The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth

by Veeraporn Nitiprapha

  In the house where the windows had been closed since the time when it was full of sounds Mother hadn’t wanted her neighbours to hear, Mother followed Father everywhere, like a shadow, to ensure that he would not experience even a second of loneliness that could drive him back into that hurtful trap of desire. Father, meanwhile, became anxious, getting up and sitting down and moving himself from one chair to another in order to elude the thumping sound of his wife’s heartbeat, which infiltrated his chest interminably. He ended up wandering around the house, a nomad in his own home, his tour coming to an end only in the late afternoons when Mother, busying herself in the kitchen with dinner preparations, would allow him to doze off in the wicker chair under the pikul tree. Only the children knew that Father wasn’t really sleeping.

  To the girls, Father’s existence was a mystifying phenomenon: he was a transparent entity they could almost see through. He would show up silently at random corners of the house and disappear without a trace when no one was looking. He was a man whose inability to have contact with other human beings was absolute. His only means of communicating with his daughters was to stare at their faces for long stretches of time, one after the other, back and forth, until the girls became frustrated from anticipating what he was about to say. But he never said anything. He would close his eyes and frown as if concentrating on his brain waves and transmitting thoughts he had retrieved from the girls’ heads to a faraway galaxy.

  And Mother? She was a familiar stranger, the woman who wearily wandered the labyrinth of furniture within the house. The woman who seemed to know happiness only when she sat down, arms crossed, slowly rubbing her arms while looking at the framed photographs crowding the walls. She was the woman who had never embraced Chareeya: not on the day the girl had come out of the fish tank, not on the day she had stood up from a crawling position and started walking on her own, and not on the day she had uttered her first word and become a living, thinking girl.

  Mother was the woman who kept her distance, even though she never failed to take care of her children. She maintained that distance until she died without ever realising that she had deprived them of her embrace, not just the embrace she never gave to Chareeya, the daughter she had never loved, but also to Chalika, the one whom she loved more than everything in the world combined, though she would never know it. My precious Chalika, she used to call the girl when she was asleep in her arms in an embrace that would vanish forever the second the world became as empty as if it had never existed – that minute on that day when Chareeya was born.

  And when the voyage of tears began.

  II

  Valley of the Fuchsia Storks

  W hile Mother devoted herself to consoling her heartbroken husband, Nual the nanny, who had three lovers and exhausted all her energy in a tangle of desire, cared for Chalika and Chareeya, and despite everything the girls grew up happily.

  It’s the nature of children. War, flash floods, landslides or the fall of empires can’t diminish the simple happiness that can only be felt by someone who doesn’t understand she’s just a child. The girls leapt out of the charred ruins of their parents’ marriage with only a few scars on their hearts. They rolled about in the orchards all day like animal cubs, scooping laughter and joy out of thin air as if by magic.

  The games they played: rolling around trying to dodge wet drops dripping from foliage ablaze in sunshine; exchanging ghost stories smuggled from adults while sitting in shade damp with aromatic green moss; improvising a song for a flower – talaybaytalaytay talaytaytalatalay flower, and quickly forgetting it the next minute… Goodbye, tabaytalatala lala flower.

  In the glare of sunbeams that felt like so many ants crawling across their backs, they hid behind a thicket of reeds, cupping each other’s mouths to muffle laughter as the increasingly hopeless calls of Nual the nanny approached and then faded. In the fine drizzle, they slunk into puddles, mouths open to catch raindrops sweetened by a rainbow. Their gleeful laughter was splintered by early wintry breezes into a hundred tiny giggles that wafted down the river.

  Like children growing up in a war zone, they did everything together. They ate together, slept on the same bed, coiled up in the same chair, laughed in unison, cried in tandem, got sick at the same time, dreamt the same dream – a dream in which they held hands and ran all night through a valley full of fuchsia storks, a dream they had completely forgotten by the time they woke up. They tied their hands together with a handkerchief before going to bed to make sure neither of them would slip alone across the fuzzy borders between wakefulness and sleep.

