To be at a place that would quite probably not exist without tourists brings a strange restlessness to the soul. In my view Luang Prabang appears almost like a tale or simply a sentence that could come to an abrupt end with a full-stop. Book finished – and immediately the story is half forgotten. I feel like that too: unimportant, trivial. Whether I am here or not plays no role whatsoever; whether I stand here or go there, whether I drink coffee here or chew a bit of buffalo-skin there: it all depends just on a comma. Can I do something that will allow me to pull out of this grammar?
While I sit in a cafe and mourn my tourist lot, a bare-chested old man, clad only in black-and-white patterned Bermudas, suddenly dances across the street. I’ve seen him before, early this morning – dragging a huge and half-rotten palm frond through the garden of the National Museum, all the while angrily muttering short sentences sounding like curses. Now and again he had jiggled the frond against his shoulder. To me his actions had seemed like a small piece of drama – only, no one had wanted to watch; the man had in fact moved through the masses of tourists as if he was invisible.
Now, the old man is sneaking around from one restaurant to another, pausing in front of the menu cards placed on stands for the benefit of guests. He grabs the cards, closes them, turns them 180 degrees, opens them again, and then replaces them on the stands. Nevertheless, the waiters are watchful; moreover, they seem to know the gent’s tricks: hardly is he out of sight than they turn the cards back again.
Between every restaurant the old man slightly bends his knees, stretches out his left arm, bends his head low as if he wishes to aim at something with his right arm – and allows a lighter to briefly flicker in his hand. Undoubtedly he shoots at something. He aims not at people but at something that he appears to see in the heavens above the houses – perhaps he’s shooting at the stars, or better still: the gods.
Peculiar his behaviour may be, yet it appears to me as if it conceals a possible answer to my question.
Pak Ou Tham Theung Caves on the Mekong River north of Luang Prapang.
First Publication: 4-5-2015
Modifications: