‘I did. But you would have noticed I wasn’t dead at the time. I was just in a trance. And as far as I can work out, the only spirits I see are the ones with unfinished business. But, I can’t know that for sure. I had no idea what I was seeing and no control over what happened there. I have this gift-cum-curse and I don’t even know how to switch it on and off.’
‘Is that why we’re here? An audience with the witch medium?’
‘No … Perhaps. I’m so close, Daeng. I feel it. I know I can communicate with these spirits. It shouldn’t be that hard. You see that fellow over there on the rock?’
‘No.’
‘Of course you can’t. He’s dead. But I should be able to call him over, sit him down here on the spare chair and ask him where he thinks he’s going. Ask him how he lost his arms.’
‘You think the witch can teach you to do that?’
‘It’s because of her and the word of a dead soldier that we’re all here. They do it all the time in Vietnam. They see the departed and ask them where the body is. If they can communicate, so can I. I’m sure it’s a question of confidence. Half the victory is in believing in yourself. You can’t tell me that faith hasn’t driven you through life.’
*
I was almost fourteen when I next saw Dr Claude and the Vietnamese. The bathroom fittings business was obviously doing well because they’d gone upmarket and were staying at the hotel in the centre of town. And they were travelling in a nice car. I’d delivered some laundry to the front desk and I saw them huddled at a small table. If they recognized me they didn’t react. I walked out and stood behind the outdoor barber stand opposite. My legs were like tofu. I couldn’t have gone back to the auberge if I’d wanted to. And I didn’t want to. I wanted to see where these devils were headed.
They could have walked but I suppose they wanted everyone to see their nice car. They drove it about two hundred yards and parked on the river bank not far from an open-air bistro. It was the type with hostesses in sexy clothes. The type the men liked; too young and just stupid enough. I’d sprinted to catch up with the car and I was out of breath when I threw myself under a hedge near where they parked the car. I watched them eat from there. I watched them drink. I watched them fondle. I’m not sure I had it in my mind to kill those two men. I don’t remember what was going through my brain. Perhaps I merely wanted them to feel what my mother and I had felt every day since we’d lost Gulap. And I had to do it then, that night, because I was afraid I’d never have the opportunity again.
It was getting late. Claude and his whore left the table and she propped him up as they walked along the river bank. He was drunk as a prince. The car was parked on a slight bluff with a scenic view of the Mekhong. They got in and there was some hanky-panky in the front seat. I’d learned all about hanky-panky at our auberge. The car rocked a little. Then there was nothing. Five minutes later the young lady of the night stepped out of the car and staggered back to the bistro. I came out of my hiding place and looked through the rear window. The moon lit up the river with a cheesy yellow glow. I could see the silhouette of Claude’s head. It didn’t move. I wondered if she’d killed him for me. But probably not. He was asleep. I’d heard all about men falling asleep at the wrong times as well. Too drunk to do his seedy business he’d decided to sleep it off.
I didn’t know anything about cars. Had never been in one. But I’d seen wheels before. I knew if you gave a handcart a good enough shove you could get it to move. I’d never heard of a handbrake and it wasn’t until several years later when I was learning to drive that it occurred to me that the spirits had left it off especially for me that night on the Mekhong. And even now I wonder whether I imagined what a laugh it would be if the car should roll all the way to the river and Dr Claude emerged angry and wet from the water. Or whether I hoped he’d be lost at the bottom of the Mekhong with all his sins come back in the form of river fish, snapping away at his nasty flesh. Or perhaps I just pushed to see what would happen.
It rolled more easily than I’d imagined. I barely leaned against the black boot and the car was on its way down the slope. It seemed to have a mind all its own. I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d wanted to. I lost sight of Claude’s silhouette when the car reached a sort of shelf and slowed a bit but in seconds it was over the ridge and nose-down headed for the water. The voracious Mekhong took the whole car in one gulp. I hurried to the ledge and looked at the bubbles — big, head-sized globs of air. Every second I expected the evil doctor to burst to the surface, coughing and spluttering and thanking his good Lord for delivering him safely from the edge of death. But he didn’t show. I was surprised to see people running past me, down to the river: foreign men and Lao staff and the Vietnamese and the curious girls. They’d seen it happen. And they all ignored me as if I’d had nothing to do with this. As if a car had taken a fancy for a dip all by itself.
Some men jumped into the water. They were probably drunk and showing off because the water was flowing fast and deep at that time of year. In fact the car was no longer where I’d put it. They found it a week later on the way to Basak. There was no ginger-haired man sitting in the front seat. At first that helped me sleep. Imagining my Dr Claude opening his car door, swimming across the river to live a nice life in Thailand. But that guilt didn’t last for long. One night, Gulap came to me and in perfect Lao she told me how she could rest much more easily knowing that man was where he deserved to be.
