The Second Biggest Nothing

by Colin Cotterill

  That evening, two young plainclothes army officers found me at my local café. Boua was at a policy meeting. The soldiers came directly to me even though we’d never met. They sat down at my table, introduced themselves and produced a manila envelope. From it they took two large photographs. Both were close-ups of my man.

  “Is this him?” one asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Would you be prepared to act as an eye witness in the arrest of this person?” asked the other.

  I said “yes” immediately but after they’d thanked me and left I started to think of all the reasons why I should have said “no.” My life hadn’t seen a great deal of excitement up until then. I’d studied, I’d traveled, I’d worked in a cinema. But I hadn’t lived the adventures I saw on the screen. Then, suddenly, there I was front seat at an assassination and on the trail of a man with a loaded gun. I was playing the sheriff role but I honestly didn’t know who the good guys were. What if the military had planned the kill? What if the shooter was a patriot? I knew Doumer was no angel. How dare I condemn his killers? But I’d pushed that wagon up to the top of the hill and those wheels had a habit of building up speed on the way down.

  Late that night, I was awoken by the hammering on the door of our tiny apartment.

  “Siri,” someone shouted, “come and drink with us. We’re celebrating.”

  I could only open the door a few centimeters when the bed was down and through the gap I saw my young military friends. They nodded and gestured for me to come. I told Boua a classmate had just . . . no, I can’t remember what lie I told her. But she believed me because I’d been an honest man until then. If I felt any guilt, it was diluted in fear for my own life.

  I was driven back to my man’s apartment building opposite the tram stop. As we entered, the concierge was being led away. I was told to wait in the foyer. An older military man in a tracksuit silently waited with me. There were no sounds of doors being broken down, no gunshots, no shouted threats. But, ten minutes after our arrival, half-a-dozen soldiers in plain clothes came down the staircase escorting a man in pajamas with a sisal bag over his head. He wasn’t cuffed or shackled, which made the situation more tense than was necessary. They stood their prisoner in front of me and pulled off his hood.

  He still wore the crust of sleep around his eyes.

  “Monsieur Paiboun,” said one of the young officers, “is this the man you saw at the Hotel Rothschild pointing a gun in the direction of the President yesterday afternoon?”

  I was distraught that he should have used my name. I put my trembling hands in my pockets.

  “It’s him,” I said.

  “And did you follow him from the hotel to this apartment at 235 Constantinople immediately after the assassination?”

  “I did,” I said.

  “Should we not ask him why?” said my man.

  There were six guards around him. Surely one of them could have told him to stop talking. But, no.

  “Because, whoever little Monsieur Paiboun is,” he said, “whoever he works for, we will learn of it. When I am released, I shall find him. If they foolishly decide to execute me, my brothers will find him. We will find him and we will take his life apart piece by piece, friend by friend. And when there remains only him, we will take him apart even more slowly and painfully, organ by organ, until there is nothing left. But long before the end he will have regretted this day.”

  At last the guards took his arms and half-carried him to the street and the waiting van. Before climbing aboard, he looked back at me and gestured a knife across his throat. And then he smiled. And the smile was more frightening than anything he’d said.

  Chapter Four

  The Widow Ghost

  Siri and Daeng were sitting on their bamboo recliners on the bank of the Mekong looking out to the pinpricks of light on the far bank. Siri had crossed the river in both directions and could have been killed doing so a number of times in any number of ways. But Mother Khong always looked so innocent, as if you could just wade your way through it, pick up supplies on the Thai side and float back over. This time of year it was at its most sly. Escapees often waited for the end of the monsoon floods only to find themselves carried south on the current.

  “I can’t believe you haven’t told me this story before,” said Daeng.

  “Have you told me all yours?” Siri asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Exactly,” said Siri. “We have a combined age of . . . several hundred years. We need untold stories to entertain each other in our dotage.”

  “You don’t think your involvement in the assassination of a president is a priority A-plus story?”

  “I was just a witness. I have many more exciting stories than that. If I’d killed him myself it would have been the first story out of my mouth. I just happened to follow a coconspirator.”

  “One who promised to take you apart organ by organ. Did you ever find out who he was?”

  “There was nothing in the press. No public trial. The only version of events on record is that of the drunken Russian émigré. Before his execution at the guillotine he claimed that he was driven in a trance to kill heads of state. Officially, the man I followed wasn’t involved.”

  “And unofficially?”

  “I met the army surgeon again a few years later. I was a qualified doctor by then. We were at a reception. He was drunk. He told me more than he was probably supposed to. He said the second shooter was a Corsican. He’d been in North America establishing a foothold for his family in various illegal activities. Some years earlier his two brothers had been in Annam setting up a network to send Chinese opium to Marseille. It was around the time Doumer was in Vietnam trying to find money to fund his projects. For two years he’d bought up the entire opium harvest and it still wasn’t enough, so he started to eat away at some of the private contractors who had established networks. The Corsicans had set up such an organization. Doumer made an offer to take over their trade, but the brothers were answerable to the family. They refused him.”

