December 2: Hellfire and Easy Riders

December
The River Kwai
Thailand

I was joined at breakfast by a few other guests. There was Dave, a tall, calm, dark haired and very good looking South African with incredibly smooth skin and a male model’s jaw line, and his girlfriend, Anna, who was Spanish, also very good looking with long dark hair and she too had incredibly smooth skin and a female model’s jaw line. Also in the restaurant were two bespectacled, blond Dutch girls but they kept themselves to themselves, studying their guide books and whispering to each other.

Mr Joo, the angel who’d rescued me on my first night at the River Kwai, arrived mid-meal and offered us all a day trip in his pick-up truck. “You lucky,” he told us all. “Monsoon finish early this year. Mr Joo drive you.”

I wasn’t sold on the idea at all until he told us more about where we would be visiting. He said he’d take us to see a few of the nearby sights, one of which was the Death Railway and as soon as I heard him say that, I picked myself up from the slump I’d fallen into over the table and listened to what he had to say. He mentioned Hell Fire Pass too, a section of the railway built by POWs which cut through solid rock in the hillside and he also mentioned the “Famous Railway Curve,” a part of the railway I’d seen in a photo at Uncle Erno’s house.

He was talking about all the places where Uncle Erno would have been when he was a prisoner here.

All the time I’d been in Thailand, I’d felt the presence of Uncle Erno close to me, locked in that small casket, like a benevolent being watching my every move. It had been because of him that I’d come here, met Antony again, yet I knew so little about him. The Erno I knew was old, frail, even silly. He was always forgetting why he’d phoned you and by the time you’d worked out it was him on the other end of the line, he’d got all flustered and had usually put the phone down.

Once when he rang my number, I picked the phone up and all I heard was him saying,

“Is that you, Muriel?” over and over again.

I didn’t have the heart to explain that it was only me so I didn’t say anything and waited until he realised there was no one there, so put the receiver down. That was the Uncle Erno I’d come to know in the last ten years of his life.

I’d heard stories of a different Erno. Dad had told us about Erno when he was younger. How he’d heard of a young, handsome man, strong and virile with a sharp sense of humour and an eye for the ladies. He was intelligent too, passed his exams and was about to start a job as a teacher in the local boys’ school before he went to war.

“God knows what happened to him,” Dad had explained one evening over supper. “He came back a wreck. A complete wreck.” Antony and I listened in silence.

I learnt over the years that it had been Aunty Muriel who had nursed Erno back to health when he turned up. He’d been presumed dead by the whole family because they’d heard nothing from him for years, even after the war had finished. Everyone had been surprised when he arrived out of the blue, like a ghost. Muriel was able to nurse his physical self, but the rest of Erno had long since been left in the faraway jungle of Thailand, sacrificed under the weight of an unforgiving, foreign war-machine.

There must have been so many like him, I thought, as I listened to Mr Joo sell us his special price, all-day, sightseeing trip and realised that I was on the edge of the silent world Uncle Erno had never spoken about.

While the others squeezed themselves into the cab of Mr Joo’s pick up truck, I sat on a rug and cushions outside in the back. It was chilly as we set off but I really couldn't understand why the others would choose to sit inside when they could have had the wind whistling past their ears, the smell of the countryside streaming through their nostrils and an unimpaired view of the spectacular mountains and forests through which we drove.

Other cars and trucks zoomed scarily up to our bumper, inches from our truck, before swerving out to overtake with barely enough room. One car was so close as it passed alongside me that I could've reached out and nicked the cigarette that the driver was smoking. A tinny motorbike hurtled up behind us until all I could see was the shaking head of the rider, the flesh on his face pulled back by the force of the air and his hair streaming. He was also so close that I could've nicked his cigarette too and I laughed at the sight of a man on a moped, smoking.

Christopher on the Harley didn’t feel far away.

About two hours up the road, Mr Joo pulled in at some natural hot springs which bubbled out beneath the rocks, piping hot steam rising into the tropical air.

