The White Shadow

by Saneh Sangsuk

  You were a foppish intellectual and she was certain you were a little off your rocker when you started to imagine you’d climbed stealthily towards the iridescence of paradise and surreptitiously slept with a fairy, whereas you were certain this kind of imagination was nothing but positive proof that you were a poet. You were about to have a row with her to see what would happen, but you had to postpone it when you received a totally unexpected letter from Nartaya. She had sent it to the U because it was the address you’d given her. It was a thick, registered letter like the others you’d destroyed, and the most surprising was that she had posted it from Bangkok. She had come to Bangkok with a relative on her mother’s side and she urged you to go and see her at that relative’s house, which was on a street off Phetchaburi Road. There was the address with a map and the bus route as well. That letter was like a thunderclap in a sunny sky. Why was she in Bangkok, what for, you asked yourself anxiously. You almost tore it at once without reading another line. She wanted to come to see you at the U from the day of her arrival in Bangkok, she said, but as it was the first time she came to Bangkok, she was all disoriented, she didn’t dare. She was scared of everything, even just to raise her arm to flag down a taxi. She didn’t dare to ask her relative to accompany her to the university as she didn’t know what excuse to give her. She wished to soon be well enough to go and see you herself, but in the meantime couldn’t you rather come and pay her a visit? Her present address was in the letter itself. Why lately hadn’t you been answering her letters? Sometimes she wrote three in the same week. At the beginning of your separation she’d tried to forget you. She was resigned to all that had happened and wished to forget everything. She didn’t complain about her sad fate but meant to face it as calmly as possible and she didn’t want you to be frightened or worried for her. But as soon as you’d written to her to anxiously find out how she was, her good resolutions had begun to weaken and she finally had answered your letters. But then in the last month or two, what had happened to you that you no longer answered her letters? What was she to think? But well, whatever it was, she forgave you. She was dying to see you. She missed you. She’d like you to be very near. The letters you’d ordered her to destroy, she’d burned them all. She’d really burned them. She could guarantee that much to you, even though she still didn’t understand why you wanted her to act like that. Had she done anything to anger you? But if you were angry, well then, too bad! She was still as well disposed towards you as before. Maybe you had a new girlfriend and were now in clover to have turned away from her like that, from her who was suffering physically and mentally. She missed classes often. She couldn’t study any longer. And right now she had to stop her studies temporarily (unless it was definitively – how would she know?) and her parents had come to take her back with them to her native home seven or eight days ago. Or was it that if you hadn’t answered her letters lately it was because you hadn’t received them? And it was from home that she had come to Bangkok, saying she was going to have a checkup, whereas to tell the truth she was ashamed and afraid, whereas to tell the truth what she wanted most was to meet you, whereas to tell the truth she felt that her condition was too serious to be treated. She wanted so much to meet you, maybe for the last time in her life, you know. She’d come up to Bangkok with more money than she’d ever had in her life. She’d like to share her life with you once again. She begged you to come and see her. Please. She’d never said anything of what had happened between you and her to anyone, not a word. She’d let nothing slip out. She remembered very well you had strictly forbidden her to. She also knew that if she acted otherwise you’d be angry and she and you would be in serious trouble. It was like she’d told you: she was determined to face her sad fate without making waves, but if there was an imperative reason for you not to go and see her rapidly, please let her know by letter. Do not leave her dangling. Find a way to come and see her. Don’t be angry with her. If she’d made a mistake or something to displease you, say so frankly. She swore to you she wouldn’t do it again. She wanted so much to see you. She’d like so much to be able to go and see you… The house where she was in Bangkok was in a small street giving onto Phetchaburi Road, the road you had to take every day to the U. You read her letter as you sat on a bench at the foot of a pine by the pond, shaking with pain and all numb. You tore her letter into small pieces and you let them fall into the pond. Your heart was beating