to my ears. She is probably praying to the sky, to the spirits of the woods, or anything else that she can think of. She is praying for the rain to stop just like she used to pray for the rain to come during the drought last year. A lightening bolt falls -- loud and bright. "Better stop awhile. The ox won't go,'' Teacher says to Father Mother wails and weeps because the wind and the rain show no signs of stopping. Their fury only grows and grows. The blanket around me is soaking. My face is wet with rain and stings with the beating wind. A ring of heat begins to flame around my heart. I am gagging over my own breath which stops, comes, and stops again. I am drowning in the mixture of saliva and rain that seem to fill my mouth..... I don't know how long it took me to pass from agonies of pain to peace. I know that the commotion of my cries, the storm, the woods, the excited voices of Father, Mother and Teacher faded slowly from my consciousness. The rain has stopped, the sky is clear and the wind quiet. There is no more pain. A fresh life of an intangibility that glows with freedom dawns in a new phase of time, full of stillness and peace. The landscape stretches vast and clear. In the tumult of wind and rain I have seen the fury of Nature, destructive and cruel. That has passed, now I see Nature in tranquility, and marvel at the richness of beauty and serenity that follows the storm. White clouds sail above the mountains like weightless balls of cotton. The woods smell of warm, wet earth. Wildflowers dot the greenness of weeds and grass with their bright colours. Where is my angel in white? I cannot see her. I would like her to share all this wealth of beauty with me as she once did in my dream. But I only see my weeping mother. She is holding my still body in her arms on the oxcart under the shelter of the spreading tree by the wayside. A narrow path winds an uneven, meandering way over streams, through woods and fields before tapering away into the valley from which I had come -- the valley of my village where nature is pure and beautiful...like it is in my mother's song... . ...when wind brings rain the scent of wet grass and fragrance of steaming earth perfume the land -- our home. Where is my angel in white? I would like to ask her if Nature is angry and cruel or is it grand and beautiful when the monsoon wind blows -- when the wind brings rain? I can see the oxcart turning back and retracing its way, It takes away with it my body and the sorrowful sounds of the people on it. Slowly it moves further and further into the distance.

Ussiri Thamachote The S.E.A. Write Award 1981 Collection : Khunthong, You Will Return at Dawn Translated: Chamnongsri Rutnin จาก เรื่อง ถึงคราที่จะหนีไกล ไปจากลำคลองสายนั้น ในรวมเรื่องสั้นชุด ขุนทองเจ้าจะกลับเมื่อฟ้าสาง ผลงานรางวัลวรรณกรรมสร้างสรรค์ยอดเยี่ยมแห่งอาเซียน ปี 2524 ของ อัศศิริ ธรรมโชติ I llustration:Indigo She took her daughter in her arms and told her never to go on a boat like that ever again because it wasn't good for her. As the child started to ask a question, she said quickly, ''Let's go into the house.'' She took the little girl by the hand and led her home. It had been 'the house' to her for many years--for so long that she had really begun to think of it as home. A hut assembled from lids of wooden crates and rusty pieces of corrugated iron, it squatted under the arch of a bridge that crossed over a dirty klong (1) . It was a shelter for her and her two children. When they lay in it at night, they could see the light of stars. In the daytime, bright sunlight shone through its gaps and holes. If this was a house, what would she call those stucco buildings along the sides of the klong , she wondered to herself. The woman led the little girl by the hand. She walked at such a pace that the child had to alternate between running and walking to keep up. Her ragged little panung (2) fapped in the klongside breeze. Her son was waiting by their 'house'. He was wearing a pair of faded trousers cut off at the knees and a striped t-shirt, an outfit he had picked up from some garbage heap and had been wearing for several days. "I have been waiting a long time,'' he said and showed his sister what he had been hiding behind his back, " A tiger mask,'' he said, putting it against his sister' face. "I found it on my way home,'' he held it up to show his mother, taking no notice of his sister's cries for it. The woman stared at the dusty mask. "'So like atiger!'' she thought the tiger that snarled and roared in this metropolis. It looked ready to tear her to pieces, the way this city had done to her life. She want to throw it away from her so that it fell into the klong, whose current would carry it out of her sight forever. But all she did was soothe her crying daughter and hand her the mask. "You can have it. He gave it to you. Tomorrow I shall put a string on it so you can wear it.'' She turned to her son and asked "How much did you get today?'' "Twelve baht, but I spent two on cigarettes.'' "Oh..you brat, you..'' she lifted her hand, looked at him a moment and then laughed. '' Do you have a cigarette left? Give me one. It was a bad day for me -- got not even five baht.'' She pushed him into the hut and then pulled her daughter in. ''I brought lots of food today," the boy pointed to plastic bags that were piled against a wall. ''Crawled under the tables. The hard-faced doorman didn't see me. Almost got some fried chicken....the people were just about to leave the table. But we started to fight for the good pieces. Hard Face came in and shouted at us. If it hadn't been like that, I would've got lots more. Come on mother, cook the rice." "I'll warm up this food of yours first,'' she answered. The bridge above them trembled under the wheels of passing cars and trucks making their hut shake and rattle. The night air reeked of the smell of dirty water and spread an invisible blanket of unhealthy dankness over everything. City lights seeped dimly under the bridge and made the black water gleam in the darkness. Three or four ugly and shapeless little huts built with corrugated iron and wooden crates stood close together under the bridge. The woman and her neighbours were used to the rattling of their huts, the sounds of heavy wheels, blaring horns and distant whistles of the traffic police. The woman lay on her side, her weight on one elbow. With