The White Shadow Read online

  THE WHITE SHADOW

  SANEH SANGSUK

  the white shadow TRANSLATED FROM THE THAI BY MARCEL BARANG

  © THAI MODERN CLASSICS

  Internet edition 2009 | All rights reserved

  Original Thai edition, Ngao See Khao, 1994

  9786117107115

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  the white shadow TRANSLATED FROM THE THAI BY MARCEL BARANG

  Copyright Page

  hymn to the dead

  death comes to the show

  the white star

  destruction of a dream

  the eclipse

  the festival of sprites

  the way of the sinner

  death merely says hello

  the gypsy’s dream

  the hut of the ascetic

  the peacock spreads its tail in the rain

  love offered as a sacrifice

  dream song

  thanthakhart

  hymn to the dead

  ‘Live? Our servants will do that for us.’

  Axel’s Castle, Edmund Wilson

  There’s a sound coming out from deep inside my cranium, coming out from the horizon deep inside my cranium and floating down over the parched, rubblestrewn open fields deep inside my cranium. This sound is a faint, husky, nagging voice. This voice says You’ve got to do it. This voice says Dawn is still far away, thus you must do it. This voice sometimes trails away, but sometimes it is clear and it grows increasingly clear during the night, because during the night I can’t sleep, because during the night my mind is restless and jumbled, because it is during the night that I’m fully awake. Thus I’ve decided to confess. I have no choice. Maybe you don’t understand, but if you were me you’d understand. It’s most necessary that you do it. This voice goes on and on, refusing to abate or hide away. Time passes and passes and passes still. I don’t know what to do with time. Time is in short supply. I don’t know how much time I’ve got left in this world. I’m weak. I’ve decided to confess. It’s dusk already; darkness is here again. It’s dark and quiet and cold. Darkness and quiet have come quickly but cold is always here, a biting cold sometimes, and now it’s biting and the further into the night the further it’ll bite. Here it’s dusk already, past eight already. There’s no electricity and I had to light the lamp. Nothing like in Bangkok. This here is a village of the rural North, remote and forlorn. The house I live in is a deserted house, close to the cremation site and very far from the other houses of the village. It’s the house that suits me best – or that’s how I feel, I don’t know why: a vacant dilapidated house for someone like me with a vacant dilapidated life. I’ve decided to confess: I’ve slept with Khwan – Khwan your bosom friend. Only four hours ago I slept with her and then I walked her to the village because she’d left her van there and I came back here and went to sleep and now I’ve just woken up. I must have slept for a little over three hours, but here I am awake again, grappling with a never-ending night, a sleepless night of fear and torment, a night similar to every other night. But for all that, night is what suits someone like me best – or that’s how I feel, I don’t know why. Three months already that I haven’t done anything valid. In the daytime I sleep; at night I lie with eyes wide open in the dark or in the mean lamplight like now, and whether in the daytime or at night I do nothing valid. What’s the date today? I only know this is the end of February, the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh of February. The cold wind still blows hard and the air is chilly as is only natural by the end of the cold season. And this is my funeral, I’ve decided. Kangsadarn, I’m talking to you as a dead man. I’ve arranged my funeral quietly and simply without ceremony. I’ve died quietly and simply without ceremony. Only a few people have come to take part in my funeral. You’re one of them. The atmosphere of my funeral is forlorn. There’s no religious ritual. I shouldn’t have slept with Khwan, I know, but I wanted to. I knew that if I did I’d be sad, disturbed, anxious and ashamed – ashamed because I’m not a man worth her sleeping with, ashamed because I’ve deceived her, ashamed because, if truth be told, I don’t love her but I made as if I did and behaved well enough for her to accept to sleep with me. But sooner or later she’ll know the truth and she’ll feel bad and sorry and disappointed and one day or another or one night or another or at one point or another, when she recalls this she’ll be sad, disturbed, anxious and ashamed. I suppose I slept quite a long time and I’ve just woken up. I’d like every waking of mine to be like the awakening of a baby opening its eyes to the world. I’d like every waking of mine to be like a new birth, having done nothing beforehand but lie still in my mother’s womb, curled up in the matrix of ignorance. I wouldn’t like to wake up to find myself confronted by all kinds of memories roaming around in darkness like a pack of wolves with glittering eyes, smirking chops baring fangs, and snarls of deliberate evil. I love you. Welcome to my funeral. And here I am, see, this corpse feigning cheeriness, chattering away with