“I know why,” the man said. “I know very well why, but I think it’s best if you don’t find out. Besides the fact that it would be pointless, it might not be good for you.”
It wasn’t as if the doctor didn’t detect the chilliness in the man’s voice, but he didn’t know what to make of it.
“Why don’t you drop by and talk to Auntie Yong, doctor? I’ve heard her grumbling about wanting to see you. I’m going to say goodbye now. It seems to me you’ll be able to open the clinic and welcome patients tomorrow. I’m off,” the man said. He then turned and was on his way.
Once the visitor had left, the doctor put him completely out of his mind. For some minutes, the doctor sat there, feeling exceedingly pleased with his own life, and then he got up and walked out of the house, cutting a diagonal path across the road to Auntie Yong’s shop. He saw her sitting on the bench out front with several others. As he approached, she quickly made room for him, and the whole group put their hands in prayer to wai him.
DANG’S BARBERSHOP WAS just five doors down from the grocery. Young men were constantly walking in and out, but Dang sat quietly all by himself in a barber chair, chin in hand. The men greeted him as they entered and then disappeared into the back room. It was still raining out, and the man of a certain age tiptoed along the road to avoid puddles. When he poked his head into the barbershop, Dang quickly perked up, sprouting a grin.
“How’s it going, Dr. Charn?” Dang said when he walked in. “You haven’t been in for ages. Is the clinic slow today?”
Dr. Charn smiled back but didn’t reply. He walked over to comb his hair in front of a mirror, tilted his head left and right, and then craned his neck toward the back door to have a peek.
“I closed up around five today,” he said. “You’ve got a good crowd here.” He went to lean against the sink, crossing his arms over his chest.
“There sure is! That’s why there aren’t many people coming in for a haircut anymore. These guys get into fights just about every day. A few times they’ve even bumped into customers while they were getting their ears cleaned—you should’ve heard them! The sound coming out of them was barely human. The other day when Don split his eyebrow and ran over to see you, I almost died laughing. Normally, that ridiculous Don is the one stirring up trouble. He loves to get a brawl going and then back out and play the referee, whacking everyone with a cue stick, pretending to break up the fight. But that day, he hadn’t come to horse around. He actually wanted a trim. So I was cutting his hair, and then his gang came running out of the back, chasing each other around with cue sticks, and they wound up smacking him right on the eyebrow.” Dang pointed at his own brow, laughing. “I just cracked up. He hasn’t shown his face around here since. I guess he’s waiting for his eyebrow to heal.”
Dr. Charn didn’t react. Had it been any other time, he probably would have burst out laughing like Dang.
The barber cocked his head at Dr. Charn. “I saw. You went and talked to the doctor, didn’t you? How did it go?”
“I just wanted to meet him. There was nothing more to it,” Dr. Charn said somberly. “Your doctor’s going to reopen his clinic tomorrow.”
“You just wanted to meet him, huh?” Dang smiled knowingly. “Don’t keep it from me, Dr. Charn. I know—you wanted to test him, didn’t you?”
“So what?”
“So, does he know how to treat people?”
Dr. Charn scoffed at the question. “If I say yes, you’ll laugh at me, but if I say no, it’ll look like I have something against him.”
“Don’t be so sensitive, Dr. Charn. I just asked a little question. I simply want to know if the doctor knows how to treat people.”
“Didn’t he treat you for almost ten years? If he couldn’t do it, you’d probably be dead many times over by now.”
“There, there. Just as I’d expected.” Dang chuckled. “In my opinion, you shouldn’t have gone and put him through whatever test. It could only make you feel worse. I’m not siding with the doctor here. I’m worried about you! You should be nice to the doctor. Otherwise don’t say I didn’t warn you if he doesn’t share patients with you. People here, they’re the only ones around, Dr. Charn. Now that we have two doctors, I don’t know if there’ll be enough patients for the both of you.”
Dr. Charn sighed and gave Dang a half-hearted smile. “Nothing to worry about. I’ve already come up with a solution.”
