ghosts | seinee saowaphong by marcel barang

ghosts SEINEE SAOWAPHONG

ghosts TRANSLATED FROM THE THAI BY MARCEL BARANG

Her lover was an ordinary man. He had no especially attractive feature or noticeable deformity that would have immediately singled him out among other ordinary people. He was neither taller nor shorter than the average Thai man at large, and he came from a family of simple folk who had â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to use her own parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; expression â&#x20AC;&#x201C; no blue blood in their veins, whereas she, in the opinion of most, did not stand in the back rows of feminine beauty, and was born into an aristocratic family whose ancestors could be traced as far back as the Ayutthaya kingdom. Yet when these dissimilar man and woman came to meet, befriend and love each other, her father blamed this unforgivable mistake on the modern way of life, which granted women too much freedom. Part of the problem was that women were allowed to study at the university together with male students. Even though access to the various university levels was restricted through high tuition fees and expensive books and services, it was not enough to ensure that only children of families of suitable or at least almost suitable social standing could attend. True enough, as a rule the children of the poor did not get past the gates of academe, but it happened all too often that some of them did manage to sneak their way in, and by mixing and GHOSTS | SEINEE SAOWAPHONG

4 socialising with this lowly lot, the other children developed preposterous ideas and were led astray from accepted behaviour, forgetting themselves, their rank and their dignity. And another reason was that women were given the opportunity to leave the house to work in offices, venturing out of safe and orderly homes into a wide, wild world full of trickery and deceit. Her father thought that because she had entered university and studied together with other girls and boys of the same age, some friends of the same sex who were never brought up in good families had put improper ideas into her head. As for the young fellows there who came from lowly families, he thought with contempt that they had no other purpose than to shed their skin and pass themselves off as gentlemen with these girls of good breeding and high standing through all kinds of artifice and fraud. Ratchanee’s grandmother had opposed sending her to senior high school because she could not bear the shame of having to meet and listen to these people and she knew that her granddaughter, who was now a fully grown woman, would have to wear shorts and raise her legs and thrust her bosom and wag her behind and squat and jump in public in what was now an adjunct to education they called ‘physical exercise’ or ‘sport’. She had successfully opposed Ratchanee’s elder sisters from doing the same, which explains why they only graduSEINEE SAOWAPHONG | GHOSTS

5 ated at secondary-school level and stayed at their grandmother’s beck and call for years on end doing nothing but waiting until a bride’s settlement took place and they passed from her custody to someone else’s. It was Ratchanee’s good fortune that she grew up much later than her sisters, and her grandmother’s ill fortune that she had aged so much that she no longer had the strength and stamina to prod and poke until her opinion prevailed and became the supreme law enforced over the whole family as was the case in the past. Ratchanee was thus able to escape from her frighteningly strong embrace. Her mother, who held slightly more advanced opinions than her grandmother because she was born a generation later, just kept her misgivings to herself, maybe because she was too weak to oppose her little daughter whom she loved and had always allowed to have her way, and because she could see that times had changed during her own lifetime. These were no longer the days of powder and turmeric but of all kinds of goods with foreign-sounding names that those overseas creatures made and sent over to sell, names so odd that a sheltered woman in her fifties could neither catch nor remember them. Her childhood was all topknots and anklets, and her adolescence had meant a belt of splendid brass. She still remembered the ceremony of cutting the topknot, a magnificent and protracted affair which had left her sore and exhausted to the point GHOSTS | SEINEE SAOWAPHONG

