‘I’ll never complain about Network Rail again, can’t move me fookin’ legs,’ said Stretch.
James looked haughtily out of the window as if he was fashioning a more embellished version of his trip to eventually re-tell in some wanky Fulham bar. Kristen and Zig were asleep within minutes as the bus lurched onto Highway 13, passing shanties on the city’s outskirts and then finally the outlying paddy fields. I could smell woodsmoke through the open window as I looked back at the fading urban glow. My heartbeat relaxed with cautious optimism, perhaps for the first time in days I felt as if I was master of my own destiny, that free of their eyes I was moving ahead, unnoticed.
I suppose despite the coffee and noise I must have fallen asleep, for an hour and a half later, my arms clutching at my sides, I woke shivering to the sound of birds squealing in the cage beside me. We were stopped in the mountains and people had climbed out of the bus; toilet-break, I figured. In the red taillights I saw an elderly crone squatting for a pee, it looked like something from a Bosch painting, her teeth missing, her face as old as sin. She looked up, saw me and cut a smile, her mouth a wound as I turned away quickly.
The tribeswoman beside me was wresting birds from the cage. I noticed they were bats. There was a sweet smell in the air like barbecued steak. Stretch was gone, Zig and Kristen were still asleep, her tanned legs drawn up to her chin, her delicate head on his chest.
James looked over. ‘We’ve blown a tyre, they’re making something to eat… bloody cannibals are roasting rats on a skewer.’
Figures squatted like crows on their haunches, their high cheekboned, mahogany faces catching the light of the fire. Behind was a road sign with a tiger painted on it that read: Laos Welcomes Tigers in its Forests.’
‘Did you mange to get any sleep?’ I asked James.
‘No, too cold… Anyway,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘who wants to sleep, you can do that anytime. I’d rather soak it all in.’
Tosser.
I looked out of the bus and sniffed the pure air; the fronds of giant palms towering over us, a light mist over the tops of the mountain. Looking into the thick brush and canopy I found myself thinking of Jacques – he’d been stationed in Vientiane and had been drawn to Luang Prabang. I was searching for old pieces of him in the trail he’d left behind. I wish he knew, that he still mattered to me after all these years; that his son still loved him with the intensity of a child. Rather than feel sad it made me smile, perhaps it even heartened me; for here among strangers and tribespeople in the mountains I had a clearer sense of my father than I had done in years.
I could hear the steady thrum of cicadas and the cackle of laughter as I left the bus.
‘Crickets.’ Said James, coming up behind me.
‘You know your animals,’ I said.
‘I spend a lot of time off the beaten track. Jungles…’
I’d had enough. ‘They’re cicadas actually,’ I said looking at my watch, ‘Crickets never sing the same time as cicadas, it’s a kind of gentlemen’s agreement, so they do it in shifts… Both of them have very different sounds, cicadas are louder, more shrill. You see, the crickets have gone to bed now, James and the chicks are on the late shift.’
He looked at me with neutral eyes ballasted by puffy blue bags. Presuming he was about thirty-five, he looked older than his years. I wondered what he did back in London. Estate Agent I figured.
‘Where’s Stretch?’ I asked, changing the subject and offering him a Salem.
‘He’s got trouble with his guts, think he’s looking for a toilet. Only thing that agrees with him is fish and chips I’d imagine… he should learn to adjust to the culture a bit more.’
The people around the flames beckoned me to join their party. ‘Sabaidee,’ I said with a wai, crouching down beside them, offering cigarettes. The heart in the toilet seemed a long way away up here. For a start it was much colder, you could almost be in a different country. An old man leant into the fire. I hadn’t noticed him on the bus. Perhaps he’d got on since Vientiane. He was watching me with his head on its side as if focusing on something on my neck.
‘Hello.’ I said.
