by Andrew J. West

From the bridge over Chao Phraya, the surface of the river appears as a blue-black canvas dappled with light stretching off into the night. I’ve grown to love this river and this bridge, so much so that over time they’ve become symbols, through the paintings I’ve made from this vantage point, of the one to whose narcotic beauty I’m addicted.

The curves of the river I stroked onto the canvas were the curves of her intoxicating form. The bright colours I stippled between the banks were the iridescent pigments of her luminous visage, glowing embers of the opium burning within my heart. Her blooming body was the underlying mandala I used to give perfect balance and harmony to my tableaux. But without her animating the movement of my wrist, the oil flowing from the bristles at the end of my brush—which had recreated the eternally flowing river of light through the darkness—leave behind only an agitated trail of tormented confusion.

I was the bridge across her river, and now, without her beneath me, I am indifferent to life. So much so it is only fitting that the bridge and river should not only be symbols of our ecstasy, but now also symbols for my passage from life to death, as well as the physical means I use to cross from one to the other.

I put down the brush and step away from the easel supporting my final artwork, my death note. As the black paint dries in the breeze, I climb over the guardrail, pull myself over to the other side and step down to the ledge, clinging to the bars as I turn around. I look down at the dark, yet scintillating water, way below. The dance of Bangkok’s lights upon the rippling surface is as mesmerizing for me now as it has been ever since I came to the city to study art. And looking at it now is the same as looking into her dark eyes and wondering at the play of light reflecting from their glistening surface. It’s strange to think that such vibrant beauty is caused by the megalopolis’s seething masses as they illuminate their gloomy, starless lives. Without the wondrous celestial bodies of the starry skies above to guide them, they have become lost within themselves and trapped by the oppressive ugliness and impotent immorality of this absurd city. They can go about their destructive pursuit of worthless money—I’ve dedicated my short life to the only things that truly matter—the enigmas of Love and Art.

While those eating and drinking in the restaurants beside the river see nothing but the churning surface in the whirling wake of the boats and ferries, I posses a powerful vision that penetrates the boundaries of sight. I see her crescent breasts and curved thighs in the eddies and currents, and see her face glowing with the spiritual luminescence of the iris of a sunflower painted by the immortal Vincent. So rapturous, the sheer remembrance of her brings me to tears, tears that flow as a flood from my agonised eyes, a waterfall cascading over my cheeks and spilling into the river below, uniting us as one. Hers is the river in which I need to be swallowed, as I had been immersed in her profound body and soul, wholly, without limits, and without restraint.

I am no longer myself, but have become the same as those deceitful souls in the restaurants, each trying to navigate the way by going in the same direction as everybody else. They imitate each other, and now I, no longer knowing where I’m headed, am left stranded somewhere in this gray purgatory between the forgotten and the void.

To stroke her canvas a final time I must follow the tears I shed for her into the gleaming river that will forever embrace me. Without her, my will to live slips away as my fingers become numb and lose their grip on the bars. Numbness radiates in mute waves from my hands, up my arms and through the rest of my body. I see her tormenting smile in the foaming wake of a boat. I hear her vexing whispers in cresting waves breaking upon the foaming banks, words murmured in impassioned whorls in my ear.

I hear an echo: “I love you.”

She said she loved me. She was my lover, but she never loved me as I loved her. Now she says she has another lover. I’ve been trapped within life’s labyrinth from which there is but one means of escape. As I contemplate making the ultimate sacrifice for love, I wander through the cortical passageways of the cerebral maze of my mind, finding a way out with the light rays flowing through my eyes, turning to stare back at myself as if looking into a mirror where the image isn’t reversed.

I hear nothing and feel nothing. I see myself from beyond my body, wondering indifferently at the freakish, fluid space in which I’m floating. I have left my physical vessel and am no longer a part of the visible world others see. I’ve become one with the unobservable dimension of my own creation, the spectral place I’d envisaged when I looked upon the river and painted her. In my art I transformed the outward world into the inward. And now, to transfigure myself, I’ve had to leave my body and enter the space of my art. In the same way I must now go beneath the superficial surface of what I’ve been painting and dive down deep to the riverbed of reality.

I’ve cast off a huge burden and become weightless, detached, falling freely. I plunge, splashing through her shining exterior, the skin I had always painted. I sink beneath her shallow meaning to the river’s black bottom. Hidden here, where the light of the visible world can’t penetrate, I am one with my art. Whereas before, whenever I painted or slept with her, though I seemed to be a participant, I was truly only a spectator. But here, now, concealed in the heavy shadows of this timeless and deathless domain, I know I’m not looking outward for answers, but inside at the mystery of myself.

Here, adrift at the bottom of Chao Phraya, I realise, I can’t kill myself because she doesn’t love me. How can she love me when she has yet to learn how to love herself?

Now I understand. I couldn’t see my true self in the river because of the illusion of her dancing on the river. And now I see myself for who I really am, I know I must live and share the vision, to help others to also find themselves through art. I swim back to the surface and soar upwards to my body, which I find still clinging to the bars of the guardrail, and return once again through my open eyes. Awakened instantly in a flash of lightening, my five physical senses return and I can see, hear, smell, touch and taste the misery and confusion of the distracted souls all about me.

I close my eyes and can feel it all at my core.

I look down at the river with a lucidity I’ve never known before. I no longer see her, only my image reflected in the shining mirror sunk beneath the waves. This bridge and this river have never been metaphors for her, but always of my own life. My reflection dissolves, leaving only the living lights undulating buoyantly. I climb back across the guardrail and start to paint the vision I’d seen.

Editor’s Note:

You can view a larger picture of the drawing for this story by clicking on the picture at the top or going to the Vasan Sitthiket Artwork for The Student.

Note on Author’s Work:

The Student is not Andrew J. West’s first story in Eastlit. He also had The Mansion published in the June issue of Eastlit, Art of Evil in the August issue and The Puppet Tree in the October issue.