December: The Bridge On the River Kwai
December
Kanchanaburi, The River Kwai,
Thailand
I must have cried for another hour the night I killed Gecko before finally falling asleep and I didn't wake until twelve hours later, missing the morning meal and sleeping right through until after nine o'clock. I felt drugged on sleep as I heard the clunk of the gate and saw Thanavaro and Amaro through the mosquito screens, walking up the footpath, their robes translucent in the sunshine.
"Morning," beamed Thanavaro. "I wanted to check you were OK. You weren't at the meal."
"I'm fine," I lied. Why do we say that? Too right I’m “fine” – the fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional kind of fine. "I'll make a drink," I said, coldly.
"No worries," said Amaro, as he entered the house. "I’ll do that. You two sit down."
He made it sound like he’d been planning what to say.
"You don't look fine," my brother told me as I slumped into a chair and he arranged himself on the bench opposite. "What's the matter?"
His faced reflected his concern but irritated by questions, I replied,
"I'm just tired, Antony. I didn't sleep well and this place is getting to me. I needed to lie in and catch up on some sleep."
And then, just for a dig, I added, bad-temperedly,
"It hasn't been easy adjusting to all this, you know."
"I know," he offered affectionately. "And I think you've adapted really well.”
He paused, nervously looking at the floor and then said, "Benedict, I really appreciate you coming. It's meant a great deal to me, more than you can imagine.”
I did know it meant a lot to him and I did know that he struggled to convey it but I wasn’t in the mood for making things easy for him so I made no response.
Despite the gentleness in his words, I could feel an unspoken tension in Antony.
"Look,” said Amaro, appearing from the kitchen with forced melodrama. “I’ve brought some of the finest chocolate in the world with me, shipped in all the way from Switzerland by kind donation of one of the novices' parents no less."
But my enthusiasm that morning wasn’t easy to find and I didn’t reply. I was tiring of all this. I was touched at the thoughtfulness of Amaro’s innocent gift but, sensing something going on that I wasn’t quite party to, I felt a tear coming but managed to keep it in check. I played along with the charade and went to root out some caramel rice-sweets I'd bought in the village the other day to go with the strong tea Amaro had made.
When I returned, Amaro had skipped off with his drink and was sitting alone in the garden, his back facing the house. Things suddenly felt very ominous.
"I need to talk to you alone," said Thanavaro, and I could feel the air grow heavy.
Thanavaro glanced over at his friend through the mosquito screen. "Amaro can act as chaperone from outside."
This was sounding serious, so I slurped some more sweetened tea to get a pre-emptive sugar boost. What was it now? What rule have I broken? Who have I offended now?
"Uncle Erno asked you to scatter his ashes, right?" he said, seriously.
I nodded, tentatively.
"He asked you and that's why you came to Thailand, and why you're going to the River Kwai,” Antony continued.
Again I nodded, and added clearly,
"And to find you, so we can scatter the ashes together."
And at that, my brother’s face fell.
I could sense what was coming but I didn't want to hear it and all the sugar in the world couldn't protect me from the final, inevitable body blow that was to send me reeling.
“I can’t handle this on my own, Antony,” I began to insist. “The whole idea of me coming all this way was so that you’d come with me. We arranged it.”
Anxiety was rising in my chest.
“You know this country,” I continued. “I’m a stranger here. You know what to do.”
Antony remained sitting in silence, his head down.
“I can’t do this on my own, Antony. You’re my family. Don’t do this, Antony!”
My heart was pleading. Don’t say what I know you are about to say.
But it was no good. Out it came.
"I can't come with you,” Antony said.
Silence hung for a few moments while I let the information register.
“Can’t or won’t?” I asked angrily, unable to go near the pain.
“Can’t,” he replied.
I didn’t believe him. He was leaving me on my own. Again. Just like he always did. Just like every member of my family always did.
Thanavaro’s voice broke into my void.
"Benedict, . . ."
"I killed Gecko yesterday,” I interrupted.
"Pardon?" he said, caught off-guard.
"I killed Gecko. I squashed his head against the door frame and he's still stuck there, hanging."
My brother looked bewildered, shuffling uneasily in his robe. Amaro was still waiting outside.
"I did it, you see, “ I explained. “I killed him."
"Benedict,"
"Go away, Antony."
He tried to explain his decision.
"I can't come with you because there’s somewhere I need to go,” he said beseeching me, but I didn't want to hear.
"Just go."
"It's important, Benedict!" It was his turn to plead now. "I wouldn't just leave you."
"But you already have, Antony.”
The words punched themselves out of my mouth.
“Don't you see? All of you have. You, Mum, Dad, Uncle Erno. All of you have left me!"
"I can't come, " Antony still insisted, a thin, forlorn figure and I remember thinking how much weight he’d lost recently. “I want to, “ he said. “But I can’t.”
I wasn’t listening.
"Go, Antony,” I said.
He looked at me. “Go. Don't drag it out. Go wherever it is you have to go but leave now."
Antony's head dropped into his hands and he started to sob.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Amaro, listening to every word. He still faced away from the house, his knees pulled up to his chest, his big, brave shoulders hunched over and his face in his hands. I remember now, although at the time it didn’t register, that Amaro too was crying.
I got up, unable to handle the situation and went upstairs, back to my darkened room, back to abandoned dead Gecko and back to bed. As I locked the bedroom door, I shut the world out and blasted my eardrums to pieces. Arctic Monkeys screaming at me. Suede. Trash. Garbage. Stupid, stupid girl.
Don't believe in fear, don't believe in faith.
Don't believe in fucking anything. Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off.
I wouldn’t let Antony in when he knocked on the door. I stayed in my room for hours, refusing to hear him. Demons took me over that night but I fought them away with loud, desperate bursts of the loudest, most desperate music my iPod possessed. I packed my bags in a frenzy of anger, alone after they had left. I didn't say goodbye to them and I left Chatanan early the next morning to catch the bus to Ubon. I was numb. Mae Li helped me carry my bags and she didn’t say a word as we crept away from the monastery. I gave her an old white T-shirt that she could wear and she hugged it to her chest but without any of her usual glee, only a sad, concerned furrow on her once wrinkly twinkly brow.
"You have good heart," she finally said as the bus came into view. "You come back Chatanan."
I tried to smile back. I doubt it Mae Li, I thought. I doubt it. And I climbed aboard.
As the rackety old bus pulled away and with dear old Uncle Erno sitting on the bench beside me, I looked back and watched Mae Li and Chatanan slowly disappear behind a cloud of early morning South-East Asian dust. I didn’t cry. I was fine.
*****
I arrived at the train station in Ubon around six, in time to see the sun rise while the almost-full moon still hung brightly above the roof. I was expecting it to be fairly quiet at that time in the morning but no, it was heaving. People were milling about, buying tickets, buying breakfast at one of the many food stalls that were set up by the tracks or sitting, waiting for the train.
My vague plan was to head for Bangkok and then work out how to get to the River Kwai in a couple of days. So much of me wanted to go straight to the airport to catch the next flight home but the sight of the box with Uncle Erno’s ashes in stopped me. I was here now. I’d got this far. I had to do it.
I was still in shock from feeling so let down by my brother but I knew I wanted to carry out Erno’s wishes. I doubt he’d have minded me going home with him and with hindsight, it may have been a better idea, but my brain wasn’t working well. I was tired, upset and angry beyond belief.
I managed to explain to the man in the ticket office that I needed to go to Bangkok today. There was a group of Thai soldiers waiting with me, swanking along the platform, hovering around their bags, laughing and chatting. I got a fair few stares but they were friendly, unthreatening stares of simple curiosity. One of the soldiers offered me a cigarette. He looked very cute, as they all did in their tight blue cotton uniforms, navy berets and shiny boots and buckles. I nodded a thank you for the cigarette and the soldier offered me a light before leaving me in peace. Sitting on my backpack, I felt like shit. Numb shit.
The train to Bangkok pulled in. I was still operating in a daze and it was only with the help of a kind, middle-aged man who recognised me from the monastery that I was able to sort out where I would be sitting.
He helped me load my bags onto the carriage.
"Sawat di krup," he bowed and gave me a bottle of water before he left.
I stared out of the window as a guard passed me. He waved a flag, and the train groaned into motion, dragging itself out of the station in a cloud of smoke and whistles. I closed my eyes.
Make the world go away.
It took fifteen hours to get to Bangkok. We left the houses and shacks of Ubon behind as our train chugged relentlessly into the countryside, weaving like a man-made, noisy snake through mile after mile of golden rice-fields. A couple of hours into the journey, I spotted two elephants at work in the fields and they stopped and lifted their trunks towards the train as we went past. The transport of Kings, my brother had called them and I shook the memory of him away. I stared at rice-fields for hours. Five solid hours of nothing but rice-fields. The countryside didn't alter except for a gradual shift from the dry, straw-like rice-fields of the north-east to lush, wet paddy fields once we'd got further into the centre of Thailand.
