Sightseeing Read online

  A kratoey with heavy makeup wearing a red blouse arrives at the front of the line. When he takes off his blouse, everybody—all the boys waiting in line and all the relatives behind the ropes—laugh and clap and point, even the officers watching from the stage. The kratoey smiles defiantly, his painted face strange on his dark, skinny torso, before bowing to the crowd flamboyantly. I recognize him. The kratoey is a boy named Kitty that Wichu and I knew in high school. Although it is well-known that some boys will arrive at the lottery in drag to try to evade the process, Kitty is not a draft day kratoey. When Kitty passes the physical exam and gets sent to the next line, there is laughter and applause again, and Kitty blows kisses at us all. When the commotion dies down, I hear a boy sitting in front of us say to his friend that we’re all fucked now if that kratoey can pass his physical. The friend grunts and tells the story of his uncle, who had chopped off the tip of his pinky finger to avoid the draft thirty years ago.

  He cut it off, the boy says. And they drafted him anyway. Told him he didn’t need a pinky to pull a trigger.

  Wichu and I finally arrive at the front of the line. I wonder if I will be sent home now, if this is what the navy lieutenant meant when he told my father that everything would be arranged. But the doctor examines me like all the other boys. We get sent to the next line, take our seats before the stage. We watch the woman who’d registered us set up the lottery urn. We sit and wait for the rest of the boys to be examined. It’s early afternoon now. The doctors pack up their bags, bid the officers good-bye. A man walks to the podium. We’re to take an hour break for lunch before the lottery begins.

  Wichu’s mother has arrived. She gestures to Wichu. Wichu walks over to her. She’s wearing her housecleaning uniform. She waves at me, smiles, and I return the courtesy. I watch Wichu kiss her on the cheek, watch her fuss over his hair and his shirt again. She’s brought us lunch, and Wichu carries the canteen back to our seats. As we eat, Wichu asks me if my parents are coming. I tell him no. I tell him that my parents are too nervous; I tell him they can’t bear to watch. The truth, of course, is that my parents have gone to Chatuchak to buy birds-of-paradise for my mother’s garden. Wichu nods. The lunch his mother has prepared—pork fried rice and green eggplant curry—tastes bitter and metallic in my mouth. But I am famished and devour it anyway. All the other boys are eating as well. Soon, the air is a potent admixture of home-cooked dishes. The sparrows in the rafters flutter down to peck at food spilled on the pavilion floor.

  After we finish eating, Wichu and I share a jasmine tea. As I’m taking a swig, an officer—a balding, middle-aged man with a gut like a melon and a toothpick between his teeth—taps me on the shoulder. He smells strongly of whiskey and nicotine and cologne. A dark map of sweat soaks his shirtfront.

  He asks me if I am who I am. I nod. He asks me to come with him. Wichu looks panicked. He asks the officer if there’s a problem, but the officer just adjusts his toothpick, moves it to the other side of his mouth, and says:

  No problem, son. Nothing to worry about. Your friend’s in good hands.

  I do not look at Wichu as the officer talks. When I get up to follow the officer, Wichu taps me on the forearm. He smiles and asks me if I’ll be okay. I pause for a moment, standing, peering down into my friend’s face, not quite understanding his question.

  I realize then that Wichu knows. Of course he knows. He was here, at this temple, outside of the pavilion with his mother, when Khamron got drafted years ago. He was here when the wealthier boys got taken out of the line. He was here when those same boys came back an hour later, took their places at the end of the lottery line, and—when their turns came—drew black card after black card after black card. Wichu had told me all about it the night of his brother’s draft. Although I had only half listened to him at the time, the memory of his voice comes back to me now in all its anger.

  Hey, he says again, still smiling. You gonna be okay?

  I understand then that he’s not really asking about my well-being. He’s asking for penitence. He’s asking for an explanation. He’s asking me why I didn’t tell him beforehand. The officer clears his throat impatiently beside me. I muster a smile, though I feel nauseated. I tell Wichu to save me my place in line.

