Curse of the Pogo Stick

by Colin Cotterill

  “Or live. Or be yourself,” said Long, emerging briefly from his bosom.

  Nhia pulled his head back to her soft chest and continued to whisper in his ear. It was a sad moment. Siri looked down at his plate. It was piled high as the sacred mountain at Phu Bia with pork and chicken. His glass was filled to overflowing. A woman on each side of him had hold of a thigh as if they were about to make a wish and split him in two. And suddenly he was afraid.

  For whatever reason, these people, these fine friendly people, had gone to a great deal of trouble to bring him here and he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to help them. He wasn’t a shaman. He didn’t know the rituals or the rites. He couldn’t bring them peace or happiness before they set off on their big walk. After seventy-three years he’d barely brought peace and happiness to himself. He knew he was going to disappoint them and, all of a sudden, he felt like a charlatan. Guilt sobered him. He politely removed the hands from his thighs, nodded at the still-full banquet mat, and got unsteadily to his feet. Long seemed to be asleep on the pillow of his girlfriend’s chest.

  Siri walked to the doorway, removed his nose plugs, and breathed in the fresh cold mountain air. The moon hung over the village puffing out its cheeks and varnishing the hilltops all the way to Vietnam with a warm yellow glow. Nobody should ever have to leave such a beautiful place.

  “The latrine’s over there.”

  Siri turned to see General Bao pointing toward a dark fence. It stood out as if some celestial dressmaker had cut a rectangle from the hem of the star-filled sky. Emptying his bladder hadn’t been the reason for his exit but contact with the chill air suddenly made it feel like a good idea. He negotiated a seemingly bottomless pit designed for people with unnaturally wide stances, did his business, and returned to find Bao still standing there.

  “Would you like to see the shaman’s house?” she asked.

  “You had a shaman here? What happened to him?”

  They walked together across the moonlit village compound.

  “They called it ‘fire from a friend.’ This village was in a Vang Pao area. It was clearly marked on the maps. We were American. But sometimes the Lao who flew the American planes were afraid to get too close to the PL antiaircraft guns. If it was a Hmong pilot there was no problem. The Hmong are fearless. But the Lao Royalists, sometimes they got confused. They dropped their bombs any old where so they didn’t have to go back to the air base at Long Chen still carrying them. There’s a lot of empty land out here. Dropping a bomb usually doesn’t hurt anyone but the plants and the animals. And the plants and the animals are used to getting hurt. Our shaman, Neng, had never wanted to be a shaman. You know how it works.”

  They arrived at the furthest house and Bao produced a ring of keys from her belt. She tried them one by one in the lock.

  “You don’t opt to be a shaman,” she went on. “You get sick one time with an illness you can’t fix with medicine. And you have a choice. You die or you become a shaman. A learned man came from another village and gave him the ultimatum. Neng wasn’t in a hurry to die so he went for the second choice. Who wouldn’t? He’d been a good silver worker before, but suddenly he had to spend all his time with the ills and craziness of the village. We all loved him, actually. He was good at it. Neng wasn’t just playing the part. He took it seriously. He used his common sense to fix small problems, not wanting to bother the spirits for minor matters. But when it came to sickness and deep troubles of the heart and soul, he was really in control. He studied hard with his shaman master so he could be the best at what he did.”

  The lock found a key that pleased it and the padlock sprang open.

  “Then one day he went down to the valley to collect herbs and he was blown to bits by our side. I mean, you have to really upset some god for that to happen, don’t you think? All that land. All those hills. One little man, but ‘boom.’”

  The chain dropped onto the earth where Bao’s tears had already dampened the dust.

  “You were close to him,” Siri said.

  “He was my father.”

  Siri put his arm around her shoulder and let some of her sadness soak into him. The door to the house swung inward.

  “We should have brought a lamp with us,” Siri said.

  “No worries, Yeh Ming.” She reached inside the door. “This village has more Zippos than any other in Laos.”

