On a wide street, arcing away from the river, people are clustered under a brown café awning, sheltered from the rain. The café looks inviting. Inside, it is warm, windows fogged, couples nuzzling. There’s a feeling, sudden and strong, of missing Z. I push it away and return to the journals. If Z were here, he would ask questions, prodding me toward accuracy:
How many journals are there?
Six.
Is that all?
There is probably one more.
Have you seen it?
No.
What makes you think it exists?
In the green journal Ella mentions it. If it does exist, it’s with her, wherever she is.
The journals, what colors are they?
Beige. Baby blue. Mustard yellow. Red. Black. Green.
What dates do they cover?
June sixteenth to late November of the following year. Seventeen months.
And the color of the one you don’t have?
Green, like the one before it—no, I’m imagining. I don’t know.
— Un café. Un double. Merci.
What are you doing? the voice asks, ingenuous, like the real Z.
Thinking.
And?
Perceiving.
Perceiving what? (He wouldn’t say this. It has been too long. I’m forgetting him, my old life. I answer anyway, since we’re both in my head.)
Sound of autumn rain falling outside the picture windows, smell of espresso and perfume, wet wood, old books.
What are you thinking about?
A conversation with Siobhán. (Aidan told me that she wasn’t angry, just troubled by the seriousness of my mother’s illness. Her trip away from Paris had nothing to do with me. She’d gone to meet a Swiss video artist in Basel.) She said, Commit, Elena. Don’t be equivocal. Accuracy is an ideal. If you hold out for perfection, you won’t notice that what’s true isn’t immutable. It isn’t constant, but slips in among colors and smells; it is accessible from anywhere except from above. Decide on details. Make it real. Live in that world. It is how stories get written, how anything at all gets made. The town of X? Use a map, Elena, my God, you’re not Balzac!
Siobhán said this?
A version of it.
Then what?
Further discussion.
About what?
A tablecloth: whether or not the table on Anthony’s veranda had a tablecloth the day Ella played Scrabble, in her words, over eggs, real toast! I write “real toast” as if this were a country where you couldn’t just buy bread if you looked for it. Nothing is ever exotic enough.
Feeling warmer now in the café, I peel off my wet coat and flip through the blue journal. I know these entries. I consulted them as I wrote about the Scrabble brunch, as I considered, in the role of Ella, how desire changes people. We studied Anthony. We asked, Is he good?
My throat is suddenly sore, my head throbbing. I’ll be more comfortable in her body, in the sun, as Ella finds her routine in Ban Du.
Anthony cooked eggs, won at Scrabble. Seb stranded me after saying I had nothing to be embarrassed about. My head was a bowling ball stuffed with humid cotton, neurons unwinding in the heat. Memory jack-in-the-box. Seb’s rattle her rattle her rattle her rattle her. Discotheque. I woke up on his couch in his clothes. Koi is Anthony’s lover—Anthony, who says the day breaks “shiny as an egg” over Ban Du, and keeps scraps of Yeats to “buffer inclement weather,” despite the sky’s unchanging blue.
I hate rice porridge for breakfast. Scallions in the morning are a sin. At work, I have a coconut yogurt and a giant mug of instant coffee with powdered cream and six packets of sugar. Today I discovered the perfect breakfast! So-La-Pow (not sure about spelling). Sold in a snack cart on my way to class. Steaming hot. Must be eaten immediately. Filled with yellow bean or red bean or pork (barbecue pork at the Ban Du 7-Eleven). Solapow! Want to sing Thai tones to the page. Song words.
Maybe fabricating detail—extraneously—is a way of reinjecting the music. She wrote:
Script where a world was. Sound sense doesn’t last forever, so life lives longer when it’s written. Does it grow richer, being read?
Let’s talk about the details: the tablecloth. When you picture the scene at Anthony’s, is it there?
Yes, English lace, with coffee stains. But it’s unlikely there was a tablecloth.
Why unlikely?
Tablecloths are a pain to wash.
So are dishes.
