The Disallowed

“I can walk home and I can walk back… What time do you propose to eat?”

“Seven to seven-thirty, as usual and you will be most welcome.”

“OK, I’ll be off now then, see you at seven-ish. Bye for now.”

“Bye, Aunt Da, and thank you again for al your help.”

When Da had left, Wan felt strange to be alone with her husband. It was the first time since Heng had become ‘il ’, as Den had taken the goats down to the stream and Din was tending the family vegetable plot. Wan needed to get word to Den that he had to slaughter and butcher one of the kid goats which were running with their mothers in the flock, but she dared not leave Heng alone. Din was the only one who could go, so she had to hope that Din would come back for some lunch, but she usually did, so Wan was pretty confident that Heng would get his chop.

She tried talking to him and, since no-one was around to overhear them, she used endearments.

“Darling Heng, are you awake, my dear? We al … I have been so worried about you… please answer if you can hear me.”

“Of course I can hear you when I’m awake, but I have dozed from time to time, Mud,” he said in his new, low, rumbling voice. “and I suppose I missed a few things then. In general, I’m feeling a lot better, if a little strange. I am looking forward to dinner though.

“What time is it now?”

“Eleven forty-five, we’l have a spot of lunch in a while, do you want any?”

“What is it?”

“Oh, a salad…”

“Bah, rabbits’ food!”

“But, but you used to so enjoy a green salad, Heng…”

“Did I? I can’t imagine that and I don’t remember liking it.”

“How about an omelette?”

“Yes, that sounds better. Could you mix in some milkshake?”

“Yes, of course, dear, I don’t see why not, I have some here that I prepared for your supper later.

“We’l just give Din another thirty minutes to see if she’s coming back.

I need her to take a message to Den to kil one of the kids for you.”

After lunch, Din took a few knives, a bag for the meat and a flask for the blood to her brother, so that he could carry out his grizzly duty, then Din went back to the vegetable patch.

“You seemed to enjoy that omelette, Heng, did you?”

“Yes, it was very wholesome, plenty of meat, plenty of protein.”

Wan hovered around Heng al afternoon, chopping vegetables and making naam pik chil i sauce, but Heng didn’t say another word. He was apparently taking a siesta or possibly a recuperative afternoon nap after his first solid meal for a couple of days.

Din was the first back in the late afternoon with a basketful of vegetables and herbs for the next twenty-four hours. Den arrived a little later and handed his mother a bag of neatly butchered meat and a flask of blood from the dead goat.

“I’ll just go and salt this skin, Mum, al right? I’ve already scraped it like Dad showed me. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“No need to hurry, we’ve plenty of time. You make sure you have a shower after butchering that goat before you come to the table.”

“Yes, Mum…”

“Mmm, milkshake, I smell lovely milkshake…” Heng was stirring and mumbling.

“Yes, Heng, milkshake… Mud is making milkshake for you for later,

but first we wil have supper when your aunty gets here.

Wan whispered to Din, “I do believe that he can smell the goat’s blood or the meat. Look at his nose twitching like a witch’s. Who would have believed a week ago that we would be living like this?”

Wan put the surplus meat in the freezer then took Heng’s chop far enough away that the smell of blood wouldn’t bother him and got on with her chores. Heng went back to sleep like a clockwork toy that had wound down.

At six forty-five, Wan took the chopped vegetables from the water to drain, put the open fire in a bucket that they cooked on on an old concrete block on the table and added a few more lumps of charcoal.

Tonight they would be having the children’s favourite – barbecued pork.

The apparatus for barbecuing was simple but effective. It was a metal

‘dish’ resembling an old-fashioned orange juicer. The trough was fil ed with water for boiling the vegetables and rice-spaghetti and the pinnacle was for barbecuing the meat. In effect, everybody cooked their own meal and topped up the trough for everyone else, so that it was stil a communal meal.

When Da arrived, suitably not early, at seven ten, Wan sent Din to fetch the meat from the fridge under the house. When she was within ten yards of the table, Heng ‘came alive’ again, his nose twitching.

“Mmm, milkshake!”

“No, Heng, milkshake later, now you get kid chop.”

“Mmm, kid chop, lovely, rare…”

Da was fascinated and was taking mental notes.

