November: Antony, why did you leave me?
November, 1943
Chungkai Camp
Charlie was sent back to Singapore with a working party under orders to take part in an operation to clear up the dead. I fear for him. He left me his wedding ring to look after and I hide it along with mine and beside Arthur's. I pray that the Nips do not find them for I could not put up a fight if they did. The knowledge of this drains me. How could I not fight for the one thing that means more to me than anything? How could I not fight for the one thing that Charlie and Arthur have left with me to protect? The fear of a beating, of death, and the sheer hopelessness of our situation has dragged my natural reactions from me. They have taken rings from the men and we know they keep them in the Commander's tent. One of the Nips was taunting an Australian about taking his wedding ring while he was being forced to stand outside for three days for stealing a bowl of rice. He bragged that they were saving it with the others to be melted down after the war. They know only too well how to break a man. The Australian was already ill and he died two days later.
I don't know when I will see Charlie again. Arthur remains with me, although he is desperately weak. He has an ulcer from a leg wound and a fever. The Doc is marvellous but we know he can do very little despite efforts to clean dressings and irrigate the wound. Maggots infest the flesh and clearing these and the pus from the lesion is a procedure which Arthur has to endure night and day. He is in luck since the hospital now has some anaesthetic, although I don't imagine the supply will last for very long. They will surely have to amputate and in these insect-ridden conditions I fear for him. He is so emaciated and weakens with every day.
We are still being sent up-country to work on the railway. Sick men have to go before inspections every morning and if they can stand, they are not exempt from work. Often, they depart, never to return, falling by the wayside, dying before our very eyes. Very few are buried and the bodies pile up in the jungle. Two officers escaped a few weeks ago and all of us prayed for them. But they were recaptured and the Nips made us all stand outside and watch as they were hauled back into the camp. The sense of hopelessness which we could see behind the officers' eyes as they were being dragged back into captivity affected us all and the camp sank further into a deep, bleak numbness. The officers were beaten within ear-shot of the rest of us and we tried to cover our ears since we all knew where the screams were heading. The silence that followed their screams lay heavy with us for days.
Morale is so low but we still try to maintain discipline. There are many times when orders have been disobeyed, and I can't blame the lads, but without discipline, survival would be even harder. I am not proud to admit that often I have wished that survival would elude me. It would be so much easier just not to be here anymore. I know not what awaits me on the other side but at least it would not be this. And who knows, maybe my Muriel will be there to look after me. How I wish to be with Muriel, lying with my head in her lap and gazing up at her gentle, loving eyes. How I wish her arms would cradle me and her lips caress me as I let her warmth envelope my being. How I wish.
Take me Muriel. Take me, away from here, away from the pain, the horror and the everydayness that is my existence. Take me. I think it is only this thought that keeps me alive, and the distant hope that we will indeed, one day be together again in this life. I would not want to live if to live meant to be deprived of this. If that were so, I'd take my chances on the other side.
Death no longer stays at a distance, waiting politely to take us only once we have seen life, loved it, watched our children grow and enjoyed three score years and ten of English summers. Instead it lies all around us, seeping into every pore and gnawing at our brains. I know Arthur will die, here in this hell. His ulcer spreads from his knee to his ankle and has devoured the flesh, which has all but disappeared save for a raw strip where his calf should be. You can see daylight between this and the bare bone. But it is not the ulcer that will kill him. It is the cure for the ulcer that will take him away. Only a few more days and they will have to amputate his leg and I have not seen any man, yet, who has lived here beyond a fortnight of such an operation. The Doc has to take the same saw used by the cookhouse to chop wood, sterilise it as best he can, perform the operation in the outdoors, and return the saw for chopping wood when he is done. If he doesn't amputate, Arthur will die an agonising death, poisoned by the festering menace which is eating him alive. If he does amputate, Arthur will surely die from infection and disease which, in the course of time, will also eat him alive.
Today I found myself thinking that maybe it would be better for Arthur if he died now, quickly, while there's still a chance to relieve his pain. I have no faith that our situation will improve. For weeks now, I have had to watch men die. Men I have been living with, working with, slept alongside and with whom I have shared the unimaginable.
*****
November
Poo Jom Petch Retreat
The Isaan
This country is so beautiful, so peaceful. I’ve finally got to spend some time with my brother too. At last. I'm having an incredible time and I've come to a place I thought I would only ever see in my dreams. We’ve come to a retreat monastery high up in the plains over looking Laos and the Mekong River.
I’ve mentioned to Antony about going to the River Kwai but he suggested visiting here first and spending a few days.
We left early morning two days ago with Tikaro. Dawn hadn’t broken as we set off from Chatanan and it was still dark. Our minibus, with our driver at the wheel and filled with food and supplies for our journey, rattled its way across the dirt tracks to the main road. No monks lived at the retreat permanently so there were no provisions and the local villagers were very excited about us visiting.
Life was waking up near Chatanan as we left and there was a bit of traffic on the road. A pick-up truck laden with workers about to start their long day passed us, a petrol wagon went by and you could hear the familiar sound of small motorbikes revving up in the distance. I opened the window to have a look at the kids on the bikes that had screamed up behind us and were about to overtake. Their screeching engines were at full throttle as their riders hurtled the machines past us in the cool, dark morning. Weary headlights barely lit their way as they passed. Antony noticed them too and turned from his seat in front of me to catch my eye, his soft, silent smile reaching me through the half-light and showing me that he remembered, too, that those were the days we thought would never end. Kids on bikes, living the life of Riley.
Once they’d gone, we were left with the dark again and all we could hear was the sound of the engine.
Silence hung between Antony and I for a while as we rested in each other’s gaze, the cool, dusty morning taking us back to years gone by, years when he wasn’t a monk, when we were still brother and sister and when he was tearing around in Levi’s on a Honda Superdream.
It was always summer, that image I had. Antony’s bike was shiny, metallic green and you could hear him coming up the street long before you saw him. Neighbours complained about the speed he rode and they complained about the revving noise coming from the back yard while he played about with the engine, tuning it, make it rev louder, getting oil all over his jeans, all over the floor. Once, he let me ride it, once and only once because I was too small to really get a hold of it and as I trundled down the back lane, scared to even try and change gear, I negotiated my first corner. I was going far too slowly to make the sharp turn and as I leaned into the bend, like Antony had forever told me to do, the Superdream fell over. Sin of sins, I’d marked the paint-work and it was the first and last time Antony let me anywhere near his precious bike. It was at that moment that I vowed to pass my bike test and get a bike of my own, just to show him and the world that girls can ride bikes too.
I was still holding Antony’s gaze as all those tender moments flooded back but Antony couldn’t hold the moment and his eyes fell to the floor. The last thing I expected though was for him to reach out, find my hand with his and squeeze it.
I knew he’d been remembering what I had. It wasn’t until we’d travelled another mile or so that he finally let my hand fall.
It was still dark outside, still silent and I still had my window open so I rested against the frame and let the breeze flow against my face and allowed the air of Thailand’s pre-dawn minutes to fill my lungs. The early morning air smelt very clean and fresh. It was warm enough to let my head fall onto the window frame and feel bathed by it.
I spent at least fifteen minutes letting the air rush over my face, occasionally pulling open my eyelids to watch the roadside flash past beneath us. I might as well have been there completely on my own.
Then, I thought I could hear something. I wasn’t sure if it was a memory or not at first, but, lifting my head up to hear better, my ears caught the sound again, so unmistakably that I thought I’d drifted into a dream. It was that amazing sound of shake, rattle and roll, chocolate and Mozart. Foreign and familiar all at the same time.
Not here, surely, I thought, but as I woke from my half-dream, I could hear it more clearly, getting louder, getting braver, getting here.
Antony heard it too and without him even turning round I could see he’d raised an invisible eyebrow and that his jaw was dropping ever so slightly with surprise. It was as if his ears had pricked up like an anticipating, excited puppy.
Tikaro, who’d been perched in the front seat next to the driver and had been characteristically silent up until now, suddenly turned round. The side of his face was lit by the orange and red lights from the minibus dashboard and his expression was almost fearful.
“You guys hear that?” He drawled, his forehead furrowed.
We nodded together. Tikaro, we’re ahead of you.
The sound of the Harley Davidson grew closer and a single, round yellow light appeared behind us, shining out of the dark into the minibus and onto our excited faces. The soft orange glow of Antony’s and Tikaro’s’ robes grew brighter, reflecting off the bus’ windscreen as the light behind us grew larger and the sound grew stronger until eventually the machine it belonged to began to overtake us and the transport of the gods came into view.
