The Woman Who Wouldn't Die

by Colin Cotterill

  3

  The Man With a Star on His Forehead

  ‘Ah, Siri,’ said Judge Haeng. With his pimples and watery eyes and green safari shirt, the prematurely middle-aged man looked more like a frog at a desk than the head of the Public Prosecution Department. He stood and offered his hand to the white-haired doctor but, as always, avoided staring into his deep green eyes. He’d had nightmares about those eyes sucking him inside that cantankerous old head full of horrible things. Siri gave a cursory shake to the outstretched hand because he knew this show of politeness came as a result not of love for his fellow man but of blackmail. The doctor was a collector of news, you see. He had the goods on a number of senior officials gleaned from eve-of-battle confessions, records of embarrassing medical procedures, and access to official government files written in French, which few in the ruling Pathet Lao could read. He had come across information that, should it fall into the wrong hands, might signal the end of the judge’s very comfortable lifestyle. It might even lead to a spell of re-education in a distant province from which many did not return.

  Judge Haeng was the type of man who would happily arrange for an accident to befall a blackmailer. But Siri was the cordon bleu of blackmailers. All his news was stored in a number of ‘Open in the event of my untimely death’ metal deposit boxes in Laos and overseas, a fact that all his victims were made aware of from the outset. A fact that was a total fabrication. They were under his mattress. Apart from his wife, nobody else knew this tasty information. But Siri used this weapon not for evil or for financial gain, but for good. There was nothing like a little incentive to keep a government official on the straight and narrow.

  ‘I … er … read your complaint,’ said Haeng. ‘I haven’t yet submitted it to the Ministry of the Interior.’

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ Siri asked. ‘You’ve had it three days.’

  ‘I know. I know and I’m sorry. I just … Why don’t you take a seat?’

  Siri remained standing.

  ‘I was just wondering whether you might reconsider,’ said the judge.

  ‘What’s to reconsider? I’m taking a bath in the comfort of my own house when suddenly this army of nincompoops led by a midget comes charging in. And Shorty flashes his camera at my private parts, no less. I half expect to find my image pinned to every telegraph pole across the city.’

  ‘Siri, Comrade Koomki is just short of stature. If he were legally a midget he wouldn’t have been given the role of Head of Housing Allocations.’

  Siri raised his bushy eyebrows and shook his head. What was going on in the mind of this Soviet-trained bureaucrat?

  ‘Judge,’ he said, ‘I don’t care whether he’s legally a midget or not. What I care about is that he invaded my house and my privacy. He deserves to lose his job. I’m entitled to make an official complaint.’

  ‘It could be … embarrassing.’

  ‘The redder the faces the better.’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose I could be inclined to submit it …’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I could be inclined to submit it … if you could see your way to lending your country a hand just one more time.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lending a hand.’

  ‘A man has only so many hands, Judge. Would you accept a finger?’

  ‘Now, Siri, there’s no need for that attitude. Until his final breath, a good socialist will always have enough oxygen to give resuscitation to a drowning comrade. No matter how choppy the sea. I’m well aware of the services you have selflessly performed for our nation. But I know too how much you enjoy the occasional junket. These little trips around the country at the expense of the committee.’

  ‘I’m retired.’

  ‘A perfect time to see the sights. A few days in a scenic guest house. One or two cold beers and good food. You could take Madame Daeng along. Call it a second honeymoon.’

  Siri hesitated.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Sanyaburi. The boat races at Pak Lai.’

  ‘The races were last month.’

  ‘Down here they were. It’s up to the cadre in charge in each province when the workers would most benefit from a few days of joy and recreation. Luang Prabang doesn’t have theirs until November.’

  ‘I don’t know. On my last junket I was caught in the middle of a massacre. The one before that I was tortured and left for dead. Joy and recreation seem to have escaped me somehow.’

  ‘This will be different, Siri. A couple of hours of work then you’re free to stay as long as you like to enjoy the countryside. You can take the two-tier ferry up there and hop on one coming back.’

