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Riding down to Bangkok from Chiang-Rai, the train begins to pick up speed at the out skirts of town, past the endless stretch of fields of rice and corn still drowned in fog, past the temple spires piercing through the blanket of mist, past the village roads still sluggish and sleepy awash in the pale light of dawn goes on with its sad monotonous click-clack of wheels dragging me from this moment to a time and space in which I have lived before yet which seems so distant now in a fading evocation of nostalgic pain. A translucent sky shifting from dull gray to a pale violet along the uneven silhouette of mountains, and the awakening land through the swiftly moving window punctuates my consciousness with strobe of memories. A rectangular shaft of soft dusty light forms a shapeless patch of glow on the floor, moves with me like my past. Even though life is but a hummock constantly being rocked between past and future by continuous whirl of thoughts and memories over the abyss of present has lost the opalescent luster of time bygone, drifting image of faces with moving lips like in a silent monochrome movie appears, then voices faint and garbled drones, and then the time and space with all the flesh of emotions illuminates.

A childhood spent chasing dusty land crabs, watching the vermicular motion of fish along with my brother and sister in rainwater trapped in rice fields during rainy season. At night four of us snuggled in the warmth of blanket in a room alight by the smoke-tainted flame of a solitary candle, floor board creaking from tossing and turning in an apparition like silence after my father had done telling his ghost stories, I would drift into a slumber land by the rhythmic pounding of mortar and pestle from my mother making spices in the kitchen.  In some other nights, I would imagine the rich ancient world of Jataka while listening to the stories of Buddha in my father’s earthy yet compassionate voice and suddenly would be awakened to consciousness by a shadow just outside the door of my mother’s, joining us my father’s nocturnal story telling session.

We had a firm at the foot of the hills, neither too big to make us rich nor too small to keep us starving, about ten rai which would be distributed equally in future among three of us I, my sister and brother, that’s what my father had told. I still remember, every day at the pig squealing, rooster crowing and bird chirping dawn regardless of the season, we would go to the firm with my parents, I the eldest would hold hand of my younger sister and my brother the youngest, yet to be a toddler would be carried and cradled in the bosom of my mother. First he would be placed in a hummock safely tied to two diagonally opposite bamboo poles of our hut nestled in the shades of a tamarind tree then before starting our day four of us would seat together and eat our breakfast, rice, pepper sauce and dried fish. While eating I would stare at the two bell shaped picks contemplating in silence over the vast expanse of rice fields, over the crown of bamboo groves, dissolved and flat like the figures of two bald headed men cut out of dark-blue clapboard and would imagine a dreamland from my father’s story beyond them. Then slowly mist would melt to reveal the reclusive temple atop the hill glinting off the tender sun being indulged in an ascetic meditation amidst the solitude and beauty of naked rocks.

My father would ask casually to my mother, “Should we farm sugarcane next year in half of our land?”

My mother would ask back, “Then what do we eat? You have to remember that we are four of us now eating rice and your son also is growing and soon he would start eating rice.” After a pause she would ponder, “Sugarcane would bring money.” The residual tension from her words would resonate her internal conflict long after she had spoken on their thoughtful, contemplative faces.

“Yes, we need money as kids are going to school,” finally breaking the pause my father would say.

Then they would talk about how this year’s harvest would be and then like a vanishing streak of sun in an overcast day their voice would be gone. They would gaze at the sheaf of rice stacks bent from the weight of grains and probably would hope for a good harvest and to gauge how mature the grains were, my father would peel open the husk to taste the milk inside. The morning breeze would rustle the bamboo bush and through the retiring fog delicious warmth of sun would wash over our body in million droplets of light.

Awakening us, a flock of birds would fly by, casting a string of swift shadows on the watery field, and my father belching with contentment would say, “Hurry up, today we have to weed the fields.” And with that our day on the farm would begin.

Our fish pond, rimmed with tall palm trees and shadowed by overarching branches of great cotton trees was so deep that we were forbidden by my parents to swim there. I spent many quiet afternoons after coming back from school sitting with my legs stretched and my back resting against the bough on one of those overhanging branches, observing the filigree of shadows on the stagnant earthy water where fading sun fashioned coronets in evanescent circular ripples from occasional breaths of fish. Tiny bubbles floated trapping the colors of rainbow till notwithstanding the tension within its thin spherical film, burst into a silent explosion of joy.