Christopher, the Malaysian helper from Chatanan, was riding it, his hair streaming away from his face as he sat in his shorts, poised on the leather seat, arms outstretched to reach the wide handlebars and his thin bare legs straddling the teardrop tank. The Harley engine was singing a loud proud song of diesel and oil and motoring along with ease through the dark morning reminding us that this was what it was born to do. To shake, to rattle and to roll. And I’m telling you, if chocolate could make music, this would be what it sounded like and Mozart would’ve written the tune.
Christopher stayed alongside us for some time, escorting us, while Tikaro, Antony and I stared out of the windows like three awestruck children. He looked so serene as he rode the enormous bike through the early morning darkness, his expression calmer than I’d ever seen him, calmer even than in the Sala when he was meditating. Finally, without changing a single facial muscle, an aloof Christopher nodded slightly at us, leaned the bike over to his right and then arced away from us, disappearing into the blackness and making his way up a different road. All we could see as the minibus continued along the main road, was the shaking beam of the Harley’s headlight as it got smaller and smaller . Shaking, rattling and rolling into the dark beyond.
It made my day, my week and my month in fact, seeing Christopher out on the Harley. A Harley’s meant to be ridden not locked away in a garage and polished every Sunday. The image had been like water in the desert.
And he hadn’t been wearing a helmet. Imagine that? A Harley and no helmet.
Apart from the bike, travelling in the mini-bus with Buddhist monks wasn’t a bowl of cherries. When I first got in, I sat myself next to Antony up front next to the driver but immediately the driver started protesting and pointed towards the back seat, a poky little area with hardly any room for my long, Farang knees and no chance of a decent view.
"I'm afraid, you can't sit on the same seat as a monk," explained Antony, waiting nervously for my reaction.
"But you’re my brother!” I protested predictably, irritable in my early morning crabbiness.
“I know, Benedict, but I don’t want to offend him. You might touch me or my robe by accident.”
“And we couldn't have that, could we?" I said, sarcastically, folding my arms in a huff.
"Benedict, please. It's him I'm thinking of," Antony replied, gently glancing at the driver. "We can swap places though, if you want. You can sit next to the driver and I’ll sit in the back so you can get a better view.”
“Antony, it’s four thirty in the morning. It’s pitch black. I won’t be able to see anything.” But I resigned stroppily to climbing into the back seat. The driver had seemed insistent.
Poo Jom Petch was about four hours drive away, which meant stopping at dawn in a nearby town so that the boys could go on almsround. There were other monks in the busy market as we pulled up and they nodded towards Antony and Tikaro as they got out of the minibus, adjusted their robes and began Pindabah. They were given heaps of food. Chicken, curries, rice, banana cakes, Soya drinks, oranges, biscuits and when they arrived back, I left them for an hour or so while they had their meal.
Later, we also stopped for a drink in a roadside restaurant. The driver left us alone. He said less throughout the whole journey than Tikaro. I ordered a rare bottle of cold Heineken, and I bought some drinks for the boys. Tikaro wanted Coca-Cola, Antony orange Fanta and they each asked for a straw. I've never seen anything quite so incongruous as two bald headed monks in sacred orange robes, sitting in a bar in the middle of remote Thailand, sucking pop ‘til it slurped.
Back in the mini-bus, heading for Poo Jom Petch, Antony and Tikaro offered me the uneaten leftovers from the morning's Pindabah, explaining that none of it was allowed to be stored for the next day.
"In case you become squirrels and start hoarding food in your rooms?" I asked.
"That's a heap closer to the truth than you think," said Tikaro seriously, peering over the top of his glasses. "It helps to be reminded everyday that our subsistence is dependent on the loving kindness of the laypeople around us."
Lighten up, Forrest, I thought, disrespectfully. I was joking.
"But they're not doing it just out of kindness, are they," I protested. "They just want brownie points to help them get to the next stage of wherever it is this Buddhism stuff takes them."
"In a way, I guess, but it ain’t quite as simple as you make it sound. An' anyways, at the end of the day, we would starve without their generosity. An' I don't ever wanna take that for granted."
Point taken, Forrest.
It's easy to criticise another culture and I didn't really understand the ins and outs of this faith, but I could already see that there was a difference between the fundamentals and what was left when that got messed up and turned into an institution. Maybe I was too ready to mock this stuff when what was actually staring me in the face was a country of very kind, very generous, smiling people.
A few of the villagers greeted us when we arrived at Poo Jom Petch in the late afternoon. Tikaro disappeared somewhere quickly while I was offered a drink of rice milk. Antony then showed me to my room. My expectations when he had referred to it as a “room” were my downfall. We were in one of the most remote parts of the country, high on a hill where a lonely goat herder was a far more realistic proposition than a double en-suite.
My room was about a hundred a fifty meters down an unmarked, unlit, path over rocks, through a small stream and up through the undergrowth. It was a small wooden hut on stilts with a single mosquito net and a few candles. During the few minutes it took us to gather my bags and walk there, Thailand’s night fell like a stone. Bam! And it was pitch black. There were no other huts anywhere near and the bathroom was somewhere down a different path which Antony indicated at with the beam of his Maglite. I had no intention of visiting that night.
“Is this it?” I asked, foolishly, squinting up at the frail, wooden hut and just making out a set of slatted steps and a long, railed walk way running along the side.
“Yes,” replied Antony.
Even though I couldn’t really see his face through the darkness, I knew his worried eyes would have been flitting nervously from me to the hut to the floor to the trees and back to me.
“Where will you be sleeping?” I asked him.
Not that I was worried or anything. It was just that we were in the middle of god knows where and I was supposed to spend the night on my own with only the insects for company in this ramshackle wooden hut miles away from anywhere, where the local villagers knew the rich westerners had arrived, where anyone could wander along for a visit and I wouldn’t have a clue where anyone else was until dawn.
“I’m not far away, Benedict, and you‘ll be fine here,” he said, unconvincingly.
“Where will you be sleeping, Antony?” I repeated, insistently, raising my voice.
I could hear his eyes rolling in the dark and the mole twitching on his cheekbone. He sighed in anticipation of my response to what he was about to tell me.
“My kuti’s the other side of the Sala,” he said.
“That’s miles!!” I shouted.
“Shh!!” And he added, quickly, “Don’t worry. Nobody comes here, they leave the place well alone.”
“This is ridiculous,” I told him, impatiently. “How do you know that, Antony?”
I tried not to shout, not to show him that I was scared.
“Antony, anyone could wander up here. They know we’re here. They know I’m here, a big fat white western woman sleeping all on my own ‘cos she’s not allowed to go any where near you lot!”
“But they respect us,” he insisted. “It’s more than their life’s worth to come here.”
“You’re too trusting,” I told him, cynically. I didn’t want Antony’s faith in the good nature of the Thai villagers tested out on me.
“And you’re not trusting enough,” he said, a cold edge to his voice. “They won’t come here,” he repeated. “They’re far more scared than you. You’ll be OK, I promise. They never come here.”
And his deliberate tone finally began to reassure me.
“You’re sure?’
“Positive.”
And, eventually, I could hear a smile in his voice.
My big brother’s knowledge of, and blind faith in this country was impressive. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad sleeping out here after all. Perhaps I would be safe after all. Perhaps I’d enjoy being out in the open and at least I’d have something to write home about. It’s not often you get to sleep in a wooden hut with no light, no lock and no loo. I was coming round to the idea. Slowly.
That was until Antony said,
“Anyway, it’s haunted.”
“That’s it!” I shouted, picking my bag up off the floor. “You just blew it. I’m not sleeping here!”
And I started to stomp off back towards the Sala but had to stop when I realised it was pitch black and that I couldn’t see where I was going without Antony’s torch.
“Benedict, they just think it’s haunted. That’s what stops them coming. Thai’s hate the thought of ghosts.”
“So do I! ” I shouted.
“Look, it’s just rumours and even if there were ghosts, you’ve got a feel of the place, haven’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean follow your intuition, Benedict. Trust it. Does this feel like a place that’s going to harm you?” He asked me.
Antony was calm, standing with his hands resting in front of him, the beam of the torch now shining up at our faces. He had absolute faith in what he was saying.
“Well, does it?” he asked me again.
I was speechless, open mouthed. He was right. Poo Jom Petch felt sublime. It didn’t feel scary at all. It felt like a place that would look after me.
“If there are any ghosts, they’re nice ghosts,” he said, comfortingly, clearly concerned for me now and no longer irritated by me. “It’s only the dark that’s frightening you, Benedict and you can cure that.”
“How can you cure darkness?” I retorted, stubborn to the end. “Even Buddhist monks can’t make that disappear.”
Antony just smiled at me, knowing I was being proud.
“You just light a candle,” he said and he did just that, taking a candle from inside his magic robe, lighting it and placing it in the centre of a large canvas lamp which hung on a metal wire from underneath the balcony of the hut. It cast a pale yellow glow in a circle all around us, a pool of light to massage my fears.