fake delight. I love you. For a long time I’ve been lying every night thinking This will be the last night of my life. But even though I’ve been thinking like this for a long time, I still have gone to the trouble of sleeping with Khwan and Khwan happens to be a decent person, a respectable woman, not a sex adventuress. I don’t want to hurt respectable people. Hurting them will only make it more difficult for me to find sleep. She’s come to see me here many times, but she told me that tomorrow she may not come. She told me she’d let me be on my own, let me get on with my writing. Fancy that! She hasn’t got a clue. She’s still hoping I’m going to write. You yourself may still be expecting me to get on with my writing. Let me tell you right now it’s most unlikely. You must be mad at me to be looking for trouble. I’ve slept with Khwan though Itthee’s death is still very recent. You must be curious about Itthee Phoowadon’s suicide, but we won’t talk about this, at least not now; maybe we’ll talk about it later or else I’ll keep this a secret I’ll take with me to the grave. I didn’t rape Khwan, all right? I didn’t rape her, I didn’t trick her in any way. She was willing enough; she must have felt lonely. She’s been away from Bangkok for ages and she goes back there once in a blue moon, so she must have felt lonely. As for me I was just back from Bangkok so I had many things to tell her, many good books to lend her, and I had many good songs on tape for her to borrow and listen to. So she and I became close real quick. Actually if you’d told her I was your lover she probably wouldn’t have dared to get close to me; she’d have been careful to keep me at a distance. But there you were, unwilling to tell her so yourself. To the contrary, you told her you and I were just friends, there was nothing serious between us. You must have further explained that as a friend you were worried for me because I’d received severe psychological shocks. You asked her to take good care of me, didn’t you? And then what happened? I am a romantic barbarian of feral disposition, so she became mine as a matter of course. She doesn’t mind that I’m a starving hack. Her salary as usaid interpreter is more than comfortable so that she hardly knows what to do with her money. Here, the town is very small, there are no cinemas, theatres or shopping arcades as in Bangkok. She bought this deserted house in the middle of an orchard with her own money and left it like that – actually she only wanted the patch of land but this haunted house happened to sit on it and she has yet to have it pulled down. She doesn’t mind the scar on my face either, but you do: every time you see it, you hold your breath. But Khwan doesn’t; she’s even kissed it. She even asked me how I managed to get such an ugly wound. I told her we weren’t going to talk about it – at least not now, or else I’d keep this a secret I’d take with me to the grave. I didn’t tell her either that in the past you and I used to be lovers and we’ve made love thousands of times. I didn’t let on any of th
is, I kept it secret. There’s only you and I who know we made love thousands of times. Khwan asked me if I’d dare marry her… share life together… work in tandem. The way she talks is straightforward and naive, but with a trace of daydreaming as well – the daydreaming of a young woman in love. When she asked me that, we were lying naked under the same blanket. How could I say no? To say no would have spoilt the whole act. Leave this deserted house and move in with her… She’s presuming too much. She knows me very little. She doesn’t realise that maybe tomorrow I’ll run away from her. Don’t make such a face, darling. Pull yourself together. This is my funeral, you know, and you’re my guest of honour. But she does know me very little. One could almost say she doesn’t know me at all. She doesn’t know how rundown I am, how putrid I am, how tormented I am, how vulgar I am. She merely thinks I’m a weird fellow endowed with uncommonly sound mental health. The bloody idiot! Women are a great and bloody stupid sex. Love doesn’t simply turn you blind; it also grows pimples all over your face. Sex is a good sleeping drug, but sex, once you’re through with it, leaves you weary and sad. It’s superb but it’s sad as well. My mother entered my dreams several days ago. My mother’s long been dead. I hadn’t dreamt of her in ages and, in the dream, she told me she’d be sorry if I slept with Khwan even though she never met her. She didn’t tell me this in words. She expressed herself through silence: my mother comes from the heart of silence. She merely looked at me with hostile, sad and hateful eyes. In the dream, my mother held out a white jasmine garland from the nether world for me to hang round my neck, but I stared deep into her eyes and shook my head in absolute refusal for I knew that to receive that garland and put it round my neck meant accepting to commit suicide. My mother was furious and left as quietly as she’d come. That dream haunted my thoughts for a long while and prevented me from