The Crooked Houses

The Crooked Houses stretch 100 met into Patong Bay, and for as long as anyone can remember they’ve been our home. Mother’s Father says that the Crooked Houses once stood on top of each other on shore, but the Gods toppled them into the sea because the ancients grew too proud. Middle Sister’s Husband, who comes from the island folk and has a more practical nature than those of us born into the Crooked Houses, says that the ancients built their towers on top of swamps filled in with the red mountain soil, and the monsoon rains washed the dirt right out from under the buildings and caused them to fall.

For whatever reason, only about fifty of the Crooked Houses are lived in these days. Ours is one of the best, as befits a family that has given two sons into the clergy. It sits only three met above the high tide mark, high enough to avoid rainy season swells but low enough to make fishing from the broad sea door easy. The floor is only about ten degrees off level and the carpeting that still clings in patches to the landward wall can be unravelled and rewoven into fishing line. The iron bedframes still bolted to that same wall make convenient storage for spears and canoe paddles. Whatever other furniture that might have graced our house in the time of the ancients has long since gone for firewood, but we still use a fragment of looking glass that Mother’s Father found when he moved in fifty years ago.

The interior wall of our main room is pierced with a doorway, two met long and one high, that opens onto a well. The wells are very useful to our folk. Ours is almost straight, open at the top and plunging down to the sea bed at the bottom, with many more doors into it both above and below the water line. In the monsoon season, when the sea is too rough to take our boats out, we can fish by dropping a line down the well, or visit neighbours without going outside by climbing up or down a rope ladder. Mother’s Father’s Younger Brother says that once Patong Bay was empty of sea life; the ancients destroyed the reefs with tin mining. But now the Crooked Houses shelter a thousand kinds of fish and shellfish, and a handful of boiled rice thrown down the well and followed by a net will feed a family.

Only about one-third of the Crooked Houses are above the water line, and our people have many legends about the spirits that inhabit the sunken rooms. Every child knows that the houses get bigger and more elaborate the further out into the bay you go, which means that the biggest and most wonderful must have been at the very top, if the houses ever did stand on top of each other, and now must rest deep under water and sand. It stands to reason that spirits, who need not fear drowning, would inhabit the best rooms.

Mother’s Father’s Sister, who was dropped on her head as a baby and has always suffered with headaches and prophetic dreams, claims to have once seen a spirit. She says that one night when she was still a virgin she got out of bed to relieve herself. Since it was monsoon season she went to the interior wall, sat on the doorframe being careful to avoid the rusty old hinges, and stuck her bottom out into the well.

Suddenly the well filled with bright light, though it was past midnight. She spun around and looked out into the well. She says that it was illuminated by sunlight streaming in through glass windows at the top, through which she could see coconut trees, growing sideways and swaying in a breeze. The well looked clean and new, she says, each doorway closed by a well-fitted door with a number on it. The landward wall was still carpeted and the seaward wall panelled with some kind of white squares, set every few met with lanterns that produced no smoke.

But the oddest thing was the spirit. Mother’s Father’s Sister says that he was huge, easily twice as tall as any of the men in our family, and grossly fat. His skin was white like a maggot and his hair red like fire. His eyes were big and round like dinner plates and a cold, cold blue. The spirit was walking down the landward wall of the well, not climbing down a rope ladder but actually walking down the wall like a fly. He was with an angel.

Mother’s Father’s Sister says it was an angel because it looked like us: small and dark with black hair and black eyes. The spirit had his arm around the angel, she says, and was walking unsteadily like a drunken man, half supported by the angel. She could see that the angel was definitely female, because what little clothing it wore was very tight, and it had paint on its lips and eyelids like our women apply on their wedding day.

The spirit and its attendant angel passed Mother’s Father’s Sister so closely that she could have reached out and touched them if she hadn’t been so afraid. She said that as they passed she could see that the angel wore a lot of gold jewellery and appeared to be laughing at something the spirit was saying. The spectral couple passed our door and proceeded on down the well, stopping at a door some way below the water line. The well was illuminated by sunlight and the magic lanterns all the way to the bottom, where Mother’s Father’s Sister says there wasn’t sand and rock but another glass window and a view of more sideways coconut trees.

