The Woman Who Wouldn't Die

by Colin Cotterill

  ‘Everyone for a hundred kilometres around is at the races,’ said Siri. ‘He picked his day, too. He really has thought of everything. He’ll unload the treasure, disconnect the cables and watch the boat slide back to the depths. I bet he has his elephant route all planned out.’

  ‘Do you think we should go down there and overpower him while he’s not expecting it?’ Civilai asked. ‘He is alone, after all.’

  ‘You’re never alone with an AK-47,’ said Daeng. ‘He’s got a couple, as far as I can see. One on the bank. Another by the dinghy. Maybe a pistol too. But I think we can probably get down there and surprise him while he’s diving. I call this Plan C.’

  ‘We’ll let him tire himself out with the caskets,’ said Siri. ‘Then we’ll think of something. None of us is as young as we think we are.’

  There were seven caskets in all. Tang crawled up on to the sandbank and collapsed on to his side as he collected his breath. He didn’t even have the strength to remove his oxygen tanks. He had a short stout knife in his belt which he used to prise open the first casket which sat beside him. The lock and the hinges were rusty so it didn’t present any problems. From their point of view, the team could not see into the box and they were too far away to notice the expression on the face of the Vietnamese.

  But Siri did see something else. A shadow was emerging from the woods on the far bank. It blended into the foliage and when it stopped moving he lost sight of it completely. He knew there was nothing human about the shadow. He was used to such sights but had never sensed such a feeling of foreboding.

  Tang turned to another cask and wrenched off its lid with more urgency. Something appeared to be wrong. He turned to a third casket.

  The shape in the woods shifted slightly and caught Siri’s gaze once more. Then he spotted a second to its left. Larger, this one, and without question the form of a person.

  The diver was on the fifth casket. He was clearly not enjoying the task. The last two lids he ripped off with his bare hands. He threw down the knife and reached into the last box and produced a black Buddha image – the type one might find in any village temple in the land. He fumbled around for the knife and began to hack away at the statuette.

  ‘Wh … what’s he doing?’ Geung asked.

  Ugly growled as he scanned the woods down below. He was sensing what Siri could see, hundreds upon hundreds of human shapes emerging from the forest. Once they left the camouflage of the jungle they seemed to have no colour at all. Like viewers at a tennis match, they sat on the grass bank and watched the diver overturn every last casket and empty hundreds of images on to the ground. He hacked at them with his knife. Smashed one against another.

  ‘They aren’t going to like that,’ said Siri.

  Daeng looked up to see her husband staring in the wrong direction.

  ‘See something?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s like a Cecil B. DeMille ghost epic,’ said Siri.

  Daeng had long since stopped asking, ‘Who the hell is …?’

  ‘Cast of thousands,’ said Siri. ‘It’s a bit frightening. I’m not sure how any of these fit into my “Waiting room to the beyond” theory. They’re connected to the Buddha images somehow.’

  ‘What are you seeing there?’ Civilai asked.

  ‘All sssitting down,’ said Mr Geung.

  They looked at him. He shrugged.

  ‘Ah, he sees ’em too,’ said the headman. ‘There’s them that can.’

  The diver was beside himself with anger. He paced back and forth with the canisters still attached to his back. This obviously wasn’t the type of treasure he’d been expecting. He hurried back to the river, reattached his mask, and threw himself into the water.

  ‘He thinks he missed something,’ said Daeng. ‘But he didn’t. Now’s our chance. We can get down there and grab the guns.’

  They all stood and worked their way down a steep rocky path that led to the Elbow.

  ‘Probably expecting something more royal,’ said Civilai. ‘Crowns with rubies and mitres and pouches of diamonds. We talk about our national treasure and naturally everyone thinks of jewels. But each to his own. To the royals, these images were priceless because they’d been worshipped for hundreds of years. They’d clocked up a lot of merit. The king probably had them locked in a vault somewhere and kept the emeralds and pearls in his sock drawer.’