her other arm, she held the sleeping girl against her breast. The boy had gone out again. She listened to the sounds that gradually dwindled as the night wore on. The noise of wheels on the bridge was less frequent now, but not the music and the clinking of glass and cutlery on the other side of the klong-- noise of food, drink and music. She sighed and looked through the open door at the sky in the south. A lone star was glittering there, beautiful and far away -- far beyond her calculation. Probably as far away as he, the man who had deserted her. He, the father of her two children. Whenever she thought of him, she could see him sitting by her side on the train. ''We won't be as poor as at home. Got to be brave. There are a lot of jobs in the city. We will find something. It will be better than living on their field and sweating to make them rich. We'll make do in the city.'' Recalling the scene up to this point, she wept. Tears blinded her, she could no longer see the gleam of the glittering star.... The rhythmic dipping of a paddle in the water had a desolate sound. The boat that was passing downstream was paddled by a woman, with a man sitting at the front end. Short poles held up a low roof in the middle of the boat. There were curtains hanging from the roof. ''Still awake, auntie?'' the young woman called from the boat. ''Yes,'' she said and watched the boat pass from the area of dim light into the darkness of one of the deep bays that the current had eaten into the banks of the klong. A moment's interlude in the noise of music and clinking of glasses allowed the drones of waterside insects to surface in the silence. The noise flooded back and drowned it. The sound of paddle strokes was part of the essence of this klong's life...yes, somehow she had not thought of that. People came from other places and met here on the klong despite its dirtiness and pollution. Lives that floated on it and existed along it seemed polluted, useless and incomplete. "How long have you gone without a bath?"' "Six days. I am waiting for the high tide so that the water' ll be cleaner" "The water in the klong is cleaner than you are now, you..." She smiled to herself at the way her klong-side neighbours teased one another during the day. Garrulous voices came to her from a boat that was being paddled up the klong against the current. The voices grew clearer as the boat came nearer. ' Terrible. Just like a log,'' cried a man's drunken voice. ''Go to a hotel, if you want something better. This is all you get for thirty baht,'' a woman's voice screamed back. ''You bitch! I'll smash your teeth in for talking like that!" ''Go ahead, and see if I don't bash your head with this paddle!" "Being nasty to a customer, eh? I'll report you to your boss." "Go on, tell him. I'm not afraid. What the hell do you expect for thirty baht.'' The voices grew fainter as the boat moved further and further away.... ''Aw, no. Not this song,'' this voice came from the other side of the klong. Males and females... ..husbands and wives....what made them go their own separate ways, so far apart, so easily. It was easy to understand in the case of the drunken man and the woman who had come together on the boat for a cheap exchange of pleasure and money. But surely not with a husband and a wife who had travelled together far away from home, who had shared years of living and loving, who had two children together. Why had her husband deserted her? Was she ' terrible - just like a log' and he had to leave her for someone better? ....some one who was good and not like a log? The woman started sobbing again..... "Mother , I got three more baht." Her eleven-year-old son was back from the all-night market, a lighted cigarette glowing as he inhaled. "Give me one,'' she said. He lighted one and handed it to her. She drew on it and blew white smoke into the darkness. "Not so many people tonight. So there wasn't much food," He sat down by her side. She was putting his little sister into the dirty mosquito net that covered almost the whole area of the room. The cigarette butt that he threw into the water sizzled and went out. She watched it drift slowly out of sight, like the debris and refuse that the dark water carried pass her hut every day and night. Discarded, unwanted things floated by on the klong whose nightly sound was of paddles rhythmically dipping in the water. ' 'I'm going to sleep now, Mother,'' the boy rolled himself into the mosquito net. "Where's the three baht,'' she asked. "I can't give it to you, I spent two fifty on some chewing gum,'' he replied. ''Where will you go tomorrow, Mother?" "Same place." "That's not so good. Why don't you go to food shops, take Ai Noi to beg with you and they will give you more.'' 'Ai Noi' was his sister who was fast asleep. She gave the cigarette a last draw and threw it into the klong. As she was closing the door, a voice came from a paddle boat, "Why are you up so late, auntie.'' "I'm going to bed now,'' she said with a laugh that was answered by fresh young laughter from the woman on the boat. The boat passed like others before it. "Was that Aunt Daoruang?'' her son asked, his voice coming from the darkness. ''Aunt Daorung 's nice. She takes Ai Noi on her boat and gives her candies. She's pretty with her powder and lipsticks and the paint on her nails. One day, when I have enough money, I will pay to go with her in her boat..." "By the time you have enough money she will be old,'' she chuckled lightly at his thought. ''Go to sleep. It's late.'' Long after her son fell asleep, she was still sitting outside the mosquito net, thinking. The woman recalled the sight of her daughter that evening, there on the klong. The girl's dirty little face was bright with laughter as she sat at the front end of the boat paddled by the pretty, painted, smiling young woman. Fear that lurked in her sad, worn heart conjured the image of her daughter - full-grown, painted and smiling - padding a boat that carried man after man, young and old, towards the privacy of the klongside little bays that were protected by steep banks. There in the middle of the boat, hidden by the curtains, her daughter would make love to so many different men...night after night..... She thought of the mask, the tiger mask. Tomorrow she would put strings on it so that the little girl could wear it. Life as she had known it was far