The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth

by Veeraporn Nitiprapha

  When he became an adult, Natee didn’t cut an especially striking figure but he did radiate the unruffled cool and charisma of an old-school movie actor. His voice was silky smooth, as if filtered through a microphone in a dubbing booth, yet still natural enough to the ear. His choice of words was measured and pleasant to those who

  heard him.

  Instead of telling people the truth about being a political reporter, Natee liked to introduce himself as a war correspondent. For him, “war” sounded more dangerous and attractive: isn’t it the ideal of journalists to sacrifice everything, including their own lives, to reveal the truth? He also thought they looked great in their clothes, mixing the desert trooper look with that of an archaeologist. They were chivalrous and reckless, and yet had a profound understanding of human conflict, like Zen monks. They were deep and romantic, sensitive and left-leaning, all the while maintaining an unwavering objectivity.

  Natee never understood why he didn’t just apply for a job as a war correspondent somewhere, except for the fact that he had had to take care of his elderly parents; though, by now, they had been dead many years. There was also the fact that he had been a pampered child who hardly had any adventurous episodes that might have trained him in the skills of survival. And, quite simply, he was scared.

  One time, Natee accompanied a friend from abroad who was making a documentary about Karen soldiers at a camp on the Thai-Burmese border. Just looking at the hard-staring eyes of those soldiers, who were still kids, was enough to give him a chill. His rich imagination fanned the flames of terror in his heart convincing him that these kids might open fire on him with no pretext, without any qualms, and without even blinking. And, if they were starving, they might devour him for lunch, uncooked and half-alive, since it would take them too long to boil him. The sparse, unhygienic living conditions of the camp exhausted him further, with malaria and other jungle maladies lying in ambush; the thought of them prompting Natee to often hold his breath and later gasp for air. Not to mention the creepy crawlies, all the reptiles and blood-sucking creatures that constantly preyed on his body.

  Still, Natee fashioned himself into that hybrid look between desert trooper and archaeologist: a thick-fabric shirt and loose khaki pants with lots of pockets, checkered scarves hanging loosely around his neck. He would sit solemnly while great adventures played out inside his head. Somewhere in a Middle-Eastern township he was scurrying around dodging bullets amidst a swirl of dust, or he had contracted a meningococcal disease and lay waiting in the jungle that buffered Thailand and Burma, or he had been captured and was imprisoned in an ancient well in an African oasis, held hostage along with the President of the United States.

  When Natee wanted to impress a woman, he would say he was a “conflict reporter”, and naturally they had no idea what that conflict was or if he was talking about a war or something else. The women in his life rarely differed from one another. In fact, it was as if they were all the same woman, with the same limited interests, speaking in the same tone. They were all lacking in ideas and imagination, just like the politicians they had no interest in. And they could provide wishy-washy comments on any topic, just like those cabinet members who got their jobs from the party quota: Never mind; Whatever you say; Up to you; or, most frequently, That’s good. That’s good, even in love and sex.

  Once, he told a woman he was seeing that he had been assigned to cover a conflict in South Africa. After he described to her what sounded like the most barbaric situation in human history, stressing again and again that he would be at risk of physical harm and possibly fatal danger, she lowered her head and became silent for a while, before telling him softly that he mustn’t worry about her, that she could take care of herself, and that she was happy he was doing something he loved.

  She was beautiful and smart, and it was a tragedy that she really could take care of herself without him. Natee secretly followed her after she finished work and saw her visit a hairdresser, then go shopping and have dinner with a group of friends – she was living a carefree life as if nothing had happened. He liked her a lot and he knew she loved him, too, but what he wanted was a woman who wouldn’t be able to eat or sleep when he was away. He wanted a woman who would be driven mad by the fear that he might get hurt or die. He wanted a woman who would cry her eyes out for fear of losing him forever. He didn’t want someone who cheered him up or supported him. No, that wasn’t what he wanted.