“Now you take bath,” he told us, a warm, kind smile on his face. He knew that none of us had seen a hot bath in weeks, maybe even months. And boy, were they hot. It took a while to get used to the heat but the luxury of relaxing in an outdoor steam pool, sprinkled with the sunshine as it found its way through the layers of green leaves above, made it worth the wait. It was like a nostalgic homecoming.

As I sank into its depths, the heat opened my pores and I began to feel a heap of pain ooze away out of my system as my aching limps were rested and I felt the familiar lap of warm water in the nape of my neck, licking at my ears. Bath time for Benedict.

Dave and Anna were at the far end of the pool, playfully splashing each other and the two Dutch girls clung together at the side, sitting on the edge and dangling their toes, too nervous to actually get in.

A Thai woman who was bathing with us lent me some soap and a bowl so that we could wash. She indicated to us to sit on the edge rather than in the water so that the suds didn’t go in the pool. It reminded me of how Mae Li had washed my clothes, first soaping them, scrubbing them and then rinsing them off with clean water. Only this time, it was me not my clothes that was being washed. I was being cleansed.

A stream flowed a short distance below our feet and I could feel the cooler air from it as the fast-flowing water hit rock after rock and crashed downstream. It provided a vivid contrast to the hot pool we’d just come from and its rush and fast pace was like a reminder of the life that lay waiting for me once these few weeks were over. A life, maybe, without my brother. Like any river, it just kept flowing no matter how hard you tried to ignore it. I turned my back on the rush of the stream and returned to the temporary sanctity of the hot pool. I sank into the soft, liquid heaven and would've stayed there all morning if Mr Joo hadn't insisted that we left. None of us wanted to get out and we groaned as we each lifted our wrinkled bodies out of the water and went limply to fetch our clothes.

We reached Hellfire Pass about an hour later. It was approached on foot through the trees and down a pathway which led to a steep set of steps plunging down into the jungle. Once at the bottom of the steps, the ground levelled out into an area less than ten feet wide. The rocks we'd just climbed down were on our right and there was a steep tree-lined valley disappearing into nowhere on our left. You couldn't see where the valley ended, it just descended into a lost mass of trees and undergrowth. Mr Joo explained that we were to walk about a kilometer along here and to be careful not to trip over the wooden sleepers which were sunk at irregular intervals into the earth beneath our feet.

The pathway ahead cut an unnatural line through the forest which was beginning to be encroached by eager young trees, leaning over until some of them touched each other forming a green roof of leaves and branches high above our heads. It was peaceful and pretty but as we set off to make our way down the pathway, I felt a dreadful icy grip take hold around my heart.

I was about to walk in death’s dark vale where a young, strong Erno had once walked before me.

Hellfire Pass is a narrow railway cutting carved by prisoners of war through solid rock which rises vertically twenty to twenty-five feet on each side. In some parts, the cutting is only about six feet wide. All that the prisoners were given to carry out the inhuman task of slicing through the rock were pickaxes and hand-drills, and occasionally a small amount of explosive. More than two thirds of the men working on the Pass died creating it. It was self-evident why. We were miles from anywhere, in the depths of a hot, unforgiving jungle where disease thrived and if the sun didn't get you then the torrential rain would and the only way out was down into the unfathomable abyss of the deep valley below.

And this was where my dear old, quirky-voiced Uncle Erno had been a prisoner. He never spoke about it, so we never did.

What hell had he been through here?

I caught up with the others who had stopped at the entrance to the pass but none of us spoke. Mr Joo halted his commentary and fell respectfully silent as we entered between the steep rocks and even the hushed whisper of the rustling trees ceased. Once between the great walls of solid cliff on either side, you could see how the rock had been chipped away, painstakingly slowly by hand, not blasted away in huge chunks or removed by machine. You could see how human hand had scraped tortuously at the brutal rock face which every so often bore the mark of a pickax that had been smashed down through ages of hard rock. There was the head of one drill still embedded in the rock, snapped off and stuck there for eternity and all along the length of this human torture tunnel you could feel and see the evidence of brutal labour and eventual death.

