The Thief

by Claire North

  This van stutters along a nowhere road in a nowhere place, the driver sucking a fat cheroot which he has savoured for nearly thirty miles, leafy ash dripping onto his trousers when – bang! An axel cracks, a tyre bursts, something shifts in the back of the vehicle which should not, but he only rolls his eyes and slows to a halt, for this has happened before to him and will happen again for the coming fifteen years in which he will continue to drive this van until that fateful day when the engine bursts past all repair and too far from replacements.

  Cursing all the way, the man steps from his driver’s seat and, feeling his way in the star-black darkness to the back of the van, throws back the tarpaulin.

  The light is faint, the moon a thin crescent behind skudding clouds, but it is enough: as he pulls back the covers from his crates, he sees a man, and the man sees him.

  The driver jumps back, a faint cry coming from his throat, not sure whether to run or fight.

  The man hidden at the back of his truck raises his hands imploringly, calls out, “Please, no – I’m not going to hurt you!”

  “You’re right you’re not going to hurt me!” retorts the driver. “This is my van – what are you doing?!”

  “I needed a lift.”

  “Haven’t you heard of asking? Why are you hiding at the back of my van?!”

  “I thought there might be roadblocks.”

  “Roadblocks? Are you a criminal? If you are a criminal then you should know that I will die to defend my property!”

  This statement, coming as it did from a potter’s son whose nearest equivalent to martial prowess was the time he was beaten up by Sunan for looking funny at Sunan’s sister, is perhaps louder and more indignantly rendered than it needs to be.

  Remy untangled himself from the tarpaulin, slipping uneasily to the ground, hands still raised in a placating way, fingers open, palms turned towards the driver. “I just needed a lift,” he murmured, eyes running across the empty land, flat fields, flat mud, low trees, darkness. “Where are we?”

  “Where are we? Where are we?! You hide in my van, you scare me half to death and then you ask, ‘Where are we?’ We are in hell, foreigner! I have driven you straight to hell and there is no escape from it!”

  Remy turned his attention fully to this bouncing, indignant doomsayer, and straightening up a little, said, “In that case, I’ll leave you to it.”

  Slinging his bag across his shoulder, he looked back the way they’d come, then on towards the dark, and with a little shaking of his head and a shifting of his weight, turned and began to walk.

  The road was packed mud; the night hummed with insects.

  His trousers were muddy from jumping too quickly from the snake-seller’s barge. What had he seen that had frightened him?

  (He had seen three cars pull up to the riverbank as they sailed away and known that three was three too many. You may be hungover, Remy, but you did not enter the higher league for nothing.)

  He had hidden in the pottery man’s truck because it was going the right way at the right time. They’d taken a back road out of the city so that the potter could say goodbye to his second-favourite aunt, the one who always gave him something sweet mashed with coconut, and in this familial manner had dodged the roadblocks.

  Remy hadn’t eaten all day, or had anything to drink.

  His stomach contracted in tight physical pain at the recollection, but he shook his head: he cannot stop; a stranger in a familiar land, he must not stop.

  Behind, the driver of the van flaps and curses and, when the darkness has swallowed Remy whole, stands still and shakes, chewing his bottom lip though he cannot say why.

  Five miles later, the fixed truck chugged by Remy on the road, the headlights dimly illuminating him. They swept past a few hundred yards, then stopped. Remy sighed and kept walking. The passenger door opened, the driver stuck his head out.

  “Hey!”

  “What do you want?”

  “You want a lift?”

  Remy stopped, turned on the muddy road to look up into the dimly-lit face within. “What?”

  “A lift! You want a lift?”

  Hunger bites, thirst sucks.

  “Yes,” he said, climbing inside. “That would be very kind.”

  Chapter 10

  The driver’s name was Looknam.

