The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth

by Veeraporn Nitiprapha

  Paradorn’s eyes were wide open, drifting, bleak, inundated by the rainwater pouring over his face. The moment Pran wiped his hand over his friend’s eyes to close them, he started to cry. Pran had never expected this, never, and he wondered why it hadn’t crossed his mind before. At that instant, as Pran burst out crying, his chest heaving, he closed his eyes and saw a father carefully pushing a syringe frothing with heroin into his son’s vein, then covering him with a blanket, stroking his head and face lovingly, as he always did. After that, he administered the drug to himself and lay down beside the boy so they could plunge together into a dark wonderland, father following son, only to discover later that the boy hadn’t come back out of the hole with him because he had become trapped, forever, somewhere in that fathomless neverland.

  Devastated amid the ruins of the last family he would ever have, Pran could only sit there crying, rootless, demolished by fate in the piercing rain that kept stabbing him, over and over, one sharp drop after another, until he was completely wrecked, and, still, it continued penetrating inside him, devouring him, leaving only that unanswerable question: why…? When the hours of cold, hard rain that seemed to know no end finally ended, Pran stopped crying and, for the first time in his life, felt the curse of solitude that would remain with him until his final days.

  The sky never brightened again. Patra didn’t go back to Berlin; he wasn’t there to witness the moment when the big wall was knocked down the following year, as he had thought he would be. He terminated his rental agreement on the house, gave all his possessions to Pran, cut his long flowing hair, which once fluttered in the light, and took his last journey to ordain as a monk in a small forest monastery in his hometown in the province of Phrae. I have nothing left, he said. That was all he said, and Pran was stunned. Something was still raining down hard inside him, even though he had felt only emptiness since the night Paradorn died.

  Pran wanted to tell Patra that he still had him, that he shouldn’t leave, that he should stay and let Pran console him as a friend, a brother, a son, someone who would be there for him – please stay, stay and be my friend, my brother, my father, don’t leave me again because I don’t have anyone else. But Pran didn’t say anything. He gazed into eyes that were once full of beautiful dreams and that were now swollen and red, as if they had been crying all this time without emitting any tears. He saw a heart that had once been as free as the wind but was now crushed and imprisoned by unending misery. He looked at a man who was once so charming, an inspiration, a dream, but who was now shattered, destroyed. And all Pran could do was shout incomprehensibly in his own mind – don’t go, don’t go – as he let Patra hug him for the last time and then watched him walk away.

  As soon as Patra was gone, Pran shook with anger and his fury reached a fever pitch when he found himself staggering towards the gazebo where he had once rescued Chareeya from the river. He was angry because everyone he loved had walked out on him. He was angry at every family he had ever had for breaking apart. He was angry at having to live a lonely life, over and over again. He was angry at everything for happening the way it had happened.

  Then Chalika sat down beside him without saying a word. She slowly unclasped his rigid fists, hugged him lightly, rocked his body back and forth gently. Her words soothed him and he rested his face on her shoulder while stammering, babbling as if in a foreign tongue, until she leant down and whispered something into his ear, and the storm inside his chest calmed, grew faint, and time stopped again.

  When Grandmother died just a few months later, Pran had no capacity left to feel anything. There was no goodbye, no last words, she just raised her hand – devoid of its little finger – over her head, slumped over a sweetly pink and exquisitely blooming lotus bouquet she had been arranging, and stopped breathing in the middle of an afternoon so beautiful Pran found it hard to believe anyone could die on such a glorious day. He couldn’t understand why the birds still sang, why the wind still caressed his body, why the sun still basked the horizon with its splendid light. He couldn’t understand how life could go on as if nothing had happened.

  After Grandmother’s funeral, Pran sold the house and moved to Bangkok. He enrolled in an art college and the following year he met a new friend who shared the same taste in music. When he found a drummer and a guitarist, he formed a band. Pran didn’t call it Broken Rainbow, as he and Paradorn had once talked about, but Broken Soul, because that was how he felt. Inside him were threadbare ruins, a rancorous corpse that had taken over the best years of his life.