6 of collapse. But these days such rites were all gone. Only Ratchanee’s two elder sisters had worn topknots, but the cutting ceremony had been so simplified as to be hardly a ceremony at all. Ratchanee was the only one who had not worn a topknot as a child, and when she came of age she did not show any interest in a copper or brass belt. She was satisfied with a mere leather belt that cost nothing much at all, and simply asked for different colours – red, green, brown, blue – to match the shirts and skirts she wore. Gone were the days of silk robes and chintzes and loose bodices and simple cloth wrapped around the waist or tied at the back; now it was all trousers for men and skirts for women. Gone also were the days of powder and turmeric and beeswax, replaced by creams and lipsticks and hair lotions. Ratchanee’s elder sisters were both married and had households of their own, which was extremely fortunate because it left only this youngest daughter to fuss about, and her mother looked at Ratchanee with constant worry in her heart, silently praying for her, hoping for some kind of miracle which would turn her again into the good girl she used to be, amid all the changes that were going on everywhere… When they first met, Ratchanee became interested in the young man for only one reason, which is that he did not show any kind of interest in her at all. When one of her friends introduced him, he did not utter a word, not even that he was pleased to meet her, as everybody says upon being introduced. Even though she was old SEINEE SAOWAPHONG | GHOSTS

7 enough to know that the sentence usually carried no meaning and was blurted out automatically for the sake of politeness, she still would have liked to hear it, and she thought with contempt that that fellow had no manners at all. As he sat in front of her, he spoke very little and in a half-hearted manner. She believed it was for the man to strike up a conversation and that the woman should wait before pitching in. So she waited, but he showed no inclination to talk, and both remained silent. She looked at him repeatedly from the corner of her eye and sensed that he felt no less oppressed than she did. As she went to leave, her friend, who was the owner of the house, and who was busy chatting with the other guests, saw that he was sitting idly by, so she asked him to do her the favour of accompanying Ratchanee to her car, which was waiting at the entrance of the lane. ‘Thank you, that won’t be necessary, I can take care of myself,’ Ratchanee said with a sarcastic undertone when she saw him standing up. He did not say anything and looked as if he had not noticed her tone but he followed her to the door, so she turned around and looked him in the face in a way which meant ‘Didn’t you understand what I said?’ His impassive face seemed to show some sort of concern. ‘…unless it bothers you,’ he muttered. The fierce glitter in her eyes abated and he must have understood from her expression that she would not GHOSTS | SEINEE SAOWAPHONG

8 object because he went on following her quietly. She was not going to keep her feelings to herself any longer, so she turned to him and asked bluntly: ‘Why are you following me?’ He looked at a loss. ‘Well, I’m seeing you to your car, aren’t I?’ ‘You don’t want to know me or even talk to me, isn’t that so?’ ‘I never said that, or if you think I did, then tell me where and when it happened.’ ‘Your behaviour is more telling than anything you say.’ ‘What!’ he exclaimed, then fell silent. Ratchanee thought that his remark, indeed his whole attitude, was a deliberate and outrageous provocation and she felt utterly offended. ‘You misunderstand my reserve and restraint,’ he said forcefully. ‘Restraint?’ Ratchanee repeated in a loud voice and thought that he was lamely trying to excuse himself. He nodded. ‘I’m restraining myself in front of you for two reasons. The first is that I know who you are, and the second is that you’re a beautiful woman and you’re well aware of it. You’ve seen enough men fall over themselves in their eagerness to approach you. Indeed you’re beautiful and I don’t deny it, but I’m not one of those men and, as for the first reason, you and I are as different as the sky and the earth.’ SEINEE SAOWAPHONG | GHOSTS

9 Ratchanee blushed deeply, seething inside. She had never heard such infuriating probing. ‘You only know that my name is Citizen Sai and my surname Seema,’ he went on. ‘You still don’t know who I am. Therefore you can’t understand my own restraint. People with different stations in life see everything differently. But this isn’t your fault, and anyway there’s one thing I appreciate in you, and that’s your frankness. When you’re upset, you say so without beating about the bush. That’s something that’s hard to find – I think that once you know me better, you’ll understand me better.’ Ratchanee shook her head brusquely, entered the car, slammed the door and drove away without a goodbye. That night, Ratchanee could not sleep. She kept thinking of the man called Citizen Sai Seema with a feeling of hurt. He had said he and she were as different as sky and earth. Who was the sky? And who the earth? ‘Am I the sky? If I am the sky, does it mean that I may socialise and talk only with the other denizens of the sky? that I may not talk with the common folk? Or is there something objectionable in me?’ Ratchanee, too, was aware of belonging to the aristocracy, an awareness derived from her domestic environment since childhood. She used to hear her senior relatives refer to some people as ‘commoners’ or as ‘the rabble’. At first, she could not understand what this meant, but when memory took her back to the time when she had been old enough to think for GHOSTS | SEINEE SAOWAPHONG