It was shocking. And it was a tourist attraction.

It took a while for the impact of where I was to sink in. It seemed so far removed from the tranquil shores of the River Kwai and the stunning sunsets that greeted us every evening. It was hard to put the two places side by side. Heaven and hell are such unexpected bed fellows but, in this subtropical haven, dark images began to colour my heart. Here was horror staring me in the face.

Halfway down, at the very centre of the pass, there was a tall thin tree. It had been planted by relatives and colleagues of those who had perished here and it stood defiant, perfectly vertical, a branchless tree reaching way, way up beyond the sharp edge of the rocks, beyond the other trees that hung from the top of the cliff and out into the blue sky above the canopy of the forest. It had grown like a beacon of hope, a symbol of triumph nourished by the bodies of the men who had fallen here.

I stood at the base of the tree, craning my neck to see its leaves which were high in the sun above and I let the others leave me. I needed to be alone. If I’d
believed in God, I’d have prayed. If I’d been a Buddhist, I might have meditated but I was none of these and so I was just still, alone with Uncle Erno, Mum, Dad and the thousands of men who had died here. I thought of Antony too and of how this place put our differences into sharp relief. I’d come back to Thailand to him, I thought. When I’d calmed down and forgiven him, I’d come back.

A plaque had been placed there explaining the history and told us how work had continued twenty-four hours a day at the pass which at night was lit by burning torches. To the prisoners the lit pass looked like the fires of hell and so the name was born. To most of the prisoners, it was the fires of hell, a hell in which they lost their lives.

I stayed in the pass a long while, alone with my thoughts and with the slow realisation of what Uncle Erno may have been through. I doubt I’ll ever know war, I thought. Yet this had been the reality of Uncle Erno’s life and none of us had known.

I eventually left to join the others but only after I’d wept, quietly to myself.

Everyone was moved by the visit to Hellfire Pass and our collective mood was very sombre as we made the return walk back along the railway and climbed the steep steps back up to the car park. Dave and Anna joined me in the back of the truck as Mr Joo set off again but none of us spoke.

We followed the direction of the railway as it made its way towards Kanchanaburi and picked up the track at its most western stop, Nam Tok.

“Now I take you to see Famous Railway Curve,” Mr Joo told us while we were eating. “Very impressive,” he said. “Very impressive.”

And sure enough, it was. A death defying section of track which followed the curve of the cliff high above the river on a fragile, wooden frame. Over a kilometer long, it wound a route about a meter away from the rock. It was a sheer drop down either side to the rocks below where the fast-flowing river carried tiny boats and rafts far, far away below us. They looked like children’s toys bobbing in the water. The rickety wooden "pack-of-cards" railway snaked its way round the rock, and grew smaller in the distance.

I stared, the sheer magnitude of this engineering feat finally hit home. How did they build this? How did human hand achieve this impossible construction and what cruel mind even dreamt of the idea? I could only wonder at the depth of misery that lay on the price tag of this bridge and at the reasons why Uncle Erno had kept a photo of it on his mantelpiece at home.


I ate with Dave and Anna and the two Dutch girls in the guest house that evening. We didn’t say much but it was good just to spend the time together.

Next day I visited one of the museums in town, of which there were many. I could’ve gone to any but this one appealed. It was a rough and ready affair run by Buddhist monks and was a reconstruction of the type of long grass-roofed hut that the prisoners would have lived in. There were thin beds made of reeds and meagre cooking utensils amongst the displays. There were also sketches drawn by some former prisoners, depictions of horrific conditions, paintings of torture techniques, men force-fed with buckets of water until their bellies swelled and were then stamped on by a guard, medical drawings of primitive amputations, legs eaten by ulcers and skeletal men with their bellies swollen from starvation.

It numbed me. I found it very hard to take in. I’d come such a long way since I’d set of from Manchester Airport. First the monastery, seeing Antony, then leaving him. Now coming here and finding heaven on earth by the river only to have it shattered by what I was seeing now. What had happened to my idyllic, sub-tropical free holiday?