  Small rocks were dislodged by their descent.

  ‘All that planning,’ said Daeng. ‘How frustrating would that be? The unnecessary deaths. The investment. You’d have to feel sorry for him. I wonder who he is; how he achieved all this.’

  ‘I was about to say that it probably couldn’t get any worse,’ said Siri who had stopped to watch the gallery of observers. They were standing now and moving towards the boat. Moving like trees swept up in a lava flow.

  ‘What is it, Siri?’ Daeng asked.

  ‘I wish I could sell tickets,’ he said.

  ‘Come on,’ she told him. ‘No time for ghosties.’

  The grey spirits of antiquity usually had little to do with the malevolent spirits of the forest – nasty bastards who had made Siri’s life a misery on several occasions. But somebody had cut a deal somewhere in the jungle and the spirits that resided in the images began to merge into the two huge teak trees that anchored the cables. Within seconds, every last one of them had been absorbed into the wood.

  ‘That’s a good trick,’ said Siri.

  ‘Don’t keep it to yourself, old man,’ said Civilai.

  ‘Just keep your eyes on the two old teaks that the cables are tied around,’ said Siri.

  But only he could see what was happening. Only he had stopped to view the show. He was left behind at the rear as the others hurried down the dirt path. He leaned against a large boulder that overhung the river and noticed the lack of sounds. There were no birds. No insects. Even the rumble of water as the river rounded the bend had become silent. There was an imbalance between nature and the supernatural. The first sound to invade this silence was a creak. Perhaps it was more a groan as the old trees strained against the weight of the boat. It was as if they could no longer hold it. Then, one after the other, the cables began to slice through the trees like cheese wires through Camembert. Siri looked down to see whether the others had noticed but he was alone. One second the boat was anchored, the next it was loose. At first it lurched to one side. Then it slid rapidly into the water, dragging its cables behind it. In a single breath it had vanished beneath the water and a bubble the size of a small whale belched to the surface. The gunboat was back at its resting place. Siri’s eyes returned to the two old trees. He expected them to topple to the ground like candles sliced through by a Douglas Fairbanks Jr sword. But they stood firm.

  He heard the voices of his colleagues below.

  ‘They couldn’t have been tied very tight,’ said the headman.

  ‘Funny they should both come undone at the same time,’ said Civilai.

  ‘I think they must have snapped,’ said Daeng.

  Siri looked on in amazement. Had they not seen the cables slice through the teak? Was he the only one who knew what had actually happened? In fact … had it happened?

  When he reached the bank at the Elbow, all was quiet. His colleagues were standing on the bank looking out across the water. There was nothing to see. Nobody really expected the diver to reappear, but for ten minutes they watched with their AK-47s trained on the Mekhong as it passed on its way to Vientiane. But, in some way, the diver did return to the bank. And he did look forlornly at the piles of iron Buddha images before stepping into the forest to face whatever retribution the spirits might have for him. Without the air-compressor to replenish the supply, there had been barely a minute’s worth of oxygen in Tang’s tank. He’d died an agonizing death trapped in the cargo hold of the gunboat. But only Dr Siri knew any of this. If, in fact, he really did.

  ‘We should go now,’ said Siri.

  ‘He might still be alive down there,’ said the headman.

/>   ‘No, he’s gone,’ said Siri.

  They all turned around and looked at the doctor.

  ‘What about the images?’ Daeng asked.

  Siri looked at the boatman and smiled.

  ‘If I were a lost Buddha,’ he said. ‘And I found myself far from home for many years, I would look very kindly on anyone who volunteered to take me back to Luang Prabang. The palace is a museum now but one of the old royal temples would gladly take them in.’

  ‘I doubt one person could handle so much merit,’ said the headman. ‘Bit of an overload.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Civilai. ‘But fifty people could share it.’

  ‘Aye, that they could,’ agreed the old man. ‘That they could.’

