God's Fool

by Mark Slouka

  The arena was weirdly silent; no one moved. It was as though the battle were taking place at the end of a long, dark tunnel, and I was the only one watching this cat, somehow grown beautiful again, quietly throwing itself at a moving wall. And suddenly, for just a moment, the gears seemed to stall, to hesitate, and in that moment I caught a glimpse of the impossible like some shy forest creature at the edge of a clearing at dusk. And then it was gone. The gears meshed. The tenth or twelfth or twentieth giant, wrapping a python trunk around the tiger’s neck, threw it high into the sun and it fell, with a horrible tearing sound, onto an upturned tusk. A slick white point thrust obscenely out its back. The battle was won.

  Trumpeting wildly, flinging its head from side to side like a dog with a rat, the elephant slid the cat from its tusk and slowly trampled it to a crushed brown mat of blood and bone and fur. My brother wept. But I had seen something. With my own tears still stinging my eyes and the acid taste of vomit in my throat, I understood, for the first time, that resistance—when our defeat has been predestined and the gods themselves are thundering in our ears, baying for our blood—is as close to the sacred as we are permitted to come in this life. And I thought then (but I was a child still, and fear had made me brave), that though we all—each and every one of us—came into the world with our mouths sewn shut and our claws pulled out, I for one would never give in. I would never accept the rock simply because it was harder than flesh, never capitulate to the laws of necessity simply because they were irrefutable, never cravenly bow to reason (or its whispering kissing-cousin, fate), merely because they could not be avoided. I would run out the length of my chain, by God. I would split my jaws on the world’s thick hide. And I have.

  VI.

  And so we returned to Meklong—an odd, inverted journey under a leaden, gathering sky, first down the Hue to the port of Touran, now dry and still, then on to Saigon for an interminable week of discussions of which we were not a part, then back down the Saigon River, around the chin at Vung Tau, and finally, like Orestes fleeing the Furies to Patmos, up the endless green of the Cambodian coast to Bangkok. Two days later we were home.

  Nothing had changed. Ha Lung had reinforced one of the enclosures, begun building a second. Everyone we knew, it seemed, was well. Our mother welcomed us with tears of relief in her eyes, and that evening gave us an accounting of the money Ha Lung had made while we were gone. We had done well. When neighbors came by to hear of our journey we put them off, explaining we were tired. We didn’t speak about what we’d seen. We let it stay inside, like a bullet lodged too deep to touch, hoping time would absorb it, too young to know that though the bandage drops away and the scar fades, every buried thing becomes a seed.

  That night, lying on our mats in the dark, we talked over our plans. A warm wind moved through the thatching over our heads. From the houseboats next to ours came bits of conversation, words and phrases like leaves torn from a branch: “still,” “more,” “he said to me,” “never again,” followed by a low, uncertain laugh. Unable to sleep, we chattered on late into the night. We had been timid too long, we both agreed. We would raise our sights, adjust the scale of our ambition. We would strike now, while we were still fresh from our journey, before the old habits of behavior and belief had had a chance to reassert themselves.

  “What about Ha Lung?” my brother asked, feigning concern. “He is old and set in his ways. He might not see it our way.” A small wave rocked the houseboat like a cradle.

  “Then we have to explain it to him so that he does see it,” I said. “And if he still doesn’t,” I continued, like a boy trying to reinforce his new voice before it breaks, “we’ll give him the choice of taking his share and going his way.”

  “Ha Lung can be stubborn.”

  I laughed, riding my own bravado. “I can be stubborn, too,” I said, and then, covering up the discomfort my own words had begun to cause me: “I’m not saying he doesn’t mean well. But we’re not children anymore. He’s held us down long enough.”

  It was agreed. The demand for duck eggs was boundless. Every week we were forced to turn people away. We would take the money we had, all of it, and triple the size of our flock. We would buy a second boat. It would be hard at first, but within a few weeks, maybe less, we would have enough to hire an extra worker. Or two, should Ha Lung decide to go his way. By June we would be bringing in three times what we made now. By the time we were twenty-two we would be living in Bangkok.