  He almost fell in love with her and could have spent the rest of his life with her, had he gone back to see her again. Instead, he punished her imperturbability by vanishing from her life so that she would feel sad, assuming he had died in a bloody riot in South Africa, or been killed in action while covering mankind’s largest massacre in Rwanda, or in some violent confrontation somewhere in the world – Baghdad, Tiananmen, Bosnia, Colombia, Gaza, Pakistan… Or anywhere, because the setting wouldn’t have made any difference to either of them.

  Natee smelled rain again. The scent of rain-soaked earth wafted through the air, blending with another scent, maybe of candy, no, it was detergent, the detergent his mother always used. At that instant, he saw himself running along a narrow alley in the neighbourhood where he had lived as a child; the rain had just stopped and the faint sunlight was like a sheet of glass, and he could smell the detergent mingled with the scent of rain and the moist perfume of moss covering a nearby wall. He didn’t notice that his chest pain had gone. A crow flew past the balcony and laughed: Caw, caw, caw… Its black wings stretched out as if in slow motion, wider and wider until they threatened to block out the murky sky and cast a spell of blackness. Just half a second later Natee would have thought of Chareeya, but he didn’t make it.

  When Pimpaka found him, Natee had already stopped breathing. And he wasn’t sitting on the chair pretending to look out on the city as he had intended. He had slipped from the chair and was lying face down, his eyes wide open, puzzled, gazing into the reflection of their own reflection of their own reflection in the coffee that had spilled on the white tiled floor. When she turned him over, she was shocked to see a pulsating swarm of ants gnawing at his body even though it was still warm, as if they had come to know the day of his death because it had been secretly foretold some fifteen years ago – though Pimpaka herself hadn’t been aware of it – and had been stalking her husband’s every move ever since, stalking him and waiting for this exact moment to come and devour him.

  Suddenly, Pimpaka heard several loud gunshots and when she looked out over the balcony the tin-coloured sky had turned black, just as Natee had seen a few moments ago. This time it wasn’t the black wings of a crow but the smoke from burning tyres on the streets that heralded one of the first signs of the political violence that broke out in 2010.* ( In May 2010, a long-standing anti-government protest staged in central Bangkok by the “Red Shirt” group was dispersed by the military, resulting in some 90 deaths.) After the fire was doused and the terrible incidents ended days later, the city would still find itself cloaked in an impenetrable haze that prevented it from knowing the truth of what had actually happened. That darkness would remain in place for many years.

  Pimpaka felt sorry for Natee when she realised how excited her husband would have been had he lived just a few days longer so that he could have witnessed with his own eyes the violent conflict; the very kind that he had plunged into with fervour when he was younger and still a war correspondent, risking his life in the most dangerous territories of the world to expose the truth.

  XI

  The Mollusk Without a Shell

  A fter many years, the villagers who rowed past the house by the river still saw Chareeya’s mother sitting under the pikul tree, though not with the same regularity as when she had just died and everyone, without exception, saw her at all times of the day – at dusk and dawn, even at noon. At least they hadn’t forgotten her as completely and quickly as Chareeya had feared they might when she was still a child.

  It was surprising that strangers could see her bu
t the inhabitants of the house couldn’t, both when she was dead but also when she was still alive; transparent, intangible, unaware of the eyes peering at her from the wall as she moved slowly behind Father, through the labyrinth of the furniture in the house that had been conquered by silence.

  Only when she returned to the pikul tree after Thana had left her did Chareeya see Mother for the first time. She was sitting transfixed by memories that left no room for her children or anybody else to love her, and she was still following Father in his death as he slowly decomposed along with his favourite wicker chair moist with his desire for that other woman. Chareeya didn’t understand how Father could have betrayed Mother, how he could have betrayed that woman, how he could have betrayed himself, or how one person could betray so many people in a single lifetime.

