The Disallowed

1 Mr. Lee’s Predicament-2

You know, especial y with my insides being like they are. Perhaps, they’ll benefit from a gentle rubbing though… what do you think, my dear?”

“Yes, I know what you mean by gentle rubbing. If that’s the case, why don’t you ask your uncle to do it? Why choose a young woman?”

“You know why, I don’t like having men’s hands on me, I’ve explained that before, but al right, if it upsets you, I won’t have a massage.”

“Look, I am not saying that you can’t go! Heavens, I couldn’t stop you if you wanted to go anyway! However, as you say, they say she is a bit rough, and she may do more harm than good. I think that it would be wiser not to, until we’ve heard from your aunty, that’s al .”

“Yes, OK, you’re probably right. You never said where the kids are.”

“I’m not sure really, I thought they’d be back by now… They went off together to see about some birthday party or other on the weekend.”

The Lees had two children, one of each, and they counted themselves lucky for them, because they had been trying to have children for ten years before their boy was conceived. They were twenty and sixteen now, so Mr. and Mrs. Lee had long given up hoping for any more.

They had stopped trying long ago too.

However, they were good, respectful and obedient children and they made their parents proud, or at least, what their parents knew about them made them proud, because they were just like any decent kids: ninety percent good, but could get up to mischief too and had secret thoughts that they knew their parents would not approve of.

Master Lee, the son, Den, or Young Lee, had just turned twenty and was nearly two years out of school. He, like his sister, had a happy childhood, but the fact was beginning to dawn on him that his father had

a very hard life planned for him, not that he hadn’t worked al his life both before and after school anyway. However, there had been time for footbal and table tennis and the girls at the school dances back then.

That had al finished now and so had his prospects of a s*x life, not that there had ever been much to boast about – just the rare kiss and even rarer fumble, but now he had had nothing for nearly two years. Den would have left for a city at the drop of a hat, if he had any sort of clue what to do when he got there, but he had no ambition either, except to have s*x often.

His hormones were playing havoc with him to such an extent that some of the goats were looking very attractive to him, which worried him no end.

Not very deep down, he realised that he would have to get married, if he wanted to have a regular relationship with a woman.

Marriage, even if it came at the cost of having to have children, was starting to look decidedly attractive.

Miss Lee, better known as Din, was a very pretty girl of sixteen, who had left school in the summer, having studied two years fewer than her brother, which was quite normal in their area. Not because she was less bright, but because both parents and the girls themselves assumed that the earlier they started their families, the better it was. It was also easier to get a husband when a girl was younger than twenty than even a few years older. Din accepted this traditional ‘wisdom’ without question, despite her mother’s misgivings.

She had also worked before and after school al her life and probably harder than her brother, although he would never have been able to see that, as girls were virtual y slave labour everywhere roundabouts.

Din, however, did have fantasies. She dreamed of romantic entanglements, in which her lover would whisk her away to Bangkok, where he would become a doctor and she would spend al day shopping with her girlfriends. Her hormones were also troubling her, but their local culture forbade her from admitting to them, even to herself. Her father, brother and even mother too, probably, would give her a hiding, if they caught her even smiling at a boy from outside the family.

She knew that and accepted it without question too.

It was her plan to start looking for a husband straight away, a task that her mother had already offered to help in, because both the ladies Lee knew that it was best accomplished as soon as possible, in order to prevent any risk of shame befal ing the family.

Al in al , the Lees were a typical family for the locality and they were happy to be so. They got on with their lives within the constraints of local

mores and thought that right and proper, even if the two children did harbour dreams of escaping to the big city. The problem was that the lack of ambition that had been bred into the hil folk for centuries held them back, which was a good thing for the government otherwise al the young people would long ago have disappeared from the countryside into Bangkok and from there to foreign countries like Taiwan and Oman where the wages were better. However, the freedom from rigid peer pressure was al uring.

Many young girls had taken the trip to Bangkok though. Some of them had found decent jobs, but many had ended up working in the s*x industries of the larger cities and from there, a few had travelled even further abroad and even outside Asia. There were many horror stories about to dissuade young girls from taking that route and they had worked on Din and her mother alike.

Mr. Lee liked his life and loved his family, although it was not the done thing to admit that outside the confines of the home and he didn’t want to lose them to some sickness that might have started building up in him when he was stil only a lad.

Old Mr. Lee (although he knew that some of the less respectful youngsters in the vil age called him Old Goat Lee) had been an idealist in his youth and had signed up to fight for North Vietnam as soon as he had left school. They lived right on the border with Laos, so North Vietnam was not far away, and he knew of the bombs that the Americans had dropped there and on Laos and he had wanted to do his bit to have it stopped.

He had joined the communist cause and gone to Vietnam for combat training as soon as they would have him. Many of the people he was training with were just like him, part Chinese, but fed up with foreign powers meddling in his countrymen’s future. He could not understand why Americans living thousands of miles away cared who was in power in his little part of the world. He had never worried which president they had elected.

