court receded like a shrine at the end of a long, straight road. Our lives resumed something of a normal pattern. Twice a week we brought our eggs to the floating market. Worried that a thief could find our savings underneath the floorboard and take everything we had, our mother began sneaking out in the darkness and secreting a portion of our money in a short piece of bamboo under some loose thatching. If we saved carefully, my brother and I believed, within a year’s time we would be able to build a second enclosure and expand still further.
In our dreams we saw ourselves trading in duck eggs all the way down the river, saw our boats, which by now had multiplied into a grand armada, sailing daily into Bangkok, saw ourselves, in fine clothes made to accommodate our condition, living in a house in the capital with a view of the Royal Palace. The king himself, hearing of our success, would request another audience. We laughed when we said these things to each other as though to say, “It’s all a joke, no more, a bit of harmless foolishness to pass the time,” wary, I suppose, of offending the gods of fortune with our presumptuousness. But oh, the dreams we dreamed squatting in the dirt by the Meklong, our bare feet slippered with therunny green waste of the duck yard, our hands white-gloved to the wrists with drying clay and salt. Those, it seems to me now, were among the sweetest times we knew in Siam. How absurd we are, to ask of dreams that they fulfill themselves. As though the shadow, diminished and pale, could ever live up to the thing itself.
But we were not the only ones dreaming. Though momentarily stunned by our success, Robert Hunter had resumed his attentions. Like a horsefly, or a suitor who appears at the door day after day even though he knows his intended would just as soon throw herself into the river with a stone around her neck as marry him, he seemed to have made up his mind to get what he wanted or annoy us to death, one or the other. Week after week he appeared, uninvited, bringing gifts we did not need, doggedly telling stories that had long ago lost their charm, laughing at things no one else thought amusing. Week after week we would find him sitting on a bamboo mat in our house, sweating into his collar. Like a dog he would follow us as we went about our business. We didn’t know what to do. We began to feel sorry for him and, like most human beings, hated him for it.
We were too young to know the power of tenacity, the extent to which pressure, applied with enough single-mindedness of purpose, for good or ill, can shape the world around it. We were too young, too arrogant. Seething inside like a vat forever about to boil, Robert Hunter hunted us. He had no shame, no sense of reticence. Frustrated at one point, he would try another. Losing the trail, he would double back and begin again. If ten years had been needed to petition the king to allow us to emigrate, he would have given it ten years. If twenty, twenty.
But he didn’t need twenty years to tunnel into the Audience Hall. Or even ten. Less than two years after our return from Bangkok, Robert Hunter broke through the palace floor, so to speak, and caught the attention of a well-placed merchant who periodically spoke to one of the councillors to the king. A month later—mirabile dictu—he was granted an audience.
I like to imagine him before the throne, making his obeisances to the heathen king, his forehead leaving a damp stain on the stones at themonarch’s feet. I like to imagine him reciting, as we had: “Exalted Lord, Sovereign of many Princes, let the Lord of Lives tread upon his slave’s head …” It amuses me. It’s an interesting picture. But of course he would have had no difficulty doing whatever was asked of him. He had been prostrating himself for two years. He would have cleaned the floor of the royal stables with his tongue if that had been what was required to get us out of Muang Tai.
He was told to rise. With
In our dreams we saw ourselves trading in duck eggs all the way down the river, saw our boats, which by now had multiplied into a grand armada, sailing daily into Bangkok, saw ourselves, in fine clothes made to accommodate our condition, living in a house in the capital with a view of the Royal Palace. The king himself, hearing of our success, would request another audience. We laughed when we said these things to each other as though to say, “It’s all a joke, no more, a bit of harmless foolishness to pass the time,” wary, I suppose, of offending the gods of fortune with our presumptuousness. But oh, the dreams we dreamed squatting in the dirt by the Meklong, our bare feet slippered with therunny green waste of the duck yard, our hands white-gloved to the wrists with drying clay and salt. Those, it seems to me now, were among the sweetest times we knew in Siam. How absurd we are, to ask of dreams that they fulfill themselves. As though the shadow, diminished and pale, could ever live up to the thing itself.
But we were not the only ones dreaming. Though momentarily stunned by our success, Robert Hunter had resumed his attentions. Like a horsefly, or a suitor who appears at the door day after day even though he knows his intended would just as soon throw herself into the river with a stone around her neck as marry him, he seemed to have made up his mind to get what he wanted or annoy us to death, one or the other. Week after week he appeared, uninvited, bringing gifts we did not need, doggedly telling stories that had long ago lost their charm, laughing at things no one else thought amusing. Week after week we would find him sitting on a bamboo mat in our house, sweating into his collar. Like a dog he would follow us as we went about our business. We didn’t know what to do. We began to feel sorry for him and, like most human beings, hated him for it.
We were too young to know the power of tenacity, the extent to which pressure, applied with enough single-mindedness of purpose, for good or ill, can shape the world around it. We were too young, too arrogant. Seething inside like a vat forever about to boil, Robert Hunter hunted us. He had no shame, no sense of reticence. Frustrated at one point, he would try another. Losing the trail, he would double back and begin again. If ten years had been needed to petition the king to allow us to emigrate, he would have given it ten years. If twenty, twenty.
But he didn’t need twenty years to tunnel into the Audience Hall. Or even ten. Less than two years after our return from Bangkok, Robert Hunter broke through the palace floor, so to speak, and caught the attention of a well-placed merchant who periodically spoke to one of the councillors to the king. A month later—mirabile dictu—he was granted an audience.
I like to imagine him before the throne, making his obeisances to the heathen king, his forehead leaving a damp stain on the stones at themonarch’s feet. I like to imagine him reciting, as we had: “Exalted Lord, Sovereign of many Princes, let the Lord of Lives tread upon his slave’s head …” It amuses me. It’s an interesting picture. But of course he would have had no difficulty doing whatever was asked of him. He had been prostrating himself for two years. He would have cleaned the floor of the royal stables with his tongue if that had been what was required to get us out of Muang Tai.
He was told to rise. With
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