  In two days, we had found a boat that suited us. By the end of the week we had accumulated the supplies we needed—extra barrels of salt, a small mountain of clay wrapped in wet sacks and stored in the shade. We had hired two little boys to collect ashes from the village cooking fires. We had arranged to rent the land on either side of our property, and begun work on the additional enclosures. Ha Lung was invaluable. Though initially unhappy with our decision, when given the choice to stay or go he had thrown in his lot with us, coming to our door with a small, carved box full of money. Nor was there anything halfhearted about his work; now that the decision had been made, he would do everything in his power to see things through, to make our enterprise a success. Despite our brave words, we were glad to have him.

  We worked from dawn to dusk that first week, building well up from the river, securing the fences against the monsoon, stopping only when our mother, who had not opposed us, brought us our food. I remember how nice our boats looked, riding side by side in the current. Three of the pens were finished and filled. Groups of sleek, close-feathered ducks were waddling about or sleeping or exploring the low shelters and egg-laying boxes we had carefully set out for them. The rest of the pens would be finished within a week’s time. We sat on the hill and ate. Our lives lay before us like a broad, smooth path. Just ahead, its spires glinting in the sun, lay Bangkok. I felt a rush of tenderness for the village I had known since birth. We would come back here. We would not forget this place when our fortunes changed. And looking about me with brimming eyes I heard our sister calling something, saw a black bird wing slowly up the current with something in its beak, saw Wei-Ling’s wife arguing with her neighbor in the houseboat next to hers, waving her arms like a marionette whose strings were attached to the swaying branches overhead, and knew, with utter certainty, that though we might one day have a fine house in Bangkok, this would always be our home. A hot, wet breeze tousled our hair and died.

  In my mind the events that followed were as abrupt—and linked—as the two-part concussion of a thunderclap. Robert Hunter, who arrived that morning looking as though he had just run from Bangkok (the reason my sister had been calling) was the first part, the ominous mumble that slowly tightens the world, then grudgingly subsides, fretting and turning interminably, into silence. He had been gone less than ten hours—striding angrily out of Meklong with his coat flapping in the rising wind like some wild-eyed prophet bent for the wilderness—when the second hit us, a ripping crack that seemed to tear the stone of heaven in half.

  “I have secured it!” he cried out to us when we were still some distance away. “I have secured it. The king himself has given me permission to take you abroad, to see the West.”

  It was tremendous news, he said. Unprecedented. A turn of fortune such as he had never expected. He had everything worked out. He had met a man named Abel Coffin—a merchant—who had connections in the Royal Palace. When Hunter told him about us, Coffin had grown very excited. And why shouldn’t he be excited? He was a man of the world, after all, as well as a man of God, a shrewd businessman with a keen eye who had made a living for twenty years plying his trade in difficult latitudes. He had seen the possibilities immediately. The two had agreed to form a partnership. And suddenly, less than two months later, the thing was done. He could hardly believe it himself.

  Hunter rushed on, oblivious to everything around him. In six weeks time Coffin’s ship, the Sachem, would be anchored in the port of Bangkok. We must be on it, as eight months or more might pass before Coffin returned to Siam. He,
Hunter, was already working toward bringing his various business affairs in Siam to an appropriate conclusion, so that he might sail for the West with a clear conscience and an untroubled heart. He most heartily advised us to do the same. “Think of it,” he said, almost shouting, giddy as a felon handed his pardon at the prison’s gates. “In three months’ time you shall be strolling through Kensington, or walking the cobbles of Lisbon, or sleeping on feather pillows in Paris.”

  In the silence that followed I heard a board creak and turned to see Ha Lung, who had come with us to see what the excitement was about, and who had probably understood just enough from Hunter’s mangling of our language to grasp the shape of the conversation, walking back down the planks to the shore. I had absolutely no doubt where he was going. There were enclosures to finish, pens to clean. The monsoon would be upon us at any moment.