“Really? That’s good. Oh, the doctor doesn’t know that I have a snooker table in the back of the shop. I bet once he finds out, he’s going to come over here and lecture me. He’s always going around worrying about folks. As far as I’ve seen, nobody takes his advice to heart. But everyone likes to be lectured by the doctor. I don’t know why. It’s like, when the doctor pays attention to you, it makes you look important.”
“I should get going, Barber Dang. Actually, I only came to say goodbye,” Dr. Charn said, moving toward the door. “Seriously, Dang, when you get a lecture from the doctor, you really feel important?”
Dang laughed. Not waiting for a proper response, Dr. Charn walked out of the shop, the barber still calling after him, “Do you want to feel important, too, doctor?”
Dr. Charn’s clinic was one street over from the doctor’s. He came back to find the old woman on a hunt to clean up chicken manure. She turned to him and smiled her completely toothless smile. In one hand, she held several tattered newspapers; in the other, a wet black rag. She always kept these two items at the ready for cleaning up after her chicken. Having acknowledged Dr. Charn, she turned her attention back toward the chicken, which was pecking at insects on the ground.
The old lady, the chicken’s owner, was hard of hearing. To get her to understand, one had to practically yell into her ears. Once the message got through, she would reply by nodding or shaking her head; she hadn’t spoken a word to anyone for years. The shed near the temple wall had been her home. She had one son, who was nearly fifty years old and small and scrawny like her. He worked odd jobs and sometimes crept up the hill behind the temple to catch wild chickens for food. Two months ago, mother and son had come to see Dr. Charn with five wild-chicken eggs in tow. The old woman’s son had noticed that Dr. Charn possessed a lamp, the heat from which could be used to incubate eggs. When Dr. Charn had agreed to it, her son had left the eggs and taken off. Since that day, the semi-deaf old lady never returned to her shed again. She instead had kept a constant watch on the wild-chicken eggs, storing them in a square tin bucket. But before they had the chance to hatch, she broke three of the eggs. The chick that emerged first proved to be the strongest and pecked the other one to death, so in the end only one wild chicken survived. Once the chick was thriving and Dr. Charn could use his lamp for reading again, another problem arose: the chick had grown attached to the light and thought that the lamp was its mother. The old woman ate and slept at Dr. Charn’s from then on, looking after the chicken as it snoozed during the day and hunted for insects under the lamplight at night. By this point, Dr. Charn’s patients were all well accustomed to the old lady and her wild chicken.
During the entire two months she’d been living with him, Dr. Charn never thought about having a talk with the old woman. He had arranged a place for her to eat and sleep. The old lady seemed as undemanding as could be, never becoming a source of concern for him. He only spoke to her, or did his best to, when calling her for meals. Although her son never showed up at the clinic again, Dr. Charn never let the matter of the old lady and the wild chicken burden his mind. It even had a calming effect on him to see the wild chicken roaming around pecking at insects; he found it amusing to watch the woman dutifully pursuing trails of chicken droppings.
But now the matter weighed heavily on Dr. Charn. She was happy living there, tending to her chicken so that it didn’t disturb his work, and she liked to serve as the clinic’s makeshift security guard when he was out. But the time had come to explain to her that he was leaving. There wasn’t going to be a clinic for her to watch over anymore.
It wasn’t going to be easy: yelling through the conversation and getting her to understand the situation so that she would move back to her old place. Getting her to hear anything at all was already such a challenge. Maybe he should go see her son. It’d probably be easier to convince him to come pick her up and take her back, but the hard part was—would he even be able to find her son? He’d heard once or twice that no one lived in the shed next to the temple anymore.