However, as fate would have it, he never had the chance to fire a shot in anger because he was hit by shrapnel from an American bomb as he was being transported from the training camp to the field of battle on his very first day out of boot camp. His wounds had been very painful, but not life-threatening, although they were sufficient to get him invalided out of the army, after he was fit enough to leave hospital. He had been hit in the upper left leg by the biggest piece, but a few smal er bits had peppered his abdomen, which he now thought may be the source of his discomfort.

That had also been the source of the rumour that he had been shot.

He had returned home with a bad limp and enough compensation to buy a smal farm, but since his leg was bad, he had bought a farm and a flock of goats and bred and sold them instead. Within a year of his return, his leg was as good as it would ever get and he was married to a pretty local girl that he had known and fancied al his life. She was also from a farming background, and they settled down to a happy, but meagre existence.

Every day of the week ever since, except Sunday, Mr. Lee had taken his flock into the uplands to graze and in the summer, he would often stay overnight in one of the bivouacs he had here and there, which he had learned to make in the army. He looked back on that time with nostalgia, as happy days, although he would not have called them that at the time.

There were no predators in the mountains any longer, except men, because al the tigers had been kil ed long ago for use in the Chinese medicine industry. Mr. Lee had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand he knew that it was a shame, but on the other he had no desire to have to defend his goats from marauding tigers every night. When the il ness had struck him only a week or so ago, he had been a goatherd for almost thirty years, so he knew the mountains as well as most people knew their local park.

He knew which areas to avoid because of landmines and strychnine packets dropped by the Americans in the Seventies and he knew which areas had been cleared, although the sappers had missed one or two as one of his goats had discovered only a month previously. It had been a shame about her, although her dead body had not gone to waste and the end had come quickly when a dislodged stone had triggered a mine and been blown skyward, taking her head clean off with it.

It had been too far to carry her carcass home, so Mr. Lee had spent a few days in the mountains gorging himself while his family were worried sick about him back on the farm.

Mr. Lee was a contented man. He enjoyed his work and the outdoor life, and he was long reconciled to the fact that he would never be rich or go abroad again. For this reason, he and his wife were now happy to have only had two children. He loved them both equal y and wanted the best for them, but he was also glad that they had left school so they could work ful time on the farm, where his wife grew herbs and vegetables and kept three pigs and a few dozen chickens.

Mr. Lee was thinking of how much he could expand his farm with the extra help. Maybe they could manage another dozen chickens, a few extra pigs and a field of sweet corn perhaps.

He awoke from his reverie, “What if it’s serious, Mud? I haven’t

mentioned this before, but I fainted twice this week and came near to it two or three times more.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Well, you know, I didn’t want you to worry and you couldn’t have done anything about it, could you?”

“No, not personal y, but I would have got you to your aunty earlier and maybe tried to get you to see a medical doctor.”

“Ach, you know me, Mud. I’d have said, ‘Let’s wait to see what aunty has to say before spending al that money’. I must admit to feeling mighty queer sometimes though and I am a bit scared of what aunty wil say tomorrow.”

“Yes, so am I. Do you really feel that bad?”

“Sometimes, but I just don’t have any energy at al . I used to be able to run and jump with the goats, but now I get tired just watching them!

“Something’s up, I’m sure of it.”

“Look, Paw,” which was her unimaginative pet name for him since it meant ‘Dad’ in Thai, “the children are at the gate. Do you want to bring them in on this now?”

“No, you’re right, why worry them now, but I think that aunty wil send for me late tomorrow afternoon, so tell them we’l be having a family meeting at teatime and they have to be there.

“I think I’ll go to bed now, I feel tired again. Aunty’s spittle livened me up for a while, but it has worn off. Tell them I’m al right, but ask Den to take the goats out for me tomorrow, wil you? He doesn’t have to take them far, just down by the stream so they can eat some river weed and get a drink… It won’t hurt them for one or two days.

“When you get ten minutes, could you make me some of your special tea, please? The one with ginger, anise and the rest… that should buck me up a little… Oh, and a few melon or sunflower seeds… perhaps you could ask Din to crack them for me?”

“How about a mug of soup? It’s your favourite…”

“Yes, OK, but if I’m asleep, just put it on the table and I’ll have it cold later.

“Hello, children, I’m going to bed early tonight, but I don’t want you to worry, I’m al right. Your mother can fil you in with the details. I’ve just got some sort of infection, I think. Good night al .”

“Good night, Paw,” they al replied. Din looked especial y concerned as they looked anxiously first at Mr. Lee’s retreating back and then at one another.

As Mr. Lee lay there in the quiet darkness, he felt his sides throbbing even more, just as a decayed tooth always seems to be more troublesome