Fine, there was a tablecloth. The details are unimportant. They can’t tell us where Ella is.
What did Siobhàn say?
She’s reading Balzac. She believes (now) in realism, in textures woven from details, but she also said not to fear ellipses—they can speak, too, if you’re careful not to gag them.
(The Z in my head finds this interesting.) What else?
She spoke of Balzac’s tablecloth, white as a layer of fresh-fallen snow, upon which place settings rose symmetrically, crowned with blond rolls. All through my youth, Cézanne said, I wanted to paint that tablecloth of fresh-fallen snow. Now I know that one must only want to paint “rose symmetrically, the place setting,” and “blond rolls.” If I paint “crowned,” I’m done for, you understand? But if I really balance and shade my place settings and rolls as they are in nature, you can be sure the “crowned,” the “snow,” the whole shebang, will be there.
What does she mean?
That you can’t write anything more than what you taste, hear, see, smell, touch, and it’s only in the arrangement—if it breaks new form—that shadows wake to life.
Of course, there are dangers—doubt, uncertainty, solitude, madness—when you imagine to yourself a world that doesn’t exist, and then it does.
I didn’t ask about her plan. I don’t need to. Siobhán wants, consciously or unconsciously, for me to become her daughter as I write, to assume Ella’s shape and feelings. Temporarily. Quick, describe what’s here, what’s real, what I see and sense as me, Elena: a metal bucket of umbrellas by the door. Drops of water slide down sheaths buckled and snapped.
I drop sugar into my coffee.
The sugar is brown, a rough lump. Imagine it cubed if you prefer (neat edges or white sugar rather than brown), or if you pictured a white sugar cube before I could stop you. If you ignored the word drop and imagined loose sugar of either color from a packet or a bowl, keep it that way. Or not. Espresso, double shot, crema broken at the top, by the sugar. Tiny spoon. The espresso cup is red. The saucer is red. It is still raining. The woman next to me is drinking wine the color of pale straw. The glass has fogged from the coolness of the wine and the humidity in the café.
This world won’t fade. I won’t lose it. When I come back from being Ella, I’ll be stronger. Yes, I must see and feel as Ella, detach from the present a while longer. Earlier today, the lecturing philosopher said that when we try to recover something—a memory, but it applies to Ella, too—we must place ourselves in a region of the past and adjust our position, as if focusing a camera. What we’re trying to recapture comes into view like a condensing cloud, passing from virtual to actual.
17
IT WAS SORAYA WHO TOLD ME about Loi Krathong, on the night she hosted a small gathering at the plantation home of her lover. When we arrived, she presented us with jasmine necklaces (to Seb’s chagrin), showed us the peach orchards and pineapple fields, then led us to a deck that the administrator had built from local teakwood. It overlooked a small pond in which tea lights and torches doubled themselves, flickering.
A table was spread with spring rolls, satays, and other Thai delicacies. Soraya showed me and Anthony how to assemble dried shrimps, peanuts, herbs, and chilies in a waxy green leaf.
Anthony puckered.
—Yes, you eat the leaf, she said, swallowing.
From the pond came the sound of small splashes, concentrated and rhythmic.
—Piranhas, said the administrator.
He was smoking at the edge of the deck, paying us little attention.
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br /> —Oh, yes, Soraya said, it’s why he built the deck so high.
Her laugh was like glass breaking,
Koi assembled a leaf and gave it to me. It was delicious, mineral, like eating the earth.
—My Western daughter, Soraya said proudly, seeing me eat the leaf.
Then she asked about my plans for Loi Krathong night. Aghast when I didn’t know what it was, she sat next to me and explained that loi means to float, as on a river, and a krathong is made of banana wood, leaves, orchids, marigolds, and candles. The krathong is the self, the river the world.
Soraya whispered, her green eyes full of intensity in the candlelight, that most people neglect the most important part of the ritual:
—Loi Krathong is about love.
—Aligned with Christian baptism, Anthony argued. It’s about the forgiveness of sins.
—Not Christianity! Koi said. You compare too much.