wildly. You couldn’t hold still, walked back and forth. Although it was only midmorning and you had lectures all afternoon, you gathered your books and went back home, fearful like a rat. You didn’t dare go out for three full days, withdrawing yourself, withdrawing yourself as much as you could withdraw yourself into the shell of your self. Nartaya might go to see you at the U but thank God she didn’t know where you lived and by staying at home you were safe. Everything between her and you should’ve ended for good, but you were the one who’d restarted it all. What a moron! But Nartaya should’ve understood it was over. She should’ve understood that sometimes you lose and sometimes you win: that’s what life is about. Something that simple and she didn’t understand. How could she be thinking of winning every time? If she did, who’d be the loser then? Lost for lost, she should accept her defeat gracefully and have the dignity to acknowledge that wanting to appeal was ignoble. But here she was now trying to contact you like a vengeful soul and attract you to her and thrust you deep into the mire of perdition with more money than she’d ever had in her life. Just how much? How many thousand baht? More than ten thousand? She wanted to share her life with you once again. That was sheer madness! And where? Inevitably in some dingy rented room in Bangkok. Just the two of you. Bloody happiness! No longer than three months, let’s say four on the outside, before her money would have run out. And how could we live together given the state of her health? So, just like that, she fancies you’re going to be her home nurse, to have dragged her body thus all the way to Bangkok? Can you believe it? She means to turn you into her servant. Women are worse than venomous snakes; the ancients knew what they were talking about. Or else she came to pay tribute, that is to say she wants you to sleep with her again because she hankers for the thing. Oh no, thanks very much, madam. No way. Well, you see, I’m full up myself, madam. How could you sleep with her? By now her uterus must be entirely rotten, mustn’t it? To be with a sick woman… take care of a sick woman… sleep with a sick woman… Better be dead. Oh, and if she died right then, what would you do? The temple? The police station? Where to go first? Whom to see? Answer what questions? Obey what orders? Would you be handcuffed? Would San come and fetch the body himself? All these thoughts plagued you and made you anxious and agitated and you couldn’t help retracting as much as you could into your shell, confused and furious. You were afraid someone would pick up your trail, as it was possible San had come to Bangkok with Nartaya. Are you so sure that what she said in her latest letter didn’t conceal some trap or lure? Maybe San is aware of what’s gone on between you and Nartaya and maybe she wrote this latest letter under his dictation or even in full complicity. You were afraid to be found out. You were trying to think of a place where to hide, of a way to get away. The dying are unpredictable. As different as men may be, the instinct of a man about to die is at its most incisive, at its most vigilant. Who knows if Nartaya won’t be able to crawl all the way to you like a snake with a broken spine tracks the man who’s wounded it until it finds him and takes its revenge. Someone will surely find you. You were wary and utterly distrustful. In the unfathomable depths of your fright, you raved to the point of telling yourself that whoever found you might be just a stranger, someone with an impassive and mysterious demeanour, someone straight out of a nightmare, and it’d be enough for him to stare at you once for you to grovel at his feet and fall into his power for good, accept to be dragged to some peculiar and deserted land before some frosty jury. You roamed around the house, stared at the jumble of wild grass and at the shallow pond soiled with mud and the rotting corpses of animals, trees, duckweed
and water hyacinth. The fourth day was a Saturday. You took the risk of going to the U to check your mailbox. There was no letter from anyone. No one told you anything. You stole into the library, which stayed open on Saturdays, but you didn’t understand what you were reading, distracted and yet looking suspicious. You went out to take shelter in the dimness of the cafeteria of a shopping centre, selecting the corner you deemed to be the least noticeable and the darkest. From there you did the round of the weekend market at the Royal Esplanade, made your choice and bargained only to realise you hadn’t the heart to buy anything at all, neither clothes nor foodstuffs nor plants nor flowers. You spent a long time at the second-hand bookstands, bought as many books as you could carry and delved into a cinema, but you understood nothing of the film that was showing. When you came out of the cinema