Loek. A Tale from a Lagoon

A wave splashed beneath her.

"Loek," she yelled again, finally relieving the hammock of all her immense weight. The hammock snapped up and Mrs Chavalit, straightening her sarong, padded up the wooden steps to serve the customer.

Loek was in the back, open part of the house (a kind of veranda), stretched out over the wooden floorboards, peering down into the clear blue lagoon below. She knew that it was only a local at the front, come to buy an ice drink or a bar of soap, so she hadn't moved. Let mother take care of it. She rolled over languidly and focussed on the thatch roof above. She heard the cover of the big blue icebox drop shut, then the padding of mother's bare feet, and finally the creak of wood as mother slumped back into her hammock.

A light breeze rippled the water as it blew in over the lagoon; it flapped Loek's sarong gently and kept her cool, or as cool as she could be without jumping into the water. She tried not to move too much in the middle of the day, especially for a local boy and his penny ice drink. Loek closed her eyes and sank back into sleep.

Lying over a rippled, blue lagoon, surrounded by a lush forest, Loek should have been at peace; her mother was -- the corpulent lady snoozing again in the hammock. Living in nature's cradle. But Loek lay restless, the younger mind of the two caught in hopes and dreams. She had to write a letter to a foreigner whom she had served recently in the store. And he wouldn't let her sleep peacefully.

He quickly vanished as the sharp sound of her own name punctured her dream.

"Loek, Loek, it's a foreigner; see what he wants will you," boomed Mrs Chavalit.

Loek jumped up and sprang across the floorboards to the adjoining house, danced through the living area, and ducked through the beads that hung in the doorframe to the store. The customer was indeed a foreigner, who, like all the others from the hotel, had strolled up the beach, crossed the spit of sand, gone through the dunes, and found the lagoon -- and Loek's hand-painted sign (in English) for cold drinks. He stood by the potted honeysuckle squinting into the dark house, his pupils still closed by the bright sun outside. Loek frowned as she studied her customer; why did foreigners walk around like this in the midday heat -- he wore no hat, carried no umbrella, and covered only the smallest part of his pink, sweaty flesh.

Wiping his dripping face with a handkerchief he asked politely for a coke.

Loek smiled through her disappointment and fetched a bottle from the blue icebox. He was too old, too fat, and must already be married. Still, she had a chance to practice her English; she asked him where he was from.

"Slovenia," he replied.

He must be attending a convention, she thought. Usually, if it was a country she knew -- America, Australia, England -- the foreigner was on a vacation. If it was a place she didn't know -- Slovenia -- he would be here for work. Occasionally a foreigner would confuse her; a man from England might say he was from Yorkshire and she'd think he was from some poor East European country and had been flown here by his multinational to learn how to better sell washing machines.

"Do you like the lagoon," she enquired, nodding towards the blue water behind the house.

"Oh, yes, of course; it's so picturesque," the man replied.

'Picturesque'; she wondered what that meant and nodded in agreement. Another word to look up later if she could remember it.

Loek decided not to overcharge, as Mother always did, and gave him the right change. He slumped at the table by the honeysuckle and sipped slowly, replacing with cold sweet fluid what the hot sun had just sucked from him, re-filling his flabby, flaccid sack of pink skin.

After a few more broken sentences of small talk, the Slovenian got up and said goodbye. Loek watched his back as he waddled towards the dunes, his tee shirt darkened with streaks of sweat. He left only a patch of moisture on the plastic chair and the word 'picturesque' for Loek to deal with.

"Ok?" Mother called up from her horizontal nest.

"Ok," Loek answered. "Go back to sleep."

Loek bent over and wiped her forehead with the tails of her sarong, then quickly looked around, self-consciously, to see if anyone had seen her. It had already been two weeks since the last thunderstorm, a violent tempest that had closed the rainy season, and the temperature was up. The lagoon was still full, though, fed by a slow river that would soon cease its seaward flow, and filled by the sea itself which would breach the sand spit at high tide for a few more weeks.

Loek, catlike, retraced her steps back through the house and out onto the stilted veranda over the bloated lagoon, stopping once to snatch a piece of writing paper and a pen, and again to groom herself in frameless mirror. She lowered herself gracefully into a crossed-legged position on the floorboards before a short-legged table, laid the paper out, and wrote "Dear Vic."

Nothing else would follow. Her body slumped at the table and her mind followed. She was swamped with thoughts of Vic and his entrance into her life. Vic was not like the Slovenian -- romance should be taut and sharp, not plump and plodding. The comparison gave her a sentence, a beginning, and she was poised to write it down.

