THE
“Is there any chance?” Somsak thought while laying on the floor and looking at the whirling fan on the ceiling, “Is there any chance that my last call for life will find an answer somewhere in the world?” He smiled with the lower edge of his mouth when he used the word “world”. But there was a justification for it. That was how the inmates defined what was outside of the prison! Prison and world were two disjoint universes where the residents must have special permission to pass from one to the other. The world was “nibbana”, the ultimate salvation, the end of fire, the tranquility of both dreams and reality. Prison was hell, absolute suffering, filth and boredom…
This last one was the worst. Being forced to stay in a place where you are not needed! “People need to be needed.” his teacher used to say. The less you are needed, the more you feel worthless, the more you lose your point in your life… But he was never needed here. Then what bugs you day and night is a big vacuum of nothingness. Regretting the past and dreaming about a non-existent future. In fact he knew his future! It was death, waiting for him with no escape from it. But still he wanted to cling to life like an ant holding onto a piece of leaf to survive in the water. He was holding onto life with just a thread of cotton, and he felt obliged to hold it until it breaks off, letting him fall on his face to cover the shame of his grotesque memories.
He was the only son of an influential man in the village. Being an only son of a rich and powerful man did not give him many choices in the rural life of peasants. He remembered that people used to call him by his father’s name more often than they used his own name. It was obvious that he would be a spoiled boy, a person with no responsibilities but a lot of atrocities… Then the unavoidable happened! He started alcohol even before finishing high school. Then drugs, being a gang member, beating other school boys, molesting girls, troubling teachers. The entire village hated him but nobody dared to complain. Father was protecting him. Once he raped a girl in the village but it was all kept hidden just because his father paid a few thousands baht to the parents of the girl in compensation. Parents did not dare to ask his father that Somsak must marry with their daughter as it happens in the village. His sins were ignored as till they accumulated into a big pile of hatred among the villagers.
Then one day, he passed the line which he should not even have touched. With the help of two friends, he kidnapped a school girl from a street and raped her in a remote sugar cane field where three meter high sugar canes were not only the silent audiences of the crime but also the protectors of criminals. This time the girl gave a great fight to save herself so they needed to beat her brutally before Somsak could finally penetrate her body like a thief sneaking inside a house after spraying sleeping gas. She was like a dead dog under Somsak’s body, not moving, not making any noise. Once Somsak realized that what he had done could not be undone by his father he killed the girl with a large rock he found in the field. By the time he finished the murder and started to worry about the corpse his friends had already left him alone. He fled from his village and lived a fugitive’s life for two years. In these two years, he committed more crimes. He stole money from the shops, killed a bank guard, sold drugs in nightclubs and raped a few more girls just because they rejected his love. It took quite a long time for the police to find him and convict him of the murder. When he was caught, it was all about a drug deal. But the more the police investigated, the more they found about him. He confessed that he committed many other crimes, by himself, including the rape and murder of the little girl two years ago.
The capture and the following confessions shook the entire country and divided people into two groups: those who wanted him to be executed in the same way and those who wanted him to be executed in a worse way. Nobody knew what was worse than being raped and then having your head smashed to a mess of hair and blood but people wanted revenge and revenge has never been rational. If an innocent’s blood has been spilled, then that blood should teach something to society so that similar brutalities won’t happen again. The entire country was in shock and the justice system was not immune to this wave of screams. The judge considered his previous crimes, his drug dealing cases, other rape attempts and at the end his two murders. Finally, the decision was clear. He did not move when he heard the judge’s verdict, did not open his mouth and did not complain. Shocking everyone from his family, he stood as a man who regrets what he has done and he knows that judge’s decision was right. First time in his life, he felt helpless and feeble like a cockroach waiting for the hard end of the broom hitting his head. At the moment he learnt that his future would not exist, he started to think about death and what is beyond it.
