From: ssg9328@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Samart Srijumnong)
Subject: TOWARDS THE UNKNOWN REGION (short story)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 09:42:12 GMT
Keywords: Thai literature


Note: Toward the Unknown Region is another story written by Pira
Sudham which appears in the collection, SIAMESE DRAMA, 5th edition,
published by Shire Books, G.O.P. 1534, Bangkok 10501, THAILAND.



T O W A R D S  T H E  U N K N O W N  R E G I O N
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By Pira Sudham


"My Dear Brother, we have just begun harvesting. Every one is in
the fields. At time like this we miss you very much. We talk about
you more often now since you sent us letters and photographs of
your new home and new friends and strange places. Nearly all the
villagers come to our house to see the photographs and to read your
letters. It is a pity that our Mother cannot read. She always urges
somebody to read them to her again lest I did not read the real
account of yourself. You know, she did not want you to go away at
all, and now in her old ages she suffers, waiting to see you back
again. She does not sleep well, and always tells us in the morning
that she has had a terrible dream.

     "I do not understand why you struggle to go away from us
and the work in paddies. I dare not think you went away because
you did not like working hard in the fields. You always tell us in
your letters that you think of home often and miss the harvesting
time. This gives me a hope that one day you will come back home
and help me with the rice planting and the harvesting. The fields
and the heard need you, and I need your help most of all.

     "You will probably be glad to know that we have three new
water buffaloes. I think in the next few months two more are coming.
But the heard mother died of old age a few days ago. We all fee
sorry because she had served us for a long time. When you and 
were small boys we used to ride on her back together and urge her
to run through water in that shallow stream near our paddies,
remember? She was our first buffalo. She used to draw the plough
and the harrow through these fields till her neck became rough and
stiff. At last she has finished her work. May she be born again in
another from and so be happy and content. I buried her in the high
ground near the swamp where she liked to lie in the mud. Father
keeps her long horns in the rice barn as a sign of good luck.
     
     "This animal has given me an insight into the duty of each
life. When we are born, men or animals, we know our duty to our
kind and nature and needs. Those timid water buffaloes, though they
are whipped and killed, never revolt against men. They give their
services silently, with endurance. When they die, they leave their
hide and horns for men to use. Then life has meaning: living to
serve. Each has its duty. My duty is a son's duty. I may live long
yet, and endure all the work in the fields and at home. It is my
turn to take care of old parents who looked after us when we were
young. I am serving them, looking after them. It is my gratitude.

     "You talk of your service and of you magnificent future; of
your intention to come back and to help us. But you must not forget
that life is good in our village. We are healthy and content. Though
we do not have plenty of money we still have shelter, enough
clothing, medicine, food. There is rice in the paddies, and  fish in
the rivers. I am not ashamed just because some people see us as
stupid and poor. I don not care whether we get anything our to the
wonderful promises of the administrators and politicians. And I do
not care if there are people who grow rich from my hard work, as
long as they left me alone, and as long as this piece of land is mine.

     "You have been away for a long time. Here another season
passing. The rice in the fields is now ripe. I am proud that these
golden sheaves I am  reaping sprouted from may sweat that fell on
this land; these golden sheaves are my life. Every minute I live near
them. They are the result of my hard work; and they give the
promise of plenty.

     "One day you will come back, I am sure. You will realize that
there is not other place that will give you more comfort to both
mind and body than your own home, among your won people. I
always remember our happy boyhood. We used to run naked in the
rain, go hunting frogs and birds on the high plain and in the
woods. There are only three of us here on our wide paddies. Father
and Mother a re very old now. I  always turn away when I see
Mother gazing aimless across the fields. I wish that you would
suddenly appear before her very eyes."

     "I cannot go to sleep. There are so many things to think
about. There will be three lectures and practical work in the
laboratory tomorrow,m and in the evening, dinner at the Williams'.
But how pleasant it would be if I were at home. It is raining there
now because it always rains in July. When it rains, the crickets and
frogs come out to sing their songs. They are happy. The village
boys and girls are happy too because they can come out and catch
the crickets and the frogs. There, everybody is busy, for the
monsoon season has come. The rains pour down over the paddies,
promising a season of joyful harvest. All are in the fields, ploughing
and harrowing and sowing. 

     It would be easy to return home and forget these new
experiences. But I do not know how I can live with my family the
way they want me to. Yet I would like to live close to the soil, in
the open, to be free and serene, to marry a village girl and have
children, there, on the high plain, away from falsehood and
corruption. But I cannot do so. I have been changed and have seen
different ways of life. To be different at home is to be outcast, to
be lonely. To be accepted is to be corrupted. Will I stand the test?
I boasted once loudly that all I wanted was to help my country and
its poor. A silly boast now - made in a distant time and place.

