The village was laid out before him, lifeless and without soul. Lumps of disused buildings perched on a hillside. Then something moved by the main house. At first he thought it might be Judge Haeng out looking for some new way to do away with himself, but as he got closer he could see a pony tethered there. A Hmong girl sat on the outside bench. He quickened his pace, but when he rounded the house he saw Dia skimming her sandaled feet over the dust.
“Dia, what’s wrong?”
“Hello, Yeh Ming. Nothing big,” she said. “I’m the fastest rider so they sent me back to let you know what we decided. I have to catch up with them.”
He sat on the bench beside her.
“What happened?”
“We met another group. They were on their way to join the big march too. They told Elder Long about relatives of theirs who’d gone before. They’d traveled at night to avoid PL patrols and the Vietnamese troops. They said a lot of the PL soldiers still hate us from the war and they kill our people on sight. No arrest, just bang bang. They had to be very quiet so they wouldn’t be spotted. In the daytime the Hmong could sleep somewhere hidden away, but …”
She looked at the distance and tried to steady her voice.
“But what?”
“But often the group’s location was given away by little children. A baby would cry and the PL would find the group and kill all of them. Some groups were so afraid they abandoned mothers and infants or they accidentally suffocated the babies trying to keep them quiet.”
“That’s awful.”
“So, Elder Long thought …” She looked sheepish.
“Where are they?”
She smiled and pointed to the shaman’s hut.
“Elder Long says it will just be until we get to Thailand. He says for you to give me an address and he’ll contact you and we can find a way to get them over the river. He said you’d know a way because you’re Yeh Ming.”
Siri’s laughter filled the valleys around. It was apparent from the look on her face that Dia couldn’t understand why this was so funny. She’d rather expected him to be angry. But Siri had his reason. The prophesy had come true in the most roundabout way. Two months earlier, Auntie Bpoo, the transvestite fortune-teller, had predicted Siri would be married and have two children before the rains started. At the time it hadn’t seemed credible, not to mention physically possible. Now he had no choice but to formally add one more branch of sorcery to his list of irrational beliefs. Fortune-telling had become a science. Soon there’d be nothing but politics left to dismiss as bunkum.
“Oh, I brought you back a goat as well,” Dia said.
“Two babies and a goat on one little pony. You should be in the circus.”
“Bao said you’d need it ’cause she didn’t think you’d be able to breast-feed the twins yourself.”
“Very thoughtful of her.”
“And she said she misses you.”
“Tell her I miss her too. I miss all of you. I won’t sleep till I know you’re safe in Thailand.”
Dia climbed onto her pony and turned three circuits until they were pointed in the right direction.
“Oh, and there’s a platoon of PL soldiers two ridges across. You might want to do something to get their attention. They’ve got the same sense of direction as your assistant,” she laughed. “Bye, Yeh Ming.”
Siri stood and watched her ride off. They were all so positive, so good-humored. They were setting off on a journey of a hundred and fifty kilometers through hostile country. When they reached the limits of the lands they knew and trusted, they would abandon the animals and cover the final stretch on foot. The odds of all of them making it were poor. Yet they could still joke and talk of adventure. In their hearts they must have known that the lives their families had lived for centuries were to become legend.
Siri said good morning to the twins, selected a particularly splendid Zippo from the collection, and returned to set fire to the main hut.
Quiet as the Morgue
The brand-new Mi-8 helicopter touched down directly on the grounds of Mahosot Hospital. Until the warranty ran out it would continue to have a Russian pilot at the controls, which explains why it didn’t remove the hospital roof or land in the trees. It did, however, manage to blow all of the new chrysanthemums out of their bed. Stretcher bearers crouching low ran to the open hatchway, carefully lifted Judge Haeng onto the canvas, and whisked him away. The helicopter could have taken him to the temporary field hospital in Sam Neua in the north, but Siri had insisted the man’s condition was so grave they had no choice but to take him directly to Vientiane.