it was nine in the evening. You stepped into a close-by fast-food outlet to drink a coffee, smoked cigarette upon cigarette, carefully wiped the dust off the covers and edges of the books you’d just bought and flipped through each volume just to kill time, wrote two or three lines on a paper towel on the theme I’m going crazy. May that bastard Satan come to my help! I’m going crazy, taking the compulsory slightly manic look of poetasters until, by the time of the last bus, you gathered all of your courage to go back home. In the bus, people were getting scarce; in the streets, people were getting scarce; it made you all the more jumpy. When you were back, it turned out that Darreit wasn’t asleep yet. When she saw how keyed up you were, she took fright and plied you with questions and speculations. You quarrelled with her, pulled the clothes out of the plastic garment bag and threw them around, tore up the wall poster with the pretty colours, knocked over the ashtray which you took and sent rolling on its edge along a shelf, hypothesising that the ashtray was the wheel of fate and the shelf the wall of destruction, then swept the ashes to the floor, pointing out to her that the floor can just as well be used as an ashtray even if it isn’t as judicious, then you stubbed out on the floor the cigarette you were smoking as a demonstration for her to understand, using the heel of your foot to squash it, pointing out to her that the heel can be used just as well instead of the hand even if it isn’t as judicious. You knocked over a glass of water and sent plant pots flying all over. You pressed the switch to wilfully cut off electricity in the whole house, from the small balcony, cute little bedroom and compact kitchen to the bathroom so vast it could practically have been tucked under the elbow and carried around anywhere at will, and after that you switched the electricity back on, turned off some lamps then lit up everything again in order to see what difference it made to quarrel without lights, with only a few lights on and with all the lights on, and you concluded that to quarrel in complete darkness was the best way to quarrel as it saved energy. Other remarkable observation: quarrelling with a few lights off was tantamount to quarrelling with other lights on. Then you whirled into the bedroom. The solemn mattress on the stoic bed you pulled out and threw on the floor and it landed by the foot of the bed. You took the upper left corner of the mosquito net and knotted it to the right pole and took the right corner and knotted it to the left pole, so that even an expert would’ve been incapable of unfurling it. And to top it all, meaning to polish your delirium to make it sparkle even more, you went out to stand on the balcony, took off your clothes there and then and proclaimed, as if you wanted the entire world to learn the truth, that clothes were only invented to be naked underneath. Darreit was so scared she didn’t dare cry out. She pointed out to you tremulously that if it was her presence that depressed you, she’d pack up and go stay with her friends or else at her uncle Chalat’s. You answered negligently Suit yourself! Going to heaven or to hell was up to her. The next day you left the house in the first rays of dawn, each step heavy with apprehension without reason. No one could have understood why you hated so much someone about to die as Nartaya. You didn’t want to be involved in any way whatsoever. At the sound of the least movement around you, your heart beat harder. You thought someone was following you stealthily and this made you turn your head and look back all the time, and you endeavoured to shut your ears to the speech of memory that said you’d made her pregnant and forced her to get an abortion and now she was dragging herself up to you to demand to see you again out of the right of one about to die. And what if you wrote her a letter and refused all of her petitions, you asked yourself. But eventually you didn’t dare. A letter would be a link which would still tie you up, even a letter of dismissal. Besides, given the fragile physical and mental state in which she was, to refuse would be a far too cruel act. Better not write to her at all. You didn’t want to hurt her, staunch humanist that you were. But not to write was an act just as cruel insofar as you were firmly determined not to go and see her and it was out of the question also that she or whoever else would meet you (how lucky though that Bangkok was a city of strangers! The best hiding place is still its crowd of six or seven million or more black shadows) and that was why you’d become a travelling star moved by endless apprehension. You couldn’t stay in the house because keeping still gave you the impression you were waiting. It wasn’t clever to stay put awaiting danger while knowing full well it’d eventually reach you. The poison