The White Shadow

by Saneh Sangsuk

  the hut of the ascetic

  In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

  Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

  Which meant the end of all that drifting in the febrile Bangkok nights, of all those times I walked about drunk, hanging to your neck unsteadily, staggering among the coloured lights that make of every man a momentary immortal, all those nights when I was beginning to get used to the provoking poses of bar bouncers; to the obscene curses and slits of a-go-go bar girls, the least clothed girls in the world, who contort themselves lasciviously to the rhythm of music and who, at times, when they slyly take off their last frills, raise high their leg to kick a chiming shell mobile hanging from the low ceiling; to the solitude of wild girls who varnish with feigned gaiety their forlornness of birds far from the nests; to the bars with bare-breasted waitresses and to the mirrorfloored bars with mini-skirted, panties-less waitresses, and to the brothels of all sorts that proliferate, as so many places where morality has gone dead; yet it’s in those unsavoury establishments that you can see boxes of offerings to the monks, their artificial shrubs blossoming with banknotes of sundry denominations the night butterflies will offer to some monasteries, the ones in their native villages probably. Such was life’s sad thriving. Maybe it had many other forms of hidden thriving, but all were sad. You were a part of that sad thriving. I’ll always remember one evening in the cold season on Sukhumvit Soi 19, an evening when you sat on the back platform of a cart selling grilled meatballs and read out to the vendor Prayoon Janyawong’s How to remedy poverty: how to breed catfish, how to rear partridges, how to season dishes with red ants’ eggs, how to pick tens of thousands of baht off the pavement… The grilled meatball vendor, standing against the saddle of his tricycle, listened without saying a word, and soon a child selling flowers got close, his arms full of flowers, and listened without saying a word. A sweets vendor stopped his vehicle and joined the circle, followed by a noodles vendor whose roving stand happened to have no custom. All these people were friends of yours. All came from upcountry. They read with one finger or didn’t know how to read. Some stood, others sat, listening to you reading, listening to the comments you made at times. You talked to them about opportunities to earn a living, talked about the future, talked about vices that made them short sighted, talked about their villages. You spoke to them slowly and deliberately. The whole scene had life’s sad beauty. You are someone who has many friends. You have friends in every corner. Nevertheless, at the time, your life had but women, women, women, almost all of them women of the night, who were only passing through. You were much more world-savvy than I was. You knew what should be taken seriously and what could be taken as a joke. I didn’t, and I wasn’t interested in finding out. I was going without haste through the various processes that lead to maturity. I sank my teeth into life and often so voraciously I choked. I’m the kind of man that can’t bear to be intimate with anyone for too long. I’m not well versed in the art of keeping my distance. The friendship between you and me was so serene as to be worrisome, and if it had passed off without a hitch up until then, it was thanks to you rather than to me. I know: with me you had to show much patience. You were superior to me, in both intellectual and emotional terms. That was the reason why I wasn’t feeling at ease. I felt as one does in a house whose excessive cleanliness impresses you and you are afraid to dirty and are being so careful you feel ill at ease and end up making some disastrous faux pas. Which meant the end of drifting in the febrile Bangkok nights. Which meant the end of all wanderings. Gone were the nights under a tent by a forest stream where sometimes a snake was heard slithering over dried leaves. Gone were the lazy beach spells watching the moulting of clouds and listening to the sea lapping against sand and rocks. Gone were the creviced cliff sections overhanging treetops and the poems read under candlelight. Gone was the idle waiting in a deserted station for the whistle of a locomotive, sitting motionless, hearts vibrating with hard-to-express emotions, between the joy of setting off for some place new and the regret of having to leave the current location. We were both young. We were people of hope and dream. How pleasant it was to put on a pair of jeans, slip our feet into canvas shoes and don a rough shirt! We were cheerful like schoolboys on home leave. Sometimes we travelled by train and sometimes by orange-red and white public coaches. Sometimes you took your camera with you on top of your colour tubes, brushes, paper and drawing board. You were a fine arts student and your amphitheatre was the whole wide world and, by the Phetchaburi, you painted the turbid river which ran nonchalantly, the sugar palm trees on the banks reflected in