I was still looking at the terrifying exhibits as I slowly made my way round the museum when I came across a photo that made me stop and stare. Old, weather-beaten, smiley men, standing stiffly for the group memento to commemorate their reunion here.

It was the same photo that Uncle Erno had left for me with the solicitor and there he was, Uncle Erno, smiling out at me.

"Miss, are you all right?" said a monk, behind me.

He was a wise-looking, concerned, old Thai monk. There was grey hair peeping through at his temples and the first, rough bristles of a white beard brushed his tired chin. He was due a shave.

"Please, drink some water," and he placed a bottle on the table in front of me, next to the photo.

"You are Benedict, yes?" said the monk, his kind, soft features close to my face.

My jaw dropped.

“I am Ajahn Sumeno,” he said. “We’ve been expecting you. First you drink and then I will explain everything to you. ”

With that, the Ajahn called over to a Thai man who was waiting close by and who scuttled off returning later with some sugary tea. The Thai man held my arm protectively as the monk led us out of the darkness of the museum and headed out into the sunlight and over to a building on the far side of the footpath. The large room we were in had a stone floor, bare walls and was far cooler than the museum. Down at the far end there was a large gold Buddha statue and I realised we were in the main Sala of a monastery.

The Ajahn took some floor cushions from a large wooden cupboard by the entrance and invited me to sit with him while the Thai man chaperoned us.

"Your Uncle visited the museum many times when he was here and became a benefactor. He provided some of the exhibits and much of the information we have. Six months ago he wrote to us to explain that he hoped, one day, you would come too. We didn't know when that would be, but we hoped you would find us."

Six months ago would have been shortly before Erno died. Ajahn Sumeno also said he knew the Farang monastery in The Isaan and, after I explained that I was alone and that Thanavaro hadn’t come with me, he suggested that I didn't judge my brother too harshly.

"You are angry with your brother, but your anger is in the wrong place,” he said.

What the hell did he know, I thought, but kept my mouth shut. Instead, I told him that I'd visited Hellfire Pass and the cemeteries and about how hard I’d found it. He nodded in empathy, the soft folds of his elderly skin creasing on his forehead.

"It is hard to know that something so ugly can happen in somewhere so beautiful," he said. “But always, this is so.”

"He never told us, you see, “ I explained. “He never once said anything to anyone."

"Yes, it is hard. But child, remember that you only see pictures," he responded. "You don't have to feel the pain as well."

I looked at this kind, humble man, so wise in his words and so warm in his energy.

"Ernest made a diary when he was a prisoner," continued the Ajahn, in a matter-of-fact tone, the wrinkles in his old face folding softly as he spoke. "It was very dangerous. If his captors had known, they would have killed him. He donated the diary to the museum."

I swallowed hard. A diary.

"Can I see it?" I asked, naively, not considering what the diary might contain.

"Of course, you may,” said the Ajahn. “We keep it safe because it is so fragile, but I suggest you are very tired and can see your strength for such things is low today. Come again tomorrow and I will show you your uncle’s diary."

And he called over to the waiting chaperone.

"My friend will take you to your guest house. You are not well enough to go alone. We will see you tomorrow."

And he smiled, got up and left, a guiding light in the lost sea that was my Thailand. I wasn’t making much sense of my trip. I’d set out to scatter a dead uncle’s ashes and carry out his final request. I’d ended up falling out with my brother and so full of rejection that I’d never known anything quite like it. I’d be home soon, I thought. I’d look at Uncle Erno’s diary, scatter the ashes and then go home. I’d do what I set out to do but I was ready to go home.

*****


Uncle Erno was a postman. He knew everyone in the village, knew their birthdays, their red-letter days, their goings on. For almost forty years he could be seen early morning, pushing his bicycle from house to house and early evening, pushing it to the local pub on his way for an early doors half-pint. He had a smile for everyone, had time for everyone, except for “Nips”.

