Dusk on the waterway

Ussiri Thammachot – Photo: Matichon online

Ussiri Thammachot (See more , pronounced 'àdsìeríe thammáchôot) was born in 1947 in Hua Hin. He studied mass communication at Chukalongkorn University and started writing. In 1981 he was the third Thai writer to win the SEA Write Award with the short story collection Khunthong, You will Return at Dawn, from which the story below also originates. Like so many writers and intellectuals in Thailand, he was strongly influenced by the events of October 14, 1973 and October 6, 1976. He worked for a long time for the daily Siam Rath.

This story is about a diabolical and universal dilemma: choose the morally right path or give yourself and your family a favor?

Is he making the right choice?

Dusk on the waterway

Slowly the man rowed his empty boat home against the current. The sun sank behind the bumpy row of trees on the banks of the river khlong but the coming of night did not disturb the oarsman.  His heart was heavy with the listless desire to get home before dark.

He felt defeated from the moment he pushed his boat away from the dock at the market. His entire boatload of heavy, green watermelons had yielded so meager that he could not bring himself to buy the cheap blouse his wife had asked him to bring, or even a toy for his little daughter. He heard himself apologizing 'Maybe next time…we didn't get enough money this time'. She would be sad and discouraged as always and he had to muffle the disappointment, perhaps noting that "We have to save for bad days."

He had made countless trips to the market dock to sell his watermelons to the wholesaler, and each time he was left with a sense of futility and wasted labor. His toil, and his wife's, was as worthless as the sweat that evaporated in a sultry breeze or dripped in the endless stream of the khlong, leaving a wet and sticky feeling that did not enliven but depress. But that's the way it was, there was only one buyer who monopolized the watermelon market. As he sailed past the jetty, other watermelon growers would whisper to him in a brotherly sense of defeat, "Better sell them than let them rot."

"We need to grow more melons, maybe two or three times as many, and then you can go to the temple with a new set of clothes and our little one can have a doll like the other children," he would tell his waiting wife. He couldn't think of anything else to earn enough for the simple things they dreamed of. Of course, that meant even more grueling and boring work, more stoic patience and, above all, more waiting. But waiting was not strange to her, it was part of her life. She always had to wait for things she wanted: a cheap transistor radio so music could brighten up her monotonous existence or a thin gold chain to show off. Those were the gifts he had promised her when she moved in with him.

In the darkening sky above the rice paddies, flocks of birds flew to their nests, beautifully colored in the golden and orange rays of the setting sun. The trees on both banks darkened, casting deep shadows menacingly. Straight ahead where the khlong broadening and bending, curling plumes of smoke were visible behind a dark grove, quickly dissolving into the rapidly fading sky. As he rowed on into the stillness of the evening, a motorboat met him, passed him and vanished in a brief explosion of sound, whipping the water into foaming and rippling waves.

He steered his lurching boat to shore for protection as the troubled water slammed a mass of floating debris against his bow. He held his oar  silent and stared at the dirty floating mess: in between lay a doll bobbing to the rhythm of the troubled water.

He used his oar to push away the floating debris and fished the soaking doll out of the water for a closer look. The little toy was all intact, nothing was missing, a naked doll with red, smiling lips, pale rubber skin, and large, black, staring eyes that betrayed a cold eternity. He moved her limbs back and forth with a sense of satisfaction. The little doll would become a companion to his lonely daughter who would no longer have to be ashamed of the lack of a doll now that all the other children in the neighborhood had one. He gleefully imagined the joy and excitement in her eyes and suddenly he was in a hurry to return home with his precious gift.

The new doll came with the flow. He didn't want to think about who owned it. The khlong winding through so many towns, villages and fields. Who knows how many eyes and hands it had already encountered as it floated along with the rubbish past countless other boats and jetties. But in his imagination he still saw the doll's owner sobbing as the doll floated away helplessly on the current. He saw in it the same helplessness as when his own daughter dropped a piece of juicy watermelon on the dusty ground, and he felt a moment's pity for the unknown child.

With a heightened sense of urgency, he steered his boat back home, avoiding the vines and branches hanging in the water. More motorboats, crossing the middle of the khlong claimed for themselves, sent waves to both dark shores. Sometimes he had to stop rowing to balance the boat with the oar, but it didn't make him angry or resentful. Home was not far away and soon the moon would be high enough to make his journey easier.

He stayed close to the safe bank even though the vegetation was now dark. Sometimes night birds would startle from the bushes along the bank and screech over his head to disappear into the other bank. Fireflies whirled about like flashing sparks from a dying fire and disappeared into the dark reeds. If he got too close to the shore, he heard the piercing sound of aquatic insects like the plaintive wail of human anguish, and a gnawing loneliness seized him.

