It's Life Jim, But Not As We Know It 6 page

All in all, it was a lot more agreeable than many of the bathrooms one finds outside the westernized world. There wasn't, however, any toilet paper. Not a surprise in itself, but I'd thought there might be some leaves or something. Instead, by the water channel, there was a plastic pitcher.

You find plastic pitchers all around provincial Asia and their purpose has confounded me for years. I refuse to believe that Asians wipe themselves with their hands – it's a ridiculous idea – but, aside from washing digits, I can't see what other use the pitcher has. I'm sure they don't splash themselves down. Apart from being ineffective, it would make an incredible mess, and they emerge from their ablutions as dry as a bone.

Of the various mysteries of the Orient this should be the easiest to unravel, but the subject matter appears to be veiled in a conspiracy of silence. A Manilan friend once came with me on a trip to a small island off the coast of Luzon. One day I found him standing on a mud-dike, peering into the mangrove swamps with obvious concern. When I asked him what the matter was he blushed furiously, which made his brown skin go almost purple, and pointed to some bits of toilet paper that were floating in the water. The tide was leading the toilet paper towards some houses, and this prospect had thrown him into a panic. Not for reasons of hygiene but because it would betray his western toilet habits – habits that the locals would find unacceptably disgusting. In his shame, he was considering wading into the swamps to hoick the pieces out and hide them elsewhere.

We managed to solve the problem by bombarding the water with stones until the paper shredded or sank. As we slunk away from the scene of the crime I asked him to describe the locals' acceptable alternative, but he refused to tell me. He just hinted darkly that I'd find it as disgusting as they found our way. This was as close as I ever got to finding out the truth.

Luckily I only needed to piss so I was spared having to experiment. When the time came for solids I decided I'd slip into the jungle.

I left the toilet and began walking back across the clearing. I was still feeling slightly feverish but I didn't want to spend yet more hours breathing stuffy air and watching flickering candle-flames. Instead I continued past the longhouse, thinking I might explore. I also hoped that I might find Etienne and Francoise, who'd been missing since I woke up. I imagined they were exploring too.

I counted nine tents in the clearing and five huts, not including the longhouse. The tents were only used for sleeping – inside the flaps I could see backpacks and clothes, and in one I even saw a Nintendo Gameboy – but the huts all seemed to have functional uses. Apart from the toilet, there was a kitchen and a washing area, also fed by tributaries. The other huts were for storage. One contained carpentry tools and another some boxes of tinned food. It made we wonder how long the camp had existed. Sal had said that the dope fields had appeared a couple of years ago, which implied the travellers had been around for some time before that.

Tents, tools, tinned food, Nintendo. The more I saw, the more I marvelled. It wasn't just how much the camp had been organized, it was how it had been organized. None of the huts looked newer than the others. The tents' guy lines were held with rocks, and the rocks were moulded into the ground. Nothing seemed random, everything seemed calculated: designed as opposed to evolved.

As I wandered around the clearing, peering through tent flaps and studying the canopy ceiling until my neck ached, my sense of awe was matched only by a sense of frustration. Questions kept appearing in my mind, and each question raised another. It was clear that, at some point, the people who'd set up the camp had needed a boat. This suggested the help of Thais, which in turn suggested a certain kind of Thai. A Ko Samui spiv might bend the rules to let backpackers stay on a marine-park island for a few nights, but it was harder to imagine them ferrying crates of food and carpentry tools.

I also found it strange that the camp was so deserted. It apparently supported a large number of people, and a couple of times I thought I heard voices near by, but no one ever appeared.

After a while, the quietness and occasional distant voices began to get to me. At first I just felt a little lonely and sorry for myself. I didn't think Sal should have left me on my own, especially when I was ill and new to the camp. And Etienne and Francoise were supposed to be my friends. Shouldn't friends have hung around to make sure I was OK?

But soon loneliness turned into paranoia. I found that I was starting when I heard jungle noises, my shuffling footsteps in the dirt sounded oddly loud, and I caught myself acting with an affected casualness, aimed at the eyes I suspected were watching me from the trees. Even the absence of Etienne and Francoise became a reason to worry.

