The Second Biggest Nothing

by Colin Cotterill

“One of the first things Jim did when he arrived here was buy a new inhaler refill,” said Siri. “We’re guessing he knew Porn from the time he lived here. I don’t know if he contacted her, or if he bumped into her at the surgery. But it obviously screwed up her plans that she was recognized. Maybe he knew something about her background in Saigon. Hard to say until we find her.”

  “There’s still a lot that doesn’t make sense,” said Daeng.

  “Like what?” asked Bruce.

  “Like why she’d be so stupid as to put her labels on all of her bottles and refills,” said Daeng. “Either she wanted to get caught or she was sure nobody would notice. She knew, given the seriousness of his condition that Jim wouldn’t survive an attack without his inhaler.”

  “What about Silver City?” Bruce asked.

  “The Women’s Union had keys for all the USAID buildings—I guess because there was a lot in the warehouses that could be used or sold. Although as yet, nobody has done so,” said Siri. “Porn was here in the old CIA days, so she’d remember the famous Ferrari and know what a coup it would be for a journalist to get a ride in it. She had time and opportunity to puncture the tank and set up the leis. She couldn’t have anticipated the pond. She’d have been hoping the car hit a tree or went over a cliff and caught fire, destroying all the evidence.”

  “And given what she did to Madam Lah and your dear friend Civilai, you still like her?” asked Bruce.

  “It takes time to hate someone you love,” said Daeng.

  “If she did this—” said Siri.

  “If?” said Bruce.

  “All the evidence points to her, I agree,” said Daeng. “But after a lifetime of experience, it seems like you should be able to judge a person. If you’re totally wrong, it’s as much a reflection on you as on her. Look, you know, Bruce, this has been a real drain on both of us. Why don’t we give it a break now and come at it again when we’re fresh.”

  “We’re both buggered,” said Siri.

  “I completely understand,” said Bruce. “Look, I’ve got two minutes left on this tape. How about I ask just two more questions and we’ll call it a day?”

  “Fair enough,” said Siri.

  “How was Dr. Porn planning to do away with you, Daeng?”

  “She’d been treating me for rheumatoid arthritis for a couple of years,” said Daeng. “She prescribed methotrexate. Originally, I was supposed to take it once a week. After our last appointment she changed the dosage to once a day.”

  Daeng yawned and leaned against her husband.

  “And what’s the problem with that?” asked Bruce.

  “It’s very toxic in high doses,” said Siri. “Daeng has been known to have a drink every once and a while. That and methotrexate combined would have been enough to kill her.”

  “So, why isn’t she dead?” asked Bruce.

  Siri could barely keep his eyes open.

  “All right, Son,” he said. “Time for a nap.”

  He tried to stand but the room twisted.

  “I said why isn’t she dead?” asked Bruce.

  He had raised his voice as if talking to the deaf. The camera was down at his waist. He was clearly angry that nobody was answering his question. Daeng’s usual flashing light warning system was dull. Siri tried to lunge forward but his reflexes were shot. He looked at Daeng and—with the few facial features that still worked—they shared an expression of apology. The window shutter was open but they couldn’t shout for help. The clouds outside grew cumbersome and heavy and dropped to the ground, followed by the sky.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Thai that Binds

  “Oh, at last,” said Bruce. “You know? In the movies I’d just toss a glass of water in your face and you’d splutter into consciousness. That was your third glass. I thought you’d had a heart attack, or I’d drowned you. For obvious reasons I didn’t want to get the room too wet.”

  Siri was the first to come around. He could see the young man in a blur and hear his words, but it was as if he were in the audience watching a scene from a play. He blinked a few times to clear his sight. He and Daeng were lying on the floor back to back, tied together at the wrists with their ankles bound. He tried to speak but whatever the boy had put in the coconut water was powerful stuff. The Lao skirts had been piled around them a meter high and Bruce sat on the top of one pile like a mischievous elf. There was a scent of lighter fluid in the room.

  “Yes, it was perhaps a bit stronger than it needed to be,” said Bruce. “But I really didn’t expect you to drink that much.”