going back to sleep. I’d like to fall asleep fast and sleep until dawn. Maybe tonight I’ll go back to taking sleeping pills. Nights here are scary. For me, all nights are scary enough no matter where, but nights in this deserted house are even scarier. Powerful sleeping pills might be the best way out. I hate sleeping pills, barbiturates, antiseptics, analgesics and what have you. I don’t want them to trespass into my life. But the last time I went into town I told fibs to the chemist to get all the drugs I needed, forbidden drugs all. If I die, don’t put yourself out for me: cremate my crummy body any which way as a corpse no relatives will ever claim. I’m again making life difficult for you. I know I disgust you, bother you, shock you and make you feel pity. I’ve seen you looking increasingly estranged. From now on you’ll never see me again, you’ll never hear from me again. If I happen to talk to you, it’ll only be in my head. There are many things I’d like to tell you, I’d like to confess, I’d like to explain. I can’t take it any longer. And there are many other things I don’t want to tell you, don’t want to confess, don’t want to explain. I can’t take it any longer. Death moves around me. The particles of mental turmoil float around me. Life gives out a feeble light like the lousy candle in my cranium. I love you. I know that I love you. I know that, in the darkness and silence, death is staring at me. At times death moves, at times death stays still, at times death lies low, at times death howls in loneliness like the Sphinx baying at the moon in the desert, at times death flutters like a cloud of butterflies, but death stares at me without flinching. This old rundown deserted house alone amid an orchard long left to a careless state of neglect, it’s been more than three months that I’ve lived in it all by myself, cooking for myself, washing my own clothes, reading, listening to pure music and writing, trying to gather my wits, trying to block the way to the mob that rouses the animal in me – and here I am sleeping with Khwan your friend. I don’t know how many years you’ve known each other. I only know you both work at usaid, except that you are stuck in the main office in Bangkok whereas Khwan has been sent to do field work here as interpreter to an old American civil engineer. She stays rent-free in a small detached house painted white on the project grounds that boasts the magnificent and protected view of a water reservoir. You figured that as time went on the more I degenerated, like a pedigree dog gone mad on the street. So you contacted Khwan to find a house for me to rent and grabbed hold of me and chucked me into the train that brought me here. At the terminal, Khwan was waiting for me. She came straight at me and greeted me as if she’d always known me. You must have explained to her with a luxury of details in your letter that the bloke with the mixed-up, sad, scruffy, mercurial looks was me with a scar on his face easy to spot. She took me to a house up for rent, but when I learned she had a deserted house in an orchard just as deserted half a dozen miles or so out of town, I thought I’d scrape a bit and with due respect asked her, if she had no objection and it was no trouble, to let me stay in that house, and this is how I find myself here as I wished. The end result is that, besides saving a bit of money, I am left with my heart in my mouth. I never sent a letter to you. I merely wrote to you many times in my head. You must be thinking I’m staying in a rented house in town. I myself had never thought I’d end up in this haunted place. But if I came here it was because of the romantic mood that grabbed me on the spot. This cursed hovel is damn scary and I can’t do any writing, I the sorry poetaster, I so true to myself, I the expert in yoni meditation. Why! She was the one who let me focus on it, you know. Slowly, in a roundabout way, she let me focus on it. So of course I did. Well, I’m only human, aren’t I? So what? Insofar as she made no bones about me focusing on it like that, you’d like me to turn my back on her and run away, would you? Don’t be angry: I’m just pretending to take it as a joke whereas in fact I feel ashamed and guilty. Itthee has just well and truly died. O women! Women! Women! Women already dead and women still alive! I even forgot myself, calling Khwan Itthee several times. I can’t take it any longer, Kangsadarn. All that’s happened is too much. I keep doing all that’s forbidden. Sleeping with Khwan is the latest offence to date and I can’t take it any longer. I used to dream I’d be a stout-hearted Spartan, a Stoic without equal. I used to dream I could walk through a hail of meteorites without flinching. But now I’m weak and lethargic. I’ve aged ten years in no time. I can’t take it any longer. It’s time for me to put a stop to this state of degeneration. My hair is tousled and tangled up like algae in a slimy gutter. My beard is tousled and tangled up like algae in a slimy gutter. The wrinkles of melancholy and anxiety make deep, stark furrows