“I’ll hear if anything happens, which it won’t,” he said. “And if it makes you feel any better, I’ve brought you a whistle. But Benedict, you won’t need it. I promise.”
And like a soft-focus, browny-orange Santa Claus, he produced more gifts from the folds of his robe. A small black whistle and a spare torch.
Antony helped me to carry my stuff up the wooden steps to the first floor room where I found my bed already made, the mosquito net suspended over it hanging at four corners from the walls and fresh flowers sitting in small glass jar. Tikaro, you’re ahead of us, I thought. So that’s where he’d disappeared.
“I love having you here, Benedict,” Antony said as he was about to leave. “This is a very special time for me.”
A tiny bit of me nearly stepped forward to hug him but I wasn’t sure whether I should and I couldn’t face the thought of getting it wrong again. I watched from my balcony as Antony descended the steps, a thin, surprisingly frail-looking robed figure slipping out of the pool of light that came from my lantern and disappearing silently in the darkness down the path. I kept watching as the beam from his Maglite slowly swung in time to the rhythm of his steps, silently dancing in the dark until finally, it was gone.
I was alone in the jungle. In the night. In silence.
I’d received two letters this week so I reread them, huddled on the floor under my mosquito net. I needed the distraction. One letter was from Michaela and it filled me in on all that has been going on since I left. Stella had got a new boyfriend, which seemed to have caused considerable excitement. The weather in England had finally started to turn cold after a mild October. There was to be a new landlord at the pub. Michaela had seen Captain Archie who had said everything was all right at the house and Molly The Cat was fine. Captain Archie had informed her in graphic detail of exactly what time he went round in the morning and evening to carry out his daily assignments and what he had accomplished. She said she’d also bumped into Joe in the pub and he’d grunted that he was missing me, thought of me often and that everyone at the Boatyard hoped I was having a good time.
What he’d actually said was, “How’s t’daft bugger doing, then?” But Michaela had translated for me.
After reading my letters, I felt very homesick and sad so I dug my iPod out, found “Where is the Love” by the Black Eyed Peas followed by the dance version of Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine” and blasted away my sadness. Exhausted, I fell asleep.
In the morning, as I was walking from my kuti to the small Sala where the meal would be served, I again caught a glimpse of my brother’s life without him being aware, like the time I’d seen him in Ubon, disappearing into a building with the Abbot. This time he was stood at the far side of the Sala building, underneath the wooden pillars which held the structure in place and he was with Tikaro. They were arguing, exchanging hushed, shouted words. It was a bit like watching a foreign film with the sound turned down, only someone had forgotten to show the sub-titles. They weren’t very animated in the argument. There were no waving arms like Amaro, no clenched fists or exchange of blows. They were both far more restrained than that, keeping their arms firmly under wraps inside their robes and only occasionally flinching them, making the cloth twitch.
It was the colour of Tikaro’s face that gave things away. He was bright red from the top of his bald head to the top of his chest, his redness vanishing in a sweeping line around his neck, a feint vein pulsing at the side of his temple. Occasionally, as he turned his head, the sun glanced off his spectacles and for a split second he became a mad vision of flashing orange, red and yellow. The poor guy was clearly upset about something, something major.
Antony on the other hand, hadn’t coloured up. Instead, he was pacing, precisely and impatiently, creating a track in the dust where he paced to and fro in a neat, twelve-foot line, listening to Tikaro, flicking his head up every few steps to look at him then looking back down at the floor as if he didn’t really want to hear what he said. I couldn’t hear what they were discussing and only caught my brother’s words once.
“But you know why I haven’t said anything,” he insisted with a tone of irritation. And the argument continued. It shocked me seeing them like that. Monks don’t argue, I thought. They’re not supposed to, and I felt a pang of guilt for having caught them at something I thought they weren’t supposed to be doing. And it upset me.
I crept quietly around the back of the Sala towards the kitchen so that Tikaro and Antony didn’t see me but I wasn’t sure whether it was for my sake or theirs that I didn’t want them to know I’d seen them.
Something to ask Antony about later, I told myself.
When I arrived at the kitchen there were three women from the village in there already, cooking the morning meal. I helped them as best I could until it was time for the morning meal.
Tikaro and Antony were offered their meal and I joined them a couple of hours later, after I’d eaten wit the villagers and helped to wash and clear up the kitchen.
“How goes it Tikaro?” I asked.
Tikaro just looked at me, thoughtfully, his gaze lost in the space between us. He didn’t reply but after a few, silent moments he focused on me again, caught my eye and just nodded. He then tugged at his robe, pulling the bit that hangs down behind the arm up over his shoulder, and left us to go and sort out his bowl. Antony and I watched him and we caught each other’s eye. My brother’s eyes told me, “Best leave him be for a while.”
*****
“Antony,” I asked later when we were out walking. “Why did you become a monk?”
They were taking me to see Tikaro’s kuti on the edge of the cliff nearby. It was hotter here than down in Chatanan and there was no shelter from the heat. The monsoon rain had long since vanished into the rocks and the heat bounced off the surface of dry river beds, scorching the soles of our sandals.
Tikaro was up ahead and I was alone with Antony.
He didn’t reply straight away and we kept on walking, his face serious and his soft smile barely perceptible. He’d never told me why he’d become a monk. I got letters from him telling me what he was up to, where he was, what it was like. But he’d never explained why. Never explained exactly what made him kiss goodbye to his old life, want to wear a funny dress and live in the middle of a wood on the other side of the world.
Finally, after a few glances in my direction as if he was checking whether or not my question was sincere, he said,
“It just made sense.”
And jumped straight back in.
“What did?”
Again there were more pauses from Antony and more deliberations. We scrunched through the dry riverbed, twigs and lifeless leaves cracking under our feet and filling the spaces of our conversation with brittle, unhelpful punctuation. Short on gestures, I think Antony was searching to find the right words. There were no other sounds and but for the crunching of dead leaves, I’m sure you would have heard our pulses beating.
“I’ve never spoken about this before,” he said, warily. “It’s like I know in my heart why I became a monk but I’ve never had to explain it to anyone. Everyone here knows without needing to explain.”
“Like riding a motorbike,” I said.
He looked at me, clearly not understanding what I meant.
“If someone has to ask you why you ride a motorbike,” I reminded him, “Then they’ll never understand the answer.”
He smiled.
“A bit like that I suppose,” he said.
“So try me Antony. I just want to understand what made you become a Buddhist monk.”
I was getting impatient because he didn’t seem to want to help me understand. Antony just gave me the same, changeless expression, and I felt like he was sussing me out, assessing whether I was worthy of an explanation, whether I was intelligent enough to understand. My patience snapped far too soon.
“For god’s sake! Why did it just make sense?”
“And why are you always angry with me?” he asked, pained, raising his voice, a rare show of emotion making his features tremble and his face colour up in a way I’d never seen. It shocked me. I hadn’t ever realised that my anger was so near the surface. I always thought it was buried deep inside, away from reality. I never for the life of me thought that it might upset him. I felt humbled and eventually managed to explain.
“Antony, I just want to understand. You never came back. You said you would, but you didn’t. You never came back and I simply want to know what it was that kept you here. Is that so strange? I’ve come half way round the world. The least you can do is try and explain it?”
Finally, realising I was getting upset, my brother decided to spill the beans and decided that maybe his kid sister just might have the sensitivity to understand after all.
“I suppose before I came to Thailand nothing really made sense,” he began, tentatively.
“So you ran away?”
“No,” he said, taking a deep breath. “It wasn’t running away.”
He was struggling to find a way of explaining, his head bowed, so I bit my tongue and gave him time to say what he wanted to say.
“Yes, I needed to get away. After Dad died, I couldn’t make sense of anything and away was as good a place to be as anywhere. I didn’t want a life that just gave me a good job, a wife, kids, a mortgage. I wanted a life that could also explain to me why Dad died. Why Mum died. Why one day I’ll die too.”
He spoke slowly, careful about the way he explained things, emotion creeping in. He clearly meant every word as he picked his head up and looked over at me.
“Is this making sense?” he asked and I could see that he really was concerned that I understood him.
I nodded. There was no need for words from me. I’d only say something crass that I didn’t really mean. I won’t pretend it was easy listening to him. It was actually very hard because I knew that while he was living out all that he was describing, I’d been at home on my own, agonising about when he, the only member of my family left alive, was coming back. Listening to him talk about that time, with no reference to how I might have felt, was painful. I still wanted to scream at him. Wanted to hit him. Wanted to stop the pain from disappearing into my stomach and giving me cramps.
But I was good. I clenched my jaw and kept listening.
