Written by Nontawat Machai
Translated by Peera Songkünnatham
Illustrated by Summer Panadd

[คลิกที่นี่เพื่ออ่าน “ไอ้บองหลา” ในต้นฉบับภาษาไทย]

The hope for a better world is often placed upon the shoulders of young people by previous generations; it is a hope bound up with the expectation that the former fulfill the latter’s dreams. For a young person, the power necessary to realize their own hopes and dreams is often a conditional offer. By the time a young person gains a position of power, chances are they’re no longer young, or no longer considered to be young.

Aware of this predicament of youth, twenty-something theater artist Nontawat Machai engaged in thought experiments from his perspective as a symbolically powerful but actually powerless young person. Cautioning his future self against living vicariously through the next generation, Nontawat wrote in the editor’s note to the anthology The Last Stand ชัยภูมิสุดท้าย (2018):

I want to write a letter to the future me, saying:

“Don’t be so presumptuous as to think you (müng) are changing the country for our descendants’ sake. Rather, build them up so they can make changes to their own age. Leave room for them, and let them forge their own paths. You’re just a case study for them. Don’t think you’re drafting a law or crafting a world for them. Their ideal world is much more beautiful than what you can imagine in your old age.”

To deliver to me in the future, to remind myself not to be corrupted by power, if one day I must, for whatever reason, exercise power. But, I pray, may power never fall into my hands, if it means I’ll have to be like the powerholders of our country today.

“A King Cobra and I” is a short story from Nontawat’s self-published volume ทรงกรวย (2019). Based on the author’s stay in his southern Thai hometown during a school break, the story returns to the act of writing a letter to one’s future self. This act, however, is interrupted by a hubbub over a king cobra. Mulling over the king cobra’s fate, Nontawat puts himself in its place and ends up addressing humanity in the second person. Nontawat’s shifting of perspectives between present and future, self and other, human and beast conveys as much alienation and disaffection as it does the actual (as in, not merely potential) potential of youth.

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A King Cobra and I

“Bamboos at a woodland edge, wind-wakened,
vocalize a poem without destination,
without a country: borders break down
whenever flowers dance and carouse.”

The end of the 2017 monsoon. The middle of Drizzly Forest, a valley in the Ruler Mountain Ranges, the edges between the provinces of Phatthalung and Nakhon Si Thammarat. Saturday morning. Everything continues on its course. The wind and the sun show up as promised. The fog frolics with stretches of mountain, rolls over the surface of water. The nippy air carries a pleasing waft of nature after an all-night downpour. The red-dirt road to the village takes on a dark brown hue and is slippery. The morning sunrays shine on on the front of the house through rubber leaves gradually budding for the seasonal rain. Dad is sipping coffee with a couple of neighbors, among whose voices I recognize, I think, Uncle Jit, Uncle Iat, and Dad.

The conversation probably revolves around local politics as election season is approaching, but has been put on hold indefinitely. Mom is cooking in the kitchen. By the aromas I can definitely recognize kaeng som with catfish, omelet and toasted shrimp paste. I enjoy the smells as I wrap myself in my favorite duvet. Last night I read so much I barely slept.

I seal the envelope, write out a poem on it, put my name as the sender, and put as the receiver the name of another me in the future, as if the postman could ride the time machine to do the delivery for me. The past two days I have been obsessed with two books: Walk to Freedom by Pramuan Phengchan, and The Other Land by Kanokphong Songsomphan. After finishing the two books last night I decided to write a letter, which took me until morning.

P’Thao, a young man in the village, ran in panic from the stream in the back of the house. He was in such a hurry he forgot to secure his boat to a post on the shore. When he comes to again, the boat is already swept to the middle of the water.

“Uncle Jit, Uncle Jit, your wife was bitten by a snake. Go help her. Auntie Nee, bitten by a snake in the rubber fields. Near the water’s edge on the other side. My boat ran out of fuel. Couldn’t paddle there myself,” P’Thao says in a tired voice, his face pallid.

“Is it a pit viper?” Uncle Iat interjects.

Nobody in the circle seems alarmed by the news, as the rubber fields are teeming with pit vipers. I wrap the duvet around myself as I stand and watch them by the front door of the house. The sun begins to grow intense.

“No, they say it’s a king cobra,” P’Thao speaks clearly in the Southern tongue.

There is a shift in everybody’s demeanor. Dad, Uncle Jit, and P’Thao all trot over to the boat. Uncle Iat, meanwhile, has gone ahead to cut bamboo. He said king cobras are averse to bamboo. Everybody knows about the venom of a bongla, what we call a king cobra, and how lethal it is. I hurry down to join them.