It mattered not a jot to Siri that the judge had no condition to speak of. Apart from the broken wrist, once his boss had slept off the drug, he would be his old disagreeable self within twenty-four hours. Siri was just tired and he wanted to go home. Despite the incomprehensible ranting of the pilot, he insisted on remaining on board until the rotors had stopped spinning. He decided he was already short enough, thank you, and he preferred a dignified homecoming.
French medical and US military choppers had arrived frequently at the hospital during the war years but, four years later, all flights had stopped. So it wasn’t surprising that doctors and nurses and patients came spilling out of their buildings to look at the spectacularly gleaming Russian craft. To Siri’s profound disappointment, Dtui and Geung were not among them. He’d hoped to impress them.
He handed the twins, now crying in coordinated stereo, to two maternity nurses and asked them to take care of the infants. He told them he’d stop by later. He walked to the morgue, carrying the remains of Danny and Eric under his arm, his only luggage. One of the uprooted chrysanthemums lay on the morgue’s welcome mat as if it were insisting on an autopsy. The door was padlocked and for some mysterious reason his key didn’t work. He wondered why they’d needed to change a three-month-old lock. He went to the office window but the curtains were drawn tightly and there was no gap to allow him to see inside.
It was just after five and usually Dtui and Geung would be heading off to water the squashes in the cooperative plot behind the hospital. They understandably dawdled getting there so it wasn’t unheard of for the morgue to remain open till five thirty. They certainly wouldn’t have rushed away before five. He had to consider another obvious possibility. On his last protracted interstate trip, the hospital had drafted Siri’s staff to work in other departments. He thought he’d kicked up enough of a stink about it to ensure it wouldn’t happen again but he wouldn’t put anything past the current administration.
He stopped by Urology and wandered in to the office of Dr. Mut. “Wandering in” was a standard procedure in most Vientiane offices. Doors were usually left ajar due to the heat and a lot of the buildings were open plan. Apart from personages at the absolute top of the heap, there were no receptionists or secretaries to keep out unwanted guests. So riffraff was to be expected.
“Good health, Mut,” Siri said.
The doctor was staring at two plastic cups that sat in front of him on the desk. He looked up and smiled. He was a kindly, greasy-faced man with hair slicked to his scalp like trails of paint.
“Ah, Siri. Can I tempt you?”
“Can’t say I’m sure what you’re asking me to do,” Siri confessed, not knowing whether these were specimens or oolong tea.
“I always end the day with a hot ginseng. Keeps me active in the bedroom.” He winked, threw back one of the cups, and wiped his lips.
“I’ll pass, thank you, Mut. Being active all by yourself makes you blind.”
Mut laughed. “Word on the ward is that you’ll be rabbiting soon on a regular basis. Young bride. Disgusting. Envy you, though.”
He threw back the other cup.
“Shouldn’t you be savoring that?”
“No. Horrible stuff. Don’t want it to last a minute longer than necessary. Tastes like pubic-hair roots. Gets stuck between your teeth the same too. Know what I mean?”
Siri had always found it fitting that t
he head of Urology should be so adept at toilet humor. Mut was its grand master.
“Well, seeing as you know so much about everything,” Siri said, “and seeing as you stole my nurse last time I turned my back, I thought perhaps you’d know what’s become of my morgue people.”
“Ooh!”
Mut let the end of the “ooh’ trail into a long noisy breath. “Now that I can’t tell you, comrade.”
“Because you don’t know or because it’s a secret?”
“Mystery, Siri. Mystery. Nobody has any idea. That morgue’s been locked like that for several days now. Nobody seems to have a sound idea why. But there are rumors, Siri. Lots of ’em.”
“I’m listening.”
“Something happened, they say. Your Nurse Dtui and her policeman got caught up in something nasty.”
“And?”
“That’s all I heard.”
“That’s not much help.”