across my forehead and at the corner of my eyes. The scar that stretches from my left eye via my cheekbone down to my jaw is more obvious than ever. You’d be hard put recognising me. Daen himself almost didn’t. The last time we met, he said he didn’t recognise me. That meeting between him and me was so frigging cool – the encounter of a failed rhymester and a crippled warrior. We hadn’t met in years, but he probably never thought I’d let myself go to such an extent. Do you still remember him? You never met him, but I spoke to you about him a few times. I left him when I was a teenager and he must have hoped to find me in better shape than this – at any rate not like the human wreck that I am. But he himself is in an even sorrier state. Daen Chartiya-wan… He stepped into my life as in a dream and from the very bottom of my unconscious I’d like him to vanish out of my life as in a dream. For years I’ve been trying to chase him out of my thoughts. I’ve told myself I’ve many things to see to, to care for, to deal with. I’m always coldly rejecting him but he keeps waiting for me. I’m his hope! He doesn’t know that I’m not worth the wait, too worthless to be anyone’s hope, too worthless, wicked, vicious, vile, a bastard without qualities that nothing but negative epithets can qualify. I was ashamed. I didn’t want to meet him. I didn’t know where to put myself. He himself had many things to tell me, to reveal to me. He pleaded and threatened for me to do what he wanted. He wanted me to go back to Phraek Narm Daeng! Phraek Narm Daeng, that accursed village! Phraek Narm Daeng, the village where I was born. The way he talked, it sounded like the last wish of a dying man. The way he behaved, I felt compelled to pay back a de
bt while I’m penniless. And I truly am in his debt. Not a debt of money but a debt of gratitude. An enormous one, actually. I’ve always tried to avoid any memories of Phraek Narm Daeng. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t go to Phraek Narm Daeng barely seven days ago, and it was exactly as I had always thought: that trip back did nothing but make everything worse. He wasn’t aware that he was pushing me into the vortex of madness. He wasn’t aware that returning to Phraek Narm Daeng made me use analgesics, antibiotics, barbiturates and sleeping drugs more than ever. Even now I dare not even pause to imagine how he has spent his days and nights since he lost his leg, dare not even pause to think how he has grappled with the whirlwind of memories that beats down on him mercilessly. I too have many things to ask him, if I’m free enough, if I’m in a good enough mood. His experience of war… Occasionally I’m in a mood to learn more about these things: blood, war and foolish courage, daft pride and honour, our hero confined to a wheelchair, our hero who must learn to walk anew with made-in-Thailand crutches and an artificial leg, the war he went through and out of… His life is radically different from yours or mine. He was my guardian in the past. He’s like my elder brother. He cleared the way to the future for me. He’s a decent man, but he’s a goddamn soldier. In the scope of his thoughts, the battlefield overshadows any other scene, with blood, with death, with booby-trapped pits and landmines, and caskets wrapped in the national flag, with male friendships, with off-duty booze-ups, with entertainment areas and their female sex workers and no holds barred brawls. Radically different from your way of life or mine. Vietnam, Laos and the southern border, the scenes of mega destruction when Long Chen fell, when the Plain of Jars had to be evacuated… the brothels of Vientiane… the fighting scenes in the field of his memories… There are demons on the prowl, the demons of the men of war, Alexander, Cesar and Napoleon, Patton and McArthur and Rommel. O soldiers! Soldiers! Soldiers! Sheep! Sheep! Sheep! These things are as far away from me as the stars at the far end of the sky. And now he’s crippled. He has to train to walk anew with made-in-Thailand crutches and an artificial leg. As a result, I feel like a snake beaten to a pulp here and now. Better be dead than live on as a loser. He’d better die for good. He should be dead for good. The woman he loved dumped him. He must’ve been reduced to masturbation. He’s an important character in my life. I used to think he should write. He’s a soldier, but he likes to read. Although it can’t be said he’s partial to literature, he does read. Quite a lot, actually. But it isn’t at all certain that even those that read a lot and are partial to literature can write well. You too are an important character in my life. If I say this, it’s because you like to read novels and you read too much, which may make you feel you’re very clever whereas in fact you’re merely old-fashioned and touchy. You’re someone decent and darn stupid. Right now, now that I lie curled up like an old foetus in this deserted house, you in your luxurious apartment in Bangkok, the foremost libido capital in the world, outdoing even Sodom, maybe you’re sitting quietly