“I was heading for Ko Tao, a tiny island off the coast. On the way, I stumbled across a temple in Ko Pha Ngan, and something just made sense,” he continued, now more confident and with relief in his voice. I’d visited loads of temples in Thailand. In Bangkok, in Krabi, in Chang Mai. You’ve seen what it’s like here. They’re everywhere. Everywhere you go in this country there are amazing temples that are full of people, people my age who were going to church.”
This was the first time I’d seen Antony so animated since I arrived. This time his arms had appeared from under his robe and he was using his hands to emphasize what he felt.
“There was something in those temples that worked for them and I wanted to learn what it was. So I began reading. I never expected to find the temple on Ko Pha Ngan. I’d hooked up with some other travellers and we island hopped from Ko Samui. One morning I took a moped up the mountain and found the temple. It was pissing with rain all the way up but as soon as I got there, the clouds lifted and the sun shone on me and on the face of a golden Buddha. It was the first thing I saw when I got to the top of the mountain and it looked at me, right at me.”
Antony was fighting back the tears now as he spoke, breathing hard, almost spitting out the last few words.
“I just fell to me knees and cried,” he said. “I knew I’d come home.”
Then after a few calming, deep breaths he continued.
“There was a monk watching me, Ajahn Bramadho. He invited me to stay.”
I felt Antony glance at me, checking my reaction as he described the moment he decided not to come home. Finally, in an effort to lighten the mood, he said,
“I never did make it to Ko Tao. After spending a few months with Bramadho I knew that I’d ordain. Something inside me shifted and I found a way of looking at life that finally made sense to me. It didn’t take away all the pain, but it gave meaning where before there’d been none. Absolutely none.”
I was silent, unable to find an appropriate response. I’d never imagined something so emotional had happened to Antony. I thought he’d just bummed around Thailand for a while, eventually found a cushy number in a cosy monastery and had got so used to it that he’d stayed. But Antony had described a brother I hadn’t yet met, one who’d taken charge and one to whom I was slowly being introduced, here, in Thailand.
“So you see, Benedict, it’s not really like riding a motorbike.”
“Do you miss home ever?” I asked him.
“Sometimes.”
Like me? I wondered. Do you miss me?
“I miss my bike like crazy,” he said, playfully.
Bastard. And I kicked a stone that was in my path and watched as it careered across the rocks and bounced off the boulders up ahead.
“But not as much as I miss you,” he said gently and knowingly.
And on hearing that, my tears arrived too.
Tikaro was waiting for us as we approached the scraggy little bamboo kuti that sat at the top of the plain. The sun was behind him as we approached and, silhouetted in his robe with his arms tucked inside, he looked like an Oscar statue sitting on a giant mantelpiece.
It wasn’t until we reached the kuti that I could appreciate exactly where we were. About twelve feet in front of us was the cliff, a hundred feet high and looking out onto the widest, most breathtaking view I’d yet seen - the magnificent Mekong river, winding its mighty way round the eastern edge of Thailand, cutting through the plain far below us and nestling up to Laos which lay on its other side. From up here it looked like a deceptively mild river but from the way it had sliced through the rocks that edged its banks and the way in which there was no traffic on this river, you could tell that it was in charge. The Mekong ruled the countryside for hundreds of miles and it cared for nothing except its own endless flow and its own continual renewal.
I must have stared at the view for nearly half an hour while Antony helped Tikaro mend a hole in the roof of his kuti.
*****
I’m typing this up as I’m sitting on the balcony of my kuti. It’s dark and I’ve only got the light of the battery-powered laptop screen, the candle lamp and my torch to write by. I know what Antony said about friendly ghosts but it’s still a bit spooky here. It’s the fact that I feel so exposed, like everyone can see me but I can’t see them. I do like it though. It is so peaceful and it’s as if this place feeds you by just being here. The moon’s out and the stars seem so close. Whenever I look at the stars I always think of home. I know that at some time soon, in a few hours’ time, there’ll be a similar view above York. Captain Archie will be walking his spaniel and there’ll be Joe on his boat and they’ll be looking up and seeing what I’m seeing. It’s really comforting and makes me feel like the world is not so big after all.
I’ve just come in off the balcony and locked the door because I heard footsteps. Outside. And Again. Behind my kuti. Someone’s trampling through the undergrowth. I can’t see a bloody thing! He’s got a dog. I can hear it panting.
I’ve got Uncle Erno’s pen-knife now and if I die, this will be my final record of what happened so listen up. I can hear them only a few yards away. Antony! You swore no one would come up here!
Shit! That was a gun shot. He’s shot the dog!! He’s shot the poor bloody dog!! Oh God, Antony, where the hell are you?
Now he’s digging, I can hear him digging. He’s burying the dog, the cold-hearted bastard. Antony, you promised. You always make promises and you never keep them.
Oh shit, what’s that now?
*****
November
Wat Pah Chatanan,
“That” was Antony, carrying two cloth lanterns which were dangling in the distance like the eyes of a giant rabbit in the headlights.
“I thought you might be a bit worried,” was the first thing he said, his face eerily illuminated from underneath by the light.
Antony climbed the stairs and stood on the balcony. The digging had stopped and the man with the gun hadn’t appeared.
“He’s shot the dog, Antony,” I whispered. “He’s shot the damn dog.”
“He didn’t shoot the dog,” Antony replied, calmly.
“He shot the dog!!” I repeated, pointing to the spot where the noise had come from, my heart beating loudly. “He shot the dog and then he dug a grave and he buried it! I heard it. I’m telling you he shot the goddamn dog!”
I was now raising my voice.
“Benedict, calm down,” he said, gently. “He hasn’t shot the dog. He was hunting. That’s all. I should have mentioned it. They find an animal hole and send the dog in. He’ll have been digging out the hole where the dog went and he’ll have shot whatever animal came out. He hasn’t shot the dog.”
It took a while before I believed Antony and for the picture to fit as I played it out in my mind.
“You sure?” I asked, grumpily.
“I’m sure. He was hunting and he’s gone now.”
“Thought you said they never came up here. Thought you said they were afraid of the ghosts.”
“Well he probably won’t ever come back now. He probably thought you were a ghost.”
“I was scared!”
“I know and I’m sorry. I should have warned you. Do you want to sleep in the Sala? I’ll help you move your stuff.”
“No, I’m all right.”
And I was. Finally. Poo Jom Petch was special. It will always be special in my memory because I had time to spend with Antony. For the first time in four years, I got to know him. For the first time in four years I could share his life with him. I could joke with him, go for walks with him, eat with him and listen to the tales he had to tell me over candle-lit times in the Sala. And I could tell him about the life I’d built up for myself in York. I told him about my life on the river and how the gentle rhythm of the water had put a rhythm back into my life after all the hard times of the last few years. I told him how much I loved the river and how, when I was away from it for too long, life was not so easy to navigate. Without the river, too many eddies found me, too many rocks got in my way. Without the constant flow of the river to renew me, life made less sense.
After listening, Antony said he’d take me on a river trip up the Mekong and I cried, feeling that finally my brother had come home to me.
We climbed the plain early one morning after the meal and descended the cliff down a thirty minute, near-vertical walk to the edge of the Mekong. I’d never been near such a vast, powerful, piece of water. As it made its way from Tibet and China, through the distant hills near Burma, through Cambodia and finally the Mekong Delta in Vietnam flowing out into the South China Sea, it made my river at home look like a trickle.
The boat we hired, skippered by a man from the village, was a tiny, wooden, hand-built one with an engine hanging over the back built from a modified aeroplane propeller.
“They’re left over from the Vietnam war,” explained Antony.
Once in the boat and away from the shore, the silence on the river was very strong, making its presence felt on my shoulders as if loading me with the weight of the entire landscape as far as we could see. I felt like a privileged soul being given a glimpse of an untouched world that had kindly allowed me to visit for a short while.
We travelled low in the water, gliding magically across the wide, strong-flowing current. We were so close to the river that I could trail my hand over the edge as we moved past sunken islands, a straggle of small trees peeping out of the water. Antony sat in front of me, his back towards me, his robes bright orange in the sunlight and his head and the tips of his ears catching the sun.
In silence for most of the trip, we just drank in the view.
It moved me. It was a journey through a timeless place. The river at home puts sense into my everyday life, keeping me calm, keeping things in place but the Mekong helped me to make sense of me, of my place in time and the tiny role I play in the great big scheme of this universe.
Speaking of rivers, I must pin Antony down about going to the River Kwai to spread Uncle Erno’s ashes. I’m looking forward to planning it with him. It’ll be difficult but special and I bet that being a monk he’ll have some really cool ideas about how we go about it. I’m not looking forward to it but carrying out Uncle Erno’s wishes with Antony will make it OK. Not sure I’d manage it on my own and it’s beginning to hang over me a bit now. I want to get it over.