  The bitter fragrance of pikul flowers drifted down the river and unsettled her. Chareeya was struck by a premonition that one day she would be like Mother, someone who couldn’t quit loving a man even though he had dumped her as if she was a worthless object. Then she suddenly realised that she hadn’t slept for ten days straight; except when she had dozed off momentarily, but when she opened her eyes tears flowed out until she had to close them again, without going to sleep, tormented by the wreckages of memory, disconnected bits and pieces of images, all overlaid on top of the despairing hope that one day Thana would change his mind and return to her.

  Maybe that’s how madness consumes someone, she thought. It’s not because of love, not because of the unbearable pain of loss, but because of the inability to dream. Chareeya walked into the house and up to Uncle Thanit’s bedroom. She picked up a bottle of sleeping pills that she had occasionally seen him take and returned to her own room. There were three pills left. Uncle Thanit probably wouldn’t mind her taking one if he knew how long it had been since she’d had any sleep. Chareeya sat down on the edge of the bed, put the pill in her mouth, drank some water, lay down, and let herself sink.

  But before sleep could free her she felt as if she had been jolted out of water and was gasping for air. And she saw Thana, so vivid in front of her, and heard the words he had often spoken to her when things were still rosy: I have nothing for you, Charee, except the mountains, the rivers, the fields, the sky – I give them all to you, all the land is yours. Come with me, come Charee… She sank again but couldn’t reach the depths. Time was slow and sticky, and she felt so very sleepy but, still, sleep didn’t come. I give them all to you – the mountains, the sky, everything… Chareeya sat up as Thana’s voice reverberated in her head, repeating the same thing over and over. All she knew was that she had to get to sleep to shut him out of her mind.

  Deliriously slumberous, Chareeya put the two remaining pills in her mouth and swallowed. She lay down again, her heart searing with pain, so heavy was the feeling that she had to flip her body face-down to suppress it. Then she started sinking again. When she had almost reached the bottom, she heard Thana calling her but this time his voice was coming from somewhere far away outside her. Charee, Charee, Charee… It was Pran. He kept calling, but there was no answer.

  It was almost noon. Uncle Thanit, who had left for Bangkok, was busy shopping for vegetable seeds at Koh Mon. Chalika was in a class learning to make a Thai dessert called Golden Teardrops with ninety-year-old Grandma Nu, whose sticky kanom chan* tasted better than anyone else’s in the whole world. Nual the nanny was dozing off even though her hands were soaking in the wash tub. And Pran was weeding pests from the stems of Chinese cabbage when a squadron of brown-yellow grasshoppers he had never seen before passed overhead and blocked out the sky. Pran got up and shielded his face with his hand to watch them until they disappeared. The wind stopped. Everything was quiet as it always was on a humid day by the river. Pran felt that something was happening, but he didn’t know what it was.

  He decided to go inside the house. He couldn’t see Chareeya and, when he called to her, there was no answer. Going upstairs, Pran called her name again before knocking lightly on the door of her bedroom, and again, and again. He strained to hear anything but all was quiet, so quiet he could hear his own sweat streaming down his back as he opened the door. Chareeya lay face-down, one arm dangling over the side of the bed. Charee, Charee, Pran called her again as he shook her body. Charee, Charee, Charee… His Charee didn’t stir, didn’t even blink.

  Grabbing the empty bottle, Pran launched himself down the stairs carrying Chareeya in his arms. From the stairs to the street he ran and ran, barefoot, stumbling a few times, not knowing if the water on his face was sweat or tears, not knowing why he was trembling in the scorching heat, not knowing where the fear that clawed his heart had come from. He didn’t remember when or how he reached the hospital. And when a woman appeared before him and spoke to him, he couldn’t hear her and only registered her mouth moving silently, until a security guard and two male nurses held him back and took her away.