blurred shadows and the farmers who guided with a perch their boats full of shining-gold rice sheaves to convey them to the threshing floor. And you painted village scenes in the hills at dusk bathed in rain or kitchen smoke that thrust into the still air in thick, heavy columns which little by little got lighter and twirled into tormented curls, as if in pain, and went away as if dancing for joy or as if to bid their last farewell before dissipating into the void. And there were prone cows chewing the cud in cowsheds, and banana trees heavy with bunches, their leaves slashed by wind gusts, and a cluster of kids playing hopscotch, and a farmer woman winnowing, and you painted even the light of a candle no bigger than a young girl’s pinkie, radiant and gloomy in the spirit house of a decrepit hovel. It was a village in the Thong Phaphoom district of Kanchanaburi province. And another time, it was on the train to the South, in Chumphon, wasn’t it, that we bought a variety of small bananas with creamy yellow skins, and their transparent flesh had sandy scintillations as in watermelons and gave out a strange perfume. I’ve got the name on the tip of my tongue. Ah, I remember, but I’m not sure it’s the right name. Too pretty to be the name of a banana: lady’s nails bananas. Never mind. It was long ago. It’s long been over. It’s fizzled out like sea foam on sand, sea foam I’d like to gulp, sea foam and corals and pearls I’d like to gulp, or even the sun at dawn or at dusk over the sea I’d like to gulp. I’d like to know the taste of the sun melting in my mouth. I’d like to because it’s beautiful. And it was during that trip down South, wasn’t it, that we drifted into a fishing village in Tha Sala district of Nakhon Si Thammarat province. There the night was but mosquitoes and the shore but a row of cheek by jowl small fishing boats. On the beach, there were but old torn nets scattered about, remains of shrimps, oysters, crabs, fish and a strong sea stench and swarms of flies. Almost all the villagers were Muslims. In the coffee shop with its elephant grass roof, the old owner too was a Muslim. He stared at us suspiciously, but that suspicion showed nonetheless a kindly nature as is increasingly difficult to find amid urban fauna. I sat down and talked with him for a long time while you walked around the village, camera slung across your chest. On the walls of his house there was a photograph of the sacred Kaaba and pictures of a crowd of Muslims in immaculate white during the Hajj. At one point, a young man appeared with an enormous sea crab and asked me if I wanted to buy it. It was tied in banana fibres and merely spat out tiny iridescent bubbles. The joints of the shell and pincers were entangled with lichen and its bigness bespoke of the fecundity of the sea around there, but I couldn’t help fearing that before long that fecundity would belong to the past, as it would be destroyed by modern fishing methods. Over there, the coffee was strong and bitter and the pa-thongko, bloated with oil, light and crisp, were almost the size of a child’s arm, and I ate them slowly, dunking them into condensed milk between two sips of coffee. Over there, sea cucumbers proliferated and their revolting looks didn’t incite one to sample them. The first man in the history of mankind who ate a sea cucumber must’ve been extremely daring. Each time I look back and recollect this fishing village, I catch myself dreaming I’m in a fishing village in Malaysia, Indonesia or the Philippines. The sea over there was true emerald and the foam of the waves so white I don’t know what to compare it with. Maybe it was because the shore was shaded with
a row of coconut and maritime pine trees. Maybe it was the frank smile of the kids playing simple games on the sand or maybe the bunch of young girls with oddly patterned garish sarongs who strolled on the beach singing in the late afternoon that made everything look beautiful and full of life. Right then it was the festival of the tenth lunar month in Nakhon Si Thammarat. You had a friend there and we’d meant to go and see the famous bullfights and not at all to visit this fishing village, but it turned out we spent two days and two nights there because, when we came out of the train, we stupidly got on the wrong bus. But you said it didn’t matter, as the festival wouldn’t begin for another three or four days. You took pictures and wrote a short article on this seaside village and sent them to a tourism magazine which usually published your contributions and whose editor, a beautiful woman with a bitter experience of marriage, paid your articles at such a high rate you often felt embarrassed. Actually sleeping on the sand inside a fisherman’s bare hut with rotting bamboo walls and a roof covered with dry coconut palm midribs, so that at night we were lying practically under starlight, made us forget altogether our tiredness and the boredom of the trip. From that village, we went to watch the tenth-month festival in Nakhon. It turned out later that your friend in that town was a father with a young baby and an inveterate gambler, who had