When Wan put the meat on the barbecue, Heng took off his glasses to get a better look in the rapidly fading light. His eyes shone like fiery red beacons making the children shudder with fear and incomprehension.

Everybody there would have said that the boiling vegetables and cooking meat smelled wonderful, but it was Heng who spoke first.

“Kid smells lovely now! Don’t burn the blood. Heng wants the meat rare… no vegetables, smell horrible.”

“Yes, Heng, I know, rare, but not raw. This is stil raw, you must give it a few more minutes.”

“No, Mud, I wil eat like this. It smells so good now, but every minute the smell gets less. I want mine now.”

“Al right, Heng, have it your own way. Do you want some vegetables with your chops or some spaghetti?”

“No, only meat, want rabbit, not rabbit food.”

Wan took the two chops from the fire, put one on a plate for Heng and handed it to him.

“There you are, Paw, but it stil looks awful y bloody to me. You always used to have your meat well-done like the rest of us.”

Heng took the plate, put it to his nose and sniffed it, his nose twitching like a rabbit’s. Then he put the plate in his lap, took the smal chop in both hands and raised it to his nose again.

“Lovely,” he said, “a little over done, but very nice.”

Heng didn’t notice that everyone was scrutinising his every move as he bit off a miniscule piece of meat and chewed it with his front teeth.

Wan at least had expected him to take out the whole circle of meat in one go. Then he held the chop in one hand and picked tiny pieces of meat off it with the other. When he had exposed a bit of the bloody interior, he put it to his lips and sucked.

His family looked at each other in utter amazement, as his red and pink eyes watched the meat like a hawk.

“Is there a problem?” he asked with a quick sidewise tilt of the head towards his wife.

“No, Heng, no problem. It is just so nice to see you eating solid food again, that’s al . We are just happy for you, aren’t we, everybody?”

“Yes,” they al agreed at once, but Da had her misgivings, although she was not prepared to share them at that precise moment.

“Good! That’s al right then,” said Heng and went back to picking at his food with obvious relish.

It took Heng a ful thirty minutes to eat half-a-dozen square inches of meat and then he started on the bone, which he picked clean and then sucked dry. The others found it almost impossible to concentrate on their own food, the consequences of which were that the trough boiled dry and the meat burned several times, so that their meal was mostly ruined, although they ate it anyway, not being ones to waste food.

When he had finished the first chop, Heng wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then licked and sucked that clean. An onlooker might have guessed that Heng had just been released after years in solitary confinement in a concentration camp on a ration of bread and water.

None of them had ever seen anyone so obviously enjoy their food so much.

“Do you want the other one now, Paw,” asked Din.

Heng took hold of the sheet that was around his shoulders and flapped it in an attempt to make himself more comfortable and Den rescued the plate from his lap before it fell off.

“We wait for this to go down first,” said Heng, “and then eat some more. Very nice food. Heng like very much.”

Den looked at his mother and she knew what he meant. Heng was

speaking pigeon-Thai and nobody had heard him that bad before, even though his Thai had never been perfect because he had had Chinese parents.

Just as people were starting to settle into their own food and Heng had become stil again, there came a muffled squelch from his direction.

Everyone knew what had happened, but being polite, they al pretended that they hadn’t heard it. Then there was another one and an awful smell.

Only Wan and Da dared look at Heng who wore a broad smile beneath his dark glasses.

Den began to titter. Quietly at first, but he couldn’t hold it in and soon Din became infected by the laughter.

“Quiet, children! Your father can’t help it. He’s il ,” said Wan. “The solid food must have gone straight through him.”

However, Den and Din couldn’t control themselves. Heng just sat there with a contented grin on his face. A few minutes later, when the smell had not diminished, Wan spoke to Den:

“Carry your father to the toilet, wil you, Den, so he can clean himself up? If there is any problem, just shout and I’ll come to help him.

“Heng, put your underpants in the laundry basket, I’ll sort them out tomorrow.”

When they had left, Wan said:

“Well, my! Oh my, what do you make of that, Aunty Da?”