Rice, rice everywhere and not a drop to drink.
The scenery became far greener as we came south. Palm trees and sugar cane was now the backdrop to my view and I could taste the moisture in the air and began to feel it lying heavy on my lungs. The Isaan had been far more arid and its heat sharp. The mass of giant, water-rich leaves and groves, which I now saw, were a vivid contrast to the sparse, thirsty twigs and shrubs I'd grown accustomed to.
Closer to Bangkok, we passed an enormous, golden Buddha as big as a church sitting in one of the fields, miles from anything. It was squat and solid, an incongruous, ostentatious emblem of the country's devotion to its faith. A faith I was struggling not to resent.
My travelling companion for most of the journey had been a fat, friendly looking young man who sat on the seat opposite. He didn't say a word throughout the whole trip. While I munched, drank, read and listened to my music, he sat calmly and upright, a gentle contented smile on his face, sitting and waiting. At first I thought he was a bit odd, the inevitable railway-carriage weirdo, but no, he was simply doing what most Thais do and what very few Brits can do. Sit and wait for fifteen hours. The only movement he made was a couple of times to have a drink and to buy a fresh curry and piece of grilled chicken offered by one of the food sellers who boarded the train at each station.
The train shuffled and shunted its way noisily through the outskirts of Bangkok towards the central station. Gone were the rich, lush forest vistas of the last few hours. Gone were the luminous lagoons and the bountiful paddy fields. Here was filthy, dirty, stinky, noisy, wonderful, alive Bangkok. Chatanan could have been on another planet for all I cared.
Funny though, how life has a way of reminding you of the things you most want to forget. While I was flicking through the guide book deciding where to stay, a dried pressed Bodhi leaf which Antony had given me, fell out. It was such a perfect shape and I had to force myself to forget how he'd given it to me one day while we were walking near the Outside Sala. The monastery’s Bodhi tree, he told me, sat in a corner, protectively over-looking the Sala. The story went that it was under such a tree that the Buddha was enlightened and so, every Buddhist monastery planted its own Bodhi tree. The heart-like leaf that Antony gave to me had a small hole in it and I screwed it up, the leaf disintegrating in my fist and threw it out of the window to be swallowed up by the noise, dirt and activity of the busy Bangkok street. I needed to leave Antony behind, in Chatanan, not bring him here. The hole in my heart would just have to remain there.
Bangkok felt familiar even though I'd been here for one night only but I knew I could now put The Isaan and Chatanan behind me and get on with the job in hand. A couple of nights here and then on to the River Kwai. I'd be OK on my own, I convinced myself. I'd always managed on my own before, somehow coping without my family but now, the resentment began to weigh heavily.
"Awright with that, love?" said a whining voice ahead of me, shocking me back to the here and now.
The taxi I’d taken from the station dropped me off at the steps of the New Samui Guest House and I was trying to drag my big fat rucksack and the bag with Uncle Erno in it, up the steep flight. It was a sticky, sweaty night and despite sleeping a little on the train, I was almost beside myself with fatigue.
"Need a hand, love?" came the voice again.
Oh for Chrissakes! What does it bloody look like?
"Yes please. If you're free," is what I actually said.
"Free to you, love, charge anyone else," and he laughed, tickled by his own, corny humour. He helped me up the steps, a short, sweaty, sticky man with flattened greasy hair scraped back across a bald patch. His glasses were thick-rimmed black plastic and he wore cream slacks and a red fake Lacoste T-shirt. Overall, he resembled a wet fish in fake designer clothing.
"No problem, darlin'. There you go. You staying 'ere, then? Been 'ere long, have we?"
"Just got here. I need a room."
"Ooo, darlin'! Lucky to find a room this late. You can always share mine!" Again, the self-congratulatory laugh, until he saw my face. "Only a joke, love. Only a joke."
I wondered what this fella's wet greasy head would look like once he'd been slapped round the gills a few times.
He hovered while I checked in and found that there were plenty of rooms available and I had to be quite insistent about not having him help me to my room with my bags. I made two journeys instead, and managed to give him the slip.
My room was very clean and had a fan and shutters over the tall window, which overlooked the lower roofs of the adjoining buildings. It sounded as if there was a working kitchen or a restaurant down there, spoons scraping against metal bowls, pans being thrown on a hot flame, a heavy chopper hitting a wooden board with a decisive thud. So this was it. Backpacker land. I had friends who dreamt of being here. It was their idea of paradise. It was the last place on earth I wanted to be at that moment. I was operating on auto-pilot, emotionally depleted. I was so tired that I didn't even make it to the bathroom to clean my teeth or have a pee.
I had weird dreams that night. Dreams of trying to evade a never-ending flow of cockroaches which were swarming over the bed like a blanket of brittle black treacle and following me as ran out of the door and down the corridor.
I woke early and weary, around six, got up and went in search of breakfast. There was a stall round the corner of the street and I bought some fried rice cakes and a drink. Opposite, there was a small entrance leading down to the river and it drew me down. Familiarity in a faraway land. The quay had hastily laid wooden planks for a walkway and I followed this through to a turnstile where I paid six baht to enter. I was standing on the edge of the Chao Phraya River, which flowed through the centre of Bangkok. On the train, I'd read about the Chao Phraya Express, a river-bus that ran the length of the river. The platform was already full of be-suited commuters on their way to work, briefcases in hand. It was like catching The Tube in London, everyone cramming themselves in and rushing to get a seat. I simply got carried along with the crush and found myself hanging on for dear life as the whistles screeched to let the ferryman know everyone was on. The engines splashed into life and we heaved away, onto the river.
Didn’t know where I was going. I just needed to be near the flow of a river again to try and find a rhythm to my disturbed life.
After a couple of stops I got a seat and was able to watch the river-life of Bangkok. Two monks sat in front of me, their backs to me as they looked out silently over the river. I had to work hard at throwing away the memories of the morning I’d spent with my brother on the Mekong. That blissful, special morning.
I swallowed my tears, refusing to let them be born.
The stretch of water we were on was a giant, six-lane free-for-all of barges, ferries, tankers and small wooden, two-person speeders with a driver at the rear steering a route through the waterway and a smartly dressed customer sitting at the front. The barges were deathly looking bruisers, black, flat, square-fronted platforms which took on all-comers and very often we had to wait for ten minutes to let one of these unstoppable dinosaurs past. It was as if the whole river came to a halt and held its breath while one of these creatures slid by silently and the rest us were scared to move and wake it in case it turned into a fiery dragon. Once it had gone, the speedboats sped again and the ferry fired up its engine, straining to be let loose again on the open water.
I was happy to watch the life of the river but it didn’t feed me, didn’t nurture me like at home. It was too busy, too exciting, too much.
We cut under a bridge and the mood of the river changed yet again, but I couldn’t change with it. Ahead, about another mile and spreading like a giant spider's web spun dramatically across the sky, was the Rama IX Bridge, the longest of its kind in the world. I’d never seen anything so big. Two awesome new-age skyscrapers, fifty, sixty floors high, sit at either end of the bridge, one walled in blue glass, its upper floors sloping off to an angle, creating a diamond which reached upwards towards a thin mast which pricked the apex. It reminded me of something invented from Lego only it was real and hundreds of feet high.
I could hear the warm buzz of the traffic overhead as I craned my neck to see the enormous slabs of engineering sliding by. The water swirled around the pillars, lashing against the new concrete and I wondered just how long it would be before it began to grind away the stone and take the legs from under this man-made mountain.
I closed my eyes for the return trip and let my face rest in the warm sun. When we reached the stop where I’d got on, I watched as we came to a slow halt amid a screech of whistles from the man on the quayside and lots of loud, sputtered manoeuvring. No one tied the boat off, it just waited there, precariously on the choppy water, straining at the leash to be let go again.
There was a crowd of people waiting to get off and a crowd of people waiting to get on. As soon as the boat got within striking distance of the quay, everyone pushed forward and the two sets of waiting people met in the middle. It was difficult to get on or off and at one point I thought I wasn’t going to make it and would get stuck on the boat while it set off for the next stop. I gave one final push forward and leapt on to the quay. As I gathered my bag to me and made my way through the melee of oncoming passengers, I saw her, the woman who I’d seen when I first arrived in Thailand. Bangkok Airport Woman.
