The Understory by Saneh Sangsuk

Author:Saneh Sangsuk [Sangsuk, Saneh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peirene Press
Published: 2023-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

I married in the year I turned twenty. I was already fully a man then, and I was tall and sturdily built and robust. As for my Garagade, she was only seventeen, but she was already fully a woman, and she was tall and fair-skinned and had long hair that cascaded down to the middle of her back, and her limbs were lithe and lovely. She had big, round eyes and long, curved lashes and a pretty, well-formed nose, and her lips were full and red like a pair of flower petals. Garagade was a quiet, reserved woman, and when not working in the fields she liked to wear a flower in her hair or tuck one behind her ear, whether it be a dwarf ylang-ylang, a chomnat, a climbing lang-lang or a jumpoon. She was an innocent country girl, and her beauty was sweeter on the eye than that of any wildflower. When she was alone, she often sang quietly to herself. Her songs were time-worn tunes, unusual ones, their melodies slow and dulcet. They’re songs I’ll never again hear, never again get to listen to. Those songs Garagade liked to sing, I can remember them all, the lyrics and the melodies both. (But being a monk, I can’t very well sing for you, can I?) Garagade’s songs weren’t anything but testaments to the gaiety of a girlhood full of hopes, full of dreams, unmarred by any of life’s darkness or bitterness. Though a woman, Garagade was very able at reading and doing arithmetic, perhaps even more so than I was. Her parents were bibliophiles. Amassed in their house were cabinetfuls of all sorts of different books, both Thai and Western. Having raised their daughter well, they weren’t worried about her trading plaeng yow verses – the billets-doux of old – with a young lad. Garagade was beautiful inside and out. Domestic skills too were within her repertoire, and oh, she knew how to weave with a handloom as well, and knew how to play the saw – the spike fiddle. She planted flowers all over our garden, both varieties that were fragrant in the daytime and those that were so at night. Garagade came from the distant village of Toong Po-Ain, and was a farmer by upbringing. Every Sunday, she came with her boat to the floating market in front of Praeknamdang Temple. I brought her honey, tiger’s nails, tiger’s fangs, agarwood resin and porcupine quills. In return, she gave me sweets like foytong, tongyip, tongyawd and galamare. I brought her bamboo shoots and termite mushrooms and wild sweet greens and venison. In return, she gave me sticky rice and sesame seeds and coconuts and beans and sugar. I brought her punk wood to use as tinder, and she gave me a khao mah cloth for me to wear around my waist. Our love, from the start, was such plain sailing. After I announced to Old Man Junpa my intention to take a wife, he arranged to go and ask for her hand for me, giving over as her bride wealth a gold necklace weighing one baht.

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