“Sorry, comrade. All I know.”
Siri, anxiety growing with every stride, hurried to the administration building. As it was after five, he wasn’t surprised to find it devoid of administrators. None of the clerical staff there knew anything beyond the same rumor passed on by Mut. His frustration grew. He knew how unconcerned Dtui and Phosy were for their own safety. It was like them to get into trouble. He went to Mr. Geung’s dormitory room but his neighbor admitted he hadn’t seen Geung for three or four days. The mystery was thickening.
Siri’s Triumph was in the parking lot where he’d left it before he headed north. He wiped a thick brown layer of dust from it and tried the key. It charged into life first time. He had to hand it to the British. If nothing else, they knew how to make motorcycles. He attached Danny and Eric to the back of the seat and headed to Madame Daeng’s shop. The shutter was bolted and a sign, not in Daeng’s own hand, was taped to the front of it. It read,
SORRY, CUSTOMERS.
CLOSED TILL FURTHER NOTICE.
He wasn’t sure where to turn next. He knew it was a mistake but he stopped by his house out beyond the That Luang Stupa. The place was a menagerie of his own making. Through his benevolence it had become a guesthouse for strays, some of whom he hadn’t yet met. Mrs. Fah’s kids were running around like headless chicks, shaking off the cobwebs they’d gathered at school. Inthanet, the puppeteer, was having a serious fight with his girlfriend, Miss Vong, in the kitchen. Something about a wife he’d forgotten to mention. Comrade Noo, the forest monk who was in hiding from the Thai junta of the month, was giving a seminar to half a dozen students in the backyard. And two attractive young ladies he didn’t know sat in his room watching a TV he didn’t own.
None of the inhabitants could shed light on the events at the morgue and he realized staying at the house would do him no good. He grabbed some fresh clothes from one of the two piles the women were leaning against and retired to the bathroom. He tried to ignore the brassieres in lurid colors that hung there, had a quick shower, and fled. At the door, he ran into Mrs. Fah coming back from the market with instant noodles for her brood.
“Dr. Siri. When did you get back?” she asked. Siri was delighted at least one person had noticed his absence. “We heard you’d been kidnapped.”
She didn’t seem all that concerned. It was as if “kidnapped” and “bitten by a mosquito” might have carried the same weight in her addled mind.
“I escaped.”
“That’s nice.”
“Mrs. Fah, have you heard anything from Dtui or Phosy?”
“No, Doctor. Since she moved out, I haven’t heard a thing.”
“Has there been any news around?”
He didn’t mean newspaper news or radio news. He wasn’t particularly interested in crop yield or cooperative farming advances. He meant reliable social hearsay news such as was in ready supply at the markets.
“Nothing much. They say there was a killing out at Kok Pho. Plenty of police out there. Just rumors, probably. Like some noodles, Doctor?”
But when she looked back he was already on his bike.
What in the blazes was happening? He needed answers and there was only one person he could rely on to provide them. He sped out along the Phonkeing Road. The potholes were more challenging than he remembered and there were several occasions when his hands were the only parts of him in contact with the bike. He skidded left at kilometer 6, sped along the side road, and soon found himself surrounded by boys with big guns at the entrance to the government compound. In spite of the fact that he’d been there a thousand times they still insisted on escorting him to Civilai’s house. His friend might be retired now but he still had his security rating.
From the curbside in front of the little bungalow, Siri sat on his saddle and yelled, “Old brother, could you come out here and tell this midget I’m not a threat to national security?”
It was dark now and the light on the porch went on and the door opened. But it was Civilai’s wife, Madame Nong, who stood there smiling.
“Well, if it isn’t the second most handsome man in Laos,” she said in her songlike Luang Prabang lilt.
“You know this man?” the little guard asked. It seemed to Siri that if the government didn’t insist on changing sentries every week they might save themselves a lot of effort.
“It’s fine,” she said. “He’s harmless.”