"Can you have a word with the officer, dear," he'd phoned one morning.

He was seemingly trying to arrange a police escort for his Welsh dresser, the one he'd bought with Muriel in the early days, and he was trying to get it delivered to our house. Erno lived five counties away. Five counties, five police authorities, five hours and five irritated but patient police officers trying to fathom why they’d been called to escort one not particularly impressive Welsh dresser to North Yorkshire.

“They said I‘d need an escort,” he told them.

We have no idea what he meant, but Uncle Erno was a lovable soul with a quirky voice, who did quirky things.

Uncle Erno was a postman who, after the war, had really wanted to be a history teacher but who now had a wobbly voice and a shuffling walk and never spoke about the war. Uncle Erno had been a prisoner of war, malnourished, humiliated, stripped and tortured, forced to watch the flesh fall from his friend's bones and who'd been presumed dead for over five empty years. No one heard anything. No one knew anything.

Then, as if heaven had started sending mail, a postcard arrived, delivering life:

"James Ernest Taylor, 1st August, 1916." Erno was alive and had been found.

James Ernest Taylor left me one hundred and thirty-nine thousand pounds and asked me to scatter his ashes. I still don't know what was going through his mind when he did that.

I went back to the museum to read Uncle Erno’s diary. I took the tattered, fragile scraps of paper from the Ajahn Sumeno and held them for a few moments. I recognised the familiar, laboured scrawl of Uncle Erno's hand, barely legible in places but written with a determination that was evident in the sparing use of every available space. Every inch, every tiny gap was filled with his words, every letter an etching of defiance and a prayer for hope. Every small scrap a testament to the enormity of the pain he and his fellow soldiers had endured.

It put me to shame, reading the words of the uncle I’d never known, the uncle who had existed before war had wrenched the spirit from him and destroyed him, leaving a wrecked shell to find his slow way home and introduce himself as the Erno we thought we knew. Erno the Postman, the small, quirky little man who stammered at any word beginning with ‘T’.

He’d been an officer, you know. I hadn’t known.

The final entry was not written in Uncle Erno’s hand. It was written by someone called George Smith and it told how Ernest Taylor had been caught by his captors with a stub of pencil hidden in the seam of his tattered shorts. Ernest wouldn’t tell them what it was for and so they tortured him in front of the whole camp. Forcing him onto his knees, they tied his hands and left him in the blistering heat for over a day. They kept asking him his name and each time he replied, they hit him. He knew that if he said anything different they’d also hit him so, proudly, he said, “Taylor”, knowing they were trying to break his spirit by getting him to the humiliating point where he couldn’t even say his own name.

“Taylor,” he told them. A rifle-butt in the face.

“Taylor,” he told them. A stamp in the groin.

“Taylor,’ he told them. A smashed jaw, a shattered shoulder, a ruptured spleen, a broken man who ever after could not pronounce any word beginning with ‘T’ without seeing an image of a Japanese officer aiming a rifle-butt at him.

Uncle Erno, the Postman, blessed thereafter with sterility.

*****

December
The River Kwai
Thailand

It’s been a shock discovering Uncle Erno’s diary, discovering his past. I suppose though, he wrote it to be read. It wasn’t a secret diary, it didn’t reveal a sordid past. It revealed a brave, strong man who’d survived.

Ajahn Sumeno and the other monks at the museum have been very kind to me. They let me go there whenever I want to and I've re-read the diary several times. Each time it hits me in the stomach but rather than depleting me, strangely it gives me strength. He made it, you see. He survived and went home.

"Some visitors to our town prefer not to know," said Ajahn Sumeno to me as I was sat on the landing stage by the river, Erno’s diary in hand.

"They prefer just to see the river, eat something, drink something and then leave. But sometimes it is important to remind ourselves what man can do to man. One hundred thousand Thai people died over there in the jungle, and more than sixteen thousand Western prisoners. And it will happen again. Somewhere."

I didn't need to ask him, but I guessed that some of Sumeno's family had died on the railway.