She didn’t turn my way and I watched, as she got on the express, alone. My eyes followed her as she dipped her head to avoid hitting it on the roof of the doorway and made her way to find a seat. Just as the boat fired up its engines and the whistles began to sound again, she glanced up at the quay. She saw me. It took a while for her eyes to register and I thought she hadn’t remembered. But, as I took my sunglasses off, she smiled at me.
I could have got back on the boat at that point. I could have, but I didn’t. Instead, the boat pulled out and Bangkok Airport Woman, like everyone else in my life, was gone. That was it. My James Blunt moment.
I saw your face in a crowed place but I have to face the truth.
I had a beer at a street-side cafe and thought of writing home. What on earth would I tell them? I imagined some of them might be a bit concerned that they hadn't heard from me but what would I say?
“Having a wonderful time. Bastard brother left me again. Going to throw Uncle Erno into the river alone. Wish you were here.”
I thought of Joe and how he had picked me up out of the river that time. I wished that his strong arms were around me now, lifting me up and keeping me out of harms way.
I spent a difficult second night in the New Samui Guest House. It was hot and noisy. Fish Features came to annoy me while I was watching the TV in the reception area so I left, and went to my room. I could hear the other travellers coming and going, sounding like they were having a fun time.
I thought of Gecko, and wondered if Mae Li had found him later as she was cleaning up. I thought of Mae Li sitting round the fire in the darkness, waiting for her husband to come home. I thought of the grey haired lady in the kitchen, of Christopher and Susan, and I thought of Amaro and Tikaro.
I tried not to think of my brother. I tried with all my heart not to think of him and not to let the anger and hurt find me. I tossed and turned on the bed. I shouted out loud and I thumped the mattress with my fist but he still got through to my head. I still saw his bald, thin face and brown mole, his orange robe and bare feet, and his thin wrists and bony hands.
What was it he hadn’t said to me? What was it that could possibly keep him from coming with me? I didn’t understand. What did he have to do that was so important? More important than me. I remembered him telling me. “I can’t go with you,” he’d said and I knew he’d wanted to say something else, but I’d stopped him. I wondered if I’d ever know what it was he’d wanted to tell me.
I cried then, like a child. A motherless child, a long, long way from home.
*****
December, 1943,
Hintok Camp, Thailand.
I managed to bury Arthur. In a frenzy of numbed madness I took him into the jungle in the darkness of night and collapsed asleep on the grave when I had finished. The Doc gave me three days in the hospital afterwards and it has revived me to a state where survival is possible again. I went back to the grave and marked it, making a mental note of its location, how many yards from the camp, how close to the cliff which edges on to the valley. When all this is over, I'll be back for him. I can't leave him abandoned forever in this forgotten hellhole. Beriberi is now taking us and dysentery has led to such a lack of hygiene.
This is the third week we have been at Hintok. Of my party, fifty have died in those three weeks, we have one hundred and fifty in hospital and only fifty are left working. The Nips have reduced the food given to the men in the hospital so that they can give more food to the working men. It is still barely enough to keep us going and every grain of rice we eat, we know a dying man goes without. I am convinced that the doctors are sending the sicker men to work, knowing that they will die anyway, and sending those with a better chance of survival to hospital. Every morning, broken men stumble to work knowing for certain that it will kill them, if not that day, then the next. Survival has been reduced to such choices and life has sunk to depths unthinkable, yet again.
I struggle to write these pages on scraps of paper stolen by the Australians. But I know I must. If I do not write this, no one will believe these events, but please, I beg, don't let Muriel see this. She doesn't need to know.
*****
December,
The River Kwai,
Thailand
Kanchanaburi, the town where the bridge over the River Kwai is located, lies a hundred and sixty kilometres from Bangkok. It took two and a half hours to get there and cost eighty pence. The train journey was unremarkable apart from two very cute children who were travelling with their mother and started playing peek-a-boo with me from behind the back of the wooden seat opposite. A small brother and sister, I got the inevitable, "Hello Miss," and, "I love you!” followed by enormous grins and added to which the boy threw in, "Manchester United!”
They offered me some chewing gum so I swapped it for some biscuits I'd bought at the station. The children got off after a few stops and I sat alone watching the Thailand countryside trundle past.
Arriving in Kanchanaburi, it was like any other town in Thailand. Rough and ready, dusty and dirty. It reminded me of Ubon only greener. The monsoon, now over for this year, ends later here. The station was quite a way from the main road through the town and I struggled as I carried my bags. There were a few other people who got off at Kanchanaburi, mainly Thais and a couple of other backpackers. It was a long, hot walk into town, far further than I thought from the map I'd picked up at the station. Thai maps, I’d learnt, weren’t high on accuracy or scale and what appeared to be a few meters ended up being a few miles. It was around five in the evening and very humid and I knew that in about an hour or so the sun would disappear and daylight would be lost. I was worried I would be too.
My backpack and Uncle Erno were getting increasingly heavier as my energy waned and I reached the end of the street. The sun was sinking fast and I was getting very worried about where I would stay. All the hostels were full, I didn't know where to start looking for a hotel if I had to resort to that and I didn't have much spare cash on me to be able to afford one anyway.
I sat on my rucksack and in the fading light and looked at my useless map. It indicated a large road joining this one at the point where I was, but all I could see was a dusty, dirt track to my right, disappearing around a curve and with no street lighting to guide my way. It also indicated that there was a guest house down there but it looked so dark and desolate that I didn't trust what the map told me. My other option was to go back the way I came but there were no Tuk-Tuks or taxis around and I was so tired that I knew I would struggle to walk the mile and half I'd just come.
My optimism faded fast and I felt like crying. I was lost, it was getting dark, I had nowhere to stay and I could feel tears pricking my eyes. How had life turned out like this? How had I got here? A few weeks ago, life had been simple, nothing more exciting than floating up and down a river in York and getting pissed occasionally. It had been a bit boring sometimes but safe. I’d had no greater problems to sort out than Molly’s dodgy teeth or my leaking radiators and the nearest I’d got to thinking about going abroad this year had been to look at a few brochures on Prague and few fewer on Italy. You had a lot to answer for, Uncle Erno, sending me out here on your last errand. You didn’t mention I’d end up here, on the other side of the world, on my own, in the bloody dark with nowhere to stay for the night.
I felt a pang of deja vu as I remembered being with my brother up at Poo Jom Petch, a memory I struggled to let go.
I looked at the bag with Uncle Erno it.
Cheers, mate, I told it sarcastically.
"Don't give in, Benedict," a quirkily familiar voice said, shocking me to alertness.
I spun round on my bag to see who was there. No one. The road was empty.
"Trust in yourself,” I heard it say again.
I thought I’d finally begun to go mad. I was sure it was Uncle Erno talking to me in his half-Yorkshire, half-Lancashire accent.
In a dazed, sub-conscious, half-mad blur, I picked up my bags and headed down the dirt-track. Just after the bend in the road, there was a hand-painted sign nailed to a tree, saying 'Guesthouse'. It looked more like someone's back yard than a guesthouse. Then a short, smiling, middle-aged Thai man appeared wearing a T-shirt and sarong, and he greeted me with open arms and a gentle face.
"Hello, Miss," he said. "You look very tired. I take your bag for you. Come, you rest, take your time, I show you room."
He led me past a wooden building which, on the side hidden from the road, had a large balcony tucked away and in which were three or four western travellers, sitting on cushions on the floor and eating or drinking from low, wooden tables. The path ran alongside the edge of the balcony and down a steep set of open slatted steps which bridged a channel of water and led to a series of bamboo huts built close together.
I followed him round the edge of one hut. I couldn't believe my eyes when we turned the corner. The amazing, stunning River Kwai burst into view two feet in front of me. I had no idea it had been so close and had been running parallel to the long road I'd just walked down. The huts sat on rafts on the river, water lapping a few inches below my feet and splashing against the stilts which moored the rafts in place. There was an empty hammock swaying between two wooden posts in front of the room the man showed me. In the room was a double bed with a decent mattress and a mosquito net draped overhead. Three other rooms shared the raft.
The sun was beginning to set on the opposite bank across the dark, wide river and I knew without a doubt that I'd come home.
"You rest, Miss, take your time, pay tomorrow," and before my angel disappeared, he placed my bags next to the bed, explained where the shower room was, told me the price was fifty baht a night and gave me the key.
I spent my first evening on the River Kwai relaxing in a hammock, listening to the hum and whistle of the insects and watching a magical, golden-red sunset spread over the horizon, turning the water into liquid fire and melting my fears into oblivion.
God bless you, Uncle Erno.
*****
I slept well, surrounded by acres of muslin suspended from four corners and hanging down in a tent over my wooden bed, protecting me from the many mosquitoes. The remnants of a mosquito repelling spiral coil that my Thai host had given me and which I'd burnt overnight lay collapsed in a forlorn little heap next to Uncle Erno, a pretty pattern of ash waiting to disappear in the morning breeze.
