by Various
“ALL RIGHT, FOLKS. THAT’S ENOUGH,” the Puu Yaybaan broadcasted around ten o’clock that night. “LET THE CEREMONY BEGIN!”
The Exalted Abbot (still asleep and therefore perfectly resigned to his role) was carried outside in his seat to lead the villagers in meditation. The silence that descended on the crowd was so deafening that even the crabs in the rice field looked up in surprise; this was the only time of the year when all the villagers collectively kept their mouths shut (because even at night most of them never stopped talking in their sleep).
Only Tangmoo was no part of this communal introspection, just like he had been no part of the communal festivities. After shoring the dead branch on the teng-rang tree with a fresh piece of wood, he had retreated to a quiet place behind the temple. He had been sitting there for hours, his back resting against a wheel of the giant mechanical replica of river goddess Phra Mae Khongkha, which would be rolled out into the temple square during the ceremony. By releasing their wishes, people try to reach that world. Tangmoo felt like a drowning person, flailing. If releasing desire was the pinnacle of achievement, how then was he supposed to justify his own existence?
A portentous shrew taking a nap on the wooden axle of the river goddess suddenly pricked up its ears. A second later it scurried off, squeaking. It seemed spooked, Tangmoo thought, as if it had spotted a tiger. Then he heard approaching voices. Suddenly, Tangmoo felt afraid, as he was not supposed to be here. On an impulse, he dove into the same bushes the shrew had disappeared into and hunkered there silently, unaware of his right foot balancing on a dry twig on the verge of snapping. (Ironically, the confounded twig came from a teng-rang tree; a much smaller specimen than the one threatening his father’s house, but with much more far-reaching consequences.)
From his hiding place, Tangmoo watched as the generally respected Puu Yaybaan and the monks Sûa and Mongkut appeared. The threesome stopped beside the wooden construction of the river goddess, not two feet from where Tangmoo was concealed. He was afraid to breathe. The men were engrossed in a heated argument, of which only snippets reached Tangmoo’s ears: “… mustn’t raise suspicion…” and “… didn’t dive myself silly for nothing, dammit…” and “… six wishes granted, that’s more than…” and “Fine! But it’s going to come out of your share…”
Is the twig to blame for the fact that it chose to snap at that precise moment and play such a pivotal role in the destruction and creation of so many lives in northern Thailand? Be that as it may, it happened, and the echo reverberated in Tangmoo’s ringing ears.
“What was that!” the Puu Yaybaan cried.
“Here!” Sûa said, triumphant. Two strong hands, quick as snakes, darted into the bushes and grabbed Tangmoo by the scruff of his neck, dragging him out. “An eavesdropper! What’re you doing here, you little fraud?”
“I … nothing,” Tangmoo stammered. “I was just … thinking.”
“In the bushes?” the Puu Yaybaan said dubiously.
Mongkut glanced around nervously. “How long has he been here?”
“He heard everything,” the village chief hissed.
“I … no, really, I have no idea what you were talking about,” Tangmoo said. He tried to free his arm. “I think I should go back to the temple square now, or my mom will…”
“He’s going to tell them everything,” Sûa said, tightening his hold on the boy’s arm. “We need to do something.”
“No, I truly don’t know what you…”
“Liar! Traitor!” Sûa fumed suddenly, spraying Tangmoo’s face with foul strings of saliva.
“We can’t give him a chance to ruin everything,” the Puu Yaybaan decided in a whisper. Even more than Sûa’s uncontrolled outburst, this was a signal for Tangmoo to yank himself free with a rip and a twist, and to start running like mad.
“Hey!” Sûa shouted.
“After him!” Mongkut yelled.
“Take care of this,” the Puu Yaybaan barked at Sûa. “Am I making myself clear? Mongkut and I will begin the ceremony, before people start wondering what’s keeping us.”