“Strange, isn’t it? But Heng’s behaviour reminds me of that of a bird.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the way he was sitting there as if perched and the way he ate and then crapped after eating… Birds do that

– I suppose many animals do too, but you watch the chickens in your yard. I can’t get it out of my mind that he was roosting there in his sheet and glasses after having eaten the chop.”

“So, you don’t think that he’s incontinent then? I’m a bit worried about our bed… we only bought a new mattress a few weeks ago… it would be a shame, wouldn’t it? Do you think it would be al right to put him in the barn until we’re sure?”

“No, don’t worry! Not even birds crap in their own nest, although you may want to put him in nappies until we better understand what is going on… Or incontinence pants if it persists, but you’ll have to go into town to get some of them.”

When Heng returned with Den, he looked a little crest-fal en, a little embarrassed even.

“Are you al right, Heng?” asked his wife.

“Yes, accident. Don’t worry. No problem. No more today. Go to bed now.”

“Yes, good idea. Aunty Da, what about his milkshake?”

“I really think he ought to have some before retiring. Don’t worry about your new bed, he didn’t soil that before, so I don’t think that he wil tonight either, but I wouldn’t want him getting up in the middle of the night looking for something to eat, if I lived in a house with him.”

“No, you’re probably right. Den, just sit your father on the edge of the table a minute. Din, get a glass of that milkshake wil you, please?”

When he had downed that and there were no suspicious noises or smells, Wan told the children to take their father to bed.

“I’ll be up soon to see that he’s al right, but I think he’l sleep now.”

“Well, well, well, Aunty Da, what a to do, eh? Now we’ve got a bird-man in the household! What do you think about that?”

“I’m not sure yet, Wan, but your joke may be closer to the truth than you know. We’l just have to wait and see.

“Let’s see if he wants to migrate south in the winter first.”

Wan wasn’t sure whether Da was joking or not, so she gave a half-smile which she hoped was inscrutable, but knew really that it would not be to Aunty Da, the Shaman.

She was worried, but then who wouldn’t be under the circumstances?

(back to the top)

4 THE ROAD TO RECOVERY

The children had put Heng to bed lying down and taken his glasses off. He had closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep, until he heard the door close behind them, then he opened them again and sat up in bed. He was not tired yet, not by a long chalk.

They had left a smal night light candle burning near the doorway as they normal y did just before al the daylight faded, but it was not bright enough to light up the recesses of the large room. However, Heng could see everything as clearly as by daylight.

He knew that this was strange, but accepted it as being better than not being able to see in the dark. He was aware of not being the same as before, but he couldn’t quite remember what he was like before. He only knew that something had changed and that he was different now.

His wife had said that he had liked green salads ‘before’, but he had no recol ection of that, and he found the idea of eating vegetables quite revolting. He couldn’t understand why anyone would prefer vegetables to

meat or milkshake.

Heng knew that the term ‘milkshake’ was not quite right either, but he couldn’t work out what the drink contained besides the obvious milk.

Cochineal? Beetles? At least that was meat of a sort too. Strawberries?

Carrots? Perish the thought, but he had no idea at al .

Heng wasn’t aware of it, but his attention span had shortened quite considerably and, consequently, problems did not build up and worry him for long.

He thought about his family and wondered whether he loved them or had loved them and concluded that he must have done and ought to continue to do so as they seemed to be so concerned about him and seemed to love him. He vaguely remembered the other woman that they called Aunty Da. His brain was lucid enough to work out that if they al called her Aunty Da, then she must be his aunty too, but he couldn’t remember any more than that, although her face did look somewhat familiar.

He tried to remember what he did for a living, but like a person recovering from concussion or amnesia, the memory was just past the frontiers of his consciousness. He struggled with it for a few minutes, but then his mind turned to something else.

Why had those people appeared so concerned when they looked at him? They had talked about him as if he were, or had been, il , but he couldn’t remember anything about having been il and amnesia never crossed Heng’s mind as a possible reason for that.

