CurrencyBy Zoe ZolbrodOV Books |
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No first-class buses routed through Pai, so at dawn Robin and Piv climbed on the third-class one. The paved road through this part of the mountains had been laid about twenty years ago, but the rough state of it made it seem biblical, an archaeological find, and the bus staggered and slowed with every gear shift. The marigold and jasmine strung from the rearview mirror jerked so rapidly they looked like hummingbird wings. Rumor was that a bigger, four-lane highway was going through—that was one of the things the Pai Resort was banking on. Looking over the road’s edge at sharply angled jungle, Robin wondered where they would put the extra asphalt. What part of the mountain would they blast away? She mourned it, but was relieved when they switched to a deluxe coach in Chiang Mai.
They arrived in Kanchanaburi Town after nightfall, and there caught one more transport, a lonely songthaew. The moon was just a sliver. Robin knew Piv’s family lived outside the provincial capital, but she hadn’t expected the ride there to be so absolutely black. Next to her, she could feel Piv rolling supplely with the truck’s lurches. To him, this route was like breathing. He didn’t need to see, but she missed the moon’s glow.
At their stop, she welcomed the electric light emanating from a row of homes. She bounded out of the truck onto a crunch of gravel curb and waited while Piv went to the driver to pay. She was surprised at the dwellings. No porch lights burned, but the glow of the lit picture windows indicated a row of two-story town houses with white shutters and broad garage doors. Because of the blackness, the songthaew’s puttering, the soft hills, Piv’s vagueness, the taste of bugs, Robin had half anticipated she was heading toward a bamboo farmhouse with pigs living underneath. The truck drove away, its departing ruckus accentuating the night’s quiet. Suddenly, she was down-deep scared. Piv slung their pack onto his shoulder and headed for the door, but she hung back. He stopped. Turned. Pecked her mouth dryly.
“Okay,” he said, giving her wrist a tug. “Come on.”
Two steps closer, Robin saw what kept these houses from being unchecked American suburban subdivision homes: the shutters looked aluminum, but the walls were unfinished cinder block.
Following Piv, she stepped out of her shoes at the threshold. The screen door opened directly into a living room focused around a color TV. Robin lagged at the door frame, and Piv strode in. He waied quickly, then caught the backpack slipping down his shoulder. A roundfaced girl, her cheeks circled in white paste, beamed up at him from her seat on the floor. From a chair, a dry curl of a man bobbed his head happily, his bottom jaw flapping. Piv’s mother just scowled. She held a square of glittering white tapestry and gestured with it up the stairs that bordered the small room.
With Piv up the stairs, gazes fell on Robin. She had memorized some basic Thai phrases for the occasion, but they were frozen just above her reach. The sister’s smile softened, and her gaze turned down shyly, perhaps embarrassed to have been caught in a beauty routine. The father still nodded happily and beckoned her into the room. The mother went back to her sewing, her elbow avoiding the tin of pearly sequins balanced on the flat arm of her chair. Then all eyes drifted back to the TV set.
There was nothing else to do or say. No one offered her a seat. Robin felt her bones were going to break by the time Piv descended the stairs.
“Sit here,” he told her, pointing to a hard yellow couch. “This one is for visitors.” He made her a cup of instant coffee from the water pot and fixings set out on a black metal tray.
“They know I’m like farang. I like hot coffee. That’s why they have this,” he said.
He took his own cup and squatted down on the mat with his sister. He slurped his drink. He picked up a sequined square from his sister’s pile and spoke to her, then turned to Robin. “My mother teaches her how to make this. Very beautiful. One man in Kanchanaburi town buys these things, sells them to U.S., where you live. I told my sister that you live there.”
Robin smiled again at the sister. “Beautiful,” she said. “Très jolie,” her freshman-year French drills kicking in under the linguistic stress. The Thai word bubbled up as well: “Suay.” The sister’s face registered only appeasing befuddlement. Robin must have gotten the tones wrong. She tried again. “Beautiful. Suay.”
Piv laughed. “The way you say that means bad luck,” he told Robin. “Suay means bad luck. You want to say su-ay. Rising tone. Su-ay.” Robin tuned her ears to pick up his different inflection, but she heard nothing she could understand. She tried again anyway—“Suay”—and was rewarded with a shy and pitying glance from Piv’s sister.
“Maybe my mother can show you how to make one,” Piv said.
“Sure,” Robin said, both of her hands gripping the coffee mug, her legs crossed at the knee and again at the feet.