On many idle afternoons I indulged myself in borrowed novels while lying over a bamboo mat at the edge of the pond. From the underbrush half revealed in water near the rim, an unknown bird flew skyward flapping its wings in a stark applause, lifting my head from the novel I caught a glimpse of its fluttering wings, before the distance would dwindle her into a faint dot where cotton-white clouds lay still in a reverie. I remember how I wondered in joy watching a line of ducks coming down in their ungainly stride burrowing through the shrubberies along the slope, then after a pause flapping their wings they jumped off into the pond with huge splashing sound, ruffling the spangle of sun motes into a million shards of mirrors.

Oftentimes, I had to take a break from my novel to help my parents in farming or taking care of my little brother while they toiled under a tropical sun which glazed the afternoon air with such fierce heat that the mountains at the horizon quivered in thin air like a distant mirage. Finally with advent of dusk when we saw afar the gnarly silhouettes of teaks standing motionless in an austere solitude at the foreground of a twilight sky, all farmer men, women and kids moved languidly, plop-plopping through the field, mud-caked, to their lean-tos. Along with them we also went to our hut wearily licking the salty flavor of the sweat off our lips, then resting over the cushion of hay stack from last year’s harvest, we scooped water with a ladle made of dried coconut shell to wash our hands and face, and then drank deeply. I, being the eldest and very close to my father, always eased the knots of his fingers by gently stretching them and massaged the sore muscles on his back after long hard days of work.

Now when I look back at those days through the filter of time and life, I realize like an adroit potter how my father had shaped me into who I am now, and in doing so he tried to realize the part of him that was unrealized.

One evening he told me while I was busy pulling his fingers to ease the knots, “I wanted to learn but I didn’t have much choice in my life. My parents couldn’t even pay for pen and papers when I was in anuban. One day my teacher asked me why I didn’t submit my home task. I couldn’t answer. When he was beating me with a cane, one of my friends told him, "He doesn’t have money to buy notebook". Then he told me to do the home task on the black board. After I had finished writing my home task on the board he hugged me and we both cried. He told me that I am intelligent; he wanted me to learn more but I didn’t have the means and that life took a different turn after your grandmother had passed away. I want all my kids to have good education, not like me who has only learned from life."

“Did you feel pain when Khun Kru beat you?” I asked pensively.

Drawing me very close to his chest, so close that I could almost feel every beat of his heart, he reflected “Pain?” then with a laughter he continued, “Luk, so long ago that I cannot remember. My teacher used to joke that I have the skin of a buffalo, the cane will break yet I will not feel the pain or be ashamed.” I lightly drifted the tips of my fingers over his palm where the rigor of life had left its marks in numerous calluses and cracks. Pondering over his simple yet poignant tale of life which gave me a fugitive glimpse of how it would be to grow up in a world so violent and fragile. Suddenly that same empty feeling of going down in a very high speed elevator roiled within me, the same feeling of insecurity which makes a child hold close to her father, tightly to search for an iota of reassurance.

I clutched his hand and just muttered “Pa”. He gently combed my ruffled hair while I listened to the voice of darkness breathing the mingled odor of rotten hay and dew damp earth of night. Fireflies winked like specks of jewels strewn on an invisible drape. Then the drape wavered and floated away in gentle night breeze till they become indistinguishable from the stars.

My father said, “Let’s go home, your mother is waiting for us,” and off we went casting a tremulous shapeless glow of the lantern illuminating on our way the bramble bush at the edge of the dirt road and quietly resting frogs.

Whenever I think of him I visualize an outline of a mountain, contemplative and stable, drawn on a twilight sky with its serene yet somber presence, which always appears to be so near yet so far away from your perception. The man was not heavily built, yet every visible muscle on his body waved like snake while he worked in the fields. But if you had looked into his eyes, you would have realized that all the hidden strength of that taciturn man lay frozen in the stillness of a pair of brown iris on a white patch, slightly reddish from long exposure to the fury of tropical sun, for which you can trust that man, you can trust that man in a way a little girl would trust her father for her little wishes to come true. His childhood days were mired in the isolation of a remote monastery far from the warmth of his parents since his father remarried after his mother’s death when he was only a boy of prathom three, and his teenage years were lost in earning a meager living and to support his family in a Thai boxing ring, yet I never saw him grumbling. My little insecurities and sadness of childhood days always found refuge in his ever present smile of happiness. Probably being in the state of extreme destitution taught him to value every little gift of joy he had received, and the greatest of all gifts in his life he said was his kids. 

 

© Victor. All rights reserved by the author.