  I follow the officer out of the pavilion, across the temple grounds toward the monks’ quarters. I walk head down, try not to look at the relatives when I walk past, though I feel all their eyes on my back. The officer offers me a cigarette. Though I desperately want one I tell him that I do not smoke. When we arrive at the monks’ quarters, there’s a small crowd of boys sitting there, smiling and laughing and talking exuberantly. I take my place among them. Years later I will wonder if I could’ve said something to the officer, told him Wichu’s name. But that draft day morning I just sit down on the teakwood floor, filled with relief even as I feel dizzy with dread, thinking of Wichu’s smiling face, of him asking me, his voice a frightening monotone, if I was going to be okay.

  The lottery begins. All the boys in the monks’ quarters fall silent. We listen to a booming voice in the pavilion announce each boy’s name one by one over the speakers, followed by the color of the ticket drawn. Sorachai Srijamnong: Red. Kawin Buasap: Red. Surin Na Nakhon: Black. Worawut Chaiyaprasoet: Red. The crowd is silent with every red, uproarious with each black. I listen for Wichu’s name. I look at the other boys; I wonder if they, too, are listening for their friends’ names out in the pavilion.

  The officer who escorted me earlier appears. He tells us to go back and seat ourselves at the end of the lottery line. Some of the boys get nervous. They ask him why. This isn’t what we’d agreed, says one of the boys. Why don’t you send us home already. But the officer tells us not to worry. You pansies, he says, grinning. Relax. Nothing’s gonna happen to daddy’s little boys.

  So we return to the pavilion, walk back single file across the temple ground. When we take our seats at the end of the lottery line, the other boys turn around to look. Word has already spread about us, about the boys who’d been taken out of the line before the end of the lunch hour. I hear relatives on the sidelines hissing and murmuring among themselves.

  Fucking corruption, somebody says.

  Cowards, says another.

  Just another day in the Kingdom of Thailand.

  I see the back of Wichu’s head some twenty meters ahead, the only thing I recognize in that sea of black and brown before me. He has not turned around to look at our entrance. He’s staring into his hands, leaning on his knees.

  I see his mother, though. I do not want to meet her eyes, but it is already too late. We look at each other and when we do, I feel my cheeks flush. She nods at me once and then she turns back to look at the boy onstage. She will not look at me again for the rest of the day.

  The boy onstage wraps his fingers around the amulet dangling from his neck with one hand, reaches into the lottery urn with the other. Red. A moan comes from a section in the crowd. The boy walks off looking stunned, drags his feet across the stage, while the speaker announces another name.

  You’re all right, boy, a man yells from the sidelines. The boy ignores him. You’re all right, the man says again.

  The new draftees are being sent to the pagoda, where officers wait for them with scissors and shears. They get their hair cut standing up, small towels draped around their necks like scarves. A few temple novices sweep the piles of hair around their feet. Soon, there’s a crowd of young men watching the lottery outside the pavilion shade, their scalps shiny under the afternoon sun. Nice haircut, I hear somebody say to a boy who’s been drafted.

  Around four, Kitty walks onstage. There’s laughing and clapping again, but this time Kitty just fingers the hem of his blouse. Krittaphong Turapradit, the speaker system announces, and I realize that I haven’t heard Kitty’s real name in a very long time. Even from where I am sitting, I can see beads of sweat glistening on Kitty’s forehead. I see Wichu sit up straight to watch. Kitty retrieves a handkerchief from his purse to wipe away the sweat
. The crowd quiets down while the officer spins the lottery urn; the mechanism’s creaking echoes through the pavilion. Kitty reaches into the urn with his eyes shut and pulls out a card. He hands it to the officer. Black. The crowd cheers, though there are also a few groans of sadistic disappointment.

  Kitty leaps up and down like a jubilant child, his red blouse flapping wildly against his torso. When an officer tries to escort Kitty off the stage, he faints and collapses to the floor, like somebody has reached down and yanked the spine from his back, and there is laughter all around as the officers try to revive him.

  The names march on, reds interrupted every so often by a few blacks. It is almost Wichu’s turn now. I see his mother chewing her nails to the quick. She waves at Wichu every so often, but Wichu just keeps on staring into his hands.

