The railway hamlet - Chatcharin Chaiwat

 

 

The Railway Hamlet by Chatcharin Chaiwat

The sky was an orange glare. The firewood, piled high as three men standing on top of one another, and stretched out in a long line, hid the living-quarters of the railway employees from sight, and let us see only one jagged half of the sun. when struck by its rays, the pile of rotting logs loomed like an ancient mountain. The children of the railway clerks and the other employees liked to run and play on it. Once in a while one heard that some railwayman’s baby boy had slipped and fallen off.

The sight of the orange April sun and the different colors of the children’s kites, swooping and darting through the grey smoke of the train hurtling in towards the station, was a delight to the eye. It meant that the railwayman’s wives would now be stepping out onto their porches and telling their older children to put away their kites and run to meet their fathers off the train. And the younger kids would be scrambling up onto the porches and peering out over the pile of firewood, watching their fathers waving from within the incoming coaches.

As the kites were put away and the sound of the train gradually died down, the children would run to take their fathers by the hand, put on their big railwaymen’s hats-which would flop loosely down, completely covering their eyes-hoot with laughter, pick up the fruit and toys, and race each other down the red-earth road.

“Peng” was the smallest of them all and rarely got the chance to do what all the others did. He’d been fatherless for a while now. Before that, he’d always raced us for his father to watch. His father had worked on the same train as mine. “Peng”, for all his tiny size, was a mischievous lad, every inch the son of his hard-drinking father.

He had two younger siblings, aged seven and three, and a mother whose hair was always a tangled mess. In those days we all smiled scornfully at “Peng”, because we knew he had no father any more. He’d stand there, picking the dried snot out of his nose, and watch us walk back from the train hand in hand with our fathers. Sometimes he’d run after us, cling to my father’s shirt and stare into his eyes for a long time. Sometimes he’d run to carry things for Father, and even have the nerve to call him “Daddy”.

That was why I got into a fight with “Peng” the day the railway put on a film-show down at the station. I was furious with him because he called my father “Daddy,” and Father in turn seemed so sorry for him. Sometimes, too, he’d make so bold as to carry the toys I should have been the one to get from Father and bring home. He could run faster than I and he’d always bring things to my mother before I could.

On the evening of the film-show at the station, we fought till I gave him a bloody nose. I called him names till a grown-up came to put a stop to it, and smacked me hard on the bottom. Everyone said how sorry they felt for him… “Damn him!” I’d say to myself, “I love my father too. He’s got no right to take him away from me”.

Everyone knew that the father of “Peng” was my father’s subordinate. His job was coupling the coaches to the locomotives.

He was also a ticket-collector and porter- what they call a ham lo¹.

We children remembered that day very well. The orange sky of the past few days had deepened into red. The train had come to a halt more quietly than usual, so quietly that even the children sensed something queer was up. There was an indescribable languor in the air. The kids were very tired that day, and were slow to run off to the station. “Peng” ran ahead of all the others, for today his father was coming home.

Not long after I’d brought Father’s things back to the house, to give him a bit of a rest, I realized something unusual had happened. All the people in the railwaymen’s quarters were clustered together, sitting and talking to one another, and staring at little “Peng”, who stood there picking his nose. Some muttered “How pitiful! His kids are still so young…” “Peng” came back to play with us as usual, but he seemed very quiet. Now, long afterwards, the word spread through the railway hamlet that as his father was coupling the coaches he’d been struck and dragged along the tracks through two stations, without anyone in the train noticing. I stood there staring at the corpse and “Peng”. It looked like meat chopped into jagged pieces. Most likely “Peng” couldn’t recognize his father either, for he didn’t cry, just stood there silent and impassive. My friends and I yelled at him that he was an ungrateful son for not crying when his father died.

The little kid had never been one to give in. Even though I was bigger than he, and taller by several spans, he fought me till my lips were split.

