“Nawin!” Porn whiningly bantered as she confiscated his headphones that
were plugged into the arm of his seat and punched him in his chest.
“Why aren’t you talking to me?”
“Rachmaninoff,” he said. She did not understand. What did she know
beyond the kinetic rhythms of pop culture? It was in her blank stare.
The word had not penetrated. He wanted to tell her. He wanted to
introduce if not explain something so ineffable and orphic to which a
mortal could only awkwardly utter that inadequate word, “beautiful.” He
wanted to see the countenance of one being extended. He wanted to
change her and take her far beyond the limits she had placed upon
herself. It was the best of him that wanted to bring the love of great
things to others. It was one altruistic motive in his many selfish
motivations for inviting her here. But he knew that like earlier, when
they were waiting in the airport, she would continue to bury herself in
comic books and the latest American sounds when not engrossed in her
French palaver with the cassette recorder. She would continue to
disconnect the ideals and harmonies from the plug in the arm of his
chair.
“I want to know what you are thinking,” she said. Her countenance was
puzzled and remained so for a couple seconds. He loved her so much
then. He breathed in deeply and wished outside himself to the cosmic
forces that she could stay with those features forever: puzzled,
probing, and beautiful!
“Why?”
“Sometimes you leave me, Nawin, and I want to know where you go in
those thoughts of yours. Were you thinking of her—Noppawan?
“I’m always thinking of her. I’m married to her.” He reached for her
hand but she rejected it and so he smiled brightly, kissed her on the
cheek, and gave her a hug. “No, I was probably riding in my artsy
whims.”
“Not a woman.”
“No, actually not a woman.”
“That’s not natural.”
He chuckled. “There are other things than loving people.”
“You are an unnatural person, Nawin.”
He smiled and thought. Maybe dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin,
the components of love, were at work whenever one cared about
something. Maybe being troubled by Palestinians blowing themselves up
was love. Certainly Rachmaninoff was love.
“Her glasses are ugly, you know. They have thick frames and what really
makes them ugly is that they are dark against her dark skin. No, what
really makes her ugly when she wears them is that the lenses are thick
like binoculars. I bet that even when she removes them every night
before she goes to bed she probably looks as plain as burnt toast. Your
wife isn’t pretty, Nawin.”
He chortled. “You’re right,” he said as his eyes looked down
shamefully. He thought about telling Porn that Noppawan never removed
her glasses when she went to bed. It was partly true. He had even had
sex with her once or twice that way. Then he had second thoughts and
decided that some things were better left alone in the dark. “Can I go
back to Rachmaninoff?” he asked while mildly shaking his headphones in
the air.
“No you can’t. Thanks for asking. When are we going to New York City,
Nawin?”
“We haven’t arrived in Canada yet.”
She stood up, stretched, and then crawled over his lap lasciviously as
she looked out of the window. “This flight is too long,” she said.
“Maybe the pilot, co-pilot, hijacker, or whoever is driving can park
for a few minutes on a cloud and you can get out,” he said.
She sat back in her seat. “I think you are angry at me for saying that
about Noppawan.”
“No,” he said indifferently. He liked hearing truth but he felt guilty
being amused by some of it. He changed the subject. “Do you want to
change to my seat so that you can look out?”
“I’d get sick looking out onto that sea of clouds for long.”
“Why do you want to go to New York City?”
“What’s in Canada, Nawin? It’s got a few walking snowmen but what else?
Snowy landscapes and cold temperatures good for penguins. When someone
thinks of Thailand it is always Thai silk, temples, Buddhist statues,
nightlife, and beautiful girls like me. What is the symbol of Canada?”
“Snowmen,” said Nawin as he chuckled, “and Canadian dollars.” He was
enjoying the conversation.
“What are they: these snowmen? Are they just Englishmen?”
“That but also Americans who didn’t want to fight against King
George... Frenchmen, of course in Montreal.”
“Why don’t they have kings now?”
“Well, Canadians do have the British monarchy. Canada is a
commonwealth.”
He didn’t go further because she sighed from intellectual strain.
“Didn’t you like Noppawan at all?” he asked with childish
vulnerability.
“No,” she replied thoughtfully. “I liked all things about her. I liked
her completely. It is hard to believe that anyone should be so
wonderfully odd.”
He liked that response exponentially. He knew that she would never say
anything so true. “Montreal will be fun. A little bit of Paris and a
little bit of New York City.”
“Laos, Nawin, is a little bit of Paris with a lot of dirt poor
Thailand.”
“It will be like going to the Thao Suranari fair in Nakhon Ratchasima.”
That was one of the largest fairs in Thailand. This thought triggered
his memory of a smaller fair in Bangkok.