My room was still dark, with just a chink of morning light poking in through gaps but as I opened the door, the view swept in, filling the room with the magic of the river. It was still here. The River Kwai. In the bright, silent light of the Thailand morning, the water still flowed swiftly and strongly and the lush green forest on the far bank was today vibrant and clear whereas the evening before it had been a dark mass, sitting in a long, heavy strip on the horizon.
A wooden boat buzzed past on its way up river where there was a long sweeping curve, which swallowed the boat, hiding its progress from view. Down river, about a mile away, I could see the main part of Kanchanaburi, far more urban and built-up than I'd envisaged. Where I was staying was a grass village compared with the hotels, concrete and traffic down stream.
The River Kwai wasn’t as wide as the Mekong, but it was strong, calm and powerful and flowed with a timelessness that brought solace to my aching soul. It began to put a slow rhythm back into my aching heart.
It was already hot by the time I set off to find the bridge. I wanted to see where it was located and get my bearings before deciding when to scatter Erno’s ashes. I hired a mountain bike and set off down the road I’d walked the previous evening, through the edge of the town and out into dusty country road.
After a couple of miles, I came across some smart hotels and about a dozen cafes, drinks sellers and gift shops. The road met a railway crossing where it took a right hand corner and followed the tracks, running in parallel alongside. Still no sign of any bridge. The railway crossing had been pedestrianized so I stopped and looked around.
I nearly missed the bridge. It sat tucked away to my left, a series of black metal arches set on solid pillars of stone neatly stretched over the river which flowed unseen a few meters below the railway line. The blackness of the bridge camouflaged it against the forest, the trees diminishing the impact of this man-made construction and it was only the few people walking across it in their brightly coloured T-shirts that helped it to stand out.
This was it, the Bridge Over the River Kwai.
I fleetingly thought of Mr Hollingsworth, my solicitor and corrected myself. On. The Bridge On the River Kwai.
I locked the bike and walked up to the railway line towards the bridge. It was single track, built on heavy wooden sleepers with smooth, weather-worn planks of wood running parallel inside the rails. It swept over the bridge between the iron arcs, each not more than ten feet high and held together with giant rivets like a child’s giant Meccano construction. It was eerie. Despite its history, there was a very strange peace about it and a deep sense of human experience was almost tangible. I could almost feel the bare feet that had walked these wooden sleepers and I could feel the bare hands that had worked them into place.
Uncle Erno had been here. An Uncle Erno I didn’t know.
My guidebook described the bridge as “not very impressive”, a description bordering on insult. The bridge had an air of respectful solitude, standing alone and to me, it was impressive. Looking down the track, which passed through the metal gateway into the depths of the jungle beyond, I was moved and I'm sure it was the presence of death that touched me. I stared between the sleepers at the river flowing underneath, and then carefully picked a route between the rails, avoiding the many Japanese tourists who had descended from a tour bus that had pulled up close by. They were posing for photos. Surreal tourist shots of a monument built by slaves slaughtered at the hands of their forebears.
I walked to the centre of the bridge and leant over the rails, looking upstream. It was so stunning here, so incredibly tranquil. Hard to believe that this stretch of water now running beneath my safe feet once ran red with the blood of torn corpses.
Two Buddhist monks were walking towards me, the soft material of their robes glowing bright in the sunshine making the colour stand out dramatically against the blackness of the iron. Their presence added extra serenity to the scene as they silently passed over the bridge, but it churned up unwelcome feelings inside me and I felt anger towards them for choosing this moment to remind me that my brother wasn’t here with me. He’d chosen the call of that bloody robe instead.
I couldn't tell if the monks were from a local monastery or if they had just stepped off a sightseeing bus too. Again I thought of Poo Jom Petch, and of catching Tikaro and my brother that morning. It was such a strange setting for two men in sacred cloth to be found arguing, that haven on a hillside. I never had got a chance to ask Antony what it had been about and I now wondered if I’d ever find out. My mind came back to the River Kwai as the sound of the river under my feet once again began to register.
And the story is told of a river that flowed, made me sad to think it was dead.
By band from America, called ‘America’. I loved that old song. I used to sing it with my brother all the time as we dreamt of Highway One and the Golden Gate. Good job the band hadn’t come from a place called Poo, I thought and as I began to smile to myself, my brief taste of frivolity was brutally measured by a sad vision of happier times, special moments with my brother that had been shattered.
*****
I arrived back at my raft hut after lunch, crashed onto the bed and after an hour’s snooze, sat and watched the sun’s glow over the river through the open door. I read a little and enjoyed the peacefulness of the setting. The water oozed by, turning from a fiery red to infinite black as the sun dropped behind the trees and finally disappeared altogether. It seemed to last longer than the sunsets at Chatanan. Maybe it was the countryside, maybe it was the clouds. Who knows.
Later, lying in the hammock, watching darkness, I remembered an evening at Chatanan, just before sunset. It was shortly before I left and I’d had a day alone, mooching, washing with Mae Li and cleaning the guest villa. We’d arranged no tea that day and I hadn’t seen my brother as he’d told me he’d be away.
I took a walk on the familiar route, following the path round the walls of the monastery. I’d brought my torch with me as I knew that once the sun had disappeared, there’d be no light to guide me back. I was coming round the curve in the road where, just ahead, was the shed that housed the old 1938 Harley. I was still some distance away. Light was beginning to fade rapidly and as I got closer, I realised that there was someone inside the shed. Christopher, I thought. I crept up.
What I hadn’t expected was to find Antony.
He hadn’t heard me approach and I watched him in the dim light from through the door. He didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular. All he did was walk slowly down the length of the bike, trailing his finger along the handlebars, over the tank and across the seat. He looked deep in thought as he gazed at the bike, as if lost in a memory, in a place all his own. When he reached the seat, he stopped. He stood, not moving for about five minutes. I barely breathed, afraid I’d break the magic spell of the moment he had created for himself.
I didn’t let him know I was there. I just watched. Tikaro had talked about how riding the Harley had been too good and how it had made him restless, made him consider his future at the monastery. Was that going on for my brother, too? Was that what they were talking about the night they’d spent sitting until two in the morning outside the Guest House? Maybe the Abbot had persuaded him to stay at Wat Pah Chatanan rather than come with me to keep him from disrobing?
It all churned over in my head as I lay watching the light fade over the River Kwai. I remembered how I’d hidden by the side of the shed when eventually Antony made to leave. Darkness had descended and it hid me completely as I heard him close the door and watched as he walked back towards the monastery, the small beam of his Maglite showing him a route and its light catching the orange edges of his robe. A silent shadow, walking away from me.
I woke at around two, restless. A full night’s sleep wasn’t on the cards. The mosquito coil had already burned away and it was pitch black in the room. There was a faint shift in the blackness of the room round the edge of the door. I knew I wouldn’t sleep, so I crept out of the bed and carefully opened the creaky door so as not to wake any visitors in the nearby huts.
Once outside, I realised that the shift in light was because the moon was out. It was bright silver, shining high in the night sky and casting a crystal sheen over the water and the trees. I could see remarkably well and walked over to the hammock by the water’s edge. Gently rocking in the swing of my own weight, I rested, letting my ears relax into the sound of the flowing river and looking up at the sky and the many stars that shone there. There were a few clouds, but not many to interrupt the space between me and the great big galaxy in which I began to let my mind rest. Who’s out there, I thought. Who’s up there, watching all this going on? Who’s letting it happen.
A slight breeze picked up and the River Kwai stirred below me. The ripples hit the side of the raft and I felt the hammock move ever so slightly. I looked into the darkness of the river again. Maybe it could give me some answers.
*****
December, 1943,
Hintok Camp, Thailand
We have tried to maintain a sense of order in the camp but disease is making it impossible. The latrines are dug one at a time, since we have neither the labour nor the materials to build more. Even now, it is the sick from the hospital, working in half-hour stretches who have to dig them. It only takes a week for a trench to fill to the brim and become infested with squirming maggots and flies. They fester on the surface six inches deep and swarm over your bare feet and along the wooden slats which we have to squat on. There is excrement everywhere. Many men don't even have the strength to make it through the trees to the latrine and the bushes and undergrowth nearby are squalid. It's not just physical strength that they lack. Many have ceased to care and the resulting filth and stench is overwhelming. That area of the camp is a human pigsty of excrement where the pathways and drainage trenches are filled with the sordid mess. And, now that the monsoon has stopped and the oceans of water that so unrelentingly fell on us simply vanished within days into the earth beneath, we have no water and no way of cleaning ourselves. Self-respect is abandoned and many men are little more than animals.
Survival. We hope for nothing more.
