DARK GLASSES

Khamsing Srinawk

It was more familiar than an ordinary visitor, though known about rather than
seen. It often walked on invisible legs into the mother’s heart and left again, as
featureless as before. It came went but she did not know how. Sometimes it came after
midnight; sometimes intruded in the early morning and lingered until nightfall. It followed
her into the rice fields and stayed with her as she gathered leaves and sticks for the fire.
I didn’t visit just anyone, only people well known to it like herself, and the father.

A few days before, while she was busy preparing for the temple festival, it
vanished and she could not recall exactly when it came back or where it came from.
She had been stitching up a new sarong for Boonpeng, her youngest son, when from a
wood a gong boomed. She put her work down and looked over the fields where no
breeze, no clouds in the azure sky disturbed the soft afternoon sunlight. The gentle but
sad reverberation saturated the landscape. She turned her eyes back to the blankness
around her. Boonpeng’s blanket was still heaped on the mattress on the porch where he
slept; beyond it, the plaited bamboo partition of their room – hers and her husbands
next to it was a solid room, properly walled with wooden boards, it doors shut, empty.
She stared at it for long time. It was probably then that welled into her heart again, this
anguish.

Any living thing nearby would have dispelled the loneliness, a little lizard on the
roof beam, a wasp on its regular flight past her head, but they were not there. The
yellow sparrow that used to cling to the tree in front of the house was gone. Its absence
reminded her of another bird she had ignored in the cage hanging from the eaves. The
sight of it made her feel good and as she approached, the still creature fluffed its wings,
stretched its neck and cooed. Unaware of the sealed door in deep shadow. The father
often stood their motionless so long she wondered what was wrong, but never, until
now, did she realize why.

It was hard to believe that three years had passed since the very day of this
festival. Well, perhaps, not the everyday. In fact it all began several months before this
season on a bright afternoon soon after the harvest. She and her husband returned
early to find a car parked under the mango tree in front of their house, the same one
that more than once had enveloped the mother in swarms of dust, not that she had
seen it clearly through the clouds of billowing dirt. It was something new for the villagers
of Dong Cam and the mother knows that it was the engineer’s car. She did not know
when those people had appeared although from their conversation with her daughter,
she had thought it could have been long before. The father had gone straight up into the
house while the mother fussed with some mangoes and kept an eye in her daughter
who was sitting at a loom weaving. The two men around her both wearing caps and
light blue-sleeve shirts were smiling conspirationally at one another. Whether or not they
were old the mother could not tell because of the dark glasses both had on.

“You were born a beauty, Camkhan.” the one leaning on the loom said. “born a
real beauty, Camkhan”, the friends of the first echoed.

The mother could make up her mind whether it was better to stay or to go up into
the house. Camkhan, in whose dialect the word for beautiful merely meant a time of
day, replied, “Oh no, I was born in the afternoon.”

“Is that so? Well, still born beautiful.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she rested the purple threaded shuttle on the cloth,
she brushed her hair away and looked at the dark glasses.”

“Why don’t you listen to me? I was born in the afternoon.” The young men’s eyes
exchanged smiles and the young girl continued.

“My mother told me that when I was inside her, she began to have labor pains
while she was harvesting rice in the filed and my father brought her back to the house
and I was born in the afternoon. Isn’t that right, mama?”

The woman was startled to be called as a witness by her daughter. “That’s right,
Camkhan”, her mother’s voice was unsteady, “Camkhan was born in the afternoon, later
than it is now.”

As she spoke, she measured the height of the sun now touching the tips of the
tress but before she could continue the father interrupted from up on the house.

“Idiots! Both of you, mother and daughter. They were just saying in Thai, she’s
pretty.”
The tone of the father’s voice was short and not pleased. St supper, the mother
saw her husband look at their daughter as if he wanted to tell her something but it never
came out. There was not night. The father sat alone at the end of the porch and did not
go into sleep until after midnight and in the room with walls of proper boards the mother
heard Camkhan turn and twist restlessly until the same late hour.

The mother new as did the rest of the village that the father treasured his
daughter for deeper reasons than that she was only one. Before the mother had move
into the village of Dong Cam her husband had migrated from place to place so often
that she became inured of it but when they reached Dong Cam, the father declared they
would not moved again and he set out to clear rice fields. Delighted when Camkhan
was born the following year, he named her himself, which he had never done before
with the other children and when the new born child turned out to be a weakling, he
blamed himself for working his wife too hard. So concerned was he to save Camkhan
from heavy work, that his neighbors especially the country lads made fun of him. As
their house stood isolated at the edge of the paddy fields, the father was meticulous in
fencing it. One day the local boys, who would tale delight in taunting him from outside
the fence, called out. “Hey, its thorns that make a fence uncle, not the smooth bamboo
you used!” Though not a man open to suggestions, the next day he went out into the
wood to dig some spiked bamboo to add to the fences and doors of the villagers’ home.
The father fell victim to further adolescent teasing. “Thorns may keep out water
buffaloes and country boys, uncle, but not cars.”