Dr. Charn sat down on a bench inside and stretched out his legs, vacantly watching the old lady and her wild chicken for some time. He tried revisiting his own situation: What if he refused to move? But he could already see how that would end. If they had to choose, how many patients would want him as their doctor? Perhaps no one would. After all, the old doctor was back. In truth, the doctor wasn’t just a doctor but a hero to the people here. Dr. Charn didn’t deny that the doctor was a good person, but sometimes the doctor’s saintliness made him sick. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly why he felt that way, so he tried to push the animosity out of his mind. A number of times, Dr. Charn readied himself to speak with the old woman, but he felt exhausted before he could even manage to get out a single word.
At nearly eleven p.m., a visitor came to see Dr. Charn. He had already closed the clinic for the night and was putting up the mosquito net for the old lady. Next to the net was the tin bucket where the wild chicken liked to sleep. The old lady was still sitting on the floor under the light, with the chicken nearby, darting about in its relentless search for insects. Dr. Charn, for his part, had still made no progress on initiating the conversation with her. Standing outside, the doctor was clutching the metal gate as he called to Dr. Charn, saying there was something he thought they ought to discuss that night.
Once inside, the doctor couldn’t fight the urge to inspect the premises. What struck him first was how much the place exuded the atmosphere of a clinic. Toward the front there was a waiting area for patients; to the right was an examination room, with a hallway to the left leading toward the back of the house. Peeking underneath the swinging doors into the examination room, the doctor could see a chair and the legs of a table; these pieces of furniture were probably used for patient consultation. Outside the examination room, cardboard boxes with various medication labels were stacked on top of one another and pushed against the wall; and nearby, there was a small mosquito net, the strings from its four corners dangling, with, of all things, a square tin bucket standing next to it. The doctor eyed the old woman and the chicken, a bit disconcerted by the sight of them. Once he turned away, he saw Dr. Charn waiting on the bench, observing him. Cautiously, the doctor sat down.
“I know to some extent what’s on your mind,” the doctor began. “Barber Dang told me you’re thinking of moving away. I don’t agree with that decision at all, Dr. Charn. If you do that, you’d turn me into a selfish person who goes around interfering with other people’s livelihood. I don’t see why it’s necessary for you to leave. I even think it’ll come together nicely. Hear me out. I know that you’re not working anywhere else, and therefore it’s simple. You can open your clinic during the day and close at five p.m. As for me, tomorrow I’m going to go to work at the hospital as usual, and then I’ll come back and open my clinic in the evening until nine p.m. See? Nothing needs to change.”
Dr. Charn processed the doctor’s offer impassively.
The doctor continued, “You don’t have to worry about there not being patients. I promise that you won’t starve to death! Please trust me when I say that everything will be just fine. Trust me, don’t move anywhere. It was never my intention to cause anyone trouble.”
Dr. Charn remained unstirred. But he suddenly snapped to attention once a certain haziness cleared. It hit him that he was now in the same position as all the other villagers: a recipient of the caring generosity of the saintly, universally admired doctor. He, however, didn’t appreciate what was being handed to him.
“I think you best not meddle in my affairs, doctor. I really don’t see why you have to be worried about me or promise to help with anything. My leaving is no major inconvenience like you think. I’ve moved I don’t know how many times. It’s no big deal. You should go. Whether or not I’m staying, it doesn’t concern you.”
“How could it not concern me?” The doctor knitted his brows. “I can’t help but feel you’re leaving on my behalf, and you shouldn’t worry about that.”
“No, no—it’s best you leave now. If you make me say anything else, you might regret it.”
“You’re the most stubborn man I’ve ever met, Dr. Charn. I beg you—”
“All right, doctor,” Dr. Charn snapped. “Fine, I won’t go anywhere. I’m going to stay right here. But let me tell you something—don’t you want to know why the people here aren’t put off by the fact that you’re not a real doctor? It’s because the villagers don’t care. It’s that saintliness of yours, so high and holy, that they revere. I get now what a great trade you’ve made for yourself. You pat the villagers on the head with your kindness, and in return you command their deference and respect. I’ve decided not to move, but why don’t you make a somewhat bigger sacrifice for me? Move away from here again—can you do that? Because if you stay, no one’s going to want to be my patient. Sacrificing for the sake of others is well within your character, isn’t it? Plus you have a fancy job, no financial worries. But me, this clinic is all I have. Since I’m so needy, it seems I’m going to have to lean on you, doctor, and under these circumstances it would be quite a noble sacrifice. You do it for the villagers all the time, do you not?”