On the day of the funeral the whole railway hamlet seemed in a stupor. The children were all so scared that none of them dared to go out to take a bath that night. They were terrified that the ghost of the dead father would come to spook them. As soon as the drum began to thud, the sound of chanting monks could be heard throughout the hamlet. The children sat huddled in a group, all with their legs drawn up to their chests². It was even scarier at my house, for Father and Mother had gone to help with the funeral ceremonies. We kids wouldn’t let ourselves be separated from one another for a moment. We drew our legs up till our knees were stiff and sore. And when darkness fell, not a single streetlamp gleamed. All the roads had turned pitch-black. The sweet, sad music of the pi and so³ made several of us start crying in spite of ourselves. Not long afterwards there was a tap at the door, and the sound of a childish voice:

“Please open up! Mother’s sent me over with some curry”. Everyone immediately recognized the voice as that of “Peng”, but no one dared to open the door. Only one was brave enough to stretch out his hand and slide back the bolt. “Peng” poked his nose in the doorway, a mirthless smile on his lips. It made me see his father’s face in his.

“Put the curry down, and get out! Who knows, maybe your father’ll come after you to spook us!” I shouted at him. “Peng” smiled and left at once, with a firm step.

Not long afterwards my father moved to another province, and I came to grow up on Bangkok, climbing steadily through the school system. At the time we moved, “Peng” had become a young pushcart-vendor, selling water from door to door, at 5 baht a cartful. His mother sole khao yam⁴ at the railway station.

When I was full grown, with a deeper voice and a higher education, I went back to inspect the piece of land that Father had bought in the hamlet. Some of the older railway people I’d known were still around, though they’d aged. Some who where still young girls when I’d lived there, and attractive enough to have young men hanging round them all the time, now sold fried bananas or sticky rice along the footpath beside the railroad tracks. When I went back to visit them, some of the railway old-timers would greet me saying:

“Hey! When did you get back? You’re Old So-and-so’s boy, aren’t you? You’ve sure turned into a real Bangkok kid!”

I felt even more proud that my clothes were quite different from those of the other young men in the hamlet, and my accent, had completely changed from what it used to be. When I spoke, in fact, many of them had to cock their heads to catch what is was saying. They couldn’t stop expressing their admiration-- though actually it was nothing special. I looked different from them only because I’d had a chance to live in Bangkok for a while and had had a better education. Father had made some money by doing business from province to province, so my status immediately seemed far removed from theirs.

I walked farther and farther out along the road. Some women who’d been my playmates in the old days followed me on their bicycles in a straggly line. The stamp of a Bangkok kid must have been displayed conspicuously on my chest. The dust-choked red-earth road was exactly the same as it had always been. It was still a road I ought to tread on proudly: I’d had more opportunities than it, and that made me its “better”.

Soon afterwards I ran into my old friend “Peng”. There was no dried snot in his nose like there used to be. But he was still undersized, just as in the old days. His wife was very pretty, and they’d had two children. “Peng” now worked as a station employee, through the patronage of the new station-master for whom he’d worked as a houseboy earlier on. His hair was now smoothly combed. The minute I reached his house, “Peng” clutched my hand tightly, and held it for a long time without uttering a word. His manner was very deferential, not at all the way it had once been. When I settled into a chair, he lowered himself to sit down on the floor, even though it was his own house. “Tell me how long you’re staying, so I can make something for you to eat on the way back.” “Peng” spoke with a strong rural accent, and smiled so broadly that I could see all his black cigarette-stained teeth.

The truth is I felt pretty uncomfortable, for in the old days we had been equals. Our fathers had had almost the same rank at work. Even though his father had been no worse than mine. He’d often treated me-- and fought with me-- without any inhibitions. Inwardly puzzling how and why two people, who came from the same place, whose way of life had been so similar, could become so unequal, I leaned back, chatting casually. There was something that made me want to dash over and embrace him as a dear old friend; yet something else held me back –I couldn’t say exactly what. I only remember thinking that his sitting lower down made it difficult for me to jump up and hug him to my heart’s content.

I was staying at a hotel in town and had become a sort of local glamor-boy. All kinds of people cycled up and down by my hotel. Old friends came crowding in to visit. And the rich kids, who used to ignore me, now came to take me out. So I didn’t get a chance to follow up the invitation from “Peng” to go have a drink at his house.

