Alida's Real-life
Drama
"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to cause the tragedy. I didn't want to hurt you. I don't want you to die and leave me by myself. Don’t you know?”
She was crying as if she was mourning somebody very close to her and that she did something very wrong that caused that person's death. Even after the sunlight turned red and then disappeared from the sky, leaving room for darkness to dominate the whole area, the cry of remorse still went up and down, going from loud to low in cycles.
The area around the pagoda was overcome by general quietness and populated by ghostly shadows that sometimes moved around at a random, growing as high as the top of a mango tree, and then falling down to earth. The cry continued off and on.
The following morning, an unusually large clientele stopped by at the coffee shop and sat down around separate tables by small group of two or three. People commented on the complaining voice of the previous night, and many versions of the same incident were offered, as was usually the case in coffee shop chats.
“Let's stop talking about this incident, otherwise the soul of the deceased will never comeback to earth and keep on wandering forever", a customer said. "This is very true, especially when the soul is from someone who died as a result of an accident," he added.
The discussion calmed down for a few moments but soon resumed when a bald, middle age man with a cup of coffee in his hands, joined one of the tables.
“This story is half clear and half murky”, he said.
All eyes were fixed at him, including those of Phonsamlet. They also all stared at one another. When so many people appeared to show an interest in the story, the man looked around and began telling what he knew after drinking his coffee.
"One morning early this month, a sedan was traveling downhill at great speed. After reaching the flat portion of the road, it veered left and right and finally disappeared in the woods. Ten minutes later, people reported that the sedan has had an accident and ended up near the edge of the road some 250 meters away from the village outskirt. Villagers flocked to the site of the accident to take a look. They saw the car resting upside down on the branches of a tree, with two passengers trapped inside. The male driver of about 50 years old appeared to be holding on to the steering wheel with one hand and grabbing his 18-year old female companion with the other hand. He was dead on the spot and his body was pulled out of the car and laid on the ground by the roadside. The girl was then still breathing, and taken to the hospital. The following day, more details came in. It appeared that the female passenger was the sister of the owner of a well-known restaurant. A student in her last year of high school, she was on her way to the restaurant to help her sister after school. She was reported to be a student with a bright future ahead of her, very studious and promising. Her hope was to earn a Masters degree and a Ph.D. She had no other things in mind except going to school and helping her sister during her free time.
One day, a VIP guest saw her and decided to win her heart. The name of the girl was Alida. Alida soon became the target of the old and hungry tiger man. Three days later, Alida was about to go into her sister's office when she had to stop short upon hearing some discussions that referred to her by name between that guest and her sister.
"Did you know that Alida is my younger sister?”
“I don’t care who she was, but I wanted her!” the old man said.
“ Please, don't force me to be an devil and destroy my own sister!”
“You are not going to do anything to her by yourself. I just want her; I don't want you. So, why do you worry?”
When Alida heard that exchange of words, she felt like she was buried under the weigh of a mountain, and her legs started to shake. She had to control herself from fainting so she could listen to the rest of the discussion.
“ Do you know why your business has prospered this long? Who made it possible for it to last up to now?" the customer asked.
“I know it's because of you. But, it doesn't mean I have to sacrifice my own sister."
“You are weir. What sacrifice are we talking about? All I need is temporary happiness. Your sister will also be happy because she will have money, and your business will continue to do well! Don't say anything more. Here are 50,000 kips. Let's settle it. Explain everything to her, and money will keep flowing your way! That's no big deal! You gain something; your sister gains something and me too, I gain something", he said in laughing loudly as if the whole world only belonged to him.
Alida could not stand listening on any further .She ran home, jumped to bed and started crying. She knew that the customer was referring to nobody else but her; because she only has one older sister and that her sister only has one younger sibling. She was wondering why her sister, who also acted as her mother, would go as far as selling her to the highest bidder for her own personal benefit. That thought made her feel a little better and allowed her to fall to sleep.
Everybody in the coffee shop was listening in silence; all that could be heard was breathing. People looked at each other and waited for the storyteller to continue.