  Her hand returned, holding a colorful lighter that sported the image of a buxom girl in a bikini.

  “America Number One,” she said in English, and walked into the house. It smelled of incense and rotten fruit. Siri followed her.

  “When was the last time you were here?” he asked.

  “Me? The day Father went to all the points of the compass.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She died giving birth to me.”

  The Zippo lit a radius of four yards and Siri knew it had to be getting hot in Bao’s hand. But she appeared to have a set destination so he followed the halo to the far side of the house. They arrived at an altar. Bao’s father had gone to a lot of trouble to make it the most elaborate Siri had ever seen. It consisted of three wooden tiers. On the bottom shelf was a silver bowl containing water. Several unspun cotton threads looped from it up to the crossbeam of the house. There were handmade flowers attached to the frame and several horns of various sizes. A string of pig jaws hung from the overhead. There were three porcelain bowls of uneaten offerings on the second shelf and a solitary incense stick burning slowly.

  “Someone’s been here,” Siri said.

  “Long! He comes every morning to worship … that.”

  On the top tier of the altar in the place of honor was a child’s toy. Hundreds of white strings led off from it like calcified veins. Spirit money was attached to it here and there and the wax of pig-fat candles clogged its frame. It was so totally incongruous it took Siri a while to identify it. Most Lao would never have seen such a thing but Siri had spent time overseas. The French called them échasses à ressort and it was probably the last thing one would expect to see in a Hmong village in the remote hills of Xiang Khouang, give or take, perhaps, a lawn mower.

  “You know what it is?” she asked. She took three more incense sticks from a box and started to light them in the flame of the Zippo.

  “Actually I do,” he told her. “A pogo stick. How did it get here?”

  “Shh, Yeh Ming. Not here.”

  She lit a candle, placed the incense in a jam jar in front of the toy, and pressed her palms together in supplication. Siri wasn’t about to join her.

  Friendly Fire and Brimstone

  “So, what was all that about?” Siri asked.

  They sat on a log in front of the shaman’s house.

  “It’s not my place to talk about it,” she told him.

  “Really? Well, Long is unconscious so that only leaves you to explain all this,” Siri said. He could feel her reluctance to speak. “And don’t forget I’m an honored guest.”

  She looked at him at first with a rebellious expression that was soon melted by his magical eyes. She sniffed and gazed out at the eastern stars in the black map of the universe.

  “We were just another village,” she began. “Families, happy enough, working hard but surviving. We weren’t interested in anything outside this mountain or the mountain before it or the one before that. Whatever place we chose was our world. But your world kept bumping into ours. You made us grow opium, then taxed us for it. You counted us and put our names in a book and forced your ways on us. It wasn’t fair. We didn’t interfere with anyone. But then the Americans came and asked us to give them our strongest men. Why? We needed them to work the fields but the Americans offered them money and that money bought silver. It was a fortune to us. And they gave the men guns and pretty uniforms, so they went. And some trained to be warriors, and when they came back they brought us beautiful things—coffee and sacks of rice and medicines we didn’t have any idea how to use. And they brought candies for the kids and co
lored posters of big movie stars. It was like heaven had sprung a leak and all the good things rained down on us.”

  Siri held Bao’s hand as she shook.

  “Then it started,” she said. “Chia’s elder brother came home with that toy. He said he got it from his American buddy. The kids loved it. They fought over it. Brothers and sisters who’d never argued in their lives fell out over it. Even I queued up to have my turn on it. It was like a drug. My father refused to let me and I went into a sulk he never forgave me for. The stick became the center of gravity in our world. By then, the curse was already on us. News came that two of our men had died fighting for the great American cause. Chia’s brother was one of them. A recruiter came and had no trouble at all signing up six other men to join General Vang Pao, the head of the Imperial North American Force.

