Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 13, 2025
"Have you medicine, Tuan?" "No," said the visitor in a startled tone. "No. Why? Is there sickness in the house?" "Enter and see," replied Arsat, in the same calm manner, and turning short round, passed again through the small doorway. The white man, dropping his bundles, followed.
High in the stern, his head muffled up in white rags, the juragan sat moody, letting his paddle trail in the water. The white man, leaning with both arms over the grass roof of the little cabin, looked back at the shining ripple of the boat's wake. Before the sampan passed out of the lagoon into the creek he lifted his eyes. Arsat had not moved.
Arsat rose and stood, an indistinct and silent figure above the dying embers of the fire. Over the lagoon a mist drifting and low had crept, erasing slowly the glittering images of the stars.
His chin rested on his chest, and he murmured sadly without lifting his head "We all love our brothers." Arsat burst out with an intense whispering violence "What did I care who died? I wanted peace in my own heart." He seemed to hear a stir in the house listened then stepped in noiselessly. The white man stood up. A breeze was coming in fitful puffs.
The white man, standing gazing upwards before the doorway, heard in the hut a confused and broken murmur of distracted words ending with a loud groan. Suddenly Arsat stumbled out with outstretched hands, shivered, and stood still for some time with fixed eyes. Then he said "She burns no more." Before his face the sun showed its edge above the tree-tops rising steadily.
Moreover, they disliked Arsat, first as a stranger, and also because he who repairs a ruined house, and dwells in it, proclaims that he is not afraid to live amongst the spirits that haunt the places abandoned by mankind.
A shout came faintly over the lagoon and the sampan began to glide towards the abode of the friend of ghosts. "If you want to come with me, I will wait all the morning," said the white man, looking away upon the water. "No, Tuan," said Arsat, softly. "I shall not eat or sleep in this house, but I must first see my road. Now I can see nothing see nothing!
He had known Arsat years ago, in a far country in times of trouble and danger, when no friendship is to be despised. And since his Malay friend had come unexpectedly to dwell in the hut on the lagoon with a strange woman, he had slept many times there, in his journeys up and down the river.
He stirred like a man waking up and changed his position slightly. Arsat, motionless and shadowy, sitting with bowed head under the stars, was speaking in a low and dreamy tone ". . . for where can we lay down the heaviness of our trouble but in a friend's heart? A man must speak of war and of love.
Arsat came through the doorway with noiseless steps and squatted down by the fire. The white man moved his outstretched legs a little. "She breathes," said Arsat in a low voice, anticipating the expected question. "She breathes and burns as if with a great fire. She speaks not; she hears not and burns!" He paused for a moment, then asked in a quiet, incurious tone "Tuan . . . will she die?"
Word Of The Day
Others Looking