Kanchanaburi, The River Kwai,
Thailand
I must have cried for another hour the night I killed Gecko before finally falling asleep and I didn't wake until twelve hours later, missing the morning meal and sleeping right through until after nine o'clock. I felt drugged on sleep as I heard the clunk of the gate and saw Thanavaro and Amaro through the mosquito screens, walking up the footpath, their robes translucent in the sunshine.
"Morning," beamed Thanavaro. "I wanted to check you were OK. You weren't at the meal."
"I'm fine," I lied. Why do we say that? Too right I’m “fine” – the fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional kind of fine. "I'll make a drink," I said, coldly.
"No worries," said Amaro, as he entered the house. "I’ll do that. You two sit down."
He made it sound like he’d been planning what to say.
"You don't look fine," my brother told me as I slumped into a chair and he arranged himself on the bench opposite. "What's the matter?"
His faced reflected his concern but irritated by questions, I replied,
"I'm just tired, Antony. I didn't sleep well and this place is getting to me. I needed to lie in and catch up on some sleep."
And then, just for a dig, I added, bad-temperedly,
"It hasn't been easy adjusting to all this, you know."
"I know," he offered affectionately. "And I think you've adapted really well.”
He paused, nervously looking at the floor and then said, "Benedict, I really appreciate you coming. It's meant a great deal to me, more than you can imagine.”
I did know it meant a lot to him and I did know that he struggled to convey it but I wasn’t in the mood for making things easy for him so I made no response.
Despite the gentleness in his words, I could feel an unspoken tension in Antony.
"Look,” said Amaro, appearing from the kitchen with forced melodrama. “I’ve brought some of the finest chocolate in the world with me, shipped in all the way from Switzerland by kind donation of one of the novices' parents no less."
But my enthusiasm that morning wasn’t easy to find and I didn’t reply. I was tiring of all this. I was touched at the thoughtfulness of Amaro’s innocent gift but, sensing something going on that I wasn’t quite party to, I felt a tear coming but managed to keep it in check. I played along with the charade and went to root out some caramel rice-sweets I'd bought in the village the other day to go with the strong tea Amaro had made.
When I returned, Amaro had skipped off with his drink and was sitting alone in the garden, his back facing the house. Things suddenly felt very ominous.
"I need to talk to you alone," said Thanavaro, and I could feel the air grow heavy.
Thanavaro glanced over at his friend through the mosquito screen. "Amaro can act as chaperone from outside."
This was sounding serious, so I slurped some more sweetened tea to get a pre-emptive sugar boost. What was it now? What rule have I broken? Who have I offended now?
"Uncle Erno asked you to scatter his ashes, right?" he said, seriously.
I nodded, tentatively.
"He asked you and that's why you came to Thailand, and why you're going to the River Kwai,” Antony continued.
Again I nodded, and added clearly,
"And to find you, so we can scatter the ashes together."
And at that, my brother’s face fell.
I could sense what was coming but I didn't want to hear it and all the sugar in the world couldn't protect me from the final, inevitable body blow that was to send me reeling.
“I can’t handle this on my own, Antony,” I began to insist. “The whole idea of me coming all this way was so that you’d come with me. We arranged it.”
Anxiety was rising in my chest.
“You know this country,” I continued. “I’m a stranger here. You know what to do.”
Antony remained sitting in silence, his head down.
“I can’t do this on my own, Antony. You’re my family. Don’t do this, Antony!”
My heart was pleading. Don’t say what I know you are about to say.
But it was no good. Out it came.
"I can't come with you,” Antony said.
Silence hung for a few moments while I let the information register.
“Can’t or won’t?” I asked angrily, unable to go near the pain.
“Can’t,” he replied.
I didn’t believe him. He was leaving me on my own. Again. Just like he always did. Just like every member of my family always did.
Thanavaro’s voice broke into my void.
"Benedict, . . ."
"I killed Gecko yesterday,” I interrupted.
"Pardon?" he said, caught off-guard.
"I killed Gecko. I squashed his head against the door frame and he's still stuck there, hanging."
My brother looked bewildered, shuffling uneasily in his robe. Amaro was still waiting outside.
"I did it, you see, “ I explained. “I killed him."
"Benedict,"
"Go away, Antony."
He tried to explain his decision.
"I can't come with you because there’s somewhere I need to go,” he said beseeching me, but I didn't want to hear.
"Just go."
"It's important, Benedict!" It was his turn to plead now. "I wouldn't just leave you."
"But you already have, Antony.”
The words punched themselves out of my mouth.
“Don't you see? All of you have. You, Mum, Dad, Uncle Erno. All of you have left me!"
"I can't come, " Antony still insisted, a thin, forlorn figure and I remember thinking how much weight he’d lost recently. “I want to, “ he said. “But I can’t.”
I wasn’t listening.
"Go, Antony,” I said.
He looked at me. “Go. Don't drag it out. Go wherever it is you have to go but leave now."
Antony's head dropped into his hands and he started to sob.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Amaro, listening to every word. He still faced away from the house, his knees pulled up to his chest, his big, brave shoulders hunched over and his face in his hands. I remember now, although at the time it didn’t register, that Amaro too was crying.
I got up, unable to handle the situation and went upstairs, back to my darkened room, back to abandoned dead Gecko and back to bed. As I locked the bedroom door, I shut the world out and blasted my eardrums to pieces. Arctic Monkeys screaming at me. Suede. Trash. Garbage. Stupid, stupid girl.
Don't believe in fear, don't believe in faith.
Don't believe in fucking anything. Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off.
I wouldn’t let Antony in when he knocked on the door. I stayed in my room for hours, refusing to hear him. Demons took me over that night but I fought them away with loud, desperate bursts of the loudest, most desperate music my iPod possessed. I packed my bags in a frenzy of anger, alone after they had left. I didn't say goodbye to them and I left Chatanan early the next morning to catch the bus to Ubon. I was numb. Mae Li helped me carry my bags and she didn’t say a word as we crept away from the monastery. I gave her an old white T-shirt that she could wear and she hugged it to her chest but without any of her usual glee, only a sad, concerned furrow on her once wrinkly twinkly brow.
"You have good heart," she finally said as the bus came into view. "You come back Chatanan."
I tried to smile back. I doubt it Mae Li, I thought. I doubt it. And I climbed aboard.
As the rackety old bus pulled away and with dear old Uncle Erno sitting on the bench beside me, I looked back and watched Mae Li and Chatanan slowly disappear behind a cloud of early morning South-East Asian dust. I didn’t cry. I was fine.
*****
I arrived at the train station in Ubon around six, in time to see the sun rise while the almost-full moon still hung brightly above the roof. I was expecting it to be fairly quiet at that time in the morning but no, it was heaving. People were milling about, buying tickets, buying breakfast at one of the many food stalls that were set up by the tracks or sitting, waiting for the train.
My vague plan was to head for Bangkok and then work out how to get to the River Kwai in a couple of days. So much of me wanted to go straight to the airport to catch the next flight home but the sight of the box with Uncle Erno’s ashes in stopped me. I was here now. I’d got this far. I had to do it.
I was still in shock from feeling so let down by my brother but I knew I wanted to carry out Erno’s wishes. I doubt he’d have minded me going home with him and with hindsight, it may have been a better idea, but my brain wasn’t working well. I was tired, upset and angry beyond belief.
I managed to explain to the man in the ticket office that I needed to go to Bangkok today. There was a group of Thai soldiers waiting with me, swanking along the platform, hovering around their bags, laughing and chatting. I got a fair few stares but they were friendly, unthreatening stares of simple curiosity. One of the soldiers offered me a cigarette. He looked very cute, as they all did in their tight blue cotton uniforms, navy berets and shiny boots and buckles. I nodded a thank you for the cigarette and the soldier offered me a light before leaving me in peace. Sitting on my backpack, I felt like shit. Numb shit.
The train to Bangkok pulled in. I was still operating in a daze and it was only with the help of a kind, middle-aged man who recognised me from the monastery that I was able to sort out where I would be sitting.
He helped me load my bags onto the carriage.
"Sawat di krup," he bowed and gave me a bottle of water before he left.
I stared out of the window as a guard passed me. He waved a flag, and the train groaned into motion, dragging itself out of the station in a cloud of smoke and whistles. I closed my eyes.
Make the world go away.
It took fifteen hours to get to Bangkok. We left the houses and shacks of Ubon behind as our train chugged relentlessly into the countryside, weaving like a man-made, noisy snake through mile after mile of golden rice-fields. A couple of hours into the journey, I spotted two elephants at work in the fields and they stopped and lifted their trunks towards the train as we went past. The transport of Kings, my brother had called them and I shook the memory of him away. I stared at rice-fields for hours. Five solid hours of nothing but rice-fields. The countryside didn't alter except for a gradual shift from the dry, straw-like rice-fields of the north-east to lush, wet paddy fields once we'd got further into the centre of Thailand.