an intimate understanding of almost all sorts of games and who considered gambling to be a science and an art, and he said only gambling makes us conscious of the vagaries of our fate, as sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, and he stated with assurance that everyone is a gambler, each in his or her own way, and the world is nothing but a huge gambling joint awaiting for one and all to try their luck. And over there, on a morning by the end of the rainy season in Nakhon, in my confused and demented memories I can see you and me walking amid a swell of movements and gay colours. Streets and avenues were swarming with undisciplined people and vehicles; nobody paid any attention to traffic rules. The crowd wasn’t limited to the city centre but overflowed into the suburbs, and it was by the side of a suburban road that we met our first fighting bulls, who were out to get some exercise under strict supervision. You stared at them as a child would new toys and you told me bulls were supervised as much as boxers preparing for a match, that is to say underwent training with appropriate exercises, notably, it was said, using a sandbag, not for the animal to gore or trample but clinging to its powerful neck to make it stronger still and sometimes, thus burdened, being forced to go and waddle in the mud of some marsh to strengthen its legs as well as prevent it from hassling the cows. For that reason, we needn’t be surprised the bulls we met were so massive and powerful. They looked so threatening that draught oxen seemed sickly by comparison and, if ever they came snout to snout with the most fearsome panther ever, it’d be the latter no doubt that would take fright and walk away with its tail between its legs. You’d gone there essentially for the purpose of reporting in depth on bullfights and you’d read all the books you could find on the subject to the point of almost becoming an expert in that field. And it was another occasion for me to keep quiet and listen to you, like when you compared the paintings of Picasso and Chagall, but before I knew what was what, you slipped away to besiege the bulls, asked their trainers for permission to take pictures and, with your most professional air, you set about shooting as if your camera was a weapon. We followed their lordships the bulls to the Thuat Thong arena, in Pho Sadet district. It wasn’t only an arena for bullfights but also a pied-à-terre for the bulls before a fight and for their trainers. Everything was provided: grass, water, stalls, dormitory for the trainers. And it was there we saw White Crystal, a Phitsanulok bull without rivals in the North. He had been there for a month to get acclimatised to southern conditions and train peaceably to pit his strength against Giraffe’s Neck from Thung Song, who laid down the law in the entire South. White Crystal didn’t seem much different from other fighting bulls, yet his superiority was obvious, given his entourage of no fewer than four trainers and his serene and unruffled bearing. The ground in front of the arena was a vast beaten earth esplanade where the bulls defied one another by bellowing deafeningly. It was all dust and cow dung smells. On one side of the esplanade, under canopies, stands served coffee and readymade dishes and it was to their tables that the arena officials gathered along with betters and the owners and trainers of the bulls. When we entered one of those restaurants, practically no one paid attention to us, even though our looks were out of place and everyone was aware we were strangers. You nodded by way of greetings to people who sat at one table and smiled at them in a friendly way, and before long you were chatting with several of them with a familiarity which began when you mentioned Praiwan the Red, whom local aficionados know well and whose feats are part of the local lore, but who by then was but a retired fighting bull. When he saw you talking about Praiwan the Red, one of the fellows at the table got up and told you that if you were interested in Praiwan the Red, he’d go and get you his owner, as that very morning he’d seen him who sat sipping coffee not far from here, and about one hour later he came back with a fat and swarthy man who, when he saw a stranger to those parts so much taken with his favourite, bestowed lavish praise on Praiwan the Red and managed to have it known he’d reared him since he was that small and when he’d begun to grow up not only did he give no indication of ever becoming a fighting bull but on top of it he was cowardly and shy, but after he was well trained and had practised toughening his horns on many opponents, he had improved to the point of becoming a first-class fighter and he had defeated all of his challengers in the South to the point of no longer having any rivals. You adroitly used that story as a shortcut to reach the core of the bullfighting world. Before we got out of there, it was past one in the afternoon. As we went back into town in a songthaeo61, we overtook an advertising van from the arena with deafening loudspeakers announcing that the most important bullfights