Corpus of a Siam Mosquito | Page 6

from the front and back speakers of the car
that was their confinement. The radio music, no matter if interpreted as
harmonious or strident by the three individuals, was a levee helping to
block their pervasive inundation of self-absorbing, mordant thoughts
and reminded them (the patriot and the pending expatriates) of their
commonality as Thais.
They passed a mall where he and Porn had gone shopping a month
earlier. That day they had spent together there was the levity of the
stroll and the shiny flash of credit cards in this Thai way of forgetting
one's impoverished roots. Feeling on top of the world, he comported
the male gesture of having one arm clutching the other one behind his
back. It was a gesture of affluence in the stroll of the shopper's quest.
At least twice when he encountered friends of his from Silpakorn Art
University with bags in their hands he would talk to them for a half
hour and somewhere into the talk he used another male gesture of
affluence. He would slip a foot from a sandal and then slap it onto the
floor loud as a firecracker. The sandal would hit the floor like a hand
slapping against an impoverished peasant.
They stopped in an alley smaller than a side street called a "soi." It was
in between many Mom and Pop businesses and there, crowded within,
was her apartment. He knew rooms like this well. They were rented out
for fifteen or twenty dollars a month (600 or 700 baht), barren, hot, and
unventilated as an attic. When she had gone in to get her bags he felt
less lonely to be momentarily rid of her. Even now at age 26 but with
thoughts at certain moments suffering and dragging like a man of 50,

there was just himself, the real unit of one, and delude himself all he
pleased he knew that he could not find anyone more significant than
that. The only thing next to his heart, in the pocket of his shirt, were the
slides of his art depicting the naked and dejected whores of Patpong
that had ejaculated him into fame and puffed up a latent ego in himself
that thought that he was a higher being than other Thais. He was
keeping them there that day because he wanted to momentarily hand
them over to airport authorities so they would not be harmed in airport
security. When she returned with an added bag that the taxi driver
plunked into the trunk the two men smiled at her and she smiled back.
After all, Thailand was the land of smiles and every infant understood
the advantages of smiling. To bypass his surly temperament and
increase friendly relations, Nawin offered more breath fresheners or
chewing gum for everyone. No Thai would refuse such friendly
gestures and the two of them took from his hand greedily like tamed
birds. Then he began his old contemplation of why 2 was greater than 1
or why 3 was greater than 2. It was an old argument of his wife. The
first time she posed it to him they both were 16 years old. He had made
the mistake of asking her to a dance. "Why do two things coming in
close proximity to each other have greater value?" she asked. His only
response had been "A le nah?" meaning "What did you say?" Neither
one of them went to the dance but straight to their bedrooms and their
sullen thoughts.
Porn was, according to his thinking, an "all right whore." She didn't
cause him any problems at all and it was for this reason that he carried
her along with him as a personification of his intellectual decadence
thereby increasing public intrigue with him. She was the pretty doll he
could swing about as a reminder of his one-man school of art. He,
Nawin Biadklang, could flaunt her around as the premier example of
the dark vision in his mind and the sexual slavery of his nation all
meshed together. He would have to draw a lot in Montreal and sell
everything he painted to pay for any expenses the scholarship would
not cover. She preferred her title of model. He was not so heartless to
deny her this euphemism. She successfully relieved him of the tension
of his body and to be emitted of it like a squeezed tangerine in such a
good rhythmic fingering would well compensate for the stress level of

having to spend so much time with her. He desired her a lot of the time
so by most accounts of love he did truly love her. Foremost, Noppawan
did not object to her. Matter of fact, she wanted Porn to relieve him.
She wanted him squeezed. She wanted the pus squished from