I spent a few days at the museum. In the evenings, I'd retire to the guesthouse and swing in my hammock, finishing War and Peace or listening to music. I'd usually take a bottle of beer down to the water's edge, light a mosquito coil and drift into another world, gently rocking to and fro, lulled by the creak of rope against wood or drowned in a musical carnival that swam inside my head. The sunsets were relentlessly stunning and the river was forever calming. I lost count of the days as I slipped into the routine of being here and found a rhythm to my life that had been missing for the last thirty years.

I often wondered what Antony would have been up to at that time, up there in Chatanan. I’d lost the need to completely banish him from my memory but I was still angry at him. Still hurt by him. I still wished he had come with me.

The visitors to the guesthouse had followed their natural rate of turnover and the familiar faces of Dave, Anna, the two Dutch girls left. New faces had appeared and I enjoyed their company at meals but mostly I relaxed into my own company.

At the weekend the calm of the setting was often blown apart by the arrival of large rafts which cruised up and down this stretch of the river blaring out disco music so loud that it drowned out any conversation. They heaved with Thais who came from Bangkok for the weekend and who took it in turns to belt out their favourite hit through a microphone. A kind of Karaoke on the Kwai.

At first I was annoyed that my peace could be so obscenely ransacked by the tinny, disco music but who was I to complain? They were doing exactly what customers on our boats in York did every Friday and Saturday night. We would rent boats out to customers who would spend three hours on the river with no greater intention than to get as supremely pissed as they could manage and dance for as long as they could still stay upright. One evening, I was working a boat which had been chartered by the staff of the local frozen chicken factory. They were on their annual social. By the end of the night, three of the blokes were on the top deck, stark naked, standing on top of the tables and shouting at the beautiful people on their yachts as we cruised past the marina. When they came downstairs, their friends joined in and we had a full strip show in front of Mad Malcolm’s pulsating disco lights. Clearing up afterwards, Joe found a pair of underpants under one of the tables. It was just average night out in York.

I was eating my supper on the balcony one evening, along with a few other guests, when one of the rafts came down stream. It had a digga-digga tink-tink disco beat pumping out of its small music system and it filled the valley for miles. The song filtered through the night, gradually growing to fever pitch as it neared the guest house. The singer sang in barely recognisable English and he either guessed at words or completely mispronounced them. I still couldn't quite place the song as every few words were punctuated by the digga-digga tink-tink beat. Digga-digga tink-tink. Digga-digga tink-tink.

The party-goers on the raft jumped up and down and shouted to their friend who was screeching into the microphone at one end of the floating disco which throbbed with flashing, strobe and coloured lights. Digga-digga tink-tink. Digga-digga tink-tink.

As the blaring raft pulled level with us, I named that tune.

"A - a - maze, digga-digga, Zing - in - ing Grace, tink-tink, How sweet, digga-digga, The sound, tink-tink, That saved, digga-digga, A - a wretch, tink-tink, Like MEEEEE!"

All of us on the balcony joined in as the party drifted past and the loud music crashed into the air. I haven't a clue what the Thais thought the words were about. I’d never heard a disco version of Amazing Grace before. Doubt I ever will again.

I visited the bridge frequently, sat on the river bank, looking at it, letting its energy soak into my veins. There is a resigned serenity about the bridge itself. It is at peace, stretching comfortably across the water, resting solidly on the history of its low stone pillars.

As you look down the railway track, it disappears into the trees on the far bank, a slight gap in the branches as it carves its way deep into the jungle. The view is lost a few meters in, swallowed up by the disappearing darkness and the peace of the bridge, which is conspicuous and safe out in the open, vanishes into the distance, devoured by the secrets of the jungle, lost to the misery of time. Hell waited at the other end. I never once felt like wandering further down the track, as some visitors did. It didn't feel safe and I’d seen the unholy savagery that lay beyond. If I ventured too far down there, I wasn't sure the jungle would ever let me return.

