The Storm.
An excerpt from "Thai Karma", an Art for Life novel about Thailand.
THE SKY goes purple, the wind picks up. The temperature drops, and people begin to scurry, every which way, readying for rain.
Merchants frantically pack up their curbside stands. Fruit dealers scurry to consolidate exposed produce. Pushcart vendors rig tarps over their produce and reposition their carts. Pedestrians seek shelter under shop-front awnings and overhanging rooftops, seeing a downpour is imminent. Green-blazoned motorcycle taxi drivers ride bag-laden shoppers to their doors, trying to beat the deluge.
Swollen clouds roll in and lurk low, primed to cool and cleanse the overheated world of dust underfoot. A strong updraft lifts dust into the air, awnings begin to creak. Every which way, merchants are preparing for the storm.
A motorcycle taxi, seeing a woman in distress, sidles up to Bun as she flounders forward. The driver offers her a ride, but she nods no, unsure of where she’s going. She’s barely able to put one foot ahead of the other, but grits her teeth and trudges forward. She penetrates deeper into the soi, unfocused and in a daze, dully following in the wake of an old man pedaling a bike-cart. Heavily overloaded, the cart appears twice its normal size, straw brooms and feather dusters fanning out of the rear like a peacock’s tail. Bunches of upright feather dusters dance in the wind.
Bun clambers past an untended vat of curry and a low-lying brazier upon which moon-shaped coconut waffles bubble and thicken in a cast iron mold. Inattentive to the clutter due to her distant, unfocused gaze, she grazes her bare ankle against the side of something burning hot, probably a charcoal grill. Flinching, she leaps aside, but the uneven pavement puts her off balance. She steps from the curb to the road. The black asphalt is warm, radiating the accumulated energy of the day.
Then, suddenly, a sports utility vehicle comes lurching through an opening in the traffic, sideswiping the broom vendor’s cart, which jerkily swerves toward the curb, in turn bumping into a delicately-balanced pyramid of ripe red rambutan. Hairy balls of succulent fruit come tumbling down from the cart and hit the ground with a soft thud and a bounce.
The big car slows but does not stop, forcing its way through by making others yield, honking at the puny three-wheeler blocking its path. When the impatient driver swerves to overtake the tuk-tuk, his big car hits a dog. The creature’s pathetic yelp is silenced with finality when the back wheels of the big car crush its carcass. Belatedly applying the brakes, the driver pauses briefly to assess what happened and then impulsively rushes away. Already the dog’s owner is on the scene, in tears, examining the limp, lifeless ball of bloodied fur by the curb.
Then, out of nowhere, a gust of wind comes whipping down the narrow urban corridor, lifting litter and plastic bags aloft in violent swirls of dust. A voluminous mass of cool air drops from sky to earth, whistling past the awnings. The downward thrust animates laundry lines, where clothing whips, billows and flaps. Under creaking, swinging signboards, nervous merchants withdraw to shelter to sit it out. There’s a sudden scrum of merchants scurrying to and fro, packing up, tamping down, stowing wares and securing produce from the rising storm.
Bun blinkingly absorbs the commotion around her but the drama of the street does not long distract her from the burning turmoil inside. When the heavens finally let loose, and the torrent gushes full throttle, she is all but oblivious to the globules of water smacking the steamy street and smacking down on her feverish head. Motor traffic is immediately immobilized, potholes fill up like irrigated craters. Rapid streams of effluent rush into the gutter.
She pushes on, squeezing between rows of idling vehicles and vibrating tail pipes that spew warm soot and exhaust on her puddle-sloshed legs. Now entering the residential end of the soi, she navigates around the stop-and-go of blocked vehicles, gaining on a luxury sedan that idles impotently due to stalled traffic.
Half-blinded by the force of the squall, she plods ahead to the dead end of the road where the frontage of row-shops gives way to empty lots, small eateries and a handful of residential plots.
