Today, the river is green. Clumps of broad-leafed plants stretch from bank to bank, spinning in delicate patterns as they are pulled into eddies that ripple from the centre, where the water runs fast and deep, and the squat barges, heaped high with gravel, spread tresses of silt behind them.

Toward the banks, the plants clog the water, a blanket bunched around the boats manoeuvring between the piers. The surface looks solid and substantial, like the tops of clouds, as the seatbelt sign dings to itself in resignation and you soar upward into the sunlight. I always imagine pulling myself through the window, running down the wing, and swan-diving out into the white.

I want to hop-scotch across these plants. I want to run like a basilisk. I want to be free.

We hit a narrow channel and slow to avoid the curling wake of a passing longtail. A swarm of tiny grasshoppers, green as the plants they’ve leapt off, launch themselves into the air and onto the woman in front of me. There is a wet slap as a catfish hurls itself from under the plants and smacks into the side of the boat, as if in competition with the grasshoppers. The woman doesn’t react at all.

The shrill whistle of the conductor sound from the rear of the boat, as he guides it toward the dock. Endless wolf-whistles to anyone who will listen. We are under the bridge now, in a moment of shade, and in the distance I can see the building that is built but not finished, near-fractal recursions of faux greco-roman balconies stretching 40 floors into the sky, the columns less and less complete the further you crane your neck.

The river is green, and as we whistle our way up against the dock, I remember green Pepsi.

.

“You want green Pepsi?” he says, as the lady with an apron bulging with cutlery leans over to place bowls brimming with thick brown soup in front of us. There are small chunks of meat in here I can identify, and larger ones I can’t.

“Green Pepsi? What?”
“Is special Pepsi. You want, you try?”
“I want. I’ll try.”
“Okay, I go for green Pepsi.”

At this stage, I am imagining one of two things. The first is a special edition bottle, bright green, with energetic Thai script, and with pictures of cavorting, oiled young things, smiling as they frolic over whatever beach or forest setting the men in suits deemed appropriate to “really, like, connect with the demographic.”

The second is a bench, somewhere in this mass of people sat on plastic chairs under the bridge, where sugar syrup and an assortment of tiny bottles are used to concoct whatever bespoke beverage is required for the occasion. I am thinking about green Pepsi. I am thinking about bhang lassie, happy pizza, special cookie and ‘hey mister mister this one just for you special okay?’

Okay.

What I am not expecting is enormous cans of Heineken, and matching green straws. He grins and pushes one across the table. “Green Pepsi!”

The lower balconies of that building behind him are covered in bright green paint. It hurts to take it all in at once, the building, such is the enormity of the spectacle of 40 stories of crumbling opulence, a tall, broken kingdom surrounded by a sea of humanity. It’s not something you expect to see in ascendant Thailand. Instead I think of rural Japan, and of their struggle to retain a sustainable population, as the excess of the bubble years is slowly reclaimed by the trees.

..

I dream of a river with deserted, crumbling schools lining its banks. Where blackbirds swoop between the trees, harassing hawks three times their size. Dragonflies as big as my fist hover above the surface of the river, iridescent and ancient. The train fills with school children and then empties again. Lungs. Like lungs.

I dream of you. I think this is important.

You bound through the glass door, and the house is as it was when I was growing up: orange map of Texas on the back door, potted plants crowding against the glass criss-crossed with fat strips of masking tape, to stop the dogs running through it. The bricks outside are specked with moss.

You throw yourself into my arms and smile, really smile, then nestle your head against my neck.

“How did you know I was back?”
“Your brother called. He said I had to know.”
“He said…”
“We all know.”

I wake and, in the dim light that filters through the curtains, everything is green.

Posted in Mwah on Wednesday August 25, 2010.

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