  The boys around me are nervous. I don’t get it, one of them says. No way in hell they’re making me get up there. Our fathers already gave them what they wanted, right? The other boys tell him to shut up. It’ll work out, one of them says. I’m sure they’ll send us home soon.

  Evening is upon us. The insects are out, moths fluttering against the pavilion lights. Many of the relatives have gone home with their sons to celebrate the miraculous appearance of a black card or, as is more often the case, to prepare their sons for the service in a week’s time. There are about a hundred of us left.

  Wichu has moved to the front of the line.

  The boy before Wichu draws a black card. He gives the finger to all the officers onstage and, in a loud booming voice that surprises us all, tells them to go fuck themselves. His parents and siblings jump up and down at the side of the pavilion, hugging one another, screaming with joy. Wichu’s mother is really nervous now. She leans against one of the rope-poles, her right leg jiggling wildly as if possessed, her mouth moving silently. Wichu Rattanaram, the speaker system says. Wichu gets up there and looks over the crowd. For a moment, I think he might be looking directly at me. In my head, I am thinking of a prayer. The officer spins the urn. I think I can hear the cards fluttering in there like so many birds. Black, black, black, I think. Wichu reaches into the urn, pulls out a card, hands it to the officer. Red, the speaker system says, and I can almost see Wichu’s shoulders slump from some invisible weight.

  I look at Wichu’s mother. She is not jiggling her leg any longer, nor is she biting her nails. She merely stares out at Wichu, waves weakly to him. She seems calm. He walks off the stage to get his hair cut at the pagoda, that folder of useless documents still tucked under his arm.

  The rest of the evening is like a dream to me now. I don’t remember much at all. I only remember Wichu arriving at the side of the pavilion to greet his mother with his head shaved. I only remember his mother reaching out to touch his scalp, to pull his head down into her bosom. He hands her his marching orders and she inspects it for a moment before tucking the document into the folder. The boys who’d been with me in the monks’ quarters start to go onstage then, the last of the year’s lottery. They pull out black card after black card after black card, like magicians pulling rabbits out of a hat. Nobody cheers for our black cards.

  The sun has set, a light evening drizzle singing against the pavilion roof. Most of the relatives have gone home. Wichu’s mother, I see, has also gone home. But Wichu stays. He stands there and watches us pull out our black cards from the urn, a blank look on his face, his clean white shirt and crisp new slacks and buffed Bata loafers getting wet in the rain. He never looks at me. I want him to leave. After a while, I can’t look at him anymore.

  They finally call my name. I walk onstage, though it seems they are calling somebody else. For the first time, that name doesn’t sound like my own. So I stand there for a moment before reaching into the urn to receive that generous fate which is mine and mine alone. And when I do, when I hand my black card to the officer and walk off the stage, I look toward the ropes and see that Wichu has finally gone on home without me.

  SIGHTSEEING

  We’re on the southbound train, the tracks swift beneath our feet, the windows rattling in their frames. The train crawls slowly down the archipelago, oceans bordering both sides of the tracks. To the east, the Hunan runoff softens the soil, silt spilling into the ocean, turning the Gulf of Thailand brown. Mountains shield the west from the monsoons, leaving the leeward coast barren and dry, the Andaman Sea retaining its crisp cool blue. We’re going through Prachuap Khiri Khan now, where the mountains recede briefly into a flattened plain, the seas pinching the peninsula into a needle. We are going through the slimmest part of the slimmest peninsula in the world, the Indian and the Pacific crashing against both shores. The earth is a tightrope; our train speeds across the flat thin wire. They say that a century from now this will all be gone, that the oceans will rise above this threadbare patch of earth, creating a strait as narrow as Molucca, as fine as Gibraltar, yoking the oceans, severing this nation in two. I can’t quite believe this because I never believe anything I won’t be around to see.

  We’re going to Koh Lukmak, the last in a long chain of Andaman Islands, a tiny fortress of forest and stone. Ma’s boss had a picture of Lukmak on the office bulletin board for years and Ma said she wanted to see what all the fuss was about. The fine sand. The turquoise water. The millions of fishes swimming in the shallow. Her boss had called it paradise, and though I remember Ma telling me as a child that Thailand was only a paradise for fools and farangs, for criminals and foreigners, she’s willing to give it a chance now. If paradise is really out there, so close to home, she might as well go and see for herself.

