The foamy storm waters carry clumps of weeds and water hyacinth that tumble, rotate and tangle in the sea-bent surge. The northern highlands flush south, causing the muddy runoff of unseen fields to soak the Central Plains. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the boundaries between land and water begin to blur. Even as the skies clear, without nary a cloud in sight, the flood continues to crest, a deferred reaction to the downpour of the day before. Puddles swell into shallow ponds, swollen canals overflow their banks and low-lying roads are rendered into shallow waterways.
Upset enough not to realize quite how upset he was, John had stumbled away from the roadside drinking stand, telling Sombat he’d see him back at the house. Then he started to wander. Desirous of putting some distance between himself and his own melancholy train of thought, he decided not to head home but instead walked all the way to the river.
As he rests his legs, leaning heavily against the railing of the bridge, a baleful tune wafts over the water, lifted by a musty breeze. The music hails from a riverside beer garden set under an array of twinkling colored lights and a canopy of coconut fronds. A sequined singer can be seen regaling the mostly empty tables with breezy aplomb. She is not without talent, nor easily discouraged, for she moves from one number to the next without waiting for applause--indeed there is none--but her voice travels clear across the water and she carries on, as if warbling to the river were enough.
Backed by a laconic keyboard player, her sad, lovelorn tunes are warped and distorted by the echo of a reverb microphone. There is something soulful in her vocal exertions, even if no one is listening, especially because no one is listening. John doesn’t recognize any of the melodies by name, but the convoluted air of the country ballads stirs something within his soul, speaking to something locked deep within, reminding him of the folly of his youthful forays in the countryside. Mental discipline weakened by fatigue, fortitude eroded by drink, his need to keep the past at bay was being challenged by the siren call of the night. Hearing yet another sad Isan song lamenting lost love was almost enough to bring him to his knees.
He no longer could pretend that bygones were bygones, nor could he effectively chalk it off to the callowness of youth and inexperience. He was becoming obsessed with the very thing he had been tried so long not to think about.
Lost between the irretrievable flow of the past and the unknown course of incoming currents, he stood at an impasse. If his present existence should come to an abrupt end, would anyone notice? Would anyone care? The reckless taxi drivers careening over the bridge motorway wouldn’t see a thing, and if those drunken fishermen up ahead on the bridge, dangling their lines from the rail were to notice anything at all, it would be too little, too late; an unseen splash in the dark.
The groan of tugboat plowing the water below rudely diverts him from his dark musings. The tug’s powerful engine sputters and wheezes as it churns the choppy water and, then, whoosh!--all of a sudden a whale-sized barge emerges from underneath the bridge, gliding at a steady clip. The barge is linked to the now distant, seemingly solitary tug by an unseen length of submerged cable. Another ark-like barge follows, and then another in train, placidly passing downstream in the wake of the tug.
The cargo in the hold of the barges looks to be sand, probably from dredging work upriver, but it imparts to the string of heavily laden craft the look of floating islands. There’s a half-naked man napping comfortably on one of the drifting dunes, oblivious to the wash of waves lapping the edge of his low-riding ark. If John jumped at the right instant he could land squarely on the moist, absorbent sand and sail away into the night until the barge reached the sea.
Downstream, the wiry sinews of the new suspension bridge glow like the strings of a high-tension harp strung across the dark waters. Another tug sounds its horn and soon another ensemble of barges follows in the wake of the first.
Wondering about the time, John glances at his bare wrist—forgetting he left his watch at home. He straightens up resumes his doleful march, as unsure of his destination as he was of the unknown hour. It was by no means early, but given the steady flow of traffic it wasn’t that late yet, either. As he plods across the bridge, wet wheels lick the pavement, whining automotive motors whip by his ears and now and then he is hit with the shockwave of a heavy truck hurtling by. Blinded by the oncoming traffic he cups his eyes to cut the glare of the bouncing headlights.
A short distance ahead, the footpath is blocked by a group of men fishing from the side of the bridge. The sight of grimy, downtrodden men, whiskered and going gray, sitting on their haunches, hunkered down sipping whiskey on the soot-stained curb just inches from the flow of hot, heavy traffic was far from unusual in a city where man and motor lived in tight proximity. But there’s a young woman in their midst, sassy, bright and fresh, and that’s unexpected. It’s hard to tell who’s teasing who but the banter is playful as the men hold their bottles aloft and press her to join them in drink. The fishermen seem to be testing their luck with her in the same resigned, but not entirely unhopeful spirit that animates them to dangle homespun fishing lines from the railing, hoping for a bite from below.
The pretty girl is not partaking, but she’s not walking away, either. Instead she’s giving them some lip, engaged in some kind of saucy repartee. She’s casually dressed and sort of sexy; her red halter-top exposes bare shoulders and a generous expanse of belly and her short denim shorts reveal comely thighs. But what’s more, there’s something musical in her movement, even as she gives the men an earful. Her limbs flex with sinuous energy, her hips sway as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other.
Pooh-ying.The female essence.
