The Disallowed

3 Pee Pob Heng-2

“Your guess might not be as good as mine, but I wil admit that I am in new territory here and am playing it by ear, but with some suggestions from my Spirit Friends, although one did say that it would be kinder to

just kil him and let him start life over again.”

“What do you think of that suggestion, Wan?”

“Er, to be honest too, I think that it’s rather a drastic measure, don’t you, Aunty Da?”

“Yes, I do, I wil agree with you there, which is why I haven’t suggested it, but it is stil an option, if things get out of hand.”

Throughout this conversation, Heng appeared to be asleep, but the ladies hadn’t checked.

“Do you think he’s suffering, Aunty Da?”

“He seems peaceful enough, doesn’t he? He’s talking again now and hasn’t mentioned any discomfort, so I wouldn’t worry too much about his physical condition, if I were you, but you know him better than anyone else, so it’s down to you to look out for any signs of mental change and report them to me so that we can discuss them.”

“Al right, Aunty Da, I’ll do that. Look, if you have other things to do, don’t let us hold you up. The kids are being marvellous – they’ve taken over al our chores, so that I can sit with Heng, but if you want a lift home, I can organise that for you. We are al so grateful for your help, Heng would have died without you and we are al well aware of it. If ever there is anything that we can do for you, al you have to do is say.”

“Yes, thank you, Wan, perhaps I wil go home for a few hours, but I would like to see Heng eat his kid meal, so if I could dine with you on pork this evening, that would be perfect.

“As for payment, don’t worry about that for now. Heng is my favourite nephew and I wouldn’t like to see anything happen to any of them, if it was within my power to prevent it.

“I can walk home and I can walk back… What time do you propose to eat?”

“Seven to seven-thirty, as usual and you will be most welcome.”

“OK, I’ll be off now then, see you at seven-ish. Bye for now.”

“Bye, Aunt Da, and thank you again for al your help.”

When Da had left, Wan felt strange to be alone with her husband. It was the first time since Heng had become ‘il ’, as Den had taken the goats down to the stream and Din was tending the family vegetable plot. Wan needed to get word to Den that he had to slaughter and butcher one of the kid goats which were running with their mothers in the flock, but she dared not leave Heng alone. Din was the only one who could go, so she had to hope that Din would come back for some lunch, but she usually did, so Wan was pretty confident that Heng would get his chop.

She tried talking to him and, since no-one was around to overhear them, she used endearments.

“Darling Heng, are you awake, my dear? We al … I have been so worried about you… please answer if you can hear me.”

“Of course I can hear you when I’m awake, but I have dozed from time to time, Mud,” he said in his new, low, rumbling voice. “and I suppose I missed a few things then. In general, I’m feeling a lot better, if a little strange. I am looking forward to dinner though.

“What time is it now?”

“Eleven forty-five, we’l have a spot of lunch in a while, do you want any?”

“What is it?”

“Oh, a salad…”

“Bah, rabbits’ food!”

“But, but you used to so enjoy a green salad, Heng…”

“Did I? I can’t imagine that and I don’t remember liking it.”

“How about an omelette?”

“Yes, that sounds better. Could you mix in some milkshake?”

“Yes, of course, dear, I don’t see why not, I have some here that I prepared for your supper later.

“We’l just give Din another thirty minutes to see if she’s coming back.

I need her to take a message to Den to kil one of the kids for you.”

After lunch, Din took a few knives, a bag for the meat and a flask for the blood to her brother, so that he could carry out his grizzly duty, then Din went back to the vegetable patch.

“You seemed to enjoy that omelette, Heng, did you?”

“Yes, it was very wholesome, plenty of meat, plenty of protein.”

Wan hovered around Heng al afternoon, chopping vegetables and making naam pik chil i sauce, but Heng didn’t say another word. He was apparently taking a siesta or possibly a recuperative afternoon nap after his first solid meal for a couple of days.

Din was the first back in the late afternoon with a basketful of vegetables and herbs for the next twenty-four hours. Den arrived a little later and handed his mother a bag of neatly butchered meat and a flask of blood from the dead goat.

“I’ll just go and salt this skin, Mum, al right? I’ve already scraped it like Dad showed me. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“No need to hurry, we’ve plenty of time. You make sure you have a shower after butchering that goat before you come to the table.”

“Yes, Mum…”

“Mmm, milkshake, I smell lovely milkshake…” Heng was stirring and mumbling.

“Yes, Heng, milkshake… Mud is making milkshake for you for later,

but first we wil have supper when your aunty gets here.

Wan whispered to Din, “I do believe that he can smell the goat’s blood or the meat. Look at his nose twitching like a witch’s. Who would have believed a week ago that we would be living like this?”

Wan put the surplus meat in the freezer then took Heng’s chop far enough away that the smell of blood wouldn’t bother him and got on with her chores. Heng went back to sleep like a clockwork toy that had wound down.

At six forty-five, Wan took the chopped vegetables from the water to drain, put the open fire in a bucket that they cooked on on an old concrete block on the table and added a few more lumps of charcoal.

Tonight they would be having the children’s favourite – barbecued pork.

The apparatus for barbecuing was simple but effective. It was a metal

‘dish’ resembling an old-fashioned orange juicer. The trough was fil ed with water for boiling the vegetables and rice-spaghetti and the pinnacle was for barbecuing the meat. In effect, everybody cooked their own meal and topped up the trough for everyone else, so that it was stil a communal meal.