He tried to recal the names of the members of his family, but it was difficult and he knew that that was strange as well, since he ought to be able to. Wan, he thought was his wife and he felt grateful that it wasn’t the older woman, who was… oh, yes, his Aunty Da. So, Wan was his wife and he loved her – he must have done anyway to marry her and have two children... a boy and a girl, whose names were… Dam and Dim? No, Den and Din? That sounded vaguely familiar, so he settled for that. Den and Din and Wan and Da, who was his aunty…

Then suddenly it didn’t seem important any longer and he started thinking about food again, although he was not hungry. It was just his mind checking whether he was hungry, a general concern about where his next meal would be coming from when he did become hungry. He couldn’t remember where his supplies were or even whether he had any or not. He remembered that the females had given him food, and wondered whether they would again the next time he was hungry... but could he, ought he to rely on them?

He struggled with their names again… Wan and Din, yes, that

sounded right. Wan and Din were the providers, so what did the other male… er, Den do? He had no idea at al .

Did females provide for males? Did Den just wait for food to be brought to him too? Heng had no idea about that either, but the moment soon passed and he was wondering why he was in this large room alone, when al the others – his family? – were sitting outside. Was he their prisoner? He couldn’t remember. Hadn’t the two young ones put him in there and then closed the door? Was that to keep him in the room?

He didn’t feel like a prisoner, but he wasn’t sure. What did being a prisoner feel like? Had he ever been one before? He didn’t think so, but he remembered being incapacitated for a long time somewhere. It was just that he couldn’t remember where… Someone had shot him! That was it, wasn’t it? But why had they done that?

No, it was not the same here and this was not a prison, this was his home. He lived here… it seemed vaguely familiar anyway…

Then his thoughts went back to food, but he stil wasn’t hungry.

However, he was stil concerned about where his next meal would come from and whether he would get it before or after he next felt hungry.

Heng looked around the room. His eyesight was so keen that he could see a few mosquitoes flitting about outside his net. He watched them with interest and despised them for flying in his space. He had an odd sensation that he wanted to eat them, to teach them a lesson, but he didn’t think that men ate mosquitoes.

He wanted to kil and eat them though for daring to… to do what?

Fly? But why?

He didn’t know, but that was what he felt like. It made no sense to him. He wanted to kil them for daring to fly? Why? Did he want to kil them to eat them? Perhaps? He was starting to get hungry, but the thought did not seem right… He despised them and wanted them dead for daring to fly in his airspace.

A saying, an old one he thought, played about in his mind like a jingle:

‘Eagles don’t eat flies’, but he could not remember where he had heard it before. ‘Eagles might not,’ he countered, ‘but I do.’ Then he stopped again. ‘But men don’t eat mosquitoes either, do they?... No, of course not!’ His thoughts were as if on a carousel rotating in his mind. There were several that came to the fore regularly every minute or two, thoughts about danger and food and there were others that flashed into his mind for a moment never to be seen again, squeezed out by the recurrent thoughts of danger and food, food and danger.

He wanted to find out whether he was a prisoner or not, so he

crawled out underneath the net and went to the door. The need for freedom was irresistible. He tried the door gingerly. It opened, so he stepped outside. The landing that he found himself on was not il uminated by anything other than the moonlight and he stood there feeling as free as a bird.

He gazed out before him and could see for miles in three directions.

He could also hear people talking down below and recognised the place as the table that he had been sitting on several hours previously. He listened to the familiar voices and guessed that they must belong to the people he had been with earlier – his family, yes, his family. He could hear and understand them clearly, but was not interested. He looked to the sky and the distance and his mind soared. He felt elated to be high off the ground and free.

Suddenly, his eagle eyes spotted movement below and his mind flashed ‘danger or food?’. He peered down his nose and identified the movement as that of the young female… his daughter, Wan? No, Din?

That sounded right. Probably no danger then, but no food either.

Din stopped, looked up, pointed at Heng and shouted for her mother, who came in an instant fol owed closely by the others. Perhaps he was a prisoner, but there was no escape.

“Heng, what are you doing out of bed stark naked like that? You could at least have put some clothes on!”

“Why, wife, what is the problem? Am I not beautiful or am I a prisoner?”

“Yes, of course you’re handsome, but your daughter doesn’t want to see your family jewels and no, you are not a prisoner. Whatever gave you that idea? Look, go back inside, it is not nice for you to stand there in your birthday suit. You are stil sick, please, let me help you back to bed…

or would you rather join us down here for a chat?”

Heng didn’t know. The truth was that he was enjoying the view and was happy where he was, so he didn’t say anything.