He wanted to wear a clown mask on the day of his execution like the revolutionary hero whose stories made his childhood worth remembering. A mask which can hide his possible tears, a mask with a large smiling face, white and red paint around the mouth, a mask looking at the gray surface of the ceiling of the execution room as if that was the happiest moment of his life, such a mask would be nice for saving his karma forever. When the bullets carved in his flesh and stopped his heart in a few seconds, he would be laughing at the people on the earth, like one last Buddhist gesture, a celebration of the end of suffering, a wedding day perhaps, from a man who never cared about Dharma all over his life. He was sure that no one will go out for demonstrations with clown masks after his death like the legendary hero he admired so much. His death will be quiet, like an ant died under a child’s point finger. He will be forgotten soon by anyone he has encountered in his life. But now, there was a hope, a piece of wooden platform at the top of the giant waves, a piece of cotton thread which dangles from nowhere in the middle of the air. He wanted to hold it even though he knew the land to step on did not exist for him any more.
This thread would be new to him, something he never had in his life before, like a girlfriend maybe! A lover he had dreamed of in his lonely life. Even when he hugged many girls in his arms, he never felt any urge to love them. He hugged them because they could not escape from him. It was the fear of attachment keeping him away from love and it was the invincible lure of woman’s body keeping him on the shore. He was always there; on the beach where with one step further you would get wet and clean yourself off your sins. But he never had the courage, or the will to let his body get washed with the cold water of the ocean. He was mostly scared of not being able to get out of the water! What if the water was deeper than he thought? What if he would never be able to get back and dry himself? And the worst, what if he finds happiness in the warmness of the water like a child who loves to keep his legs under the blanket in a cold winter morning?
He looked at the dirty wall in front of him. The scars from cigarette ashes, a lifeless bug killed by a dirt-stained thumb, the moving shadow of the noisy fan which works almost twenty-four hours a day were the things that could still be seen in the dim light coming from the corridor. The cell was full of people, sleeping, snoring, fighting, playing, laughing, cursing and even shitting. There was no toilet inside but only a bucket. During the night, they were supposed to shit in inside that bucket. The smell of human defecate was unbearable at the beginning. Now he barely notices it. In the day time, they were allowed to go to the bathroom outside the cell. There were no beds inside. Everyone had a mat and slept on it. No pillows, no blankets, no sink to wash your hands in… He turned his body with a swift move and started to stare on the iron bars. The guard was a few meters away from the bars and he was not allowed to speak with inmates after midnight. He wanted to stand and look at the corridor where all his hope was born in the first place.
It all started with a half page of the newspaper he found in the corridor. He thought one of the guards wrapped his beer with this paper so that nobody could see what he was drinking. The guards were the same as the prisoners. They were also bored to death and mostly they spent their precious time with the inmates, chatting and laughing with them. Inmates and guards shared a common hope of getting out of the prison and never returning. Sometimes it was harder for a guard to get back to work after a cheerful night spent with his wife and children but that is their job and that is the way they could feed the mouths of the kids.
When he got the page of newspaper, he first tried to smooth the creased surface so that he would be able to read it easily or at least see the pictures clearly. What he wanted was is to read a few things about the world, to know what was going on and to make sure that he would not die in a world where people are happier than he was. This feeling had grown slowly in him after he started to act like a criminal. If he was unhappy and he did not deserve a decent life, then nobody should! That was the key to his crimes, his rapes and murders, his bloody hands on the little girl.
The half page was not giving him any hope of amnesty from the king or the queen, which many prisoners look for. It was just classified ads of lonely girls asking for someone to love them or care for them. Then he thought of this: What if he wrote a letter to one of the girls, told her some lies about his past and asked her to come to visit him in the prison. A lovely girl’s hands would be definitely much better than the rough and dirty hands of the ladyboys in the prison. How many years had passed since he had touched a woman’s skin? He tried to remember his last lovemaking but the only thing that came to his mind was the purple florescent light in a hotel room. There was only the light, and under the light, he was lying on the bed naked! It seemed as if nobody else was in the room, as if he had made love by himself. The girl he had taken from a nearby bar lay on the floor, unseen; face down and with her green bra on her back.