     Another letter from home - Mother has fallen ill. She had
dreamed that I had returned home, was sitting by her sickbed. She
was very happy that I could come to let her see me for the last
time. Putting the letter under the pillow, I hurried dress myself to
go to the lectures. It is winter here; the leafless  trees in the park
shiver against the cold wind. 

     I cannot go on living here. Return home then, to serve them
well and be accepted. The bad is as much a part of nay man's
country as the good. Much is worthy, yet many things need to be
changed. It is hard to live in a foreign land, a stranger among
strangers, reluctantly tolerated as a different being. If I cannot go
back to the old, I have to travel on into the new - a homeless,
friendless, lordless man. To live in a foreign land is to be more than
an outcast, to remember old times and to weep over fond ones left
behind. But to live at home is to be miserable in the knowledge that
there are, in other countries, people more fortunate than many of my
own who must toil on the land and dig up roots and catch      
frogs and insects for food. My brother said that life has its
meaning: living to serve. The timid water buffaloes can go on pulling
the heavy ploughs, carrying yokes though they are badly whipped.
Those born to serve may be exploited; they may be corrupted too,
but they can go on living and working as best they may.

      I feel better now, and my mind seems to be clearer, my heart
less heavy. I wonder how my brother should know how to live and
why his thoughts should be so deep and worth thinking about. And
I feel ashamed of my own thoughts which now seem silly, wilful, and
ridiculous. I recall what my mother told me when I was still naked
boy. One day I would be taken from home to live in a far-off place
because I had taken the little birds away from their nests; for the
mother birds would curse a boy who stole their young and wrecked
their nests. The wretch in his present life or his next life would
have no home of his own; he would have to travel from place to
place all his days; he would be lonely and fearful like the little
birds stolen from their nest. How right Mother is! I am now paying
for my deed: I am to be alone, an exile in the unknown region.
Always a lone wanderer, without friends. There is only memory of
home and of wide rice fields.

     There was, it seemed long ago, a small dark boy who worked
in the fields. His hair and skin were scorched and his face was
plastered with mud. He had many village boys like himself for his
friends, and they were a gang of wild herdboys.

     With cool water from the earthen pot, he washed his muddy
face and dried it with the loincloth tied around his waist. He ate
rice and curry, drank some water, then took his lunch which his
mother wrapped in banana leaves, and with a bamboo gun on his
shoulder he jumped on a buffalo's back and drove the herd to join
his gang outside the village. When the cattle were grazing in the
fallow fields. he and his gang went into the woods, and blew down
sleeping owls and tree lizards, or they caught stray horses and
raced the wind. 

     When evening came, they turned the herd down towards the
village. They sang the country songs, and hallooed and laughed. He
sang a song about the yellow sun setting on the endless  meadow.
And he cursed, whipped the animals and drove them into the stream.
He drank some yellowish water and swam and laughed. When they
arrived home, he made a fire to keep the mosquitoes away from the
animals. He ate hot curry and rice, and lay on the open porch,
listening to the songs of crickets and cicadas. The light of the
kerosene lamps twinkled from the huts against the darkness of the
night. Soft lullabies mingled with the wind. At this time Mother
would sing:

               You have been working all day long:
               You have mud on your face,
               Your hands are strong,
               Your shoulders are wide,
               Evening comes, and you're trudging home,
               To rest by the fireside.

     She sings the children to sleep. She is like the earth and the
skies.

     But now that small boy lives only in memory. This boy is
different and speaks a different language. Both of them have the
same parents who are still toiling in the same fields where the rice
is still growing and life is going on as ever...the wind blows the
golden sheaves, the laughter of the reapers...the noisy warbles carry
off the seeds to their nests...the crabs dig their holes before the
water dries away. All are the same as ever - only he has changed.

     There are times, among these strangers in a foreign land,
when he smells the sun - baked soil, the wild flowers in the woods.
He hears the flute playing the country songs, and at night some-
where the lullabies are softly sung. At these moments he hears a
voice saying: if you return home, everything will be well, you will
be all right and forgiven. There, it is beautiful; there is your only
home. Don't cry, don't be sad, but come home. Come and let your
mother see you for the last time, then burn her when she is gone.

     The spirits of friends dead and alive pass before his misty
eyes. The wrinkled face and the calm eyes of an old father, the
wrinkled face and the calm eyes of an old mother, the stern young
face and firm eyes of a brother, the beautiful face and the shinning
eyes of a village girl, the dark faces and dark eyes of friends watch
him, moving nearer and nearer, but suddenly far, far away.

     Forgive him that he was not there when they harvested the
rice, and when the rain did not come. Forgive him, a stolen nestling.




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