"Why should it?" He was critical and cautious, but then he did not know what else he could be. There were less mendacious illusions like a marriage that lasted for some years and deliberate fraudulent ploys by calculating self-centered beings wanting to improve the circ.u.mstances of their lives more expeditiously. Both, with any real touch, would fall like a wall of sand so one had to be careful of what he leaned on, who he a.s.sociated with, and what he believed if he believed in anything at all. It was a world of impermanence, a world where men married women for solidity and a sense of completion as an adult, and women had their babies (or in the case of Noppawan, a friend"s baby) as though grounding oneself in the mundane would make the continual shifting of the ground stable and themselves as everlasting monuments. But, he countered, what did he know?
Artists might be introverted and anti-social by nature or just inclined to justify their enmity towards the world at large.
"Why shouldn"t it?" said the Laotian [meaning why shouldn"t their acquaintance become closer]. Nawin could not think of any reason to oppose this particular friendliness any more than to favor it, and so he stood there neutral to the dictates of fate.
If he had been more of a non-anthropomorphic deist or anthropomorphic atheist, he would have believed in the significance of this coincidence of finding him here and it would have pressed into his mind with as much religious fervor as the secular could hold. Still as lonely as he was, although adverse to admit it, he just felt its significance without giving it credence.
"Do you still have my number in case you need it? You might when traveling in Laos."
"I Threw it away," Nawin admited regretfully. And as he said this, ashamed of his own conduct, compunction bit into him like a rabid dog, and he felt friendlier towards the Laotian for accrediting him with a liberty that would not entail obligations to paint him or his family. Such moral obligations done to feel the injustice of the world and to allot money (in his case to pay them to model for a painting he did not care to draw out of a sense of pity).
"And yet we are here together. How strange. Sit down. Neither of us will be going anywhere in the rain." Nawin sat down on the wet bench next to the Laotian who wrote his telephone number out for him once again. Around them both was the mesmerizing sound of rain, now a more steady, less vehement pounding in the muddied inundation that surrounded Patuxay. With each new minute it was more like a lake instead of the elongated puddles he had seen minutes earlier.
There in the arch of the monument to the French replica, within the overarching sounds of the falling rain, he heard the sotto voce of a rotating squeak of a bicycle, the swishing of a boy"s saturated sandals, and the solitary howl of a roaming stray dog.
He watched the oval ripples reverberating around patches of random gra.s.s, the bathing of pigeons, the crawling of a worm at his feet, and that dog reaching out with two stretched paws to the solid overflow in the trash bin. It all seemed to him quite beautiful, sad, and fleeting.
Aimless as a transient, his was a melting of self into life and a conscious recording of that which imbued his senses. At this moment his life felt more replete in purpose since he was in the present moment, casting away the hopes and anxieties of the self entirely. Nawin breathed out, smiled and stretched as much as he could without touching the Laotian, content and relaxed in the inconsequence of existence. If there was meaning, he thought, it lay in the montage of what fell into one"s senses and it did not need to be any more profound than this. He was thankful for money which was needed to provide for him in this trans.m.u.tation as a homeless transient and observer of life but without stigma and free of onerous thoughts of what was needed for survival.
"It"s me. In the train? Remember? I sat next to you I was--"
Nawin smiled warmly. "You were on the floor at my feet."
"That is not the best way of being remembered but yes, it was me. Please sit down." Nawin sat down on the damp bench.
"It is hard to find a comfortable position on a train, isn"t it?"
"I didn"t sleep well the night before."
"Why?"
"Financial worries, change, the thought of returning here. The two of you had a good time of it the night before. Sleepers and my brother"s beer from what I heard."
"His beer? I wouldn"t call it a gift. I gave him money afterwards."
"It didn"t hurt you, did it?--I mean giving him something."
"No, I guess it didn"t."
"It helped him. It helped us both to get back. What was left he gave to our parents. He would not have felt good about coming back if he had nothing to give."
"I understand. I didn"t mind, really. It was a wonder that you slept at all."
"Why?"
"I think my feet were stinking. I even wanted to walk away from me." He lifted the pants legs on the foot that rested on his left leg and sniffed his sock. "Better now." She laughed and then he continued more somberly to reduce the chance of awkward silence. "Is there anything to see in this monument?"
"You can go to the top and look out over the city."
"Is it a nice view?"
"I don"t know. I"ve never gone in. It would have to be better than from the ground. The stairs go to different levels outside but they might be rather slippery in the rain."
"Maybe not then." He had enough broken bones without taking on more risks. If only she had flaxen hair like Kimberly"s, he thought, then he would not hesitate a moment. He would swoop her up in one hand and carry her up to the highest cloud.
"Will you go north to Luang Prabong?"
"I don"t know. I am not really here to sightsee. Just here to simplify existence, relax--"
"Drink beer?"
"Wine preferably." Peace of mind was often facilitated this way.
A Singha, a Leo, a Budweiser, a Heineken, and especially that most odious Beer Laos which he had drunk the other night which reminded him of his Barbarous brothers and father. He imagined them with cans in hands as they tried to stomp on his diminutive being while that which was maternal and good pretended it was not happening to him. Thus, in most situations, he eschewed the elixir of farmers and laborers.
"So, why are you sitting here?"
She tossed him an apple from the bag and bit into one herself.
Then she smiled. "The Morning Market."
Maybe she had gone there but that did not explain why she was here. Maybe she was soliciting but then, he thought, in one way or another we all were. To do anything was to seek something from it discontentedly unless one lost himself in the present moment. She was a wh.o.r.e. They all were. But then when did he object to wh.o.r.es. They had been the holy light in his paintings, the instruments of his success. As the male beast was not any better than the female there was nothing for him to say. He just silently bit into her apple as though it were her nipple.
"Don"t your parents grow any apples?"
"No, it"s a rice farm. Only that."
"Are you staying with them now?"
"Yes, I didn"t feel like I should continue to work in the factory when my brother lost his job."
"What will you do back here?"
"I don"t know."
"Maybe we should go someplace else to talk. There must be a coffee shop around here."
"There isn"t."
"Anywhere?"
"None that I have seen. This is Laos. But we can sit over there."
"There? You will get wet."
"I want to get wet."
They sat down at a bench in the rain away from the crowd that was cuddled in the arch.
"I"ve been thinking about hiring a personal secretary."
"Really?