reading a novel, a highly civilised way of having a rest. Or maybe you’re reading poems while quietly swearing to yourself that One of these days I too shall write some. Well, go ahead! Welcome to the latest female poet of this fairyland. You should write, you know. I’d like you to. Thinking is peculiar to the gods; writing or dreaming of writing is peculiar to feeble-minded water buffaloes. I don’t write anymore. I don’t think or dream of writing anymore. I’ve asked myself thousands of times what it is that makes us write well and finally I’ve got the answer: blood and madness and villainy and death – thick blood and never dull madness and villainy of the darkest black like a panther in the dead of night or a flock of solitary crows in hell, and death that haunts you like a demon no sorcerer can ever exorcise. What I should do is kill someone or kill myself. According to the grammar of reality I should kill someone or kill myself. But let’s not talk about Daen Chartiya-wan, at least not now. He’s a cripple. Of his left leg only a short stump is left. His leg won’t grow back… His very own leg… It isn’t anybody else’s leg, it isn’t your leg, it isn’t my leg: it’s his leg and it won’t grow back. And he’s waiting for me to go back to see him and in the name of gratitude I should go back to see him. In the name of gratitude which keeps begging soundlessly on and on, I really should go back to see him. And in front of that lousy gratitude I have but empty hands and a screwed-up face. My hands make as if to blow smoke away from my eyes and I merely mutter uh-uh ah-ah uh uh ah ah. I’m at a loss for words to express my torment. My groans merely resound in my chest. They are the groans of Prometheus watching a flock of vultures across the sky. I don’t know why I feel like this but nonetheless I do feel this is the right formulation. I’m Prometheus. I’m Prometheus forever in chains. Therefore we won’t talk about Daen Chartiya-wan, at least not now. I’m like a berserk spider lost in its tattered web or like a pupa demonically busy spinning, plaiting, weaving, binding its own chrysalis corpse. We won’t talk about Daen Chartiya-wan, at least not for the time being, because his leg won’t grow back. A leg is neither a nail nor a strand of hair or beard. It isn’t your leg and it isn’t my leg. Here it’s dark, quiet and chilly. The babble of the brook down below is light and steady and sometimes smothered by the screech of insect wings or the raspy swish of leaves under brisk gusts of wintry wind. The mooing of a cow comes out of somewhere in the village far away and there’s a strange noise that comes interfering as well. It sounds like someone’s deep breathing. Someone or something. Can you hear it? The night is frightening. I told Khwan that I was worried stiff but it was by and large bearable. I didn’t want her to laugh at me behind my back. She told me I could always go back to the rented house she had selected for me at first or just as well move into her house at the project. I don’t know. No matter what, I like to live alone. But tell me now: if it were you, would you dare to live alone? Khwan told me she wouldn’t be surprised if all of a sudden I packed my rucksack and went because I’d come across something really weird. Several people in the village told me the same thing. Before I came, it used to be the dwelling of a Khmer witch doctor. The day I came here, Khwan merely dropped me off in the village, as she didn’t know me well enough and besides she said she had work to do at the office. By then, it was late afternoon. She wasn’t too happy with herself, though: she’d have liked to welcome a stranger like me properly. She said there was no electricity. She tried to talk me out of it by advancing all kinds of reasons, but I just listened without saying a word. The village here has only thirty houses or so, built at a distance from one another. The village itself is some three kilometres away from the main road. The red earth track leading to it is bumpy as hell. There are herds of cows, walls of bamboo wattle, chicken coops and simple country folk as in villages everywhere. From the mere glimpse I had of the village, I felt satisfied. Maybe it was because I had it up to here with Bangkok that I enjoyed finding myself in country surroundings like that. Khwan is popular. Everyone in the village knows her. But after she left steering her small, rattling, bouncing pickup van, I began to feel how much of an alien I was here. What was scruffy me with scruffy long hair and scruffy rucksack up to in a hole like this? The villagers were all friendly, but the village dogs were barking all-together-now. In the village’s little grocery store four or five fellows sat chewing the cud. When they knew I was to stay at the house, one of them told me in his northern twang I should buy incense and candles before I left to offer to the spirit of the place when I got here. I merely smiled at them. They smiled back. At the edge of the village there squats the slaughterhouse. It’s summarily built: a roof over a cement area without any walls. The place reeks of blood. This is where Mr Kho-khart works. He is an ordinary man, but his trade is peculiar. Beyond the slaughterhouse, the sandy earth footpath cuts through tall grass and scrubs, and I soon caught sight of the house, which stood gloomy and grey among trees. Not far beyond it is the cremation site. Nobody told me it was the cremation site; I’ve figured this out by myself since. This house is very old – close to