When Da arrived, suitably not early, at seven ten, Wan sent Din to fetch the meat from the fridge under the house. When she was within ten yards of the table, Heng ‘came alive’ again, his nose twitching.

“Mmm, milkshake!”

“No, Heng, milkshake later, now you get kid chop.”

“Mmm, kid chop, lovely, rare…”

Da was fascinated and was taking mental notes.

When Wan put the meat on the barbecue, Heng took off his glasses to get a better look in the rapidly fading light. His eyes shone like fiery red beacons making the children shudder with fear and incomprehension.

Everybody there would have said that the boiling vegetables and cooking meat smelled wonderful, but it was Heng who spoke first.

“Kid smells lovely now! Don’t burn the blood. Heng wants the meat rare… no vegetables, smell horrible.”

“Yes, Heng, I know, rare, but not raw. This is stil raw, you must give it a few more minutes.”

“No, Mud, I wil eat like this. It smells so good now, but every minute the smell gets less. I want mine now.”

“Al right, Heng, have it your own way. Do you want some vegetables with your chops or some spaghetti?”

“No, only meat, want rabbit, not rabbit food.”

Wan took the two chops from the fire, put one on a plate for Heng and handed it to him.

“There you are, Paw, but it stil looks awful y bloody to me. You always used to have your meat well-done like the rest of us.”

Heng took the plate, put it to his nose and sniffed it, his nose twitching like a rabbit’s. Then he put the plate in his lap, took the smal chop in both hands and raised it to his nose again.

“Lovely,” he said, “a little over done, but very nice.”

Heng didn’t notice that everyone was scrutinising his every move as he bit off a miniscule piece of meat and chewed it with his front teeth.

Wan at least had expected him to take out the whole circle of meat in one go. Then he held the chop in one hand and picked tiny pieces of meat off it with the other. When he had exposed a bit of the bloody interior, he put it to his lips and sucked.

His family looked at each other in utter amazement, as his red and pink eyes watched the meat like a hawk.

“Is there a problem?” he asked with a quick sidewise tilt of the head towards his wife.

“No, Heng, no problem. It is just so nice to see you eating solid food again, that’s al . We are just happy for you, aren’t we, everybody?”

“Yes,” they al agreed at once, but Da had her misgivings, although she was not prepared to share them at that precise moment.

“Good! That’s al right then,” said Heng and went back to picking at his food with obvious relish.

It took Heng a ful thirty minutes to eat half-a-dozen square inches of meat and then he started on the bone, which he picked clean and then sucked dry. The others found it almost impossible to concentrate on their own food, the consequences of which were that the trough boiled dry and the meat burned several times, so that their meal was mostly ruined, although they ate it anyway, not being ones to waste food.

When he had finished the first chop, Heng wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then licked and sucked that clean. An onlooker might have guessed that Heng had just been released after years in solitary confinement in a concentration camp on a ration of bread and water.

None of them had ever seen anyone so obviously enjoy their food so much.

“Do you want the other one now, Paw,” asked Din.

Heng took hold of the sheet that was around his shoulders and flapped it in an attempt to make himself more comfortable and Den rescued the plate from his lap before it fell off.

“We wait for this to go down first,” said Heng, “and then eat some more. Very nice food. Heng like very much.”

Den looked at his mother and she knew what he meant. Heng was

speaking pigeon-Thai and nobody had heard him that bad before, even though his Thai had never been perfect because he had had Chinese parents.

Just as people were starting to settle into their own food and Heng had become stil again, there came a muffled squelch from his direction.

Everyone knew what had happened, but being polite, they al pretended that they hadn’t heard it. Then there was another one and an awful smell.

Only Wan and Da dared look at Heng who wore a broad smile beneath his dark glasses.

Den began to titter. Quietly at first, but he couldn’t hold it in and soon Din became infected by the laughter.

“Quiet, children! Your father can’t help it. He’s il ,” said Wan. “The solid food must have gone straight through him.”

However, Den and Din couldn’t control themselves. Heng just sat there with a contented grin on his face. A few minutes later, when the smell had not diminished, Wan spoke to Den:

“Carry your father to the toilet, wil you, Den, so he can clean himself up? If there is any problem, just shout and I’ll come to help him.

“Heng, put your underpants in the laundry basket, I’ll sort them out tomorrow.”

When they had left, Wan said:

“Well, my! Oh my, what do you make of that, Aunty Da?”

“Strange, isn’t it? But Heng’s behaviour reminds me of that of a bird.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the way he was sitting there as if perched and the way he ate and then crapped after eating… Birds do that

– I suppose many animals do too, but you watch the chickens in your yard. I can’t get it out of my mind that he was roosting there in his sheet and glasses after having eaten the chop.”

“So, you don’t think that he’s incontinent then? I’m a bit worried about our bed… we only bought a new mattress a few weeks ago… it would be a shame, wouldn’t it? Do you think it would be al right to put him in the barn until we’re sure?”

“No, don’t worry! Not even birds crap in their own nest, although you may want to put him in nappies until we better understand what is going on… Or incontinence pants if it persists, but you’ll have to go into town to get some of them.”

When Heng returned with Den, he looked a little crest-fal en, a little embarrassed even.

“Are you al right, Heng?” asked his wife.

“Yes, accident. Don’t worry. No problem. No more today. Go to bed now.”