On the first day he arrived in Laos, the man calling himself Herve Barnard had travelled south to Pakse on a false laissez-passer. He shook his head at how easy the commies made it to falsify documents. How had they ever won the war? It took him only half a day to find the man he was searching for. The Lao was still living at his old address. This information had recently become available following the declassification of official documents in Paris. Most of the material pertaining to the debacle at Dien Bien Phu was now in the public domain. Too bad for anyone mentioned in the files whose life depended on secrecy.
The Lao officer had once been the head of clandestine missions for the Lao Issara resistance movement and subsequently for the Pathet Lao in the south. The years had made him soft. There had probably been a time when he would have died rather than disclose information about his colleagues. But just two hours of torture, not even sophisticated state-of-the-art torture at that, and Barnard had the name he’d wanted: Daeng Keopakam. The Lao had died anyway, but bereft of honour. Barnard spat on his corpse.
Armed with the name, some old French charm and a seductive smile, he’d found the warm trail of Madame Daeng. She’d continued her lunchtime noodle restaurant shift deep into the American occupation. Then, for some pathetic, nostalgic reason, she’d taken over that same restaurant at the ferry crossing. How was that for ambition? What a mind to waste.
He thought back to their last night. He’d awoken and she was there beside him. She’d kissed his cheek and said good morning. She was beautiful, there was no doubt. Those deep dark chocolate eyes could take all the air out of a man in one blink. He’d looked around the room with heavy eyes. Everything seemed normal. His uniform on hangers in the doorless closet. His gun on the desk. His briefcase on the chair. Everything was as it should have been. Apart from an odd feeling at the back of his mind.
He’d heard the code name Fleur-de-Lis. It had not come from the French side but from the Lao. It had been given up to interrogators by a captured local spy. But he’d not known the agent’s true identity. Only that the Fleur-de-Lis had been responsible for most of the mayhem experienced by the French administration in the south. But, like Barnard, they’d all assumed the agent was a French official. A double agent. At the very least, a sophisticated Vietnamese educated in France. Espionage was a career for the upper classes, not the coolies or the corvee labourers. Nobody had considered for a second that the bane of all their security troubles could be a native.
And that was why it wasn’t until long after the mess to end all messes, after the humiliation, that
the man now calling himself Herve Barnard finally put the pieces together. He was certain who Fleur-de-Lis was. He’d been in love with her which made her betrayal even more biting. Yet only he and she knew what had transpired that long sleepy night. And the years passed and he rose through the ranks and became a man with power. But his successes could never satisfy him because of that dreamless night in a bamboo room in Pakse.
And, as a man in his sixties, he was back. He’d stood at the ferry ramp and looked down at the tattered canopy of the noodle stand that had once belonged to Madame Daeng. It was lunchtime but the stools were unoccupied. The pot-bellied patron sat alone eating an orange, wiping his hands on his greasy undershirt. No finesse, thought Barnard. No class. Typical of these disgusting people.
He was back in Vientiane now. He had her name. They’d told him she’d come here twelve months earlier to establish a business in the capital. But the different departments: business registration, migration, housing, medical — none of them was prepared to give out information about a Lao citizen. Not to him. He was the enemy. The officials were cadres from the north-east who’d spent a lifetime fighting his kind. If they spoke French they didn’t let him know as much. When he’d returned with a translator they’d interrogated the poor woman about her relationship with this old farang. Not even offers of a finder’s fee could squeeze a sac of information from these dry old commies. He’d gone to the markets. There were still some French speakers there. Nobody knew of a Madame Keopakam. But Daeng? My word. There were Daengs aplenty, they told him. Fire a bullet in the air and it would likely land on a Daeng. He’d suggested there would be a reward to anyone who could locate his old friend, Daeng Keopakam, from the south and said his name was Herve and he was staying at the Lane Xang.
And that’s where he sat in his hotel room, waiting, choking in the smog of his chain cigarettes, fuming. The only way he could lighten his mood was by imagining Madame Daeng hanging by the ankles from a beam, and him with a brand new tyre iron.
5
The Uphill Rowing Club
On Friday morning, Siri and Daeng awoke to a completely different Mekhong. Far and near, the villages had washed the three years of grime from their longboats and those with leftover paint that hadn’t hardened in the cans had spruced up the old ladies of the river. By whatever means, they’d dragged them to the water and, with thirty-six hours to go before the races began, old crewmates with rusty joints were relearning the pleasures of rowing.
Before the change of administration the races had been annual. Betting on the results had become endemic. Wealthy landowners brought in athletes to replace the less serious rowers on their local crew in order to safeguard their bets. One by one the locals lost their seats to outsiders and became viewers. But these were socialist days and an edict had been passed around saying that only those born within the sound of an elephant’s trumpet from the village could crew its boat. And on this gloriously sunny but chill morning, the motley crews of out-of-shape villagers puffed steam into the cold air. There was no doubt there were no athletes on display this day. It seemed hardly possible that more incongruous teams would ever be gathered. Different ages, genders, builds, sizes of girth, levels of disability and mental state; all were on display.