"Loek, Loek." A coarse voice called from the lagoon, snapping her incipient concentration.

She looked up but didn't move; it was only Alloy: Fisherboy Alloy.

Naked but for knee-length pyjama-like black trousers bunched around his waist and held up by a white cord, Alloy was standing on the thwarts of his twelve-foot boat pushing earnestly at two crossed oars locked in brass rowlocks, his powerful shoulders animating the effort he exerted.

"Loek, the lily of the lagoon, are you coming out with me today?" he called across to her, momentarily relaxing his glistening body.

Loek sat up and said: "Why? So that I can become black and muscular and stink of fish like you?

"Ha ha, Loek, your flowery fragrance is safe, the harmless creatures of the sea cannot defile it. And your beauty is of perfection, sublime and inviolate. The sun's golden rays can do nothing but stir that splendour and help radiate it to all."

"Alloy, you and your childish poetry are interrupting me; I'm trying to write to my friend from America. "

She put down her pen and crawled over to the side of the floor, where, clutching her sarong, she swung her slender legs out over the side, carefully keeping to the shade. Alloy pushed a few more oars towards her, grinning as he tried to keep his balance on his rocking blue boat.

"Who is it this time? Mr Engineer? Mr Schoolteacher? Or is it Mr Government Officer?"

"Very funny, fisherboy. But if you want to know he is an electrician. Handsome, educated, and rich. And he said that he'd come back and see me next year." Loek tried to sound emphatic but was just playing with Alloy, trying to make him jealous.

"Alloy," she continued, dropping the pitch of her voice, "if you pick me up tomorrow I'll let you drive me to Bang Bao." It was another taunt; she knew he didn't have a motor scooter, only that old, blue, motorless boat. "I have to post my letter to America."

"Get in; I can row you around to Bang Bao now."

"No thanks. I don't want to sit on your stinking nets, and besides you have to catch some fish if you want to eat tonight."

"I'll catch many today, with your smile in my heart and the monks' blessing in my nets, and I won't need to go out again tomorrow. But I must go now, or I'll be stuck in the lagoon and have to talk to you all afternoon."

"Yes, quickly go; and you don't have to bring me a snapper for supper; Father will be back from Bangkok tonight and he'll have lots of special food with him."

"I'll give you my fattest catch, Loek, a fish fit for a queen. And don't wait up for your Father again; Bangkok is not like it used to be."

Alloy, singing, pushed off down towards the breach, his strong sinewy body harmonised with thousands of years of island fishing -- a man, a boat, and a few simple nets.

Loek watched the incoming water slowly drown the trunk of a guava tree on the nearby shore and wondered what to say to Vic.

                *   *   * 

Loek awoke after a dreamy night's sleep to the sound of the morning cock giving his final trumpet to the bright new day, but on this island even the cocks stirred late. She had stayed up well into the night with her dictionary and eraser, talking to faraway Vic, with words she barely knew how to use. Father hadn't come back. Alloy had dropped off a fish.

"Mother, I'm going to Bang Bao to post my letter; do we need anything? She said, slurping up the dregs of her rice porridge from a huge plastic bowl.

"Just check at the Post Office to see if your father has sent any money." Mrs Chavalit replied, coldly, staring down into the ceramic mortar in which she was pounding small red chillies into a paste. She seemed to pound harder at the mention of her useless husband. Whenever her husband failed to make good on a promise (a return or money) she resorted to such violence -- beating the life out of chillies, garlic, or peanuts. At least she could eat the fruits of her anger and destruction.

"Don't worry, Mother, soon I'll be in America and I can send you all the money you need. We can buy a motor scooter -- a car even. We can put a proper roof over the stilts and add another storey to the house. You can stop selling stupid penny drinks to the fishermen and open a real restaurant for the foreigners. And we can save cousin Nuk from the...." Loek stopped, not knowing which word to use. Everybody knew what Nuk did, and where she did it -- away in the provincial capital with the black-suited employment agent who had taken her away -- but nobody was supposed to talk about it.

"When will you grow up?" Mrs Chavalit snapped back at her daughter, uncheered by Loek's bubbling optimism and angered by the mention of Nuk -- her own sister's child, almost her own. She stopped pounding for a moment and, from her cross-legged position on the kitchen floor, looked across at Loek and said: "Marry Alloy."

Loek's smile dropped from her face, like a heavy coconut thudding to the ground from a tall tree; she slammed down her empty bowl and fled the kitchen. Mother pounded harder.