  Daeng groaned.

  “I’m not sure I’ll have the time for both of you to regain your speech. I have a plane to catch this evening. At least your ears are working. Two weeks, just like I promised. Not as smooth as I’d hoped. It all started off so well too. Good fortune with the journalists, eh? Right on time. Civilai desperate for sleep popping the Ibuprofen I prescribed for him. And you, Lady Daeng, my only failure. So proud of yourself. But, Daeng, you should have gone with the drug option. Burning to death is so . . . icky. With all this antique cotton you’ll go up a lot faster than Comrade Civilai, but it’ll still be a wicked way to go. And it’ll be a shame for you to leave this earth without knowing what the point was, right? So I’ll chat for a little while, if you don’t mind.”

  He was flicking the top of an engraved Zippo lighter open and closed and rolling the flint wheel with his thumb. Daeng stirred.

  “I’ll begin at the end. Or, a bit before the end because the end hasn’t happened yet. Seksak who runs the Fuji Photo Lab did have a cousin named Keophoxai who went to study in Australia when he was ten or thereabouts and eventually became Bruce. That much is true. But it wasn’t me. Theirs was a big extended family with more cousins and nephews and nieces than you could spray with insecticide. Your dear old friend Dr. Porn was his unpopular aunt. She’d gone off to fight the royalists, so she wasn’t the most loved family member. But I’ll get back to her later.

  “The Australian embassy had language classes back then and Bruce was their brightest student. They arranged a scholarship for him, and he breezed through high school in Sydney, got into university and studied film production. Again, all true.

  “And then, there’s me. I’m Thai from the northeast so, technically and historically, I’m Lao too. I was a keen student but I came from a poor family and I didn’t have any opportunities to study. My mother was a widow from a young age. My father got shot by the border patrol. Smuggling. I was the only son so I stayed home and worked the fields. We struggled. My mother went away to the town for a few weeks from time to time. She said she’d found work in a shop but I wasn’t stupid. I could smell booze on her clothes and I knew what she’d been doing. But, good luck to her, was my philosophy. Better than starving to death. She was pretty then and we needed the money. When it ran out she’d get back on the bus. I got used to the system.

  “Then, one day, and I’ll never forget it, she came home with a farang—a white guy. She introduced him to me as Uncle Henry. He was tall. He had a blond buzz cut and phenomenal teeth—even and white like the man in the Darkie toothpaste ads. He said something I didn’t understand and held out his hand to me. I didn’t know what to do with it.

  “Shake his hand, Dom,” my mum said.

  “Dom, that’s me. So I grabbed his fingers and shook that hand the way you’d shake dust out of a mat. And they laughed. I didn’t know why. But I laughed too. And that was the start of the happiest two years of my life. As he taught me English, I learned that Henry was a pilot and that he had a disease that stopped him being able to fly anymore. The US Air Force had given him money so he could retire. And he chose our house for his retirement. Nobody worked. The rice paddies dried up and cracked in the drought. The vegetables got overrun with weeds. We ate all the pigs so there were none to mate in the fall. But if we needed something we’d drive to the market in th
e old truck Henry bought and buy whatever we needed. It was as if the money would never run out.

  “Henry bought a generator and fixed up our cabin nicely. There was nothing fancy. He didn’t want to draw attention to us. There was no TV. Nothing that you’d call a luxury. But we were a happy family. Every afternoon Henry tutored me in whatever subject we could find books for. He always said I was the brightest kid he’d ever met. I ate up everything he said. I wanted to please him. He told me stories about his parents who were both university teachers who were short-listed for Nobel Prizes, and his sister who won the Miss California beauty title in 1967, and his brother who was working his way up to being the President of America. And my mum said that nothing would make her more happy and more proud than if her son could study in a real university and become a doctor.

  “And I guess they decided that I’d go away to study. I hated the idea of being away from the house, but Henry convinced me that school wasn’t a lifetime. That I’d . . .”

  Siri coughed. “I don’t . . .” he said in a breathy voice.