This avuncular stranger, a member of the parliament and the former
governor of Pattaya, had informed Kumpee that the fair held in March
was coming to a close this year. This fair, run by government
ministries to raise funds for the Red Cross, was near the Parliament in
the area called Dusit. Tickets to enter were sold at 200 baht each. The
two other brothers—all, like him, boys with layers of manhood like
aluminum foil wrapped over the small crumbling pieces of cake that were
themselves-did not utter questions. Had Kazem robbed Thai Farmers Bank,
Siam Commercial, and Bangkok Bank entirely it wouldn’t have made any
difference. The psyche needed a degree of ebullience. This was their
respite from worries about survival to which drugs or snookers had been
ineffective distractions. A bit of it insulated them from the attitude
of doom that would eagerly zip them up into its body bags.
A woman wearing a pointed straw hat, who had a 2-year-old baby cuddled
around her neck, thrust herself before them. She solicited them to her
table of snake blood refreshments seasoned with dried monkey brain. She
was one well-seasoned in salesmanship. She knew the cajolery to lure
daredevils who would come to such a fair as she knew the approach to
children whom she would sell her krathongs, banana boats of flowers and
candles attached to banana leafs and Styrofoam sailed onto the river
for good fortune during each Loi krathong festival, or Buddhist
rosaries and necklaces to old women during religious holidays.
“ Please come over to my table, boys.” They smiled and came. “ I know
you. You think I don’t but I do. I can see into hearts-hearts wanting
to be men, wanting to end boyhood. You’ve heard those stories about men
who became more than that from drinking a bit of this. The stories
aren’t true. They are stupid. Nobody has ever done anything like that;
but the real parts of the stories are gaining courage and strength. My
husband was in his teens when I saw him for the first time doing what
you are about to do. I watched him the way those girls over there are
watching you now. Anybody would have second thoughts about this.
Anybody would. It tastes horrible because it is strong in courage and
strength for those with the courage to drink it. If you can do this you
will never run away from anything again. Instead, you will have it on
the run. This is your only time to conquer your fears and do something
naughty while the police are sleeping. Whatever you do, make sure that
you put a few coins in the box to help the Red Cross.” She pointed at
the plastic box at a distant corner of the table. While Suthep inserted
a few baht into the hole she directed herself to Kazem. “Are those two
your brothers?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I know you won’t make them ashamed of you. It’s just fifty baht each.
Look. People are staring at you. You’ve got to do it. Drink!”
“Drink, money man,” reiterated Suthep.
He glared at Suthep. “Hey, I’m not paying for me alone. I’ll do it for
the pure pleasure of seeing you stand there all night looking into your
cup.” Kazem paid for three cups. Jatupon stood there stiff and
frightened. Starting from the oldest to the youngest they drank down
their beverages. The liquid molecules of hell were a hundred times that
of the airborne ones from Kumpee’s socks and shoes. All of them choked
and coughed. All of them swallowed some of the blood heathenishly but
spit out most. It was followed by a sip of watery and caffeinated
whiskey that had been diluted and adulterated in cola. Normally such
open liquor drinking would have gotten everyone arrested especially
when it involved selling to minors but since some of the proceeds were
going into the public fund on this day it was overlooked. While the
brothers were given a second shot of whiskey again diluted in cola, new
customers came to the woman anxiously. She led them to her table and
sat there with the squalling, squalid child. The baby was restless on
the apron that she wore. Conscious of how a repetition of her spiel
could spell out insincerity and a customer’s aversion, she attempted to
wait silently as they debated doing this. She muted the child with a
firm hand pressed against its mouth. Before she could make the sell she
reflexively responded to the smallest degree of wetness on the apron
and let her child urinate away from the sidewalk and her virility
stand. The ground did not eagerly swallow the fetid and sweet liquid
and his recidivist urine came back to the sidewalk with the insistence
of a foul stream. Past shoe salesmen on a sheet, shoe repairmen, comb
and battery salesmen, noodle workers, and lottery
representatives—unlicensed businesses that abounded everywhere- they
entered the gates of the fair. At kiosks, the three of them threw
darts, shot basketballs in moving hoops, and bounced balls against
walls to knock over bottles for prizes. They continued doing this until
the infancy of night murdered the sun allowing it to slowly die,
languishingly sliding off golden rooftops of temples. When darkness
unfolded around them, they paid to see a woman put her face in a
plastic box of scorpions, elephant trainers whose elephants walked over
them to enter into the crowds where they picked up humans with their
trunks, and oarsmen in the facsimiles of royal barges competing against
each other. The boats had the same body and countenance of dragons just
like the television shows they had seen of the kings’ ancient boats
that were housed in the Royal Barge Museum.