He had a goatee and thin wisps of grey hair. His eyes looked strangely green and vulpine, a wise old fox with stories to tell. He smiled broadly, motioned for me to sit beside him and offered me a bat on a skewer. I shook my head - there were still bits of fur on the tiny body. Then he touched the left side of my neck, the place of my birthmark, gently moving my head so he could see it illuminated by the fireglow. Maybe a birthmark was symbolic of something here; folklore, mumbo jumbo, but the old boy gripped my hand and clutched it tightly as if he’d found something precious. He shook his head and looked up at the dusting of stars, then smiled as if his face might crack.
The bus honked its horn and ruptured the moment. In the distance to the north I saw vertical branches of lightning. I detached myself, bowed to the old man and told him my name was Alain.
‘Je m’apelle Yin, tu es Alain. Tres bien!’ he laughed, then pointed at my birthmark, placing a finger to his lips, ‘Je connais toi. Trouvez-moi dans Luang Prabang, Marché Dala. You remember?’
‘Yes. The Dala Market.’ I said, and went back to the bus shaking my head.
‘Who’s your mate?’ asked Stretch, folding his legs like an origami puzzle,
‘No idea, some old boy who thought he knew me?’
Stretch threw me a goofy grin, ‘See? I told you, you was familiar. You’ve got one of ‘em faces.’
It was too cold to sleep so we smoked cigarettes in the back of the bus and looked out at the reeling night. Fatigue was pressing down on me, I wanted a warm bed and body to cuddle up to, someone safe… the sound of London rain outside my bedroom window. As the road began another mountain ascent, a wind kicked up and it started to rain; heavily, like thousands of drumming fingers upon the tinny roof. I buried my head in my hood and tried not to think. And that sense of being hunted, I had it again, acutely; it felt like something black was in the bus and sitting behind me. Against all common sense, I was willfully heading into the spider’s web. Better to see your foe than never know where it comes from. And now I had a friend, an old man who seemed to be expecting me in Luang Prabang.
Two hours on, just as I was settling to sleep, the bus slowed and I saw a vague light ahead, the phantom of rain sheeting across it. ‘Vang Vieng.’ The bus driver said, turning around and driving at the same time.
- 25 -
We took the first place we could find, a guesthouse off Highway 13 called The Orchid. The woman at the door was dressed in a pair of Wellington boots, had a shower cap on her head and a lighted candle in her hand. She said the rain had flooded the bedrooms downstairs and shorted the electricity, but there was a large room upstairs with three double beds facing the limestone cliffs. Then Stretch appeared,
‘He too big,’ she said abruptly, waving her arms, ‘no bed big enough for giant. You go another place.’
‘Talk to me mum about that, it’s not my fault I’m the size of a yeti or that you people are as big as ewoks.’
‘”Ewoks”?’ said the Lao lady,
We were too cold and tired to argue with her. Kristen, seemingly a natural diplomat rummaged in her bag and found a brightly coloured hairgrip lacquered in glitter. She passed it to the woman and said, ‘Kop chai lai lai… thank you.’
The owner took it in her hands as if were made of diamonds, shrugged and invited us in. The first flashes of sheet lightning painted the sky an electric pink, silhouetting the ragged mountains. A shiver ran down my spine as I looked out at the empty night then shut the door.
We were deadbeat and hungry but it had gone two am and everywhere would be shut. ‘Right, I’ve got a Mars Bar… half a pack of cigs, wot’s everyone else got?’ said Stretch, his legs hanging over the end of the bed,
‘I’ve got a ch
eroot,’ said James.
Stretch howled with laughter, ‘A fookin’ cheroot? What use is that? Shootout at the ok corral? Bloody ‘ell you London lot - what with im on menthols, you on cigars!’
Zig was rummaging in his rucksack; he pulled out a bunch of bananas, enough for us all. His girlfriend lit a candle and we sat shivering in the shadows waiting for our bones to warm up. I felt in a small way, just for that moment, as if I belonged with them; tenuously perhaps, but it was a welcome feeling. We’d shared a journey together, even if it was only a few hours. I didn’t know the first thing about them except Stretch’s monk story and that James had been to Cambodia and Kristen had a tattoo. I was just glad to be among them, free of my solitude.
