Chu’s House in Isan: One Family, One Village

Nong Theng isn’t on the maps the narrator is used to reading. You get there by a straight road between flooded rice paddies, then down a street of dirt and concrete where the chickens cross whenever they feel like it. In chapter 5 of The Season of Breath, Mr Schaka finally steps through the gray wall behind which stands Chu’s house, in Roi Et province.

Chu’s house, a house of two ages

The house has two floors and two ages. Downstairs, concrete painted a pale aqua green, peeling in patches to reveal older greens underneath, like the layers of a cake. Upstairs, dark wood, wide planks worn by the rain, and white windows with arched frames cut like lace. Downstairs, the house of today. Upstairs, the house of before.

Out front there’s even a third house, brand new: the massage parlor of Lalita, Chu’s sister. Apple-green walls, air conditioning, midnight-blue curtains scattered with white stars, and her diploma framed on the wall. It’s the cleanest and proudest room in the house.

Life under the awning

Everything happens out front, under a big corrugated-iron awning: concrete benches, red and green plastic chairs, blue water jugs, a fan turning for nobody and a hammock strung between two posts. A little girl does her homework on a flowery tablecloth. A white-and-pink dog, the size of a small pig, comes to sniff the visitor’s ankles and decides he’s acceptable.

Before going in, you take your shoes off, and the narrator adds his Crocs to the mountain of flip-flops by the door. The book recalls a few simple rules from Isan, and from all of Thailand:

• the head is the highest and most sacred part of the body: you never touch it, not even a child’s;
• the feet are the lowest part: you never point them at a person, at the altar or at an image of the Buddha;
• when sitting on the floor, you tuck your legs to the side, feet pointing backward.

The narrator spends the evening keeping an eye on his feet “like two badly behaved dogs.”

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A family too big to count

Then the family arrives, from everywhere: from the house, from the yard, from next door. The narrator never did find out how many of them there were. There’s Lalita, who looks like Chu with ten more years of sun. Wichan, the brother, in a red shirt, who laughs so hard when he sees him that he has to lean on the doorframe. Nephews, nieces, nephews’ children. In the middle of it all, Chu answers everyone in Isan, laughing, touching arms, shoulders, cheeks.

Wichan declares that the man from Liège is now his brother. He says that to everyone, Chu translates, but this time she thinks he means it. Neither understands a word of what the other is saying, and it doesn’t matter in the slightest.

On a bamboo table, Lalita pounds som tam in a wooden mortar: shredded papaya, garlic, tomatoes, lime, tiny crabs and a handful of chilies. Tok, tok, tok, “the sound of Isan.” When the narrator asks in Thai for it not to be too spicy, the whole terrace bursts out laughing, and Lalita takes out one chili. Just one. The fire makes him cough; everyone thinks it’s the chili. Only Chu doesn’t quite laugh.

Lalita’s hands

After a nap in the hammock, offered the way you’d offer the best room in a hotel, Lalita is waiting for him on the threshold of her parlor. She has decreed that he walks like an old man, and that it’s his back. She kneads his shoulders with all her weight. Then her hands reach his ribs, and stop. They listen. Nobody in the village knows anything about his illness, but her hands have understood. Without a word, she lightens her touch there and goes back at his shoulders with renewed vigor. When he comes out, he walks a little less like an old man.

The parents’ floor

Chu then shows him around the house. On the ground floor, Bombay’s delivery scooter is parked indoors, like a horse in its stable. At the foot of the stairs, under a red plastic bag, two gilt frames are waiting: her father, and her mother, who had exactly her chin. She tucks them under her arm and climbs the thirteen wooden steps.

Upstairs, everything is wood, golden light and cobwebs. Nobody really lives there; the floor belongs to the past. Chu shows where she slept with her sister, where her brother and parents slept, then sets the portraits down at the exact spot where her childhood bed stood. That evening, during dinner under the neon light, she quietly gets up with sticks of incense and climbs the stairs without stopping. Nobody comments. Here, everyone knows what you go upstairs to do with incense.