  Rather, his name was Kalayanaphan Angthongkul Somboon, but as a child his mother found him a mewling, difficult boy and so named him for the larvae of the maggot, and called him Looknam, and for reasons of speed as much as anything else, Looknam he remained. For four years as a child he barely made a sound except for crying, but aged six some switch was flipped in Looknam’s soul and from a creature of few words he became near impossible to silence, speaking both volumes and – worse – tactless, honest volumes of words where none would have been preferable. By the age of twenty he’d achieved the remarkable accolade of having lost four jobs in fewer years, and at twenty-one he was finally given to his uncle by his despairing mother in the hope that the wealthier potter could find some use for his garrulous nephew.

  Rather unkindly, that use was driving the truck.

  “I think my mother thought that it might make me quieter, a better man, you know, having no one to talk to? I drive thousands of miles every week; I go to Rangoon to sell to the British or Vientiane to sell to the French; and I pick up the clay on my way back south and my uncle says that one day I might be allowed to do something else, like sell things instead of deliver them, but I don’t mind: I like driving; it’s relaxing, and my friend Gop says that everyone’s hoping I’ll drive off a cliff or get stuck in a river or something somewhere, because the truck wasn’t really built to do all this hauling over such distances and it would make more sense to put the pottery on a boat and sell directly to India but I say that we’ve got family in Rangoon and they buy at a really good price because you know the people who come to that city to trade, well, they’re really stupid, much more stupid than in Bangkok so it’s good that we can sell there and if I’m the only one driving the truck then it’s not so expensive and in Bangkok people know what good pottery really is so we can’t sell this stuff – I mean, it’s not bad, but it’s not great; actually it’s not very good at all, but the Chinese used to make better stuff but that market dried up, my sister says, so maybe it’s okay really, but anyway, like I said, I don’t mind driving: I enjoy the quiet.”

  Silence, for a few seconds.

  “Also I like picking up people; there are people going places in this country; this is a moving country ever since the generals stepped in and I know that people talk about how it’s not a good thing, and that the king is in danger and we have to protect the king but I say how’s the king in danger? These are his generals doing the best for his country and I know there was some…but it’s all settled down now and we’re all going to be fine really, as long as the Japanese don’t invade which they won’t because why would they? They’re not interested in us, just the British, really, just Singapore and India and that’s fine, really, although the Japanese are almost as bad as the Europeans but if they don’t bother us who cares?”

  Who did care?

  Not Remy, it seemed.

  “But one day I’ll stop driving and meet a woman and we’ll get married and have five children – three girls and two boys, but the boys will be the oldest and protect their little sisters and the youngest girl will be my favourite, not that I’ll have favourites but I will really because, well, we do, don’t we, and she’ll be very shy until one day when she starts singing and then everyone will say how brilliant she is at singing and she’ll become the most famous of them all – not the richest: the boys will be rich, and they’ll look after me and my wife in our old age – but my daughters will all be famous and all take it in turns to come and feed us when they’re not travelling the world performing.”

  Silence.

  “What do you think?”

  Silence.

  Remy sucked in the side of his cheek, feeling the s
oft tissue with the tip of his tongue, exploring the interior of his mouth carefully as if seeking out unwise sentiments that might have lodged between his teeth. “I think it sounds very pleasant.”

  Silence.

  Then, “Do you want a cheroot? I pick them up in Rangoon, much better – much better! – than what you get here, cheaper too, everything cheaper.”

  A cigar, wrapped in grey-green leaves, fatter almost than his wrist, was offered. “Thank you, no.”

  “Mind if I…?”

  “Not at all. As you say, it’s your truck.”

  “My truck, yes! Can’t believe you hid in it; I would have given you a lift if you’d asked; what is it – law trouble? Don’t worry about it, everyone’s had trouble with the law before, it happens; you know a lot of criminals go into the monasteries now? I mean, I’m in favour, whatever the monks do I’m sure it’s good, but I don’t know, some take the robes and I’m sure they get better but some, some are just – well! You know what some are like, don’t you? But I’d never say anything, I’m sure, because it’s not my business, just make merit and pray for good karma, that’s what you do, isn’t it? Do you pray?”