  We had never seen him angry. He spit, he raged, he fumed like a child. He wheedled and cajoled one moment, whining for our understanding, threatened us the next. Had we lost our senses? The West would make us rich. Our mother would be given the equivalent of three hundred pounds—a princely sum, he might add, to do nothing—to compensate for our absence. We would return in a year with more than we could make in twenty peddling our damned eggs. This was outrageous. We had discussed it all beforehand. We had had an agreement, on the basis of which he had made certain irrevocable arrangements. Everything was in motion. Our refusal now would ruin him.

  We rose to our feet together as always but it was my brother who spoke. We had had no agreement, he said, his voice as calm as water in a bucket. If he had already taken steps based on this misunderstanding, we were sorry, but the fault was his, not ours. We had traveled enough. We had no intention of leaving Siam. And now, if he would excuse us, we had work to do.

  His eyes bulging as though an invisible hand were squeezing his gullet, Robert Hunter stared at us, spun on his heel, then turned again at the door. He waved his arm to indicate our boat. “This is what you want? This is what you aspire to? To spend your days peddling eggs and relieving yourself in the river with your fellows? Living in filth?” Out of the corner of my eye I could see our mother and sister standing by the wall. Hunter’s hand had come to rest on a small figurine of the Buddha. He seemed to have lost his mind.

  “We have work to do,” my brother repeated.

  Hunter was staring at us as though trying to remember who we were. For a terrible moment I thought he might lose control entirely: burst into tears like a slapped child, or throw himself at our throats.

  “God has no mercy on heathen like you,” he hissed, “and rightly so, for you deserve none.”

  “We have work to do,” I heard my brother say again.

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when the figurine smashed against the bamboo wall. “Then work and be damned, you little yellow bastards,” he yelled, in his rage breaking into English, “but don’t come crawling to me on your bellies when you’ve changed your minds!” And he was gone.

  • • •

  It begins slowly. A whisper in the thatching. Small black birds, like pepper in the wind.

  An hour later the trees toss and still. Toss again.

  By midday the palm fronds, razor-edged and stiff, have begun to rub and scrape against each other. The sky is churning like a stirred pot. In the pauses, everything is silent. Someone coughs. A baby cries. Nothing can be secured against what is coming: no love, no sail, no roof or wall. People huddle in their rice-paper shelters under the descending boot, the mothers always, always, wrapped around their babies, pressing their heads into their laps as if to return them to the womb. The men stare at the bamboo walls, wincing like unetherized patients with every gust of wind. And the song begins.

  No words can describe it. No roaring winds or cracking cheeks. Even now, a lifetime later, I can only see it slant, describe it, as one might describe the burning sun—which in the days that followed seemed turned to ashes in the sky—by the depth of its shadow, the penumbra of fear it cast around it. Perhaps it was not a typhoon at all. Perhaps it was Hunter’s Calvinist God, flown down from his soul-feathered nest in Basel or Boston to smite the heathen. To stir the cup. To lay waste the land on behalf of his pimpled emissary in the East.

  God would have no mercy, Robert Hunter had told us. He was true to his word.

  Our sister’s body was pulled from a flooded rice paddy nearly an hour downstream from our village. The last time we saw her she was lying on her side, holding the ugly wooden doll our father had made for her years ago. Our mother was lying behind her, I remember, our little brother nested tight between them. Already the wind was too loud for us to speak. I smiled at her (I was always braver for others than I was for myself) and she smiled back—quick and familiar—and for a moment it felt as though we were children again, playing at hiding from someone, some unseen other even now walking about the houseboat poking under tables, prying up the boards. I felt as though I hadn’t spoken to her, seen her, in years. And then something cracked and crashed outside and I ducked my head against my brother and she was gone, erased along with half the people we’d known, the village we’d grown up in, the ridiculous landmarks—tiny mites on the world’s vast girth: Praphan’s garden, the double-trunked palm—by which, in dreams always unutterably lonely and lost, we would continue to try to reckon our place in the world for the rest of our lives.

