brothers reached the other side of the bridge. Then he looked down at
his chest. A sweat bee hovered over the glands in his opened shirt like
an oil worker ciphering the ground. He shoved the industrial exploiter
away. He felt awe in how complex it all was: one thing feeding on
another. He wondered if, after the immune system conquered a virus, it
consumed it. He wondered how much of his parents' bodies would have
been consumed by bacteria in decomposition if they had not been
cremated. He wondered if things were so clearly defined. Maybe a part
of his parents was alive in ways that could be sensed but never
understood or explained.
It was no wonder, as they sat there drinking beer in a pub on the
other side of the canal (remarkably able to afford drinking beer at
all) that Kazem was happy: after all, the uncle's gate had opened up to
him when he talked into a speaker. It was also not so strange that his
mood of elation had for a short while, when viewing the scorpion lady,
gone awry. Seeing the son of the Ayutthaya landlord who had rented his
family that small space for their restaurant was depressing. There he
was in his fine clothes with his wife and two small children. Kazem
had thought to himself that as a rich man poverty had not ruined his
inclinations-this man, not much older than himself, copulated in the
right hole.
Suthep, sandwiched between his two brothers, drank voraciously
without any strong inclination to run away. He preferred being
elsewhere but elsewhere without money was nowhere. He preferred
playing snookers and trying to woo a young girl to be somewhat
interested in him while playing against his buddies. Here, however, he
had no friends. The city was entirely new and he didn't know anyone.
Once, in Ayutthaya, he had gone with a herd of those wolves to capture
a park whore. He and his buddies took her to a cheap guesthouse where
foreigners often went and had their spasms within her. It had been his