  “Ah, good,” said Dom. “Communication. It can never be overrated. But, right now, you can’t interrupt me. I’m on a roll. I have a lot to say and the clock’s ticking. You’ll have your moment. Where was I? Right, he told me that in no time I’d be back with skills and a degree, and I could support my family and be someone important in the community. I told him I wanted to be a pilot like him. But he said that pilots just kill people and that I should be a doctor and help people instead. He said it would make my mother happy. And she was. After a life of abuse and struggle I could see that finally the spirits were on her side. I couldn’t disappoint her.

  “I travelled to Bangkok with Henry. We went to the Australian embassy. At the time I wondered why he’d want me to go to Australia rather than America. It was several years before I really understood.”

  Siri’s senses were returning. First came his sense of smell. The lighter fluid wasn’t on the skirts. It was on him. He felt Daeng’s index finger tapping against his hand. Dom, the boy who was not Bruce, droned on.

  “I took tests in Bangkok that were obviously designed for idiots. I was embarrassed at how easy they were. And the next thing you know I’m on a Qantas flight to Sydney. Then the blur. The classes. The bullying. The cultural explosion. The A grades, the distinctions and, wham, I’m accepted at Sydney University to study medicine. And the only thing that kept me centered through it all were the monthly letters from Henry. My mother couldn’t write so I learned of their life through him. They were such happy letters in the beginning. Every semester, money arrived in my account to cover my study fees. I didn’t socialize so my income was more than enough. My only two objectives were to graduate and go home.

  “It was 1972 when I received the letter that changed everything. Henry’s condition had deteriorated to the point that he had to go to Vietnam to see a specialist.”

  Siri tried to say something but the words crumpled together before he could organize them.

  “Yes, Good Doctor Siri,” said Dom. “I can feel your excitement. Because now is when you appear in this story. Daeng, my darling, this is the bit I want you to hear. The specialist was you, Siri, remember? Educated in Paris. Trained in tropical medicine. How could he fail to find you? As I was into my second year of study, Henry decided that I was ready to learn about his condition, echinococcosis. He described it in detail. It was a horrible, debilitating disease but it was curable. If Henry had come to Sydney he would have recovered. But he didn’t. He found you instead. He was in your clinic for four months being treated for something erroneous. You withheld his letters to me during that time. He sent me no money because you were draining his account for medicine unrelated to his illness. He sent that same medicine to my mother who had the same disease. By then he was too sick to go to America so he returned to Ubon. And there he found that my mother had died in his absence. A disease that would have been cured if you had prescribed the correct medicine.”

  “All . . . bull,” Siri managed at last. It was barely audible but the Thai was too engrossed in his own story to notice the interruption.

  “Out of his love for my mother he stayed on at our house. Any time he wrote for the next year, he mentioned you in his letters. Your cruelty. Your incompetence. And every letter concluded with the same line: ‘Siri Paiboun the fake Lao surgeon has done this to us. He has destroyed our family. He must atone. This is my final wish.’ I couldn’t stand it anymore. The payments into my account stopped. I didn’t have any money to return to Thailand or to continue my studies. I took a menial job and saved as fast as I could. In 1976 I received a letter from the village headman telling me Henry was dead. I had loved him even more than I loved my mother. Suddenly, I had nobody.”

  Siri coughed again and forced out the words, “Henry was a . . . a compulsive liar.”

  “Of course, Fake Doctor. What else could you say to protect your reputation? But me? I had been told I had to discontinue my studies. I had passed every course. I specialized in pharmacology. I was offered a post at a research laboratory. But by then I had a bigger ambition: to avenge the deaths of Henry and my mother. I befriended the Lao community in Sydney. It wasn’t too hard to convince them I was one of them. They were quick to adapt to life in Australia. We spoke English together. Then, in ’75 when the floodgates of refugees opened, I was already a respected member of the Lao welcoming committee. And through them I heard of your whereabouts, Fake Doctor. I learned where you worked and where you lived and who you loved.