Piv turned to his mother. His grin was blinding. Robin realized that for all the charm he’d turned on her—and she sometimes felt subsumed by it, choked up, suspicious—she’d never gotten a smile this big. His mother’s skin was butter-smooth, butterscotch, pulled over cheekbones as high and regal as Piv’s, but her hair, twisted into a bun, had finger-wide streaks of gray. And her mouth was hard and fixed, plump lips ironed into a purse. It killed the beauty she surely must have had. With infinitesimal movements, she signaled negative to everything Piv said. He didn’t bother to translate. Still smiling, punctuating with short laughs, he offered other questions, presumably farang-neutral—Robin took personally her hostess’s freeze—until the knife-mouth softened into a recognizable prototype for Piv’s. All the while she jabbed sequins onto a piece of muslin.
The TV on, the family all sitting—one member swallowing bile— the prim house, decent, a crown of achievement but without any room for grace: it reminded Robin of Palatka. She pictured her own mother. She’s still pretty, Robin told herself, the perennial consolation implying that something might yet happen for her, but behind that banner slogan lurked the faded tints and frown lines that accosted Robin on her last visit home. She would have liked to imagine that her mother would be generous in welcoming Piv into the house, but with a sinking heart she saw the likely stare of fear, incomprehension. And she heard a command spoken when she was fourteen; she still felt the shame: “Don’t dance with them anymore, honey. I know it’s only dancing, but you can’t let them think dating’s okay.” Robin had occasionally bristled at some farangs’ attitudes toward Piv—they treated him as irrelevant, uncomprehending, a hustler, a tout—but in his own country he always had the upper hand. He would be the farang, the foreigner, at home. She’d never thought of that. Palatka was so far away.
But she and Piv had both come far; they’d both gotten out. No wonder they had drawn together. They wanted more: space and motion, possibility and beauty. A wider range of everything than was offered to their mothers, whose potential was cut off by kids, by cruel or unreliable or ineffectual men, by lack of funds; who were stuck. Without knowing anything else about Piv’s mom, Robin knew that much.
The family didn’t have a hot shower, but Piv insisted on heating water for Robin to bathe. She stood in a clean, tiled room and washed Thai-style, sluicing the warmth over her with a bucket, soaping up, then rinsing off. Afterward, she self-consciously balled up all her stray hairs from the drain on the floor and opened the window to push them out. The Turkish-style toilet had no flush, and there wasn’t a waste basket. Piv had given her one of his sister’s sarongs to wear. The two ends had been seamed together to make a loose tube, which wrapped around much more neatly than the open-ended cloth that Robin owned. She stepped gingerly out into the kitchen. Piv was waiting for her, but the fluorescent living room light was turned off. Everyone else had gone to bed. Was there another bathroom? No. She blushed with the embarrassment of taking too long and blushed again, protesting in whispers, when he insisted that of course they would share his bed. No one expected them not to.
The huge bed, with a six foot teak headboard, nearly filled the room. A metal stand with a mirror above it sat in one corner. The white cinder block wall was bare.
“Was this your room when you were growing up?” Robin asked. She sat on the bed with the day’s clothes in her lap, scanning for signs of adolescence or childhood: trophies or schoolbooks or one favorite toy. Nothing. Piv took her bundle from her.
“We moved here when I was seventeen years. We feel lucky to have this house. This one is good. New.”
He took off his jeans and T-shirt and folded them on top of the backpack, then turned off the light and came to bed in his bikini underwear.
“Does it feel weird for you to be back here?” Robin whispered.
“Hmmm? What do you say?” Piv squirmed deeper into the bed. “It feels good to be in my home.”
“But does your mom feel angry because you’re gone so much, because you live in Bangkok?”
“No. She’s not angry. I do business. When they’re old, I’ll help them. Sure. They know that.”
The answer didn’t sit right. The day’s sensations rolled through Robin: the shake of the first bus, the long roll of the second, the clenched anxiety she had felt since they’d reached this home. She tried to relax. Piv’s breathing grew regular.
“Piv,” she whispered. “Piv.” She poked him. “Hey, I don’t think your mom likes me.”
His hand grazed her hip. “She likes you. Sure. Because you’re suay. Suay. Very pretty.” He tilted his face and nuzzled into her hair.
At least it’s only one more night. Then we’re due back in Bangkok, Robin thought. But that promise wasn’t enough to relax her. She was awake to hear the chickens cackle and to see the gray light of sunrise suffuse the room.