more savage than the teeth and claws of wild tigers. How could she let it prey on the daughter that she loved more than anything in the world? "Can I paddle a boat like Aunt Daoruang?" ' her daughter's voice -- yes, she heard it only that morning. ''No, you aren't pretty enough,'' said her brother. "You have to paint your lips and nails and cheeks Besides, you aren't strong enough yet. Even if you were, men wouldn't want to go with you." "You wait! I'll learn to paddle. I'll do it and look pretty, too." A sudden thought sent her rushing into the mosquito net to hug the little girl tight against her breast. The child wailed softly in her sleep as the bridge rumbled and the tin hut shook to the fury of a speeding truck. A tear fell on the child's hair. There were no more sounds of music or the clinking of glasses on the other side of the klong. Coming at long intervals, the roars of passing cars and trucks drowned out the drones of night insects. But all through the night she lay listening to the light, lonely sounds of paddles in the drifting water of that klong..... When morning came, she took her children away from that klong. (1) a canal (2) Thai version of the sarong

Ussiri Thamachote The S.E.A. Write Award 1981 Collection : Khunthong, You Will Return at Dawn Translated: Chamnongsri Rutnin จาก เรื่อง แล้วหญ้าแพรกก็แหลกลาญ ในรวมเรื่องสั้นชุด ขุนทองเจ้าจะกลับเมื่อฟ้าสาง ผลงานรางวัลวรรณกรรมสร้างสรรค์ยอดเยี่ยมแห่งอาเซียน ปี 2524 ของ อัศศิริ ธรรมโชติ Illustration : Indigo “My master says you must leave. He’s coming tomorrow to deal with the farm … and with this house,” the visitor said in a slow, toneless voice as he stood alone under the open sky. “My master has told me to guard this house and the land even if I have to die doing it,” replied the host in the same tone. He was sitting on the top rung of the wooden ladder of the house. “Your master lives in the city. He can’t help you. He won’t even see your corpse,” the reply came back laced with a discordant laugh. “Oh that! Forget it, Nak. He owns my life, and you know it.” The man called Nak straightened his thick shoulders, standing like a pole driven deep into the earth. His baggy trousers were made of the same rough black fabric as that of his shirt, and the ends of his pakaoma fluttered like banners in the breeze that blew over the fields. His body threw a deep shadow over the wind-touched grass. Specks of wind-blown dust circled in the hot sun. The sun rose so high in the sky that it seemed as though it was escaping from its own scorching heat. “I’m doing what I have to, Hern. This is the last day that he’ll let you stay on this land. If I don’t get you to leave, my wife and kid’s lives won’t be as easy as they are now.” As he spoke, the man called Nak tightened the knot of his pakaoma with his rough hands and drew himself up to an uncompromising height. Hern remained seated at the top of the ladder. He, too, wore loose black trousers, but the top part of his muscular body was bare, except for a pakaoma thrown carelessly over one shoulder. He looked as vital as he was strong and as implacable as his visitor. A shaft of sunlight slanted through the eave of the house. It caught a steel-like glint in the eyes that gazed down at the standing man. The gaze was so steady that the eyes seemed incapable of blinking. “I know. But, with me, everything is up to my master. We are the same, Nak. It’s duty first,” Hern said tersely. “So, how shall we do it?” Nak chuckled and looked down to trace an aimless pattern in the dust with his foot. He leveled his gaze at Hern and chuckled again before answering. “You, on your own, Hern.” “And you?” “On my own,” said Nak. “I have men, but I won’t bring them. They’re young. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to you.” “Thanks. Sword, or gun?” asked Hern, looming at the top of the ladder. “Swords. They don’t make too much noise.” Nak answered, with a sinister hint of laughter in his voice. Hern paused and laughed along with Nak. “Would you be jailed if you killed someone?” he asked. “No, my master would help me. And you?” “My master would take care of that.” Silence fell briefly before Nak said, “I’ll be back just before dawn.” With a nod from Hern, Nak turned and walked away. He seemed to have relaxed, walking with his arms swinging lightly as if taking a stroll. Hern sat down and rolled some tobacco in a piece of dried palm. He drew on it serenely, as if tomorrow would be just another day. He breathed out a cloud of smoke, still watching Nak’s receding figure. In his memory, he saw Nak walking up to these fields years ago. In those days, he had been a very young man as Hern himself had been. He was walking behind the two brothers, the ‘masters’, whom Hern rushed out to greet, humbly and happily. “Hern, this is Nak, my brother’s man,” said Hern’s master, the younger of the two brothers. And that was how they were introduced. With the smiles they exchanged a friendship WAS BORN which existed on instinctive recognition of their common stand and values. Each was his master’s man. “D’you drink?” Hern had asked when the masters had passed into the house. “Sometimes,” Nak replied, laughing. “Why not celebrate tonight?” The friendship was like roots of two trees planted close together - roots that reached out and entwined under the ground creating stability and power for the spreading trees above. Hern often felt that he and Nak were one and the same. They had the same toughness and strength. They were close in age, height and physique. Their respective masters arranged their marriages, supported their families, and gave them the houses they lived in. Their duties were the same; each followed his master everywhere to protect him. And their masters were almost always together – almost like twins. In their thoughts, both placed their masters above their own lives. “Our masters have given us everything we have. We are men. We can die for them if we have to,” Nak used to say, echoing his very own thoughts. It was beyond Hern’s understanding why the two brothers who were once so close suddenly hate each other so. They turned their backs on each other. It was worse than if death had come between them. “My brother betrayed me. We shall live in the city.” With those words, his master moved to the city with his wife and children, taking Hern and his family with them. Then, one day, the master gave