Rice, rice everywhere and not a drop to drink.
The scenery became far greener as we came south. Palm trees and sugar cane was now the backdrop to my view and I could taste the moisture in the air and began to feel it lying heavy on my lungs. The Isaan had been far more arid and its heat sharp. The mass of giant, water-rich leaves and groves, which I now saw, were a vivid contrast to the sparse, thirsty twigs and shrubs I'd grown accustomed to.
Closer to Bangkok, we passed an enormous, golden Buddha as big as a church sitting in one of the fields, miles from anything. It was squat and solid, an incongruous, ostentatious emblem of the country's devotion to its faith. A faith I was struggling not to resent.
My travelling companion for most of the journey had been a fat, friendly looking young man who sat on the seat opposite. He didn't say a word throughout the whole trip. While I munched, drank, read and listened to my music, he sat calmly and upright, a gentle contented smile on his face, sitting and waiting. At first I thought he was a bit odd, the inevitable railway-carriage weirdo, but no, he was simply doing what most Thais do and what very few Brits can do. Sit and wait for fifteen hours. The only movement he made was a couple of times to have a drink and to buy a fresh curry and piece of grilled chicken offered by one of the food sellers who boarded the train at each station.
The train shuffled and shunted its way noisily through the outskirts of Bangkok towards the central station. Gone were the rich, lush forest vistas of the last few hours. Gone were the luminous lagoons and the bountiful paddy fields. Here was filthy, dirty, stinky, noisy, wonderful, alive Bangkok. Chatanan could have been on another planet for all I cared.
Funny though, how life has a way of reminding you of the things you most want to forget. While I was flicking through the guide book deciding where to stay, a dried pressed Bodhi leaf which Antony had given me, fell out. It was such a perfect shape and I had to force myself to forget how he'd given it to me one day while we were walking near the Outside Sala. The monastery’s Bodhi tree, he told me, sat in a corner, protectively over-looking the Sala. The story went that it was under such a tree that the Buddha was enlightened and so, every Buddhist monastery planted its own Bodhi tree. The heart-like leaf that Antony gave to me had a small hole in it and I screwed it up, the leaf disintegrating in my fist and threw it out of the window to be swallowed up by the noise, dirt and activity of the busy Bangkok street. I needed to leave Antony behind, in Chatanan, not bring him here. The hole in my heart would just have to remain there.
Bangkok felt familiar even though I'd been here for one night only but I knew I could now put The Isaan and Chatanan behind me and get on with the job in hand. A couple of nights here and then on to the River Kwai. I'd be OK on my own, I convinced myself. I'd always managed on my own before, somehow coping without my family but now, the resentment began to weigh heavily.
"Awright with that, love?" said a whining voice ahead of me, shocking me back to the here and now.
The taxi I’d taken from the station dropped me off at the steps of the New Samui Guest House and I was trying to drag my big fat rucksack and the bag with Uncle Erno in it, up the steep flight. It was a sticky, sweaty night and despite sleeping a little on the train, I was almost beside myself with fatigue.
"Need a hand, love?" came the voice again.
Oh for Chrissakes! What does it bloody look like?
"Yes please. If you're free," is what I actually said.
"Free to you, love, charge anyone else," and he laughed, tickled by his own, corny humour. He helped me up the steps, a short, sweaty, sticky man with flattened greasy hair scraped back across a bald patch. His glasses were thick-rimmed black plastic and he wore cream slacks and a red fake Lacoste T-shirt. Overall, he resembled a wet fish in fake designer clothing.
"No problem, darlin'. There you go. You staying 'ere, then? Been 'ere long, have we?"
"Just got here. I need a room."
"Ooo, darlin'! Lucky to find a room this late. You can always share mine!" Again, the self-congratulatory laugh, until he saw my face. "Only a joke, love. Only a joke."
I wondered what this fella's wet greasy head would look like once he'd been slapped round the gills a few times.
He hovered while I checked in and found that there were plenty of rooms available and I had to be quite insistent about not having him help me to my room with my bags. I made two journeys instead, and managed to give him the slip.
My room was very clean and had a fan and shutters over the tall window, which overlooked the lower roofs of the adjoining buildings. It sounded as if there was a working kitchen or a restaurant down there, spoons scraping against metal bowls, pans being thrown on a hot flame, a heavy chopper hitting a wooden board with a decisive thud. So this was it. Backpacker land. I had friends who dreamt of being here. It was their idea of paradise. It was the last place on earth I wanted to be at that moment. I was operating on auto-pilot, emotionally depleted. I was so tired that I didn't even make it to the bathroom to clean my teeth or have a pee.
I had weird dreams that night. Dreams of trying to evade a never-ending flow of cockroaches which were swarming over the bed like a blanket of brittle black treacle and following me as ran out of the door and down the corridor.
I woke early and weary, around six, got up and went in search of breakfast. There was a stall round the corner of the street and I bought some fried rice cakes and a drink. Opposite, there was a small entrance leading down to the river and it drew me down. Familiarity in a faraway land. The quay had hastily laid wooden planks for a walkway and I followed this through to a turnstile where I paid six baht to enter. I was standing on the edge of the Chao Phraya River, which flowed through the centre of Bangkok. On the train, I'd read about the Chao Phraya Express, a river-bus that ran the length of the river. The platform was already full of be-suited commuters on their way to work, briefcases in hand. It was like catching The Tube in London, everyone cramming themselves in and rushing to get a seat. I simply got carried along with the crush and found myself hanging on for dear life as the whistles screeched to let the ferryman know everyone was on. The engines splashed into life and we heaved away, onto the river.
Didn’t know where I was going. I just needed to be near the flow of a river again to try and find a rhythm to my disturbed life.
After a couple of stops I got a seat and was able to watch the river-life of Bangkok. Two monks sat in front of me, their backs to me as they looked out silently over the river. I had to work hard at throwing away the memories of the morning I’d spent with my brother on the Mekong. That blissful, special morning.
I swallowed my tears, refusing to let them be born.
The stretch of water we were on was a giant, six-lane free-for-all of barges, ferries, tankers and small wooden, two-person speeders with a driver at the rear steering a route through the waterway and a smartly dressed customer sitting at the front. The barges were deathly looking bruisers, black, flat, square-fronted platforms which took on all-comers and very often we had to wait for ten minutes to let one of these unstoppable dinosaurs past. It was as if the whole river came to a halt and held its breath while one of these creatures slid by silently and the rest us were scared to move and wake it in case it turned into a fiery dragon. Once it had gone, the speedboats sped again and the ferry fired up its engine, straining to be let loose again on the open water.
I was happy to watch the life of the river but it didn’t feed me, didn’t nurture me like at home. It was too busy, too exciting, too much.
We cut under a bridge and the mood of the river changed yet again, but I couldn’t change with it. Ahead, about another mile and spreading like a giant spider's web spun dramatically across the sky, was the Rama IX Bridge, the longest of its kind in the world. I’d never seen anything so big. Two awesome new-age skyscrapers, fifty, sixty floors high, sit at either end of the bridge, one walled in blue glass, its upper floors sloping off to an angle, creating a diamond which reached upwards towards a thin mast which pricked the apex. It reminded me of something invented from Lego only it was real and hundreds of feet high.
I could hear the warm buzz of the traffic overhead as I craned my neck to see the enormous slabs of engineering sliding by. The water swirled around the pillars, lashing against the new concrete and I wondered just how long it would be before it began to grind away the stone and take the legs from under this man-made mountain.
I closed my eyes for the return trip and let my face rest in the warm sun. When we reached the stop where I’d got on, I watched as we came to a slow halt amid a screech of whistles from the man on the quayside and lots of loud, sputtered manoeuvring. No one tied the boat off, it just waited there, precariously on the choppy water, straining at the leash to be let go again.
There was a crowd of people waiting to get off and a crowd of people waiting to get on. As soon as the boat got within striking distance of the quay, everyone pushed forward and the two sets of waiting people met in the middle. It was difficult to get on or off and at one point I thought I wasn’t going to make it and would get stuck on the boat while it set off for the next stop. I gave one final push forward and leapt on to the quay. As I gathered my bag to me and made my way through the melee of oncoming passengers, I saw her, the woman who I’d seen when I first arrived in Thailand. Bangkok Airport Woman.
She didn’t turn my way and I watched, as she got on the express, alone. My eyes followed her as she dipped her head to avoid hitting it on the roof of the doorway and made her way to find a seat. Just as the boat fired up its engines and the whistles began to sound again, she glanced up at the quay. She saw me. It took a while for her eyes to register and I thought she hadn’t remembered. But, as I took my sunglasses off, she smiled at me.