She must have dozed finally, because when she woke later in the morning, Piv was gone. She lay for a while waiting for him to return from the bathroom or kitchen and gather her up. She strained to hear his voice amid the downstairs activity. She looked at her watch. Twenty after ten. Resentment ticked in. Didn’t he know how awkward she felt? That she needed his help? She rose and swiftly dressed. Her most likely Thai-girl outfit had been tried yesterday. She put on silk harem pants and a scoop-neck T-shirt and made the bed, then sat on it to give him a few more minutes to redeem himself, to save her. Those minutes ticked by. She sighed and stood. She needed to pee, badly, but she still wanted to postpone going down. She checked her hair in the mirror.
She was finger-combing the tangles out when the door flew open. She jumped to look and saw Piv’s mom. Wearing a flowered shirt and matching lavender pants, she held a short-handled broom and aggressively swept the joint where the floor met the wall. Robin stood stock still and smiled.
“Sa-wat-dee kha,” she murmured—it was the only Thai greeting she knew, and she wasn’t even sure it was appropriate now. The older woman, moving into the room, just scowled at the floor she was attacking. Robin stepped sideways, but the space she occupied, between the end of the bed and the back wall, was very small. As the bamboo broom swept closer, Robin side stepped until the only option left was to collapse back onto the mattress, her knees over the footboard, her weight on her hands. Piv’s mother swept beneath her dangling feet. She wasn’t using a dustpan. Her overt hostility dissolved Robin’s shyness.
“Where’s Piv?” she asked. Surely a mother must recognize her son’s name. Her voice grew loud. “Where’s Piv? Piv!”
Finally the woman stopped her sweeping and looked up, her face drawn with disappointment and full of contempt. She had a scattering of birthmarks by her left eye. Staring at Robin, she flicked her wrist twice at the window.
So he had gone? Or did the gesture mean that they’d all be better off if Robin were the one to leave?
Piv’s mother swept her way out of the room and closed the door with a thud.
She must have sent Piv on some errand, made him go. He’d be right back. Summoning bravery, Robin went downstairs. She went to the bathroom. When she came out, Piv’s father gestured to the tea tray. He’d poured her a mug of hot water. She put a tea bag in it, not Piv’s instant coffee, and perched again on the yellow couch, to wait for a very long half hour before a motorbike rolled into the driveway.
Piv came in with a joyful gait, with a happy face, with a bag of fruit.
“You sleep this morning, wow!” he said.
“Where’ve you been?” Robin asked. But he was already talking to his mother, holding up fruits Robin had never seen before—some brown and bulbous, some hairy. Grudgingly, his mother accepted a rust-colored pod from him, sniffed the skin, nodded, then took the bag. “I told her tonight I’ll take her to restaurant, very good one, in town.”
“Piv, I’ve just been waiting here. I’ve been up over an hour. Where have you been?”
“I rode the motorbike into town. I told you my father has that. You’ll go, too. Today we’ll go ride.”
“You couldn’t have waited?”
“I needed to use the international phone to call Abu. Better to call in the morning our time. I told him that I bring you to see my family. He says sure, it’s no problem if we stay here two more days.”
“What if I don’t want to stay here?”
“Okay. No problem. Today only, I will show you Bridge over River Kwai, very famous one. We’ll go on the motorbike and you can see.”
But alongside the banks of the slow-moving river, Piv proved quietly intractable. They sat watching a boy on an elephant caress his beast as he waited for tourists who might pay for a ride, and Robin had to ask several times about bus schedules before Piv replied.
“It’s better to stay more days, not leave so soon,” he said.
He brushed aside Robin’s claims of maternal hostility. His mother was just busy. She’d warm to Robin when she had more time.
“Please,” Piv said. “We stay together. This is my family.”
Robin went back to picking at the ground with a stick. She let a curtain of hair fall over her face, blocking her view of the two tourists who were being loaded onto the elephant’s back. Piv twisted around and put his head on her lap and looked up at her. “Please,” he said again.
He promised her daytimes of tourist fun. He’d take her to see a cave temple; he’d take her to a waterfall. A party boat floated down the river, music trailing behind it, and he told her that the two of them could spend an evening on one. By the end of the afternoon, Robin acquiesced, a pit of dread still lodged in her stomach but her mood softened by the flecks of sun coming in through the trees.
Because his parents had declined the invitation to a restaurant dinner, Piv brought home take-out food. On the motorbike, they’d wedged the bag between Robin’s front and Piv’s back. The five of them ate in a circle on the living room floor, Piv serving Robin out of the bowls placed family-style, describing the different foods to her, then turning back to the Thai conversation. It was his juggling act, but even living it vicariously, Robin felt exhausted.
