There it was: the connection. Siri interrupted her gossip. “Do you know what happened to the family H’Loi worked for?”
“The soldier’s family, you mean? No, uncle. All I know is she found herself stuck here without a job. But she got lucky and caught a local chap.”
“Do you have any idea where they live?”
“Of course.”
“Is it far?”
“About half an hour. Do you want to go there? I can show you.”
Siri sent Dtui back to the guesthouse with Panoy and the guide. She had been anxious to talk to him about another pressing issue, but she decided it could wait. He had a feeling it was something serious and promised he’d return as soon as he could. He set off across the rolling hills at the montagnard girl’s heels. Very few hikers in Huaphan strayed from well-trodden paths for good reason. In fact, even the well-trodden paths were known to explode from time to time.
At a village so simple it made the previous hamlet look like Manhattan, they met H’Loi. She was a plain, jolly girl in her thirties who lived with an extremely ugly Lao man much older than she was. The marriage had given her legal status. Necessity, for the victimized montagnards, was the mother of invention. The woman had already been fluent in French and Vietnamese as well as two local dialects. Since her marriage, she’d mastered Lao. In any other society she’d be a highly sought-after personal assistant or interpreter. In this village she made babies and cooked. She knew there was no point in arguing with her fate.
She sat in her simple house with Siri and was happy to discuss her time with the colonel and his family. She’d been recruited by the colonel’s wife when they were at their previous posting in Ban Methuot in Vietnam’s central highlands. It wasn’t as if she’d had any choice. She was lucky to have any kind of work at all. She’d made the thousand-mile journey to Huaphan with them for their next posting. Although the wife could be something of an ogre, the daughter, Hong Lan, was sweet and, in H’Loi’s charming phraseology, as smart as a bath full of judges. Apart from being maid, cook, and tutor, H’Loi had also been the girl’s companion. They became close.
When Hong Lan fell sick, H’Loi had gone to the hospital every day. Often she stayed overnight. Hong Lan said it was just a little stomach pain, but the doctor had confided once that it was more serious than that. She had to have two operations to make things right. The girl was in the Kilometer 8 Hospital for over a month, recovering. Then, one day, the mother turned up out of the blue and had her transferred to a military hospital just outside Xam Dtai. That had been too far for H’Loi to travel every day so she hadn’t seen Hong Lan until the girl returned home.
Hong Lan hadn’t been herself after that. She was still very weak, but everyone said the operation had been a success and it wouldn’t be long before she was well again. But H’Loi wasn’t so sure. All those positive words didn’t seem to change Hong Lan’s condition one little bit. They talked a lot in those days. Once, the girl confided that she’d fallen in love during her stay at Kilometer 8. That came as something of a shock to H’Loi because she’d never suspected anything of the sort.
Although Hong Lan didn’t tell her who the man was, she talked about him as if she knew him intimately. She said there was good reason why she couldn’t mention his name.
But, by then, H’Loi had already started hearing rumors. She knew about the black magicians and their love potions and their hypnotism and their sacrifices. H’Loi’s people had their own share of occult practices so she knew how dangerous they could all be. In spite of her love for the girl she’d nannied for nine years, H’Loi feared she didn’t know what she was saying. She’d been bewitched. She’d never before talked of love, never shown an interest in men. Then, suddenly, after six weeks in a cave hospital, she’d fallen head over heels in love with a man, someone she hardly knew; a man who was totally wrong for her.
When she finally confronted Hong Lan with her suspicions, H’Loi didn’t pretend to mask the hatred she felt for the Cubans. It didn’t matter to her whether they were black, pink, or cobalt blue. They were bad. She told Hong Lan they were devils, and her relationship with the girl soured.
The colonel’s death had been so unexpected it left them all stunned. The war was over and the family had dreamed of a normal, happy life. As a military family under the Vietminh, they’d never had a permanent home. So close to their dream and suddenly the old soldier had managed to get himself killed. After the funeral, the mother started preparations for their journey back to Vietnam. They had a small army pension, enough for a little house. Perhaps Hong Lan could even go to college.