I could have got back on the boat at that point. I could have, but I didn’t. Instead, the boat pulled out and Bangkok Airport Woman, like everyone else in my life, was gone. That was it. My James Blunt moment.
I saw your face in a crowed place but I have to face the truth.
I had a beer at a street-side cafe and thought of writing home. What on earth would I tell them? I imagined some of them might be a bit concerned that they hadn't heard from me but what would I say?
“Having a wonderful time. Bastard brother left me again. Going to throw Uncle Erno into the river alone. Wish you were here.”
I thought of Joe and how he had picked me up out of the river that time. I wished that his strong arms were around me now, lifting me up and keeping me out of harms way.
I spent a difficult second night in the New Samui Guest House. It was hot and noisy. Fish Features came to annoy me while I was watching the TV in the reception area so I left, and went to my room. I could hear the other travellers coming and going, sounding like they were having a fun time.
I thought of Gecko, and wondered if Mae Li had found him later as she was cleaning up. I thought of Mae Li sitting round the fire in the darkness, waiting for her husband to come home. I thought of the grey haired lady in the kitchen, of Christopher and Susan, and I thought of Amaro and Tikaro.
I tried not to think of my brother. I tried with all my heart not to think of him and not to let the anger and hurt find me. I tossed and turned on the bed. I shouted out loud and I thumped the mattress with my fist but he still got through to my head. I still saw his bald, thin face and brown mole, his orange robe and bare feet, and his thin wrists and bony hands.
What was it he hadn’t said to me? What was it that could possibly keep him from coming with me? I didn’t understand. What did he have to do that was so important? More important than me. I remembered him telling me. “I can’t go with you,” he’d said and I knew he’d wanted to say something else, but I’d stopped him. I wondered if I’d ever know what it was he’d wanted to tell me.
I cried then, like a child. A motherless child, a long, long way from home.
*****
December, 1943,
Hintok Camp, Thailand.
I managed to bury Arthur. In a frenzy of numbed madness I took him into the jungle in the darkness of night and collapsed asleep on the grave when I had finished. The Doc gave me three days in the hospital afterwards and it has revived me to a state where survival is possible again. I went back to the grave and marked it, making a mental note of its location, how many yards from the camp, how close to the cliff which edges on to the valley. When all this is over, I'll be back for him. I can't leave him abandoned forever in this forgotten hellhole. Beriberi is now taking us and dysentery has led to such a lack of hygiene.
This is the third week we have been at Hintok. Of my party, fifty have died in those three weeks, we have one hundred and fifty in hospital and only fifty are left working. The Nips have reduced the food given to the men in the hospital so that they can give more food to the working men. It is still barely enough to keep us going and every grain of rice we eat, we know a dying man goes without. I am convinced that the doctors are sending the sicker men to work, knowing that they will die anyway, and sending those with a better chance of survival to hospital. Every morning, broken men stumble to work knowing for certain that it will kill them, if not that day, then the next. Survival has been reduced to such choices and life has sunk to depths unthinkable, yet again.
I struggle to write these pages on scraps of paper stolen by the Australians. But I know I must. If I do not write this, no one will believe these events, but please, I beg, don't let Muriel see this. She doesn't need to know.
*****
December,
The River Kwai,
Thailand
Kanchanaburi, the town where the bridge over the River Kwai is located, lies a hundred and sixty kilometres from Bangkok. It took two and a half hours to get there and cost eighty pence. The train journey was unremarkable apart from two very cute children who were travelling with their mother and started playing peek-a-boo with me from behind the back of the wooden seat opposite. A small brother and sister, I got the inevitable, "Hello Miss," and, "I love you!” followed by enormous grins and added to which the boy threw in, "Manchester United!”
They offered me some chewing gum so I swapped it for some biscuits I'd bought at the station. The children got off after a few stops and I sat alone watching the Thailand countryside trundle past.
Arriving in Kanchanaburi, it was like any other town in Thailand. Rough and ready, dusty and dirty. It reminded me of Ubon only greener. The monsoon, now over for this year, ends later here. The station was quite a way from the main road through the town and I struggled as I carried my bags. There were a few other people who got off at Kanchanaburi, mainly Thais and a couple of other backpackers. It was a long, hot walk into town, far further than I thought from the map I'd picked up at the station. Thai maps, I’d learnt, weren’t high on accuracy or scale and what appeared to be a few meters ended up being a few miles. It was around five in the evening and very humid and I knew that in about an hour or so the sun would disappear and daylight would be lost. I was worried I would be too.
My backpack and Uncle Erno were getting increasingly heavier as my energy waned and I reached the end of the street. The sun was sinking fast and I was getting very worried about where I would stay. All the hostels were full, I didn't know where to start looking for a hotel if I had to resort to that and I didn't have much spare cash on me to be able to afford one anyway.
I sat on my rucksack and in the fading light and looked at my useless map. It indicated a large road joining this one at the point where I was, but all I could see was a dusty, dirt track to my right, disappearing around a curve and with no street lighting to guide my way. It also indicated that there was a guest house down there but it looked so dark and desolate that I didn't trust what the map told me. My other option was to go back the way I came but there were no Tuk-Tuks or taxis around and I was so tired that I knew I would struggle to walk the mile and half I'd just come.
My optimism faded fast and I felt like crying. I was lost, it was getting dark, I had nowhere to stay and I could feel tears pricking my eyes. How had life turned out like this? How had I got here? A few weeks ago, life had been simple, nothing more exciting than floating up and down a river in York and getting pissed occasionally. It had been a bit boring sometimes but safe. I’d had no greater problems to sort out than Molly’s dodgy teeth or my leaking radiators and the nearest I’d got to thinking about going abroad this year had been to look at a few brochures on Prague and few fewer on Italy. You had a lot to answer for, Uncle Erno, sending me out here on your last errand. You didn’t mention I’d end up here, on the other side of the world, on my own, in the bloody dark with nowhere to stay for the night.
I felt a pang of deja vu as I remembered being with my brother up at Poo Jom Petch, a memory I struggled to let go.
I looked at the bag with Uncle Erno it.
Cheers, mate, I told it sarcastically.
"Don't give in, Benedict," a quirkily familiar voice said, shocking me to alertness.
I spun round on my bag to see who was there. No one. The road was empty.
"Trust in yourself,” I heard it say again.
I thought I’d finally begun to go mad. I was sure it was Uncle Erno talking to me in his half-Yorkshire, half-Lancashire accent.
In a dazed, sub-conscious, half-mad blur, I picked up my bags and headed down the dirt-track. Just after the bend in the road, there was a hand-painted sign nailed to a tree, saying 'Guesthouse'. It looked more like someone's back yard than a guesthouse. Then a short, smiling, middle-aged Thai man appeared wearing a T-shirt and sarong, and he greeted me with open arms and a gentle face.
"Hello, Miss," he said. "You look very tired. I take your bag for you. Come, you rest, take your time, I show you room."
He led me past a wooden building which, on the side hidden from the road, had a large balcony tucked away and in which were three or four western travellers, sitting on cushions on the floor and eating or drinking from low, wooden tables. The path ran alongside the edge of the balcony and down a steep set of open slatted steps which bridged a channel of water and led to a series of bamboo huts built close together.
I followed him round the edge of one hut. I couldn't believe my eyes when we turned the corner. The amazing, stunning River Kwai burst into view two feet in front of me. I had no idea it had been so close and had been running parallel to the long road I'd just walked down. The huts sat on rafts on the river, water lapping a few inches below my feet and splashing against the stilts which moored the rafts in place. There was an empty hammock swaying between two wooden posts in front of the room the man showed me. In the room was a double bed with a decent mattress and a mosquito net draped overhead. Three other rooms shared the raft.
The sun was beginning to set on the opposite bank across the dark, wide river and I knew without a doubt that I'd come home.
"You rest, Miss, take your time, pay tomorrow," and before my angel disappeared, he placed my bags next to the bed, explained where the shower room was, told me the price was fifty baht a night and gave me the key.
I spent my first evening on the River Kwai relaxing in a hammock, listening to the hum and whistle of the insects and watching a magical, golden-red sunset spread over the horizon, turning the water into liquid fire and melting my fears into oblivion.
God bless you, Uncle Erno.
*****
I slept well, surrounded by acres of muslin suspended from four corners and hanging down in a tent over my wooden bed, protecting me from the many mosquitoes. The remnants of a mosquito repelling spiral coil that my Thai host had given me and which I'd burnt overnight lay collapsed in a forlorn little heap next to Uncle Erno, a pretty pattern of ash waiting to disappear in the morning breeze.