Still, once they were tucked in bed, lights off, he began caressing her.
“No. I don’t want to in your mom’s house,” she whispered.
“Shhh,” he said. “No problem.”
He continued with his touching, soft but sure. Her body responded. I could be in the pits of hell, she thought. In the midst of a big sale, and if it were him, I’d still want to, I can’t help it.
Trapped all evening in an unwelcoming house, Robin found solace in their joined skin. He ripped a condom packet open. She fit to him, relaxed.
But at the first creak of the bed, it was Piv who froze. Abruptly, he sat upright. He yanked the pillow from under her head and threw it on the ground, along with his own.
“Too noisy,” he said. “Floor better.”
“What?”
“Shh.” He spread a blanket out, gestured for her to slide off the bed. Confused, self-conscious of her nudity, she did so, but once on the floor she remained sitting, her brows knit and mouth half open, until he eased her back onto the pillows with his chest and shoulders. It was so dark.
“Okay?” he whispered.
“Yeah,” she said, because she’d never answered otherwise when they lay naked together.
With some effort he pressed into her again, and she went along, trying to regain that space, the warmth, the rhythm. The window shutters were open, but there was no moon or street glow. With her hands obligingly on his shoulders, she felt how little there was of him: bone, muscle, skin, nothing extra. His face was against her neck. It seemed to take so long this time, and the blanket and pillows shifted so her backbone rocked on hard floor. Piv’s lips found hers, but for the first time they seemed sloppy and artless. Her mind was elsewhere until she felt him straining, approaching his climax, and then she wished him on. She tried to help, but only because she wished it over.
Afterward, he lay very still. His heartbeat thumped against her. It galloped, cantered, trotted, finally walked. He pulled his head back. Because there was no light in the room, nothing reflected from his eyes.
“My wife,” he whispered. He kissed her.
She kissed back but felt herself retreat from her skin.
Why had he spoken then, she later wondered. She had otherwise taken so much pleasure in their lovemaking, couldn’t he tell when she had taken none at all?
They were squeezed into the two feet of space between the bed and the wall. He slipped under her so that it was his body that pressed against the floor. Hers was half on top of him, scooped close by his arm. “I want you be my wife,” he said. She felt him watch her.
What to do? If there had been more room for noise, she might have chuckled and made a joke, but the thick silence, the secret proximity, forestalled this. And she couldn’t hedge with a vague romantic declaration. Awash in this strangeness, as alone in her life as she ever had been, she didn’t know what love meant. She couldn’t say anything.
“Okay?” he said. “You marry me?” He kept massaging the base of her neck with the hand that held her to him. When she didn’t answer, he asked again. “Okay?”
“I never thought about it, Piv. I never thought of getting married.”
She hadn’t, really. At least not very specifically, which surprised her. Especially considering what she’d done for money. She’d stolen things, misled, rushed people, hounded, wheedled. She’d borrowed far past what she had, which led directly to now—erranding for gangsters, trafficking in dying species. All this, until she didn’t know herself, and she’d never thought of marrying rich? Not even when she’d dated guys born into money or pulling down big bonuses? No. She’d had contempt for their cushions even as she’d laid in them. The alienation this contradiction inspired combined with the doctrine of independence implied in the lives of artists she’d most admired took quid pro quo marriage off the table. But smelling Piv’s fruity breath infuse the nook where they lay, Robin’s stomach sank. At the least, a husband should not be a deficit.
“Don’t think about it. Be. Be my wife.”
“But why? We’ll have our business. We can travel anywhere we want, come and go. You won’t need papers. We don’t need to be married.”
Piv sat up. She felt the loss immediately. He lowered his head toward her.
“I’ve been with many woman. Too many. When I make something with you, I never feel like that before. This is not for the papers. This is not because you’re from U-S-A.” He punctuated the three initials sarcastically.
Robin reached out for him, fumbling in confusion about his urgency and hers. Her hand landed on his knee, but he stood and it fell off.
“We haven’t even known each other for two whole months. Let’s talk about this later,” she said. Her voice was pleading.
She pushed herself into a sitting position, but he stepped over her. He picked up his sister’s wadded sarong and tied it around his waist with one hand. In the other hand he held their knotted, spent condom. He left the room, closing the door softly behind him.
The next day they went to the Erawan waterfalls. Piv was polite, charming. He flirted. But that was all. He wouldn’t say a nonjoking word about what had transpired. His mother forgot to scowl at Robin, but she never smiled. The third day they took a first-class bus back to Bangkok.