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Then a second security guard appeared out of nowhere, materializing with the sounds of his portable transmitter and receiver in nebulous static blaring from his hip. Less wary, he meandered sinuously until he made his way close to Nawin who was thinking: "Those foreigners in the tuk- tuk must be in Laos by now going to Vientiane as I am."
And so, assuming that all was not destined and man had choice about all matters, he had chosen to check into this guest house in the center of Nongkai instead of going straight into Vientiane. To some degree it had been because of the weight of the backpack. It had become increasingly heavy against his shoulders with every kilometer of that long walk. Confusion also had had its bearing.
What did he want of that telephone anyhow, as possessing it would not bring women back, not even the cute nurse at Siriaj Hospital, for the wound had been reopened and a reopening a vile hole he must fall through. At this time she, Noppawan, was no doubt there in their home with his child, and so he could return to Vientiane, find a decent hotel the few that there were and give her a call.
He knew it, and he knew that this repugnant human weakness suggested that the peace of mind he hoped to obtain by a Buddhist trip into Vientiane could be easily ravaged by wild desires as random and pointless as the landscape of weeds and sedges about the train, for desire was innate as the yearning to breathe.
At this particular moment he yearned viscerally for the Laotian, the stranger, to awaken and remove himself from the train at the next stop; and yet as the man was going to Vientiane, there was little or no chance of him leaving before the last stop of Nongkai. He splashed a bit more of the water onto his face and felt better.
He had mistakenly believed that during most of his time in Laos he would be sitting in some park or another reading a volume of essays on Buddhism or art, and when glancing up at the sky he would hear nothing within and without but the gentle rustling of pages turned by the fingers of the wind. Instead he heard evacuation sirens within the city of the mind. And here he was exiting Vientiane.
If he relented by calling her at a pay telephone booth and by a miracle fortuitous, dull, or moribund, he was made to believe that some type of reconciliation was possible as economic provider or more, it would be better that it were done there where he could buy a ticket immediately than to experience a breakdown of His integrity while stuck uncomfortably in Vientiane.
Perhaps he was too sensitive for this world but here he was and so, to use an Americanism, he needed to see things through "rose colored filters." Thus his first impression of Vientiane Laos was that of an intricate tapestry of life. All he had to do to appreciate it was to simply open his eyes by abjuring agenda and accomplishment and melting into true being.
He was deciduous, but unlike a tree, he suffered a loss of most of the trunk of his entire being: the full love of a child for his mother that would never come again; the family that damaged and then vanished almost as quickly as one was conceived, gestated, and delivered as a member into its cell of sordid and clandestine activities; an infatuation with a girl that once seemed garish, all-consuming, and eternal as the sun; and the full pleasure of feeling those awesome gusts of wind hit against his face as a boy would, smelling the pile of winter leaves that he once jumped into as they began to suffocate him, and appreciating the significance of the simple delights of the ordinary as a child's mind did, and to which no vacation to Vientiane as an adult had the hope of restoring.
When he was glancing at post cards so that he could send one to her, oddly in an eerie way, she was there with him urging him to find one for herself that more accurately depicted the history of Nongkai. Every time he thought of going straight into Vientiane she expostulated that it would be better to bypass the city as much as possible so that they might spend more time in the Plain of Jars.
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