Twenty minutes later, most of which was spent preening and grooming, Loek left her anger at the front door and began to saunter up the dirt path, parasol in one hand, airmail in the other. The dirt road was her private catwalk where she regularly practised her Pretty-Woman walk, copied from pirated Hollywood videos that she watched occasionally at a distant relative's home over in Bang Bao. She would first adjust her carriage -- pull herself vertical and attack the path squarely. She heaved in her stomach, wrenched back her shoulders and stuck out the other curves. She would then pout and peck at imaginary onlookers, firing from the neck with her jutting chin, not smiling (it wasn't sexy). She would now and then flourish a wall of ebony hair as she swung her head back at missed admirers. She sometimes even lifted up her sarong and swung her hips, walking like a pigeon. Today she did all of this only she forgot to come out of character before she reached the surfaced road that looped the island (linking everywhere to Bang Bao).

Loek's private catwalk didn't stop at the surfaced road but continued on the other side up to a small temple, two monks from which always patrolled the area around the cross roads looking for 'customers'. The older, more senior monk, brown robed, liked to hide behind a knotted bo tree smoking; the younger novice, saffron robed, whiled away his hours by throwing stones at stray dogs. Today however there were no stones and no cigarettes; they both stood in sandaled feet on the hot tarmac brazenly lusting at Loek wiggling her slender body, their shaved heads swivelling as she passed by.

"Don't you have any nets to bless?" she mocked, and she didn't stop until she was out of their sight.

The next vehicle pulled up for Loek, as was the custom on the island. Public busses didn't ply the loop of tarmac circling the island; a few taxis did occasionally speed around, but they were strictly for relaying foreigners between the ferry terminal (on the mainland side of the island) and the hotel (just outside of Bang Bao). Locals helped each other: a driver with room on or in his vehicle picked up whoever might be waiting on the side of the road and was usually rewarded with a coin or two. The simple community of island life.

                *   *   * 

Loek thanked him, slipped him a coin, and slid off from her side-saddle position. Bang Bao's only building on dry land was the Post Office, and into this wooden hut Loek skipped, airmail still firmly between thumb and forefinger.

"Loek from the lagoon," said the boyish clerk from behind the counter. "Another letter going over the water?"

"A stamp for America," Loek demanded, wishing she didn't have to tell him what she was doing. "Please," she added a little too late. "And is there a moneygramme for Mrs Chavalit?"

The little clerk vanished and Loek moved back from the counter to stand under the ceiling fan.

"Sorry, nothing." The clerk had reappeared and pushed two stamps over the counter.

Loek didn't care but she knew her mother would.

"But there is a letter for you."

Loek's heart sprang forward; her eyes darted at the envelope he was holding. She reached for it, but at once she saw its cheap, grainy brown-paper and its tuppenny stamp.

"Father," she muttered, taking it from the clerk.

Loek paid for the stamps and stuck them next to the 'x' at the end of Vic's surname (which she couldn't pronounce). She made the clerk stamp them before she dropped her missive into the overseas box.

Bang Bao's many other buildings sat over the water. Wooden boxes with long legs walking through the sediment of the ocean floor, parted by boarded gangways along which naked children ran and rode their small bicycles. Loek walked the hundred meters or so to the end of the main pier; she greeted a few friends in familiar houses and stopped once to buy a bag of sweet ice tea. Near the end of the pier (where the water was too deep to build), in the shade of the bow of a squid boat, Loek slumped and sat. She ripped open father's letter, letting the envelope fall into the water below, and began to read:

...tough in Bangkok...little work...no money to send...can't come home yet....

Father had the same old sorry story to tell and he was still hopeful; he was sure that his luck had turned with the Loy Kra Tong Festival -- The Festival of Lights. Loek read on about his exploits with disdain -- she was untouched by the superstitious hope of this hopeless old man. He had built himself a model boat, which he had carried, with thousands of other worshippers, to the top of The Golden Mount, where a venerated old monk had splashed him with holy water and blessed his miniature boat.

'Venerated monk', Loek muttered aloud incredulously; her mind flashed to those two lecherous fools who bothered people at the crossroads.

She read on. Father had shuffled around the stupa at the top of the Golden Mount, in a human line, chanting mantras to the relic of Buddha embedded within (a 'seed' from the cremated body of the Buddha). She clucked disapproval again and sucked a few strawfull's of tea into her dry mouth. Father had then taken his lucky boat down to one of the many klongs (canals) that fret Bangkok. He stuck a lucky candle on the boat, lit the candle, and then launched the thing into the water. From that moment he had begun waiting for his luck. He and thousands of others.

Father you are so silly, Loek said as she pushed the letter into her bag, annoyed at her father's childlike optimism and unaware that her own happiness was similarly invested in the future -- the only difference being that her own dreams were unsupported by the scourge of superstition.