Nearly every time I visited the bridge, the same thought crossed my mind. Why did Uncle Erno want to have his ashes scattered here? Why come back? Of all places? And, why me? If I’d been him, I'd have wanted to be kept on safe ground back home not returned to a place of so much pain. I'd have wanted to be buried with my loved ones where people could come and visit me and put flowers on my headstone.

"Are there any loved ones to visit Ernest’s grave?" asked Ajahn Sumeno when I mentioned it to him.

There weren’t, apart from me. And my brother who lived here.

"Not everyone views death the way you do," continued Sumeno. "When I die, I will not be put in a box as you Christians. My body will be placed on a fire and burned in front of the community."

"That's barbaric," I informed him, helpfully.

The wise old monk only smiled and said, slowly,

"We don't need to hide death from our eyes. It is only a body that is burning, only flesh and blood. It is not I who is burning. I will no longer be."

"Are you saying people here aren't afraid of death at all?"

"No, just that we try to accept that we are to die and that is how it is. For every beginning there is an ending.”

“Don’t you mean the other way round, for every ending there is a beginning?”

“No. It is how I say. For every beginning there is an ending. When we accept this, suffering eases.”

I loved my chats with the Ajahn. He was so kind, so knowing and he’d clearly lived a fulfilling life.

"It doesn't stop you being sad when someone dies, though." I said.

"Of course we miss them, but all death comes from birth. If we are to cry, we should cry when someone is born because we know they will suffer in life. Death means that their suffering in this life is over, so, we should be happy."

"I still think it is strange to want to have your ashes scattered in a place where you suffered so much pain," I told him.

"They are only ashes, you will not be throwing Ernest into the river,"

"But I will be. It's all that's left of him."

"My child, they are only ashes," he repeated but I wouldn't let it drop and tackled him again.

"But what is he trying to achieve? Does it mean he’s forgiven them?"

"Benedict,” chuckled the old Ajahn. “You are like a dog scratching at a wound. Maybe there is no message. Maybe he just wanted you to see this place. You do not need to know why, but if you loved your uncle, do as he asks."

"I’d just like to know," I protested.

Sumeno laughed at me and swung the rolled end of his robe back over his shoulder.

"Scratch, scratch, scratch,” he teased, slowly picking himself up off the step. "You look for problems which do not exist. If a dog is scratching at something, he keeps scratching because he knows no better. If we scratch at something, we should not keep scratching. We should take away the flea."

And he chuckled as he turned and patted up the steps in his old, bare feet.

After a week or so of being by the river, I made a decision to scatter Erno’s ashes. I wasn't relishing the thought but I knew I wanted to do it. I'd put my life in England on hold for weeks and it’d been fine to suspend it all for a while but I'd begun to miss it.

I decided that I’d sort out my tickets when I returned to Bangkok but first, I needed to see Uncle Erno.

Back in my room at the guest house, listening to the water lap at the sides of the raft, I lit some candles and closed the door. As well as a mosquito coil, I lit some incense that Ajahn Sumeno had given to me and took the bag containing Uncle Erno’s casket out from the corner of the room. I lifted the casket out of the bag it'd been in throughout the trip and sat it on the floor in front of me. The dark, wooden casket was shining like new, still highly polished and you could see the reflection of the candles on its surface. There was no plaque or inscription on the top as I was half-expecting, just a solid brass clasp at the front which I undid. The hinges slid smoothly as I pushed the lid back until it rested with a gentle click.

Inside was a thick, translucent polythene bag, folded over at the top and neatly tucked in and sealed. There was an envelope placed on top with my name written in familiar, hand-written, laboured scrawl.

My Dearest Niece,

With my ashes you scatter gold from the rings of the brave men with whom I served. I throw myself at their feet.

May we all rest in peace with Our Lord,

Your loving,

Uncle Erno

Sitting in the dust, I read the letter twice and I felt very close to him in my make-shift shrine. I assumed when he spoke of gold, he was using it as a metaphor. I had been dreading opening the box. It felt akin to opening a coffin and I had an irrational fear that once open, I'd be letting a whole heap of dead spirits escape into my world and they'd fly round me, pestering me, not leaving me alone and I'd never find peace while they menacingly whispered in my ears and swiped past my face with their poisoned wings. It was only the memory of Uncle Erno's innate goodness that pushed aside my irrationality and allowed me to peel away the square of tape that was sealing the ashes.