Fumbling blind, Tangmoo ran through the darkness. Sûa ran after him. They sped across the winding path away from the temple, through the woods, across the thickets. Sûa was right behind him, growling like a feral cat, while not four hundred yards away from them in the temple square all the wish balloons had been lit and were starting to fill up with hot air. Loud cheers rose up as the wooden Phra Mae Khongkha was rolled out into the square, and no one heard Sûa’s insane roars: “GET BACK HERE, YOU MISERABLE LIAR! HAVEN’T YOU DONE ENOUGH?”
Finally, the moonlit path opened out. Feet splashed through water. Dismayed, Tangmoo realized he had reached the river. He turned to his assailant at the same time that his little sister Noi turned around on the podium outside the temple. She had been chosen to play the role of Neng Tanapong this year, beaming proudly in her beautiful costume. Undoubtedly Noi was thinking of her big brother, somewhere out there in the frenzied crowd.
“Now I’ve got you.” Sûa grinned, wading into the shallow riverbed.
“Listen,” Tangmoo wept, stumbling backward, up to his thighs in the water now. “I have no idea what you were talking about. How could I talk about something I don’t know?”
“Little boy,” the tiger said, “it doesn’t matter what you know.”
Snarling, he threw himself at Tangmoo, his saffron robes billowing on the water like a cloud of blood: no, no, no, no, the gigantic wooden arm of the river goddess descended on little Noi and she looked up with a gasp, the crowd cheered with so much excitement and so little restraint that they seemed to be going mad; yes, yes, yes, yes, the river foamed over Tangmoo, flashes lit up the night, fireworks crackled, spattered, whirled, feet kicked desperately, dislodging starfish from the riverbed, smothered cries rose in bubbles to the surface, popping soundlessly; help, help, help, help, little Neng Tanapong drowned in satin fabric as thousands of khom loi all rose up simultaneously, the crowd fell to their knees, looking up in tears toward the fiery miracle, wishes filled the night, the stone phallus shrank in shame, and Tangmoo drowned in the river.
But not without a witness.
Because from the shadows by the riverbank one shade extricated itself, bigger than all the others. This was, of course, Phra Mae Khongkha who, after bestowing life on the river a long time ago, had stopped for a breather in the riverbed. And so it happened that Sûa the monk, dripping wet and flushed with exertion, glanced over his shoulder and saw his fondest wish fulfilled, even though he did not believe what he was seeing. His body was found downstream the next day, but not his ripped-off hands. They were never found.
And Tangmoo?
I’m sure that if you had looked closely, you could have seen a tiny speck of light rise from the river. It fluttered up into the night sky, hastily climbing past a swarm of surprised purple swamp hens, and then joined the khom loi. That’s where the little light found peace. In Tangmoo’s dead eyes on the bottom of the river you could see a starry sky full of wishes reflected. Around him whirled running tendrils of ink, and he read them all.
Next day around noon there was a crack when the dead branch on the teng-rang tree sagged, but there was no one to prop it back up. Two days later it finally snapped off and destroyed besides the house also the part of Tangmoo’s father’s brain that was responsible for redirecting grief. From then on Gaew, who had been inconsolable after the death of his son, devoted his deliriously happy life to his remaining children, aided by his wife who admitted to herself sadly: Thinking that life is good is better than not living at all.
The collapse of the damnable branch had the added consequence that now, every morning, a particularly bothersome ray of sunlight tormented the eye of the philosophical and always death-wishing irrigator Daeng, causing uncontrollable screaming fits and severe sleep deprivation. It was not long, therefore, before Daeng nodded off behind the wheel while driving along the main road. He rammed a truck full of pigs on their way to the slaughterhouse, rol
led fourteen times, and found new joy in life when he realized he had survived the crash without a scratch. Contrary to the pigs. So lugubrious was the scene of the accident—chunks of bloody pork all over the place—that it made the news broadcasts all over Southeast Asia. Even in Singapore, where Om had been working at a Thai restaurant for six years and sending a monthly email to his mourning grandmother Isra, who had no email address. Om then wrote her a letter, saying: I’m doing fine, Grandmother. I have a PhD in computer and I’m making lots of money now. Here, have some—and added his tips to the envelope. When Isra found the letter in her mailbox a week later, she died of happiness.