“ Three days later, on New Year's day, Alida was sitting in the veranda when her sister approached her. Alida smiled to her, trying to act natural although deep in her mind, she was dying to ask her sister a few questions about what she overheard earlier. She recognized that, as a restaurant owner, her sister was dealing with serious competition; many other restaurants of the same vintage had already gone out of business. By contrast, her business was still running great and might even be growing some more.
“ Alida, can you still sleep well?” asked her sister with a straight face as if she had been drinking a lot.
“ Yes, very well. How about you, couldn't you sleep? You don't look that well rested.”
“ Oh, no, I slept well", she replied, trying to hide her face.
“ Do you need any help from me?”
She shook her head and smiled. Even when she tried very hard to hide what was on her mind, sadness still showed up on her face. Alida read her sister well, but couldn't figure out why she felt that way. What kind of relationship did she have with the guy that came to see her the day before and why did he talked to her the way he did? She wanted to ask all those questions, but didn't dare to do so. After all, she respected her both as an older sister and a mother. After her sister left, tears popped off her eyes and dropped onto the ground. She was thinking about her parents when they were still alive, and could clearly see all the past events in her life. She never experienced any hardship, even when her parents passed away; she knew she still had a sister who gave her everything she needed.
Time passed quickly. Her sister didn't know what to tell the old man whose words still hung in her ears all the time.
“ This is my need! I need your sister; I don't need you. Why waste our time arguing? You need to convince her to be with me!"
She used her fingers to plug her ears and screamed loudly to get rid of her worries. She was really short of ideas on what to do. Everything seemed dark. The rich customer came back once more, smiling like most men did. This time he was expecting an answer for what he was after. He stared at the sister with unusually red eyes as if they were painted with blood by an executioner.
“ Don’t tell me you had not talked with Alida!”
“ What do you want me to do? She is my sister!"
“ You're doing big business and you can't deal with a small business like this one? Don't forget that without me you wouldn't have lasted this long! That's fine if you don't want to do it, but don't blame me later for being rude!" he said at the top of his voice, with a red-hot face. After he left the room, the sister felt face down onto her bed and moaned and groaned in desperation. Her tears made the pillow all wet, and there was nothing to stop them. Midnight passed, and soon, the sunrise came, but the sister didn't get to sleep at all.
Three days later, the rich old customer man came back again and ordered a bottle of whisky. After two glasses, he went up to the stage and announced,
“ Ladies and gentlemen, today I feel extremely lucky. I want to let you know that all the drinks and the food are on me! Drink as much as you want; don't worry, because I will pay for your food and your drinks".
Everybody clapped their hands and joined in the celebration that lasted throughout the night.
Many things then went wrong; it was increasingly difficult to get the customers, new or old, to pay their bills. The rich old man himself ended up owing two to three million kips. The sister knew that the reason he didn't pay his food and drink bills was because he had a hidden plan. Normally, bills only ran in the hundreds of thousands kips a night, but that night's multi-million total bills were incurred on purpose and designed to create problems. This situation forced the sister to make a phone call to let the guy know that she was ready to do anything he wanted. That was the only way she could get him to back pay the bills, including interests.
The man kept running the same show, night after night.
One night, the old man went again back up to the stage and announced,
“ I want to announce once more that I will take care of the food and drinks bills for you. Please eat and drink for your happiness." The other customers applauded and wondered why the man volunteered to play the host.
That night the man was surprised to see the sister standing nearby. He sat down, drank a glass of whisky, and said,
"If you have something to say, do it now and then go away. I'm having fun." He then crossed his legs and turned his head away from her.
“ Please, don't make me feel any more distressed than I already am. I'm really stretched to the limit right now."
“ What did I do to cause you so much heartbreak?”
“Don't you care for me? In only four to five nights, your unpaid bills have already escaladed to ten million kips. My business is about to go bankrupt," she pleaded with a halting voice.
“ You know, if I can bring you success, I can also bring you havoc", he replied out loud.
She started saying, “ I understand, and ...." but got cut off.
“ Are you brave enough to go on stage and refute what I just announced to the crowd? Don't forget, if we cannot reach agreement, we have to stop everything. But if we can agree, then much more money will flow in". Having said that, the old man quickly left the bar.
