Chapter 14 Huay Tueng Tao

On Monday Yaa turned up near the end of training and the evening followed its usual path to Spicy.  I looked at her across the table, wasn’t she bored? The same places every night, drinking, smoking, talking to the same deadbeats.  Sure it was a change from Bangkok, but not a great one. It was funny in a way, smart as we both were we’d accepted our reality, that when it came to down to it, when the work was done, drunken folly was the only thing which made sense, to close down the mind, to lose yourself in life.  I understood why foreigners loved Thailand so much now; it was the freedom, the spontaneity.  You could go out every night, meet new people, enter into loose relationships and slip away after a night or a week. 

“I want relax tomorrow, go Huay Teung Tao,” Yaa said

“The reservoir.”

“Yes.”

Sleeping through the morning she again insisted on taking her bike and wound down the country lanes pulling onto the expressway where she opened the throttle.

“Yaa Ja, cha cha,” I called.

All my time with her was the same, an intense succession of tension filled moments.  It couldn’t be any other way, like me she’d become used to living fast and once you had you couldn’t go back.  You kept having to find things to push against and the moment you didn’t you crashed. 

Crossing the speed bump at the entrance we stopped at a small store.

“Wait one minute,” she said hopping from the bike and disappearing inside. Following I found myself surrounded by tourist oddments; bathing rings, whisky, assorted snacks.

“You want whiskey?”

I shook my head.

“O.K., small one,” she said grabbing half a half litre and two bags of chips. 

Back on the bike we rose up the hill and emerged to view of the lagoon. 

“We go down there,” she said pointing to a series of floating platforms and throwing us down an incline.  Dismounting I paused to let my body catch up with itself and I followed.  She was someone who couldn’t be led, as if she knew better than anyone where she was going, and I followed.

“We go here,” she called crossing a gangplank.  Joining her on our private island a mat covered the floor, a canopy of palms shading us from the midday sun.  Lying down I pushed my bag beneath my head, closing my eyes as she activated the music on her phone. 

“You go sleep?”

I kept silent, signalling my intent for quiet contemplation, drifting into a doze as the lapping water mingled with a Thai ballad.

Waking to the clinking of bottles a waitress deposited drinks and returned with a tray of covered dishes.

“Papaya salad and this, you see inside,” she said lifting a mettle lid.  I jumped back as tiny translucent prawns leapt to the air and fell flapping to the deck.

“You like,” she smiled.

“I like them when they’re dead.”

After munching through the food, I wiped my hands and lent back.  It was the type of setting never offered in a holiday brochure, a place which had to be discovered, a girl who had to be searched for. 

“When you go back to England?” she said without looking at me.

“When my training’s finished.”

We shared a moments silence and I decided to return a question, “What about you, you’ve got the perfect life, what do you want to do?”

“Buy a car, I already see in Bangkok.”

She described a sporty yellow model and I resubmitted the question, “O.K., after the car, what comes after the car?”

“I want house, big house.  I work maybe five years, then I buy, have family, get married, you want marry me?”

“Were you going to marry your French boyfriend?”

A vacant look drifted across her face.

“Yes, I was going to go to France, get visa.  He still help me get visa but now cannot be with me.”

“You speak French?”

“Boyfriend France teach me, not as good as English, but can speak.”

“You loved him?”

“Yes.”

I sensed she had, like I’d loved my wife, a naïve first love and it wouldn’t be like that again.  I’d believed in Hollywood love, one special person you stayed with forever but I didn’t believe it now.  It had seemed wrong with Suzy, the way she’d always wanted to be the most perfect girl I could imagine.  All girls had breasts, different faces, some beautiful some less so but I’d always found other women attractive and her stance on wanting to be ‘The one’ had never rung true.   

Love was composite now, sex with one girl, conversation with another, sleep with one more.  I sometimes wondered whether I’d ever really be with anyone again, it was always going to be a compromise, taking one in place of the many, surrendering a part of yourself, and what of the chance, the chance that they might change, because people always did.

“Why you come to Thailand?” she asked.

“To train Muay Thai.”

“I not think you come to train Muay Thai.”