of madness that endured from the night before seemed all the more noxious. To counter it, you went straight to the cool-box of the first grocery store you found and extracted from it a bottle of beer and drank it greedily. After the fourth bottle you were back in top form and you realised your situation wasn’t as scary as you’d thought and you’d shown yourself until then too lilylivered. There was nothing to be afraid of. If Nartaya wants to see you, well then, go and see her. If she wants to live with you, well then, let her live with you, and if she’s really going to die, well then let her die. Whatever will be will be. But another part of your mind was warning you you were thinking in a short-sighted way more than you’d ever done in your life, for which you’d have to pay more than ever as well, and that right now your life was a whisker away from disaster. So you let yourself be swept once again into the whirlwind of panic. You jumped from bus to bus at random. You let your steps lead you to the Chinese district and in that district you found provisional shelter in the shape of a second-rate cinema which showed two Chinese films per programme. They were titillating films that deliberately offered plenty of glimpses of naked flesh. But you were tired and weak. You didn’t feel like watching. You sailed between sleep and wake in the husky growls of the soundtrack, the thoroughly vulgar and obscene dubbing and the revolting pong coming out of the toilets that reached you by whiffs. When you collected your wits, you looked around and moved to another seat. You acted like that three or four times without understanding why. It was late in the afternoon when you came out of that lousy cinema. You took the 25 bus, which took you to Samut Prakan. You ate in a seaside restaurant, forcing yourself to swallow, drank beer and looked at the flocks of gulls in the dusky light, solitary and afflicted as if you found yourself in front of your own grave in a deserted cemetery. You took the same bus back. This time you slept like a log up to the terminus. The night had fallen. It was drizzling. Bangkok was sullen and wet under a cloud-smudged sky. You counted the money you had in your pocket. There was more than enough. Then you thought about Nart Itsara. You called him up at the Seewiang hostel, where he took the call in a sleepy tone. You told him you’d like to stay at his place if he had no objection. He answered Mm Mmm Mmmm. And for the next four or five days you slept in his rented room, briefly went to see Darreit just once, told her you were quite busy and if she couldn’t stand staying alone in the house she might invite her friends to sleep there or if she preferred she might go and sleep with her friends at Ailada, and it turned out later she did both. For an entire month, as soon as the lectures were over, you hurriedly fled from the U. You no longer made a detour for the club under the pines to kill time in front of a draughtboard or a chessboard and you often sighed in relief that there was no news of Nartaya. She must’ve lost any hope you’d do what she wanted. She’d made your l
ife a misery long enough and finally accepted defeat. Yeah, but was she really dying? Or was she merely pretending? When someone says he’s dying it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s really going to die. It’s just a way of speaking, isn’t it? For instance, I’m dying of thirst, I’m freezing to death, I’m bored to death, I could die laughing… and furthermore women like Nartaya are weak to death, precisely. She thought she could buy you off with her tears or what? By now she must’ve left Bangkok. And you suddenly felt pity for her, feeling a pang at having deceived her. Actually, a scrupulous humanist like you didn’t want in any way to disappoint her. But what else could you do? Well, that she’d scared you to death for an entire month, you forgave her for that. Then you reconciled with Darreit, apologised profusely to her with sincere accents, admitted as a gentleman it was your fault if she found herself lonely and didn’t understand. The woman who’d broken your heart, the very one you’d shown her a photograph of, she did remember her, didn’t she? Well, she’d begged you to make up and that had upset you very much. Being as you were in a rather destabilising period of your life, you were full of contradictions. As for thinking about the past, so happy and so sad, for sure you were thinking about it. But you were trying to deny yourself any weakness, right? Sure, you’d taken your time about it, you admitted that much. That woman had been at the origin of your creativity, the silvery source of your dreams, the magnificent pearl dug out of the depths of the sea of your imagination, you do understand, don’t you, before you met her, Darreit. That woman had been deserted by the man who’d broken your heart and thus, out of despair, she’d