Maya - Illusion

”Yes, maybe you are right. We’ll see what happens.”

“Well, when Soom goes back, Joy’s funeral will not yet be over, so that is another reason to put it off for a while. Look, I’m not trying to stop you going... I know that it is going to happen one day, but I want you to get the maximum effect from your visits. That is all. Think about it.”

There was no longer a bristle of gossip among the twenty or so women gathered at the shop, they had become hushed. Talking in whispers out of respect for the double fatality. Two women, one in her twenties and one just turned fifty dead, killed not a hundred metres from the safety of their homes by a truck that shouldn’t have been there, that had never travelled that route before. Two husbands and three children left behind and one baby dead with its mother, still unborn.

People talked in hushed voices about who or what had sent the petrol tanker to kill these women and wreck the peace of their families for months, years and decades to come. People talked of never going down the lane at night again lest they should come across the ghosts of Joy and Ma walking back and fore along that isolated lane doomed forever to keep trying to get home to their children.

When they left Nong’s at seven o’clock it was already beginning to get dark. Lek clung to Craig’s arm, petrified that she would meet Joy looking for someone to take care of her family in her absence. When they entered their garden, they could see the family gathering next door.

One group of men were putting out rows of chairs, erecting awnings and blocking the lane to cars, while another group were setting up the P.A. that would relay the monks’ ceremony to those sitting outside and play the funeral music.

They had already brought Joy back from the hospital and half a dozen older women were preparing her body to lie in the refrigerated casket, which would be its final resting place for its last seven days on Earth.

“I want to go to Bangkok now, Craig. I am scared. What can I say to Joy, if I see her with her head smashed in and she asks me to help take care of her family?”

“She never hurt you when she was alive, did she? So why do you think she is going to try now?

“If you meet her, just say ‘Hello’ and if she asks you to take care of her family, tell you can’t because you’re going on holiday to Bangkok soon. I’m sure she’ll understand. She’s not stupid and has family nearby anyway. Advise her to ask them. Tell her I’m a handful.”

“You are never serious. This is serious...”

“Hold on a minute. OK, I like to joke, I accept that, but I am being serous about Joy. If she asks you, just tell her that you are too busy to do a good job. Tell her to ask someone else. What’s wrong with that? That is what you would have said if she had asked you yesterday when she was alive, so why not say it now? Nothing has changed except she hasn’t got a body any more.”

“Oh, don’t say that. Oh, my Buddha. I won’t sleep for a week until she’s gone. I know it. Oh, my Buddha...”

“Look at it this way. With all the worry, sleepless nights and helping out next door, you will probably loose those extra pounds you have been putting on, won’t you?”

“Oh, thank you very much. I’m scared and depressed and you call me fat!”

“Joke, my dear. Just a joke.”

She tried to smile.

“But, it might work. Every cloud has a silver lining, so they say,” he added as he nipped into his office.

Lek was truly worried about Joy’s ghost, or ‘Pi’ in Thai. She had been to hundreds of funerals before but never because of such a violent, unexpected death involving a close neighbour and friend. She went next door to pay her final respects before the monks arrived at about seven thirty.

After the four monks had performed their duties for the first day, which took about thirty minutes, a rushed meal was passed around those who remained behind - about fifty people. It was a very quiet affair compared to average funerals – the whole village was in deep shock. Nobody liked to voice their thoughts about the evil spirit that had caused the petrol tanker to be in the lane and to kill, on its one and only rerouting down there, two women who had made that journey hundreds of times safely before.

Attendees at the funeral wanted to get home early in case there was an evil spirit lurking in the shadows.

When Lek went home at nine o’clock, she had a friend walk her up the drive to her front door even though it was only fifteen yards, the lights were on and Craig was working in his office. He had never seen her that affected by a death – not even that of one of her best friend, Goong, six years before. Goong had died at an even younger age than Joy, but she had been ill for a while, accepted her Fate – even welcomed it - and had had time to sort out her affairs.

She hovered about in Craig’s office, talking incessantly about one thing and another, but mostly about things that she would not normally concern him with. Then it dawned on Craig that Lek was frightened to go to bed alone in the dark. Actually, it was much worse that that, she was even too frightened to shower alone, so Craig did the right thing: he shut his computer down and suggested an early night. Lek leaped at the chance and held on to him tightly all night.

Craig got to sleep with difficulty, as had been the case since he was an infant, but Lek didn’t remember sleeping at all, which was most unlike her. She was waiting for her friend and neighbour to come walking through the wall looking as if she had been dragged through a hedge backwards.

∞

Whatever state of consciousness they were both in, they were immediately aware when the lorry-load of huge speakers roared into life at five a.m. the next day The speakers were less than twenty yards away, but their purpose was to call any women in the whole village who wanted to help prepare food for the evening’s ceremony. This was a cathartic event for people who were grieving. Instead of sitting at home alone while the men were in the fields working, they could sit together, chop, peel and prepare vegetables and meat and generally keep each other company.

Lek jumped out of bed and prepared to join in. There was no way Craig could sleep again, so he just started work. He understood that this had to be done and it didn’t bother him in the slightest. Lek was showered, dressed and out of the house in fifteen minutes, which Craig did resent a little, wanting to ask whether she had seen Joy’s Pi in the night.

Later he was glad that he hadn’t had the opportunity, deciding that it would probably have caused a problem. Sometimes, he just didn’t know when it was inappropriate to make a joke.

The music was turned down a lot when they had most of the helpers that they were expecting, about thirty minutes later, which made it feel less like having his head in a kettle drum at a Jamaican beach party. Craig just got on with the daily routine of checking and answering his email and writing relevant articles for his web sites, but when he got up to put the hot water on to make his coffee, he remembered what Lek had said the evening before about writing a book on or set in Thailand.

He knew that Lek had no idea of his writing skills- how could she? She had never read any of his work because she couldn’t read English and none of her friends could have told her either. It was an intriguing idea and one that he may never have come up with on his own. At least, he hadn’t so far in his fifty-eight years. He took his coffee back to his desk and got back into his routine.

Another routine was established too for the duration of the funeral ceremony of seven days. Lek brought him some lunch from the funeral at about two o’clock and met him in Nong’s at five. He would then have to escort her to the house next door for fear of Joy’s Pi, he would go back to work and she would stay there until about nine, when someone would walk her home. Craig could follow all the events from his office and sometimes he went to sit on the patio to concentrate on the monks chanting at about seven thirty.

On the fifth day, Joy’s body was cremated at the usual time of three o’clock. Her friend had been cremated the day before. Craig could hear gunfire and fireworks coming from the Wat and the final acts of the ceremony were completed on the seventh day of her death.

Soom was back for the actual cremation which pleased her mother and Joy’s family. Death is taken very seriously in a Thai village despite the fact that they don’t fear it as Buddhists. Lek saw it as part of Soom’s training, that she should learn and observe the traditions that made sense to her and to Lek. Anything that could improve one’s Karma made ultimate sense. She wanted her daughter to have the best chance in life by using every tool at her disposal: physical, metaphysical and spiritual.

Normally, Lek would have played cards every night after a funeral, but she did not at this one. Whether that was because she was scared of ghosts and wanted to be home or whether she was trying to be nice, Craig never knew. In fact it was for both reasons in equal measure. She was not afraid of death, but she had been shocked by how sudden it could come and she wanted to be around to see her grandchildren.

The death of those two women had had a profound effect on her.

And so had the way Craig had talked about ghosts

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