But, just before the departure, the girl was kidnapped. She was taken right from their wooden shack in broad daylight. At the time, the mother had been away making final arrangements for transport. H’Loi was out picking fruit for the journey. When she got back to the house, Hong Lan was gone. There were signs of a struggle. A strongbox had been broken into and the housekeeping money was missing. According to H’Loi, everyone knew who was responsible. There was a huge search. The colonel’s old regiment was mobilized. They scoured the whole province. After two weeks, when there was still no sign of the girl or the Cubans, everyone assumed they’d taken her out of Laos. The mother had returned to Vietnam, leaving H’Loi to fend for herself.
Siri had so many questions about this amazing story he didn’t know where to begin.
“Why didn’t you return with the mother?” he asked.
“She didn’t ask me to. She blamed me for not watching her daughter that day. She vanished with all their belongings and my wages, what little there was owing to me. I didn’t have any money at all. The regional command sympathized and they kindly found me a husband.”
“Very nice of them,” Siri said. “And you didn’t hear anything else of Hong Lan?”
“Oh, there were stories. This is the world capital for rumors. I’m sure you know that, uncle.”
“Were there any credible ones?”
“Not really. There was one that they’d murdered her and buried the body. Another was that the blacks had smuggled her to Cuba to use as a sex slave.”
“And what do you think happened?”
She gave him a look as if it had been a very long time since anyone had sought out her opinion on anything. “I really have no idea, uncle. I’d like to think, spell or no spell, that she enjoyed this love she thought she’d found, and that she’s still living in blissful ignorance somewhere.”
“How was Hong Lan’s relationship with her mother?” Siri asked, again catching the woman by surprise.
“I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. I doubt I’ll ever see the old witch again. You know? If they were close, they wouldn’t have needed me. It was as if she’d done her national duty, produced the child the colonel expected, then left it to grow by itself. The mother was politically active. She ran seminars and organized this and that. But I never once saw her hold her daughter. I wasn’t the first nanny. The girl had had half a dozen before I came along.”
“Yet she turned out OK?”
“She turned out lovely. See what happens when you have a montagnard looking after your children?”
“I’ll keep it in mind when I have my next.” They both laughed, and the husband poked his ugly head in through the window to see what was happening.
H’Loi ignored him. “I often wonder whether she would have been so susceptible to the magic if she’d had a little more love from her family.”
“The day of the kidnap, whose decision was it for you to go and pick fruit?”
H’Loi laughed again. “Do you really expect me to remember such a thing? I’m just a simple housewife, remember?”
“Madam,” Siri said in all sincerity, “I have met many simple housewives in my life, and, believe me, you are not one of them. You are a very astute, intelligent woman.” She looked at him with her mouth open, astounded. Never in her life had she received such a compliment. The fact that it had come from a man of letters, a physician no le
ss, made it all the more incredible. All the more profound. A solitary tear gathered momentum in the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek.
“I suppose it had to be Hong Lan,” she said, wiping it hurriedly away.
“What did?”
“Who suggested I pick fruit. She was the only one who ate the stuff. I’d never seen anyone get through so much fruit without spending the day in the toilet. Her mother lived on a diet of rice and pork rind for years. That was probably the root of her nastiness.”
“Do you believe Hong Lan might still be alive?”
“Doctor … honestly, I don’t feel her presence anymore.”
Siri got lost three times on his walk down from the hills, but as any way down would lead him to the only road, he was never in a state of panic. He arrived at the guesthouse just as the day ended. He found himself mesmerized by the setting sun. He saw it as a huge bullet puncturing the horizon in slow motion. The horizon bled, red seeping from the entry wound, and oozing across the landscape. It occurred to him that forensic pathology might be damaging his appreciation of nature.
Before he reached the front steps of the building, he saw Dtui and Panoy under a don soak, the sad tree. He walked over to them.