She says that the spirit had an object in his hand which he pushed clumsily at the door until it opened. The last thing Mother’s Father’s Sister saw was the angel pulling the spirit into the sunken room while the spirit tugged at the angel’s upper garment. As soon as the door shut the well was plunged into darkness, she let out a scream that woke every member of every family that lives on our well, and she’s been scaring the children with that story on rainy nights ever since.

______________________________________________

I used to believe Mother’s Father’s Sister’s stories when I was young, and often I would wake in the night to a boat bumping against the Crooked Houses outside our sea door and rush to the well hoping to see my own spirit and have my own stories to tell. But I never saw anything. My friend Pig, whose family lives in the house two doors up and across the well from us, claims to have seen a spirit.

Like most of our people, his family makes its living by diving into the sunken rooms for relics of the ancients which can be traded to the island folk for rice, tools and medicine. Our family uses a set of china bowls bearing a crest in the sacred tongue of the ancients that was given to my Father on his ordination by Pig’s father.

Pig says that one day when he and his Mother’s Brother were diving into houses far out in the bay, they found a well that dropped from the spine of the Crooked Houses down past twenty or more doors before it collapsed in on itself. Pig tied the diving rock around his waist, made a prayer over three flowers which he then tossed into the well and followed, letting the rock pull him down while his Mother’s Brother played out rope from above. Pig is a strong man and he used to be a strong boy, so he sank with the rock almost to the point where the well ended in a jumble of concrete and rusted steel.

When the pressure in his ears began to bother him he let go of the rock and grabbed a doorframe. He kicked the rotten door away and swam into the Crooked House. He was overjoyed to see that he had discovered a house that had never been explored before. By the shifting green light coming in the sea door he could see big shards of the glass that had once closed that opening lying half buried in the silt on the floor. The island folk still use glass in their windows and would much rather trade us food for it than buy it with gold from the Chinese merchants who sail up from Penang every year. Pig could also see an aluminium tray in the sand and an unbroken water bottle.

But Pig had been diving for several years at this point, and he knew that the real wealth of a house like this would be found in the Tiled Pantry. A water bottle could be traded for a few sacks of rice, but a fragment of looking glass or a porcelain basin could fund a whole family’s needs at the market in Phuket Town for a year. Even a few stainless steel sewing needles make an excellent gift for a bride’s mother, something very much on Pig’s mind in those days.

So he swam to the Tiled Pantry and pulled its crumbling door away. The door fell and kicked up a cloud of silt that obscured his view. Pig clung to the doorframe and meditated to slow his heart and conserve the air in his lungs. As the silt settled and his eyes adjusted to the light he began to make out shapes in the room: a perfectly preserved basin as long as a man lying on its side on the floor next to the porcelain chair, which was crushed under fallen masonry.

Pig knew, having swam through dozens of sunken rooms built along exactly the same lines, that a house on this side of the well would have its face washing basin imbedded in a shelf hung from the ceiling, so he rolled over in the water and looked up.

Immediately above him was a figure floating in the water, and two wild eyes stared down into Pig’s. My friend says that he screamed and the bubbles from his mouth collided with bubbles coming DOWN out of the spirit’s mouth. Pig thrashed his way out of the Tiled Pantry, giving himself a gash on the leg from a rusty doornail, and with an effort born of desperation kicked his way out of that house and up the well, pulling himself up the rope to his Mother’s Brother who hauled him retching and sobbing into the sunlight.

Pig reported his experience to the priests, of course, who made offerings of rice and oil and wine tied to rocks and dropped down that well, finally ordering its mouth to be sealed with rubble and sacred thread. Middle Sister’s Husband, who was raised on dry land where the spirits are kept tamed in little houses in the front yard, says that Pig never saw any spirit at all, but only his own reflection in an unbroken looking glass attached to the ceiling. Of course, he says this quietly and only to family, since what he’s saying goes against established religious doctrine. Nobody’s ever seen an unbroken looking glass, so it must have been a spirit. But if it wasn’t, it’s a great shame, because a looking glass that big could have kept Pig and his family in groceries for a decade, and Pig could have married Sugar Cane, our headman’s youngest daughter, instead of the widow Shell, a mean-tempered woman two years Pig’s senior, whose womb produces only daughters.