  In those dreams we would always come upon Ha Lung sweeping or hoeing or twisting a wire in his hard brown hands, and ask him for directions. He would look up from his work and point, as though we had not been gone for twenty or thirty or forty years, as though nothing had changed and our home were a place that could still be found in this world, its location plotted in earthly degrees of longitude and latitude; as though somewhere, just around the bend, the rows of houseboats still cut their thatch-topped shadows out of the green water of the Meklong in the long afternoons and he himself had not been found twenty feet up in a razor palm half a mile from the village, impaled on the foot-long spines of the boll.

  There was nothing we could do. This was an unnecessary, spendthrift fury; a rage beyond reason. A tenth of the storm would have been enough to erase the village we had known, to adequately flay the hills, to gouge the river’s curves and turns. A fraction of that prodigal fury could have crusted every south-facing thing with a rime of salt, decorated the mountains of brush and broken furniture with the dead.

  A shrieking roar. As the winds rose we wrapped our arms around each other and waited, huddled under the boards we had piled over our heads until suddenly the floor began to steepen below us and we were falling down into the wall. I could feel my brother’s arms around me like an iron band, his head tucked against mine. Something cracked and splintered. We were soaked. Something soft—a skirt, a sheet, a length of cloth—fell over us. We pulled it around our heads and held on, spinning in the center of that maelstrom like a doubled nut in a torrent. I found I could breathe in the space between my brother’s jaw and shoulder. I breathed. Somewhere, far off, I could hear a tiny screaming.

  We awoke to a world of lighthearted whimsy and death. A dog was found unharmed in a tree. The floor and one entire wall of Wei-Ling’s house were found in the forest with one of his chairs still standing in the corner. Entire families had drowned like kittens. Drifted against every fallen tree, filling every crack, were dunes of small, perfect shells. In the silence we could hear them clattering faintly, shifting like sand.

  For three days we burned the dead, then dug a pit in the wet, rooty ground and buried the ducks we had found piled like sodden rags against the fences. Our boats had simply disappeared. We had nothing.

  We built a crude shack above the river. For two weeks our mother couldn’t speak but just sat in the corner holding our brother until he squirmed out of her grasp and came outside to where we were cooking meat over a fire, ate what we gave him and returned to her arms. With the other men in the village we began pulling the bits and pieces of our future homes from the
river. We found a drowned parrot in a wooden cage and a small live python, as long as my arm, twined in the thatching of a roof we dragged from the current.

  Two months later, on a dark, rainless day that never seemed to fully dawn, we stepped aboard Abel Coffin’s Sachem with nothing more than a python in a parrot cage and a small trunk of clothes which Robert Hunter had kindly bought for us in Bangkok. Our mother and brother stood on the docks. Next to them stood Ha Lung’s daughter, who had appeared at our door and never left.

  I remember the three of them standing back between the hills of crates and yellowed rope; the air was barnacled, sharp with resin and salt, and they looked very small to me, as though time, anticipating itself, had already begun its work. Coffin was shouting something from the captain’s deck. Small, oily birds were floating in the narrow crack between the groaning continents of hull and pier. And I remember Eng saying, as quietly as though the rubbing of wood and the tightening of ropes had somehow forced his unwilling thoughts to the surface, “Thank God we’re together, brother.”

  “Little choice there,” I smiled, afraid that his fear would encourage my own. We both stared straight ahead as the ship began to move. Raising my arm to wave, I scared a gull standing on the rail. I could see the two children leaning into our mother’s waist from either side, her brown, familiar arms like a pair of bandoliers tight across their chests.

  We were never to see them again.

  VII.

  We never meant to go. We would have stayed, begun again. At seventeen life is endless.

  But in 1839, from a shack on the hill above the Meklong River, three hundred pounds appeared an enormous sum; magnified by our losses—by the smell of the dead daily unburied by the rain, by the small swift streams cutting channels in the dirt beneath our beds—it was undeniable. With her grasp on the things she loved sufficiently loosened by fate, our mother gathered up what little strength she had left and sent us away. And we went. I don’t blame her.