Maybe it was partly to do with my fever, or maybe it was a normal reaction in abnormal circumstances. Either way, the eerie quietness was freaking me out. I decided I had to get out of the clearing. I went back to the longhouse to pick up my cigarettes and some shoes, but when I saw the long avenue of shadow that lay between the door and my candle-lit bed, I changed my mind.

There were several paths that ran from the clearing. I chose the nearest.

By good luck, the path I chose led directly to the beach. The sand was too hot for bare feet so I jogged down to the water's edge, and after making a mental note of where I'd come out of the jungle, I flipped a mental coin and took a left.

Getting out from the claustrophobic cavern of trees calmed me down. There was plenty to distract me as I walked through the shallows.

From the waterfall, I'd seen the vast circle of granite cliffs as a barrier to getting down, but now they were a barrier to getting back up. A prison could hardly have been built with more formidable walls, although it was hard to think of such a place as prison-like. Aside from the lagoon's beauty, there was a sense that the cliffs were protective – the walls of an inverse castle, sunk instead of raised. Sal hadn't given me the impression of being very threatened by the dope farmers, but the knowledge that the cliffs lay between me and them was still comforting.

The lagoon itself was almost perfectly divided between land and sea. I estimated its diameter at a mile, though I wouldn't rely on the accuracy of this guess. Now nearer to the seaward cliffs than on the waterfall, I could make out features in the rock-face I hadn't seen before. Along the watermark were black hollows and caves. They looked as if they penetrated the cliff deeply – perhaps deeply enough to provide a passage for a small boat. The sea itself was punctuated by protruding boulders, slick where the waves lapped against them, flattened into slabs by centuries of tropical rain.

I'd walked a few hundred metres down the beach when I noticed some shapes splashing around one of the larger boulders. Bizarrely, my first thought was that they were seals, until I realized there couldn't possibly be seals in Thailand. Then, looking harder, I realized they were people. At last I'd found someone.

I checked the urge to call out, for no particular reason other than a vague instinct to be cautious. Instead I jogged back over the sand to the tree-line, where I could sit in the shade and wait until the swimmers returned. There I found footprints, T-shirts, and to my delight, an open packet of Marlboros. After a millisecond of debate I stole one.

Contented for the moment, I blew smoke-rings into the still air, discovering that when the smoke-rings floated over the beach they would rise quickly and, without dissipating, drift into the overhanging palm leaves. It took me several baffled puffs to work out it was due to heat rising from the sun-baked sand.

The swimmers were less confusing. They were spear fishing. Every so often they'd all get out of the sea and gaze intently at the water around them, spears poised. Then they'd all throw their spears at once, dive back in, splash around a bit, and repeat the process. They seemed to catch a lot of fish.

Exocet

Neutralized by wet hair and dark skin, each of the six swimmers looked like a carbon copy of the other. I didn't recognize Etienne and Francoise until they'd crossed the hot sands and were laying out their catch.

Something made me hesitate before I stepped out from behind the tree-line. Seeing my two travelling companions on such friendly terms with the other swimmers felt strange. They were all laughing and calling each other by name. It made me realize how much I'd been left out by sleeping through the first night and day in the camp. And then, when I did step out, none of the group noticed me. I had to stand there a few moments, a grin frozen on my face, waiting for one of them to look up.

Eventually, not knowing what else to do, I coughed. Six heads turned in unison.

'Hi,' I said uncertainly. There was a silence. Francoise was frowning slightly, as if she couldn't quite place me. Then Etienne's face split into a huge smile.

'Richard! You are better!' He bounded over and embraced me. 'Everybody,' he said, tightly gripping me with one wet arm and making an expansive gesture with the other. 'This is our friend who was sick.'

'Hi, Richard,' the swimmers chorused.

'Hi…'

Etienne hugged me again. 'I am so happy you are better!'

'I'm happy too.'

I looked over Etienne's shoulder at Francoise. She was still standing with the group and I smiled at her. She returned the smile but in a lop-sided way. Or a knowing way. I suddenly wondered what kinds of things I might have blurted out to her in my delirious state.