The doctor’s face tensed. “Why all the sarcasm? If you’re pissed off about something, just come out with it. I mean you well, really I do. But I can’t do what you’re asking. You know how much I love this place. Moving away was a rash decision, and I was miserable the last two years I lived in town. I was in constant contact with my landlady because I hadn’t cleared out some of my furniture. I kept checking whether someone had asked to rent the place, so I’d know to come get my things. Only a few months after I moved out, someone did ask to rent it …”
“Oh, that was probably me,” Dr. Charn said.
“Do you know what I did? I suddenly felt possessive of my clinic, very, very possessive. So I continued to rent it, never having the courage to move back. Month after month, I needlessly paid the rent … You can ask me to do anything, Dr. Charn, but don’t make me move away again. Trust me and follow my plan.”
“Of course—I knew it! I knew there was no way you’d leave. You’re not worried about being surrounded by the people you love, doctor; it’s just that those people are willing to bow before you and put you on a pedestal. That’s what you aren’t willing to lose. Am I right, doctor? And the way you force your damn heroic sacrifices on everyone, I see how it’s a clever move—”
“Don’t you talk to me that way,” the doctor spat, red in the face. “I’ve never thought such things in my life. Who’s on what pedestal?”
“But you’ve already gained so much. Haven’t you taken a look at yourself to see how grand you’ve become? The people here are practically the size of ants by now! The bigger you grow, the smaller they shrink.”
“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to punch you in the mouth,” the doctor seethed, eyeing Dr. Charn with contempt. “Do you think I don’t know what kind of doctor you are? One day you go and place bets on snooker, and the next you go get drunk and mix with the unemployed rabble. All you have is a piece of paper that says you’re a certified doctor—and you have the nerve to look down on me?”
“You’ve got all that right, doctor. I really am that way, and in truth there’s more! Someone of my character shouldn’t be a doctor, right? Of course, I remember now—an old woman told me that you treated her son once, and she desperately searched for a chance to repay you in some way. Do you remember how she repaid you? It was at the temple fair. She said she gave up her front-row seat at the likay theater for you. To this day, she still reli
shes the fact you were willing to take her chair.”
“If you don’t shut your mouth, I swear to god I’ll make you!” the doctor shouted.
“If someone of my character shouldn’t be a doctor, then someone of your character exceeds being a doctor by a long shot, I think. But even if I don’t have an elderly lady giving up her chair for me, I don’t feel inferior to you. Me, I’m just an ordinary person; I’m not more or less of a human being than you or anyone else. Ha! You know how much I love this place,” Dr. Charn said in a mocking tone. “Under the weight of your superiority, your love is also diminished to the size of an ant.”
The doctor shot up from his chair. Eyes bloodshot and head cocked, he stared at Dr. Charn.
“Now, now, doctor. That’s hardly a befitting expression for a saint.”
The doctor moved around the coffee table, coming for Dr. Charn. At the same time, the latter noticed something beyond the gate, off to the side. He stood up to investigate, but before he took one step, the doctor’s fist rammed squarely into his left eye, sending his face sideways as he fell backward onto the floor. The punch may not have been executed smoothly, but the blow did quite a number on Dr. Charn. The table creaked from the commotion, and the wild chicken started flapping its wings, fleeing to perch on top of one of the examination room’s swinging doors, which then started moving back and forth wildly, causing the chicken to struggle to maintain its balance. The old woman, meanwhile, was crouched behind the mosquito net with just her head poking out, her little round eyes, their lids sagging, glued to the doctor. Dr. Charn sat up, still disoriented, the doctor’s crazed taunts ringing in his ears.
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