In that timeless moment of solitude where no other boat could keep him company – in that timeless moment where the soft sounds of the splashing water reminded one of the breathing of a dying man – in that moment he thought of death and suddenly became aware of the smell that the breeze blows over the khlong carried away- the smell of putrefaction.

The rotten rump of an animal perhaps, he thought. A dead dog or piglet - whose inhabitants are on the khlong would not hesitate to throw it into the water where the current would carry it away and where the water would complete the decay of the once living flesh. There…there it was, the source of that sickening stench among the floating rubbish in the shadow of an overhanging banyan boom.

A fleeting glance, and he was about to sail his boat away from that smelly, repulsive thing when something caught his eye. He couldn't believe his eyes, but when he looked again he saw a rotting human body among the mass of floating rubbish. He froze with shock and fear, and his oar got stuck halfway.

It took him a few moments to pluck up the courage to push the garbage aside with his belt so he could approach the disgusting object. With the help of the pale moonlight that chills through the leaves of the banyan tree flickered, he studied the lifeless body with morbid curiosity.

Like the doll he had just pulled out of the water, it was a naked little girl about the same age as his daughter. Like the doll, nothing was missing from this pitiful little dead thing except the tight smile and blank stare. The child's body was horribly swollen and, in the pale moonlight, had a sickening green hue. It was impossible to imagine what the child had been like in her fresh young years, or  with what radiant innocence she had passed through life before she had now become this rotting corpse, the sad but inevitable process that would eventually merge her with the ever-moving stream of this khlong.

He was acutely aware of the poignant sadness and loneliness of everyone's fate. He thought of the child's father and mother, and how they would react to this cruel turn of fate. How could he let them know? He moved the boat this way and that way to call for help, covering his nose with the palm of his hand to ward off the sickening stench of the corpse.

As he turned to see if a boat was passing he caught a glare that froze him for a moment. Almost completely sunk into the swollen flesh of the dead child's wrist lay a chain of yellow metal. His heart stopped for a moment.

"Gold," he called to himself, using the oar to bring the bloated body closer. The sudden whine of a motorboat and the light of an oil lamp startled him with a sense of guilt. He steered his boat so that its shadow obscured the body, and he waited until he was alone again in the ensuing silence.

It would be a blatant injustice and unforgivable stupidity for someone else to win this award. No one would take advantage of him like they did with the sale of the watermelons. After all, he himself was the discoverer of this treasure, and he had suffered terribly from the intolerable  stench of the corpse. While it may not have been a fortune, it was definitely worth more than what he had  for his boatload of watermelons, and it was the current that brought it here where he found it.

He was elated at the thought of his capped wife now wearing the blouse she had been waiting so long for, and perhaps he would make her a pretty colored matching one. phanung from the north, and more clothes for themselves and their child. For the first time he would taste the happiness of spending money without the aching stabs in his heart as he parted with his hard-earned money. All he had to do was row against the current to his home. The happiness that would light up his wife's exhausted face and the longing look in his daughter's eyes, though momentary and fleeting, were blessings as precious as a downpour on a parched field.

The moonlight lay like a silver fleece over the rippling water, and the endless hum of the insects resembled prayers for the dead. He held his breath and with the watermelon knife he cut into the soft swollen flesh of the dead child's hand and wrist. Little by little, the rotten flesh separated from the white bones and floated away, revealing the radiant gold chain after being hidden in the dead tissue. The stench was now so overpowering that he gasped and when he had the necklace in his hands he couldn't hold back the retching. The smell of death clung to his knife, his hands, his whole body. He vomited profusely in the water after which he washed his knife and his hands after which the water carried away every trace of his disgusting deed just like the pieces of dead flesh.

The body, by a push with the belt  freed, floated slowly downstream in silent finality. He pushed the boat from the bank to the middle of the stream. His gaze fell on the dummy in the boat. It lay there with the frozen smile on the red lips and the empty black-painted eyes, her hands raised in a gesture begging for compassion. 'It's possessed by a ghost! It's that little girl!', his mind flashed. He hastily tossed the doll into the water where it drifted in the same direction as its owner. 'What would it be!' he thought, his heart filled with joy. He could buy his daughter another doll to play with, or maybe two. He no longer felt depressed about what he had first considered a futile journey. Thinking of his wife and child who did not yet know of his unexpected happiness, he rowed with new energy as quickly as possible to his house, of which he already saw the lights behind the bushes in the distance.

He didn't think for a moment about the poor little body. He no longer cared where it came from and whether the parents would learn of their child's fate. That little human tragedy disappeared into the caverns of his mind, leaving only a trace.

He rowed on with extraordinary power and exuberance.