  Sometimes, the two sisters roamed about wrapped in a single sarong, arms entwined like Siamese twins. They proclaimed themselves Madame Eng and Madame Chan, and came up with a language to communicate within the Eng-Chan tribe, which consisted of exactly two members in the whole world. They tapped secret codes on each other’s arms under the table: once “Yes”, twice “No”, three times “Maybe”, and in that way reached a consensus before negotiating with the adults. They even took each other’s strands of hair and braided them together so they could transmit their thoughts in secret. Whatever they did, their heads leaned towards each other all day long. The house already conquered by silence was also deprived of the sisters’ chattering since they had trained themselves to laugh and sob quietly, on the inside.

  Madame Eng / Hmm? / I want to drink rainbow-sweetened syrup / We have to wait for the magical day / When is that? / When it rains while the sun shines / And when will it rain while the sun shines? / On the magical day, I told you / But… / Sleep, Madame Chan / Madame Eng… / Sleep, little Miss Chan / Madame Eng… / Go to sleep, Charee, I’m sleepy.

  No one knew when Madame Eng and Madame Chan stopped tying their hands together before going to bed, or when they overcame the fear of losing each other in the gap that separated sleep and wakefulness. In their minds, they remained Siamese twins who followed each other everywhere but when Chalika was ten years old she started spending most of her time lost in the world of novels; a fantastical world in which an aristocratic lady could fall in love with a lowborn man, a world preoccupied by the need to find proof of love through complicated and unscientific processes, a mysterious world in which the miracle of love inspired bliss and tragedy, a world strewn with traps, thorns, jealousy, and black comedy written by fate. A world in which the quest for true love existed only in the imagination.

  Chareeya, three years younger, spent her days hunting strange creatures with strange cries in the santol orchard, or putting a kitten in a ditch to teach her to swim, or kidnapping baby snakehead fish to provoke their mother’s wrath, or digging up clumps of earth in various colours from the riverbank to sculpt frogs. The Red Frog came alive in the sun, the Yellow Frog under the moon, and the Blue Frog by the year’s first storm; only the Lightning Frog could come back from the dead because after it was washed away by the rain it returned at night with its incessant croaking and left poor Sun Frog and Moon Frog sitting there caked in dust.

  As soon as the rains let up, Chareeya would start tracking a blind earthworm lost in a labyrinth it had dug itself. She never found any clues but once accidentally uncovered a string of ancient Dvaravati beads that looked like they had been buried just days before, though they crumbled to dust at the touch of her breath. In the same manner in which Chareeya tracked the blind earthworm, Chalika would shadow her wherever she went. The elder sister, seated on Father’s wicker chair reading love stories about men and women with poetic names, would move around after her, from under the santol tree with its faint aroma to the riverside gazebo, to the reed grove, to the branch of a tree, to anywhere and everywhere.

  Lika, why does an earthworm have no eyes? / I don’t know / How do we know if it’s awake or asleep? / Well, I don’t know / And does it know? / Know what? / Does it know if it’s awake or asleep when it’s digging? / It should know / But I used to sleepwalk… Chareeya looked at an eyeless earthworm wriggling in her palm. When I was sleepwalking, Lika, I saw everything so clea
rly, not like when I’m dreaming / So you’ve told me several times / I have, and I didn’t know I was asleep when I was sleepwalking / Sleepwalkers don’t know / And does the earthworm know? / Know what? / That it’s asleep when it’s digging / God, Charee! How would I know? / Grandpa Earthworm eats earth, shits earth, eats earth, shits earth… So the girl sang a song about Grandpa Earthworm she made up in that moment and ran back into the orchard.

  Chalika was twelve; Chareeya nine. Six years after wandering hopelessly confined in his own house amidst all the framed photographs, Father fell ill. He was hospitalised, then came home and spent all his time in bed. One morning, he disappeared. Mother searched for him all over the neighbourhood, like a madwoman.

