Maybe I am biased against you and you should beware and ask frankly if it was because of my bias against you that I was presumptuous enough to curse your friends who shared your ideals. All of the time we were intimates, you despised me, even if you hid that despise, because I was so utterly ignorant of the history of revolutionary struggle. Even though you didn’t let on, I could feel it. You always forgot I was as prompt as you were in feeling things, even prompter. Politics is one of those things that interest me the least, especially active politics. And when I learned that the politically committed artists of the circle under the pine trees regarded me as mentally retarded in matters of politics, first I merely smiled and shrugged and then I took a provocative stance and retorted without mincing my words that human wisdom isn’t limited to those that dig politics, comrades. Insofar as you only care about politics, do you think you’re smarter than the others? I was fed up and disgusted with activist comrades just as much as I was fed up with Chao Phraya and when I watched the oyster60 government’s broadcasts, ‘For the Thai land’ as well as those for village scouts, I felt like puking. As it happened, you were favourably disposed towards me and you wanted to save me from remaining politically retarded and that’s why you’d invited me to go with you for a bout of character building. Thanks very much, you bastard. But then you were weary. As a matter of fact, you were boiling mad and almost couldn’t control yourself when I spoke of the sons of bitches in love with justice. You told me you didn’t understand how I could come up with such a revolting expression. What was it that made me think that way? It was the coarsest expression you’d ever heard and you begged me never to use it again and you yourself never wanted to hear it again. I kept silent. I neither retorted nor protested, but deep down I was utterly pleased. The expression ‘sons of bitches in love with justice’ which had fallen off my lips had made you livid. Your voice had a catch on, your hands shook. But what to do? You knew as well as I did there are such things as sons of bitches in love with justice, just as there are motherfucking dictators. Those many nights we spent discussing those moronic stories had only one good thing, which was that I disliked you more and more. We were lying in the hut, mat unrolled, mosquito net unfurled. On some nights, we were short of cigarettes. There were hordes of mosquitoes. The mosquito net on your side was well stretched; on mine, it was full of cigarette holes. We slept late. I didn’t like to express what I felt. I didn’t want to tell you that enough was enough. I knew perfectly well what fucking bastards they were, those capitalists, warlords, aristocrats and dictators, and I was capable of limitless love of the masses too, so long as it was the female among the masses, young and cute and stupid enough to open their legs to me – this much, I swear. I worship this kind of masses to madness. No need to put me in condition. It was in those days that I became addicted to coffee. There were times when I rushed back to Bangkok and spent two or three nights at Seewiang, leaving you alone. The orchard was deserted and the atmosphere very anguishing at night, as if we were deep into the jungle. There was nothing but insect noises and birdsongs. But you weren’t afraid at all. In fact, you seemed to be happy. I knew that, had I stayed there alone, I’d have died of fright. I was afraid of ghosts, afraid of darkness, afraid of the supernatural and incapable of getting over it. I still am even now. You and I we were totally different. I’m about to pass on. It isn’t sure, but I probably am about to pass on. I can do no more. I can’t take any more. I told you once that one day I’d write something worthwhile. That was years ago, but I still haven’t written anything good. Writing is the worst torture of all. Being unable to write is too. My fingers are too stiff to hold a pen. My fingers. The fingers of the left hand are unable to join and don’t have enough strength to hold a pen or a pencil for me to set to work. Right now, where is my hand? I want two hands, I want one head and one body and two feet to go somewhere at daybreak. I’m about to pass on. I’m sorry this is so but at the same time I’m happy about it. My body. I’m about to dissolve and join the droplets of fog that cover the entire sky tonight. My body, all of my particles, drops like candle tears that twist, spread out, get diluted, thin out and scatter without noise, without haste, float and mix with fog particles and clear out and are gone. I’m a microbe that has served its time in the world and is thinking of leaving it, a microbe on the way out, a terminally sick microbe. You exist. I exist. Everybody exists. More or less. Why do I have a feeling I am closest to death? Maybe it’s the accumulated poison of the sleeping pills. Fireflies twirl gaily in the moonlight. Tonight, there are lots of fireflies, brief, dark blue, diffuse sparks that prettify the night, and at times forktails trill in their sleep and at times blackbirds trill in their sleep. Maybe they can’t sleep because of the moonlight. You’d probably like this place and this hour more than I do. Are we going to tell the truth to each other or are we too fragile to speak frankly? Your life was destroyed by the yoni. My life was destroyed by the yoni. I know how to step back and look at the world from afar and from even further away, hundreds of thousands of miles away. Maybe you feel what I feel. The world is but a small planet where the lives of men, plants and animals are confined as in a muddy zoo resounding with the yells of beasts that tear each other to pieces. Some being of a superior civilisation hundreds of thousands of light-years away will perhaps confiscate this zoo to give it to his children or grandchildren. You and I find ourselves locked up on this planet. We used to be at each other’s throats and then there was one day when we did what men on this earth have always done in the past, still do and will keep doing in the future, which is, we parted, each going his own way, and each has kept going on his somnambulist way. I’ll keep speaking of somnambulism again and again, but the slow estrangement that followed the night when I freed the panther of my fury resulted in our being unable to keep on associating with each other in an intimate way, and the fact that I didn’t reimburse my debt in its entirety resulted in our being unable to keep associating in an intimate way, as you gave up university in the last year, even though your diploma was within reach, and after that we only saw each other every now and then. You’d changed very much. We were increasingly strangers to each other each time. I’ve always thought you were my friend. The break-up that took place made me angry with myself for a long time. But on the other hand, I was glad it was over. I wanted to grow up freely. I wanted to be under no one’s thumb. In any case, I admit your ideas had a great influence over me. Too great, maybe.
The White Shadow Page 18