*****
Chungkai Camp
Charlie was sent back to Singapore with a working party under orders to take part in an operation to clear up the dead. I fear for him. He left me his wedding ring to look after and I hide it along with mine and beside Arthur's. I pray that the Nips do not find them for I could not put up a fight if they did. The knowledge of this drains me. How could I not fight for the one thing that means more to me than anything? How could I not fight for the one thing that Charlie and Arthur have left with me to protect? The fear of a beating, of death, and the sheer hopelessness of our situation has dragged my natural reactions from me. They have taken rings from the men and we know they keep them in the Commander's tent. One of the Nips was taunting an Australian about taking his wedding ring while he was being forced to stand outside for three days for stealing a bowl of rice. He bragged that they were saving it with the others to be melted down after the war. They know only too well how to break a man. The Australian was already ill and he died two days later.
I don't know when I will see Charlie again. Arthur remains with me, although he is desperately weak. He has an ulcer from a leg wound and a fever. The Doc is marvellous but we know he can do very little despite efforts to clean dressings and irrigate the wound. Maggots infest the flesh and clearing these and the pus from the lesion is a procedure which Arthur has to endure night and day. He is in luck since the hospital now has some anaesthetic, although I don't imagine the supply will last for very long. They will surely have to amputate and in these insect-ridden conditions I fear for him. He is so emaciated and weakens with every day.
We are still being sent up-country to work on the railway. Sick men have to go before inspections every morning and if they can stand, they are not exempt from work. Often, they depart, never to return, falling by the wayside, dying before our very eyes. Very few are buried and the bodies pile up in the jungle. Two officers escaped a few weeks ago and all of us prayed for them. But they were recaptured and the Nips made us all stand outside and watch as they were hauled back into the camp. The sense of hopelessness which we could see behind the officers' eyes as they were being dragged back into captivity affected us all and the camp sank further into a deep, bleak numbness. The officers were beaten within ear-shot of the rest of us and we tried to cover our ears since we all knew where the screams were heading. The silence that followed their screams lay heavy with us for days.
Morale is so low but we still try to maintain discipline. There are many times when orders have been disobeyed, and I can't blame the lads, but without discipline, survival would be even harder. I am not proud to admit that often I have wished that survival would elude me. It would be so much easier just not to be here anymore. I know not what awaits me on the other side but at least it would not be this. And who knows, maybe my Muriel will be there to look after me. How I wish to be with Muriel, lying with my head in her lap and gazing up at her gentle, loving eyes. How I wish her arms would cradle me and her lips caress me as I let her warmth envelope my being. How I wish.
Take me Muriel. Take me, away from here, away from the pain, the horror and the everydayness that is my existence. Take me. I think it is only this thought that keeps me alive, and the distant hope that we will indeed, one day be together again in this life. I would not want to live if to live meant to be deprived of this. If that were so, I'd take my chances on the other side.
Death no longer stays at a distance, waiting politely to take us only once we have seen life, loved it, watched our children grow and enjoyed three score years and ten of English summers. Instead it lies all around us, seeping into every pore and gnawing at our brains. I know Arthur will die, here in this hell. His ulcer spreads from his knee to his ankle and has devoured the flesh, which has all but disappeared save for a raw strip where his calf should be. You can see daylight between this and the bare bone. But it is not the ulcer that will kill him. It is the cure for the ulcer that will take him away. Only a few more days and they will have to amputate his leg and I have not seen any man, yet, who has lived here beyond a fortnight of such an operation. The Doc has to take the same saw used by the cookhouse to chop wood, sterilise it as best he can, perform the operation in the outdoors, and return the saw for chopping wood when he is done. If he doesn't amputate, Arthur will die an agonising death, poisoned by the festering menace which is eating him alive. If he does amputate, Arthur will surely die from infection and disease which, in the course of time, will also eat him alive.
Today I found myself thinking that maybe it would be better for Arthur if he died now, quickly, while there's still a chance to relieve his pain. I have no faith that our situation will improve. For weeks now, I have had to watch men die. Men I have been living with, working with, slept alongside and with whom I have shared the unimaginable.
*****
November
Poo Jom Petch Retreat
The Isaan
This country is so beautiful, so peaceful. I’ve finally got to spend some time with my brother too. At last. I'm having an incredible time and I've come to a place I thought I would only ever see in my dreams. We’ve come to a retreat monastery high up in the plains over looking Laos and the Mekong River.
I’ve mentioned to Antony about going to the River Kwai but he suggested visiting here first and spending a few days.
We left early morning two days ago with Tikaro. Dawn hadn’t broken as we set off from Chatanan and it was still dark. Our minibus, with our driver at the wheel and filled with food and supplies for our journey, rattled its way across the dirt tracks to the main road. No monks lived at the retreat permanently so there were no provisions and the local villagers were very excited about us visiting.
Life was waking up near Chatanan as we left and there was a bit of traffic on the road. A pick-up truck laden with workers about to start their long day passed us, a petrol wagon went by and you could hear the familiar sound of small motorbikes revving up in the distance. I opened the window to have a look at the kids on the bikes that had screamed up behind us and were about to overtake. Their screeching engines were at full throttle as their riders hurtled the machines past us in the cool, dark morning. Weary headlights barely lit their way as they passed. Antony noticed them too and turned from his seat in front of me to catch my eye, his soft, silent smile reaching me through the half-light and showing me that he remembered, too, that those were the days we thought would never end. Kids on bikes, living the life of Riley.
Once they’d gone, we were left with the dark again and all we could hear was the sound of the engine.
Silence hung between Antony and I for a while as we rested in each other’s gaze, the cool, dusty morning taking us back to years gone by, years when he wasn’t a monk, when we were still brother and sister and when he was tearing around in Levi’s on a Honda Superdream.
It was always summer, that image I had. Antony’s bike was shiny, metallic green and you could hear him coming up the street long before you saw him. Neighbours complained about the speed he rode and they complained about the revving noise coming from the back yard while he played about with the engine, tuning it, make it rev louder, getting oil all over his jeans, all over the floor. Once, he let me ride it, once and only once because I was too small to really get a hold of it and as I trundled down the back lane, scared to even try and change gear, I negotiated my first corner. I was going far too slowly to make the sharp turn and as I leaned into the bend, like Antony had forever told me to do, the Superdream fell over. Sin of sins, I’d marked the paint-work and it was the first and last time Antony let me anywhere near his precious bike. It was at that moment that I vowed to pass my bike test and get a bike of my own, just to show him and the world that girls can ride bikes too.
I was still holding Antony’s gaze as all those tender moments flooded back but Antony couldn’t hold the moment and his eyes fell to the floor. The last thing I expected though was for him to reach out, find my hand with his and squeeze it.
I knew he’d been remembering what I had. It wasn’t until we’d travelled another mile or so that he finally let my hand fall.
It was still dark outside, still silent and I still had my window open so I rested against the frame and let the breeze flow against my face and allowed the air of Thailand’s pre-dawn minutes to fill my lungs. The early morning air smelt very clean and fresh. It was warm enough to let my head fall onto the window frame and feel bathed by it.
I spent at least fifteen minutes letting the air rush over my face, occasionally pulling open my eyelids to watch the roadside flash past beneath us. I might as well have been there completely on my own.
Then, I thought I could hear something. I wasn’t sure if it was a memory or not at first, but, lifting my head up to hear better, my ears caught the sound again, so unmistakably that I thought I’d drifted into a dream. It was that amazing sound of shake, rattle and roll, chocolate and Mozart. Foreign and familiar all at the same time.
Not here, surely, I thought, but as I woke from my half-dream, I could hear it more clearly, getting louder, getting braver, getting here.
Antony heard it too and without him even turning round I could see he’d raised an invisible eyebrow and that his jaw was dropping ever so slightly with surprise. It was as if his ears had pricked up like an anticipating, excited puppy.
Tikaro, who’d been perched in the front seat next to the driver and had been characteristically silent up until now, suddenly turned round. The side of his face was lit by the orange and red lights from the minibus dashboard and his expression was almost fearful.
“You guys hear that?” He drawled, his forehead furrowed.
We nodded together. Tikaro, we’re ahead of you.
The sound of the Harley Davidson grew closer and a single, round yellow light appeared behind us, shining out of the dark into the minibus and onto our excited faces. The soft orange glow of Antony’s and Tikaro’s’ robes grew brighter, reflecting off the bus’ windscreen as the light behind us grew larger and the sound grew stronger until eventually the machine it belonged to began to overtake us and the transport of the gods came into view.
