..续本文上一页that my father left home for a good while. Three days after my mother left the fire,1 I developed a swelling on my head, and couldn”t eat or sleep for several days running. I was an extremely difficult child to raise. Nothing my mother or father could do ever seemed to satisfy me.

　　My mother died when I was eleven, leaving my father, myself and a little sister whom I had to care for. My other brothers and sisters by that time had all grown up and gone off to find work, so there were just the three of us at home. Both my sister and I had to help my father in the rice fields.

　　When I was twelve I started school. I learned enough to read and write, but failed the elementary exams, which didn”t bother me in the least, but I kept on studying anyway. At 17, I left school, my main aim in life being to earn money.

　　During this period my father and I seemed always to be at odds with each other. He wanted me to start trading in things that seemed wrong to me, like pigs and cattle. Sometimes, when it came time to make merit at the temple, he”d stand in my way and send me out to work in the fields instead. There were days I”d get so upset that I”d end up sitting out alone in the middle of the fields, crying. There was one thought in my mind: I swore to myself that I wasn”t going to stay on in this village — so I would only have to put up with things just a little bit longer.

　　After a while my father remarried, to a woman named Mae Thip. Life at home became a little more bearable after that.

　　When I was 18 I set out to find my elder brother, who had found work in Nong Saeng, Saraburi province. News had reached home that he had a salaried job with the Irrigation Department, which was in the process of building a watergate. So in October of that year I moved in with my brother. Before long, though, we had a falling out, because I happened to mention one day that he ought to make a visit back home. He was dead set against going, so I left on my own, heading south, looking for work. At the time, I felt that money ranked in importance next to life itself. Although physically I had now come of age, I still thought of myself as a child. When friends would ask me to join them in going out to look for women, I wouldn”t be the least bit interested, because I felt that marriage was for grownups, not for kids like us.

　　From what I had seen of life, I had made two resolutions that I kept to myself:

　　1) I won”t marry until I”m at least 30.

　　2) I won”t marry unless I have at least 500 baht to my name.

　　I was determined that I”d have both the money and the ability to support at least three other people before I”d be willing to get involved with a woman.

　　But there was yet another reason for my aversion to the idea of marriage: During my childhood, at the age when I was just beginning to know what was what, if I saw a woman pregnant to the point where she was close to giving birth, it would fill me with feelings of fear and disgust. This was because the custom in those parts when a woman was going to give birth was to take a rope and tie one end to a rafter. The woman, kneeling down, would hang on to the other end of the rope and give birth. Some women would scream and moan, their faces and bodies all twisted in pain. Whenever I happened to see this, I”d have to run away with my hands over my ears and eyes, and I wouldn”t be able to sleep, out of both fear and disgust. This made a deep impression on me that lasted for a long time.

　　When I was around 19 or 20, I began to have some notion of good and evil, but it wasn”t in me to do evil. Up to that point I had never killed a large animal, except one — a dog. And I can remember how it happened. One day when I was eating, I took an egg and put it in the ashes of the fire. The dog came along, found the egg and ate…

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