Seb pointed out that the ancient Sukhothais had devised a way to release, each year, the bondage of self, which was more than just sin. I found myself moved by the idea of the ancient ritual, akin to snakes’ molting: shedding the self in order to grow.
Seb drew on his Singha, gazing beyond the pond into the darkness. Soraya, too, seemed magnetized by it, that void. Then she turned, eyes wide, as if possessed, to say that Loi Krathong was her favorite night of the year.
—You get to start everything again, all new, she said.
There was uncomfortable silence. She grew still, staring blankly at the dark. Our earlier conversation returned to me, things she’d said simply, without irony. Her sadness seemed more than her own. Maybe it was mythic sadness. She wore it beautifully. It was in her face, lit by the candles she’d placed along the deck. It was patterned into the colored scarves she draped around her shoulders. Usually, I saw only her passion and energy, but tonight, with her gaze lost in the darkness of the plantation, she was sadness. I didn’t see it. I felt it as my own.
At the far end of the deck, the administrator lit a cigar.
We watched the moon come into view. Distended, drunk with light, it pulled at the frail strands of our conversation.
18
I SCAN ELLA’S PAGES, SOFT, WORN. There’s something of her body in them: oil from her fingers, cells of her skin. From the binding’s crease I take a strand of her hair. My first thought is to tell Siobhán. But a relic might upset her. I hold the hair up to the autumn light, rusted as Paris stretches in its bed of shadows. The strand is amber-colored, gold. I pluck a hair from my head to compare. Hers is coarse, mine finer, warm, darker. I tuck them together between the pages.
The self is the past is desire, Ella wrote. Rituals are real. She seems to believe that things will be different as soon as her krathong sails into the river. The world will flow through her, and she’ll be open to it, finally free. Her Loi Krathong entry is eight pages in copious blue ink. It begins with what looks like an epigraph: Death is linked with love because death, like love, symbolizes our fear of letting go of ourselves as well as our desire to let go of ourselves.
In other entries Ella mentions a book called A Buddhist History of the West, by David Loi [sic]. I found the book by David Loy, a scholar of Buddhism and psychoanalysis living in Japan. The line is from page seventy-four. I order this book and two more on Buddhist philosophy, then look again at the entry. The prose is drunk, strange: … rivers flow east over land like a page. River cut earth skin. Not-self is the world. River mouth, dark hollow, asks without uttering a sound. Words, faint fictions by which experience, long dead, guides us with afterimages …
19
ACROSS THE STREET AT ANTHONY’S, torches flared and Chinese lanterns danced color to the dusk. Loi Krathong falls on the full-moon night of the twelfth lunar month. Lunar months, unlike solar months, drift through the seasons, more fluid. What better way to divest oneself of the dying year, Anthony reasoned, than by honoring Dionysus? He was throwing a party.
Béa’s house, across from Anthony’s, has the only working oven in the village, so we did the cooking for the party there. As we chopped vegetables and roasted chickens, Béa told me about a brilliant local artist who, out of the blue, won the Bangkok Prize for photography. He couldn’t afford materials, and he taught photo classes at the Alliance française just to have a camera. Béa was arranging an exhibition of his work in Chiang Rai.
—Everything ready? Anthony asked, emerging from the shadows of the road. Koi and I will carry over the ice for the bar, WON’T WE, KOI? We’ve had a row. He’s bought fish. I said there would be plenty of food. Thai people won’t eat falang food, he says. So now we have three large fish—we’re keeping them warm over the burners. He says it doesn’t matter if they’re cold, but what is worse than a cold fish? And now, because of this, he’s petulant and—
Koi appeared in the halo of the porch light. Dodging the hand reaching for his waist, he slung two bags of ice over his shoulders and strutted back across the road toward Anthony’s.
—He’s in a mood, Anthony said, speaking fluidly, distractedly. We’ve been to the flower market today. There’s a lovely flower market in Chiang Rai. Have you been? ISN’T IT LOVELY, KOI, THE FLOWER MARKET? They had roses for one hundred baht—one hundred baht for a dozen roses! I bought three dozen!
