Where Waters Flow,
Where Waters Return

By Eliseo Martinez

The following is taken from Eliseo Martinez's forthcoming book, The Light of Foreign Days, written during his Asia-Pacific travels. The excerpt below find Martinez and girlfriend Jessie in the South Asian country of Laos.

* * * * *

In Luang Prabang, the cocks across the path roost at every hour of the day. The town was one paved road with many bumpy dust roads branching off in perpendicular curiosity. After a meal of more fish soup at a small restaurant across from where we were staying, I realized I had forgotten my wallet and returned to my room to pick it up. Jessie stayed behind and watched me from the window.
        When Istepped back inside the restaurant, I saw our waiter standing by the table, talking while Jessie laughed. I sat down and started to count out the money we owed.
        "Eliseo, I want you to meet…umm…"
        "Lung."
        "Yes! I'm sorry, Lung. I just didn't want to butcher your name. Lung, this is my boyfriend, Eliseo."
        "Hello," he said and nodded his head. "I don't want to say your name."
        Lung had been studying English intensely at school and after school. He was 17 years old and very thin in blue jeans, a thin white sweater, and sandals. After he had cleared our table and taken the money for the bill, he mentioned to us that he occasionally organized small trips to waterfalls and swimming holes in exchange for conversational English. We agreed to meet him the next day.
        We took a long taxi ride out to the country of Laos. Lung told us about his family, and his ambition to come to the United States to attend school there. He told us about his shaved head, in mourning for the recent loss of his father. I felt a little like the host of a late-night show, asking questions, prompting him to speak. He had a little trouble understanding us and after awhile we stopped talking because we were not making sense to him, and he was not making sense to us, and after 15 minutes of trying to figure out what the hell the other person was saying, we gave up.
        Jessie and I waved at kids on the side of the road who were waving at us. We counted yaks and rice fields. This road was very bumpy and our driver drove a little fast. Our covered truck fell victim to the afternoon sun, passing oxen, butterflies in disarray.
        We arrived at the first waterfall, a peephole into a heavenly kingdom. It was at least 60 feet high and the spray from the fall was tailored to our skin by a light, cool hand. After taking some pictures, we climbed to the top of the fall.
        We took a small, hidden path up through dense jungle while staying wary of snakes and spiders. Once we reached the top, we were all soaked. Looking below at where we had been, I'm certain we each thought about jumping, but of course no one would mention it. Sometimes death descends like yellow light through green leaves onto smiling eyes and faces, carving out laughter from mortality.
        We walked back down to the bottom and then we took a dusty bumpy ride to another waterfall. This one stretched further and further back until you could not see the beginning of the falls. Imagine -- deep, cool, clear water running down the staircase of the gods, with every step holding three or four varieties of enormous trees with thick, twisted roots that looked almost carnivorous. We splashed around in the shadows, jumped from step to step. We were the gods. These were our steps.
        By the time we got back into town, the sun was setting behind a perfect day. We made it back to our hostel and after a brief dinner, we fell asleep.

* * * * *

        The next day, Lung had arranged for us a small boat ride down the Mekong to an ancient cave, with a stop at a small village that specialized in the production of rugs, blankets, opium pipes, and sweet red wine. Lung did not accompany us this time as he had to work at the restaurant and the driver of the boat and his wife spoke very little English. It did not matter.
        We stopped at the village first. I bought a bottle of the wine, Jessie bought an orange and red blanket. I wanted to buy some opium as well, but did not know how or whom to ask. Nobody walked up to me and read my mind.
        I stumbled upon a small shop set up with pipes of all sizes. I picked one out that had elephants carved into its side. The shopkeepers looked at me offering toothless grins. I decided to test whether or not the pipe was clogged or faulty by putting it to my lips and inhaling. Inhaling through an empty pipe is like breathing through a clean and clear straw, which is why I was very surprised to discover bits and pieces of stuff in my mouth.
        I started to spit on the ground and was even more surprised to find that some of the bits and pieces were alive. I was spitting out bits of bone powder and ants. Red ants. I looked at the pipe and discovered more ants crawling all over the pipe, their frantic epileptic movements communicating, "What the hell happened?!?" I didn't know what to tell them so I gagged.
        The shopkeepers had subsided a little in their laughter by this moment, and one rose and entered the darkness of his home, reemerging with a glass full of rainwater. I took the water and noticed it had a slight yellow tint to it. Still, something about ants in my mouth made me quite ready to use this or any water to rinse my mouth out.
        I bought the pipe. When I asked for opium, they returned with tobacco. I turned to the oldest shopkeeper requesting opium, and all they could do was shake their heads. With the dust and the sunlight settling around our ankles, we walked back down to the boat.
        Once on the boat, I opened the bottle of wine and we drank. The clouds darkened quickly, and before we knew it, it was raining heavily. Jessie and I were seated beneath a sort of canopy with the rainwater coming in over us through the sides. Our driver and his wife glanced back at us and smiled. We returned the gaze and passed the wine over to them. We rode that way through the rain.
        We arrived at the ancient cave. It was a hole naturally cut into a sheer cliff wall, full of old relics and images of the Buddha. Some of these relics had broken beneath the weight of time, but others had broken beneath the weight of generations of dust that had accumulated around them.
        We walked around the cave with a very small flashlight and after a bit, we went back into the rain, which was just about done, back to the boat, back to the happy driver and his wife, back to the bottle. We finished it off.
        As we passed a particular stretch of shore, some kids began to wave crazily at us. As we waved back, the kids lifted a large bamboo pole that resembled the turret of a tank. They pointed it at us.
        "What are they doing?"
        "I think they're pretending to blast the boat."
        We waved back again.
        Then they shot us.
        I swear, the goddamn bamboo pole went BOOM! There was smoke coming out of the end that faced us. The kids laughed again and waved at the ghosts that floated past them.

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