“Hello,” he said. “Having a picnic?”
“They won’t let us in,” Dtui told him.
“In what?”
“In Guesthouse Number One.”
“Why on earth not?”
“They say this little girl here”—Panoy looked up and smiled and tried to reach for Siri’s eyebrows—“is illegal. They say they can’t allow guests who are not on the official Party register.”
“But she stayed here last night.”
Dtui put on the strict tone of the guesthouse manageress. “‘That was an absolute infringement of regulations for which somebody will be punished.’ If they’d known we’d smuggled her in, they’d probably have shot us on the spot.”
“I take it you’ve already argued the point?”
She smiled. “Isn’t my face still blue?”
“Then let us once more attempt to champion our opposition to silly rules.”
The manageress, still in her apron and army fatigues, stood at the top of the steps with her arms folded. It appeared she’d anticipated this second foray. Siri took a moment to size up the enemy. She’d never formally introduced herself, though Siri had noticed her lurking in the background of every meeting, meal, and melee. She was fortyish and formidable, but Siri had battled worse.
“Good evening, Comrade,” Siri smiled.
The woman responded with a line she’d obviously been rehearsing. “I’m sorry, Doctor. She can’t come in. There are rules. I’ve already reported last night’s infringement.”
“She doesn’t need a room,” he tried.
“She isn’t registered. She can’t come in.”
“This is a guesthouse.”
“Not that kind of guesthouse, it isn’t.”
“You mean, the kind that admits guests?”
“Only guests that are on the list.” She was an immovable object. “Rules are rules. Where would we be if we all went around bending them?”
“Quite right. And what is your stance with regard to evidence?” said the irresistible force known as Dr. Siri.
“I … you what?”
“Evidence, Comrade. I’m the national coroner. I’ve come north to collect evidence for the president.”
“Evidence is things.”
“It certainly can be things, as you rightly say. It could be photographs or even the spoken word. Or it could be a person who bears evidence.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at.”
“This little girl”—he dragged Dtui forward with Panoy in her arms—“is covered in fingerprints.”
“She … ? There aren’t fingerprints on people.”
“Obviously you haven’t been keeping abreast of world developments in forensics. Why do you think we didn’t let her shower last evening? According to the law—and I’m also an attorney, so I know what I’m talking about—this little girl is not technically a person. She’s a corpus delicti. In short, she’s my evidence. Naturally, if there were some way to remove the fingerprints from her and take those to the Justice Department, I would do so. But I’m sure you realize how nasty that would be. She is the evidence that carries the prints. So you don’t have to worry about her being registered, do you?”
“I … I don’t?”
“No. Because by the letter of the law, as she isn’t a person, she can’t be a guest.” He winked at her and smiled. He doubted she was silly enough to believe such rubbish but he had given her a way around her rules.
“I … I suppose.”
“I’m sure Comrade Lit of the Security Division will confirm this when he gets here.”
The woman’s left eye looked first at Siri, then at the child. The right eye did so a split second later. Both eyes eventually settled on Dtui. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”
Dtui shrugged. “I’m in medicine. Law’s way above my head. I wouldn’t have known where to start. I was sure, as legal adviser to the president, Comrade Siri here would be able to clear things up for you.”
“Well, yes. I mean. If only I’d known.”
Panoy slept soundly on the spare bed in Dtui’s room. Siri and Dtui sat out front with their feet up on the balcony wall. Dtui had just finished explaining her dilemma. Siri grunted.
“I mean, it is a marvelous compliment,” she said, looking up at the cliff that towered over them like a purgatorial mother-in-law. “I mean to say, it isn’t as if he doesn’t have choices. He’s somebody. He’ll probably keep climbing till he’s—what?—Prime Minister or something. Women like men with power. But if he got that far, I doubt he’d want me gabbling on about his politics. It would be sure to annoy him. Perhaps I’d be able to tone it down a little. I could run the house and leave the country to him.”