As if to panic me further she walked over and lightly brushed a hand against my arm. 'It is good to see you better, Richard,' she said flatly, then as I opened my mouth to reply she turned away.

'I caught a fish!' said Etienne. 'This is my first time fishing, and I caught a big fish!' He pointed to the catch. 'You see this big blue fish?'

'Uh-huh,' I replied, only half listening as cold thoughts flooded my head.

'Mine!'

I was introduced to the other swimmers.

Moshe was a tall Israeli with an ear-splitting laugh. He used it in the same way as a madman uses a gun, spraying it around with bewildering randomness. Hearing the laugh made me blink instinctively, like hearing a hammer pound on brick or metal. Our conversation was impeded by having to watch him through the strobe effect of my convulsing eyes.

Then there were two haughty Yugoslavian girls whose names I could never pronounce and certainly never spell, and who made a big deal about being from Sarajevo. They said, 'We are from Sarajevo,' then paused meaningfully, like they expected me to faint or congratulate them.

And there was Gregorio. Gregorio I warmed to at once. He had a kind face and a soft Latin lisp, and when we were introduced he said, 'I am very pleathed to meet you.' Then he dried his hand on his T-shirt before offering it to shake, adding, 'We are all very pleathed to meet you.'

I can't remember one thing about what Etienne said to me as we walked back along the shallows. I remember he was talking about what I'd missed while I was asleep, and I have a vision of the way he cradled his catch, smothering his brown chest with silver scales, but everything else is a blank. It's a measure of how disturbed I was by what I might have said to Francoise.

I realized I had to find out the truth or it would drive me crazy. Francoise was walking a few paces behind the group so I lagged behind Etienne, pretending to find an interesting sea shell. But as soon as I did so, she picked up her pace. Then when I caught up with her she seemed to deliberately drop behind again.

Seemed. It was impossible for me to tell. When she slowed she was apparently distracted by something in the trees, but that might have been no more real than my interesting sea shell.

It was enough for me. By now I felt sure my suspicions were correct, and rational or otherwise, I decided I had to clear the air without any delay.

When I lagged behind the next time, I caught her by the arm.

'Francoise,' I asked, trying to find the right balance between firm and casual. 'Is there something funny going on?'

'Funny?' she replied, wide-eyed. 'Oh, well, everything here is so strange. Of course, I am not used to it yet.'

'No, I didn't mean here… Look, maybe it's just me, but it feels like there's something funny going on between us.'

'Us?'

'Me and you,' I said, and instantly began to blush. I coughed and pointed my head at the ground. 'I thought that, while I was ill, maybe I said something that…'

'Oh.' She looked at me. 'What are you afraid you said?'

'I don't know what I said. I'm asking you.'

'Yes. And I am asking what you are afraid you said.'

Fuck, I thought. Rewind.

'Nothing. I'm not afraid I said anything.'

'So…?'

'So I don't know. I just thought you were acting funny. It's just me. Forget it.'

Francoise stopped. 'OK,' she said. The rest of the group began drawing away from us. 'Let me say it, Richard. You are worried you said you loved me, yes?'

'What?' I exclaimed, momentarily thrown by her Exocet-like bluntness. Then I gathered my wits and lowered my voice. 'Jesus Christ, Francoise! Of course not!'

'Richard…'

'I mean, that's a ridiculous idea.'

'Richard, please. It is not ridiculous. It was what you were afraid of.'

'No. Not at all. I was…'

'Richard!'

I paused. She was staring straight at me. 'Yes,' I said slowly. 'It's what I was afraid of.'

She sighed.

'Francoise,' I began, but she interrupted me.

'It does not matter, Richard. You had this fever, and in a fever people can say strange things, no? Things they do not mean. So you are afraid you said something strange. It means nothing. I understand.'

'You aren't angry?'

'Of course not.'

'And… Did I say anything? Anything like that?'

'No.'

'Really?'

She looked away. 'Yes, really. You are very sweet to worry, but it is nothing. Do not think of this again.' Then she pointed to the others, who were now fifty feet down the beach. 'Come. We should

go.'