‘What happened to your friend from the bar in Bangkok?’ asked Kristen out of the blue,
I coughed involuntarily, ‘He went home… had to go back to work.’
‘What work does he do?’
‘He was an actor.’ I said without thinking, ‘I mean, he is an actor, that’s what he does.’
The air seemed colder, coloured lights danced around my periphery as if I was pressing my knuckles to my eyelids.
‘He was very handsome.’ Kristen said, nudging Zig playfully.
‘You know what they say about actors,’ said James. No one was interested, ‘They’re either egomaniacs or people running away from themselves.’
‘He wasn’t running. He’s brilliant actually.’ I said, again mixing my tenses. Maybe he hadn’t forgiven me for my correction on crickets and cicadas.
‘Well, all the ones I’ve met are conceited, self-obsessives.’
My hands balled into fists in the dark, the constrictions in my forehead tightened another notch, red and black light floating inside my sockets, but I said nothing. We returned to our bananas and I tried not to think about him. After a short silence, the thunder following closely on the tail of the lightning, Stretch sat up and grinned, ‘Does this place give you the willies or wot?’
James looked at him condescendingly, still smarting over the piss-take of his cheroot, ‘No, why?’
‘I heard they used to eat people in these hills.’
The shutter was open; through the window we could see the sky lit in spasms, below, the ragged karsts towering menacingly. Zig pulled Kristen toward him, ‘Stretch, don’t say that, Kristen believes everything you say and she gets scared.’
He needed little more encouragement. ‘I’m serious. During the war here there were stories of tribesmen sticking their commie victims’ heads on stakes and dancin’ around them.’
I lit a cigarette. ‘Very Heart of Darkness.’ I said, ‘Who did the heads belong to?’
He sat up and turned to face me, myopic lenses reflecting candlelight, ‘Dunno, but it sounds pretty fookin’ creepy. I get the feeling weird things have happened in this country but cos everyone smiles ‘ere and they’re all nice to you, you’d never find out. You know what I mean?’
‘Just like dolphins.’ said Kristen. ‘They look as if they’re smiling but they’re not, at least not all the time. It’s a fixed expression.’
James pulled out his cheroot and lit it on the candle, his face emaciated in the poor light as if he’d been travelling and eating cheap noodles all his life. He inhaled hard on it hard and began. ‘This is a very strange country, I studied it at Uni; the place was swarming with secret agents during the war, mainly American. More bombs were dropped per capita here than in the whole of the Second World War…’
Wasn’t that what Casbaron said in my mum’s front room? I’d read the same figures in the guide book but I didn’t say anything.
He continued. ‘The war was a waste of time despite all the money the yanks poured in. The communists took the country by storm with the help of the Vietnamese, threw out the Royal Family and sent everyone else to re-education camps in the north. The Hmong tribe, who’d helped the yanks were left on their own with nowhere to run. Some of them were allowed to go and live in the States, the rest took to the hills near here. There are thousands of them out there in the jungles of the Xaisomboun Zone waiting for the U.S to return. The Vietnamese and Lao military have bombed them to bits, they’re a raggle taggle army toting Kalshnikovs, humping around on false limbs and living off fruit. And sometimes just to spite the government they kill a few tourists passing through the mountains on buses.’
Finally he had an attentive audience and I had to admit, he told a good story.
Stretch yawned. ‘Very impressive Jimbo, but I read it in the guidebook too. Wot’s that got to do wi’ me getting the willies?’
James looked deflated. I wondered why he kept feeling the need to display his knowledge. ‘I’ll bet you don’t know about what’s been happening near Luang Prabang though do you?’ he said as an afterthought.
‘No, wot?’
James looked back at him smugly. Kristen had climbed into bed with her clothes on, while Zig was still awake trying to keep up with what was being said, his Nordic face wide-eyed with curiosity. The Fulham boy looked into the naked flame, ‘People have been disappearing.’
My stomach tightened a notch.
‘How do you mean, “disappearing”?’