  Later that year the band got a deal to do a studio recording with a small indie label. Though they hardly sold any albums, they at least got to play twice a week at a small bar in Patpong. They still managed to drag themselves up in the morning to attend classes and just barely passed their exams. They spent their energy writing songs and practicing, and released another record the following year. Again, it didn’t sell. After that, they scored an on-going gig at the Bleeding Heart, playing at the bar six nights a week. And, in the end, they dropped out of college because it was just too much bother to get up in the mornings.

  During those years, Pran wrote several songs for his family members: Like a Grain of Sand for Uncle Chit, Light of the Day for Uncle Thanit, a ballad called The Moon and Stars are Melting for Chareeya, The Woman who Stopped Time for Chalika, Flame for Patra, and In the Dark for Paradorn. But he hid them all in his heart, neither putting them down on paper nor playing them to anyone. And he never went back to the house by the river, as he had promised Chalika he would. If one thing changed, he was scared everything else would change so it was best to leave everything as it was when he had left it, leaving it somewhere in the unreachable depths of his heart and telling himself that it would remain there forever, unchanged.

  Pran braced himself for the fact that nothing could stay the same forever, as he had been trying to fool himself it would, and when he finally returned to the house by the river with Chareeya, the scars inflicted by time made his heart quiver. The house was considerably worn. The walls and floors repaired by Uncle Thanit years ago were riddled with long cracks. The windows, once sealed shut during those days when Mother’s moaning echoed through the house, had fallen from their frames. The paint was peeling off. The old pomelo tree was a skeleton of its former fulsome self. The long-faced swan deigned to turn and squint at him as he walked in, before flicking its head back and lowering its gaze again. The creature looked old, angry, sad, splotchy – its long face had grown longer and moodier, and Pran felt guilty.

  When was the last time I saw you…? Chalika smiled. Pran put up his fingers to count. Seven or eight years / You haven’t changed, except the long hair, like a hippy. Pran smiled a faint smile. You’re prettier / Don’t sweet-talk me – you said you’d come back but you never did / I’m sorry / Forgiven, now that you’re here / Uncle Thanit? / Travelling, as usual / When will he come back? / Months – I think his last telegram was from Ladakh, wherever that is.

  I’ve been coming home more often and I still never see him – we keep missing each other, said Chareeya, looking up from a stack of vinyl records. He’s gone to buy fabric? Pran asked. Yes / He’s serious about it? / Yes, for many years now, Chalika said. Pran thought about the last time he had seen Uncle Thanit, then still fit-looking, with the smile and glinting eyes of a young man. You can always talk to me, you’re like my nephew, you know that, right? That was how Uncle Thanit had said goodbye to him, as if he would only be gone a few days, and Pran had never thought it would take this long for him to return.

  Pran, stay the night. Sleep in Uncle Thanit’s room and go back tomorrow. I’ll row you out to a new restaurant, just beyond Grandpa Phum’s vegetable garden / Near Grandpa Nong’s haunted house? Chareeya asked in panic. Pran laughed. Yup, it’s the haunted house. Pran laughed again. But no one has seen Grandpa Nong for a while, not since the house became a fancy restaurant – where would his ghost find a place to sit down and cry? / I saw signs for several new restaurants on the way
here / Yes, this isn’t a backwater anymore / But I want to try the local dessert everyone in Bangkok is talking about – the dessert made by a chef pretty as an angel, Pran teased. Of course, tomorrow the angel will serve you sweets instead of breakfast. Chalika laughed her delightful laugh. Right, Pran thought, when was the last time he had heard Chalika’s laugh?

  Chopin’s Nocturne floated in, daintily, with a melody as delicate as when sound had first returned to the house. Anyway, Lika, what dishes do you recommend at this restaurant? / Hormok krok – interested? Casseroles cooked in little pots / Fancy! My mouth is watering… / Their freshwater fish is good, home-made curries with okra leaves, boiled mackerel with madan, steamed horse fish, earthstar mushrooms in gravy* (Hormok krok is a fish mousse made with coconut milk and steamed in little pots, madan is a Thai fruit used in savoury dishes, and “horse fish” refers to the boeseman croaker, native to Southeast Asian rivers. ) / Stop! I’m hungry now – what do you say, Pran? Chareeya beseeched. Sure, I don’t have to play tonight, I can go back late morning tomorrow / Great, it’s dinner with everyone / Yeah, I haven’t had dinner with Lika for, what, seven years?