a hundred years, I reckon. It stands in an orchard of about six acres. Khwan bought it for a mere fifty thousand baht. The former owner is none other than the local village chief. Khwan often has to travel around these parts and, as she got along well with the village chief, he sold her the plot. He sold it because he had a pressing need for cash. He has lots of property hereabouts; keeping this one would’ve been unprofitable. There had even been freeloaders who asked to stay there, such as that black magic practitioner of Khmer extraction. And it’s here, darling, that I live; it’s here, my love, that my soul is convalescing. The house is waiting for me like a wild beast awaits its prey. I have the impression that, even if I stay here until the end of my days, I’ll never get used to it. The patterns carved in the woodwork of the windows and air-duct panels are peculiar, reminiscent of Shan artistry. The floor which sags and squeaks under every footstep or even every time the wind blows a little hard is made of teakwood. The pillars too are of teakwood. On one side a wall has gone missing, but a panel of bamboo wattle has replaced it, roughly held in place by strings of rusty barbed wire. A flimsy, wobbly staircase tilts all the way up to an empty doorframe. Everything is covered with dust. Musty smells float all around – smells of all sorts of old things, smells of the shabby white roof tiles, the rust of iron chains, old rickety tables with drawers full of dust and refuse, old rickety chairs, dead leaves and chunks of bark, ancient blankets in tatters and striped mattresses that ooze kapok like wounds ooze pus, smell of the cobwebs that dangle down in clutters, smells of dog shit and dog piss… No matter how many times I clean the place, these stubborn smells remain, they simply won’t fade. The windows are as wide as my arm is long. One is facing north; out of the other, facing west, you can see the crematory and the mortuary pavilion. The house has two floors. On the first floor are the kitchen and the bathroom. The upper floor has only one room, with two sealed-up windows and a doorframe but no door. Everywhere else has been left empty and bare. That room has something mysterious even in broad daylight, as if it were the very heart of inauspiciousness, as if that place had been used by someone to commit a murder. I’ve gone into that room only a few times even though at first I thought I’d use it as my bedroom. All around the house there are only trees of various sizes. Discoloured thrusting branches, twigs and even treetops have sneaked in through crevices in the walls. Under the roof there’s a dense tangle of creepers whose names I don’t know, some dead, some still sappy. A huge teak tree has grown against the eastern side of the house and when, sitting at my writing desk, I look outside I see its enormous trunk and fork. It looks like a tree from the dawn of time. A strip of frayed, faded saffron monk robe is wrapped around the bottom part of the trunk. A little distance away stands a small spirit house crammed with clay figurines of servants, cows, buffaloes, elephants and horses, and stumps of incense sticks and candles. Dry flower petals are scattered all over like so many shards of dreams. Part of the foliage of that teak tree towers above the house as if to protect it from human invasion, but at the same time compels it to shrink upon itself with a power beyond grasp. I’ve known from the first time I ventured into the orchard that actually this deserted house is devoid only of human presence, because a pack of stray dogs dwells here and has taken over both the lower and upper floors. They do their business, eat, sleep and mate here freely. I met some of them as soon as I walked into the orchard. They growled, bared their fangs and pawed the ground in a display of enmity. Every night they gather below the house, on the stairs, on the outer platform, and in concert bark and howl as if they wanted to evict me. But on the nights when the slaughterer goes about his work, they go and mass around the circle of light of the pressure lantern, their eyes fixed on the three or four human beings busy quartering and cutting up cows, in the hope of getting some scraps. They yapped at my heels as I walked around surveying my new dwelling. I found four or five bottles of local moonshine at the foot of the stairs, as well as a twelve-chronicles prayer book with smudged torn covers and three or four small Buddha powder-amulets placed on the platform of a long-ago shrine. Bunched-up ceremonial thread lay on the ground near a plaster image of a panther with ears missing. On one of the walls, a charcoal-scrawled poem gushed ‘O how solicitous our love in the past / All too soon wilted and had us slain.’ I don’t know whose poem this is. But such is my abode. Such is the place where I find myself convalescing. Such is the place where I’ve decided to hold my own funeral. It’s redolent of the stench of fright and that fright keeps growing and exerting stifling pressure. At night I can’t sleep, tormented and restless alone in the darkness, the quiet and the cold amid sundry scary noises. Night after night I yearn for dawn and at times during that long wait I freak out. In the daytime there’s nothing to fear at all. This is but an ordinary deserted house. The funeral procession of villagers I once happened to see was an ordinary funeral procession, with an ordinary coffin on an ordinary cart. The people in the procession were ordinary people. The novice or monk I don’t know which who dedicated merit to the deceased was an ordinary monk or novice. The funeral pyre, though, was not ordinary. It was made of two thick layers of bricks supporting iron rods large enough to accommodate a coffin. Firewood was placed under the coffin and lit. But the smoke from the cremation was ordinary smoke. The downcast expression on the faces attending the funeral was an ordinary downcast expression. The teak tree whose branches creak against the roof here is also an ordinary teak tree. In the daytime the secluded and serene atmosphere here is most cheery. When you look outside you only see the green of the trees. Butterflies and dragonflies swarm over the gourd flowers and sunflowers. At the northern end of the orchard there’s a brook with crystal-clear waters. I wash and swim in it every day. Its bed is deep and its current strong. On either bank you find only the green of bushes and creepers, far away from humankind, giving me the impression of being the first or the last man on earth. I swim against the current pushing myself to the limit or else I float and rest my head against a rock or a root, turning my face away from the soft blond sunshine that percolates through the leaves. Sometimes I’ve even kept on lying thus until I almost drifted into sleep, feeling happy and safe, as if I’d never known any of the nightmares of life. In the orchard the grass grows thick and wild. The slaughterer tethers his cattle here for them to graze. He goes about the countryside buying cattle he’ll kill by and by. Those that aren’t yet scheduled for slaughter he must fatten. The slaughterer is a quiet fellow, but on some days he talks to me. On some days I go and talk to the cattle, talk to them before they are turned into carcasses. I cut the tender top branches of rain trees for them to chew, stroke their heads, and inquire about their health in a low voice. There are all sorts, young ones, old ones, calves and heifers, bullocks and cows, some hardly more than babies. Those in the prime of life and the old ones seem to know the fate that awaits them. These are sad cattle. Their sadness expresses itself mostly in their eyes. They behave as strangers to one another yet each endeavours to get to know the others, but as soon as the wind changes direction and brings to them the stench of blood from the slaughterhouse, they panic. Their tethers stretch to breaking point. Some of them even bellow, hopeless and lonely. The calves haven’t a clue and keep chomping and romping about. They like to tease their elders. They challenge them with their horns playfully. If the adult reacts, they can’t resist and must break away. Some good-sort bulls pretend to be defeated and the young calf at once swells with conceit and starts again, but as he butts him with his horns he suddenly pulls his head away and runs around the bullock and from behind throws his head between the hind legs. He must’ve thought he was playing with his mother, who, when he’s tired or hungry, has milk to give him; he thinks the bullock he’s just challenged with his horns has udders. These calves are the soul of innocence. They really haven’t a clue. When they see the cattle panic at the smell of blood, they’re puzzled, roll their big eyes in all directions and feel restless. In the daytime I often talk to these cows, stroke their heads, stroke the skull between
their horns, where the slaughterer will with all his might hurl down his sledgehammer that weighs I don’t know how many pounds. But I’ve got nothing against the slaughterer. Killing is his job and those nights that he kills cows are nights during which I’m not scared. Looking towards the slaughterhouse, I see the light of the pressure lantern; I see Mr Kho-khart and his two or three assistants bustling about in that light. At times I hear their voices faintly. I don’t feel lonely any longer. In the silence and the darkness I hear the sharp blows of the sledgehammer against the skulls, sometimes three or four times when some strong cow refuses to die without fuss. I hear the cow’s hooves kicking the cement floor, sometimes repeatedly and persistently. The