Siri took a sip of his tea and smiled.
“I mean,” she went on, “he’d have to make changes, too. That’s what a good marriage is—compromise. Right? I’m sure you and Boua had to make compromises. And look, you were together for a hundred and some years. It just takes a little work.” She sipped her tea also.
They watched an egret, caught in the light from the balcony, swoop down from a ledge and perform an almost perfect loop-de-loop before continuing its gliding descent. It was worth a comment but Dtui was preoccupied. “I mean, how many offers like this is someone like me going to get? Perhaps I should think about that. If I pass this up, there I’ll be, an old maid with varicose veins and a moustache, always ruing this lost opportunity.”
A little girlish sigh escaped from Panoy, dreaming in the room. Dtui let it fade away then continued. “I suppose the question is which would I regret more, marrying him or not marrying him? My ma says a man is never going to be sweeter than he was on the day he proposed to you. She said that’s the best you get. Once you’re deposited in the wife bank, he never has to make that effort again. He really knocked me flat with his speech, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a subcommittee to write it for him. I didn’t see any emotion. He recited it like he was making a presentation to the grand assembly.”
She swung her feet down from the wall and stood with her hands on the balcony railing as if she were about to address a large gathering. “And the damned permission form.” She almost spat out the words. “What arrogance. What spinelessness. Would he have to get Party permission before every decision he made? Everyone at the regional office knew he was going to propose before I did. Is that how he’d run his personal life? ‘Dtui, darling. I think it would be nice if we made love tonight. I’ll just pop down to the Social Relations Committee suboffice and fill out an F27b.’” She blushed. “Ooh, sorry, Doc.” He raised his eyebrows in forgiveness.
“I mean”—she appeared to be on the last lap now— “what kind of creep wouldn’t have the backbone to stand up to a room full of bureaucrats?
And who does he think he is—negotiating me into a marriage without any flirting or wooing? Surely a girl deserves that? Perhaps he knew I wouldn’t have any of it. I’d have knocked him back at the first glimmer of a come-on. The shock marriage card was the only one he had to play.
“But this is all academic, Doc.” She looked over her shoulder to see if he was still there. “You know why? Because when I get married, it’s not going to be to somebody who’s suitable or well-off or looks good in a uniform. I’m going to marry someone who turns my insides to soy paste. I’m going to marry someone I hate to leave when I go to work in the morning: someone I miss all day. I’m going to marry someone I love and I’m not going to settle for anything less. I could no sooner love Comrade Lit than I could learn to like this horrible creepy building. No, you self-assured Party machine—go find yourself another ‘suitable’ woman to appoint to the wife position. I’m out.”
She heaved a sigh of relief and sat heavily back onto her chair. Siri put his hand on hers.
“Thanks, Doc,” she said. “I knew you’d sort it all out for me.”
“Glad to have been of service,” he told her.
Laoness
Mr. Geung had followed the coastline of the Num Ngum reservoir for twelve miles. He’d spent the night in an abandoned fishing hut on the bank. The first thing he noticed when he woke was his own smell. He could hardly remember why he was coated in this dark brown gunk that had hardened to a shell, and the clear water was right there in front of his door. He walked, fully dressed, apart from his boots, into the reservoir. It was a wonderful feeling. Not till he was in up to his neck did he undress. His shoulder stung a little but the cool water soothed his aching muscles, soaked his flaky skin, and washed away his only protection against insects.
What makes the dengue mosquito so deadly is its dishonest use of time. Once the sun dips below the horizon, people know that it’s mosquito frenzy time. They wear long sleeves, put on repellent, and light their coils. At night they sleep under nets. It’s a type of unspoken contract between man and his bloodsucking foe. But the dengue mosquito is a contract breaker. She strikes in broad daylight when you’re sweating in the fields, when you’re swinging on your hammock in the shade, even when you’re sitting stark naked beside Num Ngum reservoir, waiting for your clothes to dry.
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