My room was still dark, with just a chink of morning light poking in through gaps but as I opened the door, the view swept in, filling the room with the magic of the river. It was still here. The River Kwai. In the bright, silent light of the Thailand morning, the water still flowed swiftly and strongly and the lush green forest on the far bank was today vibrant and clear whereas the evening before it had been a dark mass, sitting in a long, heavy strip on the horizon.
A wooden boat buzzed past on its way up river where there was a long sweeping curve, which swallowed the boat, hiding its progress from view. Down river, about a mile away, I could see the main part of Kanchanaburi, far more urban and built-up than I'd envisaged. Where I was staying was a grass village compared with the hotels, concrete and traffic down stream.
The River Kwai wasn’t as wide as the Mekong, but it was strong, calm and powerful and flowed with a timelessness that brought solace to my aching soul. It began to put a slow rhythm back into my aching heart.
It was already hot by the time I set off to find the bridge. I wanted to see where it was located and get my bearings before deciding when to scatter Erno’s ashes. I hired a mountain bike and set off down the road I’d walked the previous evening, through the edge of the town and out into dusty country road.
After a couple of miles, I came across some smart hotels and about a dozen cafes, drinks sellers and gift shops. The road met a railway crossing where it took a right hand corner and followed the tracks, running in parallel alongside. Still no sign of any bridge. The railway crossing had been pedestrianized so I stopped and looked around.
I nearly missed the bridge. It sat tucked away to my left, a series of black metal arches set on solid pillars of stone neatly stretched over the river which flowed unseen a few meters below the railway line. The blackness of the bridge camouflaged it against the forest, the trees diminishing the impact of this man-made construction and it was only the few people walking across it in their brightly coloured T-shirts that helped it to stand out.
This was it, the Bridge Over the River Kwai.
I fleetingly thought of Mr Hollingsworth, my solicitor and corrected myself. On. The Bridge On the River Kwai.
I locked the bike and walked up to the railway line towards the bridge. It was single track, built on heavy wooden sleepers with smooth, weather-worn planks of wood running parallel inside the rails. It swept over the bridge between the iron arcs, each not more than ten feet high and held together with giant rivets like a child’s giant Meccano construction. It was eerie. Despite its history, there was a very strange peace about it and a deep sense of human experience was almost tangible. I could almost feel the bare feet that had walked these wooden sleepers and I could feel the bare hands that had worked them into place.
Uncle Erno had been here. An Uncle Erno I didn’t know.
My guidebook described the bridge as “not very impressive”, a description bordering on insult. The bridge had an air of respectful solitude, standing alone and to me, it was impressive. Looking down the track, which passed through the metal gateway into the depths of the jungle beyond, I was moved and I'm sure it was the presence of death that touched me. I stared between the sleepers at the river flowing underneath, and then carefully picked a route between the rails, avoiding the many Japanese tourists who had descended from a tour bus that had pulled up close by. They were posing for photos. Surreal tourist shots of a monument built by slaves slaughtered at the hands of their forebears.
I walked to the centre of the bridge and leant over the rails, looking upstream. It was so stunning here, so incredibly tranquil. Hard to believe that this stretch of water now running beneath my safe feet once ran red with the blood of torn corpses.
Two Buddhist monks were walking towards me, the soft material of their robes glowing bright in the sunshine making the colour stand out dramatically against the blackness of the iron. Their presence added extra serenity to the scene as they silently passed over the bridge, but it churned up unwelcome feelings inside me and I felt anger towards them for choosing this moment to remind me that my brother wasn’t here with me. He’d chosen the call of that bloody robe instead.
I couldn't tell if the monks were from a local monastery or if they had just stepped off a sightseeing bus too. Again I thought of Poo Jom Petch, and of catching Tikaro and my brother that morning. It was such a strange setting for two men in sacred cloth to be found arguing, that haven on a hillside. I never had got a chance to ask Antony what it had been about and I now wondered if I’d ever find out. My mind came back to the River Kwai as the sound of the river under my feet once again began to register.
And the story is told of a river that flowed, made me sad to think it was dead.
By band from America, called ‘America’. I loved that old song. I used to sing it with my brother all the time as we dreamt of Highway One and the Golden Gate. Good job the band hadn’t come from a place called Poo, I thought and as I began to smile to myself, my brief taste of frivolity was brutally measured by a sad vision of happier times, special moments with my brother that had been shattered.
*****
I arrived back at my raft hut after lunch, crashed onto the bed and after an hour’s snooze, sat and watched the sun’s glow over the river through the open door. I read a little and enjoyed the peacefulness of the setting. The water oozed by, turning from a fiery red to infinite black as the sun dropped behind the trees and finally disappeared altogether. It seemed to last longer than the sunsets at Chatanan. Maybe it was the countryside, maybe it was the clouds. Who knows.
Later, lying in the hammock, watching darkness, I remembered an evening at Chatanan, just before sunset. It was shortly before I left and I’d had a day alone, mooching, washing with Mae Li and cleaning the guest villa. We’d arranged no tea that day and I hadn’t seen my brother as he’d told me he’d be away.
I took a walk on the familiar route, following the path round the walls of the monastery. I’d brought my torch with me as I knew that once the sun had disappeared, there’d be no light to guide me back. I was coming round the curve in the road where, just ahead, was the shed that housed the old 1938 Harley. I was still some distance away. Light was beginning to fade rapidly and as I got closer, I realised that there was someone inside the shed. Christopher, I thought. I crept up.
What I hadn’t expected was to find Antony.
He hadn’t heard me approach and I watched him in the dim light from through the door. He didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular. All he did was walk slowly down the length of the bike, trailing his finger along the handlebars, over the tank and across the seat. He looked deep in thought as he gazed at the bike, as if lost in a memory, in a place all his own. When he reached the seat, he stopped. He stood, not moving for about five minutes. I barely breathed, afraid I’d break the magic spell of the moment he had created for himself.
I didn’t let him know I was there. I just watched. Tikaro had talked about how riding the Harley had been too good and how it had made him restless, made him consider his future at the monastery. Was that going on for my brother, too? Was that what they were talking about the night they’d spent sitting until two in the morning outside the Guest House? Maybe the Abbot had persuaded him to stay at Wat Pah Chatanan rather than come with me to keep him from disrobing?
It all churned over in my head as I lay watching the light fade over the River Kwai. I remembered how I’d hidden by the side of the shed when eventually Antony made to leave. Darkness had descended and it hid me completely as I heard him close the door and watched as he walked back towards the monastery, the small beam of his Maglite showing him a route and its light catching the orange edges of his robe. A silent shadow, walking away from me.
I woke at around two, restless. A full night’s sleep wasn’t on the cards. The mosquito coil had already burned away and it was pitch black in the room. There was a faint shift in the blackness of the room round the edge of the door. I knew I wouldn’t sleep, so I crept out of the bed and carefully opened the creaky door so as not to wake any visitors in the nearby huts.
Once outside, I realised that the shift in light was because the moon was out. It was bright silver, shining high in the night sky and casting a crystal sheen over the water and the trees. I could see remarkably well and walked over to the hammock by the water’s edge. Gently rocking in the swing of my own weight, I rested, letting my ears relax into the sound of the flowing river and looking up at the sky and the many stars that shone there. There were a few clouds, but not many to interrupt the space between me and the great big galaxy in which I began to let my mind rest. Who’s out there, I thought. Who’s up there, watching all this going on? Who’s letting it happen.
A slight breeze picked up and the River Kwai stirred below me. The ripples hit the side of the raft and I felt the hammock move ever so slightly. I looked into the darkness of the river again. Maybe it could give me some answers.
*****
December, 1943,
Hintok Camp, Thailand
We have tried to maintain a sense of order in the camp but disease is making it impossible. The latrines are dug one at a time, since we have neither the labour nor the materials to build more. Even now, it is the sick from the hospital, working in half-hour stretches who have to dig them. It only takes a week for a trench to fill to the brim and become infested with squirming maggots and flies. They fester on the surface six inches deep and swarm over your bare feet and along the wooden slats which we have to squat on. There is excrement everywhere. Many men don't even have the strength to make it through the trees to the latrine and the bushes and undergrowth nearby are squalid. It's not just physical strength that they lack. Many have ceased to care and the resulting filth and stench is overwhelming. That area of the camp is a human pigsty of excrement where the pathways and drainage trenches are filled with the sordid mess. And, now that the monsoon has stopped and the oceans of water that so unrelentingly fell on us simply vanished within days into the earth beneath, we have no water and no way of cleaning ourselves. Self-respect is abandoned and many men are little more than animals.
Survival. We hope for nothing more.
posted by tricia walker at 3:43 AM
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