of the year on the occasion of the festival in the honour of the Nakhon Si Thammarat reliquary were about to start, the greatest encounter of bulls originating from all corners of the country which lovers of this kind of sport couldn’t miss. The vehicle progressed slowly around town like those upcountry cinema vans announcing the film of the day, the stars billed and the film director. On both sides of it, billboards featured the main opponents. That’s where we saw again White Crystal and its adversary, Giraffe’s Neck, the unvanquished star of the South compelled to cross horns with the unvanquished star of the North – the crazy thing was not only that it’d be a decisive confrontation to determine who would be the national champion but also that both bulls had never been defeated and both had equal bloody battle experience. From our conversation in the restaurant I knew the bets on this fight reached the half-million-baht level and I was becoming aware of the growing excitement such a confrontation generated. We had lunch in the restaurant of a rather luxurious hotel you selected because you knew how you were to go about having an important scoop and you’d got hooked. From that moment on, we started to follow the fights from the very first one on the very first day. Actually, the tickets were very expensive and we didn’t have the means to go there every day, but your friend the compulsive gambler showed how wellacquainted he was by taking us to see the boss of the arena, a friend of his he’d let crib off his homework since they were in secondary school, and told him we were journalists from Bangkok who’d come to report on bullfights, which obviously would be good pr for the arena, and if he was smart, he’d let the two journalists in, and if those (phoney) news hawks wanted to see anything whatever in the arena, he should allow them to and when they questioned him, he, as the boss of the arena, should answer truthfully. As it happened, the arena boss made no objections, except to implore us not to write that the arena was a gambling circle, that’s all, whereas in truth that’s what it was, and not just an ordinary gambling circle but one that handled a million baht a day, and as you’d obtained the green light from the boss, you were able to go into the stalls of the bulls that featured in the programme. Those st
alls were at the back of the arena. Ordinarily outsiders were denied access to them, as the trainers were afraid they came to spy on them in one way or another and trainers as well as owners of bulls were in dread of poisoning. But we were able to get in and we soon were on good terms with not only the trainers and owners of bulls and arena officials but also the bulls themselves. This allowed you to take many good shots and realise that fighting bulls must not only eat well, like boxers, exercise, train and abstain from sexual relations, but their horns are sharpened with a sickle to keep the tip permanently as sharp as a sword blade. We went there during the seven days the fights lasted and saw over a hundred confrontations. We were enthralled by the atmosphere prevailing in the world of violence around bullfights in Nakhon Si Thammarat in early October, some days under a parching sun, some days under pelting rain. Couple after couple confronting each other, majestic and powerful beasts that pounce on each other and gore each other: there’s nothing that incites one so much to insanity. And the day White Crystal confronted Giraffe’s Neck, the arena was packed. Thousands of people sat tight there in a state verging on riot, just like balloons inflated with lethal gases. Of White Crystal and Giraffe’s Neck, one and the other with a record of innumerable victories, one or the other must bear the stigmata of defeat. It was hard to guess who would win. Analysts of all ilk had to be very careful about the opinions they uttered, as hardly anyone had seen the way White Crystal fought, what were his fortes and his failings. What was known was only hearsay. But for a fighting bull to be convoyed thus to the other end of the country, you could be sure he was a champion. As for Giraffe’s Neck, no one had the least doubt about his excellence, and if there were a Hall of Fame for fighting bulls, his name would be on the list in the same capacity as Praiwan the Red’s, who’d become a legend in his lifetime. There was absolute confidence in him, but that absolute confidence was somewhat shaken when White Crystal made his appearance in the arena. The hubbub suddenly hushed, so that we could now hear the bellowing of bulls in the stalls behind the arena. White Crystal was a magnificent beast, tall, enormous and well proportioned. His robe was white and impeccably clean once washed and anointed with curcuma like all the other bulls to mask the pervasive smell of the opponent. He was calm and impassive but gave out such a feeling of malefic strength one came to think he could paralyse the other bulls with a mere glance, and he stood in the arena to fight with a calm nothing seemed able to shake, like Choo Long, in The Three Kingdoms, ramrod on his horse in