  ‘What’s the catch?’

  ‘You’re always such a sceptic. Why should there be a catch? You’d merely be there as a … what shall we call it? An observer. This would really be easier if you’d take a seat.’

  Siri remained standing.

  ‘An observer of what?’

  ‘Something quite ridiculous, to be honest. Even so, I wouldn’t doubt it’s right up your alley.’

  ‘What alley might that be?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Ghosts and the like.’

  ‘Why should I be hanging around in any alleyways with ghosts?’

  ‘Come on, Siri. There are those who believe you like to dabble in the supernatural.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘That’s what I tell them. He’s a man of science, I say. There is no place for superstition in the mind of a medical man. But you know what this place is like for rumours. Even the Minister of Justice seems to think you might enjoy this ghost hunt.’

  Siri sat. The rickety wooden chair creaked beneath him. He considered standing again.

  ‘And whose ghost might I be hunting?’

  ‘The brother of the Minister of Agriculture.’

  ‘Really? And who exactly is the Minister of Agriculture this month?’

  It was a response that would normally have caused Haeng to reprimand the doctor for his lack of respect for the longevity of government appointments. But, with so much resting on the success or failure of the current farming cooperative programme, the role of minister in charge of such a mess was something of a revolving door.

  ‘General Popkorn,’ said Haeng.

  Siri sighed. He knew them all. Natural commanders in the field of battle and clueless behind a desk.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘His brother was presumed killed in a covert military operation. They never retrieved the body. The general’s wife is Vietnamese and she believes there’s disquiet amongst the ancestors because her brother-in-law is unsettled and that’s causing problems in the family. Personally I think the family problems are caused by the fact she’s a nasty cow but don’t quote me on that. She believes the brother wants to come home and be afforded his just rites.’

  ‘Where was he presumed to have died?’

  ‘Hmm. That’s not such an easy one to answer. He was operating under cover, mostly organizing guerrilla attacks on royalist-held bases. The last dispatch they got from him was from Luang Prabang in June 1969. There were suggestions he might have been discovered and killed there. But there was no mention of him in royalist reports.’

  ‘If he was under cover they wouldn’t have known who he was. I doubt he’d have been carrying his citizen identification card.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Then he could have died anywhere.’

  ‘Also true.’

  ‘Then how on earth are they going to return his body if they don’t know where it is?’

  ‘The minister’s wife – and feel free to laugh at this – has hired a witch.’

  ‘Does she come with a broomstick?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  Civilai was perhaps the only person in Laos who got all of Siri’s funny lines. Haeng got none of them. Not even the ones that were culturally inclusive.

  ‘Tell me about the witch,’ said Siri.

  ‘The
locals call her Madame Keui – the used-to-be woman. She’s what they call a ba dong,’ said Haeng. ‘She claims to be able to locate the bodies of soldiers killed in battle. They say she’s good. Give her an object that belonged to the departed one and she’ll draw you a map to where his remains are. It’s all nonsense of course but the minister obviously has no control over his wife and she’s insistent. She dragged her husband off for a meeting with the witch last weekend. The old woman did some mumbo-jumbo incense burning gobbledegook, performed a couple of magic party tricks and hey presto, they’re both sucked in. According to the witch the body’s a few kilometres upriver from Pak Lai.’

  ‘That’s two hundred kilometres from Luang Prabang.’

  ‘He escaped by boat, she says. Succumbed to his injuries before he could get to a qualified medic. It’s not clear where he got off the boat. A lot of the river round there is deep in jungle. No settlements. It appears that’s where the mystic radio waves ran into some interference.’ He laughed at his own cleverness. ‘That’s why the witch needs to go there and take a look for herself.’

  ‘Good grief. You’re sending me on holiday with a witch?’

  ‘You don’t need to have any direct dealings with her. Just wait around. On the off chance she turns up with a body, you do the examination.’

  ‘Why is it that people hand me bones and expect me to know whether the skeleton was a paid-up member of the local trade union?’