  “And I bet they had an accident,” said Daeng.

  “A truck they were traveling in exploded. The authorities said it was a petrol tank leak, but some of the workers said they’d seen men with military haircuts creeping around the night before. Doumer denied any involvement but the Corsicans knew better. The younger brother, my man, was on the boil for a long time. That’s why the family sent him to the States. But the Corsicans have short fuses and long memories. He watched the news of Doumer’s return to France and fumed when the old man assumed the senate seat for Corsica. There were those who suggested Doumer was merely carrying his opium business home. The family suffered again at his hand and the elders finally gave the green light for the younger brother to return to France. By then, Doumer had become president and the rest we know.”

  “And you think the Godfathers still have a black list with your name on it, Siri?”

  “It’s not impossible, Daeng. There are still Corsicans in Laos left over from the opium heydays of the forties and fifties. They’re married to Lao women and waiting for opportunities. Any one of them could be related to my man. There could be a contract out on me for old times’ sake.”

  “You see, Ugly?” said Daeng to the dog. “This is what happens when you allow strangers to attach notes to your nether regions.”

  “And that’s odd too,” said Siri. “Ugly doesn’t let anyone near him. A head pat’s the most he can handle. He’s not going to stand still for five minutes while an assassin ties a ribbon to his tail, is he now?”

  “Yet, he obviously did.”

  “Curious.”

  Daeng poured them both a glass of homemade rice whisky, and they let it flow over their palates before allowing it to drop and burn holes in their livers. Around then, someone on the Thai side was apparently blown up by an illegal propane gas tank. They recognized
the sound. It happened often.

  “What I suggest . . .” said Daeng.

  “Yes?”

  “. . . is that we do absolutely nothing.”

  “I thought that’s what we were doing.”

  “We don’t want paranoia to set in.”

  “Why does everyone on the planet think I’m paranoid?”

  “Exactly. I suggest we just work on the small and solvable problems.”

  “Such as?”

  “I’m glad you asked,” said Daeng. “You remember Granny Far from the skirt bank?”

  “How could I forget her?” said Siri. “We’re keeping her alive, aren’t we?”

  The skirt bank was one of Madam Daeng’s many community projects. More and more women she knew were running into financial strife and were selling what items of value they had to keep their families fed. Many had already sold their silk phasin skirts for far less than they were worth. Their family heirlooms were lost forever. Siri and Daeng had come into some good luck as a result of a drug deal that went wrong. They happened to have been in the right place at the right time. It was no fortune. Enough, Siri thought, for a nice little car and sufficient petrol to run it for a while. But Daeng had convinced Siri that they should use that money to set up a loan service. The women could deposit their phasins at Daeng’s shop. She would give them a fair price for the skirt and, one day, when the spirits were in a more convivial mood, they could pay back the loan and reclaim their goods.

  The spirits were obviously in no hurry to heap blessings on the hapless women because Daeng’s spare room was starting to look like a fabric warehouse. Mr. Geung, currently doing whatever it was that grooms did on their honeymoons at vegetable farms, was the curator of what he called the sin bin. He had no written records but he had a remarkable nose. If anyone returned and claimed their treasure he could sniff it out in no time.

  Granny Far had long since lost her valuable phasin collection to unscrupulous dealers on the Thai side. But she still had an assortment of chain-link silver belts. Her children and grandchildren, and all but one nephew, had fled to the camps across the river. The anticipated arrival of money from her relatives in third countries had yet to materialize. So, from time to time, the old lady would ride her bicycle over to Daeng’s noodle shop, have a bowl of her favorite spicy number two and call Daeng to one side to discuss a little business.

  That evening, the business had been entirely different.

  “Her nephew,” said Daeng.

  “What about him?” said Siri. “He’s a nasty little shrew if I remember rightly. Did he run off with the old lady’s belt collection? Wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “No, he’s dead.”

  “Ah, well. Then I apologize to his spirit for being so negative. Someone shoot him?”

  “He died in his sleep.”

  “Really? How old was he?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Hmm.”

  “He’d worked the night shift in the kitchen at the Russian Club,” said Daeng. “The curfew’s flexible at the moment with all the journalists in town. He came home at two-ish and went to bed. Granny Far tried to raise him at nine but he was dead. No wounds.”

  “Any vomit—saliva?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I hope our donations to the family were generous enough to cover a nice budget cremation.”

  “Siri, he’s still there.”

  “Still where?”

  “On his bed roll on the floor.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I promised her I’d take you there to have a look at him.”

  “Oh, did you?”

  “Yup.”

  “You do know I’m not a coroner anymore?”

  “It’s like riding a bicycle, Siri. You never forget.”

  “What about my replacement, the good Doctor Mot?”

  “About whom you were quoted as saying, ‘If they weren’t stuck on, he wouldn’t know a breast from a buttock’?”