He tried to force himself to sleep but the more he tried the more it became difficult. Especially in the last few days, he was haunted by the dream which always ends at the same point: He runs in the empty streets of
The dream ends here but he himself knows that reality will not end at the same point. It will go further and what cannot be seen in the dream will take his breath away from him. But now he has hope. She is coming to visit him tomorrow. She is coming to see him and hold his hands. That is what she wrote in her last letter. They exchanged pictures, they exchanged jokes, and they exchanged lies which make up life for each. The girl is from an Isan village, already served two years in prison because she mistreated the baby she was supposed to take care. But she never mentioned her prison term in her letters. She was one of the lonely girls in millions and why to bother to tell the truth, to a man who stole money from a pat-thai seller just because his mother needed medicine to survive. She believed the story because like her own story, there was no right or wrong! She remembered the parents of the baby she cared. How they tortured her with sharp bamboo sticks when she broke a glass, how they shouted at her when the food was a bit salty or tasteless. Then she was angry but did not know where to go. She was a bomb set to explode soon but not knowing that who will be the victim. That is why she chose the baby, the most innocent one. Whenever she was tortured by the parents, next day baby had bruises on her arms and legs. Soon they realized that she is inflicting all these pains on their precious little one. First they wanted to punish her by themselves by putting her in a dark room, raping her, beating her, leaving her starve to death. But later they realized that this will cause more stress at home, more trouble for themselves. They went to police and filed a complaint.
The rest is known by all media. She was the evil, she was the one who hates babies and likes to see them suffering, instead of making them happy. Judge listened to her story quietly and gave her only two years in prison. The parents also have been fined to pay some big amount of money but of course this has never been mentioned in newspapers. Once the media declared the evil then they cannot make their readers confused.
Somsak turned one more time but this time his hand went to his backpocket where he keeps his hope alive. He took the small picture and turned its surface to the dim light coming from the door. She was not a beautiful girl but there was something special on her face. A piece of curved hair falls down on her forehear like a spider dangling from the ceiling. Her eyes were small and the eye balls in them were even smaller. A bit like an elephant’s eyes he has thought when he saw them the first time. Small and sharp! There was no cheer in these eyes, bare satisfaction or ready to accept what is given. Her face was large and white, even whiter than many other girls he met before in his village. “She must be a muey” he thought and an envy smile appeared in his face. Trying to hide his excitement he looked through the door to see the clock at the end of the corridor. It was almost five. Soon the guards will appear and take them to the garden for morning exercises. Somsak never liked to exercise. His body was no more young, his mind was full of desire for freedom, his days were filled with fake hope for touching the hand of a real girl before his last day arrives.
At the end of the corridor he saw three guards walking towards the cells. On the right side there were rooms where the breakfast is served. Time was too early for the breakfast he thought while standing up in front of the bars to ask one of the guards. But the sound of footsteps and the jingling keys were the only answer he got. There was something extraordinary in the prison this morning. Then he remembered the execution of Noi, the drug dealer woman. When an execution is planned the breakfast is served one hour earlier and no prisoners are allowed to the garden till the execution ends. Thus everyone knows that prison will face a death that morning, one of them will go and not come back. Somsak tried to see what the guards up to but could not see much because of the darkness at the both ends.
He thought about Noi again. Her prolonged death by the bullets hit her left torso but not be able to find her heart was the most scary legend in the entire history of prison. Some prisoners even joked that she had no heart –if she had, she would have distributed yaba to prisoners- or the others said she is an angel. They had a ground for this latter one. Noi is the only prisoner who kissed her executioner on his cheek before she goes to death. She was even laughing before, not crying like many big boys. Legend this, she told her executioner how handsome he was and how she would love to marry him if she wasn’t to be killed in a few minutes. Her legend continued in the dark and smelly cells of the prison: After the first shooting, doctor claimed that she was dead. They took her blood-covered body to morgue to shoot the other two drug traffickers. But before they brought the new guy into the room, one of the guards saw that she tries to stand up in her blood bed which itself looks like a swamp. Her throat was gurgling with the warm taste in her mouth and she was fighting not to drown in her own blood. The guard tried to push her body down and tried to accelerate the blood flow but it did not work. She was still strong and wanted to fight. Then other guards came in. One suggested killing her there, in the morgue, with a hand gun but the chief prison officer said no, using hand gun is against the law. They carried her back to the execution room, loosely tied her to the steel cross, spread the white screen second time. This time no lotus in her palms, no red flag falling to represent the end. Then they shot six more bullets, this time right side of her torso where she carried her heart as if it was her own fault. She died without any more struggle, like a sack of rice falling from high, she fell on the floor.