the middle of the battlefield. He didn’t look disoriented: for him, all bullfighting arenas in the world were the same. He must even be able to perceive the musk of local prejudices of the people around him, but he didn’t seem to mind. His horns were vigorous, well proportioned, about a cubit long. They were reputed to be able to manoeuvre in every way, either to undermine his opponent’s strength or to cut and thrust. Their bases were wrapped around with adhesive tape as is the case for all bulls about to fight, but their tips were naked and terrifying. There was also something melancholy in his pose, like pity for his foe. And that was how he stood in the arena. It was a white, terrible, pure force waiting for his rival, who ran all by himself with uncontrollable impetuosity. Giraffe’s Neck didn’t leave his opponent alone for long. He bellowed in defiance, actually, and groaned with irritation at having to wait so long to get goring. Walking in front of him was a hunchbacked old man busy muttering incantations and oblivious to anything else while copiously sprinkling holy water over the arena. Giraffe’s Neck drew back his dark brown cum black body. He was as enormous and thickset as White Crystal. His horns were shorter but their bone basis was thicker. His hooves scraped the wet ground of the arena, which obviously showed he wasn’t going to dither any longer. As soon as the drum rolled twice in the arena signalling the start of the fight, it was as though the roman candle of tension ascended and, having reached the apex of its trajectory, exploded in dazzling colours before its strands lazily fell back. The fight, awaited for months and months, only lasted eighteen minutes. Eighteen minutes, each crammed with the powder of apprehension. The result was a draw, with equal amounts of blood shed and equal numbers of strikes. Someone sheathed the horns of the two bulls with woollen caps, and garlands were wrapped round their necks. People mobbed the two beasts when they left the arena; nobody gave a thought to the next fight. You were one among them. You made your way through the throng to get close to White Crystal while triggering the shutter wildly. You made your way through the throng to get close to Giraffe’s Neck while triggering the shutter wildly. You disappeared into the scramble. I myself didn’t feel like watching the next fights and I lost time looking for you and finally found you in one of the restaurants by the side of the arena, in front of a still full glass of iced coffee in which the ice had melted because you weren’t drinking at all. There was a cigarette placed on the rim of the much-smudged table. Its long bent ash was about to fall, and you were writing head bent into your notebook covered with scrawls larded with rough sketches without paying the least attention to the din and confused agitation of the people around you. After that week of bullfighting during the tenth-month festival in Nakhon Si Thammarat, I kept following you as much as time, occasion and money allowed, and was it in Nan or in Loey that, at the end of February, it was so cold we were freezing to the marrow and we’d only taken a jacket each, as when we’d left Bangkok the heat was torrid, and over there, far away from Bangkok, the sky was overcast all day long and one had to hurry to bathe by four in the afternoon? It must’ve been in Loey province. You had a friend who was a social worker there. In the morning, the market was foggy and the people were huddled in their warm clothes, ample coats or blankets. You and I sat frozen at a table near the stove in a grotty joint, drinking coffee and eating freshly roasted khao larm. The bamboo tube, as long as the arm, was fragrant and released hot vapour, and whitish particles stuck to the glutinous rice inside. It was khao larm with filling, weird and bloody good. The filling seemed to be made out of taro mixed with sugar or something like that. Vapour came out of your mouth and nose and mingled with the fragrant smoke of just extracted khao larm. Loey or Nan? And that other time in Dansai, with the posse of ecologists. That time, on the way back, I told the car to stop and got out to pick flowers by the roadside, mauve flowers striated with red I’ve never known the name of. The young ecologists laughed at me no end. Those jerks had nothing romantic. But in any case, you must remember it was at a time when we were very close and, everything considered, you behaved like a kindly big brother. It was a time when I felt secure and happy. Darreit had already left and I was scared stiff of women. In the second year at the U, I moved and rented room number fifteen at Chainarm. You stayed at Seewiang. But we didn’t lose touch with each other for all that. And besides, it was in Pai district of Mae Hong Son province that we climbed a mountain and swore never to do so again. You had a friend who was a volunteer teacher there. Pai that year was a small district, not to say a subdistrict. It was a plateau surrounded by mountains. The school where your friend taught was about three kilometres out of town and stood on a green grass