The escort rode away and Siri climbed off his bike. He went through the silly little American gate that any horse or bullock could have stepped over and kissed Nong’s cheek. She too was a product of a French education so she didn’t recoil from physical contact like the wives of her Vietnamese-trained neighbors.
“I was hoping to see the old man,” Siri said.
“I was hoping too. He’s been gone all this week.”
“Gone where?”
“Don’t know.”
“Come on. There’s nothing you two don’t share.”
“I’m serious. He came home one day in a fit of nervous excitement, packed a few clothes, told me not to worry, and left.”
“He’s retired.”
“It doesn’t feel like it. He’d been working on something with your Nurse Dtui and Inspector Phosy.”
“Did he say what?”
“Look, dust yourself off and come inside. I’ll make you a little drinkie and tell you all I know.”
“My fantasy.”
“What?”
“Civilai out of town …”
“Dream on, Casanova. I still keep my Luger under the pillow.”
“That’s encouraging. At least we make it to the bedroom.”
At the kitchen table, Nong told Siri everything she knew—about the booby trap, the poisoned cakes— everything up to the day Phosy and Dtui decided to follow up on a lead they had about the Lizard studying at Dong Dok. Civilai had come home that day, flustered and secretive, grabbed a bag of clothes, told her not to worry, and was gone in twenty minutes.
“And, of course, you’ve worried,” Siri assumed.
“It’s been three days. Of course, he used to do things like this all the time when he was in the politburo. I wouldn’t see him for weeks at a time. But he’s not supposed to be doing anything official these days. That means he’s doing things he shouldn’t. Ornery old men can get themselves in a lot of trouble, Siri.”
“Well, if he was dead you would have heard by now.”
“That’s very comforting, thank you.”
“Have you asked around?”
“All his old comrades. Nobody seems to know anything. It’s as if my darling husband has just vanished off the face of the earth.”
“Don’t panic, my love. I’ll find him.”
Every step, every line of inquiry had made the mystery even more baffling. He had one more stop to make before he would allow hopelessness to overtake him. Phosy had an office at police headquarters at the Interior Department. It was one of the few buildings where the wandering-in policy didn’t apply. A scruffy man in a large green uniform sat at the desk. His hair was so short it was
more pink than black. He seemed surprised to have a visitor after dark.
“Help you?”
“I’m looking for Inspector Phosy.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“Haven’t seen him all week.”
“Do you have any idea … ?”
“No. I just man the desk. If you have any inquiries—”
“I know. Ask in the morning when someone with a mind is on duty.”
“Hey, no need to be rude, old man.”
Siri took a deep breath and reminded himself where he was.
“Look, I’m sorry. This isn’t police business. I’m a friend of the inspector. I haven’t seen him for a few days and I’m worried about him.” Just for effect he added, “I’m Siri Paiboun, the national coroner.”
“Then I reckon I’ve heard of you.”
“Could you just give me a hint?”
The night man looked up into Siri’s tired eyes and obviously decided he wasn’t a threat to security.
“All I can tell you is that something big went down earlier in the week and your pal was caught up in it. Him and a couple of other people have been missing since. Nobody’s saying what happened to them. We’ve had the director of police and half a dozen Vietnamese advisers here running around. But I didn’t tell you this.”
Siri’s was the only engine disturbing the silence in Vientiane that night. He’d reached the stage where he didn’t know what to do, who to ask. The fatigue of the past few days was squeezing rational thought out of him. With no idea how much precious petrol there was in his tank, he rode around the streets of Vientiane’s humble downtown. It was a grid of no more than twenty blocks, most of them dark, deserted, and uninviting. Few Lao could afford a night out and for those who could, the curfew had them home by ten. The resident foreigners had their favorite spots and kept them alive. Ninety percent of the entertainment venues had closed down since the Royalists left and the remainder were pale shadows of their lively pasts.
Curse of the Pogo Stick Page 15