Wishes, wishes, wishes everywhere. The well-mannered crab huntress Kulap found some scrap metal from Daeng’s wrecked truck in the rice field and used it to forge a gong. When she sounded it one night, she touched such a probing frequency that every man in Doi Saket was enchanted and lured toward her little house. As soon as the well-bellied weed exterminator Uan saw her, he fell head over heels in love. Kulap, not a bad sort, gave him a cursory embrace, and at least the idea of love.
Wishes, like pearls on a string of cause and effect. Kulap’s gong kept chiming across the rice fields for nights on end, finally resonating in the blood supply to Somchai’s husband’s failing manhood and dislodging something in the veins. He immediately ravaged her with all the lust that had been denied him all these years, and Somchai was engulfed in waves of coital energy that were tangible for miles around—even as far as Chiang Mai, where legs were spread, thighs were kneaded, and orgasms were shrieked out. All over northern Thailand wishes came true. Bonds of love were forged. Children were being born. Kemkhaeng broke his leg.
And maybe this was all coincidence, like so much in life.
But let me tell you that, somewhere, a tiny little light had found its swarm. It let itself drift along on the winds toward the west. All the while, it wished and wished and wished. And so, wishing, the light and its wishes flew toward the edge of the universe and beyond.
Copyright (C) 2013 by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Art copyright (C) 2013 by Victo Ngai
1Uan means “hugely fat” in Thai – not necessarily an insult
2“Turtle”
3“Real woman”
4“Red”
5“Wild goat”
6“Beanpole”
7The Thai custom of addressing one another by nicknames is meant to remember oneself better and to fool the spirits into forgetting people’s real names. As do the Thai themselves, for that matter. Irrespective of how unflattering the nickname may be, it is freely used in everyday life and no longer necessarily has a traditional origin. The wayward harvester driver Sungkaew, for instance, named his daughter Loli, after Marlboro Lights, and the unemployed mushroom picker Pakpao named her son Ham, after David Beckham. (Until his classmates discovered that in the mountain dialect “Ham” means “sack full of testicles,” causing his well-meaning mother, unable to resist his ceaseless badgering, to rename him Porn.)
8“Tiger”
9“Watermelon”
10Wish lanterns made of rice paper with a burning firelighter underneath
11About 650 dollars
12“Mighty warrior;” the Abbot is the head monk of the temple
13Small lizards intelligent enough to articulate their own name
Contents
Title Page
Begin Reading
In America, they don’t let you burn. My mother told me that.
* * *
When we came to America, we brought anger and socialism and hunger. We also brought our demons. They stowed away on the ships with us, curled up in the small sacks we slung over our shoulders, crept under our skirts. When we passed the medical examinations and stepped for the first time out onto the streets of granite we would call home, they were waiting for us, as though they’d been there the whole time.
The streets were full of girls like us at every hour of day and night. We worked, took classes, organized for the unions, talked revolution at the top of our voices in the streets and in the shops. When we went out on strike, they called us the fabrente maydlakh, the burning girls, for our bravery and dedication and ardor, and the whole city ground to a halt as the society ladies who wore the clothing we stitched came downtown and walked our lines with us. I remember little Clara Lemlich, leaping to her feet at a general meeting and yelling, “What are we waiting for? Strike! Strike! Strike!” Her curly hair strained at its pins as if it might burst out in flames, the fire that burns without consuming.
* * *
I was raised in Bialystok. I was no stranger to city life, not like those girls from the shtetls who grew up surrounded by cows and chickens and dirt. Though I had my fair share of that as well, spending months at a time with my bubbe, who lived in a village too small to bother with a real name, three days’ journey from the city.
My sister, Shayna, she stayed in the city with our dressmaker mother and shoemaker father, and learned to stitch so fine it was as though spiders themselves danced and spun at her command. Not me, though. I learned how to run up a seam, of course, so that I could be a help to Mama when I was home, but my apprenticeship was not in dressmaking. Mama could see from the beginning that I was no seamstress.