  ‘I’ve made it easy for you, Siri. Major Ly, that’s the name of the brother, had been injured in a grenade explosion a year before he disappeared. He’d had work done in Hanoi to put his chin back together. There’s a screw in his jaw. The doctor was Cuban. He kept records and an X-ray. I’ll have them for you before you go.’

  ‘You seem confident I’ll agree to all this.’

  ‘Ah, Siri. You’re a curious man. Retirement doesn’t suit you at all. You love mysteries like this.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll see what Madame Daeng says.’

  ‘That’s the spirit. A good soldier—’

  ‘Right. I’ve had my socialist maxim for the day already. When’s the supposed departure?’

  ‘Thursday. I know you’ll do the right thing.’

  Siri stood and considered his next action carefully. Then he reached into his shoulder bag and produced an envelope which he handed to the judge.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Haeng.

  ‘It’s a letter from some judge asking the US consulate if he can have a condominium overlooking the Pacific in exchange for the odd secret.’

  ‘I …’

  ‘It’s the original. I didn’t make any copies. I’d hurry up and burn it if I were you.’

  Siri rode his bicycle home along Fahngoum Road. Ugly the dog trotted behind him. It was a remarkably fine day. There was a cool breeze off the Mekhong and the sky was, at last, the colour of the airport: Wattay blue. It still seemed to be the only paint colour available in the city. The small maggot blooms along the roadside were a wash of colours but smelt like vomit. To his right, every other shop and restaurant he passed was padlocked and shuttered. The river road had been a happier place when the Americans ruled the roost. Beer and girls and loud music that lurched across the river and collided with loud music from Thailand. Now, on the Lao side, the cicada male voice choir was the loudest sound you could expect. Vientiane was a green city. That isn’t to say a Western-type city with sporadic outbreaks of controlled vegetation, but a forest of a city with big sprawling trees along the roadways and patches of jungle that would one day give themselves up to development – but not without a fight. The plants ruled and, thanks to them, the city breathed. The street was paved but covered in mud and there were no cleaners to dig down to the concrete. Siri’s tyres left slalom grooves. His was the only transport on the road.

  He caught a brown flash of movement low on the bank of the river. At first he thought it was an animal. A wild cat. But as he squinted against the bright sun Siri could see that it was a man. Naked. Indian. He seemed to be tracking the squeaky bicycle like a jungle predator. Hopping from bush to bush. Crazy Rajid had apparently arrived at the belief that if he were undressed he would be invisible. If anyone spotted him he could merely freeze in position certain that he had blended into the surroundings. He was Vientiane’s own street person. Mad as a sack of rats. Unpredictable. Uncommunicative. Yet with a frozen pond of skills Siri had only just broken the surface of. He waved at the loping vagabond. Crazy Rajid froze in position. Siri looked around as if wondering where he’d gone. Rajid’s face broke into a vast white smile.

  Siri laughed. It had been a fun day. He’d left the judge gaping like a mortar wound to the chest. He hadn’t really expected a ‘thank you’. Giving him back his letter had been a difficult decision to make. By holding on to it, the doctor could have kept the man chained indefinitely. The official would continue to be polite and efficient and respectful to his elder. But, to be honest, where was the fun in that? Since their first meeting in 1975, the year the Communists took over the country, the year Siri was railroaded into a job he didn’t want, Judge Haeng had been a wonderful nemesis. Incompetent but wielding great power. Awash with misguided self-confidence. Slippery as a freshly peeled mango. Judge Haeng had been the face of the Party. Siri couldn’t break the Party, but my word he could break the face. That’s why he’d released the judge from his spell. He wanted the battle to continue.