Somsak was still looking at the corridor to figure out the things will happen soon and warn his friends in the cell. But how possibly could he know that this was the morning the decision for his death came from the chief army general as a summary execution. Normally a prisoner had to wait at least six months after their first appeal but the recent military coup took many rights of the prisoners away from them. The army was thinking that prisons were over-populated and must be cleaned as soon as possible. And executions were a good way to show the people that army is working for the country. It was not easy for an ordinary person to figure out that powerful ones need to do some innocent-looking killings to cover up their illegitimate killings of political minds. No appeal went to higher court, no Human Rights Protectors have been allowed inside the prison. Whenever the army general thinks that one more must be killed, the guards are waken up that morning two hours earlier than their usual time. A signed paper of execution verdict is given to the guards so that they can know who to execute and what time. Army generals might be thinking that this was a better way of dying. If the inmate knows when he will be executed, he will go crazy in the days of waiting. Army’s method was quick and silent! One morning you wake up and learn that today is the day. You have a few hours to react and for most of the prisoners these a few hours pass with hesitation of whether or not they will be able to believe this is going to happen to them. Since they did not think about it before, death comes to them like an accident, crashing a tree, hitting your head to the windscreen and dying instantly.
A few hours later Somsak was outside, in the garden, barefooted and alone. His hands were tied tightly. He was looking at the sky for a possible rain. The clouds were large, blocking the sunlight on his day of wedding but it seemed there will be no tears for this morning. On his right side there was the seven-storey security tower, on his left the yellow-painted walls of the prison. The guards were talking to each other with little voice, trying to hide something from each other, fear perhaps or the hesitation! Everyone knew that execution is not done by one person. The one who pulls the triggers should not feel the entire burden of guilt on his own shoulders so that at least six other guards are involved in the procedure. Two hold the prisoner and tie him, one holds the red flag –the only color in the execution room before the shooting-, one sets the gun to the target, and one just stands at the corner and watches because his responsibility is to write a report after each execution, one physician waits at the other corner to announce death. A collective work of killing is surely makes the executioner feel less guilty and less responsible.
But still, even they take little part in the entire job; they cannot get rid of the heavy ill-feeling of taking someone’s live so they were talking about things which will not remind them their job. Somsak knew what they were talking about. To scatter the black fog of death from their head, they talk about their families, their financial problems or how last night they had great time with some friends in a nearby restaurant which serves rice whisky and fried scorpions. One of them was talking about her daughter’s school expenses; the other one was looking at him, perhaps calculating the money he will receive from the government for the execution. Another one was quietly talking about Noi, the chaos the guard had to deal with during her execution. This will be the first execution after Noi. It must go smooth, it must be done quickly.
Somsak walked across the garden while looking at some of the sparrows on the ground. Their songs were cheerful, happy with the new day. Do they know that this is a prison and people are executed here? Sparrows don’t know about death he thought. Where do dead sparrows go? Why aren’t they around? Shackles on his legs were jingling in each step he takes. He was feeling exhausted somehow, maybe because of sleeplessness, maybe because of his expected guest who will go back home empty-handed in the afternoon. He felt like he needed to go to toilet but he knew that this was a fake feeling, emerging from the anxiety of death, the fear of rolling into a well where there is only darkness and trepidation. He at the end will reach to the finish point of his marathon which seemed to him as a never-ending dream.