  “I learned about Dr. Porn in Vientiane who had a nephew studying in Sydney. His father had died and the boy was alone. I contacted him and became his friend—in a way. I hadn’t yet formed my plan to—”

  “You should just stop and listen to the stupidity you’re talking,” growled Siri. “None of it makes sense. I was in Hanoi. Why would a US pilot go to Hanoi for medical treatment in the middle of a war? And there is no echinococcosis in Thailand. He just selected the name from a medical dictionary. You—”

  Siri fell into a coughing fit. The boy reached behind him and found his can of lighter fluid. He removed the cap and sprinkled the remainder of the liquid, not on Siri, but on Daeng. Her finger percussion became frenzied.

  “Nearly done,” said Dom. “A little bit more and we can all go on our respective ways. It turned out that Dr. Porn’s nephew wasn’t a great communicator. He rarely wrote home. Never sent photos. Even less often after his sad demise.”

  “You killed him too?” Siri asked.

  “Not really,” said the Thai. “It turned out he had a weak heart. I introduced him to cocaine: the heart-attack drug of choice. It was my first experiment with death by existing conditions. It was nothing like murder, you see. If I’d given him the cocaine and he didn’t have cardiovascular disease, I’d have been doing him a favor. It’s not at all like being a poisoner. I haven’t directly killed anyone. If you feed your friend peanut butter sandwiches every day he’d thank you and scoff the lot and suffer no more than weekly stomachaches. But, what if he was allergic to peanuts? Oops. It led me to look more closely at the sometimes lethal combinations of conditions and medicines. I got away with young Bruce’s deliverance and nobody found the body. I adopted his ID. I started to communicate with the family in Laos pretending to be him. I’d learned the Lao alphabet when I was a kid. My Lao writing wasn’t fluent but appropriate for a boy who’d spent fifteen years in Australia. Spoken Lao was easier. My village dialect was easy enough to adapt. I apologized for my slackness at not writing. Telling them how close I was to graduating. Saying I wanted to return to my homeland. I wrote to my dear Aunt Porn who was the family’s black sheep: anti-royalist, registered Communist. Nobody else spoke to her. She wrote back to me. She was surprised I knew about her. It was like Pandora’s box opened up in front of me. She told me all the gossip: about relationships, about the resources she had at her weekend surgery. I stole pharmaceuticals
and sent them to her for her stock. We became close.

  “I had Bruce’s passport. We looked similar. I put on some weight and dyed my hair like him—he had this peroxide fixation—and we could have been twins. The family met me at the airport. They hadn’t seen Bruce since he was ten so it wasn’t hard to fool them. They wanted me to stay with them but I insisted on going to a hotel. I was waiting for Dr. Porn to invite me to stay with her. She lived alone so she was reluctant at first, but we soon became comfortable with one another, and I moved into her spare room behind the weekend surgery. I pretended to like her but she was sloppy. She wasn’t one for security. Her filing cabinets weren’t locked and the medicine cabinet was always open. I’d alter the labels, change the contents and she’d hand over the drugs that would kill her patients.”

  “Why the journalists?” Siri asked.

  “See? I knew you’d be interested. I was planning to start my attack with the bread woman but there I am at the market and this guy comes up to me—this farang—and he says, “Bugger me, if it isn’t little Dom.” I recognized him from Ubon. It was Jim. He was one of Henry’s drinking and toking buddies. He’d come to stay with us a few times when he was doing stories up country. I tried to convince him he was mistaken, but he’d watched me grow up. We’d played soccer together. I guess he had that photographer’s eye that never forgot. The hair and the added weight didn’t fool him. I guess my face hadn’t changed that much. It really screwed up my plans.

  “Porn had told me about the red Ferrari and Silver City. The keys were sitting there in her office cabinet. So I got the two Aussies all fired up about taking the car for a drive. I’d emptied the inhaler he asked me for, opened a couple of beers to see them off and dropped some antibiotics in the open bottles to deaden their senses to the smell of the gasoline. I’d arrived a couple of hours early to—”

  “Boy,” said Siri. “Henry had reason to hate me, but it had nothing to do with disease or misdiagnosis. Your mother’s boyfriend was AWOL. He was a deserter and a coward and a liar.”