  “No.”

  “You should pray, you should pray, it’s very important, even if you don’t pray to the right things you must pray, you must make offerings otherwise you’ll never have any hope; it’s the law, the law of the universe – are you sure you don’t want a smoke?”

  “Thank you – no.”

  Looknam shrugged. “More for me!” he exclaimed merrily, and chatted on as they drove through the dark.

  Chapter 11

  The village lay on the water.

  Those words could be spoken about most places in lowland Siam, and therefore as geographical descriptors went, they meant nothing at all.

  Remy slept in the back of the truck while Loknoom snored in the front. Dawn came in reflective grey streaks, bouncing off the still water of the lake. Remy woke with the cawing of the crows, knelt in the mud and washed his face, drank a handful of water down, felt hunger in his belly, fear at his back, looked around at a four-house town, Loknoom’s truck the only vehicle in sight; knew he could not stay.

  “I’ll take you to Rangoon! I’ve got a cousin there, his wife – you should see his wife …”

  “I can’t leave this country.”

  “Why not? You’re foreign – you can go wherever you want!”

  “Not today I can’t. Thank you for the lift.”

  “Where will you go? There’s nothing round here!”

  Remy shrugged, and walked away.

  Impressions of a man on the run.

  He has forty-eight baht in his bag. What was that worth? A month’s rent for a small room in the city – if he didn’t eat. A couple of journeys by train. One night of drinking at the French club in Bangkok. A gun and a few bullets. A few weeks’ food and drink, carefully measured. Not enough – not nearly enough.

  Dawn rises to the day. The day is hot. In February, the locals call it mild and luxuriate in the sun; which turns Remy’s skin lobster-pink as he boils. In May, even the oil-skinned men who hunt snakes on the water confess it too hot to work after 9 a.m., and sit and wait for the rains. It is April. It is the worst of times to get sunburnt.

  He steals fruit from the trees and eats in an explosion of juices and sugars. He tries to steal a chicken, but it’s too fast for him and he lands on his face.

  He walks for five hours without seeing a car, a bicycle, a truck or another village.

  The only people he sees are two farmers, their trousers rolled above their ankles, wide hats upon their heads, leading three heavy-limbed buffalo to a field. They stare at him, openly amazed, perhaps the first foreigner they have ever set eyes on, but he puts his hands together in a greeting and is careful to bow lower than they do, for this is their land, their fields, and he is a stranger trespassing on their roads.

  He stops shortly after midday, sweating, still hungry despite his stolen fruit, thirsty enough to risk climbing through flooded fields, drinking from water that he has no doubt contains its fair share of leeches and snakes. He must survive off this land, he knows, since he hasn’t the resources to live by any other means, and to do so first he must stop fearing it.

  After an hour, he carries on walking, his head now pounding, not from alcohol – though that ill-fated start to the journey did not help – but heat and hunger. He cannot say after a while if it’s the sun that moves about the earth, or he who moves about the sun; cannot swear that he isn’t walking in circles, chasing sunset. It isn’t until the sky is turning orange and pink on the horizon and the glare has gone from his gummy eyes that he comes to another village, a cluster of houses roofed with dried leaves spread across a wooden frame, whose adults stare at him as if he were a walking ghost, and whose children, knowing no better, flock around him in fascination, too shy to ask questions, too curious to run away.

  An old man approaches. He is almost as thin and fibrous as the stick on which he leans, skin like bark, hair like cobweb. He is the village elder but unlike his father, who was the elder before him, he has retained his wits and knows better than to glare with suspicion on the unknown.

  “Who are you?” he asks. “Are you lost?”

  “A traveller,” Remy replies. “Not lost; just wandering.”