a terse command, “Go back to the fields. Keep my brother away from the land and the old house. Guard them with your life, Hern.” And Hern took leave of his wife and children and came back to this house, his master’s command imprinted on his conscience. His friendship with Nak had ended because Nak was now the ‘enemy’. They had not met since the master left the farm. He had come to think of Nak with distrust and suspicion. Nak was someone on the other side. That was as clear to him as his own boundless allegiance to the master. “It’s our duty, Nak,” he murmured. Nak walked past the fence that bordered the fields, uneasiness nagging at his thoughts. He kept thinking, “Hern, you should go away. You really should go away.” It was only wishful thinking because he knew Hern too well. Nak knew the man’s nature from the day they had first met, the day he had followed his master to these fields. Nak and Hern had become friends because of their masters’ shared common interest in the field. It was only natural that they should turn their backs on each other when their masters quarreled. The masters’ dispute was above and beyond his reasoning. The master’s affairs were not for people like him to understand. They were like the skies, the winds – things that he accepted without questioning. What he understood was the loyalty they owed to the master whose commands were sacred. He knew it was the same with Hern. “My brother cheated me – the house and land are mine,” the master said. Then came the day when he told Nak, “Go and get Hern to leave. Tomorrow I shall take over that house.” As he made his way past the huts and the woods on either side, he heard again the tales told by his mother when he was a child. So many of them were about the indestructible ties between servants and their masters. The bountiful masters and their indisputable commands, the faithful servants with their unquestioning loyalty – such were the shining examples he heard in those early years of childhood. “Mother, I am doing the same as the servants in your stories,” Nak said in his heart. Looking up at the setting sun, Nak felt sad at the thought of the final end to the friendship between himself and Hern. The hostility between their masters had stifled it – but not with the deadly finality of what would happen before tomorrow’s dawn. Nak had no thoughts of who would win and who would die: and, he knew, neither had Hern. Such things belonged to the realms of time and destiny. It was not their concern to speculate about what lies in the future. The sky was still dark when Nak came to the house in the middle of the fields. Hern was already waiting with an oil lamp. In the dim light of the oil lamp, the two men’s swords flashed like lightning in a thunderous sky. The night rang with the clashing of iron against iron. Sparks that flew from the furious blades looked momentarily like stars before falling earthward. The stillness of the pre-dawn air shook with the sounds of breathing, the din of shaking floorboards and the noise of the men’s bodies against the house’s wooden walls. The light moved to the unrhythmic swaying of the oil lamp in the intermittent breeze. Now and then it shone on the faces and bodies of the fighting men in the lonely house. Sweat and blood oozed down the crevices of their faces and smeared their muscular chests and arms, giving them the appearance of blood-crazed demons. Sometimes the pupils of the staring eyes gleamed red like the eyes of wild animals. The beams from the swaying lamp caught the blood-soiled blades, now making them gleam like white lightening, now losing them to darkness. The light shifted randomly, often falling repeatedly on one place while quickly glancing over others; but wherever it shone, there was always the sight of blood. The clashing of the swords, the sounds of quick breathing, the noise of bodies hitting the wooden walls and of feet on the floorboards did not stop until dawn. The pale moon had dropped behind the treetops far away in the horizon and morn awoke with shrill cockcrows. Nak stood swaying on the house at the top of the ladders, surrounded by the stirring of the new day. His eyes were unfocused; the tip of the sword in his right hand was buried in the wooden floor. Hern’s body stretched out on the floor behind him. It was deadly still. The light of the oil lamp looked wan in the morning light. His black trousers were wet with blood from the wounds on his bare chest and arms. Blood streaked his face. He staggered down the ladder, leaving the sword trembling with its tip buried deep in the wooden floor. Nak descended a few steps and fell. His body rolled to a stop against a clump of tall grass. 'Hern’s gone…,' he thought as he lay still, his breathing growing short and light. 'Master will be able to do what he wants with the fields. I’ve done my duty.' It dawned on Nak that his friendship with Hern had not ended. What had stopped was his friend’s breath. The bond of life, understanding, and honour was unbroken. Hern’s life was gone and his own was ebbing away… Nak felt tears mingling with the sweat and blood on his face. Tales that his mother used to tell drifted back - those strange tales of masters and servants that he had heard again and again as a child; the tales of masters and men, of honour and loyalty. Though he lay face down against the clump of grass, he clearly saw – one after another – his master, his wife, his children, and Hern. Then, last of all, he saw his long-dead mother. He saw her clearly. Her image lingered the longest of all … and her stories … “Mother, your stories were good but I am glad I haven’t told them to my children.” Nak was weeping because of the pain he felt in his body and in his heart. Along with the blood that flowed from his wounds, he was losing his children and his wife – his friend he had already lost. He was losing his master, too, but somehow he felt no sadness. Not the unspeakable sadness that he felt at the thought of losing his wife and children … and Hern. But the last moments of consciousness were actually tinged with a lightness of the heart. At last there would be no 'master' . The bondage had been broken. Nak and Hern were no longer bound to their masters. Nak’s fingers clutched and pulled at the grass. They left trails of bruised and broken blades as his last breath mingled with the sweetness of the morning air.