  In the middle of the sad Nocturne, Chareeya sat down beside Chalika, grabbed her sister’s hand and implored her with a smile: I want to have dinner with Lika, too, I misssss her… They looked similar and had the same sparkle in their eyes, the same smile. Chalika was a sharp-featured beauty: shoulder-length hair, unpretentious, with a hint of internal strength like a woman from a small town. Chareeya had a fairer complexion with long wavy hair, not as pretty as her sister but more lively and fashionable. Images from the old days flashed across Pran’s mind, images from when they were just two naughty girls playing in the mud – look how they had blossomed. Back then Pran could never have imagined them the way they were now.

  Don’t sweet talk me, Charee… Chalika feigned resentment at her sister. Pran, you too. After dinner tonight, I’ll have to wait another seven years to eat with you two again. Who made a promise to come back? If Charee hadn’t run into you… / I’m sorry, Lika, I… Pran faltered, a lump had made its way into his throat. He didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t want to tell her how he had once mistaken a woman walking in the crowd for her, how his heart had sunk when the woman looked up and he had realised it wasn’t her, and how, for a few seconds, his chest had pounded in delight when he thought he had run into her.

  He didn’t tell her that he had returned once but had only made it halfway, pacing around indecisively before getting back on the bus. He had been afraid that he wouldn’t see her and Uncle Thanit the way they had been preserved in his memory. He didn’t tell the two women that he used to lie down and look at the stars, thinking back to a time when they had all lain in the back of a battered pick-up truck and watched the passage of the universe until it evaporated into morning. He didn’t tell them how the world beyond his window was just a shithole of loneliness, or how he had been living his life, or how he had missed them every single day.

  He didn’t tell them how many times he had hoped beyond all hope that everything would come back to this living room in which they were sitting right now, with Chopin’s saddest-music-in-the-world murmuring in the background as they talked and talked about nothing of importance, and an aroma of smoke wafted in from somewhere, blending with the evening fragrance of the river, on an ordinary evening that resembled no other evening on earth.

  I’m sorry, Lika, I’m sorry I never amounted to anything more.

  XVI

  Shadow Play

  W hen he was a young man, Natee believed he had been born to love – to love someone deeply, passionately, feverishly. When he met Chareeya, he was thirty-six, having lived half his life uneventfully without many adventures, having been with several women and almost marrying some, and having stopped hoping a long time ago that he would find a woman he could love deeply, passionately, feverishly.

  After barely a month of dating, Natee told Chareeya he would be going to Sarajevo to cover the horrendous massacre taking place there. He related the barbaric conditions of the civil war in great detail as if he had witnessed them himself, and he kept warning her that he might not make it back alive. He only wanted to know how she felt about him, and how deep that feeling was. It was like he was testing her: I don’t want to go, it’s dangerous. Before I met you, I didn’t care what happened – my life had no meaning. Natee looked out at the evening garden, watching the swaying treetops before turning his sad eyes back to Chareeya. But now I have you, I don’t want to risk my life anywhere again and I’m afraid something could happen to me. I want to live my life with you. His last sentence trailed off tremulously.

  Deep in the throes of love, Chareeya wept and sobbed heavily, and she kept crying until he had to promise he would call her every day to assure her that he was still breathing. But, of course, Natee never went anywhere. He waited for a week before calling her and Chareeya wept intensely over the phone, mumbling words that had no meaning. From then on, guilt gnawed at Natee’s conscience, driving him to insomnia and long days of feeble will and inactivity; he was in agony because he was the reason for her suffering. On top of that was the debilitating torment of not seeing her, which drove him to indulge in nonsensical scenarios in which something terrible happened to her while he pretended to be away.