  Siri headed for the trees and studied the point where the cable wound around them. He saw no evidence of magic. Madame Daeng made for the Buddha idols. When she returned she had a small package wrapped in cloth.

  ‘What’s that then?’ Siri asked.

  ‘Surely we couldn’t go through all this excitement without claiming one little souvenir,’ she smiled.

  ‘Daeng, you’ve seen what the curse can do.’

  ‘All I saw were two cables snap. Bad quality.’

  ‘I strongly recommend you don’t take that souvenir out of this valley.’

  ‘Recommendation noted. Let’s go.’

  ‘Be it on your own head.’

  ‘I suppose the saddest part of all this is that the minister didn’t get to find his brother,’ said Daeng as they walked along the bank on their way back to the longboat.

  Siri laughed.

  ‘Something funny?’ she asked.

  ‘You know I wonder whether anyone actually read the Cuban medical report of Major Ly’s jaw surgery.’

  ‘It provided some insight into his whereabouts?’

  ‘Pretty much pinpointed the location. I read through it last night. The last page of the file is a letter to the Cuban surgeon from a private hospital in Bangkok. They very politely requested a copy of the surgeon’s report and the X-ray, which I doubt he sent.’

  ‘Bangkok? What’s Bangkok got to do with all this?’

  ‘Oh, I have a feeling the minister’s brother might have had enough of all the warring over here and popped across the border. I imagine he’d collected himself a little nest egg from war booty which he used to establish himself in Thailand.’

  ‘As what?’

  ‘Ooh, at a guess I’d say he bought himself a gogo bar and drank and fornicated himself to death. I doubt he ever got his jaw working properly.’

  ‘That’s not a guess, is it?’

  ‘I might have dreamed some of it.’

  ‘Siri.’

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘I will not have you dreaming of gogo bars.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  When we fought hand to hand in the jungle I became aware that I was killing the children of parents. Young men who were stuck for a job so joined the army expecting a few years of pineapple eating in the tropics. It concerned me that killing was becoming second nature to me. Indifferent. Indiscriminate. Anyone in a French uniform. That wasn’t the way to do it. You needed to operate at a different level to make a difference. I made the decision to leave the jungle and my rebel friends and dig in undercover in the heart of the French administration in the south: back in Pakse where my mother and I had sweated in the steam of boiled bedsheets for twenty years. Like many who feared the reprisals of the French, my mother had returned to what was left of our village. In fact, a lot of the old faces of Pakse had disappeared. I suppose my old face had disappeared with them. Nobody recognized me. I’d become hard, my features angular. My hair was short and my body was lean and muscular. If I’d made myself up with some cosmetics and dressed like the French mademoiselles, I could have had my pick of the French administrators. I could have been the mistress of any one of them. But that wouldn’t have worked. It was a small town. Belonging publicly to one man would have closed the door on others. And I would have drawn ire from the Lao. I needed to merge. Be invisible again.

  There were men. There were handsome ones and there were ugly ones. Cruel and kind ones. But, to a man, they had something in common. They were always superior. I was never more than an aperitif. I wasn’t in their class. I was an ignorant brown-skinned girl they sought to rescue. And so, they were clumsy. They released secrets through the sluice gates of cheap wine. They boasted over the telephone. They left documents lying around. In the beginning I was clumsy too. I hadn’t yet learned how to love mine enemy in order to garrotte him in his sleep. I needed to become an actress to mask the disgust that rose in my throat whenever I witnessed the excesses of our gods. Everything could have collapsed in that first week back in the town. It was as if all the trains of fate collided in one day in Pakse and there was only one survivor.

  I was told of an agency that recruited French-speaking menial staff for the gods. I was interviewed by an officious Vietnamese woman whose French was awful. I had to match her mistakes and dumb myself down in order to sound competent. It was established from the beginning that she would be receiving 50 per cent of my income as an agency fee. I agreed gladly and noted her address. She sent me to the home of a Vietnamese couple. The wife met me at the front door of their fine wooden home on the bank of the Mekhong. She announced her name and status as if reciting lines in a school play. She couldn’t have been much older than sixteen. She called me ‘big sister’ and showed me to the servants’ quarters. There was a fat Lao cook, female but balding, a Vietnamese male driver with an abundance of female hormones, and me.