To myself in the year 2600[2057]

“You’re probably in your early sixties now. I will take liberties to use the formal pronoun khun to refer to you, even if you are me and know me very well. The thing is, I don’t know you at all. And worse, I’m putting you on the spot. I have three questions for you, as attached at the end of this letter. Please answer them sincerely. And before answering, please do some soul-searching on whether or not you still believe that ‘Hope is the only thing stronger than fear.’

“With love, …and hopefully you’re still alive and able to respond to this letter.”

What would I do if I were the character Snake in Pramuan Phengchan’s Walk to Freedom? This question has resounded in my head countless times ever since Pai Dao Din, a young man steadfast in the fight for the environment and community rights, was charged and arrested with lese majeste [for sharing a BBC Thai biography of King Vajiralongkorn on his Facebook –trans.]. This is an age that’s covered in fear at every juncture. Between the one instilling fear and the one made to fear, who is more dominated by fear? I do not know for sure. Walk to Freedom, which chronicles Pramuan Phengchan’s journey by foot from Chiang Mai to Koh Samui, his birthplace, is packed with philosophical insights. I just finished reading it last night.

A scene in the book details the author’s face-off with fear induced by a snake. The author cannot come to a conclusion which one of them is more afraid, him, the author Pramuan Phengchan, or the snake he faces. It reminds me very much of my own situation and that of my contemporaries. We have become othered in our own land, in an age where Love and Fear try furiously to tear us from our native land.

After about fifteen minutes of Dad steering the boat, we spot Auntie Nee sitting by the stream, holding in her hand a bloodstained piece of wood about two meters long. Around her stand several villagers who have gotten here before us.

 “I thought I was going to die today. Ai Bongla was huge. Never seen any that big,” Auntie Nee tells the story, her hand clutching a stick.

“Wanted to run but couldn’t bring myself to run. Afraid it would strike from behind. Fortunately a piece of wood was nearby,” she says as she, stick in hand, pokes the snake that lies lifeless, and almost headless, too, from the blows she delivered.

“It probably came here to drink some water. Just happened to run into you, Sister. Chalk it up to misfortune, which has now passed,” says Dad in a gentle tone.

“Good that you’re safe,” Uncle Jit, her husband, joins in on the pep talk.

“I saw people shout and scream, so I thought you’d got bitten,” P’Thao says, laughing. As the situation returns to normal, some people take pictures of the dead snake, including selfies with it, before going on their way.

I stand silently as the events unfold.

What do you (khun) think will happen between Human and Snake at the conclusion of their face-off?

Of course! We are afraid of the snake killing us, so we seize the initiative to kill it first, to prevent it from hurting and harming us. Of course! It is the most convenient and the best method for the preservation and continuation of our lives, don’t you think? In the end, the snake dies from our fear. Wait, this death is death all the same, is it not? But fortunately, snakes don’t have a capacity for reason. This blue planet is nicknamed the Human World, or the World of Humanity; humans like me and you (rao-rao than-than) are, therefore, not to be faulted. The snake’s death, therefore, does not register as death.

Are we being reductive about the snake’s nature? If so, to what end? To justify killing? Perhaps the snake was also afraid of us? Did it rear its head and spread its hood because of the fear that we would hurt it? Was this all just self-preservation?

Who is more afraid, we or snake? I am full of doubts and questions. But what do my questions matter, seeing that I am not an expert? I’m not allowed to ask questions in this country anyway.

[…Snakes are always dangerous in humans’ view (well, not including the case of mall exhibit snakes to be worn around the neck and take photos with, since those snakes are useful to humans, at least in terms of sizable profits. And even if some of them are venomous snakes from the wild, they are the ones that didn’t die by human hands. They were wounded, so they could be taken, trained, and somewhat tamed)…]

I posted this on Facebook.

“Don’t put yourself in the snake’s position,” says Mom out of the blue in the middle of the meal. Mom probably saw my Facebook status, I figure.

After helping Auntie Nee deal with the snake, Dad and I hurried home because it was almost noon, we were getting late for lunch. Mom was waiting. This school break I am staying home for two weeks, so I have time to sit and read up on snakes.

You’ve never heard of the story ‘The Farmer and the Cobra’? Didn’t Grandma tell it often when you were a kid? Snakes are no good. They can’t be tamed. Consider the example of the cobra in the folktale: it is ungrateful, and can even turn around and bite the farmer who saved it… The same applies to other snakes, says an expert on snake genes.

What would I do if I were the character Snake in Walk to Freedom? After I consider the goings-on of the age that’s covered in fear at every juncture, it begins to dawn on me who, between the one instilling fear and the one made to fear, is more afraid.

Please bear in mind: the fear that you (than) have imprisons low-class living things like us… How do you want history to remember you as part of this ‘human’ world? That is up to you to decide, King Cobra says.

…

Sorry, I’ve forgotten about all that I was going to ask.
I’ll write you again.