10 herself, she found that much of what had happened to her since then gave the words a concrete meaning. She remembered that, as a child, she had been strictly forbidden to play with the children of the servants or of the distant relatives who stayed in the house as half servants and half relatives, but she had always managed to do so anyway, because she had no other friends to play with. Her sisters were too old to enjoy playing with a little girl like her. There were times when well-groomed children came to her house in a car with their parents, and her own parents told her to play with those children while the adults talked. But this rarely happened and besides, the children would bully her and lay claim to her toys every time. Ratchanee thus could not help but sneak out to play with the children in the house. Were it not for them, her life as a child would have been very lonely and forlorn. She was aware that she dressed more beautifully and cleanly and had more toys, but these children never bullied her and never tried to take her toys, even though they had practically none of their own. She had a nanny who looked after her day in, day out. Whenever Ratchanee was caught playing downstairs, she would be taken away and given a good scrub and then confined to the house. The more she grew up, the more fed up she grew with her nanny. After she had sneaked out many times, she found that the children were trying to stay away from her as much as possible and looked scared when she invited them to play with her: the master of SEINEE SAOWAPHONG | GHOSTS

11 the house had ordered their parents to forbid them to play with her. This edict proved more effective than trying to keep her confined in the house. ‘I’m now old enough to talk or socialise with anyone,’ Ratchanee thought, and she could not see how someone like her could be objectionable to anyone. ‘If there is any repugnance in social contacts, it’s only from upper class people towards the lower classes,’ Ratchanee thought further. ‘There is none from the lower classes towards the upper class. But I don’t mind socialising with people of a lower social condition so long as they are good people. Isn’t goodness, rather than wealth, rank or lineage, the only yardstick to measure human worth? I have many friends whom I can call dear friends and who are much inferior to me in social standing, and yet I hold them dear because of their goodness. But this man is so conceited!’ Memories of her childhood flashed across her mind. The apprehension of the children in her house who had not dared to play around and be on familiar terms with her made her feel uncomfortable. ‘But then, actually, he looked straightforward and courteous enough, and I have a feeling that he spoke from the bottom of his heart. Perhaps he has been scorned by some arrogant people in the past. There are plenty of conceited grandees always ready to look down on others, but I’m not one of them,’ Ratchanee told herself firmly. ‘I’m educated and modern enough to know what the true value of a person is. Status and money aren’t GHOSTS | SEINEE SAOWAPHONG

12 important to me at all. It is goodness that I respect and use as a yardstick in dealing with people at large.’ ‘He looked so straightforward, though. He said I was beautiful and men were falling over themselves in their eagerness to approach me. How dare he make such a sarcastic remark! I’m no movie or stage star, you know. “I’m not one of those men.” Who are “those men”? And then, who are you?’ Ratchanee asked resentfully in her mind and felt sorry to have let anger get the better of her before she could wrangle with him to the end. ‘Wait and see! When I meet you again, I’ll deal with you once and for all.’ ‘Oh, what an infuriating man!’