The night and its dark appetites were mature in full insurrection. They
had eaten their share of rice and chicken topped with cotton candy, and
yet not cowering, their stomachs craved for beer so they headed to a
nearby bar. Before them a child was walking slowly on the steps that
rose up to the bridge that went over a canal. He slammed his
fire-snappers against the cement watching the air burst before his
feet. They passed him to quickly fulfill the surfeit of beer that was
part of their general yearnings. They yearned for so much—these three
young men. They yearned for relaxation with beer; they yearned for
friends and places away from this fraternal group that they had been
conceived into and forced to work with; and, except for Jatupon, they
each yearned for a love to come their way so that they would not be
lost in themselves. Jatupon yearned most to be naively complete like
that boy they had passed. Jatupon had once been like him: fascinated by
his own thoughts and sensations and self-contained. In late boyhood a
boy mastered independence that in infancy and early boyhood he
struggled to achieve. It was all thwarted, however, by the upsurge of
sexual feelings which made a young man want to bond cohesively and
addictively to others. The progress of late boyhood was razed in a
brief year or two.
Strangely, the world was a dreamy place and from the modest display of
fireworks being shot over the canal there was a dreamy idea of
connectedness and fraternity in the psyches of these young men although
such ideals varied from moment to moment based upon their
interpretations of the environment. Lagging behind in serpentine
movements of dreaminess but eager for connectedness, Jatupon hurriedly
caught up to his brothers only to lag behind them again. It was time
for Heineken, Singh, or Bush (not those two presidents). It was a time
to celebrate and dunk the self in artificial dreaminess like one
bobbing for apples. Jatupon looked up at the sky when he and his
brothers reached the other side of the bridge. Then he looked down at
his chest. A sweat bee hovered over the glands in his opened shirt like
an oil worker ciphering the ground. He shoved the industrial exploiter
away. He felt awe in how complex it all was: one thing feeding on
another. He wondered if, after the immune system conquered a virus, it
consumed it. He wondered how much of his parents’ bodies would have
been consumed by bacteria in decomposition if they had not been
cremated. He wondered if things were so clearly defined. Maybe a part
of his parents was alive in ways that could be sensed but never
understood or explained.
It was no wonder, as they sat there drinking beer in a pub on the other
side of the canal (remarkably able to afford drinking beer at all) that
Kazem was happy: after all, the uncle’s gate had opened up to him when
he talked into a speaker. It was also not so strange that his mood of
elation had for a short while, when viewing the scorpion lady, gone
awry. Seeing the son of the Ayutthaya landlord who had rented his
family that small space for their restaurant was depressing. There he
was in his fine clothes with his wife and two small children. Kazem had
thought to himself that as a rich man poverty had not ruined his
inclinations-this man, not much older than himself, copulated in the
right hole.
Suthep, sandwiched between his two brothers, drank voraciously without
any strong inclination to run away. He preferred being elsewhere but
elsewhere without money was nowhere. He preferred playing snookers and
trying to woo a young girl to be somewhat interested in him while
playing against his buddies. Here, however, he had no friends. The city
was entirely new and he didn’t know anyone. Once, in Ayutthaya, he had
gone with a herd of those wolves to capture a park whore. He and his
buddies took her to a cheap guesthouse where foreigners often went and
had their spasms within her. It had been his first time. He would
prefer to be with his friends but this wasn’t so bad. Drinking with his
brothers was like playing football with them once again or fishing with
them at the edge of the river.
Somewhere into things the beer changed to whiskey and it was from that
bottle of whiskey that the mosquito and his female counterpart climbed
out and shook off their wetness. When this canine shaking of the
wetness was not enough, they used the paper towels as bath towels. They
were less grotesquely large at this point but returning to their
monstrous shapes by the moment.
—What was the dinner like that Kazem attended?
—It was not a dinner, but the sip of the man’s coffee in the den. It
consequently led to the proposal of a dinner.
—And did he accept the proposal?
—He did.
—On behalf of the family of brothers?
—That would seem to be a correct assessment although the eldest was not
expected to attend. No definitive date was scheduled because the
senator hesitated about this issue. It was a tacit declaration that
could only be read in a scarce trace of caution on his countenance. It
indicated that he was reluctant to be associated with these thugs. This
irritated Kazem and yet he pretended as if he wasn’t bothered by it. He
probably told himself that he needed the time to rehearse his lines.
—What would he need to rehearse?
—His part as the benevolent older brother. He thought he was that but
he had trouble convincing others of its veracity.
—I don’t understand.