  And what joy this new mission offered. A witch, no less. A woman who could trace the dead. He’d heard of them, the ba dong. There were many in Vietnam. There had been incredible stories. A rescue team directed by map to a remote mountainous crop and to within a metre of a shallow grave. Nothing visible above the surface. This was the world that Siri was inadequately a part of. In spite of his own common sense and his medical training, he was well aware that he hosted the spirit of a thousand-year-old shaman. His scientist self had immediately fallen into a fit of denial. He’d argued himself silly that possession was biologically impossible. He’d attributed his visions to dreams, to drunken hallucinations, to heatstroke. But after some time, when the spirits began to make direct communication, supernature and nature collided unmistakably. He was left with no alternative argument. There was, without a shadow of a doubt, a spirit world. And once his stubborn streak had let go of his prejudices, they came. In ones and twos at first, leaving clues. Making efforts to establish a two-way link. He saw them. He heard them too, albeit in a tinny second-hand form through his own mind. He even felt the icy blades of the malevolent few who wanted his resident shaman annihilated. And the more he believed, the more he saw. In their hundreds on the old battlefields. In their tens of thousands in Cambodia. And it came to the point where they were as much a part of his landscape as his wife Daeng, and his friends, and everything else he had come to see as normal.

  But there was a blockage. He didn’t know where the main pipeline to the afterlife was clogged or how to clear it, but he still could not conduct any two-way conversations with his visitors. It was as if he were on one bank of the Mekhong and they were over there on the Thai side. They’re waving and shouting but he can’t hear. And so they resort to pantomime. Charades for the hard-of-channelling. Most of the time he didn’t get it. He had no idea what they were trying to tell him. When a murder case was resolved by more scientific means he would look back over his dreams and his encounters and slap his ever-bruised forehead. ‘So that’s what they meant.’ It was like looking at the filled-in crossword on the solutions page of Le Figaro.

  He was tired of guessing. He needed a tutor. He believed that, like the sciences, the super-sciences could be learned from an expert. He’d met one such seer: Auntie Bpoo the transvestite fortune-teller. One had to look beyond her sumo build and her penchant for the type of clothing one might see in Pigalle late in the evening. He-she had the direct line. There was no question. He-she could have taught Siri everything. But he-she, and she preferred to be referred to as she, was a most exasperatingly certifiable huma
n being. Siri had recently hounded her for tutorials but she had been occupied to the point of unavailability by ‘the do’.

  Fortune-tellers, if they’re worth anything at all, should be able to see everything. Auntie Bpoo had seen her own demise. She knew the date and the time and she had been planning a Phasing Away party in memoriam of herself. For the past month she’d been preparing for the evening – for, luckily, she would be dying at approximately nine p.m. – by handwriting invitations and working on a menu. And, naturally, there was the costume. A girl had to go out on a high fashion note. Siri had begged – not something he did willingly – for some insights, but she had dismissed him with fortune cookie comments such as, ‘Under a full moon all is clear.’ He wanted to strangle her but he knew she’d see it coming. She would be phasing away, with or without his help, at nine p.m. on the fourth Tuesday in October, which wasn’t a full moon night at all.

  But here was an even better chance. A ghost whisperer. A witch. More likely a sorceress or a spirit medium, but with enough of a track record to win over a cynical Lao general. A few days away together on the Mekhong. Enough time to probe her mind. Perhaps Madame Keui, the used-to-be woman, would be the medium to take his hand and lead him through the teak doors to the beyond.

  ‘He’ll be sleeping with you next,’ said Daeng.

  She was on her bamboo recliner in front of the shop shelling peas. She had ‘the smile’. It was a different smile to the one that greeted her husband in their bed every morning and welcomed the customers to the restaurant. This one came to her unnaturally, care of the opium she took to fight off the ravages of rheumatism. Siri had attempted to guide her to less addictive pain relief but, having seen the misery in her eyes, he no longer begrudged her. He shared the sigh of relief when the demons let go of her joints for a few hours.

  ‘No danger of that,’ said Siri climbing down from the one-speed Chinese Pigeon. ‘Ugly is an outside dog. He stands watch at the door then accompanies me to the next appointment. If I were accosted along the way he would bite off the leg of the attacker. If I were stabbed in my sleep he would shrug and leave it all up to the police. He’s never been inside a building. Doesn’t trust ’em.’