A fourth excerpt from The Season of Breath. In chapter 9, Chu signs Michael up for an excursion to Ang Thong National Park, a cluster of some forty islands off Samui. There are kayaks, cliffs, and a very steep trail.
Then the islands appeared. Dozens of them. Sugarloaves of gray limestone, bristling with spikes, covered in jungle right to the top, rising out of the water like the teeth of a giant jaw. Cliffs hollowed out at their base by the sea, caves, tiny white-sand beaches wedged between two rocks. The whole boat pulled out its phones at once.
They gave us kayaks. Yellow plastic two-seaters, with orange life jackets that smelled of the sea and other people’s sunscreen. Chu took the front, I took the back. She said she would steer and I would paddle. I said that was exactly like life. She said yes.
I paddled along the foot of the cliffs, in jade-colored water so calm you could see the bottom. Slowly, not too much, stopping often. Above us the rock rose sheer, gray and streaked, with trees clinging in the cracks like climbers who had given up on getting back down. Birds wheeled up high. It was hot, and the shade of the cliffs was cool. Chu turned around to take a selfie, with me behind her, paddle in hand, wearing the focused look of a man who doesn’t know where he’s going but is going there in earnest.
It was there, between two strokes of the paddle, at the foot of a cliff in Ang Thong, that I thought I was happy. Not pleased. Not fine. Happy. It’s not a word I use often. It came to me on its own, like a fish leaping out of the water, and I didn’t chase it away.
AFTER THE kayaking, the boat dropped us off on the island of Mae Ko. A little white-sand beach in the shade of the trees, speedboats lined up in the green water, and at the back, against the cliff, a carved wooden sign with the Thai flag and a yellow flag on either side: Ta Le Nai Lagoon. The inner lake.
The guide explained it to us in English, then in Thai, then with his hands: in the middle of the island, hidden behind the mountain, there is a lake. A saltwater lake, emerald green, enclosed in a ring of cliffs, connected to the sea by underground tunnels that nobody can see. The sea gets into the island from below, in secret, and makes a lake there. To see it, you have to climb to the viewpoint.
I went as far as the start of the trail. There was a rope strung between posts, steps cut into the rock, and two signs, one above the other. On the first, in Thai and English, you could read: The path is steep and has sharp rocks. Please take care every step. On the second: Do not feed the animals, in four languages, including Russian and Chinese, because apparently the monkeys can’t tell the difference.
I read the first sign three times. Take care every step. Somebody, somewhere in the Department of National Parks, had written my life on a wooden sign and planted it in the middle of the jungle, right in front of me. I found that very thoughtful.
I put my foot on the first step, water bottle in hand, Crocs on my feet, shirtless, in palm-tree shorts, and turned to Chu so she could take the picture. The explorer’s pose at the start of the expedition. The kind of photo you take before setting off to conquer Everest.
Then I took my foot off the step.
I didn’t go up. Not this time. It wasn’t even a defeat. I knew. I didn’t need to try. You learn. My body and I have come to agree on certain things, like two old business partners who no longer fight over the same old stories.
Chu looked at me.
“Do you want me to go up? For you?”
“No,” I said. “Stay with me.”
We went back down to the beach. The others climbed, single file, in clusters, puffing. We sat at the water’s edge, on the sand, where the sea wets the rocks. The water was so clear it had no color, only reflections. The sun drew nets of light in it that trembled over the pebbles on the bottom.
Chu put her hand in the water, flat, fingers spread, with her painted nails and her blue bracelet. The light played on her skin through the water, in dozens of tiny moving stars. She looked at it for a long time, her hand, without saying anything, as if she had never seen it before. Then she took a photo.
“Why are you photographing your hand?”
“So I remember.”
“Remember what?”
She didn’t answer right away. She left her hand in the water a moment longer.
“That it was here. That I was here. With you.”
I put my hand in the water next to hers. The koi on my arm caught the light, and for a moment, beneath the surface, it looked as if it were really swimming.
When the others came back down from the viewpoint, red-faced, out of breath, delighted, they showed us their photos of the lagoon. An emerald-green lake at the bottom of a ring of cliffs. It was magnificent. I looked at it on a phone screen, and I didn’t regret a thing. I too had seen a place where the sea comes in secret. It was shaped like a hand.
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This excerpt comes from chapter 9, “Ang Thong,” of The Season of Breath, the true story of a man from Liège who goes to live a season in Thailand with an illness no one can see. The book is available in English.