  Plagued by these fears, Natee spied on her at the CD shop, positioning himself at a distance across the street. From that vantage point Chareeya looked wilted, abandoned, alone, and Natee was seized by a profundity of emotion that compelled him to write numerous poems dedicated to her. But, still, he didn’t call her. He kept staring at the phone and several times almost succumbed to an irresistible urge in his hands to press the buttons. Come late afternoon, he would stalk her as she made her way home and as she stopped off at a noodle shop for a bite to eat. And he continued following her, standing like a zombie in the shadows and looking up at the illuminated window of her room. Then he would return home and toss about in his bed, half-asleep, half-wandering in fevered dreams. He endured this self-flagellation for three full weeks before dragging his sorry self back to Chareeya.

  And he was nearly scorched to ashes by flames of desire he had never experienced. Never before in his thirty-six years had he loved someone with such passion – a maddening, smouldering love that brought pure joy when she was returned to his embrace. Weakened by longing, soggy with tears, in that fervour of desire, he kept saying he loved her, over and over again, covering her with kisses on the top of her head, on her forehead, her chin, her shoulder, her cheek. And when he thought back on the great misery of their separation he was so overwhelmed that even more tears streamed down his face.

  The voluptuous longing, the head-over-heels magnificence… Natee’s love was dizzying, obsessive. He had taken a page from Romeo and Juliet and peppered it with cutesy daily banter like the script of a Hollywood romcom, with classical music from the Romantic period as a private soundtrack in his head, complete with a stint of separation as a test of willpower, and with the city of lost angels as the backdrop. As a daughter unloved by her own mother, who had counted animals and trees as members of her family, been chronically sick with solitude, and lived most of her life in various forms of a fish tank, Chareeya had no choice but to plunge into the myth of love – the splendour of a passion that no one else would ever feel in their lives.

  Even so, Natee couldn’t suppress his need to fabricate tales of dangerous missions he was compelled to embark upon as part of his journalistic duty. He would disappear for a couple of weeks at a time and the lovers would repeat the longing, the I-miss-yous, the soul-crushing worries, and he listened to Chareeya cry as if she was about to die right there with her hand still clutching the phone. He imagined himself a young man, though he had lived long past that age, playing the role of an arrogant yet tortured lover. When the time was right, he returned to her restless embrace, an embrace that clambered to pull him into the epicentre of their obsessive love.

  After a while,
Chareeya began to adjust and get used to Natee’s alleged near-death adventures in faraway war zones. She convinced herself that he would make it back unscathed, as he had done every single time. She would shed a few tears when he said goodbye and talk to him on the phone in her lonely little voice. Then she would wait for him, perfectly calm, and welcome him back with a warm embrace that increasingly came to resemble a motherly hug. For his part, Natee still yearned for that feeling of being loved so intensely, so inexorably, as if there was no tomorrow for either of them.

  Once, during a camping trip in the mountains, while Chareeya was sleeping, Natee sneaked out of the tent for a stroll. On his return, he hid behind a bush and watched her seized with panic after waking up without him beside her. Only then did he reveal himself, playing it cool and collected: C’mon, I was just taking a walk. Don’t cry, dear, come to me. Another time he stood Chareeya up, leaving her gripped by fear the entire night. Then he called her the next morning and told her he had contracted a meningococcal disease at the border outpost where he was staying. But, no, he wouldn’t reveal the name of the town: I don’t want you to see me in this state, a half-dead wreck. If I don’t make it back, you must remember, dear Charee, that I loved you.

  Chareeya didn’t even know where he lived. He had told her only that he lived with his mother and that she didn’t want to see her son in love with any woman. It’s all right, my mother is dying anyway – it’s just a matter of time, he assured her. Neither did he share his work address with Chareeya. I’m a freelance journalist, I don’t have an office. Freelance, you know what that means, right? Deprived of information as to his whereabouts, Chareeya skipped work and blindly ran around to different hospitals. A week later, Natee returned, looking sunny. He had miraculously survived and was in great health after volunteering himself as a guinea pig for a newly discovered drug. The person who developed this medicine will soon win the Nobel Prize, just wait and see.