Ussiri Thamachote The S.E.A. Write Award 1981 Collection : Khunthong, You Will Return at Dawn Translated: Chamnongsri Rutnin จาก เรื่อง เช้าวันต้นฤดูฝน ในรวมเรื่องสั้นชุด ขุนทองเจ้าจะกลับเมื่อฟ้าสาง ผลงานรางวัลวรรณกรรมสร้างสรรค์ยอดเยี่ยมแห่งอาเซียน ปี 2524 ของ อัศศิริ ธรรมโชติ Illustration : Indigo It had been raining ceaselessly ..... persistently, and as the rain-swollen water brimmed over the edge of the pond in front of the hut, Buarum thought of the return of her mate with a trembling heart. Her heart .... she could feel it trembling like the ripples of light on the surface of water ruffled by falling rain. ''Praying for him to go somewhere far away? You are wishing that he knew. You hope he won't come home'' The hoarse gritty voice of the person squatting by her side broke into her thought. Buarum looked in the general direction of the speaker, then down at the sleeping baby on her breast. Giving no answer, she sighed and gazed dully across drenched paddy fields through the soft misty rain. The rain came down lightly in white thread-like lines, blown by the paddy wind into luminous curves against the grey backdrop of the sky. Its vapours captured the morning's fugitive sunbeams and refracted them into exquisite rainbow colours visible only from afar. The gentle rain made a dull symphony of low monotonous sounds on the leaves of nearby trees, the blades of grass around the hut and the palm-leaved eaves above Buarum's head. The man beside her drew up both his knees and rested his rifle on them. “ I know how you feel, It's natural with husbands and wives. I understand it, you know,'' the man spoke again, this time keeping his eyes lowered as if studying the weapon that lay hard and unfeeling across his knees. And this time Buarum really turned her face away from the lonely fields to scrutinize the man in wonder, echoing his word doubtfully, “…….understand…….” 'The man smiled at her. ''My wife has a baby. Like you,'' he said, laughing softly. ''I left home only a few days ago and I already miss them ....yes, really miss them!''. Buarum found herself laughing along with him--a short, wry mirthless laugh. She sank back into her own thoughts while her eyes watched the fragile windblown threads of rain swaying out there in the lonely space between the sky and the fields. Her thoughts went back to the day They arrived, heralded by the sound of horses hooves on the damp earth of the dyke that separated adjacent fields. It seemed to her that the first drops of this soft persistent rain had brought them, for suddenly there they were in front of her little hut. "Sain is a criminal. We're here to arrest him for robberies and murders,'' said one of the four horsemen in a loud voice. She could see that they were dressed in khaki uniforms with pakhaoma (1) cloths tied around their waists and rifles slung behind their backs. " He isn't here!'' Fear had made her shout back at them. " We know he isn't here, but we can wait for him'' , retorted the horseman and, motioning his hand at the wailing baby in her arms, he went on telling her - as if she didn't already know - ''He'll come back to you and the baby.'' ''Are you going to kill Sain? Are you?'' Already, on that very first day, her tears had been right there, ready to flow. ''Come, come. It won't be that bad,'' the same man had said to her in reply. The other three had been as silent as mutes. "We only want to arrest him, not kill him.'' Reliving that morning up to this point, Buarum knew she couldn't believe anything They said. She knew that her man would be shot down like an animal the moment he came within their rifle range. The man sitting beside her was right, she was praying with all her soul for Sain to know and to go away, far away....she was praying with all her love for her husband, praying for him not to come to her to be trapped and killed before her very eyes. “You've been worrying about him every moment since we got here,'' the man beside her was speaking again. Buarum's train of thought came to a jolt. She turned to ask him, curiously, “Are the four of you going to wait here until he comes?" "Don't know,'' he shook his head. "It's up to Chief. When Chief says leave, we leave."' ''Which one is Chief?" ' 'The one who spoke to you on the day we arrived. That's Chief. He's an officer, I'm just....a policeman. I do what he tells me to do." "Where are the three of them now?'' She asked with a curiosity mixed a sense of growing friendliness toward this uniformed stranger. "Somewhere in this village, but I can't tell you where,"' he smiled kindly at her. ''My job is just to see that you don't go outside the village - that's my job, you know." "Will Sain die?'' The question escaped while her heart beat with an unbearable dread, her gaze fixed on the face whose sunburnt smoothness betrayed the fact that its owner could not have been much older than she. The policeman's young face clouded as he looked out on the rain that was desolately caressing the empty fields. He said after a while, ''Didn't you pray for him to keep away?" Slowly, Buarum shook her head, '' It won't work. I know...and you know ....he will come." As her tears were about to brim over, the familiar picture of Sain rose up clearly, oh, so clearly, in her mind. The picture of Sain on horseback, galloping home - always during the first few rains of the monsoon each year, always with the large cotton bag slung behind him filled with the loot that he brought for her. How the sight of her waiting for him in front of the hut would make joy leap and glow in his face! "Enough for the rent and for renting the buffaloes'' he would say; and she would caution him, ''Take care, or they’ll catch you.” The sun was now shining, soft and bright; and the rain looked like windblown dust barely visible against the clearing sky. The clouds rose, rapidly twisting and soaring higher and higher, revealing the mountains that stood grey and remote on the horizon. The air in front of the hut was fragrant with the perfumes of the grass blooms and the wet earth. “Before you came to live with him, did you know that Sain was a bandit?'' The young policeman asked with a sigh. Buarum nodded simply. ''Have you tried to stop him?'' ' 'No,'' she said. "We're poor." ''Others here are poor, too, but they work and bear it.....don’t they! They work on the fields during the rain season, and find other jobs when the season's over. They don't break the law, rob and kill, like your Sain.'' He glanced briefly at the baby and said, ''If he is arrested, you and the baby will be in for a hard time.'' "Then take him