Wan started to approach him cautiously with slow steps as one does when trying to catch a chicken so as not to frighten it. Heng looked agitated, but had nowhere to escape to. He didn’t want to go back inside and the landing was only four feet by three, so he climbed up onto the railing with the intention of scrambling up onto the roof. When Wan was only three steps away, he jumped for the roof, missed his hold and fell down past the landing.

He saw it slip past his eyes and heard his wife scream. He may even have screamed himself, he couldn’t recol ect, because he was too shocked when he didn’t hit the ground and die.

Instead, he became a bird, or more precisely, a bat, not a bird at al and no-one could have been more surprised than Heng.

Wan ran up the few remaining steps and looked over the railing only to see her children looking for Heng where he should have been lying with a broken neck.

“Can you see him? How is he? Is he stil alive? Speak to me!”

“I can’t find him, Mum, he’s not here!” said Den. “I don’t understand it, this is where he fell. Maybe he’s crawled off somewhere to die…”

“You stupid boy! Of course he hasn’t! Look harder! I’m coming down. He must be in pain or dead… He’s not likely to have gone for a walk after fal ing thirty feet, is he? Din, you’ve got more sense, give him a hand, wil you? Before I do, around the back of his head!

“Heng, dearest, where are you? I’m sorry that I frightened you. Come to Mummy! Come on, there’s a good boy, come to your Mud!”

Heng could see and hear them, but didn’t care. He couldn’t believe that he was not dead, or maybe he was, he thought, perhaps bats were angels. He was flying around, soaring, diving, swooping and wheeling and al at incredible speeds.

He tried to call out to his family to look at him and tell them that he was al right, but he couldn’t speak. Al that came out was ‘peep, peep, peep’ and when he made these noises he could ‘see things’ al around him like on a radar monitor. He could see the house, the barn, the table and smal flying dots, al in luminous green. He flew at one of the green dots and scooped it out of the air with his mouth. It was one of those insolent mosquitoes and there were thousands of them al around him.

Heng ate a few more and was surprised to find that some were sweet and some were sour. He liked both flavours but preferred the sweet ones, which he presumed were the ones that had sucked blood as they had very soft centres. After eating a few dozen, he noticed different flavours behind the sweetness and guessed that the blood had come from different animals, even humans and possibly his own family below. His instincts and prejudice told him that if they had drunken human blood, then it must be from the people down below, his family, because mosquitoes would be too stupid to find their way back if they flew more than half-a-dozen metres from home.

He chuckled, as only bats can, at his anti-mosquito joke and ate a few more.

Heng ate them with relish. It was like eating unwrapped chocolates from the pick-and-mix bins at a sweet shop. He chose his victims at random, and didn’t know which flavour he would get next, but they were al nice anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

Then he remembered his family and then danger and then his family again. He wanted to tell them that he was safe and well, but didn’t know how to do it. He fluttered past Wan’s face and she tried to swat him:

‘Peep, peep, peep’, he said, but she couldn’t hear him and he knew that she wouldn’t understand anyway even if she could.

She obviously had no idea who he was, but he was out of ideas. His wife was crying, so he approached his daughter from behind, hoping he wouldn’t get swatted again, and landed on her shoulder. However, as soon as he touched down, he became human again and they both tumbled to the ground. Din was excruciatingly embarrassed to find her naked father straddling her chest facing her and Heng was horrified too. He leaped to his feet, his hands over his privates.

“Er, sorry, Din, so sorry, that was not meant to happen…”

“Where on Earth did you come from, Paw? Mum, Paw’s all right, he’s over here,” she shouted, dusting herself off and trying not to look at her father. “Oh, Paw, thank God you’re safe, but where have you been? We saw you fall and we’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“I’ll tell you later. Fal , but only fal , er, little bit. Not too far…”

“But it’s thirty feet from there, Paw, and we al saw you fal ,” said Den.

“Not problem now, eh? Not die. I am here. No worries.”

Heng’s answers were so weird that they were al staring at him, even Din, although she tried not to.

“Heng! What happened to you? Why won’t you tell us? What happened back there? We al thought you were a gonner for sure.”