  “They were used up in no time and the recruiter came back. He lowered the enlistment age to fifteen so our brothers went with him to get their gum and their girlie magazines and their Zippo lighters. That was when my father realized what was happening. The stick had brought a curse to our world. Since it arrived we’d lost our men and our boys and our souls. He confiscated it and the younger children hated him for it. Never before had children dared speak like that to a shaman. He knew then that evil had been reincarnated in the frame of the jumping stick. At first he buried it and used his strongest spell to remove its power over us. But still the recruiters came and this time they took our younger brothers, only twelve and thirteen. And they were all used up too.

  “The stick was stronger than my father. It couldn’t be destroyed. It had to be adored. For the survival of the village we had to pay homage to it. It had stolen all our menfolk and our boys. If we didn’t worship it, my father was sure it would take us all. He had us line up and beg the stick to spare our lives. And it seemed to work. There were no more reports of deaths and no more recruiters came. But it needed just one more sacrifice to satisfy it. So it took my father.”

  She sighed as if she’d been allowed to put down a heavy pack after a long trek.

  “Is that why you brought me to your village?”

  “For the stick? We all believe it’s connected somehow, but, no, Yeh Ming. Not for the stick.”

  “Then why?”

  “Surely you know. Elder Long has forbidden us to talk about it.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “He said you’d know it—sense it.”

  “Bao, I’m a doctor of scientific medicine. I’m not a shaman. Yeh Ming isn’t my name. I’m Dr. Siri Paiboun. I’m just a sort of living, breathing container for Yeh Ming’s spirit. I can’t even talk to him.”

  A look of horror came over her face.

  “But everyone has so much faith in you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  For a long while the only sound was the chirruping of night insects and water dripping into the house jar. Siri broke the deadlock.

  “Look. I do have some … connection to the spirits. I see them. I can’t control them at all but I see them. Sometimes they give me clues.”

  “Clues?”

  “You know? Hints. I have to work out what they mean. Perhaps if you told me why I’m here I could see whether …”

  “Yes, Yeh Ming.” She didn’t seem at all heartened by this suggestion. “Let’s try that. Do you think … ?”

  “Think what?”

  “Do you think we can keep this from Long and the others? There have been so many catastrophes. This is the first time I’ve seen them happy for such a long time.”

  “How do you suggest I do that?”

  “Just pretend. Pretend you have all the powers of Yeh Ming.”

  “They’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Perhaps. But let them have hope for now. There isn’t much of that around here. Give their hearts a lift until we’ve buried Auntie Zhong. Then I’ll tell you why we’re here and see if your science and medicine can help us at all. Can we do that?”

  “If you think it will help.”

  “I do. Now I think we should get back. Your sleeping partner will think I’ve stolen you from her.”

  Siri froze halfway between a sit and a stand.

  “My what?”

  “Ber. She’ll keep you warm tonight.”

  Siri sat back down.

  “Actually, I don’t suffer from the cold. Don’t feel it at all, in fact.”

  “We all sleep together, guests included. You’ll offend Long if you refuse.”

  “Then just this once let him be offended. I tell you what. I’ll sleep here in the shaman’s hut. You can make up some story … I don’t know, say I have to absorb the spells here or something.”

  “It’s musty here.”

  “I’ve slept in worse.”

  “Very well. I’ll get you a lamp and some bedding.” A laugh she’d been trying to suppress escaped through her nose.

  “What is it?” Siri asked.

  “I’ve never known a man with so many wrinkles to be so afraid of a little female company. It’s sweet.”

  He watched her scurry off across the compound. So young. So frisky and bright. And all at once the face of Madame Daeng embossed itself on the inside of his dirty old mind.

  Phosy’s police-issue lilac Vespa seemed grateful for the fact that it only had one small hill to negotiate on its journey out to the National Pedagogical Institute at Dong Dok. With Dtui riding sidesaddle on the back it had a lot to prove. Each pop of its motor was like a small blood vessel bursting. Both riders had scarves across their mouths and noses to keep out the dust that seemed to hover above the roads for hours after the passing of each army truck.