alive! Don't hurt him ... don't kill him,'' she pleaded and started to weep again. ''Who knows! Sain may resist arrest. He may fight us!'' The young man spoke in a rush of unreasonable anger.. against whom, he didn't quite know. He snatched the rifle from his knees and held it in his hands. Buarum fell silent. She looked at the narrow path that led out from the small nearby woods. A passing cloud dimmed the sunlight, making the fields and the woods with its narrow path appear as dank and dejected as her own spirit this morning. ''You don't know,'' she said plaintively in the low murmuring voice of one whose thoughts were far away, ''how hard our lives have been. We suffered when we were children; we suffer now when we are grown. Our baby...its life will be hard, too. It will suffer..yes it will...it will.'' She looked down at the baby that had begun to stir from its sleep at its mother's breast and had started to cry softly. But the flow of words that had its source deep inside her would not be stopped. “We've never known what comfort is. We've never owned anything--not these fields, not this hut. We aren't like you and your people. The last time that we had drought here, we had almost nothing to eat. Sain went into the city to work, but they cheated him--yes, they did, those city people.'' The young man sat motionless for a long moment before slowly letting out his breath. He laid down the rifle and stretched arms towards the baby, saying to Buarum: “it won't stop crying. Come let me hold it for a bit.” The young policeman, in his brand new khaki uniform with pakhaoma cloth tied around his waist, gently rocked the crying baby in his arms. ''Child of a bandit!'' he said softly, briefly looking up at Buarum who managed to force out a smile despite the tear on her cheeks. ''I've been with the force only a few months....and here I am, ordered out here to catch a bandit,'' the man said. '' On the day I left, my wife cried and cried -- just like you. You see, that's why I understand.'' He laughed lightly, for all the world, as if there was a joke in what he was saying. The baby finally went to sleep against the policeman's chest. After a while, the sun came out again. A small bird on the branch of a tree near the hut chirped a few clear, warbling notes. Then, came the distant sound of a horse's hooves striking the rain-sodden earth on the path deep in the heart of the woods. It rang rapidly nearer and nearer in an urgent rhythm that betrayed the rider's impatience and yearning. "DON'T!'' The young policeman shouted with all the power of his youthful lung, laid the startled baby on the ground, and tore off after Buarum, who was screaming to her husband in a voice that rended the moist air of the wide lonely fields, making it vibrate with his name. The young man caught her and pulled her back with all his strength, while the sounds of rifle shots echoed through the woods and the fields - an ugly destructive anomaly of nature on this soft, rainy morning. The body of the rider dropped from the saddle like a bird from a branch, scattering the wet earth under the indifferent rain that was again falling in white, curved threadlike lines. Fugitive sunbeams were still refracted by the vapours into exquisite rainbow colours visible only from afar. Buarum threw herself on the ground in an abandonment of grief. Her heartbreaking repetitions of '' Sain didn't resist…..Sain didn't fight.....'' intermingled with the unknowing screams of the baby from the ground, beneath the eaves of the hut. For a full numbing minute the young policeman stood as if frozen, then he walked to the edge of the brimming pond. The rippling water sparkled with a multitude of trembling lights like a star-cluttered sky. He shook his head to drive away the blurriness that had come over his vision and felt it best to wash away telltale traces of the shameful weakness that betrayed his pitiful greenness….his newness to the profession. Yes, he had better wash them away before his chief and his comrades came near enough to see them on his face. (1)long piece of cloth used for a variety of purposes - but mostly as waist-cloth

Ussiri Thamachote The S.E.A. Write Award 1981 Collection : Khunthong, You Will Return at Dawn Translated: Chamnongsri Rutnin จาก เรื่อง ขุนทองเจ้าจะกลับเมื่อฟ้าสาง ในรวมเรื่องสั้นชุด ขุนทองเจ้าจะกลับเมื่อฟ้าสาง ผลงานรางวัลวรรณกรรมสร้างสรรค์ยอดเยี่ยมแห่งอาเซียน ปี 2524 ของ อัศศิริ ธรรมโชติ Illustration : Indigo Ever since the first rain of Lent was expected, they have been saying that Kunthong would be coming home. Yes, they have been saying that he would become a law-abiding citizen again. Not a drop of rain has fallen and the fields are parched but Mother's once barren heart blooms with hope. Mother busies herself with preparations for Kunthong's return. Kunthong had left home since last year's Lent rains. A cloth bag slung over his shoulder, he went without telling a soul - not even his own mother. Neighbours who saw him said Kunthong was fighting tears as he went bare-handed into the wild, lonely jungle. "Aren't you taking a sword?'' someone asked. ' 'I can find one later," Kunthong had said. Mother's boat moves against the current of the klong that flows slowly as if tired and disheartened. The water is low from the lack of seasonal rain. Mother is traveling to the pavilion that the authorities have set up in the town center to greet the return of her Kunthong and others like him. How can she not be eager, how can she not look forward to seeing her son's face when she hasn't seen it for so long, It must be a year now, since he has gone. She orders the servant to quicken the strokes of his paddle ''What if he doesn't come," asks the servant "Of course, he will come, he misses his mother, I know how he feels," Mother's voice is full of conviction but her face is touched with uncertainty. What if he doesn't come,.the words strike a dark lingering note. The darkness grew as she thinks back and sees, once again, Khuntong weeping on that terrible day. It was the day before he went away; her boy had wept late into the night. Mother knew he was angry, and hurt ... but who or what caused him the hurt and the anger she did not know. Was the pain so bad that he had to leave his village, his mother? Was it so bad that he could leave the comforts of home to live as an outlaw in the jungle? "It can't be...it can't be that bad," she denies in her heart. It was getting light. The horizon that stretched beyond the canal was touched with the faint gleam of dawn. Bushes and trees on the banks peer out from a pall of