The father’s uneasiness came with the passing of the rain clouds from the sky.
Dong Cam ceased to be a remote hamlet. The villagers excited with the new road took
to gathering under the eaves of the coffee shop and began to go abroad more. The
young people, the girls and boys, got kicks by hitching rides in the construction trucks
even as far as the district town. They returned dresses in gaudy clothes from the
market. The father went more often to the temple, and become more reserved. “I’d put it
off, if possible.” He was speaking of the Merit Making festival held every year in the
fourth month. “If no one’s interested anymore, why should I worry.” But he was wrong.
Before long the people got used to the new things, to the strangers and then to traffic on
the road and turned their talk to the festival although it was not quite the same. This
time it began with green and red invitation card is printed in the town and handed out to
all the families and even to people living outside the village. On the night of the festival,
the temple which used to be all rosy and warm in the light of torches and incense was
now brashly lit by electric light supplied by a portable generator and strident with people
and music. The pulpit that used to be so fresh in a mantle of banana leaves, sugar cane
and wild flowers was now festooned with flashy multi-colored cellphone. Cars, trucks
and buses were squeezed in the temple yard. The monk’s sermon, blasted forth by
loudspeakers, could be heard in several surrounding villages.

The mother’s wandering mind returned to her sewing for a moment and then
sought out the birdcage.

It had bright little eyes. Each time the mother moved, it bobbled its head and
cooed. The big gong tolled again but though its voice was soft as before, the loneliness
of the sound had vanished. She glanced from the birdcage out across the rice fields to
cluster of figures moving out the trees beyond. The sound of the gong became more
frequent and was punctuated by periodic cheers from the procession.

As it neared, she could see the old monk, composed, on the palaquin in the front.
There were two men clowning around, with green and purple sashes, playing the part of
the children of Vessandra, the Buddha-to-be. Behind them were the villagers carrying
flowers and branches of trees from the forest. Her husband was carrying the gong at the
rear of the file. She gazed after it until turned and disappeared around the bend at the
end of the village. A little later she heard the deep thrumming of the temple drum telling
the world that the Buddha in previous reincarnation had returned. After that it would be
the time to decorate pulpit with the flowers and leaves.

The mother could not remember when the little bird came to share their roof. She
guessed it must have been when she upset she didn’t know whether the moon was
waxing or warning and her husband had withdrawn into stunned silence. When her grief
had abated, she noticed him fooling with the birdcage but never left like asking him
about it. This was really the first day she had taken a close look at the bird, a pretty
thing looking as if it were made of talcum powder. As she fell in love with the tiny bird,
understanding of her husband and sorrow at thinking ill of him for his outward
indifference to the disappearance of their daughter suffused her heart. After that festival
three years before she did not think her husband would go again to the temple and she
never thought she would again see such a fine procession as had passed. The fields
were still bright, the air cooling and she knew that grief, in time and if life lasts, relents.

The father returned home before the sun disappeared, and though weary, his
face showed contentment after the merit making ceremonies. He was holding little box
of saffron and waited a bit when he saw his wife standing next to the birdcage.

“It’s a tame little thing”, he said as if not knowing what better to say.

“It is”

“I didn’t mean to keep it caged so long. You know I thought when its wings were
strong enough, I’d let it go. Well, years have already just slipped by. I’ve made it suffer
enough. What a shame.”

“Yes”, was all the mother could say.

Early the following morning, after blowing saffron water on the bird for good luck,
the father carried the cage to the temple and, at peace with himself, listened to the
sermon. When the gong sounded the end of the chapters it was almost noon; he
prostrated himself three times in the direction of the monk and then crept over to the
cage placed at the foof of the pulpit. On the seeing the man, the bird cooed softly to
him; he smiled with joy; his neighborhood tittered.

He turned to his wife, “Join me in letting the bird go?”

“You go ahead.”

“Well it’s really my sin to have kept it locked up.”

 The father carried the cage from the temple, passed under the sacred Bo tree,
and cut across the field to the end of the fence where he put the cage on the ground. A
few children trailed after him to watch. “Let this be the end of our troubles,” he intoned.
He extended his hand to the door of the cage. “Back to the woods. Help your mate
hatch your eggs. Feed your babies with grass seed. Go, go. Off as far as you can”. The
father tapped the cage gently but the bird held fast to the perch. In a moment, the pink
tinted downy little bird hobbled out of the cage, its legs crimson in the sunlight. The
children closed in to see. It beat its wings but fell to the ground after a few yards. The
children clapped their hands and chased it. It flew again, this time more than twenty
yards. And the third try it made a bamboo branch and smoothed its feathers with its
break.

The father stayed on the temple to help put away the pulpit and the other things
until late in the afternoon, and reflected that even if his happiness were only as heavy
as bits of gravel, he wouldn’t have the strength to carry it all home that day. He felt he
was floating in the air, the sky above was clear, the land around beautiful. The group of
children tending the water buffalo were playing happily. He hardly noticed tending the
water buffalo were playing happily. He hardly noticed the distance to the house. Before
he could climb the stairs, he was transfixed by Boonpeng’s cry. “Pa, I was in luck
today.” He held up his trophy proudly to show his father. It was fat and stupid. I beat it
down with a stick.

The boy placed his good fortune in his father’s hand and turning to the fence
shouted, “Hey, sister, Cam, Cam!”

The father dully watched his returning daughter mince uncertainly down the path.
The mother came down from the house and began to cry. He gazed stonily at the little
in his hand, the saffron still showing under its wings.