  You should’ve taken us to Japan with you then, like you promised Mother you would. Uncle Thanit nodded, took off his glasses and hid his tears behind cupped hands. Pran was deaf and mute, his body had no space left for any feeling other than the hot fury that threatened to shatter his chest. He kept seeing himself smacking Thana’s face and hearing himself shout, She’s mine, you prick! I dragged her from that river, I snatched her from death, and I did all that so that an asshole like you could treat her like a toy? Veins taut as rods, Pran clenched his fist and imagined himself repeatedly slamming it into Thana’s face until Chalika got up from where she was and came to sit down beside him. She had stopped crying when she unclenched his fist and held it in hers. She put her arm around his shoulder and gently rocked his body in tender consolation. Then, she lowered her head and said something to him in a barely perceptible whisper, and the chaos that was raging inside Pran’s head melted away. In that tiny moment,

  time stopped.

  When she woke up, Chareeya didn’t say anything about what had happened as she resurfaced from the torpor of a dream filled with Thana’s image and voice. It took her some time to piece together what had transpired; that Uncle Thanit hadn’t remembered there weren’t enough pills in the bottle to kill her, and that Pran hadn’t been able to rouse her from her thirst to dream. They had all been convinced that she had been defeated by the agony of love and were now sharing that pain with her. Guilt surged inside Chareeya but she was too damaged and weak to explain. It wouldn’t have helped, after all that had happened. And no one said anything to her about it ever again.

  Without having any reason to, Chareeya again got up before dawn. She lay down on the sofa with her right hand on her heart. This time she didn’t play Brahms’s heart-thumping fourth symphony; instead it was a gloomy tango by Piazzolla called Oblivion. And then, as if nothing had happened, she left the house again without saying goodbye. She left carrying a blue tin box with a rusty lid that was stuffed with love letters, yellowed and crisp with age.

  She just didn’t want to see the pain in Uncle Thanit’s eyes, didn’t want to feel guilty when she looked at Chalika, and didn’t want to feel awkward with Pran who kept his vigilant eyes on her like a guard dog. She didn’t want to see anyone or do anything, except listen to Piazzolla’s Oblivion every day for the rest of her life.

  But, no, Chareeya didn’t listen to the sorrowful Oblivion every day for the rest of her life as she had intended when she was sixteen. Nor did the ache caused by that love diminish at all. But, as time went by, the shards of memories that had stabbed and tormented her with sleeplessness became indistinct to the extent that she wasn’t sure whether she’d ever loved Thana and spent a brief part of her life with him. It was as if everything had been just a dream that left a deep wound on her soul.

  She went back to work at the CD shop. The business was growing fast because the city had few other specialty stores dedicated to classical music and jazz. The store had grown four times bigger within two to three years, and had added two smaller branches. A year after she left home for the second time without tell
ing anybody, Chareeya went back to visit the family once more. But everything had changed.

  Uncle Thanit had quit farming pesticide-free vegetables and started trading antique fabrics. Pran had left home to study in Bangkok and gone incommunicado. Chalika had decided not to go to university and instead was looking for a spot to open a dessert store in the market. Once in a long while she would go with Uncle Thanit to Bangkok to look for second-hand novels and have a meal with her younger sister, but such visits were infrequent since Chalika disliked the traffic, the oppressive smoke, the ceaseless tumult of the crowds, the concrete slab of the expressway crouching over the city like a giant python.

  That same year, Chareeya met Urai, a childhood friend who could laugh all the time, even when she was crying, and who had left the river-side town to study medicine in Bangkok. She also met Thanya, who worked at an advertising agency and who had decided to take a French language course after seeing the film that featured the most beautiful song in the world, just like Chareeya had. She also struck up a friendship with Rawee, a young woman with drooping eyes who loved to write when she was sad, and who was so often sad that she became a writer of heartbreaking romance novels; she would stay up all night writing only to watch the first rays of sunlight seep around the edges of the buildings, waiting for Chareeya to open the store and choose a melancholy song for her, before going back to bed in tears. These four girls, who hardly had anything in common, founded a secret society that met every Friday night for many years. Calling themselves “The Witches”, they assembled to worship the splendour of life in the shadows that radiated from tequila shots, laughing, weeping, whispering, getting wasted and devastated, and slowly growing together into women.