tried to see you again to heal old wounds, but in the end you decided to turn her down and that, because you had her, see? Darreit wasn’t very much interested in what you were telling her, but said in a plaintive tone she now felt like going back home. She didn’t know whether her parents knew and that bothered her. She’d been on the verge of calling up her uncle several times to ask him whether he’d informed her father or not yet. She meant to tell you frankly she really couldn’t stand anything that was ambiguous or furtive. The usual date of the money transfer from her father had gone by for several days, but why wasn’t he sending it? She was wondering whether her father wasn’t setting up a trap for her to go back to get the money, wondering what her father actually wanted. Maybe he had suspicions about his daughter’s behaviour? She didn’t have any money worries for all that. She had enough on her account to live comfortably for another three or four months, but she felt like going back home, she didn’t know why. Let’s say something was bothering her. You, who were only a wisp of straw which had only just escaped from the grip of someone drowning like Nartaya, cut the matter short easily by telling her not to pay attention to it. Fear and suspicion have killed lots of people, you know. You rather felt like taking a rest. Everything would be all right. You spoke softly and calmly. There was nothing to worry about. Her good uncle would do nothing of the sort, and even if her father knew he probably wouldn’t say anything. Didn’t he indulge all her whims? Since he’d lost every hope in her brother he was all the more willing to please her, wasn’t he? Come now, believe me, everything will be fine. You hadn’t felt as carefree in a long time. You were happy and you wanted other people to be happy also. You didn’t understand why she had to be so glum. So you had her drink a beer, you vaporised air freshener in the entire house, you spread rose petals over the stoic bed and called it the couch of the queen and her lover, and this ended with her and you rather tipsy making love ravenously. The next day you went and bought a narrow-necked vase, bought fifteen asters you stuck into the vase, bought a couple of goldfish you baptised Adam and Eve to breed them in a big brandy glass with a big bunch of algae inside and on the glass a sticker saying no feeding with apple, bought three pots of cactuses you baptised Bedouin, Cleopatra and Ethiopia, bought a bracelet made of seashells you baptised Kan-ha and a ring made of seashells you baptised Cha-lee, and a bottle of sweet white wine of local vintage. As for her, she bought a package of dry, seasoned seaweed. She munched while saying she’d eaten some during her trip to Japan. She held out a strand of it to you and told you in the tone of a child possessive of her sweets Only one, okay? and once you’d eaten it asked you what you found it tasted like, oishii nee or not? to which you answered it was a little better than a smack on the mouth with a ruler. You were happy ; she was happy. Obladi oblada… You put things away, had a thorough clean, scouring what had to be scoured, washing what had to be washed, put out to dry what had to be exposed to the sun, shaking what it was alright to shake, putting aside what had to be put aside, throwing out what had to be thrown out, with much noise, knocking against this, bumping into that, swearing blithely, grumbling joyfully, singing a volley of songs by Uea Sunthornsanarn with the voice of Santi Lunphei. As for her, she tuned in to Radio Chulalongkorn’s Japanese language course, listening carefully when she was asked to listen carefully, endeavouring to repeat when she was asked to repeat, answering the questions when she was asked to answer the questions, and then she played the guitar and tried to sing a Japanese song and from there took her Mikasa volley ball and practised the under and set in the narrow courtyard in front of the house. When you asked her whether she’d also bought her volley ball during her trip, she answered in a most clear voice Hai! and went on with her training. You were happy, she was happy in this old, not very large house with a one thousand baht monthly rent of which you each paid half. The true life of a couple, for fuck’s sake! On the following days, you asked her to do some footing at dawn, drank a glass each of Ovaltine or milk reconstituted from milk powder, took a shower then went smooching up to the mouth of the street and separately left for class. In the evening if you didn’t come back too late you both went out to run again. You’d very much have liked to have your old racing bike. You should’ve brought it with you. You would’ve liked to have a bike, liked to have fields of vivid green grass with waves of little flowers, clumps of flower trees and a watercourse to ride across or around in the area.