  That night, the girls were woken by an endless screaming fit. They found Mother weeping and writhing around on the floor, having yanked her hair so violently that there were only a few tufts left on her scalp. Before her lay Father, his body serene amidst four thousand two hundred and twenty-two letters, each bearing an address written in his own handwriting. He lay in an engraved wooden coffin that had been sent from a woman – that woman.

  Before dawn broke, Mother burned the letters, circling the bonfire and spitting into it. She refused to call a monk to perform funeral rites. Instead, she ordered workmen to dig a hole. As deep as possible. Mother buried Father under the old pikul tree. You’ll stay here forever. You will never be reborn.

  Every day until she died one year later, Mother sat from dawn to dusk above the grave of the only man she had ever loved. With a strip of sad-looking purple cloth wound around her head where the hair never grew back, she sat on the wicker chair, its surface gnawed by her husband’s implacable longing for that woman. She sat, just like that, in a cocoon of agony, amid the bittersweet perfume of pikul flowers, in the eternal river breeze, sitting on guard to be certain that Father’s spirit would never slip out to see that woman, or any other woman.

  To be certain he would never rest in peace.

  III

  The Goldfish that Sang

  I n the same way as Chalika and Chareeya grew up among plants, animals and gaggles of people who wandered out of the pages of novels, Pran had a warm childhood growing up amidst a huge family made up of dozens of uncles, aunts and grandparents.

  The day Pran’s father came home and saw his wife in the arms of a stranger, he stood there for hours watching the lovers sleep in the coil of their embrace. All he did was go into the next room and pick up his baby, then he left the house and never went back. From that time on, he let Pran sleep and dream, crawl and grow up to the swaying motion of a train.

  By the time Pran was old enough to know what was what, he was able to take care of himself, to be left alone for long periods while his father, who was employed by the state railway, was on duty or getting drunk in the rear carriage. He was told not to get close to strangers, regardless of their rank or status, and this made Pran a boy of few words; he hardly even talked to himself. He would sit quietly, staring out of the window, watching the world go by and contemplating the universe by night so that he wouldn’t have to experience the boredom of a return trip along the train’s narrow, gloomy corridors where he overheard the strange breathing of passengers asleep in all sorts of positions; their throaty wheezing, the murmurings that escaped from their dreams, the whispered moans finding their way back from some forgotten past.

  One night while Pran was fumbling in the dark, a man sat up from his seat and called out, What are you selling? / Boiled eggs, Pran blurted without thinking. At that moment the boy realised that the man was talking with his eyes closed. How much? / Six salueng* (*A salueng is obsolete Thai currency equivalent to 25 satang (the Thai baht is made up of 100 satang); today’s 25-satang coin is still commonly referred to as a salueng.) / Give me two. Pran handed him two imaginary boiled eggs and watched the man fiddle emptiness from his shirt pocket and put it in the boy’s hand. Tenderly, he peeled the nothing-egg, bit half of it off and chewed steadily, his eyes still closed, looking satisfied. He peeled another and smiled. Then he leant back against his seat and snored.

  It wasn’t clear why Pran’s father was preoccupied by an unusual urge: he wanted to keep moving and refused to stay any place longer than a year at most. No sooner had he settled down in a house than he would find an excuse to request a route change, asking to be transferred from the northern to the southern line, from one province to another, from one railway junction to another, from one railway-worker community to another, from one grey house to another one that looked exactly the same.

  When he was young, Pran roamed the latitudes of the country, wherever his father’s schedule took them. When he started school and when his father had to take an overnight shift, the boy was entrusted with neighbours who fed him, and took him to bed at night and to school in the morning. Though father and son never lived anywhere long enough to get close to anyone, it wasn’t a problem. The railway workers considered themselves an exclusive tribe cut off from the general population, and they were prepared to take care of each other like members of a large family. It helped that Pran was an uncomplicated, undemanding and unfussy kid who hardly spoke and caused no trouble.

  In order not to put too heavy a burden on any one household, Pran was sent to a different family each time his father was away. In the late afternoon, he’d sit at the school gate with a mattress and pillow sewn together in a bundle and an envelope with some cash for food in his shirt pocket. He would wait for someone whose face he’d never seen before to pick him up and take him to a house he’d never been to, to become a transient family member for one night, two at the most. The families treated him as if he were one of their own, and then they let the boy go in the morning without ever asking about him again.