Christopher, the Malaysian helper from Chatanan, was riding it, his hair streaming away from his face as he sat in his shorts, poised on the leather seat, arms outstretched to reach the wide handlebars and his thin bare legs straddling the teardrop tank. The Harley engine was singing a loud proud song of diesel and oil and motoring along with ease through the dark morning reminding us that this was what it was born to do. To shake, to rattle and to roll. And I’m telling you, if chocolate could make music, this would be what it sounded like and Mozart would’ve written the tune.
Christopher stayed alongside us for some time, escorting us, while Tikaro, Antony and I stared out of the windows like three awestruck children. He looked so serene as he rode the enormous bike through the early morning darkness, his expression calmer than I’d ever seen him, calmer even than in the Sala when he was meditating. Finally, without changing a single facial muscle, an aloof Christopher nodded slightly at us, leaned the bike over to his right and then arced away from us, disappearing into the blackness and making his way up a different road. All we could see as the minibus continued along the main road, was the shaking beam of the Harley’s headlight as it got smaller and smaller . Shaking, rattling and rolling into the dark beyond.
It made my day, my week and my month in fact, seeing Christopher out on the Harley. A Harley’s meant to be ridden not locked away in a garage and polished every Sunday. The image had been like water in the desert.
And he hadn’t been wearing a helmet. Imagine that? A Harley and no helmet.
Apart from the bike, travelling in the mini-bus with Buddhist monks wasn’t a bowl of cherries. When I first got in, I sat myself next to Antony up front next to the driver but immediately the driver started protesting and pointed towards the back seat, a poky little area with hardly any room for my long, Farang knees and no chance of a decent view.
"I'm afraid, you can't sit on the same seat as a monk," explained Antony, waiting nervously for my reaction.
"But you’re my brother!” I protested predictably, irritable in my early morning crabbiness.
“I know, Benedict, but I don’t want to offend him. You might touch me or my robe by accident.”
“And we couldn't have that, could we?" I said, sarcastically, folding my arms in a huff.
"Benedict, please. It's him I'm thinking of," Antony replied, gently glancing at the driver. "We can swap places though, if you want. You can sit next to the driver and I’ll sit in the back so you can get a better view.”
“Antony, it’s four thirty in the morning. It’s pitch black. I won’t be able to see anything.” But I resigned stroppily to climbing into the back seat. The driver had seemed insistent.
Poo Jom Petch was about four hours drive away, which meant stopping at dawn in a nearby town so that the boys could go on almsround. There were other monks in the busy market as we pulled up and they nodded towards Antony and Tikaro as they got out of the minibus, adjusted their robes and began Pindabah. They were given heaps of food. Chicken, curries, rice, banana cakes, Soya drinks, oranges, biscuits and when they arrived back, I left them for an hour or so while they had their meal.
Later, we also stopped for a drink in a roadside restaurant. The driver left us alone. He said less throughout the whole journey than Tikaro. I ordered a rare bottle of cold Heineken, and I bought some drinks for the boys. Tikaro wanted Coca-Cola, Antony orange Fanta and they each asked for a straw. I've never seen anything quite so incongruous as two bald headed monks in sacred orange robes, sitting in a bar in the middle of remote Thailand, sucking pop ‘til it slurped.
Back in the mini-bus, heading for Poo Jom Petch, Antony and Tikaro offered me the uneaten leftovers from the morning's Pindabah, explaining that none of it was allowed to be stored for the next day.
"In case you become squirrels and start hoarding food in your rooms?" I asked.
"That's a heap closer to the truth than you think," said Tikaro seriously, peering over the top of his glasses. "It helps to be reminded everyday that our subsistence is dependent on the loving kindness of the laypeople around us."
Lighten up, Forrest, I thought, disrespectfully. I was joking.
"But they're not doing it just out of kindness, are they," I protested. "They just want brownie points to help them get to the next stage of wherever it is this Buddhism stuff takes them."
"In a way, I guess, but it ain’t quite as simple as you make it sound. An' anyways, at the end of the day, we would starve without their generosity. An' I don't ever wanna take that for granted."
Point taken, Forrest.
It's easy to criticise another culture and I didn't really understand the ins and outs of this faith, but I could already see that there was a difference between the fundamentals and what was left when that got messed up and turned into an institution. Maybe I was too ready to mock this stuff when what was actually staring me in the face was a country of very kind, very generous, smiling people.
A few of the villagers greeted us when we arrived at Poo Jom Petch in the late afternoon. Tikaro disappeared somewhere quickly while I was offered a drink of rice milk. Antony then showed me to my room. My expectations when he had referred to it as a “room” were my downfall. We were in one of the most remote parts of the country, high on a hill where a lonely goat herder was a far more realistic proposition than a double en-suite.
My room was about a hundred a fifty meters down an unmarked, unlit, path over rocks, through a small stream and up through the undergrowth. It was a small wooden hut on stilts with a single mosquito net and a few candles. During the few minutes it took us to gather my bags and walk there, Thailand’s night fell like a stone. Bam! And it was pitch black. There were no other huts anywhere near and the bathroom was somewhere down a different path which Antony indicated at with the beam of his Maglite. I had no intention of visiting that night.
“Is this it?” I asked, foolishly, squinting up at the frail, wooden hut and just making out a set of slatted steps and a long, railed walk way running along the side.
“Yes,” replied Antony.
Even though I couldn’t really see his face through the darkness, I knew his worried eyes would have been flitting nervously from me to the hut to the floor to the trees and back to me.
“Where will you be sleeping?” I asked him.
Not that I was worried or anything. It was just that we were in the middle of god knows where and I was supposed to spend the night on my own with only the insects for company in this ramshackle wooden hut miles away from anywhere, where the local villagers knew the rich westerners had arrived, where anyone could wander along for a visit and I wouldn’t have a clue where anyone else was until dawn.
“I’m not far away, Benedict, and you‘ll be fine here,” he said, unconvincingly.
“Where will you be sleeping, Antony?” I repeated, insistently, raising my voice.
I could hear his eyes rolling in the dark and the mole twitching on his cheekbone. He sighed in anticipation of my response to what he was about to tell me.
“My kuti’s the other side of the Sala,” he said.
“That’s miles!!” I shouted.
“Shh!!” And he added, quickly, “Don’t worry. Nobody comes here, they leave the place well alone.”
“This is ridiculous,” I told him, impatiently. “How do you know that, Antony?”
I tried not to shout, not to show him that I was scared.
“Antony, anyone could wander up here. They know we’re here. They know I’m here, a big fat white western woman sleeping all on my own ‘cos she’s not allowed to go any where near you lot!”
“But they respect us,” he insisted. “It’s more than their life’s worth to come here.”
“You’re too trusting,” I told him, cynically. I didn’t want Antony’s faith in the good nature of the Thai villagers tested out on me.
“And you’re not trusting enough,” he said, a cold edge to his voice. “They won’t come here,” he repeated. “They’re far more scared than you. You’ll be OK, I promise. They never come here.”
And his deliberate tone finally began to reassure me.
“You’re sure?’
“Positive.”
And, eventually, I could hear a smile in his voice.
My big brother’s knowledge of, and blind faith in this country was impressive. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad sleeping out here after all. Perhaps I would be safe after all. Perhaps I’d enjoy being out in the open and at least I’d have something to write home about. It’s not often you get to sleep in a wooden hut with no light, no lock and no loo. I was coming round to the idea. Slowly.
That was until Antony said,
“Anyway, it’s haunted.”
“That’s it!” I shouted, picking my bag up off the floor. “You just blew it. I’m not sleeping here!”
And I started to stomp off back towards the Sala but had to stop when I realised it was pitch black and that I couldn’t see where I was going without Antony’s torch.
“Benedict, they just think it’s haunted. That’s what stops them coming. Thai’s hate the thought of ghosts.”
“So do I! ” I shouted.
“Look, it’s just rumours and even if there were ghosts, you’ve got a feel of the place, haven’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean follow your intuition, Benedict. Trust it. Does this feel like a place that’s going to harm you?” He asked me.
Antony was calm, standing with his hands resting in front of him, the beam of the torch now shining up at our faces. He had absolute faith in what he was saying.
“Well, does it?” he asked me again.
I was speechless, open mouthed. He was right. Poo Jom Petch felt sublime. It didn’t feel scary at all. It felt like a place that would look after me.
“If there are any ghosts, they’re nice ghosts,” he said, comfortingly, clearly concerned for me now and no longer irritated by me. “It’s only the dark that’s frightening you, Benedict and you can cure that.”
“How can you cure darkness?” I retorted, stubborn to the end. “Even Buddhist monks can’t make that disappear.”
Antony just smiled at me, knowing I was being proud.
“You just light a candle,” he said and he did just that, taking a candle from inside his magic robe, lighting it and placing it in the centre of a large canvas lamp which hung on a metal wire from underneath the balcony of the hut. It cast a pale yellow glow in a circle all around us, a pool of light to massage my fears.