______________________________________________

Like all the men of my people, I ordained into the priesthood for the three months of the monsoons when I was twenty years old. My family is noted for producing gifted scholars, and while I never did distinguish myself in the study of the scriptures like my Mother’s Father’s Second Brother or Eldest Sister’s First Husband, I also did not disgrace myself and my family by forgetting the words to the litany in front of all our people as did my friend Pig. To this day I can remember most of it, although it has been four years since I wore the orange robes:

Priest: The Prophet is our Refuge.

Novice: Are you ready to order, Sir, Madame or Miss.

Priest: The Scriptures are our Refuge.

Novice: May I make up the room now, Sir, Madame or Miss.

Priest: The Community of Priests is our Refuge.

Novice: Have a pleasant journey, see you next year.

Priest: Sir, Madame or Miss.

Novice: Sir, Madame or Miss.

Eldest Sister’s First Husband can recite even the most obscure texts, like the Wine List and the International Direct Dialling Country Codes, which the priests use to forecast the future. Since we live in such close proximity to our spirits we depend on our priests much more than do the island folk. Every time a family moves into a new house the spirits that occupy it must be propitiated, and every relic that is brought up out of the sunken rooms must be purchased with prayer and sacrifice.

Pig’s Eldest Brother was noted for being careless in his devotions, and one day he dove down a well looking for the blue plastic pipe and was never seen again. Everybody knows that the blue plastic pipe is treasured by the spirits, else why would the ancients have hidden it behind walls and floors? The pipe is also coveted by the island folk, who normally irrigate their paddies with water brought out of the hills in bamboo aqueducts which must be constantly maintained. The blue plastic pipe lasts forever and is easily joined with the tar that washes up on Patong Beach in the rainy season. Many of our people have tried to pull a length of the blue pipe out of a wall only to have a ton of broken brick come crashing down on them, and afterward upon questioning the dead man’s family the priests will always find some flaw in his pre-dive ritual.

Our priests are quartered in the Marble Hall, a giant amphitheatre which is the only part of the Crooked Houses still on land. One of the strongest arguments against Mother’s Father’s theory that the houses once stood upright is that the Marble Hall would have been the lowest point in the structure, and why would the ancients put a holy shrine under their feet? Perhaps that is part of the arrogance that caused the Gods to cast them down. At any rate, we regard the Marble Hall with reverence even if the ancients didn’t and it is there that we go every morning with our gifts of food and drink for the priests. Until they reach an age to go to market, this morning trip to shore is the only time our youngsters set foot on dry land.

The Marble Hall is an impressive edifice, and a tribute to the building sciences of the ancients; scholars from as far away as Songkhla and Surat have come to study it. Open to the sky and to the rising sun landward, sheltered by the First Wall of the Crooked Houses on its seaward side, bordered to the north and South by shattered columns, its floor is laid with polished marble not found in the Kingdom or neighbouring states, so we are told. A long counter or altar of the same stone runs the length of the landward side of the Hall, and it is from behind this that the priests chant the morning prayer with the sun climbing over the mountain behind them:

Refrain from harming any living beings, check out time is twelve noon.

Refrain from dishonesty, the porter with take your bags.

Refrain from adultery, there is a charge for overnight guests in the room.

Refrain from wrongful speech, deposit valuables in the safe box.

Refrain from intoxication, and have a nice day.

We receive the blessings of the priests while kneeling with our foreheads on the floor, facing the fabled islands in the east: Yipoon where the prophet was born, Ong-Gong where he achieved enlightenment, and Ostalia, where he died. After the benediction we watch the priests eat and gossip among ourselves, and after the priests are finished with their meal we leave them to their meditations. The time for supplicants to ask the priests for special blessings or advice is in the afternoon, when the Hall is shadowed by the bulk of the Crooked Houses and the wind blows good luck in off the sea. The act of presenting alms to the priests is called Tipping in the sacred speech, and it is forbidden for a priest to accept a tip directly from the hand of a woman. She must place her offering on a special wooden tray made for this purpose, under a holy piece of paper inscribed with magic pentagrams. The word for this paper is Check-Bin.