  Pran’s status as a one-night family member meant that he grew up having hundreds of siblings, though none of them really thought of him as a real sibling. Moving schools once, or sometimes as many as three times, a year, Pran also made friends with thousands of kids around the country, though hardly any of them remembered him. Counting the transitory family tree of all the various uncles and aunties who showed up at various train platforms, Pran’s early life enjoyed a warmth generated by sheer number; it was a heavily populated childhood that comfortably made up for the loss of his mother.

  Only on some weekends and summer breaks did Pran rejoin his father in his railway nomadism. On the train, he sat staring at the world flashing by in a quiet blur: at verdant fields laid out in a checkerboard pattern that resembled fluffy salee*( Salee is a steamed pudding made of cassava and tapioca flour, topped with shredded coconut.) in their trays; at scarecrows with arms outstretched in the blinding heat, wiggling their fingers as if to tease him; at a forest of shadows on a lonely platform in the dead of night, stirred into bustling motion when the train approached and resuming motionlessness once it had passed; at a crescent moon dangling in the sky like the dismembered claw of a giant. The boy stared at thousands of light bulbs big and small, all competing to illuminate morning markets in the distance, and tempting his heart with the vision of a future that lay ahead.

  Never once was Pran aware that somewhere in the world that passed by the window, Chalika and Chareeya were running and playing, crying and laughing, sleeping with their hands tied together with a handkerchief for fear of losing each other in their dreams, and that one day the three of them would become the best of friends.

  Not only did Pran grow up in a family like Chalika’s and Chareeya’s, but his home, which came in many shades of grey, was also conquered by silence. When his father wanted the boy to eat, he would glance at a plate of rice. If he wanted Pran to take a shower, he would hand him a towel. He would point at objects he wanted his son to pick up for him. To get Pran to carry something, he would hold it at the boy’s eye level. His cough was a warning and he stroked his hair to indicate he was in a good mood. At bedtime, he would turn off the light and the television, and let the boy drift into sleep.

  After work, his father w
ould take Pran along to his drinking sessions at cafes near the station, or at cheap saloons frequented by low-wage earners, invariably there was an open-air shack with twinkling coloured lights festooning the front door and an old jukebox with peeled-off paint chained to a post like an old, angry dog. Once in a while his father would take Pran along to a Pink House, which was either an actual house, or a rowhouse painted pink, or a place decked with neon bulbs wrapped in cellophane that gave off a halo of pinkish light. The houses customarily boasted pink-coloured decor and knick-knacks – flowers, curtains, cushions, plant pots, lamps – and there was something that made them all identical, besides the platoon of heavily powdered women who smiled with listless eyes.

  During such visits his father would disappear with one of the women, leaving Pran to watch television with the rest of them. He might play with his superhero dolls in the corner or fall asleep on a sofa so densely laden with the stench of cigarettes that it was damp in the middle. Pran came to believe that these Pink Houses were a network of secret organisations: the pink motif was a symbol of sorority, the women were espionage operatives hiding their real faces beneath their powdered masks as they embarked on missions to save the world from destructive villains, and the men who visited them were field agents who came to retrieve information and left furtively and in haste.

  One night, the women were in a playful mood and dressed Pran up as a girl. His father seethed with rage, baring his fangs like a she-dog protecting her newborn puppies, when he came into the room and saw his son smiling sheepishly in a loose lace blouse that fell to his feet, a plastic flower and bows crowning his head, and cosmetics smeared on his face. He ripped the blouse from Pran’s body, clenched his teeth and blasted expletives: Bitches, my son isn’t your toy, as he tore the flower from his head. My son isn’t anybody’s toy, as he pulled out his handkerchief and violently wiped the boy’s face. Stupid whores, as he dragged the boy out of the room. But the women weren’t angry; they just giggled in delight and waved goodbye. Come back when you’re a man, Pran.