“I’ll hear if anything happens, which it won’t,” he said. “And if it makes you feel any better, I’ve brought you a whistle. But Benedict, you won’t need it. I promise.”
And like a soft-focus, browny-orange Santa Claus, he produced more gifts from the folds of his robe. A small black whistle and a spare torch.
Antony helped me to carry my stuff up the wooden steps to the first floor room where I found my bed already made, the mosquito net suspended over it hanging at four corners from the walls and fresh flowers sitting in small glass jar. Tikaro, you’re ahead of us, I thought. So that’s where he’d disappeared.
“I love having you here, Benedict,” Antony said as he was about to leave. “This is a very special time for me.”
A tiny bit of me nearly stepped forward to hug him but I wasn’t sure whether I should and I couldn’t face the thought of getting it wrong again. I watched from my balcony as Antony descended the steps, a thin, surprisingly frail-looking robed figure slipping out of the pool of light that came from my lantern and disappearing silently in the darkness down the path. I kept watching as the beam from his Maglite slowly swung in time to the rhythm of his steps, silently dancing in the dark until finally, it was gone.
I was alone in the jungle. In the night. In silence.
I’d received two letters this week so I reread them, huddled on the floor under my mosquito net. I needed the distraction. One letter was from Michaela and it filled me in on all that has been going on since I left. Stella had got a new boyfriend, which seemed to have caused considerable excitement. The weather in England had finally started to turn cold after a mild October. There was to be a new landlord at the pub. Michaela had seen Captain Archie who had said everything was all right at the house and Molly The Cat was fine. Captain Archie had informed her in graphic detail of exactly what time he went round in the morning and evening to carry out his daily assignments and what he had accomplished. She said she’d also bumped into Joe in the pub and he’d grunted that he was missing me, thought of me often and that everyone at the Boatyard hoped I was having a good time.
What he’d actually said was, “How’s t’daft bugger doing, then?” But Michaela had translated for me.
After reading my letters, I felt very homesick and sad so I dug my iPod out, found “Where is the Love” by the Black Eyed Peas followed by the dance version of Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine” and blasted away my sadness. Exhausted, I fell asleep.
In the morning, as I was walking from my kuti to the small Sala where the meal would be served, I again caught a glimpse of my brother’s life without him being aware, like the time I’d seen him in Ubon, disappearing into a building with the Abbot. This time he was stood at the far side of the Sala building, underneath the wooden pillars which held the structure in place and he was with Tikaro. They were arguing, exchanging hushed, shouted words. It was a bit like watching a foreign film with the sound turned down, only someone had forgotten to show the sub-titles. They weren’t very animated in the argument. There were no waving arms like Amaro, no clenched fists or exchange of blows. They were both far more restrained than that, keeping their arms firmly under wraps inside their robes and only occasionally flinching them, making the cloth twitch.
It was the colour of Tikaro’s face that gave things away. He was bright red from the top of his bald head to the top of his chest, his redness vanishing in a sweeping line around his neck, a feint vein pulsing at the side of his temple. Occasionally, as he turned his head, the sun glanced off his spectacles and for a split second he became a mad vision of flashing orange, red and yellow. The poor guy was clearly upset about something, something major.
Antony on the other hand, hadn’t coloured up. Instead, he was pacing, precisely and impatiently, creating a track in the dust where he paced to and fro in a neat, twelve-foot line, listening to Tikaro, flicking his head up every few steps to look at him then looking back down at the floor as if he didn’t really want to hear what he said. I couldn’t hear what they were discussing and only caught my brother’s words once.
“But you know why I haven’t said anything,” he insisted with a tone of irritation. And the argument continued. It shocked me seeing them like that. Monks don’t argue, I thought. They’re not supposed to, and I felt a pang of guilt for having caught them at something I thought they weren’t supposed to be doing. And it upset me.
I crept quietly around the back of the Sala towards the kitchen so that Tikaro and Antony didn’t see me but I wasn’t sure whether it was for my sake or theirs that I didn’t want them to know I’d seen them.
Something to ask Antony about later, I told myself.
When I arrived at the kitchen there were three women from the village in there already, cooking the morning meal. I helped them as best I could until it was time for the morning meal.
Tikaro and Antony were offered their meal and I joined them a couple of hours later, after I’d eaten wit the villagers and helped to wash and clear up the kitchen.
“How goes it Tikaro?” I asked.
Tikaro just looked at me, thoughtfully, his gaze lost in the space between us. He didn’t reply but after a few, silent moments he focused on me again, caught my eye and just nodded. He then tugged at his robe, pulling the bit that hangs down behind the arm up over his shoulder, and left us to go and sort out his bowl. Antony and I watched him and we caught each other’s eye. My brother’s eyes told me, “Best leave him be for a while.”
*****
“Antony,” I asked later when we were out walking. “Why did you become a monk?”
They were taking me to see Tikaro’s kuti on the edge of the cliff nearby. It was hotter here than down in Chatanan and there was no shelter from the heat. The monsoon rain had long since vanished into the rocks and the heat bounced off the surface of dry river beds, scorching the soles of our sandals.
Tikaro was up ahead and I was alone with Antony.
He didn’t reply straight away and we kept on walking, his face serious and his soft smile barely perceptible. He’d never told me why he’d become a monk. I got letters from him telling me what he was up to, where he was, what it was like. But he’d never explained why. Never explained exactly what made him kiss goodbye to his old life, want to wear a funny dress and live in the middle of a wood on the other side of the world.
Finally, after a few glances in my direction as if he was checking whether or not my question was sincere, he said,
“It just made sense.”
And jumped straight back in.
“What did?”
Again there were more pauses from Antony and more deliberations. We scrunched through the dry riverbed, twigs and lifeless leaves cracking under our feet and filling the spaces of our conversation with brittle, unhelpful punctuation. Short on gestures, I think Antony was searching to find the right words. There were no other sounds and but for the crunching of dead leaves, I’m sure you would have heard our pulses beating.
“I’ve never spoken about this before,” he said, warily. “It’s like I know in my heart why I became a monk but I’ve never had to explain it to anyone. Everyone here knows without needing to explain.”
“Like riding a motorbike,” I said.
He looked at me, clearly not understanding what I meant.
“If someone has to ask you why you ride a motorbike,” I reminded him, “Then they’ll never understand the answer.”
He smiled.
“A bit like that I suppose,” he said.
“So try me Antony. I just want to understand what made you become a Buddhist monk.”
I was getting impatient because he didn’t seem to want to help me understand. Antony just gave me the same, changeless expression, and I felt like he was sussing me out, assessing whether I was worthy of an explanation, whether I was intelligent enough to understand. My patience snapped far too soon.
“For god’s sake! Why did it just make sense?”
“And why are you always angry with me?” he asked, pained, raising his voice, a rare show of emotion making his features tremble and his face colour up in a way I’d never seen. It shocked me. I hadn’t ever realised that my anger was so near the surface. I always thought it was buried deep inside, away from reality. I never for the life of me thought that it might upset him. I felt humbled and eventually managed to explain.
“Antony, I just want to understand. You never came back. You said you would, but you didn’t. You never came back and I simply want to know what it was that kept you here. Is that so strange? I’ve come half way round the world. The least you can do is try and explain it?”
Finally, realising I was getting upset, my brother decided to spill the beans and decided that maybe his kid sister just might have the sensitivity to understand after all.
“I suppose before I came to Thailand nothing really made sense,” he began, tentatively.
“So you ran away?”
“No,” he said, taking a deep breath. “It wasn’t running away.”
He was struggling to find a way of explaining, his head bowed, so I bit my tongue and gave him time to say what he wanted to say.
“Yes, I needed to get away. After Dad died, I couldn’t make sense of anything and away was as good a place to be as anywhere. I didn’t want a life that just gave me a good job, a wife, kids, a mortgage. I wanted a life that could also explain to me why Dad died. Why Mum died. Why one day I’ll die too.”
He spoke slowly, careful about the way he explained things, emotion creeping in. He clearly meant every word as he picked his head up and looked over at me.
“Is this making sense?” he asked and I could see that he really was concerned that I understood him.
I nodded. There was no need for words from me. I’d only say something crass that I didn’t really mean. I won’t pretend it was easy listening to him. It was actually very hard because I knew that while he was living out all that he was describing, I’d been at home on my own, agonising about when he, the only member of my family left alive, was coming back. Listening to him talk about that time, with no reference to how I might have felt, was painful. I still wanted to scream at him. Wanted to hit him. Wanted to stop the pain from disappearing into my stomach and giving me cramps.
But I was good. I clenched my jaw and kept listening.