animal being killed must be a strong cow that refuses to die without fuss even though it’s already collapsed under the blows. On those nights of slaughter, I’m not afraid. I don’t feel lonely any longer. The killing starts around three in the morning and the quartering comes to an end at the break of day. I actually wait until three in the morning so that I can no longer feel lonely. On slaughtering nights, the dogs don’t howl. They wait for the time to form a ring at the rim of the funnel of light of the lantern. I’ve got nothing against Mr Kho-khart. One morning, he even brought me a casserole full of boiled veal. It had a milky smell, or was it just my imagination? Once he had left, I threw the chunks of meat to the dogs. I never dream of Itthee Phoowadon. I can’t get her out of my mind, but when I sleep I never dream about her. And I never dream of Nart. I can’t get him out of my mind, but when I sleep I never dream about him. Do you still remember Nart Itsara, that friend of mine who used to draw portraits to order in the streets? And I never dream about you. I can’t get you out of my mind, but when I sleep I never dream about you. For me, you’re a solitary white flower, a solitary white swan, a solitary white star in the dark. Nartaya too was a solitary white star in the dark, but she’s exploded and scattered and fallen out of the sky, has slowly and painfully exploded and fallen back slowly and painfully. Nartaya was a solitary white star, a solitary white virgin, a solitary white goddess, but she’s exploded and scattered and fallen out of the sky. You don’t know Nartaya Phisutworrakhun. I’ve never talked to you about her. And you don’t know Darreit. I’ve never talked to you about her. Darreit is a plastic goddess, a plastic woman. Darreit Waeojan seems to have been synthesised in some lab somewhere. Since I’ve been here, I haven’t written to you. Actually, I did write, but I never finished and never sent you anything. But you keep writing to me, keep sending me books, sending me tapes, which you address to Khwan and Khwan brings them to me. Your letters and gifts make Khwan visit me often. She must park her pickup van in the village and walk across the woody grassland to come to me, beating the tufts of grass with a branch all the way – she is scared stiff of snakes. She’s a good driver, impressively so. She drives fast and spunky. Same thing riding a motorbike – fast and spunky. She wears jeans, a shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and ankle-high boots. But lately she’s been bringing me flowers – I mean, since we’ve become close. Yet we never talk about love. I’m too hard-nosed to talk about love and she is too reluctant to talk about love, because she’s aloof very much like a man. But she’s invited me to go and stay with her. I kept quiet. I neither accept nor refuse anything when women are in a sensitive and incoherent mood. I know her very little. She knows me very little. She listens and seems to understand when I say slowly and cautiously I only came here to write poetry. She listens and seems not to understand when I say slowly and cautiously writing poetry is a painful profession and so far as I know the Buddha in his cycle of reincarnations never made it as a poet. He reincarnated himself as an elephant, a bird, a tiger, a cow, a monkey and even a frigging monitor lizard, but never as a poet. She is no white swan, no white flower and no white star either. I still don’t know what she is. Maybe it’ll be only when I’ve left her that I’ll know what she is. I’ve told her frankly that every so often I’d merge into solitude and hold lengthy monologues with the sky and the trees and the cows and the birds. She listened and said she understood, even though she didn’t look like she did. She doesn’t know that in my shoulder bag there is a haunted knife. She doesn’t know that my whole being was born out of pain. She doesn’t have a clue that I’m a romantic barbarian. She merely thinks I’m a strange man. She doesn’t know that I subscribe fully to Nietzsche’s idea that writings of quality must be written with blood. I don’t understand women and I don’t try to understand them. I don’t think Shakespeare understood women when he wrote Ah, woman, your name is fickleness. Have I ever tried to understand you? Have I ever tried to understand Itthee? I don’t know. But maybe tonight I’ll try. Very well. I’ve made up my mind: I shall try. It’s necessary. If you were me, you’d know it’s necessary. Tonight the wind isn’t very strong. The cold is increasingly keen, so that for several days now I’ve had to light the fire after taking a bath. Dusk comes quickly and I can no longer linger in the water. When I go back to the house the first thing I do is light the paraffin lamp, the only instrument here that gives out light. Its glass panes are black with soot I’m too lazy to wipe out. On the antique writing desk by the eastern-side window the manuscripts of my poems are piled up. They are old manuscripts, all mouldy, born of a filthy imagination. I’ve never worked hard enough.