—A typical female reaction. Let me be more lucid. It is my impression
that he intended to use this first meeting for future ones where he
could use sympathy as a way of extorting money from the aging man for
this group of leeches and quasi-pariahs.
—As Kazem and the senator/former governor of Pattaya/former
uncle-in-law drank coffee together, what was the lure that kept him
interested in these boys? After all, he knew them only by name apart
from that time or two of being irritated by their noise when the two
families came together. That was over a decade ago. Isn’t that right?
—Yes, you are not ignorant. It was 11 years ago. I believe his new
founded interest in them was what they call empathy?
—Empathy? I know about that. It is a rather rare and abnormal form of
behavior sometimes seen in those evolving beyond their species. From
the research I’ve done on such aliens empathy and compassion seem to be
the only emotions that aren’t destructive and hedonistic. In small
quantities all emotions aid judgment calls in social situations but
unfortunately they are produced and expended in bulk. Unlike other
emotions that are rampant, empathy and compassion tend to be quite
rare. Could you elaborate on his nascent burgeoning of empathy for them
and the disingenuousness that prompted it?
—It was no different than their aunt who hustled a marriage out of him
years ago. Kindliness and loneliness, from what I can tell, have always
been his weakness. It was a simple calculating maneuver on Kazem’s
part, really. Kazem affected being uncomfortable and shy. He waited
until this uncle asked directly about his circumstances and then he
gave a modest biographical summary of their move to Bangkok after
selling their parents assets. He was careful not to mention Kumpee, the
need for money, or any real description of how they were living. The
uncle’s attempts at finding out information on those putrescent issues
were only marginally successful. As a result, it seemed to the senator
that Kazem was earnest and unassuming. He became more curious and
anxious to help these pariahs as a result.
—And can you be more specific on how this was done?
—It’s rather mundane. I don’t wish to really.
—Human studies and our intellectual copulation require more
information. One would have to be ignorant to not know that or male.
—He chitchatted, my dear, in a logical sequence that was a bit
desultory at times. Humans call such an inexact order “variation.”
After he told the location of where they were living and that the move
had taken place because of Kumpee’s desire to be near his girlfriend,
he answered the senator’s question on what his brothers were doing in
their state of unemployment (Jatupon with his comic books and Suthep
with his snookers). Then he moved to large ideas outside of his
personal life: the upcoming elections for prime minister, the question
of the government’s role for the flood victims in Hattayai, and if the
senator would run for re-election in a couple years. It was done to
create a mystique about he and his brothers as well as to elicit the
approval of the senator who preferred people who could break out of
their own skins. It was deferential. It was noble. It was all of those
things that were manipulation in a consummate performance. Kazem played
the part so well that he even began to think that he was this shy,
vulnerable, unpretentious, and caring person despite trying
circumstances.
—Did he directly attempt to exploit the man’s feelings of sympathy for
their plight or the senator’s loneliness?
—In some respects he did. He reminisced about his mother whom this high
governing uncle had sympathy. The senator of course entertained this
sympathy because his wife (their mother’s sister) had always carped,
disparaged, and vilified her for such a marriage to an illiterate
street person. The senator never forgot his sister-in-law’s birthday
even after his divorce. To be specific, Kazem was seated before the
senator drinking coffee and eating doughnuts when he ironically spoke
of how he missed the scents of flowers his mother would bring into the
home or the smell of a freshly cleaned floor. It belied the truth of
this porcine creature whose domestic tendencies had surrendered to male
nastiness early into marriage and motherhood. The sad lonely tone
resonated with the senator. It strummed the harp of his heart.
—What are these three brothers doing at present?
—At present they are drinking beer and celebrating with some of the
money that the senator gave to them.
—Did the senator give money that quickly?
—No, he dismissed Kazem after tiring of him. He said that he needed to
return to his work. And then as the teenage boy was leaving a servant
told him to return the next day. It was then that a sizable amount of
money, by the standards of regular Thai people, was given to him.
—Suthep doesn’t seem as happy as the other two.
—He is happy with the money and the beer but his happiness sinks down
with the dying fizz of the beer but it rejuvenates again with the fizz
of the next beer. His behavior can be attributed to a bit of repugnance
toward the two companions at his table and a bit of general moodiness
aggravated with alcohol consumption. He really has been so moody ever
since becoming a teenager. He was so nice to Jatupon as a child. Oh
well, the world is continually in flux.
—The youngest brother whom they sometimes maliciously nickname
Jatu-PORN now seems to be sad. What could he be thinking at this most
auspicious evening?
—He is thinking of Suthep thinking that these lovers are repugnant.
—And I assume that Suthep is now thinking that he is thinking this.
—Now you understand why these creatures never go anywhere.