hill with mountains all around. Most of the inhabitants were Shan. They spoke a mixture of Shan and northern dialect, lived growing soy, onion, garlic, planted a little rice, and the felling of teak was their main activity. Poor though they were, they all lived in teak houses. Sometimes they used teak as fuel to do the cooking. After a few days, your friend and the other teachers invited us to go and inspect the piece of land where a new school was to be built. That was tantamount to a challenge, as a mountain had to be scaled. That challenge, we took up and we were to regret having done so later on. To begin with, we travelled by motorcycle over something like thirty kilometres through jungle and watercourses to go and spend the night on the heights. The next morning we started to walk; the way was too overgrown for bikes. We walked uphill over eight kilometres, almost spitting out blood, what with that lousy rain that started to pelt down and the track that was slippery. To stop was out of the question, as the
others, those sons of bitches, didn’t want to hear about it and, if we’d stopped regardless, we would’ve got lost as it was dense forest all around. The school to be built was in a Karen village with the cool name of Kaeng Horm (Fragrant stew). People, dogs, pigs and fowl lived together on good terms. The pigs weren’t fenced in but free to forage as they wished. On the other hand, the vegetable plots were surrounded with sturdy, tightly woven fences. Progressive development experts had told those Karen that developed people, you know, they fence in their pigs: fences around vegetable patches, you just don’t do that. The Karen had answered that to do so was absurd: pigs had legs to move with, so they might as well be left to wander where they pleased, no? As for vegetables, as is well known, they can’t walk, so that to protect them with a fence was common sense. Besides, vegetables, you know, when they’re fenced in, they don’t protest, but pigs – as credulous Karen who had followed the advice of development experts had found out soon enough – if you fence them in, they keep groaning, they aren’t happy and they run away often. Such was the wisdom of the land. But neither you nor I would’ve ever guessed this would become a matter of heated controversy among progressives a few years later. Mae Hong Son, I’ve never gone back to. It has remained a marvellous memory. And another marvellous memory was that village by the Moon river in the Kraburi district of Nakhon Ratchasima province in the Northeast, where we spent a month and a half. One of your friends was a teacher there. A village of some twenty houses with elephant grass roofs threatening to collapse. The Moon flowed red. The pigment of the ground was red. That gave a funny complexion and a funny colour of hair to the villagers, as if they belonged to another race. Village, river, mountain, the very civilisation seemed to have just been born, but that was mere appearance, for, even though it was far from any urban society, that little world was already invaded by transistor radios, aspirin pills, canned fish and instant noodles. On some days, someone came on a bicycle to sell bear meat, looking weatherworn, both man and vehicle, zigzagging among the ruts drawn by cart wheels, the bear meat transported in a bamboo basket on the back carrier. Thirty baht a kilo. That’s how I learned bear fat gives cooking oil like pig fat. On some nights, in your friend’s hut, we lit a paraffin lamp and discussed sitting down or lying down until very late, and sometimes until dawn. A village hunter, almost octogenarian, called on us regularly. Above the hut platform caught in the flickering lamplight, the stars wept. The light rasp of water upon stone at the nearby waterfall, the gusts of wind that sometimes were redolent of frangipani, the monologue of the old hunter relating stories of times gone by – all of that sounded oddly sacred. His Khorat man’s lilting accent was akin to chanting. He spoke slowly, with a raspy voice. What the old man told were stories, not historical events. No doubt he was exaggerating a bit for effect, but I didn’t mind: I listened to his tales as tales, and I liked it very much when he came to his elephant hunt at a time when the jungle was virgin and he young, courageous and strong, when he surreptitiously slipped into a herd of some thirty elephants to shoot down the one with the most handsome tusks. The old man said in his own way that the giant elephant was right in the middle of his herd and the others kept pacing around him ceaselessly on the lookout for any unusual smell, while he stood against a tree trunk, dressed only in a G-string, his body entirely covered with fresh elephant dung to mask his human smell, and he progressed with stealthy, silent steps to get as near as possible to the one he’d selected. He couldn’t afford to miss as his locally made cap gun had only one bullet and he only fired for sure, practically point-blank, with an audacity that would have made Raphin Phraiwan or Alan Quatermaine look like runts. A life for a life in conditions as fair as could