Dark Glasses
By far one of the subtlest pieces of Thai literature (that I've read until now), the short story entitled Dark Glasses, presents a grief-stricken couple, who had to send their daughter into prostitution in order to be able to settle down and, maybe, live a better life. In fact the main reasons of their decision can hardly be noticed and the reader gets a gist of it just by looking at the big picture.
Thai culture avoids direct confrontation. The author did the same thing when he wrote his short story. He didn’t tell us straightforward the reason why a mother and a father were acting so strangely in the presence of their daughter. But, we can get a grasp of the whole situation if we consider the symbols the author used when writing his story.
The main clues are presented in the first part of the story, when men with dark glasses, whose age couldn’t be exactly approximated by the mother because of the glasses they were wearing, come to the modest house of an ex-migrating family. At the end of the story, while the daughter walks back home, the reader understands that those men were in fact there to take the girl into prostitution.
The presence of the two men creates confusion in the girl’s mind who cannot understand their witty dialogues. At this point, while I was reading I came across a schema conflict. The two men told the girl that she was ‘born a beauty’. The simple mind of that country girl couldn’t understand the metaphor (in fact the men’s sweet-talk) and replied that they’re wrong: ‘Oh no, I was born in the afternoon.’ It is now when we understand the girl’s innocence.
In fact the story is narrated three years later. It was the same time of the year when the village was preparing for a Buddhist festival. Thus, the father and the mother were reluctant to participate to an event that triggered in their memories (like Marcel Proust’s madeleine cake from A la Recherche du Temps Perdut – Remembrance of Things Past) the sad circumstances when their daughter was actually obliged to prostitute herself for the well being of the family.
An uninformed reader might think that this type of situation is part of past, that nowadays Thailand is more civilized and proud of their family roots. Well, it still happens, and I myself know of a few cases in which parents asked their daughters to work in the sex industry just to provide the family with money. I have even heard, from trustworthy sources, that some parents leave their underage daughters alone with different ‘friends of the family’, while they are being sponsored to go shopping.
But, to get back to the story and its symbols, I have to mention one of the ways the author tries to make the reader feel sympathetic to the girl’s sad destiny. The family has been feeding a small bird kept in a cage for quite a while. So, on the day of the festival the father decides to free the bird after making merit to the monks. What is interesting is the fact that the bird has been caged for three years and it cannot really fly. It is exactly the same period of time that the daughter has been working for the ‘dark glasses’. Eventually the bird flies away with great difficulty and the parents return home glad that they’ve done a good deed.
It is obvious that the author tries to speak up the parents’ wishes of freeing their daughter of her burden. But they cannot do it out of financial reasons. By setting the bird free, the father thinks he’s doing the right thing, but in fact in his subconscious he would have liked to give his daughter a second, a better chance, a new life. Like the bird who has been living for so long in a cage, not knowing anything else but the near surroundings of its dwellings, the girl seems to be trapped in his parents’ home, seems to be trapped into prostitution.
But the father didn’t realize that the bird could not look after itself, having no previous experience in the real world. When he arrived home in the evening from the temple he found his boy in tears with his prize in his hand. The prize was exactly their bird which he had so easily taken down after chasing it with his friends while playing games in the field. While the father, mother and boy were feeling sorry for the bird, their daughter returns home, walking down the path to the house. The mother starts crying, but the author doesn’t mention who is she crying for? Is she grieving because the bird has died or for her daughter’s destiny.
I think that the woman is crying out of pity for herself, her husband and of course her daughter. She realizes that the girl will not be able to leave the house-cage and start her own life. If she does, she will end up getting killed, just like the bird (metaphorically speaking).
After I had finished the story I felt sad and I needed a few minutes just for myself to do some thinking. I thought of all the girls I’ve met and heard of, especially those who became trapped in a cage they could never escape without deep scars on their souls and minds, and in some case even worse.
The story has outstanding literary and social merits. It tries to wake up the awareness of the Thai educated public about such a taboo subject.
Photo from Dr. Helmut Lukas' 
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