Corpus of a Siam Mosquito | Page 4

"We are going international. Eva Airlines. Eva Airlines, an international flight to Japan." Reiterated Nawin. He kept it simple. He didn't even want to think about Montreal. The thought of accompanying an animal, of sorts, to the other side of the world was too much. No sooner had he said it than she reminded them both of the fact that she would be going to her home first. Nawin had fallen into his own pensive inclinations but unlike them he wanted the completion of his thoughts. He was scanning his mutating neurological circuitry for a possible answer to the enigma whom he called his wife. Noppawan's flippant comment that the stoplight wouldn't get any greener as she smiled and shut the door on him and his whore troubled or inveigled him. One's driveway wasn't exactly equipped with a stoplight so that one sentence bordered on sarcasm. Her placid demeanor was like plastic and how she behaved belied everything so how was he to know if she was discontent with this arrangement if not jealous of it.
It was the first time that he would be leaving her to travel abroad. He had offered to delay the trip by a week or two until she had submitted her grades at Assumption University, which Thais called A-back. Maybe having his Porn stay over at their house the previous night was disrespectful to his wife but nice or offensive behavior was based upon one's guesswork on how society would interpret such situations and unique situations like this were all the more impossible to judge. His wife was definitely different. That was for sure; but she was still a woman down deep even if she denied it just as his American passport and name-change made him abstain from bits of himself. A woman had instincts at suspecting a man's activities. A woman had jealous rages and seductive lures that had a chance of keeping a man with her: genetic programming from hundreds or thousands of female ancestors who had experienced the promiscuity of husbands and were afraid that they and their children would not be properly taken care of. But there was certainly no chance of children. She slept with him a few times as husband and wife in a motion of fulfilled and completed consummation never to be repeated. Then she went in to get herself sterilized. Why she needed to do both was unclear. She was a mystery and steadfast in committing herself to that vow they had made to each other when they were 14 or 15 years old to not live petty lives. Such was the gray in the gray matter that enveloped them. Life with Noppawan had the insatiability of an itch to a mosquito's bite and contained the same pleasurable discomfort.
"Taking a trip to Japan" thought the taxi driver sarcastically. He wasn't certain how anyone could afford to go there. He was stuck to the boundaries of the car and he resented it; although from it, despite its limitations, he was always introduced to people so different than he was. They were the favored ones whose ideas were not curtailed to traffic jams exacerbated by infuriatingly influential traffic lights and accidents. Traffic accidents were such chaos because smashed cars could not be moved until insurance agents came to the scene to make their reports. Traffic policemen, who could easily be bribed, were never to be trusted. The favored people did not have everyday to roam the streets like homeless but highly mobile mendicants, their every movement enslaved and dictated by the pronouncement of street names called out from the back seat. "Do young people like you have money to go off wherever you wish?" The words pierced out of one who was pierced. The ache tore open like a tenuous newly heeled scar with the blade coming up to slit others. He knew that he had behaved contrary to social instinct but he hadn't been able to stop himself.
"Don't you know who this is?" asked the whore with arrogant vehemence.
The taxi driver looked in the rear view mirror at the brown-faced Nawin or Jatupon and asked, "No, should I know you?"
"No you shouldn't. Neither one of us should know the other one. Just drive!" said Nawin although again he winced from his darker alter ego that only became him when he uttered its thoughts. He wasn't totally devoid of societal programming of right and wrong no matter what he claimed to Noppawan. Being respectful to one's elders and giving the prayerful gesture of the "wai" (pronounced as "why") to one's superiors did exist in him at certain times. He would always stand up for the tribute paid to the king prior to a movie although that was more from the idea of not offending the sensibilities of others around