While pointedly refusing the repeated offer of an outstretched bottle, she seems otherwise unfazed by the coarse enthusiasm of her admirers. Illuminated by passing headlights, she looks elfin and puck-like, almost cartoonish. She has high, broad cheekbones and a button nose; her hair is bobbed and tinted with golden streaks.
So--what’s her story? A sassy passerby? What was she to these men? A relative? A niece? A neighbor? A proposition?
Bangkok life was tightly circumscribed for females; John’s abortive courtship with the cosseted daughter of a quasi-aristocratic clan had taught him that much, and, based on his own sorry-ass experience, he felt pity for poor girls who wanted to make good but were hemmed in by all kinds of rules and prohibitions. Social conventions being what they were, the “good people” of Bangkok—the lovely, infuriating Joy immediately comes to mind--would be appalled at the sight of a young woman loitering on a bridge around midnight. She would dismiss the girl as hardcore--probably a hooker, probably hooked on drugs--or, in the compounded misfortune that befell those not in good graces of good society, all of the above.
As John draws near, he slows his pace, desperately trying to dampen the squeak of his wet sneakers. He’s amazed he hasn’t been noticed yet, but his eventual exposure is inevitable. Feigning disinterest, he plows straight ahead, braced for the inevitable quip or comment that will greet him upon passing.
Hands in the pockets of his jeans, head down, he is startled when the girl he had been studying from afar leaps in front of him and makes a show of blocking his way. Even as he tries to pass her she anticipates his every awkward move, a shift to the left, a step to the right, effectively halting him on the spot. The fishermen, situated a short distance ahead, bellow with conspiratorial delight, their exhalations steeped in the odor of cheap booze.
His tormentor flashes a sassy smile; he smiles meekly back. Lit by the flicker of passing headlights, the standoff fuels a renewed round of cackles.
Had she seen him coming all along? Was it some kind of set-up?
Flummoxed, John quietly signals his intent to continue on his way, and she makes no further effort to stop him. He gingerly steps around her fine, perfumed body and begins to edge past the plastic buckets, bait and tangles of fishing line that clog the path.
But no sooner does he move past the gaping fishermen, seeking to slip away without further incident, than he can see out of the corner of his eye that she is trailing him, mimicking his heavy gait, moving her arms apelike as he swings his arms, following him like a slightly out-of-synch shadow.
What now? He stops, turns and confronts her, returning the impish attention, forcing a smile to show he gets the joke. Her put-on pout quickly gives way to a series of coquettish blinks and a knowing smirk.
A long moment of silence ensues.
Then someone cracks a joke in dialect and the men erupt into muffled laughter. John doesn’t get it, but he requires no translation. The joke’s on him, he’s a walking, talking punch line.
An odd moment of reckoning presents itself. A few minutes before he had felt invisible and alone, but he wasn’t feeling invisible anymore. Just alone.
If there’s an odd man out, it’s him, not her; he’s the stranger loping across her bridge, he’s the interloper in her land.
He continues on his way. As someone who had the custom of walking wherever his fancy took him, he knew the first rule of dealing with strangers in the night was to be aware, but not unduly defensive, to protect oneself pro-actively, without provocation, and if challenged, to show no fear.
As the late night traffic whistles by and the choppy Chao Phraya continues to roll towards the sea, John is further jarred by a nagging sense of déjà vu. He is overcome with the distinct sense that the girl who got in his way was no stranger, utterly strange as that might seem. Every step he took away from felt increasingly leaden and regrettable, as if he were going in the wrong direction.
After forcing himself to cross the entire span of the bridge, he finds himself on the Thonburi side of the river with no particular reason for being there. Impulsively he decides to double back. He retraces his steps, as if to challenge those who teased him, as if to show he had no fear, as if to prove the point that he could walk pretty much anywhere he pleased.
The men take note of his approach with a look of alarm, while the girl registers his reappearance with silent astonishment. She lets him pass by with nothing more than an impertinent gaze.
If he was going to talk to her it was no or never. But he couldn’t think of anything to say. The kind of line that worked so well in high-end bars, “Hello, haven’t we met somewhere before? What’s your name again?”
But he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pickup lines that worked wonders at hi-society dos and posh poolside parties were useless on a rusty old bridge with noisy traffic careering by. Polite small talk was doomed to ring false and fall flat in the forlorn, hard-boiled world of the Bangkok street.
Perhaps he could ask her directions, or at least maybe ask the time. Unable to contain his curiosity, he pauses, and puts his foot up on the bar of the railing, pretending to tie a loose shoelace, but what he really wants to do is get a better look at her.
There she is, drolly watching him tie his shoes, looking pert, looking pretty.
“Fa-rang!” she calls out. She says it slow, she says it sweet, blowing air through her upper teeth onto her lower lip before release. The tone goes from midrange to low. It starts out forceful, but drops to a low whisper on the second syllable.
What the? Farang is not a friendly greeting. In fact it’s not a greeting at all. Were it not for her follow-up grin, he might construe it an insult.
He was hungry to communicate with her and she seemed to sense it. So, why the F word of all words? Fa-rang. White man? Is that all she saw? Is that all she wanted to see? A stereotype. A race apart. A red-faced foreign clown. A tacky tourist? Fluffy?