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2 Although she received comfort and convenience in life and was at an advantage over her friends at the university in many ways, Ratchanee could not help but feel choked up by the obstacles that she encountered constantly and that prevented her from acting as freely as she would have liked. Comfort and convenience had come to her as a birthright, along with the feeling of constraint resulting from the old-fashioned thoughts and tradition-bound ways of her family. No one at home had heartily agreed to her entering the university and, as long as she studied there, no one had ever cared enough to ask how she was getting on. Disapproval and displeasure were shown through indifference. Thanks to her cleverness in finding ways to outwit her soft-hearted mother and circumvent her stern father, Ratchanee was sometimes able to obtain what she wanted, but her parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; indifference almost discouraged her several times from going on with her studies. The moral support of some of her dear friends and her own fear of finding herself shut away in the emptiness and loneliness of home prompted her to persevere and see her studies through. As graduation time approached, her friends began to talk enthusiastically about finding jobs and planning to do this and that, which sounded both amusing and interesting. But Ratchanee had no such plan in GHOSTS | SEINEE SAOWAPHONG

14 mind, as she was not sure she would be able to leave home and venture into the world of labour, even though, with the faith and sincerity of young men and women everywhere, she was eager to work so that she could make use of all that she had learned. ‘What are you going to do after you graduate?’ one of her friends asked. ‘I’m not sure,’ Ratchanee replied, sounding dejected. ‘Maybe my parents won’t allow me to work outside.’ ‘Uh-huh,’ Kingthian uttered in sympathy. Kingthian was Ratchanee’s closest friend. Both were well aware of each other’s respective background. ‘Your parents are so conservative!’ Kingthian was the daughter of a minor civil servant who had passed away while she was still in secondary school. Her mother had to work hard to supplement her modest pension so that Kingthian could study up to university level. ‘I don’t want you to have a hard life like me,’ her mother had told her, as Kingthian had later confided to Ratchanee. Kingthian did well in her studies. Although she was not brilliant and had never come top, she always received high marks in some subjects. She was interested in all kinds of knowledge and had an analytical and logical mind, so that her friends had taken to calling her ‘the adviser’. If one of them had a problem, she would come to her and always receive useful practical advice from her. Ratchanee had much sympathy for her friend for having to struggle hard in order to be able to study, SEINEE SAOWAPHONG | GHOSTS

15 which was the exact opposite of her own case: even though her parents had another dozen children, they had had no problem at all supporting them until they graduated from the university, yet no one in her family thought highly of a good education. Ratchanee had gone to Kingthian’s house and had received a warm welcome devoid of any social pretence. She had witnessed love and warmth passing between mother and daughter, and it had made her feel a little sad when she thought about herself. Kingthian studied with dedication and spared no effort to help her mother whenever she had some free time. Formerly, helping her mother had never entered her mind, because she thought that her only duty was to study well. ‘Seek knowledge for yourself so you won’t have a life of hardship like me,’ her mother used to tell her. But one day, after she was already a student at the university, before she went to bed that night, her mother had stroked her small hands gently and said, ‘Your hands are much softer than mine.’ That single sentence had changed Kingthian’s attitude towards work. Even though her mother had probably spoken out of gratification as is in the nature of mothers who love their children dearly and are willing to do everything for their comfort, those words had made Kingthian aware of the duty she had to her mother – not the assistance she would provide once her studies were over and she had an income of her own, but the help she could extend there and then whenever she was free: hardship had to GHOSTS | SEINEE SAOWAPHONG

16 be shared in common. From then on, Kingthian, besides studying, had given her mother a helping hand willingly and proudly. But when Kingthian in turn went to visit Ratchanee at her house, she came out with a long face. ‘I won’t go to your house again,’ she said bluntly as was her habit. Ratchanee shared this habit too. This was one of the reasons why they were close friends and candid with each other. ‘Why not?’ ‘I can’t stand it.’ Kingthian shook her head. ‘How can one ask “Whose child are you?” like His Lordship greeted me? It’s too much, really!’ ‘Forget it. That’s the way he is. Don’t mind him. Let’s be ourselves and remain friends forever.’ ‘Sure!’ Kingthian replied firmly. ‘But I won’t go to your house again. It scares me.’ ‘If you won’t come to see me, I’ll go to see you instead.’ ‘I’d rather. This way, we can still see each other after we graduate.’ Both young women walked out of the university building, one thinking about entering the world of labour with resolve and trepidation, the other feeling depressed, hesitant and uncertain. ‘If you stay home for a few years and do nothing, your knowledge will turn to rust,’ Kingthian went on. ‘Then what you’ve learned will be of no use to anyone, not even to yourself, as you’ll become some sort of picture in SEINEE SAOWAPHONG | GHOSTS