  It is not an easy trip—twelve hours by train, eight hours by boat—and Lukmak is so small it rarely appears on most maps. In a few hours, we will step off this train and sleep in Trang. We will leave that small seaboard town at daybreak, hire a boat at Tha Tien. The boat will be small and thin. With the monsoon’s approach in a few months’ time, our vessel will skip dangerously along the sea’s hard current. We will stop to rest and take lunch at Koh Trawen, the first of the Andaman Islands, an abandoned penal colony. We will leave Trawen after lunch, board the same small boat, get to Lukmak by nightfall.

  Sightseeing, Ma said when we bought our tickets at the station in Bangkok. We’ll be farangs. We’ll be just like the tourists.

  This is my last summer with Ma. At the end of the summer, I am to leave for a small vocational college up north.

  I watch the blue of the Andaman on the right side of the train. Ma is turned the other way, watching the murky brown of the Gulf. Her window is open. She presses her face against the warm wind, her long black hair whipping wildly around her, the thin navy blue blouse fluttering against her chest. Our shoulders knock every so often, rocking to the motion of the train. We have barely spoken since we left Bangkok early this morning from Hua Lamphong Station.

  I break the silence. I tell her to look straight ahead, toward the front of the car. I ask if she can see both oceans out of the corners of her eyes. She smiles and tells me she can. One eye blue, one eye brown. My mother puts a hand on my knee. Then we are silent again, eyes fixed on the front of the car. We know that soon the mountains will rise and we shall be committed to one side of the peninsula—blue or brown; that the sun shall set and the oceans will soon be dark and inhospitable; that the earth only thins and flattens out long enough for us to see two oceans at a single glance; that only a handful of people ever get to see this in their lifetime. Above all, Ma and I know that if things were different, if our lives were simply following their ordinary course, we would never have taken the time to notice such sights.

  The beginnings seem so obvious now, though they did not present themselves so clearly to me then. False steps. Spilled coffee. Porcelain cups ratcheting against the kitchen counter.

  Cuts and cooking burns, welts white against her dark arm. Bruises on her legs from running into furniture, ebony rosettes blooming on her unblemished skin. Shoulders knocking against doorframes. Her penciled eyebrows more arched than usual, uneven sometimes,
the naked flesh of a brow peeking from beneath a thin charcoal line.

  But I am at first too busy to give these things much thought. I am too absorbed with the life I plan to lead in the north, on my own, away from Ma. I spend nights in my room studying the vocational college’s pamphlets, its maps and course guide, brochures of the nearby town. I familiarize myself with the surrounding geography, dream of the mountains that nestle the campus, of a steady provincial peace away from Bangkok’s cacophony—its congestion, its heat, its concrete facades. I make copious lists of the belongings I will take with me. I revise this list endlessly. I pack and unpack into the night hours though my departure is still many months away.

  One morning, Ma misjudges the last step coming down the stairs, turns her ankles. She steadies herself with a hand on the banister.

  “You all right, Ma?” I laugh. She steadies herself, widens her eyes. She blinks twice. She smooths out her dress with both hands, pulls the strap of her purse back onto her shoulder.

  “Oh dear,” she says, chuckling. “Don’t know what’s with me these days. Just a little overworked, I guess. Too many things on my mind.”

  A few days later, she’s not going to work. She’s home, reclined on the couch, watching television in her pajamas.

  “You sick, Ma?”

  “It’s just this migraine,” she says, holding a hand to the side of her head. A migraine. Migraines never stopped her before. She’s a woman who doesn’t miss work. Not ever. Not for migraines, not for flus, not for colds. Not for monsoons, not for landslide warnings. Not even for the military’s curfew a few years ago, when the Red Cross carried wounded protestors on bloodied stretchers into the lobby of her office building. She’s a woman who once went to work with malaria and was asked to go home because her boss found her in the bathroom throwing up. Even then, she insisted on going back to work—until she fainted in the middle of a company meeting. An ambulance had to be called; she went back to work the very next day.