  Dong Dok was the next logical stage in the Lizard hunt. The previous evening they’d listened to their visitor, Bounlan, tell of her studies at the English Department of the nearest thing Laos had to a university. In 1964, she and thirty other teachers from around the country had been invited to the new Pedagogical Institute for a six-month course to upgrade the standard of their teaching. The woman whose photograph was on the poster had come from somewhere in the south. If Bounlan remembered correctly, her name was Phonhong, although most of the students called her by her nickname, Dtook. It was obvious she came from an affluent family as she always dressed in the most brilliant white shirts and spectacular phasin skirts that were probably made from antique cloth. The woman’s father, Bounlan recalled, had held a senior position in government at some stage, although the family’s surname escaped her. She had no idea why the woman had chosen a career in teaching. They weren’t the closest of friends. In fact Dtook had kept herself very much to herself.

  Phosy wondered about the woman’s age. Bounlan pointed out that Dtook had always looked haggard but that she was probably no older than forty at the time they met. She wasn’t an attractive woman. She always had that up-all-night-studying look. That’s why the other women had been so surprised that she’d found herself such a prize husband. She’d even brought him along to the course graduation. A tall, strapping officer in the Royal Lao Army to boot.

  The graduation party, Bounlan told them, was the last time she’d seen Dtook. She had no idea what had become of her. None of her classmates heard from her. Bounlan, on the contrary, was very involved in organizing reunions with the women who’d taken the course. She knew the current teachers—the ajans— very well. Only one who had taught the class of ’64 was still on the faculty. He had been a lecturer and home teacher and he was currently the vice director of languages in the new progressive, socialist Dong Dok. His name was Ajan Ming and Bounlan was certain he would be the best bet for following up on Dtook’s whereabouts. The group thanked her and noted her address in case they had any further questions.

  Before Dtui and Phosy had left for the institute that morning, two peculiar items of news had come their way. The first was in the form of a note they found pinned to the morgue door. It was written in the peculiar Hmong script. Its jumbled roman characters always reminded Dtui of junior Scrabble tiles before they’re arra
nged into real words. She couldn’t make head or tail of them. They sent Geung off to find Kou, the Hmong orderly, who translated it for them.

  Yeh Ming—fortunately, Dtui knew who this referred to and so, apparently, did Kou—is alive and safe and will come back to you before the end of Hmong New Year. He is helping us. Do not worry. He is great. It was signed The Hmong.

  Why they had believed the note, neither Dtui nor Phosy could say. Perhaps it was the smile and knowing nods of the translator that made them feel at ease. Perhaps if the second note, this one from Manivone at the Justice Department, had arrived first, they might have been less inclined to be placated by it. If there had been no Hmong note at all they would have been frantic with worry and probably cancelled their trip to Dong Dok. The second note read:

  Dtui,

  We’ve just learned that Dr. Siri and Judge Haeng have been abducted by Hmong insurgents in Xiang Khouang. I will let you know if we get any more information. We’re all praying for Dr. Siri’s safe return.

  Manivone

  If she hadn’t read the Hmong note first, Dtui wouldn’t have noticed the omission of Judge Haeng in the Justice Department prayers. As it was, both she and Phosy were still chuckling about it when they left. They could think of no reason why the Hmong would bother to deliver the note unless it was true. The mission to Dong Dok was still on.

  They’d tried to phone ahead several times but as the Lao said, passing a live turtle up one nostril and down the other was easier than trying to make a local telephone call beyond the city. It was only ten kilometers to Dong Dok but it might as well have been in another solar system. Civilai hadn’t wanted Dtui and Phosy to venture there. He wanted them somewhere safe until the Lizard had been caught but of course they would have none of it. Their armed guards accompanied them to the edge of town, but once they were certain they weren’t being followed, the pair insisted on going on alone. Stubborn as teak roots, the pair of them. So there they were putt-putting past the ramshackle roadside stalls, to the front gates of Laos’s seat of higher learning.