hardly remember him at all—shook his head over our common bond, noted that we looked healthy and strong, let us grasp a finger each, and returned to his selling table outside our door.
Others were less sanguine. News of our birth reached Bangkokalmost before my father’s boat had bumped against the house that May afternoon, and like any new event, whether celestial or earthly, it had to be worked into the tissue of superstitions that made the people feel secure. The learned men of the royal court put their heads together and lo! there was light. If an unnatural birth was a bad omen, they reasoned, a birth such as ours, of such surpassing strangeness, could only prophesy the end of the world. The sun would turn black in the sky. Rama II himself, the Lord of Life, decreed it: We would have to be separated or put to death.
We were neither.
They came three weeks later in a pouring rain, their sandals slap-slapping in the mud: a group of five men, three holding vermilion umbrellas with gold tassels—a thing never before seen in our village—and two in the yellow robes of the Buddhist priests. They stopped on the shore at the foot of the walk to our house. The gaggle of soaked villagers who had been leading them pointed up the plank and stepped away. “We have come to see the marvel,” said one to my mother, who, all unsuspecting, wordless with astonishment at this august delegation standing before our houseboat, invited them in. My father was out fishing.
I can see her running ahead, shame quickly outstripping amazement at the thought of her clothes, the smallness of the rooms. Our poverty, I imagine, must never have been as visible to her as it was in those few moments. The room where we lay sleeping on a mat by the wall, despite the open windows, smelled hot and rank. We had shat ourselves. Quickly drawing the soiled cloth from under us, she wiped us with a clean edge, slipped a fresh cloth under our bottoms and ran out the back door just as the boat gave a telltale heave and the group stepped aboard. Anyone watching from the opposite bank would have seen our mother burst out the side door as though the boat were under pressure, make two quick swipes with the cloth in the river, drop it on the plank in the rain, and rush back in. By the time the men had filed into the main room, led, no doubt, by our screaming (they were prepared for the ill manners of the peasants, and the stunned awe their own appearance could provoke),she was there to greet them in a fresh skirt, her head bowed low between her raised arms in the wai she had been too startled to offer earlier. A bowl of bright red ngáw fruit sat on the table.
They wasted little time. Ignoring the fruit she offered them, they walked over to where we lay crying under the faded yellow cloth we had succeeded in pulling over ourselves. One of them, a small, wizened-looking man with a pointy beard, asked my mother to remove the cloth.
A shocked murmur greeted our appearance. This was ghastly, an evil omen indeed. One of them, bolder than the rest, ran his smooth finger across our bridge, then flipped us over. We screamed. My mother began to step forward—though whether to stop them or help them is unclear—then paused. Consensus was immediate. We would have to be separated. If we lived, a case could be made that the threat had been forestalled; if we died, the king’s decree would have been carried out.
But if the desired end was undebatable, the means by which to achieve it were not. Something of an argument ensued among the three physicians, during which my mother at first stood awkwardly off to the side like a young girl hoping to catch the boys’ attention, and then, perhaps unable to think of anything else to do, went to the fire. One maintained the bond between us was dead flesh, or very nearly so, and therefore susceptible to sawing or burning. The second, reaching for a piece of fruit, disagreed. Sawing through the flesh would be too crude; the ligament, he
Others were less sanguine. News of our birth reached Bangkokalmost before my father’s boat had bumped against the house that May afternoon, and like any new event, whether celestial or earthly, it had to be worked into the tissue of superstitions that made the people feel secure. The learned men of the royal court put their heads together and lo! there was light. If an unnatural birth was a bad omen, they reasoned, a birth such as ours, of such surpassing strangeness, could only prophesy the end of the world. The sun would turn black in the sky. Rama II himself, the Lord of Life, decreed it: We would have to be separated or put to death.
We were neither.
They came three weeks later in a pouring rain, their sandals slap-slapping in the mud: a group of five men, three holding vermilion umbrellas with gold tassels—a thing never before seen in our village—and two in the yellow robes of the Buddhist priests. They stopped on the shore at the foot of the walk to our house. The gaggle of soaked villagers who had been leading them pointed up the plank and stepped away. “We have come to see the marvel,” said one to my mother, who, all unsuspecting, wordless with astonishment at this august delegation standing before our houseboat, invited them in. My father was out fishing.
I can see her running ahead, shame quickly outstripping amazement at the thought of her clothes, the smallness of the rooms. Our poverty, I imagine, must never have been as visible to her as it was in those few moments. The room where we lay sleeping on a mat by the wall, despite the open windows, smelled hot and rank. We had shat ourselves. Quickly drawing the soiled cloth from under us, she wiped us with a clean edge, slipped a fresh cloth under our bottoms and ran out the back door just as the boat gave a telltale heave and the group stepped aboard. Anyone watching from the opposite bank would have seen our mother burst out the side door as though the boat were under pressure, make two quick swipes with the cloth in the river, drop it on the plank in the rain, and rush back in. By the time the men had filed into the main room, led, no doubt, by our screaming (they were prepared for the ill manners of the peasants, and the stunned awe their own appearance could provoke),she was there to greet them in a fresh skirt, her head bowed low between her raised arms in the wai she had been too startled to offer earlier. A bowl of bright red ngáw fruit sat on the table.
They wasted little time. Ignoring the fruit she offered them, they walked over to where we lay crying under the faded yellow cloth we had succeeded in pulling over ourselves. One of them, a small, wizened-looking man with a pointy beard, asked my mother to remove the cloth.
A shocked murmur greeted our appearance. This was ghastly, an evil omen indeed. One of them, bolder than the rest, ran his smooth finger across our bridge, then flipped us over. We screamed. My mother began to step forward—though whether to stop them or help them is unclear—then paused. Consensus was immediate. We would have to be separated. If we lived, a case could be made that the threat had been forestalled; if we died, the king’s decree would have been carried out.
But if the desired end was undebatable, the means by which to achieve it were not. Something of an argument ensued among the three physicians, during which my mother at first stood awkwardly off to the side like a young girl hoping to catch the boys’ attention, and then, perhaps unable to think of anything else to do, went to the fire. One maintained the bond between us was dead flesh, or very nearly so, and therefore susceptible to sawing or burning. The second, reaching for a piece of fruit, disagreed. Sawing through the flesh would be too crude; the ligament, he
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