  Ah! Revelation dawns in the elder’s face, for he knows, though he has never met anyone like this before, that foreigners go very easily mad in hot climates, and here clearly is a deluded poor fool struck down by too much sun.

  “Come inside, come into the shade,” he commands. “Eat with us, eat!”

  Remy obeys.

  Chapter 12

  Remy ate rice in the shade.

  Took off his boots.

  Rubbed the blisters, put his boots back on before he could scratch them until they burst.

  Found a leech feeding busily against his calf.

  Knocked it carefully off. Do not pinch it at the back, or squeeze too hard. Do not scald it with fire or salt. These remedies, though traditional, make the leech regurgitate its meal, filling a wound with its stomach. Ease it off gently – so gently – or let it gorge until it flops to the ground, the anaesthetic of its saliva numbing the bite.

  The villages watched him silently, asking nothing until, when her father’s back was turned, the daughter of the house lent forward and said:

  “Is it nice in the city? Is there a lot to do?”

  Remy opened his mouth to reply, and found that only banalities or shallow half-truths were willing to manifest. A longer, more honest reply would have required more energy than he had.

  “It’s all right,” he said, “as these things go.”

  When he tried to sleep, the elder’s wife came over to him, offering a bag of what seemed to be powdered white chalk. He didn’t understand, and she demonstrated, rubbing it into her face, her arms, her legs, her hands, until every exposed part of her seemed to become a ghost, an eager, grinning ghost, offering her gift to him. He cautiously rubbed some on his face, and found it cooling. She nodded and smiled, encouraging him as you might encourage a frightened child.

  He lay down on the wooden floor of the elder’s house, and slept without being invited, and without being disturbed.

  He slept for five hours.

  The sound of engines woke him.

  A terror in the night, a dread of discovery. He sat straight awake, saw the sweep of headlights across the roof of the hut, crawled on hands and knees to the window, peeped out.

  Already the people of the village were gathering, curious, if not particularly surprised, for first a foreigner had come, and now this car: these things were most certainly connected, and most certainly unremarkable in being so.

  A man steps from the car; then another; then a third.

  They are smartly dressed. One is Thai, another Japanese, the third is of that wondrous medley of bloods that has no real place to call its own, but is of everywhere in the world. Abhik Lee, you could have been bea
utiful if you were not such a player.

  The elder of that place greets them, points them towards his house.

  They run inside, but Remy Burke had slept with his boots on and is not to be seen.

  Chapter 13

  A miserable sunrise.

  He crawls in the night through mud and field, and at daybreak looks back to see the clear path of destruction his journey has sown through that tranquil land. Torn stalks, broken flowers, fallen purple petals and uprooted wild celery mark the path he has taken, and the village is still visible behind him, his way clouded by darkness. His feet are sodden, threatening to rot inside his boots; he shivers though the air is growing hot.

  He cannot use the roads – not now, not with Abhik so close. The hunter moved fast, so fast! He saw that his prey had escaped Bangkok and must have followed the roads, sending out tendrils to ask where a stranger had been seen. Remy needs to change his face, and soon, but there has been no time, so fast the chase follows.

  He staggers, back bent and lungs gasping, through the rising day.

  A car swerves by on a nearby road. He hadn’t even seen the road; it was a thing lost behind the bushes, just a path of mud carved through more mud still. He hides, belly-down among the thin green shoots of the field, until it has passed. A pair of water buffalo eye him suspiciously, not sure what this walking puddle is doing in their kingdom. His appearance will be a problem, he knows. If there is anything more distinctive than a six-foot-tall Anglo-Frenchman walking alone through the lowlands of Siam, it is a six-foot-tall Anglo-Frenchman who is covered in mud. Such an appearance is not the colonial way, and Bulldog Britain or La Belle France would be most displeased to know that one of their native sons was so dishonouring their noble ways as to appear…dishevelled. Uncouth. Inferior. There is no mud, the ambassador might proclaim, in noble England. Even the beggars are hungry for better things.