17 a frame, or an elephant tusk or an ancient weapon used as household decoration, and later still you’ll be only slightly better than a ladle or a strainer in the kitchen just because you can talk and walk.’ Ratchanee was silent because she did not know how to answer. ‘Anyway, you can’t be blamed for this, because you do mean to make yourself useful, you do want to work, but it’s the power of your environment that forces you down.’ ‘Then what do you want me to do?’ ‘If you don’t work and have no income of your own, you’ll never be independent and free. You’ll remain a child forever because you’ll have to go on asking money from your parents and you won’t be able to do anything they don’t approve of. Of course, working is less pleasant than staying at home and using your parents’ money. But you’re grownup, you have knowledge, and staying idly at home doesn’t make sense. I think the only path is to give yourself a chance to be yourself.’ ‘I agree with you, but I doubt if I’ll ever succeed.’ ‘I don’t think there’s a third path for you to choose. If you don’t force yourself to become independent, then you’ll remain weak and submit to your parents’ every command.’ Ratchanee remained silent. ‘But maybe it isn’t as difficult as you think. Have you talked to your parents about it?’ GHOSTS | SEINEE SAOWAPHONG

18 ‘Not yet. I’ve sounded them out several times, but it seems no one agrees.’ ‘You must try again, seriously and cleverly,’ Kingthian suggested. ‘But there’s still time. Let’s think of the best way you should do it, okay?’ Ratchanee nodded. Kingthian’s voice was full of encouragement and hope. ‘Let’s go to the movies. I don’t want to go home right now. I’d rather watch a matinee film.’ ‘No, thanks,’ Kingthian replied. ‘Please! My treat.’ Kingthian shook her head. ‘You treat me too often. I feel bad about it. Besides, I can’t afford to treat you in return.’ ‘How can you say things like that!’ Ratchanee chided. ‘You talk as if we weren’t friends. How can you think about petty matters like these?’ ‘No, no,’ Kingthian hastened to reply. ‘I’m not free today. I have to hurry home to help Mum bake cakes. Her cakes sell very well. The customers at the coffee shop keep asking for more, and we can hardly keep up with the demand. Some other day, all right?’ Ratchanee knew that Kingthian was careful not to rely on anyone else in any matter and was proud and very forbearing about this. Ratchanee wanted to help her friend out of genuine generosity, but Kingthian never talked about her troubles, never asked for help, never received help from anyone either. Unlike other people, she didn’t like to see films often, and thus set herself the SEINEE SAOWAPHONG | GHOSTS

19 rule that she would not see more than two films a month. If she had some time to spare, she would read in the library. As for Ratchanee, if she found herself free in the afternoon, she would usually go and see a film. She was in no hurry to go back home because she had more freedom outside of the house, and so she ended up inviting Kingthian to the cinema every time. ‘I’ll bring you a baked cake tomorrow. The way Mum cooks them, they’re delicious.’ Ratchanee looked a bit disappointed. As they were about to walk past the university’s main gate, they met Saengsoam and Danai, who were standing there. ‘Where are you going?’ Saengsoam asked. ‘Nowhere in particular,’ Ratchanee replied. ‘Then let’s go to the movies,’ Saengsoam offered. ‘We were looking for company.’ ‘I invited Kingthian, but she won’t go.’ ‘I have to hurry home today,’ Kingthian replied. ‘Then how about you, Ratchanee?’ ‘Miss Ratchanee won’t go with us if Miss Kingthian isn’t going,’ Danai said as he saw Ratchanee hesitating. It was known among friends that Kingthian and Ratchanee were each other’s shadow: you never saw the one without seeing the other. ‘Do come with us,’ Saengsoam pressed. ‘Kingthian is always a goody-goody.’ ‘I don’t want to be in the way,’ Ratchanee teased. ‘Bah!’ Saengsoam blushed. GHOSTS | SEINEE SAOWAPHONG