  “I did say that, didn’t I? What about Dtui?”

  “She and Phosy are taking care of their journalist group. And Granny Far specifically asked for you.”

  “Why?”

  “There are . . . unusual circumstances.”

  The thing Siri liked most about his Pigeon bicycle was its padded passenger seat and the fact that Madam Daeng had to wrap one arm around his waist and push one breast against his back while they were riding together. Whenever he hit a pothole, a spontaneous samba ground them together. There were few potholes that escaped his attention. But Granny Far’s house was only ten blocks away along the river. She was on the doorstep when they arrived. Ugly was with them of course. He hadn’t expected to be on duty that evening, so he trotted drowsily to the spot where they parked the bicycle and collapsed beside it.

  “Lucky it’s not been a hot day,” said Siri. “Or we should start to get a whiff of the boy by now.”

  He and Daeng followed Far to a room at the rear of the house, where the nephew lay beneath a grey mosquito net. The youth’s face was contorted into a horrible death mask. His hands were poised in front of him as if warding off an attack. And he was wearing a nightdress; a woman’s pink, sleeveless nightdress with Disney dalmatians printed all over it.

  “I take it he wasn’t given to homosexual tendencies?” said Siri.

  “No, Doctor,” said Granny Far, “he had a lot of young lady friends.”

  “And he didn’t dress in girls’ clothes at any other time of the day?”

  “No, Doctor,” said Far. “Would you like to cut him open now? I have an old plastic table cloth we could put down.”

  “No need,” said Siri.

  “Was he poisoned?” she asked.

  “No, Granny Far,” said Siri. “He wasn’t poisoned. He was haunted to death.”

  “Oh, I say,” said the old woman, and she held her palm to her chest. Siri was certain she had some good luck talisman hanging there. He had one too. It could often mean the difference between life and death. He instinctively reached for his own stone amulet beneath his shirt.

  “Is there anything we can do?” Daeng asked.

  “On the way in I couldn’t help noticing the pile of furniture in the yard,” said Siri.

  “It’s all the old stuff,” said Far, “and wood from the old trees out back. I loaded it there this afternoon.”

  “So I take it your temple no longer provides a service?”

  “All the monks have gone, bar one,” said Far. “And his only functions seem to be grumbling and insulting anyone who wastes his time with dead loved ones.”

  “So you’d sooner do it here?” said Daeng.

  “It’s been the family home since the last century,” said Far.

  They wrapped the corpse in the old plastic tablecloth and carried it to the familial pyre, where they sat the nephew on a chunky Chinese chair. They knew they were supposed to inform the authorities and stand back and watch the cogs turn slowly, but there wouldn’t have been much of the nephew left by the time they’d got his file up to date. There’d be the issue of lighting a fire without village headman permission, but Far said she could handle that.

  “Doctor, could you say a few words?” said Granny Far, still attempting to ignite her candle with a cigarette lighter.

  “What kind of words?” said Siri.

  “I don’t know. Something fitting.”

  “I don’t know anything religious.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “How’s your French?” he asked.

  “Non-existent, Doctor.”

  “Then here goes,” said Siri.

  “J’avais auparavant,

  Vaincu de la jeunesse,

  Autres dames aimé,

  Ma faute je confesse.”

  “That’s lovely,” said Granny Fa
r. “What does it mean?”

  “It is my desire that your nephew finds a comfortable place in nirvana,” said Siri.

  She offered him a silver belt for his trouble but he refused.

  Back at the restaurant they locked up and retired for the night. They lay on the mattress in the familiar spoon position. Daeng caressed her husband’s neck as they watched the moon rise through the open window.

  “You’ve heard of that type of thing before?” Daeng asked.

  “A lot,” said Siri. “But since the beginning of the exodus—thousands of young men fleeing to the West—it seems to happen unsettlingly often. It’s almost an epidemic. We hear about it in letters to relatives all the time. But I’ve never witnessed it first hand before.”

  “But what causes it?”

  “Belief,” said Siri. “Or should I say, misbelief. In many ways the young men feel they’ve failed in their duties as protectors of the family. They find themselves away from their support network. They don’t have access to the shaman or to their village spirits or their ancestors. All those paths you could take in stressful times are closed. It makes them more susceptible to the malevolent spirits that have hitched a ride with them.”

  “But Far’s nephew didn’t go anywhere.”

  “But his family did and they took their beliefs with them. He felt he’d failed them by not going with them. He was left alone with the widow ghost who sucks out men’s souls when they’re sleeping. The Hmong call her tsog tsuam. In the beginning, she might make appearances like a movie extra in his dream. She’ll have the role of a waitress or a passerby. But then he’ll notice her . . . expect to see her. And with every dream she becomes more prominent. He tries not to sleep but can’t fight it. He’s heard about her from his friends. He knows she’s only interested in young men, so he goes to bed dressed as a woman to trick her. But, by then, it’s often too late.”