We heard the surge and sputter of a motorcycle. Anthony hurried off, worried a guest had come early.
In Béa’s kitchen, a candle swelled and crackled, dripping wax into an herb pot. Countertops were piled high. I peeled lychees for an experimental pie, and Béa rolled dough with a wine bottle. We were laughing over something when we noticed Soraya, oddly still, framed like an icon in the doorway.
—Sawatdee ka, she said in a hollow voice.
She moved through all parts of the space, unsure where to pause, pulling her red scarves around her shoulders. When she finished her circle, she stood in the center, fixing me with her green eyes. Her bottom lip quivered, her skin taut. Her face fell into her hands. Her shoulders shook.
Béa asked what was wrong, but Soraya couldn’t answer. Her chest only heaved.
I listened to the sharp inhales of her sobs, not knowing what to do. Béa, more humane, hugged Soraya and smoothed her hair.
When Soraya looked up, her eyes met mine. I felt guilty, not saying anything. She passed a hand across her cheeks and chin to brush away the tears.
—Anthony said you would be here, she said.
I nodded. I wanted to be as warm as Béa, but drama made me anxious and skeptical, as if the display of emotions made them less real.
Béa took Soraya’s arm and led her around the kitchen, showing her the tray of toasting peanuts and Kaffir lime leaves, roasting chickens, bubbling greens. Soraya grew calm.
—We need someone to do the cranberries, Béa said.
She’d asked for a dish connected to where I was from, so I’d gone to the Western grocer in town and bought imported cranberries for sauce. It was the best I could do.
—Okay, Soraya said, like a child who wishes to be obedient.
—All you do is wash them, add sugar and water. Pick out any rotten ones.
Soraya sat listlessly at the table, trying to read the package instructions. Tears returned.
—I could smell it, she said bitterly—smell sex when he came home. He’s away again now.
I looked at the floor. I’d hated the administrator when I met him, aloof and uninterested. Joining her at the table, I held Soraya’s hand.
—The worst part? she whispered. This has happened before. The first time, my husband, it was almost the same! I knew. But I couldn’t believe …
Some days earlier, Anthony had salaciously revealed the full story of Soraya’s escape from Bangkok. The daughters, daddy’s girls, hadn’t questioned their father’s story about Soraya’s running off with the administrator. The true tale was that Soraya had caught her husband entangled with a younger cousin of hers in the most compromising positions. Anthony had touched his teeth to his lip with relish at this part. When I p
ressed him for his source, he said he’d gone to the driving range with the vice president and the other administrators. It was all they could speak about. Men are such gossips!
Béa handed Soraya a tissue.
—Thank you, she said, wiping her face. I’m fine. It comes and goes. Some days I mind less. I do my work …
She sniffled.
—But my daughters …
Soraya’s face fell into the cup of her hands.
—I don’t care about him—either of them—but my daughters … They think I left them. They are still so angry at me. They don’t know why …
Soraya’s body shook.
—They try to cut me out, to pretend I’m not their mother. To forget me! Where do they think they come from? From her? Who is nearly their age?
Soraya ripped open the bag of cranberries with her fingernail, spilling them onto the table. She laughed, throaty and shrill.
—They believe the lies. Like dogs. They’re not mine. I don’t want them.
Her expression hardened. She began sorting the berries. As her pain transformed to focus, I saw that this anger, betrayal, and humiliation—an old refrain—drove her many smiles.
Béa put sugar and water in a pot. Soraya added the cranberries. We waited for it to boil, for their skins to break.
—I see their seeds, Soraya called, looking over the pot.
She’d brought pineapples for the party. Slicing them, she told us about the two kinds: Sapparot Chiang Rai and Sapparot Phuket.
—It’s the soil that determines the taste of the fruit. The soil in Chiang Rai is mountain soil. Phuket is by the sea. You taste the sea in a Phuket pineapple. There are different seeds, but it’s the soil that matters, she smiled sadly. The soil is the mother.
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