"How old is your sister?"
"Forty. She's older."
"No sisters sixteen years old or younger?" It was the vilest set of words beyond 'fuck' and 'American' that could be spoken to a French damsel, and he was startled to hear them spill out of his mouth. It was a slap against women for losing their beauty with increasing years, and a shallow and blatant disregard of the inner worth of a being. It was chauvinistic and repugnant, and it got him what he wanted.
"No, no younger sister. I've got to go!" As she was leaving him, she suddenly stopped and turned toward him abruptly. "You are ugly and pathetic. You know why? You went to America and America took over your thoughts. You are Asian and yet just like those war criminals. Why don't you just leave here and go back to America or better just go to hell." Then there was perennial solitude once again.
Irritated by the stings of the ants that had crawled up his legs, and feeling a sense of compunction for having been so rude, he felt that he was now lost and wandering through the miasma and malaise of himself. It was so unbearable that he wanted to move away from the stupa and out of his inner self. If he made a left to Main Street and then another left, he would be on the road that went near the Morning Market and toward the Arco de Triomph replica, Patuxay. To the right, he would be where he was—that plaintive temple museum that seemed to still be in mourning over the loss of the Emerald Buddha. Eventually, further in that direction would lead to government buildings, which were in the French colonial architecture, and then to the river; at least that was what the map indicated.
By the time the time the Patuxay monument was clearly visible, it had begun to rain heavily and he dashed toward it for shelter. Once there, he shook the water from his hair and clothes, and stared down at some flowers growing in a square pot at his feet. Feeling less fettered by the dampness, he then looked up at the deviant kinnari and Ramakien giants that were shaped intricately into the arched doorway, and scraped the mud off of his sandals. He remembered when he was five years old in America the faux pas of wiping his feet on a neighbor's doormat that had gotten him into trouble. He had believed then that that was what doormats were for. He again postulated that perhaps there really was no love—just people who having no extrinsic value in the universe at large clung to each other for meaning. Then he suddenly heard in a Thai-Laotian dialect, "It's the Thai artist. Do you remember me."
33
The Laotian made the prayerful gesture of the wai which Nawin reciprocated. Then he said, "In the train, man. Remember?" He was trying to pierce through the fixed, glazed expression to pry into another mind and loosen the memories therein. His words could only be insolent if they were contemptuous, which they were not, and flagrant if he considered the age of the interlocutor, which he may not have done, and overall, the informality of it made Nawin feel equal instead of superior which was equivalent to a sense of being young once again. He remembered and smiled at his acquaintance and found himself amused at the fluctuation of demeanor in a given moment of time.
"Yes."
"I gave you a beer."