Mama didn’t have the power herself, but she could find it in others. Eyes like awls, my mama had. Sharp black eyes that went right through you. When I was born she took one look at me and pronounced, “Deborah—the judge.”
When Mama saw what I was going to be, she knew that I would have to spend as much time with my grandmother as I did with her, and so when I was four years old, my father rented a horse and cart and drove me out to my bubbe’s village. That first time, I sobbed all the way there as if my heart would break. Why would my mama and papa send me away? Why could I not stay with them as I always did? I imagined it had something to do with my mama’s rounding belly, but I did not know what.
My bubbe was a zegorin in her village, one who leads the women in prayer at shul, and after only a few hours by her side I was so happy to be with her that I barely noticed when Papa left. Over that summer and the ones that followed, she kept me by her side and taught me not only the proper rites but how to conduct myself toward other women, how to listen to what’s not being said as well as what is. She was a witch, looking after the women of her village, because the kinds of troubles women have are not always the kinds you want to talk to the Rebbe about, no matter how wise he is.
If her village made Bialystok look like a metropolis and we had to be afraid of the Cossacks, it was as close as a girl like myself could get to cheder, the Jewish schools where little boys began their education in Hebrew and reading Torah. Every day my grandma set me to learning Torah and the Talmud and even some Kabbalah. None of these are for girls, say the wise rebbes, but for the working of pious magic, what else can one do? I studied the sacred words and memorized the names of God and his angels, and I liked that best. Within a few years, I was able to help my bubbe as she wrote out amulets to preserve infants from the lilim and prayers for women whose men were wandering out in the world, peddling in each little town in order to keep their families in bread. I couldn’t get away from the sewing, though. Still I had to sew simple shirts of protection to preserve those same peddlers from harm, and every time I pricked my finger and bled on the fabric, I had to start over again.
When I returned home after that first summer, Bubbe came with me, the first and last time she ever did so. She did not like the city, though she admitted it was safer for us than a town exposed to the wild like hers. And so the first birth I ever witnessed was that of my little sister, who from the very beginning was wreathed in dimples and golden hair. She blinked her green eyes up at Mama and smiled so bewitchingly that Mama smiled back and whispered, “Shayna maedele.” So Shayna was her name.
I did not get the golden hair or green eyes, but then, Shayna did not get any of our bubbe’s powers. When I examined myself that evening in my mama’s hand mirror I saw sha
rp angles, even at four, coarse black hair, and eyes like Mama’s. Eyes like icepicks. I was not an attractive child, not like Shayna.
But I had the power. I knew already that I could be useful.
The following summer, when Papa drove me to Bubbe’s, I bounced up and down in my seat as though I were one of the horses and could speed the cart on its way. I did not like to think of pretty Shayna at home with our mama and not me, but my bubbe’s house was where I was the favorite. My fondest memories are of sitting at her kitchen table writing out the names of angels and symbols of power while she praised my memory and confided that there was no shame in making up names and symbols when one ran out of traditional ones—for is it not true that all things are held in the mind of God, and so anything we create has been created already?
Less to my taste, but even more practical, were the lessons I learned from watching Bubbe’s visitors. Women from the village came to see her, both the shayna yidn and the proste yidn. They came in and my grandmother would offer them coffee and talk to them as if they were old friends just come over to pass the afternoon. Then, usually, just as they were leaving, they would turn and say, as though they had almost forgotten, “Oh, Hannah, a puzzle for a you,” and my grandma would usher them back to the kitchen and listen intently as they poured out stories about sick children, women’s illnesses, being with child when one more would be more than a woman could ever want. Most problems my grandma could solve with a jar of her broth, seasoned this way or that, but this last was always trickier, and was when Bubbe welcomed another pair of hands most. I could not manipulate her instruments as well as I liked with my smaller hands, but I could boil them and watch and learn. And when it was time for a baby to come, my smaller hands were a great help.