sadness. Huts, houses and barns sheltered by leafy branches looked empty and deserted. From the bushes on the darks banks, Kunthong's voice rings clear in Mother's mind, ''I know that I can beat them with these two bare hands." "Who are 'them'?'' She remembers that he did not tell her but showed so much anger that she was annoyed. ''Well, as long as you don't kill anyone!'' Kunthong laughed, his eyes bright with the vitality of youth. It was beyond her to imagine that death and blood would soon be part of the life he chose -- living out in the jungle with a sword in his hand. After all, she was used to seeing him with his books, never knives or swords. The chirping of birds recalls her to the present. The sky has become so light that she can see white smoke curling up from behind the distant trees.... dim white smoke against the glimmering sky. “Did you say he might not come back?" Mother asks the servant who was paddling away like a dumb robot. ''And what do you think?" he asks. “He will come back... I'm sure of it!" The servant nods and paddles faster……. Khunthong had been gone since last year's Lent, leaving sadness to keep his mother's company for so long. Now Mother can only believe that he will come back to the warmth of his home and the unchanging love of his mother. However deep the anger, it surely must fade with the changing time. Memories of past happiness are sure to make Kunthong come home. It is impossible that Kunthong will not be back this dawn. Mother has brought with her a piece of cotton string that has been blessed. She will tie it around her son’s wrist to give him good luck. She has also brought many other things for him from home. Skillfully the servant guides the boat to the landing as the morning sunlight dances on the rippling water. The mistress and the servant hurry towards the pavilion at the town center. "He is dead,'' a youth of Kunthong's age tells her. Mother sobs ... her son is dead! ' 'Did you see his corpse?'' Mother asks. ''No, not his corpse, I met him, and he asked me to tell you that he is dead.'' ''Who is he staying with?'' she asks again. ''With his sword....the sword that is stained with blood and hate!'' says the young man. The sun glares from the midday sky as Mother's boat makes its way homeward with all the stuff that she had prepared for Kunthong, Who is it that has made her gentle boy so angry? Who is it that has made him decide to die away from his mother and his home? She could not find an answer. Sounds of the paddle rhythmically dipping in the water punctuate the silence. Then Mother begins to weep again as she thinks of the loneliness awaiting her in the house.....the house where there has not been even a shadow of her Kunthong for nearly a year.

Ussiri Thamachote Translated : Chamnongsri Rutnin Short Story from S.E.A. Write Award-Winning (1981) Collection : Khunthong, You Will Return at Dawn ผลงานแปลจาก เรื่อง เสียแล้ว เสียไป ในรวมเรื่องสั้นรางวัลซีไรท์(2524) ขุนทองเจ้าจะกลับเมื่อฟ้าสาง ของ อัศศิริ ธรรมโชติ Illustration : Indigo 1 The woman reached the house in the orchard at sunset. The winter mist hung like a light veil over bushes and trees. A bird was chirping and the dog began to bark. She stopped at the gate and stood as still as a statue. The sight of a bent old man tottering from beneath the house made her want to cry -- that, and the dog which had stopped barking and was now wagging its tail, scratching the gate and darting back and forth in an ecstatic welcome. The old man unlatched the gate with shaking hands. She greeted the old man, her grandfather, with a voice as soft and light as the mist. The old man's eyes took in her left hand holding a large suitcase, and the emptiness below the sleeve where the right one should have been. A breath of cold wind made the woman shiver. The old man held her in a shaky embrace, saying: ' 'What's gone is gone.'' A tear rolled down her face and fell on the old man's faded sweater which she remembered buying for him some three or four years ago. "I've bought you a new sweater, '' she said as he took the suitcase out of her hand. ''You can throw this one away."' With the dog trotting ahead, the old man led the young woman toward the house. Tears filled his eyes and ran down the wrinkles on his old face. 2 ''It's a lot of money, we can't keep it in the house," her father said, his voice harsh and tight. ''We won't get much from a bank,'' her mother said in the same tone. "The headman told me that banks give very little interest." ''Then let's buy what we need,'' her younger sister joined in, ' 'and ask the headman to keep the rest for us.'' The woman smiled -- a brief, faint smile, and turned her gaze back to the bonfire which Grandfather was busily stirring to keep the flames glowing, Wearing the new sweater with its grey and white stripes, he looked clean and fresh, but his expression was curiously bleak and sad. "We can't trust the headman,'' her father said garrulously, ''He cheated Ai Kong last year -- all the money that Ai Kong kept with him.'' "Well, this is a lot of money...." her mother said her eyes shining with more than the reflection of the fire. ''We can buy things that we have never had. We can think of what's left later." ''Pay the carpenters to make a cart, buy an ox, and give what is left to her. It's her money,'' Grandfather spoke for the first time from his place by the fire. Tension rang in his thin old voice. "That's a stupid idea. It's going to be dry this year and the crop is going to be bad. Why waste the money!'' her father retorted angrily. ''You're right," her mother nodded in agreement. "It's cold. Shall we get a wireless?'' she turned to the silent woman. " Your sister wants one.'' ''Buy whatever you want, Mother. I give all the money to you and Father.'' Grandfather kept his gaze carefully fixed on the fire which he was busily poking and stirring. ''I want a gold chain. Only a small one,'' her sister said. “All right, a short one for the wrist. I am going to town tomorrow And you,'' Mother turned to her, "What do you want me to buy? Or have you got everything you want from Bangkok?'' "I've got everything, Mother." “Good luck comes together with bad luck,'' her father said addressing no one in particular. Grandfather's faded eyes were full of pity and understanding for the hurt in her heart. ''I'm going to bed,'' he said and left them to their bickering over the windfall. Her father wanted to buy a gun. Her sister came up with the idea of earning interest on loans to farmers who needed money for the new planting season. The dog began barking at the