Heavy raindrops pound down in multitudes. Her field of vision is foreshortened, misty and indistinct. It’s thundering now, as the up-tempo squall unfolds its tropical fury in full swing. The rain hammers down indiscriminately upon rich and poor, pelting canvas umbrellas, immaculate luxury cars, and rusted tin rooftops.
A jet of water shoots down from the gutters of a steep, weather-beaten tile roof, splashing noisily on the sidewalk below, bringing attention to the traditional contours of a two-story wooden house. Its steep roof and broken gutters send water cascading every which way at once, with almost none of it landing in the big, poorly-positioned rainwater jar at the side of the house.
A glassy curtain of water spills from the partially-rotted roof, splashing at the base of the partially-rotted foundation posts.
The runoff kicks up a frothy foam the color of coffee.
The excited torrent seeks its level, inundating a yard choked with weeds in the back of the ramshackle house.
This was it. The place once described by the foreign teacher she is both drawn to and repelled by as “the most Thai house on the block.”
He wasn’t wrong; it was a Thai-style house with a pointed Thai-style roof, the only one of its kind on a block of utilitarian shop-houses and luxury condominiums.
With water blowing in the window and drenching the floorboards faster than he can mop them, John battles with a jammed wooden shutter. He got all the other creaky windows closed, but this one just won’t shut. The only way he’s going to close it is to force it shut from the outside.
He rolls up his pants, puts on flip-flops and steps into the deluge, sloshing across the yard to the side of the house facing the street. Balancing on the narrow wooden ledge below the windowsill, he’s like a sailor battening down the hatches, putting all his weight behind the shutter, forcing it closed with a loud slam.
He jumps back to the soggy ground and he lands with a splash. That’s when he catches a glimpse of a girl with dripping curls and a wet T-shirt stumbling by.
The girl looks up at him, blinks slowly, and then looks away.
“Bun?” he calls out, unsure at first. “Bun!”
The girl pauses curiously upon hearing the name but continues to slosh forward, as if it were a case of mistaken identity. She slumps away, downcast eyes not once deviating from the flooded street surface.
“Bun!” he shouts. “Bun? Where are you going?”
At last she turns around. Her wet, sun-scorched face, framed by black locks pasted to her forehead, betrays a glimmer of awareness, but not the affirmative recognition he expected. She stands there dumbly on the submerged curb where a small torrent runs up to her ankles, as if crazed on drugs, all sullen and inexplicably motionless.
“Bun! What are you doing?” he shouts. “Come on, come here! It’s pouring out. Don’t be crazy!”
He unhooks the latch of the gate and runs out into the street. He takes her by the hand and shepherds her into the ramshackle compound. He guides her across the swampy yard; even the stepping stones have been swallowed up. He leads her up the slick wooden steps to the back porch. Even under the eaves, her water-logged locks continue to ooze a trickle down her blistered cheeks.
“Bun!” he proclaims with a mix of joy and consternation.
“I impose on you,” she says flatly.
“No, no you don’t. Come in, come in.” He steps over the doorjamb into the kitchen, expecting her to follow.
“I go now.” She starts to turn around.
“No. Wait. Wait. What’s the matter?”
“I feel ditzy. Du, dit, a little, diz-zy.”
“Here, come here. Come in. You can sleep on my bed.”
“Bed?” His words confuse her. Why do men always take advantage of women when they are at their weakest? Her body trembles with anger for a microsecond, but her face remains ashen.
“I am tom,” she says.
“Tom?”
“I am not straight,” she protests, searching for the English words that will protect her. Lady Power words.
“What are you saying?”
“I do not sleep with man.”
“The mattress is not a man!” her host answers indignantly. “It’s, it’s ah, it’s just a mattress!”
He meant to be reassuring, he really did, but his talk confuses her.
“Goodbye…” she says listlessly.
“No, no! Come on,” he pleads. “The rain’s not gonna stop any time soon. I’ll go stay in the neighborhood hotel if it comes to that. Just help yourself to a towel; you had better dry off. Would you prefer to lie on the couch? Is that better? I’ll leave you alone as soon as I clean up. My home is your home.”
“Home?” She mouths the words but says nothing more
.