_______________________________________________________

Whatever a diver brings up from the sunken rooms is brought to the priests before it is traded to the island folk or used by our people. Traditionally, all the sunken rooms that are intact will contain the same items, proscribed by the Gods and unchangeable as the tides: each with a Holy Name and required prayer: The Small Plastic Box with its collection of glass bottles inside, The Large Plastic Box With One Glass Side which legend tells us was sacred even to the ancients and is never removed from a room, The Aluminium Tray With Water Bottle And Drinking Glasses, which are almost always broken, The Bud Vase and The Fone, which is useless to us except for one part which can easily be twisted off, cup-shaped and pierced with small holes, good for straining tea. In the Tiled Pantry will be the Long Basin, The Face Basin, the Porcelain Chair, the Plastic Cloth With Rings and the Sewing Kit. The Sewing Kit is often found amid a collection of tiny plastic bottles, too small to be useful and without much religious value.

These ten holy relics are the basis of our livelihood, though we also sift the silt of a newly discovered sunken room for the shards of looking glass and plain glass. Occasionally we will find other items, unique to the particular room and the spirit whose home it is: plastic buttons, old coins, gold teeth and crockery or cutlery. If a diver is very lucky and careful in his prayers he may be rewarded with a length of the blue plastic pipe.

Unfortunately, my people are having to dive deeper and into ever more unstable rooms these days. I can remember when I was a boy, the divers in my family could find trade goods within a few met of the surface, and Mother’s Father can remember his Father bringing back relics found in houses above the water line. Now a diver has to go far out into the bay and let the diving rock pull him deep down a well to find anything really valuable. I worry about this sometimes. I’ve asked the priests what we will do when we have depleted the resources of the Crooked Houses. Our people know no other occupation, and the island folk would not welcome our competition even if we could somehow purchase land and learn to farm it.

The priests say that the Gods will provide for us, and that we should keep our faces turned to the sea as we have always done. My friend Pig takes this to mean that the Gods will open up new rooms to us by the discovery of new wells, but I’m not sure. I have a different idea.

Last year a junk from the Chinese trading fleet out of Penang lost its mast in a storm and had to lay over in Patong Bay for repairs. Our headman invited the crew to an ordination ceremony in the Marble Hall, and afterwards we brought the captain and his chief trading officers out into the Crooked Houses and they were our guests at a feast. We hold our feasts, in the dry season, on the spine of the Crooked Houses next to the Great Cistern, an enormously long room which generations ago was sealed and now collects rain water for our use. We build fires on the plane of smooth brick, still warm from the day’s sun, throw our lines into the sea and broil fish and bananas. The women play music and dance in the firelight and the children swim in the reservoir. In the moonlight, after the children have gone to bed, we men drink liquor and gamble and sing bawdy songs, the priests perform magic and the young lovers wander off to share the vacant rooms under the stars.

On this particular occasion, last year, the Chinese Captain and his men apparently enjoyed themselves a great deal, singing along with us in their funny voices and losing at cards with good humour. When it was almost dawn some of our unmarried women showed the guests to their rooms, where they ended up staying long past the time their ship was ready to sail. Our people have always prided themselves on their hospitality, in fact the island folk say that’s all we’re good at. The crew of the junk left promising to return, not for trade but for another friendly visit. Our headman received from the Chinese Captain ten gold ringgit, ten mosquito nets and a half-barrel of fish sauce. A small fortune in return for inviting them to a party we were having anyway. Several of our unmarried women received gifts of gold jewellery as well, to add to their dowries.

I often think how easy it was. Nobody had to go into the water or enter a sunken room where the ceiling might collapse at any moment. It wasn’t even really work, but so profitable. I think about how many junks full of rich merchants sail up and down the coast between Penang and Rangoon each year, men far from home and bored with the ship’s routine, lonely for some music and wine and the flirting glance of a woman. Look to the sea, the priests said.

And there’s always plenty of vacant rooms in the Crooked Houses.

© Steve Rosse. All rights reserved by the author.

----------------------------
If you enjoyed this short story of Steve Rosse's  you can easily purchase his book 'Thai Vignettes' online here at Bangkok Books.com: http://www.bangkokbooks.com/php/product/product.php?product_id=000025&sub_cate_name=&sub_cate_id=

Most books published by Bangkok Book House are available at Asia Books, Bookazine, B2S, Kinokuniya, Suriwong Chiang Mai, DK Chiang Mai, Pattaya, Lampang; all airports, many hotel outlets, supermarkets (Villa, Friendship Pattaya), The Books (Phuket, Krabi), Singapore including airport, Hong Kong airport and many smaller independent outlets throughout Thailand (www.bangkokbooks.com).