gate. Her father started, took an axe from the wall and held its handle tight in both hands. The woman looked at the fear on all their faces. It was not until the dog stopped barking and they heard the voice of the visitor that the fear faded. ''The village headman,'' her mother whispered. The headman had weathered the cold night wind to come and express his concern at the tragedy that had befallen her. ''I was the one who read the factory manager's letter to your father,'' he told her as he raised the right sleeve of her coat to reveal the pathetic stump below her elbow. ''They gave me ten thousand.'' ''The whole village knows that,'' he laughed, then whispered to her father, ''That's why I'm here, It's dangerous. The money should be kept at my house tonight. Don't you trust me?'' Her parents were reluctant, but the headman finally carried the money away in a bag of rice. "Why do you trust him!'' her mother scolded. ''The headman is honest. He wouldn't lie,'' her father answered uneasily. ' 'You said he cheated Ai Kong'' ' 'Well... it's probably just a rumour,'' her father replied, without seeming to believe his own words. ''Still, I hope we won't lose the money.'' "The headman is an honest man. Everyone knows that.'' the woman cut in for the first time. Her voice was hard. The two older people fell silent. Uneasiness crept into the night air. A sharp kick from her father made the affectionate dog at his feet yelp. The man strode angrily up into the house. ''Stupid'' her mother cried to his receding back. The woman recalled that her mother's brown eyes had been as excited as her father's when she had opened her suitcase to reveal the bundle of money that gleamed red in the lamp's light. Her sister had not been able to hide the greedy delight that shone in her eyes. 3 As the night grew late, the wind grew colder. The woman could not sleep because of what Grandfather had said to her before she come to bed. ''hey are all crazy about the money,'' his frail hand stroked her hair. "Well, people are like that.'' She lay coiled under the warm blanket, her eyes open. The oil lamp was turned down to a tiny flame that was the only spot of colour in the darkness of the room. The wind blew through the chinks in the wooden walls and made the light from the low flame dance on the ceiling and walls. ''Shadow of the Fiend,'' she cursed silently as she stroked the empty sleeve and wept. ''What's gone is gone,'' she consoled herself. The chaotic noise of the factory engine roared in her memory like the laughter of derisive fiends. The machine severed her right wrist with its sharp claws, iron blades as sharp as a sword. Not sated with the blood, it sucked dry her feelings, her life, her soul. The bloodthirsty Fiend plundered everything. She thought back to the days before she had lost her hand. The days when she had been innocent of the realities of life and human baseness. She had been able to find happiness as an ordinary, unimportant person who knew what it was to love and yearn for family and friends far away at home. She had possessed the will to face the problems of the world and, most of all, to bear the responsibilities of supporting her very poor family. When the Fiend had severed her hand, she became a cripple who returned home with loneliness and defeat. Worse - the large sum of money that was the 'compensation' for her lost hand took away everything that she ever valued in her life. It was the shadow of the Fiend that had followed her home to destroy whatever was left. It wanted more than her hand ... the greedy Friend! She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, listening to the song of a night bird that sang out in the cold air. It was not the coldness of the small hours of the morning nor The barking of the dogs that startled her from sleep and made her sit up in fright. It was two gunshots that sounded close together, and the footsteps that made the whole house tremble. Urgent knocking on the door was followed by her mother's quavering call. "Open the door, quick!" Her left hand fumbled at the latch. When the door opened she saw two men standing behind her parents and her sister. The rifles which shone black in their hands made her knees shake. She stumbled back against the wall. They searched her suitcase, scattering her clothes on the floor, then looked up at each member of the family. "I told you the money is with the headman. Go and rob his house. Go,'' sobbed her sister. It was after the strangers had gone into the morning mist that a thought suddenly came into her head and she rushed down the steps. On the small path that led to the gate, the bodies of Grandfather and the dog lay close together in a pool of blood. Grandfather's body was still warm though his eyes were closed. She put her arms around him and her head against his shoulder. ''Tears did not flow, except for one drop which fell on the grey-striped sweater and mixed with the redness of the blood. 5 The headman brought back the money in the rice bag and returned it in the presence of all the people who came to the house that morning. He advised her father to take it to the district bank accompanied by the police who had come to inspect Grandfather's corpse… The dog was already buried. Grandfather would be cremated tomorrow. “It was a good thing that the headman kept the money for us. Otherwise it would all be gone,'' her mother told the neighbours who had come to call. Her face was a little sadder than usual. ''Good luck and bad luck come at the same time,'' her father added. His face was a little sad, too. ''Mother promises to buy me a bracele.,'' she heard her sister's voice. ''You look really bad, not like the others,'' the headman said to her in a low voice. “She loved her grandfather a lot,'' her mother overheard and answered for her It was getting late, but the sun still looked like an orange in the whiteness of the mist. The paddy fields were white. The village was covered with a pall of clammy coldness. She sat watching the white mist that was slowly lifting over the distant line of trees. She saw in it a streak of redness. She thought of the colour of blood and of that bundle of money. 6 She left the house in the orchard as the sun was setting in the haze of the winter air. The day's last bus with its yellow headlights drove on and on through the translucent mist. She wondered where she intended to go, but couldn't find the answer. She only knew that she wanted to go far away and never to return home. Tears now flowed freely, tears that had been held back since her arrival yesterday at dusk.