20 Ratchanee turned to look questioningly at Kingthian. ‘You go, Ratchanee. You’ve nothing to do.’ ‘Miss Kingthian will never go with us,’ Danai said. ‘Right! She once berated us for being loafers,’ Saengsoam added sarcastically. ‘She keeps burying herself in books. If she doesn’t let her hair down, I’m afraid she’ll go mad.’ ‘I’m going, all right?’ Ratchanee told Kingthian, because she felt bad about leaving one friend in order to go with another and because she still did not want to go home, more than because she agreed with Saengsoam. Kingthian nodded. ‘Let’s grab the chance while we can, because before long we’ll be dead anyway,’ Saengsoam said before the three of them started to walk away. Kingthian returned home by bus. Tomorrow, on the balconies of the lecture hall, her friends would chat about the films they had seen the day before – the same story or others that were being shown in Bangkok cinemas at the time. Moving pictures had become the students’ daily topic of conversation. Those who had not seen them had to hurry to do so in order to have something to chat about with their friends, so much so that the feeling grew that those who did not go to see films were not with it, unlike those who attended every film programme. Saengsoam was of the latter breed. ‘We have different interests,’ Kingthian thought. ‘We all have twenty-four hours a day at our disposal, and each of SEINEE SAOWAPHONG | GHOSTS

21 us has the right to spend those hours as he pleases, but for all that, the environment has a powerful influence over our perceptions.’ Many friends who did not like watching films often now had become dedicated film buffs. When Kingthian arrived home, her mother said, ‘You’re back early today.’ Kingthian smiled at her mother, who was kneading cake dough next to Aunt Maen, a middle-aged distant relative who had lived in the house for years. After she placed her books down and changed clothes, Kingthian walked over to the earthen jar and washed her hands. She looked at her own hands as she soaped them. She did not keep her nails long as young women did these days, as it prevented her from helping her mother kneading dough and doing other household chores. ‘Those who grow long nails probably want to show they have no need to work,’ Kingthian thought. But that may not always be the case. She knew a young office typist who often got on the same bus as she did. That young woman kept her nails long and had them painted too. Although they were not so long that they curved downward like a cat’s claws, she probably took pains to type with the fleshy underside of her fingertips, which was more tricky than typing with the nail-lined tips as was the correct method. Women kept their nails long because they believed long nails looked beautiful, and they thought them beautiful because it showed their owners had no need to work hard! GHOSTS | SEINEE SAOWAPHONG

22 ‘I have to do well with my studies and my hands must be as coarse as Mum’s,’ Kingthian resolved. She raised her hands, which she had already rinsed and wiped dry, and stroked her cheeks gently as if to test their texture. They were not as soft as before, and the realisation made her happy and proud as she walked over and sat down beside her mother to help her knead the dough. That night, Kingthian stroked her mother’s hands for a long time. She would have liked her mother to comment on her hands once again, as years had gone by since her first remark. But her mother had probably forgotten her passing observation, which had been so significant to her, so she didn’t say anything, even though she endeavoured to massage her mother’s hand for a long time.

In the early 1950s, novelist‐diplomat Sakchai Bamrungphong, now better known under his pen name, Seinee Saowaphong, wrote two socially committed novels that flopped – Wanlaya’s love and Ghosts – and as the diplomat prospered the novelist fell into oblivion. Two decades later, however, the ‘student revolution’ of 1973 resur‐ rected these generous, prophetic works and their author was given a second literary life and pride of place as Thailand’s foremost progressive writer. Proclaimed a National Artist in 1990, Seinee Saowaphong is ninety years old this year.

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