That night was like the previous nights, because the sister was not able to collect a single dime for the food and drinks that were served. She felt like a time bomb had been planted on her heart, about to explode at any moment.
Alida witnessed the events from beginning to end, but she didn't quite understand the real reasons behind the whole thing. After she was done making her homework, she was about to go in to see her sister when she was stopped by the sound of her sister's lamentation coming from inside the room.
"Alida, if you knew everything, you probably would accuse me for selling you off! Alida, I didn't mean it. How could I explain it to you?"
Alida couldn't stand the wait; her tears started to flow out. She had to open her sister's room and ask her at the top of her voice,
"What seems to be the problem? Does such an evil man really exist?”
“Alida! I....... ”
“Don't say anything. I've already got the picture.”
Finally, everything came to a close. All you heard was the moaning and crying, and along with it, the feeling of emptiness and powerless, discouragement and stressful foul play. The sister tried to maintain composure and explain the whole truth to Alida, haltingly and little by little. In the end, the full story was aired. Alida jumped up from her bed, quickly wiped her tears, and said with a resolute voice,
"I'm definitely not going to do it. You know, I will go as far as getting a doctorate degree! I'm not a hooker trying to make money like this!"
“So, what do you advise me to do?"
"Do as you please, but I'm not going to be a part of it. There is no way I will sell my virginity!"
The sisterly relationship between the two siblings began to crack in a disheartening way. The dilemma involving the restaurant's major customer and Alida was still there ready to strike her sister's heart and open that crack even larger. Alida let her tears drop onto the ground so that Mother Earth goddess could bear witness of her trauma. That was also one way for her to relieve her pain and allow her tears to some day reach the wide ocean and cause the Naga kings to come to her rescue, should something bad happened to her.
With her tears still running, an expected event that an 18-year old girl like Alida could not imagine took place. Two huge hands grabbed her neck from behind, shut her mouth, and carried her onto a waiting car with black glass windows pulled down. Within a few seconds, the increasing pressure exerted by those huge hands caused Alida to temporarily pass out.
Looking up to the ceiling, she had the impression she was swimming in a wide body of water. She tried to close her eyes and swallow her saliva. She re-established her composure, reopened her eyes to soon realize she was lying on a bed with a big and soft mattress surrounded by an unusual scent. She tried to move her body but felt like she had tons of rocks hanging on her legs. My God, had that evil selfish man just raped her? Alida cried as loud as she could, but could only produce a faint voice because she felt so weak.
“Don’t cry, everything happens naturally. I personally take all the blame for this."
The fact that he referred to himself as "Ai", implying "I'm of your brother's age" made Alida feel utterly disgusted about that dirty, filthy old man standing so close to her. But everything went as the old man had planned and there was nothing that Alida could do to turn back the clock. She kept on crying, thinking about her bright future now tarnished by that black cloud blocking her way. She didn't dare setting foot outside the room for a whole week during which all she did was providing pleasure for that sex maniac. She couldn't blame anybody but herself to be born a beautiful girl. A good person often runs into a bad one who wants everything to feed his greed, which he referred to as his "happiness".
Alida ran out of options. She decided to focus on satisfying the sexual needs of the old man so as to exhaust those needs. She got up, dried her tears, put on sexy western dresses, and wore perfumes that cost hundreds of thousands kips to test how long his sexual drive would last. She used the dubious tactic with this steady client, and anything else she could dream up.
Ultimately, she had that car accident, which she survived with only a broken right leg. She recovered from the accident after going through about three months of physical and emotional suffering, desperation and deception. She had no desire whatsoever, including the need to feed herself every day. Her life went quickly downhill, soiled by continuous tears that refused to stop. But tears could not erase bad memories that prematurely ended her teen-age life, despite the fact that her sister did everything to alleviate her sorrow and deep disappointment. In the end, she had to leave this world to put a closure to her real-life drama.
After hearing the story, many in the audience breathed heavily, and shook their heads in sadness. Phonsamlet walked out of the coffee shop and whispered to himself: “ I understand why last night's crying in the pagoda court yard sounded so sincere and so real. She was a real actor in causing Alida drama.” He then headed for the main street downtown.
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