Suddenly he found himself in front of the execution room. It looks the same as the one in his dreams, a bit grass at the front, closed white-painted windows, brown steel door, a concrete floor with absolute coolness, a few flowers just beside the Buddha image which seems not belong to the execution room but just brought here for him. There were wheels under the cart which carries the yellow Buddha image and the little vases still included stains of ashes from previous ceremonies. The old monk with his yellow robe was standing just next to the Buddha, holding the chain which is apperantly used for pulling the cart and chanting some words Somsak could not understand. The whole picture was a sort of divine joke for which he did not know how to react. His face was pale, his body was powerless. The guards unlocked his handcuffs, locked his shackles loosely enough to let him walk slowly and asked him to knee down before the Buddha image, lit a few incenses and beg for forgiveness.
He did what he was told. He kneed down and begged for forgiveness for the things he has done. He asked mercy from the people he hurt, the lives he has taken, the girls he raped, the shop owners whose money he has stolen and the lonely girl who will come this afternoon just to learn the lies he wrote. He wanted to cry to show the world that he was really sorry for what he has done but no tears came down from his eyes. He stood up, leaning on his hands pushing the cool earth. The guards helped him to stand and walked him inside where he will have his last breakfast. He entered the house. On the top of the door it was reading “This is the place where suffering ends.” He forced himself to smile but could not make it, remembering his dream and walked into the room where a table with variety of food waiting for him. There was kao-dom-guy with fresh vegetables on a side dish. There were also a dish of pineapple and mango, a bowl of icy desert with red and yellow pieces floating in it. He tried to remember when the last time he ate mango but could not make it. The food in the prison was monotone and persistently tasteless. Now he is being offered food which he has not touched for years but not surprisingly he had no appetite at all. This must be part of the joke he thought, making a miserable man happy just before killing him. He said “He does not want to eat because he does not want the food is wasted”. Then he asked the guards to give the food to one of his friends in the cell. The guards looked at him suspiciously, without knowing that if it is possible to transfer the last meal to someone else.
Rejecting his last food, Somsak asked for a pen to write his last letter. He had extra time now, gained from the meal. They gave him a pen, an empty clean –almost virgin- paper and an envelope to close his letter by himself. When a prisoner writes a letter while he is in his cell the guards always take the letter to the prison director for possible censors. However, it was not the same for the last letter of a prisoner. No one dared to read the last letter of a man who will be executed soon. No one wanted to because no matter how bad the prisoner was; he too deserved to say his last words to the people who cared about. To make sure that system works perfectly, they also put melted wax on the table for him to seal the envelope.
Somsak sat on the chair and wrote slowly; trying to remember the words he did not use for long time or sometimes even asking the guards how to spell the certain words. He was doing same thing in the cell while writing to the girl. Apichart was his friend who encouraged him to write more passionate letters, to use stronger rhyming words and to create fictional stories about himself. He filled the entire page, signed after the last line and took the photo from his back pocket. Putting the photo inside the folded paper, he inserted them into the envelope, then sealed the envelope. Behind the envelope, he wrote “To Apichart, my true friend”.
When he gave the sign to the guards that he is done, two big men came on both sides of him. He asked one of the guards that if they can give the letter to his friend before today’s lunch. The guard assured him with a brief gesture and disorientation. He knew that Somsak had a girl friend outside the prison walls but the letter wasn’t for her or not even for Somsak’s sick father who was also living his last months in the village. The last letter which is supposed to be sent to outside as the last scream of a vanishing existence was not meant to be a scream in Somsak’s case. It was probably a goodbye letter to a friend he met in the prison.
Big guards helped him to stand and walk towards the door where there was a machine gun on one side and a tall cross with blood stains on it. When he entered to the room, the guards stopped him and took his finger prints, signed the document which makes sure that they are taking right man to the execution room. They have to repeat same thing after the execution too. Holding a dead man’s lifeless finger and taking the finger print is not a job anyone would like to do but somehow guards too were used to do their job as an obligation, as a mechanical work.
After the fingerprints, Somsak asked for his clown mask –instead of being blindfolded- which was written in his last wish long time ago. He did not believe that the guards will bother to find a clown mask for him but it was there, on the little desk behind the machine gun. A face smiling widely, looking at the world nonchalantly was waiting to be worn. One of the guards took the mask and put it on Somsak’s face. The holes for the eyes were closed so at the end it wasn’t so different from being blindfolded. Then the guard at the corner read the execution verdict. Covered by the clown mask, nobody knew how he reacted to the long and heavy sentences pouring on his head like a bowl of hot water. He stood silently; smiling to every direction his head moved.