Maybe James had read the article in the Vientiane Times or shared a coffee with Lou. I tried not to look interested, ‘Bandits?’ I asked.
James shook his head and smiled cryptically. ‘No amigo, it’s a bit stranger than that. I’m talking about half-eaten bodies of young boys, teeth marks in their flesh. I’m talking about children snatched from their villages.’
Wasn’t that information off the record, the bit about the half-eaten kids? As I recalled it was just the private opinion of the Editor I’d spoken to and his friend Nathan Moore in Luang Prabang. The room temperature, despite the fact my clothes were almost dry, seemed colder now. I got up and shut the window,
‘Not telling a porkie to old Stretchie are you?’
The rain from the open window was blowing onto my face, ‘I heard the same story, Stretch.’ I said, ‘Up beyond Luang Prabang there’s a nature sanctuary, isn’t that where it’s been happening, James?’
Stretch looked serious, now that I’d endorsed the story it was giving him the creeps. James sucked on his cheroot like a baby at a nipple, ‘There you go, even ‘eagle-eyes’ here has heard about it.’
Again I felt my fists bunch, I think we were all getting tired of his mordant humour. I was going to tell him to stick the remainder of his cheroot up his malnourished backside when I saw a car cruising slowly by on the main drag. I bolted the shutter. It looked like the same car that had deposited Vong outside the Ravens Bar. It was dark but I was almost certain of it. So now they were searching for me again. It wasn’t as if you saw a Lexus every five minutes, there were probably no more than a dozen in the entire country. For a moment it ceased to be an automobile and became something more vivid; an ill-defined rectangle of darkness, evil even, stealthily patrolling the streets for its flagging victim.
Goosepimples covered my arms. I opened the shutter an inch and looked out.
‘So who’s eating them?’ Stretch said in the background.
I wasn’t listening to them, suddenly I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t shift a muscle.
Despite my newfound feelings of solidarity, reality came flooding back with grim realization - I wasn’t travelling, I was running. Travellers glide through trouble like ships passing through flaming waters, they never get burnt; half the time they’re never even aware of the dangers. Why couldn’t I have come up with another idea, something that hadn’t required hauling myself and Skip over here? Instead I was in lost in a puzzle on the other side of the world with a stupid map and key, and as a result I’d probably never make it home.
I waited for the car to reappear. The lightning had stopped, just the sound of rain drumming on the corrugated roof and mak
ing holes in the muddy road beside the guesthouse. Nothing came, perhaps the Lexus had continued to Luang Prabang where they thought I’d go? I had to go somewhere else to throw them off my scent. But hadn’t I done that already by coming here, boarding the vulnerable, slow bus – and they still stuck to me like glue.
‘I’m knackered, let’s hit the hay, gents.’ Stretch collapsed on the bed and was asleep within seconds; his glasses carefully placed on the bedside table, little red pressure marks on his face where they’d been digging into his nose.
I was about to snuff out the candle. ‘How did you hear about the people disappearing in Luang Prabang?’ I asked James quietly.
His stringy frame shivered beneath a threadbare striped jumper; he probably bought it in Kashmir or Nepal – for James had ‘professional traveller’ written all over him. ‘Some people I travelled with in India had been in Laos learning meditation… that’s where they heard about it.’
‘Oh,’ I said, kicking off my Crocs. ‘Bit weird isn’t it?’
He was still suspicious of me. ‘Did you read about the chap who had his heart ripped out?’
I stopped breathing. ‘The guy from Bangkok Hilton?’ I said,
‘No, I’m talking about someone else, same style of killing - ribs ripped outward, lungs and innards spread around them like wings. But this was two years ago.’
I was glad of the dark around me, he couldn’t see my hands shaking. ‘I haven’t heard about that,’ I said.
‘Serial killer or cult killing, has to be one of the two.’ he whispered.
‘But how does a cult tie in with the disappearances in Luang Prabang, I mean weren’t they supposed to have been got at by animals?’
Black Buddha Page 27