the flower jail


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THE FLOWER JAIL

1 I call it jail. I spend my life here. Anyone getting off the bus at the market and turning right into the tarmac road heading due east, past the shabby old wooden cinema, then taking the red-earth road with a boxing club and a little school facing each other before it crosses a grove which is part of the military camp to reach a wide expanse of paddy fields, and then again turning left into a dusty cart track and over a small turbid canal – that person will see an area which has been parcelled out according to different space and building uses. Given that the boundaries are built in a way which is neither secure nor strong but scary, first-time visitors might get the mistaken impression that the neighbouring villages in the cogon grassland or on the hill slope are also part of the jail. It might even be possible that all the children in the villages feel there is no difference at all between the jail and their own homes, they being equally comforting. Nevertheless, there is the insistent rumour among the convicts that those casual fences are full of terrifying hidden traps. The dawn after a waning moon night was my first dawn here. The big round pale yellow moon looked forlorn. Its light fell on the roof battens above the bed head, which in the darkness looked very much like cell bars. The rays that got through to slap my face woke me up eyes wide open, as if that pale moonlight was the hand of a demon tearing my eyelids open, pulling 10 THAI SHORT STORIES

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me out of a warm bed and dragging me to the window. I looked through the dim moonlight glossing everything over. My friends got up and came to stand beside me quietly. We didn‘t tell one another anything at all as we looked at the many species of flowers whose petals and beautiful hues were like a painting in the first glow of dawn amid scattered fog. I shifted my gaze from the line of flowerbeds to the cart track running alongside the fence that disappeared into the grove. Some five hundred yards from the place where I stood a high earthen dyke came into view. After a few moments, I heard echoing bursts of gunfire coming from that dyke line – always loud at dawn as a wakeup call, day after day, as if to stir each day awake after a long sleep. The rays of dawn slowly grew bolder. The sounds of killing increased further like flowing blood whose reek spread all over the fields and grove… Every day without exception. It‘s a jail. I spend my life here. 2 ―Pang! Pang! Pang!‖ I raised the hoe and stopped it in mid-air, flung it down forcefully to turn the soil the colour of dry leaves, then took it out and put it by my side, stretched myself erect, my legs straddling firmly the row of earth dug into a plot. I looked up at the fence and saw the pretty smiles of the innocent children standing there. ―Pang! Pang! Pow! Pow!‖ The children mimicked the burps of guns. They all had their index and middle fingers up, aiming through the fence at me. ―Watch out! Don‘t get too close to the fence. It‘s dangerous,‖ I shouted to warn them. ―Will you go there, uncle?‖ A child pointed at the earthen dyke far away in the military grounds. 10 THAI SHORT STORIES

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―What for, hey?‖ ―To see the soldiers practise shooting.‖ ―Practise warfare.‖ ―Shooting each other as in the movies.‖ ―No way.‖ I shook my head, smiling. Drops of sweat ran into my eyes, making them sting. ―Over there, there are phayom flowers fallen from the trees too, you know,‖ they shouted, ―but the soldiers step on them so much they‘re all squashed when they go back to their barracks once the training session is over.‖ The children set off down the cart track running alongside the fence, their teasing like bell chimes fading in the distance. They are the sons and grandsons of poor villagers in the nearby cogon grassland. Children are all bright cheerfulness. They are like substitutes for the convicts‘ hopes and dreams, just like the flowers that bloom in this jail, a jail which has only fences of rotten bamboo of various sizes in thick rows on all sides, yet never has anyone been able to get away from this place. Even though there have been attempts and flights to freedom, before long everyone always returns to detention. I looked at the building which was like a rest house. Two friends working close by smiled broadly at me in the sunlight. Their faces were oozing sweat. They were mowing grass and spreading fertiliser on the birds of paradise which were blooming into bird-shaped posies of vivid yellow, pink and red. I waved at them. Last night, the three of us were talking quietly by the campfire burning bright and warm. The register of flower sales lay open to check the accounts, with the night wind flipping through its pages slowly, one at a time. We note down sales details in it, but all the money is kept by our warders to await the time when our sentences will end. When that day comes, each of us will have money available to get on with his life. ―When will we be released?‖ I mused, breaking the silence, 10 THAI SHORT STORIES

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pricking the fire idly with a branch, sending spurts of small sparks flying. ―They‘ve told us many times since the day we were brought here, were made to fall in line and given our gear, then sorted out and assigned to the various areas. Don‘t you see there are warning signs all over the place? So why keep asking?‖ the older man asked seemingly in irritation. ―I can answer instead of the jailers,‖ the younger one said, his gaze lost in the darkness, out of focus. I saw his eyes were full of clear tears reflecting the sparkle of the fire. Night birds called out in the woods. ―When we are at the end of our sentences, when our relatives and friends that we love remember us, love and worry about us, truly want us, that day they‘ll come and take us out of here, and then that day … stupidity, stubbornness, the bad in us will change for the better, in tune with society… That‘ll be the day.‖ His voice wobbled while the old man and I looked for stars in a sky veiled in clouds and fog. ―Do you miss home?‖ I asked the old man. ―Sort of.‖ ―Aren‘t you thinking of running away again?‖ He kept silent. The three of us and everything else were swallowed up by the silence. Even the fire‘s brightness dulled. Last year, the old man had run away from here. He had left at dawn almost at the end of the rainy season. We learnt about it when the jailers came to tell us and ordered all of us to keep quiet with harsh voices. Five days went by. The old man came back with the jailers and a strong posse of police officers. He looked exhausted, hardly recognisable, like a flower trampled underfoot in the dirt. The sunken eyes and gaunt face were devoid of any glint of hope. The whole week he had to lie helpless in bed after being confined to isolation as punishment. That night he called me out for the first time. I dragged a chair to sit by his bed, leaned out to peer at his face closely. I was able to 10 THAI SHORT STORIES

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note the expression in his eyes. It was the expression of someone remorseful. He asked me if he had been wrong doing a bunk in search of freedom. I asked him about his condition and asked him, in the same words I had asked him last night, ―Aren‘t you thinking of running away again?‖ ―Surely not. I‘ve just realised there‘s no one outside that cares about us. Nobody extended a hand to help with even a grain of rice or a coin. Nobody at all. It looks like outside is just another jail everybody is stuck in for life…‖ He laughed sheepishly before saying in sorrow and hopelessness, ―I hid at night at the railway station, in passenger trains, in public parks, foraged for water and refuse in the rubbish heaps at the market, avoiding police and jailers all along. The dry bird of paradise flower I kept in my shirt pocket, even that was taken away… I don‘t know who stole my shirt on the third night. Damn it! I‘d tried my best to keep it as a sort of amulet from the very first night I came here… No matter who runs away must meet with it – death, I mean. It‘s already waiting.‖ He sank his head between his knees out of weariness. We were too scared to ask about the traps in the fence. No one dared to mention them. I stared at a star with a dark blue shine as I thought that I, he or any one of us might try one more time. It might be death as he said, even though we knew that everywhere the eyes of our jailers were on us, eyes like those of venomous snakes in the dark, eyes with glints of scorn, devoid of benevolence, and tricky. One day, some convict would try again. 3 It‘s late in the morning. Emerald green chameleons are basking in the sun on branches and on the ground. Squadrons of dragonflies are looping the loop in the bracing air. 10 THAI SHORT STORIES