Then the time came. Guards walked him to the iron cross where rust and blood fight with each other’ to dominate the surface of the iron bars. Being blindfolded by the mask, with the help of two guards, Somsak walked slowly and thoroughly to the other end of the room. His arms were tied to the cross, a single lotus was put between his palms as a sign of pertinence in Buddhism, his torso was tightly pulled with the tension in his arms so that he will not be able to move his body during the shooting. His back was looking at the gun, his face has turned to the colorless wall. The guards walked back to take their positions beside the machine gun. Another two guards stretched a white sheet in front of the cross. On left side of the sheet there was a point which unmistakingly indicating Somsak’s heart.
The gun –or as the guards called it “Mighty HK MP5”- was an old submachine gun. It looked like a sewing machine at first sight with its four legs opening larger to the floor to decrease the vibration. The old guard who was responsible from setting the gun, aiming to the right point and charging the cartridge with fifteen bullets took his position and without saying a word, he did his job and left the room. Then the prison’s main executioner came into the room. “Angel of Death” was his nickname but he never liked it. A man of a few words, never talk more than what he has to say, never mentions his job to the people who do not need to know.
He just finished his last cigarette and came into the room. Everything was ready for him and his expressionless face was showing that he too was ready. He saluted other guards and a few government officials who were watching behind the barred windows. The guard with the red flag was standing half a meter beside the gun and he was holding the red flag straight, parallel to the ground. There was silence in the room and it was deadly for Somsak. He was waiting for the end but he did not know what was really happening behind him. Just stood there, tied to the cross, without moving, without breathing, like a primary school kid, standing in front of his class, waiting his punishment to end.
A few seconds after the silence dominated the room like a dirty party house following a flamboyant wedding ceremony, the arm holding the red flag dropped. The executioner pulled the trigger once and shot seven bullets. The smell of gunpowder was sharp and hard to miss. He looked at the other guards to get approval for the prisoner’s condition. The doctor walked swiftly to Somsak’s body, checked his pulse. He confirmed that he was dead. Executioner saluted the guards and the spectators again, then left the room for another cigarette.
Somsak’s body was carried outside the execution room with a cart which was similar to the one which brought Buddha image in the morning. The monk who was ready during the execution helped the guards to carry the dead body of Somsak. When one of the guards attempted to remove the mask from Somsak’s face, monk said “No, it was part of his wish that he will be cremated with the mask on his face.” The clouds were still there but there was no sign of the rain in the air. It was a sunless, desperate day for everyone. His body was taken to a nearby temple for cremation. No one from his family came to the last ceremony. He was burned with his clown mask on his face, with a large smile to the world as if this was the happiest moment in his life or as if there is nothing to worry about behind his last moment.
In the afternoon of the same day, a young girl appeared at the gate of the prison. She asked for Somsak. The guard at the entrance, not knowing about Somsak’s destiny, told her to wait at the cafeteria where the prisoners can meet with visitors. A few minutes later a tall, handsome prisoner appeared at the entrance. She looked at the picture then looked at the man, smiled and said “Are you Somsak? Woww! You look much better than how you look in this picture”. Apichat took the photo from his own pocket, looked at it again as if examining someone else’s wallet and said “You too! People look different in pictures because cameras are not capable of taking the picture of our souls”. The girl smiled again to his words which were similar to the witty sentences in his letters and put the spicy somtam bowl on the table together with kao-niyo and guy-yung. The afternoon light was strong, the cafeteria was quiet and her heart was beating hard like a little bird chirping in her bosom. They ate together; talked about the letters they wrote to each other. Both laughed and enjoyed the meal she brought. Then they watched the rain from the window while her hand was holding Apichat’s hands. A few minutes after the rain started, one of the prison guards standing at the corner looked at his watch and shouted “Nai Somsak, visitor’s hour ended”.
22 MARCH 2008 - HCMC