be. I like this story of the old man as it’s a hunt that confines to perfection. His way of telling brought a clear vision in my mind of the tall elephant trumpeting in stupor, fright and pain, his trunk flipping up, his front legs rising boxing the air, his enormous body tottering and reeling over before collapsing at the end of a life more than centennial in a cloud of dust, a gust of tree leaves and the ground shakes in waves while his mates skedaddle. The old man told many other stories of the jungle over the following nights, but none as beautiful as the elephant hunt. In any case, those nights of olden times full of sortilege are no more. And neither are those feverish nights in the many streets of pleasure of Bangkok. Even though you were still at Seewiang, you and I began to grow apart little by little, most naturally. The circle under the pines wasted away when the Old Lion went to teach for a while in the United States under a university exchange programme and five or six of the most assiduous members of the circle said they were giving up or disappeared without a word. I began to love again. We still met when I brought you some money to reimburse my debt at the beginning of each month. There was a time when I went to see you repeatedly just to ask you to find me some work, but you’d disappeared I don’t know where or for how long, having locked your room after paying the rent. Later, there was a rumour you were back in Bangkok and you’d gone to the length of forming a musical ensemble with fluctuating membership which was composed of former revolutionaries, young fellows eager enough but without any financial means, and bloody awful visachallenged hippies come from the West to sample hash and nirvana, and which performed every Saturday and Sunday among the crowd in front of a second-hand jeans shop at the weekend market on the Royal Esplanade. On weekdays, drawing board under your arm, you sketched portraits to order in the sex streets of Bangkok as before. When you could find the time, you paid a call to the U and invited me out for a coffee. You started telling me again about that piece of land you had yet to buy, of the uncertain income you drew painstakingly from those portraits in the street, painstakingly from your articles, painstakingly from the odd jobs you took on, such as layout or proofreading. I listened to you and grew dismayed. You were aware of it and changed the subject, saying you’d like to find a full-time job to land on your feet, get on with it for five or six months or even a year in order to have money like so many others, no longer get drunk if not necessary, no longer go upcountry if not necessary, no longer sleep with street girls if not necessary as you’d always done, but instead love a good woman for good as, no matter what, there’s nothing like women to give us inspiration and press us to realise our dreams. At other times later, you talked to me of a Japanese advertising agency where one of your older friends was artistic director. That friend of yours was a former leftist and he had invited you to work with him. You hadn’t made any decision because the salary was rather low. If you obtained the salary you wished, maybe you’d let yourself be tempted as, no matter what, conceiving advertising slogans is an experience worth trying to test oneself. I listened to you without saying anything. I had no opinion. We hadn’t grown apart for good yet. In the eyes of those that knew you and that knew me, we were two scruffy young fellows very close to each other, made to understand each other, complementary. At other times later, you talked to me of a tenrai piece of land by the Phetchaburi, not very far from the city centre. It was an abandoned orchard. It was the land of a friend of yours, another former leftist. He had a pressing need for money as he wanted to become a shareholder with other former leftists in order to open a pub where there would be politically committed songs and other cool things of that nature, like those pubs we can see just about everywhere these days, the kind for getting drunk singing ‘The red orient shows the way’ and showing openly that one loves the people to the utmost, one hates dictatorship more than anything and one always loves justice even when making love. That former leftist was ready to sell you that plot for only eighty thousand baht. You’d gone to see the plot in question and you found it was a very interesting proposition. Even if you merely left it as it was for ten years, it’d certainly go up in value, wouldn’t it? I listened without saying anything. I had no opinion. I kept bringing you money at the beginning of the month after I received my postal order, more or less each month. Sometimes I went to Seewiang and you weren’t there. I left the money with