Another blue squid boat had already moored alongside the first, and now another was manoeuvring in, its plangent diesel engine belching black fumes over the mirrored turquoise. When it had finally bumped to rest and had been tied up, shiny, black-skinned fishermen began hopping between the boats and onto the pier. Loek threw her empty tea container and straw into the sea and stood up. Immediately twenty pairs of hungry eyes fell on her, disconcerting her for a brief moment, then thrilling her as the stiffening breeze of self-confidence expanded her sail of vanity. She fluttered and flapped as she adjusted her clothing and hoisted her parasol. And then, not waiting for the vulgar comments that would quickly come, she sailed off along the boards without looking back.

The attention made her feel whole and full but she would rather die than be with one of those stinking dark fishermen, even though they were real men with big motorised fishing boats -- a million miles from the fisherboy Alloy.

                *   *   * 

Mrs Chavalit cried when she read the letter, not because her husband wasn't coming home, but because there wasn't any money, again. Loek left her mother sobbing in her hammock and walked out over the lagoon, padding gently on the smooth wooden floor. She picked up her hair brush off the floor using the toes of her right foot and started to unknot her ebony hair as she lowered herself into a sitting position at the edge of the boards, dropping her legs towards the water.

A rotting guava gave up its fight against gravity and plopped down into the rising water. Loek's almond eyes searched for the splash among the slowly disappearing trunks. She suddenly realised that Alloy would appear soon, his sinewy, taut body would be pushing back through the breach with the high water.

'Marry Alloy,' her mother had said that morning. That might be better than what cousin Nuk had, but Loek couldn't be sure. What kind of life could Alloy give to her? Besides his poetry and a daily snapper, nothing much. And he would probably want a clutch of children and a nurse for his ageing mother. Of course Alloy was still just a boy, poetic and childish, but he would grow into a man�and become what? A vulgar-mouthed deck hand working on a Chinaman's squid boat, like those vile creatures that had leered at her that afternoon. What a disgusting thought. She would never get off this island if she married Alloy.

Loek picked up a small file and started manicuring her nails. Her daily banter with Alloy had become a routine; she wouldn't admit to liking it but she would notice if it stopped; Mother would certainly miss the snapper.

Suddenly three law-laws flapped up from the far side of the lagoon, their afternoon meal had been disturbed. Loek squinted over the sparkling water, dropping her nail file into a crack between two boards. Alloy and his small fishing boat? Yes, it must be. Who else, she thought. But why was he so far away, on the distant shore of the lagoon. She stood up and bent over the balustrade, her just-manicured fingers coiling around the wooden rail. She gazed. Yes it was Alloy, standing squarely on the thwarts and pumping those long oars with all his scrawny body. The boat turned (Alloy must have been escaping the current near the breach), and Loek spied a second figure sitting in the front of Alloy's boat, pushing down the bow and unbalancing the usual cocked-prow position. Loek walked to the end of the veranda, vainly trying to get a better look. Yellow hair; was it? Or just a hat. No, it was a yellow-haired girl squatting on the front planks of Alloy's little boat -- and she seemed to be laughing.

Loek's squinting face became sullen as she retreated from the balustrade, not wanting Alloy to see her (he couldn't, of course), her sheen having been suddenly washed away. Another rotten guava dropped like the stone in Loek's stomach.

She must be a tourist, thought Loek; a tourist wanting to see the lagoon. Alloy, is he earning a dollar. Or is he stealing a heart; but Alloy doesn't like foreign girls, he's told me often enough, he likes me, doesn't he?

She picked up her hairbrush and pulled it through her hair just once before flinging it away; it slid to the side and almost went over. She thought of Vic, then quickly went back to Alloy; Alloy and the girl; the yellow-haired girl sitting at the front of Alloy's boat.

"Loek, Loek; where are you?" Mrs Chavalit's booming voice filled the house. There was another customer at the store. Loek waited to hear if it was a foreigner or not.

© Paul S. Davey, 2002

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Paul S. Davey is a freelance travel and fiction writer. He started life in the UK but now turns up in the strangest of places around the world -- usually with his notebook handy

novels:
Ghost Money first chapter of a new novel
Fei Azzis and the Water Table of Sa' An (coming soon)

travel:
Tryin' to Get to Mexico
Freedom in Cambodia
Saigon Gary
Pedalling Taipei
Tofu Culture
Urban Betel Adventure: Sex, Drugs, and Spitting
Hawking Carrot-Cake and a New President
Cambodia, Freehand