'OK,' I said quietly.

'OK.'

We caught up with the group, neither of us talking. Francoise walked up to Etienne and started chatting with him in French, and I walked a little aside from the others. As we neared the turning off the beach to the camp-site, Gregorio sidled over.

'You feel like the new boy in school?'

'Oh, uh… Yeah. A bit.'

'These first days are difficult, of course, but do not worry. You will find friends quickly, Richard.'

I smiled. The way he emphasized the 'you' made it sound personal, like he thought there was something particular about me that would make it easy to find friends. I knew it was just the way he spoke English, but it made me feel better all the same.

Game Over, Man

While we'd been on the beach, the camp had filled up with people. I could see Bugs and Sal by the entrance to the longhouse, talking to a group who all carried ropes. A fat guy was busy gutting fish outside the kitchen hut, stacking the hollowed bodies on broad leaves and emptying the innards into a blood-smeared plastic bucket. Beside him a girl blew on a wood fire and fed the flames with kindling.

The centre of the clearing seemed like a focus point. Most of the people were there, just milling around and chatting. At the farthest end a girl was carefully laying wet clothes over the guy lines.

Gregorio was right. I did feel like the new boy in school. I scanned the clearing as if it were the playground on my first day's lunch break, wondering what divisions and hierarchies would have to be learnt, and which of the thirty or so faces would end up as friends'.

One face stuck out. It belonged to a black guy sitting alone, his back against a storeroom hut. He looked around twenty, he had a shaved head, and his eyes were fixed intently on a small grey box in his hands – the Nintendo Gameboy I'd spotted earlier.

Etienne and Francoise followed Moshe to deposit their catch with the fish-gutters. I nearly trailed after them. The schoolyard atmosphere was telling me to stick with the people I knew, but then I looked back at the Nintendo guy. His face suddenly screwed up and over the murmur of talking I heard him hiss, 'Game Over.'

I began walking towards him.

I once read that the most widely understood word in the whole world is 'OK', followed by 'Coke', as in cola. I think they should do the survey again, this time checking for 'Game Over'.

Game Over is my favourite thing about playing video games. Actually, I should qualify that. It's the split second before Game Over that's my favourite thing.

Streetfighter II – an oldie but goldie – with Leo controlling Ryu. Ryu's his best character because he's a good all-rounder – great defensive moves, pretty quick, and once he's on an offensive roll he's unstoppable. Theo's controlling Blanka. Blanka's faster than Ryu, but he's only really good on attack. The way to win with Blanka is to get in the other player's face and just never let up. Flying kick, leg-sweep, spin attack, head-bite. Daze them into submission.

Both players are down to the end of their energy bars. One more hit and they're down, so they're both being cagey. They're hanging back at opposite ends of the screen, waiting for the other guy to make the first move. Leo takes the initiative. He sends off a fireball to force Theo into blocking, then jumps in with a flying kick to knock Blanka's green head off. But as he's moving through the air he hears a soft tapping. Theo's tapping the punch button on his control pad. He's charging up an electricity defence so when Ryu's foot makes contact with Blanka's head it's going to be Ryu who gets KO'd with 10,000 volts charging through his system.

This is the split second before Game Over.

Leo's heard the noise. He knows he's fucked. He has time to blurt, 'I'm toast,' before Ryu is lit up and thrown backwards across the screen, flashing like a Christmas tree, a charred skeleton. Toast.

The split second is the moment you comprehend you're just about to die. Different people react to it in different ways. Some swear and rage. Some sigh or gasp. Some scream. I've heard a lot of screams over the twelve years I've been addicted to video games.

I'm sure that this moment provides a rare insight into the way people react just before they really do die. The games taps into something pure and beyond affectations. As Leo hears the tapping he blurts, 'I'm toast.' He says it quickly, with resignation and understanding. If he were driving down the M1 and saw a car spinning into his path I think he'd react in the same way.

Personally, I'm a rager. I fling my joypad across the floor, eyes clenched shut, head thrown back, a torrent of abuse pouring from my lips.