As I pulled the edges of polythene apart I could see the ash sitting inside and I drew the casket nearer to the candle to catch the light. Flecks began to glisten in amongst the ash, glinting golden in the candlelight, firing sharp beams of brightness out at me. This was Uncle Erno and he had a glint in his eye. Looking closer, I could see flakes of bright gold leaf mixed in with the soft ash and they glittered, sending any dark spirits flying and filling the casket with happiness, joyfully playing in their feathered sand pit. They defied my morbid mood and told me to cheer up.

I might have guessed that Thailand held a few more surprises for me before I left but I hadn't banked on discovering gold. What was it doing in there? What’s going on, Uncle Erno?

I closed the bag, being careful to seal it fully and leaned back against the wall of my hut. With that, I heard someone's carefully placed footsteps coming down the steps behind the raft and I closed Uncle Erno’s casket, pushing it under the bed. I heard Mr Joo call from outside my door,

"Miss Benedict, please, a friend is here, in the restaurant."

I had no idea who he’d meant when he’d said friend and thought maybe it was someone from the museum or maybe he was playing a joke on me. I didn't have any friends here. Opening the door, I found an excited Mr Joo eager to usher me up the steps and into the restaurant.

When we reached the restaurant, in the far corner of the balcony, a man was standing with his back to us, looking over towards the darkness of the river. He was tall, white, and in the dim light I saw that he had very, very short cropped hair and was wearing jeans and a thin cotton shirt. I didn't recognise him and turned to Mr Joo for help but he simply waved me towards the man again, excited and grinning.

The man turned round and smiled. He had the start of a thick, dark beard covering his jaw and he was wearing John Lennon glasses. As his smile widened, an unmistakable, goofy grin smiled at me and his face reminded me of Jesus.

"Hi there, Easy-Rider," he said in a slow, American drawl. "How ya doin'?"

"Tikaro?" I gasped.

He nodded.

"I disrobed," he said in explanation and grinned even wider as he pretended to ruffle his head of growing hair, which was far too short for ruffling.

"I ain't alone," he added and nodded over to the door.

"Thought we'd call in for a cup of tea," said a young, muscled monk in a sing-song Australian accent as he dipped his head to get through the low doorway.

"Amaro!" I yelled and it was all I could do to stop myself from going over and throwing my arms round his orange robes and giving him a great big smacker on the both cheeks. My heart beamed at the sight of them both.

Then, confusion hit

"What are you doing here?" I asked. And where’s Antony?

Tikaro and Amaro stood together by the balcony. The river was pitch black, not a light or sound other than the gentle, distant lap of the water as it brushed the sides of the rafts a few meters down the bank. The nervous silence that had descended on our small reunion was beginning to concern me.

Time hung in the air. No one said anything for a long while. Slowly, I became aware that Amaro, was wiping his eyes with his finger tip. He’d begun to cry, very, very quietly and Tikaro, I noticed, was biting his lip, staring down at the river as if his life depended on its very presence.

“Tikaro?” I said.

He looked up.

“This isn’t easy,” he explained.

“Come on,” I joked, trying to dispel my growing panic by making it easier for them. “Can’t be that bad. Okay, so Antony didn’t want to come. It’s OK, I’m used to being on my own.”

And at that, I felt Amaro flinch.

“Benedict,” said Tikaro, reaching out to me, stepping forward and taking both my hands in a tight grip.

But again he stalled. He needed to breathe deeply before continuing.

“It’s your brother, Thanavaro,” he eventually said, torturing me.

Spit it out, man! For god’s sake.

I saw Tikaro’s chest heave with an enormous, determined and painful intake of breath before he finally found the voice to tell me.

“Benedict, he’s dying.”


*****