..续本文上一页e at last to declare his love.

　　Luang Por went to work in the family fields. Inevitably, the novelty of mud and sweat soon wore off, and though he applied himself to the regular round of the rice farmer with a gusto that drew much praise, he bore quietly within himself a sense of something lost and unfulfilled. It was not an overpowering emotion – he was a buoyant, vigorous young man – but a constant, unobtrusive shadow that he could only try to ignore. For the moment Luang Por was content to pert himself in the usual ways. Together with his best friend Puut he would walk to neighbouring villages to flirt with young ladies at monastery fairs.

　　When Luang Por finally fell in love it was with a girl from his own village. Her name was Jyy, the step-sister of his companion Puut. The girl”s parents were pleased with the prospective match; Luang Por was a friend of the family, good-natured, hard- working, and honest. In those days it was taboo for young lovers to be alone together; custom dictated that they would meet at the girl”s house, upstairs on the porch in the evening, where she would be sitting demurely spinning wool. Luang Por began to spend more and more of his evenings at Puut”s house. Relations between young men and women were strictly overseen by elders. Lovers, forbidden to touch, were quick to learn the nuances of the verbal caress. In Isahn village life, banter between them was inventive and the ability to extemporize much admired. The men would swagger and flatter and ardently woo in the “I-can”t-live-without-you” style, while the girls would play shy and hard to get or else wittily insult their suitor”s manhood – “the loud- mouthed swain is holding a limp kite in a windless sky”, was just one of the well- known jibes gleefully repeated.

　　But witty repartee soon loses its charm when genuine feelings are engaged, and late at night Luang Por and Jyy would like to sit out in the starry coolness talking quietly. The plan hatched on one such night was that they would marry as soon as Luang Por had completed his National Service and spent a rains retreat as a monk to make merit for his parents in the time-honoured way. At that time Luang Por was nineteen years old and Jyy seventeen. It would be another four years before they could expect even to hold hands.

　　One day that year as the rainy season approached and every household was busy preparing ploughs, rakes, hoes, yokes, fish traps, and machetes for the upcoming work in the paddy fields, Luang Por had just taken out a load of tools to the family”s small hut raised on stilts in the middle of their fields. As he related himself many years later: “When I was eighteen I liked a girl. She liked me too, and, as these things go, after some time of liking her I fell deeply in love. I wanted to marry her. I daydreamed about having her by my side helping me out in the fields, making a living together. Then one day on my way home from work I met my best friend, Puut, on the road. He said, “Chah, I”m taking the girl.” When I heard those words I went completely numb. I was in a state of shock for hours afterwards.”

　　Simply, and with the unquestioned prerogative that parents of his age and culture possessed, Puut”s father and his wife had decided that their two stepchildren should marry; there was no more to be said. The reasons were pragmatic and economic. If Puut married Jyy, the family would be saved a bride price they could ill afford. They had just acquired land some distance from the village that should not be left fallow. The young couple could move out there and farm it together.

　　Luang Por, despite the coming of the rains, must have felt his life suddenly beached in a dry and desolate land. But other than trying to reconcile himself to the situation, what could he do

　　 It m…

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