The last time I saw “Peng” he spoke to me just as respectfully and deferentially as before. “Won’t you come and have a drink at my house? Please do, I’ve got everything prepared. And I’ve wrapped up some nam phrik⁵ for you to eat on your journey back.” I had stopped in once at his house. But when I saw the food he’d prepared, I lost interest. He’d set out a big gurami with some liquor, kung yam⁶, stir-fried leafy vegetables—and plain water. So this time I excused myself rather feebly, and went off to drink with some other friends at a restaurant on the beach.

That day, as I was walking home late in the afternoon, my face felt strained and an indescribable sensation flashed through my body, for once again the sky was an orange glare, deep almost to the point of red. The long bank of firewood was a dull grey. I rubbed my eyes, thinking maybe it was drink that made my face feel tight. Inside, a sudden pang knifed through my heart. The atmosphere in the hamlet revealed the pattern right away. The people on the platform sat in huddles, deathly silent. I saw his 5-year-old kid standing there stark naked, holding a piece of bamboo and scraping it back and forth through clots of blood…

Fragments of flesh were still stuck to the railway tracks. The smell of the blood, smeared about like the tears on the cheeks of his wife, was nauseating. Stiffened feet, streaked with crusted blood, protruded from under the stretch of the drab-white covering-sheet…. Another station old-timer was dead. He’d caught his leg in the coupling, and had been struck and hurled aside by the train. The white sheet, bulging according to the shape of the body underneath, looked ghastly, as ghastly as the day when “Peng” poked his nose in and set the curry down in front of the door of my house. It was the station-master who bought coffin into which the corpse was slowly lowered. The sky grew dark, crumpled horribly. The sound of the train’s whistle moaned like someone in his death throes. Many people couldn’t hold back their tears.

Once again the drum thudded insistently, just as on the day when the father of “Peng” had died. But this time it was “Peng” himself who was lying in the coffin. The so played in short, sharp beats, as before. I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. My chest felt burning hot and suffocatingly tight. The long, towering pile of firewood looked like the wall of hell. And the jagged rim of the sun, which had almost vanished into the pile, seemed to be pointing out something over and over, as though it were a satanic spirit with the power to trample down and crush little people….

I stared at the sun so long that I felt dazed. And when it disappeared behind the firewood pile, my vision blurred. Everything I looked at turned red and purple. Not until someone brought me a handkerchief to wipe the tears from my eyes did I realize that I was crying, crying hard. My old friend’s eldest boy was still running about playing with his kite, as before. But when he ran close to the stroller of the station-master’s baby, he stopped still, stood looking at it and then stretched out his hand to touch it. Whereupon he was roughly shoved to the ground by the stationmaster’s servant, who grabbed the chubby, cuddly baby by the hand and hurried it into the house.

Watching this scene, I felt I had no tears left to weep. The long railway tracks extended into our little hamlet in parallel lines which never met, even at the station’s end. The little station-worker was never given the opportunities we had. All he could do was wait and scramble for any chance that might come by. No one had ever given “Peng” and his children any security in life. I felt certain that what had happened to “Peng” would be forgotten before long. There’d still be people selling sticky rice on the station platform. There’d be a new young worker in his place—who might well be his own son. And so it would go, on and on, over and over. People would always say: “Don’t brood over such a trifle. It’s not worth it.”

My friends were urging me to leave, when some said exactly these words, insisting that I not get too involved. After all, he said, everyone dies some day. It must have been because the sun had just disappeared that I was confused enough to say out loud: “You know, he’s not really dead at all. Do you see his two little kids? Do you see his wife? Do you see their future? That’s just it, no one sees. Where will those two kids end up? It’s not over yet. I know for sure that it’s not over yet. It’ll happen again, over and over, because no one gives a damn about these little people”.

I remember bursting into the most racking sobs at that funeral.

1An all-purpose term for unskilled railway laborers.

2In many parts of Siam, it is believed that ghosts like to seize children by their feet.

3The pi is a kind of oboe, the so a kind of vio.

4Khao yam is a Southern Thai dish made of rice, vegetables, and a spicy sauce.

5Nam phrik is a condiment made of shrimp paste, lime-juice, hot pepper, and garlic.

6Kung yam is a dish made of prawns, lemon-juice, and hot pepper.