Fluffy. That’s what Joy called him. She said his long auburn locks had the kind of body and wave that girls were jealous of. Even after all these years, especially after all these years, he wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or not.
While it made him wince to be singled out on the basis of race by a sweet young thing he was feeling a flicker of interest in, he was sufficiently versed in Thai behavior to know it was not necessarily a barb, just a casual, semi-comical way of putting him in his place. To bring attention to another’s otherness was not taboo, Thais did it all the time, but it did tend to enforce pre-existing distinctions. A time-tested way of naming the unknown. A verbal joust to keep the other at arm’s length.
We-are-Thai-and-you-are-not.
What else might she see in his sad, sunburned face? Did she not detect a slightly drunken gait as he passed by? Did his slouch and nascent paunch and sloppy attire scream ‘sex tourist’? If the ignorant little rag girl chose to hurl the white word at him he could hardly blame her: he fit it to a T!
Had he not been caught unawares, he might have gently upbraided her—a farang does not like to be called farang even though farang get called farang all the time.
It irked him, not because it wasn’t on some level true, but because he didn’t like the way he responded to it. By taking umbrage each time the word was uttered, he gave license to total strangers, even idiots, even kids, to single him out and lance his self-esteem with a careless word crafted to keep him apart. Okay, he was a whitey, after all, wasn’t he? He was a farang, a Frank, a putative Frenchman of European descent, and, more technically speaking, he was Caucasian, but wasn’t that as trivial as it was obvious?
Unable to formulate a proper response, he shoots her a gaze but blinks.
She blinks back.
He smiles tentatively.
She beams back.
Her face lights up when their eyes at last meet, as if it were all very amusing, as if she is pleased to see that her little arrow had hit its mark. She purses her lips and blows him a kiss.
At last he recovers enough composure to offer a formulaic “Sawat-dee.” It rolls off his lips easily enough, but with that stiff, formal greeting expended, he is flat out of things to say.
Her eyes continue to twinkle with mischief. Unsure of himself, he nods sheepishly, indicating he needs to get on his way. She looks at him intently, almost pleadingly. Even after he turns his back on her, the latent heat of her attention lingers.
He continues back across the bridge, plodding heavily, putting the encounter in the past tense. It was not as if they hadn’t communicated at all; there was an exchange of eye talk that cut through the thicket, something in the mutual smiles that went well beyond words. In the uneasy silence of the silly face-off, each had gotten a glimpse of something in the other that was receptive, decent, almost tender.
John continues to plod towards the exit ramp on the Bangkok side of the bridge, wondering about his ability to read people. Had the girl been trying to pick him up or put him down?
If only he had the guts to turn around, to chat her up, to swoop her up in his arms and take her home. It’s almost like he was stuck on her, snagged in an invisible web, bound by something unseen, a nascent spiritual net. Or was he just drunk, punch-tired and not thinking clearly, letting his lust do the talking?
He passes the ornate Chinese temple that sits smack on the sloshing bank of the river. The tiled structure is a riot of eclectic design, riotous in color, even in the dim, ambient light of the Bangkok night. The temple’s arched tiled roof is capped with a coiled ceramic dragon. The fierce-looking guardian is no mere artsy decoration, but a sentinel on a par with a junkyard dog, a fierce protector of place, the keeper of the gate.
As early adapters to the convoluted culture of Thailand, Chinese immigrants knew a thing or two about gatekeepers and guardians, inside and outside of temples. They couldn’t own land, so they favored being near water; living on riverboats and eking out a living along the very canals they helped to dig. They couldn’t live off rent, so they traded goods, lent money and prospered. With wealth came a modicum of acceptance…the saga of Joy’s powerful clan came to mind. No doubt about it, John had his own guardians and dragons to contend with.
Flip-flop, flip-flop. The gentle sound of footsteps is enough to startle John, drawing him back into the here and now. Who’s that padding behind him? His heart jumps. Is it her? He imagines it to be so, but he’s too proud to turn around just yet.
But it only takes a moment more to realize the inviting patter of the flip-flops flip-flopping behind him does not belong not to the girl, but a beggar man in rags.
The emaciated man notices John looking his way and extends an empty palm, asking for alms.
On impulse, as if trying to propitiate unseen spirits, the discomfited American reaches deep into his pocket and offers the mendicant a handful of change. The man bows appreciatively and flip-flops away.
John scans the bridge but can find no sight of the girl now. There was something intriguing about her, but, alas, what was meant to be was meant to be.
Racked by a vacillating mind, he dawdles down the ramp, not yet ready to put the bridge behind him. Tired, footsore, and ambivalent, he presses forward, pausing at an ill-lit intersection.
Several empty taxis drive right past him, not that he was surprised. One way taxi drivers who did not speak English could avoid the awkwardness of dealing with foreigners was to avoid foreigners--but at last a sporting driver deigns to pull over and rolls down the window.
“You! Where you go?”
“Mai pai…”John impulsively declines the ride, for reasons that he could not entirely fathom.
Standing on the corner, torn between wanting to go home and not wanting to go home, he decides to retrace his steps. He’s in a mood to play with fate, to replay what just happened, to cross the bridge one more time.