She was too smart, reading between the lines.

“You’re right, I didn’t come to train Muay Thai, I came to prepare for the French Army.”

“France, why you go to France, why not England?”

“The French have the best army, a special army for foreigners, only foreigners can join.”

She stared over the water, she knew I wouldn’t stay in Thailand but now I’d said it a bond seemed to have broken, the fantasy exposed for what it was.

“I can’t stay in Thailand, I need to go home, earn money, I can’t do that here.”

“You think too much.”

A comment I hadn’t seen coming I took a moment to consider it.

“I like to think, if we don’t think what’s the point in anything? Everyone has to think.”

“Only think when you need to think, when not need to think relax.”

It was like she’d overturned a rock I hadn’t got to yet.  I’d felt for a while people who didn’t think were happier and now she’d made it clear.  Unless something went wrong you just kept going, if a problem came up you fixed it and moved on.  I was always fighting life, always discontent, always feeling I should be doing something more but perhaps it was about choosing a life, the best you could imagine and then living it with all your heart.  When I’d started questioning things I’d opened a Pandora’s box and I wasn’t sure whether I was worse off.  Had she got it right?  Was that that the right life? She had money, she took care of her family and she enjoyed herself, but in a way I considered her lazy.  I imagined what she could do if she turned her energy towards helping people beyond her circle.  But perhaps that was another key, the pace.  In time she would, but right now she needed her time, time to relax, time to step back and make sure when she acted she did so with clarity.    

As a fish jumped a few yards away I looked to see it rise again.  It was life’s rhythm I couldn’t adjust to.  The world seemed so busy I couldn’t see a place to touch down.  Every time I’d tried my life had become filled with clutter, my wife’s shopping, my meaningless jobs, newsreaders talking about growth, always buffeted by the forces around me, I was never able to feel in control unless I was away.  I’d read how Gandhi had tried to perfect it all, stopped having sex, fought for truth with non-violence, but looking at India even he’d slipped up, the bloodshed, a nation torn apart by religion.  It seemed at some point we had to accept your place, accept that there was only so much you could do.  I wanted to scream out to the world, take a night off, take a year off, enjoy yourselves, stop competing, but it just couldn’t happen.  The mighty machine grinding forward, and in my gut the constant niggle, the feeling that there was so much I could do.  Change the world, maybe.

“Think too much,” she said again. 

“How’d you learn English?”

“Before I work in jewellery business I know nothing, just learn what I have to for work.”

“But your English is good.”

“My English O.K., but I not know this, not know this,” she said pointing to her arms and legs. 

“You're telling me you can have a conversation about love and the future and you don’t know this and this?”

She nodded.

That was her point, only think when you need to think, only learn what you need to know.  She’d focused on the things most important to her and nothing else mattered.

On Wednesday I woke late collecting fruit and bringing it back to the room.  She was still sleeping as I ate.  Stirring as I ran my fingers down her back she lifted her head looking into the pillow and flopping back again, then rising again to lay on my chest. 

“What time’s your flight?”

“Monday, six o’clock.”

I could feel myself becoming hard and moments later we were making love, cumming inside her I tried to bring her back to me.

“You only care about sex,” she hissed. “Only want sex, not care about anything else.”

I saw it starting again, the drama of the Yakuza girl, a fight for the sake of fighting.

“You want to play game with me?” I demanded.

“Not play game.”

“Then why speak like this, I don’t have time to play games, if you want to do that, you can go.”

I meant it, my relationship was a nice to have, but if it was going to get complicated, I was out.

Dressing she marched to the door, “You not see me again.”

I didn’t see her for a few days, filling my time training and finishing my book it was Monday when she called.  I’d hired a movie room with Gunner, sat watching a prison riot in South America as his phone rang.

“It’s for you,” he said.

“I have motorcycle accident, can come see you.”

I met her outside, bandages covering legs and elbow. 

“What happened to you?”

“Driving motorbike, I think about you and fall down.  Big car miss me by this much,” she said pinching her fingers together. “I almost die.”

I was sure she would, absolutely, without reservation, a motorcycle accident, Aids, cigarettes, absolutely yes, she would die.