—How alone these fickle creatures must be never sure of the acumen of
their own ideas. These ideas seem to change from minute to minute based
upon the chemistry of the food they put into their bodies, their
perceptions of their own failures, the limitations of work and routine,
their hormones, the firing of neurotransmitters left and right, the
pleasures gained in social interaction, memories from the past, the
mood generated from the environment, and the well-being of the body.
How lost they must feel wincing from their forlorn inner selves by
clinging to others around them. Is not one of them self-contained?
—No, my dear, I’m afraid not.
—Your summary is very orgasmic, my husband.
Mosquitoes 1 and 2 changed angles, this time looking into each other’s
left eyes. They were mesmerized in each other’s beings and their wings
flickered from the internal fire of passively intellectualizing life’s
energetic insignificance. Then they looked away from each other and
breathed deeply before once again looking at each other face to face
with less intensity.
—Wouldn’t you say that the older brother, Kazem, possessed a lot of
effrontery to go to the speaker on the brick wall connecting to a gate,
push the button, and talk so glibly? Could a clarification be gained on
how it is that he could have acquired that entrance?
—It could. Such an individual gained entrance by stating that his
mother, prior to her death, had prepared a gift for her brother-in-law
in celebration of the Songkran Thai New Year’s festival
—And what gift did he present to the man as they drank tea and coffee?
—He presented to the man a Buddhist necklace his mother had given to
his father.
—And the politician took it?
—Not immediately. He of course resisted; but Kazem argued persuasively
that it had been intended for him. It looked new, although the
politician wasn’t under much of an illusion that it was. Still, in case
it was a gift from the dead, he couldn’t really refuse it. That would
have hurt the brothers and the memory of the woman.
—And as the brothers drink beer together, do the younger ones notice
that this somewhat expensive trinket that Kazem had heretofore claimed
as his own and had worn around his neck is now missing.
—The more perceptive one called Jatupon notices this and infers that he
really did give a gift to the senator and it was probably the necklace.
—They do play their games of trying to affect future outcomes. They’d
be better being as insentient as cows. The youngest should drink his
beer and be happy to be with the big boys engaging in the naughtiness
of illegal alcohol consumption. Instead he seems worried.
—He’ll be returning like a bound slave. The noodles will bind him once
again when the equipment needed for the sidewalk restaurant is
purchased. He feels that he did not take advantage of the brevity of
freedom.
—To do what?
—He doesn’t know either. Even more troubling, he is also assessing that
his brothers are growing up. He wonders if they will soon desert this
first family. He wonders if for the pleasure of women they’ll jettison
the earlier notion of family as insignificant, weighty, and likely to
cause them to sink. He wonders if they will cast it out like a bad
dream that they want to forget. He knows that they are biologically
driven by hungers like a mouse cognizant of the trap but eating the
cheese anyway.
—-What would he do as a cast away?
—Well, there are ways of survival. One can be out there selling his
body one moment and then find his head shaved and a robe on what had
been out there as a marketable commodity.
—Such a transformation from prostitute to a monk really occurs?
—Indeed, it does. When the goals of money don’t arise well from
prostitution, being a monk is a position that commands respect and an
escape from destitution. It has a morose facade but in such a somber
demeanor like that of Jatupon it has its own splendor
—What splendor can be had in such a pointless and austere profession?
—Well for one, a given monk might put on some military clothes and go
off to the local masseuse for a Thai massage of the most dissolute
dimensions. It is an easy thing for a young monk to do: just take the
expense for the whore out of the monastery coffer
—When Buddha was born in Lumpini Park in Nepal was it so that men might
engage in the recidivism of their animalistic natures?
—All you need to do to answer that question is see the types of whores
parading themselves in Lumpini Park in Bangkok, Thailand not to mention
the male prostitutes waiting for money and sexual experiences in the
shadows of the trees. Everything changes. Good men are distorted into
Gods, and philosophy is made into a sordid religion. Buddhism,
Christianity, Islam, Hinduism-it is all a perversion of the founder’s
ideas.
—How do you know these things?
—What things?
—About the meeting with the senator
—How do I know about the meeting with the senator?
—Yes, how do you know this?
—How do I know this? mumbled the mosquito confoundedly.-They are in
Jatupon’s head.
—And how does he know them?
—How does he know them? Because of the night when they were drinking
together...the night of the fair...were you sleeping when I was talking
to you?
—No, I heard you earlier. So it came from Kazem’s mouth and Jatupon’s
conjectures. Those doesn’t seem like reliable sources.
—What?
—Those don’t seem like reliable sources. The two mosquitoes stared at
each other nihilistically. There was silence.