  I still wasn’t sure what I was supposed to learn by being in the home of a high-ranking Vietnamese official. I had no guidance. We were hardly the French underground. This was all my idea and it was an idea that felt heavier with every passing day. I was to clean the house, keep the garden and serve food when there were guests. One of the first questions the bitch at the agency had asked was whether I could read. It was a question I got to hear often. I’d told her ‘no’. Thus I was allowed access to the master’s office. There were so many documents scattered here and there and my French was basic back then. I didn’t know where to start. I knew somewhere in the piles of papers there would be information I could pass on but I was so raw that all I could do was start at the top and work my way slowly down.

  I was halfway through that very first pile on my very first day when my heart was wrenched out of its socket. A deep male voice from behind me said, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  I retreated from the documents with my head bowed. Didn’t dare look at the man who had caught me out. I cowered in a corner. Took courage from the knife between the folds of my phasin skirt.

  ‘I asked you what in hell’s name you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Cleaning, sir,’ I said, glaring at his boots – boots that should by rights have been taken off at the front step.

  ‘That did not look like cleaning,’ he said. ‘That looked like reading.’

  I had an act already by then. I spoke slowly as if I were backward, blew into my lips as if every word was an effort.

  ‘I … I wish, sir,’ I said. ‘I wish I could read. The characters look so beautiful on the paper. I wish I could turn them into words.’

  I shook with fear as might have been expected. He shocked me by kneeling in front of me but I kept my eyes trained on the parquet flooring.

  ‘You’re the new girl,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  I had so many.

  ‘Sik,’ I said.

  His hand reached for my chin and yanked it up so he could see my face. Still I forced my eyes downward.

  ‘Girls as pretty as you don’t need an education,’ he said. His Lao was competent but he was undeniably Vietnamese. There was something familiar about his accent.

  ‘You can make your way in the world with these.’

  He grabbed my tit with his free hand and squeezed
hard. I let my hand gently slide beneath the fold of my skirt. That was when I first doubted my ability to be what was expected of me. My life was already sacrificed for the fight of our people, but how could I ever allow myself to succumb to this?

  His hand gripped my chin tighter and his face came closer to mine. I could smell the garlic and wine of his lunch and the grease that encased his hair. For the first time, I looked at him. And I knew him. A flash-flood of awful memories whisked me away from that room. Rolled me over and over in the swirl. Back there somewhere in the room he pushed his lips on to mine and forced his tongue against my teeth. And I let him kiss me. I let him because my mind was elsewhere and it was the means to an end. I knew he wouldn’t hear another cockerel crow nor abuse another girl. Suddenly, I had the will.

  I awoke next morning to the screams of the thin-haired cook. I ran to the yard with the flowery driver one pace behind me. We stood at the chicken coop crying and screaming intermittently. The driver’s horror seemed sincere as, I hoped, did mine. The French militia came and the administrator and the local Lao headman. And they carried away the body of the poor deputy requisitions director who had been so horribly mutilated – down there, as they say. They suspected the young wife who remained sitting impassive on the top step of the front porch the whole time. But for the French to arrest someone for a crime of passion, they had to sense some … passion. The little Madame showed none. Felt none. As neither the cook, the driver nor the chambermaid had a motive, everything was once again laid in the lap of the bastard insurgents who lurked in the night shadows.

  That night I burned sixteen candles at the temple; one for each year of Gulap’s short life to let her know the last of her tormentors was off the streets. I lit one more as a general thank you to whichever god had put me in the house of the Vietnamese. I never did learn how he’d wangled his way into a government position but, I suppose, if a man like that can sell toilets, he can sell himself.

  14

  Daeng’s Big Finish