“I don’t know what happened,” he said and that was the truth, but his head seemed to be clearing now that he had become a bat once.

He was stil not the same old Heng and never would be again, but he was a little more human or at least mammal once more. It was as if a fog were lifting from his brain.

“Er, Heng, don’t you think you should put some clothes on? You are starkers in front of your daughter and aunty.”

Heng put one hand over his bottom and ran up the stairs to the bedroom. They talked about him at the family table while he was away, but Heng felt like a superior being, like a king, haughty and proud as he wrapped a sarong about himself and contemplated going downstairs He had flown and knew no-one else who had the slightest clue what that felt like. He had eaten mosquitoes on the wing like old ladies eat chocolates fil ed with alcohol at Christmas and he had soared. There were no dangers for him any more He would never starve and nothing would ever hurt him again. He felt free, truly free, for the first time in his life, although what sort of life lay before him, he did not know.

He did sense though that he ought to keep this a secret for the time being, at least until he could assess local public opinion, because he was now Pee Pob the real Lao-Thai term for a vampire and they feared ‘Pee Pob’, as he had always done himself.

He checked his teeth out of curiosity, but his canines had not grown or not yet anyway, although he was deathly pale and his eyes were stil red on pink. He decided to go downstairs and descended the stairs like royalty.

When he came into view from the table, people could not help but feel the majesty of the man. The change was incredible. He was awesome and his presence shone like a beacon for yards al around him.

As he took a seat on the table, Wan asked him:

“Are you al right, Heng? Are you sure you didn’t bang your head in that fal ?”

“I am fine, never better, Mud, wife, Wan. I am as I should be.

Everything is as it should be. Can I have that other chop now?”

“Of course you can, do you want me to heat it up for you?”

“No, as is wil do.”

Heng took a smal bite, but didn’t like it. He tried not to show it, but it was revolting to him, so he put it back on the plate and ignored it.

Da was studying him closely as she had been doing since he had fal en from the landing. She saw everything but had hardly spoken since then.

She had never actual y witnessed a case like Heng’s, but that was not to say that she was total y ignorant of the condition - it was just that al she

‘knew’ was second-hand, hearsay, she had never had the opportunity to put any of it into practice, so she was happier to just watch for the moment.

Da didn’t travel any more, but she had frequently until about thirty years previously when she had met other shamans, some of whom had talked of cases like Heng’s. She had a strong personal interest in helping her nephew, but she found his condition clinically fascinating as well.

Her gut reaction, if the Pee Pob had been anyone else but family, would have been to kil it, because it was no longer human, but she could not bring herself to suggest that yet, and it was a golden opportunity for her to study one at first hand.

She wanted a chance to talk with Heng alone, because she didn’t want to frighten the children. She also wanted to get her facts straight before discussing what to do with Wan and she needed that chat as soon as possible. Right now, if she could find a way of doing it, but she could hardly tell them al to go to bed, so she just sat and watched and bided her time.

“How are your eyes, Heng?” she asked after a while.

“A little sensitive, Aunty Da, but al right, thank you. I don’t think that I could stand bright, direct sunlight though. It is strange, but I can feel light on my skin too, it has become so sensitive now.

“The sunglasses Den gave me wil help with my eyes, but maybe I wil need some sort of cream to cover my face. What do you recommend?”

She decided to play along with Heng, because she was not sure whether he was aware what he might have become or not yet.

“Your kidney failure seems to have affected your body,” then the thought struck her that perhaps becoming Pee Pob had caused the kidney failure. “You have many of the symptoms of an albino. Their skin and eyes are hypersensitive to light too. Do you know what an albino is, Heng?”

“I have heard the term, but I do not know much about it…”

“Nevertheless, that is what you seem to have become and that condition is incurable as well, although there are ointments for the skin and drops for the eyes. They won’t sell any of that stuff around here, but I can make you up something, if you like.”

“Yes, that would be very kind of you, Aunty Da.”

“Well, you won’t be able to go back to work for a few days yet, even if you are feeling stronger now, so I’ll make up some skin cream and eye drops for you tomorrow morning and perhaps you’d like to call around in the afternoon to pick them up. We can see how effective they are then in the afternoon sun… that should be a good test to see if they are strong enough to help you.