Corpus of a Siam Mosquito | Page 4

year old. Again there was a chortle. "Why does that
question seem to make her laugh," asked the taxi driver. "That is very
strange. That is a strange young lady."
"Krap," said Nawin gruffly, "I don't know why she is laughing." "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"