A couple of years ago I had a game called Alien 3. It had a great feature. When you ran out of lives you'd get a photo-realistic picture of the Alien with saliva dripping from its jaws, and a digitized voice would bleat, 'Game over, man!'

I really used to love that.

'Hi,' I said.

The guy looked up. 'Hi.'

'How many lines did you make?'

'One four four.'

'Uh-huh. Pretty good.'

'I can do one seven seven.'

'One seven seven?'

He nodded. 'How about you?'

'Uh, about a hundred and fifty is my best.'

He nodded again. 'You're one of the three FNGs, huh?'

'Yep.'

'Where are you from?'

'London.'

'Me too. Want a game?'

'Sure.'

'OK.' He gestured to the dirt. 'Pull up a chair.'

BEACH LIFE

Assimilation, Rice

A few years ago I was going through the process of splitting up with my first serious girlfriend. She went away to Greece for the summer and when she came back she'd had a holiday romance with some Belgian guy. As if that wasn't bad enough, it seemed that the guy in question was going to show up in London some time over the next few weeks. After three hellish days and nights, I realized that I was dangerously close to losing my head. I biked over to my dad's flat and emotionally blackmailed him into lending me enough cash to leave the country.

On that trip I learnt something very important. Escape through travel works. Almost from the moment I boarded my flight, life in England became meaningless. Seat-belt signs lit up, problems switched off. Broken armrests took precedence over broken hearts. By the time the plane was airborne I'd forgotten England even existed.

After that first day, wandering around the clearing, I didn't really question a single thing about the beach.

The rice: over thirty people, two meals every day, eating rice. Rice paddies need acres of flat, irrigated land which we simply didn't have, so I knew we couldn't be growing it. If the situation hadn't come up with the Rice Run, I might never have known where it all came from. Unremarked, I would have let it pass.

Assimilation: from day one we were working, everybody knew our names, we had beds allocated in the longhouse. I felt like I'd been living there all my life.

It was the same thing that had happened on the aeroplane; my memory began shutting down. Ko Samui became a hazy, dream-like place, and Bangkok became little more than a familiar word. On the third or fourth day I remember thinking that Zeph and Sammy might turn up soon and wondering how people would react. Then I realized I couldn't quite recall Zeph and Sammy's faces. A couple of days later I'd forgotten they might be coming at all.

There's this saying: in an all-blue world, colour doesn't exist. It makes a lot of sense to me. If something seems strange, you question it; but if the outside world is too distant to use as a comparison then nothing seems strange.

Why would I question it anyway? Assimilating myself was the most natural thing in the world. I'd been doing it ever since I became a traveller. Another saying: when in Rome, do as the Romans. In the traveller's ten commandments, that's commandment number one. You don't march into Hindu temples and start saying, 'Why are you worshipping a cow?' You look around, take on board, adjust, accept.

Assimilation and rice. These were just things to accept – new aspects of a new life.

But even now, I'm not asking the right questions.

It doesn't matter why I found it so easy to assimilate myself into the beach life. The question is why the beach life found it so easy to assimilate me.

Over the first two or three weeks there was a song that I couldn't get out of my head. Actually, it wasn't even a song. It was just a couple of lines from a song. And I don't know the song's name, but I suspect it's called 'Street Life', because the only lyric I could remember went, 'Street life, it's the only life I know, street life, dah dab-dah dah dah dah dab-da-dah.' Except the way I sang it went, 'Beach life', instead of 'Street life', and all I could do was repeat that little bit over and over.

It used to drive Keaty crazy. He'd say, 'Richard, you've got to stop singing that fucking song,' and I'd have to shrug and say, 'Keaty, I can't get it out of my head.' Then I'd make an effort not to sing it for a while, but without meaning to I'd start again a couple of hours later. I'd only realize I'd started again when Keaty would smack his forehead and hiss, 'I asked you not to fucking sing it!Jesus, Richard!' Then I'd have to shrug again. Eventually I got Keaty singing it too, and when I pointed this out he said, 'Aaargh!' and wouldn't let me play on his Nintendo for the rest of the day.

Night John-Boy

Routines developed quickly.