the old landlady, that’s all. She attended to your every need, as she loved you as if you were her son or grandson. We still hadn’t grown apart, our relations still weren’t strained. That only happened after the night my panther went on a rampage. I myself don’t understand even now what it was that sent my panther on a rampage. It was a very ordinary night in July. I went to see you very late in the evening to bring you another one thousand five hundred baht, which I had neatly placed in a white envelope. We talked of this and that and when we were fed up we took out a bottle of whisky and started to drink. Neat alcohol, with draughts of cold water, as we both were too lazy to volunteer to go out and buy soda and ice cubes. You offered me to play chess. I refused, as I was beginning to be blotto drinking that way. You told me it was just as well, as you were sleepy. You fell asleep almost immediately while I remained sitting and thinking idly. Nothing extraordinary should have happened. We were only two insomniac young men with long hair who’d taken off their shirts and drunk to stave off boredom and who sometimes cursed those fucking mosquitoes and who sometimes cursed that fucking stifling heat. It wasn’t long before I fell asleep in turn, my bag under my head for a pillow. You were lying on the floor. I was lying on the floor, and I woke up at dawn. But why was it I woke up a panther? I saw, smelled and heard like a panther and, when I moved and roared, I moved and roared the way a panther does. I don’t know from which corner of my memory that panther had escaped to take over my body and why it had to be a panther rather than a fishing cat or a clouded leopard or a dog or a rabbit or a bear or a crocodile or a bluebottle fly or a canned turnip or an ashtray or a toothbrush or a mop or a mad maggot. Why did it have to be a damn panther and right on a night I spent in your room? For before that I’d never ever dreamed of myself as a panther and I never again have dreamed of myself as a panther in my life. In any case, on that night I uttered an aberrant roar and jumped on you who were fast asleep with my panther body. One of my hands clutched your throat, and in the next instant I flung myself back, the hand that held the knife rose as high as it could go and struck down with all its might, but luck favoured you, as you’d woken up upon hearing my roar: you writhed away in time, but the tip of the knife drew a long gash on your neck from which blood flowed. I came to my senses as soon as the knife, driving through the pillow, got stuck into the floor. Stark awake, but stunned by my own dream. Stunned you were more than I. You stared at me as if you’d never seen me before. You raised your hand to touch the blood on your neck. You breathed hard, looking totally bewildered. You sat up and, after staring at me for yet another while, you got up. I sat up and, after staring at you for yet another while, I got up in turn. We were both breathing hard and sweating profusely. Your face was contorted by some internal pain. My face was contorted by some internal pain. I almost begged your pardon haltingly, but you pounced on me, caught me by the shoulder and shook me hard and yelled What the fuck is the matter with you? Such a reaction caught me unawares and shattered my sense of reality like a flush of birds. One of your hands hooked my hair and pulled, thrusting my face backwards, and you yelled again What the fuck is the matter with you? I shoved your hand away, bent over, grabbed the knife and the bag, hurriedly buttoned my shirt up again, gave myself a mighty punch on the nape of my neck before stalking out of the room, leaving you standing dumbfounded with your What the fuck is the matter with you ? After the absurd gesture of that night, when we met we greeted each other normally, but you started to be careful about what you said and the tone you used when you spoke to me. Such circumspection was obvious even in your body language, which was beyond you. In our conversations, which you seemed to make sure wouldn’t exceed ten minutes, you obviously had a question to ask me, but it never managed to come out. That question was: if I dreamed that weird dream that night, it was because I thought I’d never reimburse you, wasn’t it? To which, had you actually asked me, I would’ve answered quite frankly: Not at all. Oh no, really, not at all! Why I came to dream such a daft dream I haven’t a clue. One evening, about one month after the panther assaulted you, you came by to see me at Chainarm. After beating about the bush for quite a while, you finally ventured to ask me if I thought I could give you twenty thousand baht. You’d bought the piece of land by the Phetchaburi river and you were short of twenty thousand baht to fully own the title deed. Taken aback, I hesitated. I said I didn’t. I had on me seven hundred and seventy baht only. You could have five hundred baht for a start. You showed yourself embarrassed at once. We’d always spoken of everything under the sun except the debt I owed you. You asked me if I couldn’t get that amount for you from somewhere. I was silent. You were silent. I was ashamed. You were ashamed. Between us then, there were lots of words that weren’t spoken. It was so unexpected I was shocked. You hesitated for a long time. You surely must’ve asked yourself several times what to say to me. Finally, you said Never mind, never mind, to end the awkwardness.