“I was heading for Ko Tao, a tiny island off the coast. On the way, I stumbled across a temple in Ko Pha Ngan, and something just made sense,” he continued, now more confident and with relief in his voice. I’d visited loads of temples in Thailand. In Bangkok, in Krabi, in Chang Mai. You’ve seen what it’s like here. They’re everywhere. Everywhere you go in this country there are amazing temples that are full of people, people my age who were going to church.”
This was the first time I’d seen Antony so animated since I arrived. This time his arms had appeared from under his robe and he was using his hands to emphasize what he felt.
“There was something in those temples that worked for them and I wanted to learn what it was. So I began reading. I never expected to find the temple on Ko Pha Ngan. I’d hooked up with some other travellers and we island hopped from Ko Samui. One morning I took a moped up the mountain and found the temple. It was pissing with rain all the way up but as soon as I got there, the clouds lifted and the sun shone on me and on the face of a golden Buddha. It was the first thing I saw when I got to the top of the mountain and it looked at me, right at me.”
Antony was fighting back the tears now as he spoke, breathing hard, almost spitting out the last few words.
“I just fell to me knees and cried,” he said. “I knew I’d come home.”
Then after a few calming, deep breaths he continued.
“There was a monk watching me, Ajahn Bramadho. He invited me to stay.”
I felt Antony glance at me, checking my reaction as he described the moment he decided not to come home. Finally, in an effort to lighten the mood, he said,
“I never did make it to Ko Tao. After spending a few months with Bramadho I knew that I’d ordain. Something inside me shifted and I found a way of looking at life that finally made sense to me. It didn’t take away all the pain, but it gave meaning where before there’d been none. Absolutely none.”
I was silent, unable to find an appropriate response. I’d never imagined something so emotional had happened to Antony. I thought he’d just bummed around Thailand for a while, eventually found a cushy number in a cosy monastery and had got so used to it that he’d stayed. But Antony had described a brother I hadn’t yet met, one who’d taken charge and one to whom I was slowly being introduced, here, in Thailand.
“So you see, Benedict, it’s not really like riding a motorbike.”
“Do you miss home ever?” I asked him.
“Sometimes.”
Like me? I wondered. Do you miss me?
“I miss my bike like crazy,” he said, playfully.
Bastard. And I kicked a stone that was in my path and watched as it careered across the rocks and bounced off the boulders up ahead.
“But not as much as I miss you,” he said gently and knowingly.
And on hearing that, my tears arrived too.
Tikaro was waiting for us as we approached the scraggy little bamboo kuti that sat at the top of the plain. The sun was behind him as we approached and, silhouetted in his robe with his arms tucked inside, he looked like an Oscar statue sitting on a giant mantelpiece.
It wasn’t until we reached the kuti that I could appreciate exactly where we were. About twelve feet in front of us was the cliff, a hundred feet high and looking out onto the widest, most breathtaking view I’d yet seen - the magnificent Mekong river, winding its mighty way round the eastern edge of Thailand, cutting through the plain far below us and nestling up to Laos which lay on its other side. From up here it looked like a deceptively mild river but from the way it had sliced through the rocks that edged its banks and the way in which there was no traffic on this river, you could tell that it was in charge. The Mekong ruled the countryside for hundreds of miles and it cared for nothing except its own endless flow and its own continual renewal.
I must have stared at the view for nearly half an hour while Antony helped Tikaro mend a hole in the roof of his kuti.
*****
I’m typing this up as I’m sitting on the balcony of my kuti. It’s dark and I’ve only got the light of the battery-powered laptop screen, the candle lamp and my torch to write by. I know what Antony said about friendly ghosts but it’s still a bit spooky here. It’s the fact that I feel so exposed, like everyone can see me but I can’t see them. I do like it though. It is so peaceful and it’s as if this place feeds you by just being here. The moon’s out and the stars seem so close. Whenever I look at the stars I always think of home. I know that at some time soon, in a few hours’ time, there’ll be a similar view above York. Captain Archie will be walking his spaniel and there’ll be Joe on his boat and they’ll be looking up and seeing what I’m seeing. It’s really comforting and makes me feel like the world is not so big after all.
I’ve just come in off the balcony and locked the door because I heard footsteps. Outside. And Again. Behind my kuti. Someone’s trampling through the undergrowth. I can’t see a bloody thing! He’s got a dog. I can hear it panting.
I’ve got Uncle Erno’s pen-knife now and if I die, this will be my final record of what happened so listen up. I can hear them only a few yards away. Antony! You swore no one would come up here!
Shit! That was a gun shot. He’s shot the dog!! He’s shot the poor bloody dog!! Oh God, Antony, where the hell are you?
Now he’s digging, I can hear him digging. He’s burying the dog, the cold-hearted bastard. Antony, you promised. You always make promises and you never keep them.
Oh shit, what’s that now?
*****
November
Wat Pah Chatanan,
“That” was Antony, carrying two cloth lanterns which were dangling in the distance like the eyes of a giant rabbit in the headlights.
“I thought you might be a bit worried,” was the first thing he said, his face eerily illuminated from underneath by the light.
Antony climbed the stairs and stood on the balcony. The digging had stopped and the man with the gun hadn’t appeared.
“He’s shot the dog, Antony,” I whispered. “He’s shot the damn dog.”
“He didn’t shoot the dog,” Antony replied, calmly.
“He shot the dog!!” I repeated, pointing to the spot where the noise had come from, my heart beating loudly. “He shot the dog and then he dug a grave and he buried it! I heard it. I’m telling you he shot the goddamn dog!”
I was now raising my voice.
“Benedict, calm down,” he said, gently. “He hasn’t shot the dog. He was hunting. That’s all. I should have mentioned it. They find an animal hole and send the dog in. He’ll have been digging out the hole where the dog went and he’ll have shot whatever animal came out. He hasn’t shot the dog.”
It took a while before I believed Antony and for the picture to fit as I played it out in my mind.
“You sure?” I asked, grumpily.
“I’m sure. He was hunting and he’s gone now.”
“Thought you said they never came up here. Thought you said they were afraid of the ghosts.”
“Well he probably won’t ever come back now. He probably thought you were a ghost.”
“I was scared!”
“I know and I’m sorry. I should have warned you. Do you want to sleep in the Sala? I’ll help you move your stuff.”
“No, I’m all right.”
And I was. Finally. Poo Jom Petch was special. It will always be special in my memory because I had time to spend with Antony. For the first time in four years, I got to know him. For the first time in four years I could share his life with him. I could joke with him, go for walks with him, eat with him and listen to the tales he had to tell me over candle-lit times in the Sala. And I could tell him about the life I’d built up for myself in York. I told him about my life on the river and how the gentle rhythm of the water had put a rhythm back into my life after all the hard times of the last few years. I told him how much I loved the river and how, when I was away from it for too long, life was not so easy to navigate. Without the river, too many eddies found me, too many rocks got in my way. Without the constant flow of the river to renew me, life made less sense.
After listening, Antony said he’d take me on a river trip up the Mekong and I cried, feeling that finally my brother had come home to me.
We climbed the plain early one morning after the meal and descended the cliff down a thirty minute, near-vertical walk to the edge of the Mekong. I’d never been near such a vast, powerful, piece of water. As it made its way from Tibet and China, through the distant hills near Burma, through Cambodia and finally the Mekong Delta in Vietnam flowing out into the South China Sea, it made my river at home look like a trickle.
The boat we hired, skippered by a man from the village, was a tiny, wooden, hand-built one with an engine hanging over the back built from a modified aeroplane propeller.
“They’re left over from the Vietnam war,” explained Antony.
Once in the boat and away from the shore, the silence on the river was very strong, making its presence felt on my shoulders as if loading me with the weight of the entire landscape as far as we could see. I felt like a privileged soul being given a glimpse of an untouched world that had kindly allowed me to visit for a short while.
We travelled low in the water, gliding magically across the wide, strong-flowing current. We were so close to the river that I could trail my hand over the edge as we moved past sunken islands, a straggle of small trees peeping out of the water. Antony sat in front of me, his back towards me, his robes bright orange in the sunlight and his head and the tips of his ears catching the sun.
In silence for most of the trip, we just drank in the view.
It moved me. It was a journey through a timeless place. The river at home puts sense into my everyday life, keeping me calm, keeping things in place but the Mekong helped me to make sense of me, of my place in time and the tiny role I play in the great big scheme of this universe.
Speaking of rivers, I must pin Antony down about going to the River Kwai to spread Uncle Erno’s ashes. I’m looking forward to planning it with him. It’ll be difficult but special and I bet that being a monk he’ll have some really cool ideas about how we go about it. I’m not looking forward to it but carrying out Uncle Erno’s wishes with Antony will make it OK. Not sure I’d manage it on my own and it’s beginning to hang over me a bit now. I want to get it over.
*****
posted by tricia walker at 1:06 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home