I'd wake around seven, seven thirty, then head straight down to the beach with Etienne and Keaty. Usually Francoise wouldn't swim because it was too much hassle getting the salt out of her long hair every day, but sometimes she would. Then we'd go back to the camp and rinse off in the shower hut.

Breakfast was at eight. Every morning the kitchen crew would boil up a load of rice, and it was up to the individual to sort out anything else. Most had their rice plain, but a few made the effort to boil up some fish or vegetables. I never bothered. For the first three days we mixed in our Magi-Noodles for a bit of flavour, but when the Magi-Noodles ran out we settled for the rice.

After breakfast people would begin to disperse. Mornings were for working and everybody had their job to do. By nine the camp was always empty.

There were four main areas of work: fishing, gardening, cooking and carpentry.

Etienne, Francoise and I were on the fishing detail. Before we'd arrived there'd been two fishing groups, but we made it three. Gregorio and us made up one group, Moshe and the two Yugoslavian girls made up another, and the last group was a bunch of Swedish guys. They were very serious about their fishing and every day they'd swim through the cliff caves to the open sea. Sometimes they'd come back with fish as big as your leg and everybody would make a fuss over them.

Work-wise, I felt pretty lucky. If it hadn't been for Etienne and Francoise volunteering to go fishing on that first day, we wouldn't have met Gregorio, and I might have ended up on the gardening detail. Keaty was on the gardening detail and he used to complain about it all the time. He had to work over half an hour from the clearing, up by the waterfall. The head gardener was Jean, a farmer's son from south-western France who pronounced his name like he was clearing his throat, and he ran his garden with an iron fist. The problem was, once you'd taken on a job it was pretty hard to change. It wasn't like there were rules, but everybody worked in groups so if you changed jobs you had to leave one group and break into another.

If I hadn't been a fisher, I probably would have tried to get in with the carpenters. Kitchen duties didn't appeal at all. Aside from the hellish chore of cooking dinner for thirty people every day, the three cooks all carried a lingering odour of fish innards around with them. The head cook, whose nickname was Unhygienix, had his own private store of soap in his tent. He seemed to get through a bar a week, but it didn't do any good.

The carpenters were run by Bugs. Bugs was Sal's boyfriend, and he was a carpenter by trade. He'd been responsible for the longhouse and all the huts, and he'd had the idea of tying the branches together to make the canopy ceiling. From the way people treated him, it was obvious that Bugs was much respected. It was partly that everybody relied on the things he made, but it was also because he was Sal's boyfriend.

If there was a leader, it was Sal. When she talked, people listened. She spent her days wandering around the lagoon, checking on the different work details and making sure things were running smoothly. At first she devoted a lot of time to making sure we were settling in OK, and often joined us when we swam down to the boulders, but after the first week she seemed satisfied, and we rarely saw her during the work period.

The only person who didn't have a clear working detail was Jed. He spent his days alone and was usually the first person to leave in the mornings and the last person to come back. Keaty said that Jed spent a lot of time near the waterfall and above the cliffs. Every now and then he would disappear and spend the night somewhere on the island. When he turned up again he usually had fresh grass, obviously taken from the dope fields.

Around two thirty, people would start drifting back to camp. The kitchen crew and the fishers would always be first so the food could be prepared. Then the garden detail would arrive with their vegetables and fruit, and by three the clearing would be full again.

Breakfast and dinner were the only meals of the day. We didn't really need more. 'Dinner was at four o'clock and usually people went to bed about nine. There wasn't much to be done after dark, apart from get stoned. Night-time camp-fires weren't allowed because fires were too conspicuous to low planes, even through the canopy ceiling. There were a lot of low planes around, flying to and from the airstrip on Ko Samui.

Apart from those with tents, everybody slept in the longhouse. It took me a while to get used to sleeping with twenty-one other people, but soon I started enjoying it. There was a strong sense of closeness in the longhouse which Keaty and the others with tents missed out on. There was also the ritual. It didn't happen every night, but it happened often, and every time it made me smile.

The origin of the ritual was the Waltons TV series. At the end of each episode you'd see a shot of the Waltons' house and hear all of them saying good night to each other.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 599