The boats were sturdy and long, accommodating anywhere from thirty to fifty rowers in each. Most were hand carved from solid timber and stank from a hundred layers of linseed oil. All of the crews were in need of professional coaching. The starboard to starboard rule of passage had never entered the rule books of the Pak Lai races. They floated sideways. They collided. They laughed. They formed logjams of boats held together with oars and careened downstream. They laughed some more. Siri and Daeng watched the circus with tears of mirth rolling down their cheeks. Their favourite was one bright green boat whose crew seemed to be on the waning side of sixty. Most of the women had a smudge of red where their teeth used to be. They chewed cuds of betel and grinned horribly. One particularly gaunt man appeared to be the village headman and he shouted instructions that were either ignored completely or met with howls of derision. As they seemed to have trouble fighting against the current, Daeng lovingly nicknamed this crew the Uphill Rowing Club.
‘Do you suppose they’ll get it right by tomorrow?’ Daeng laughed.
‘I very much doubt a month of practice would improve matters too much,’ said Siri.
‘I can’t-’
Daeng’s thought was interrupted by a loud knock at their door. The door wasn’t locked so they both shouted, ‘Come in!’ but the knocker did not do so. Siri was out of breath by the time he reached the handle. He opened the door and was confronted by a short but very attractive woman around Daeng’s age. She wore a beautiful Lao phasin and a crisp white blouse. Her thick hair was fastened in a chignon with two gold hairpins. Behind her was a Chinese-looking man of the same height. His head was shaven and, for some reason, he wore a long white nightshirt.
‘Doctor Siri,’ she said, not a question. Her smile was that of a much younger person. If her teeth were false they’d been fashioned by a craftsman.
‘Yes?’ said Siri, suddenly aware he was dressed in nothing but a threadbare towel.
‘I am Madame Peung,’ she said in impeccable French. ‘People have been calling me Madame Keui of late so that is the person you might have been expecting. But, what’s in a name? Please call me whichever you wish.’
Siri was about to hold out his hand but the visitor put her palms together in a nop. The authorities had outlawed the bourgeois salute but it still felt right. If he hadn’t been holding up his towel with one hand he would have returned it. The bald man merely nodded.
‘My brother, Mr Tang, lost the power of speech after an explosion when he was in the military,’ she said. ‘Neither can he hear. But he has great sense. He feels our meanings.’
Then, in Vietnamese, she said, ‘I hope you’re enjoying your retirement. It must be difficult to know what to do with your days now.’
Siri was fluent in both French and Vietnamese but of course both were spiced by his Lao. Yet there was something peculiar about this woman’s languages. It was as if … as if she were speaking to him with his accent. As if she’d borrowed the words from him.
Madame Daeng joined them at the door.
‘We have guests,’ she said. ‘Why haven’t you invited them in?’
Siri made the introductions as they all walked to the veranda. Madame Peung and Tang sat on the deckchairs. Siri sat on the railing, being careful to keep his knees together. Madame Daeng found herself dragging the heavy wooden chair over to join them. Madame Peung proved to be most agreeable for a witch. After talking about their respective journeys, bemoaning the cost of goods at the local markets, and one or two jokes, the three communicators had apparently broken the ice. So much so that Madame Peung decided they were close enough for her to toss a few sticks of dynamite into the embers of bonhomie.
‘Before he shot me, I was as Lao as you two,’ she said.
‘Sorry?’ said Daeng.
‘You’ve heard I speak Lao with a Vietnamese accent,’ she said. ‘But before the break-in to my house two months ago, my Vietnamese and French had been quite basic. After I was shot I found myself channelling Hong Phouc, a Vietnamese mandarin of the late nineteenth century.’
‘How badly were you injured?’ Daeng asked.
‘Oh, I was killed,’ she said.
It’s not easy to keep a straight face when the person you’re talking to insists they were once dead. She’d delivered the line so deadpan that both Siri and Daeng smiled at her, expecting a punchline. But she continued.
‘They still haven’t caught him, the murderer. So they don’t know why I was targeted. He didn’t take anything from the house. Hong Phouc suggests that it was part of the vast cosmic plan. The same man shot me on two separate occasions. The second bullet didn’t do any harm at all.’
‘Because you were already dead,’ smiled Daeng.
Before becoming involved with Siri a
nd his band of merry ghosts, Daeng would probably have made a joke at this juncture and dismissed the woman as a nutcase. But she’d heard of so much weirdness from her husband that almost anything was possible. Almost. Siri, on the other hand, was so engrossed his knees drifted apart.
‘Evidently,’ said Madame Peung, averting her eyes and letting out a gut laugh that suggested she was every bit as bewildered by it all as Daeng. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it? On the night I was shot for the first time, all I remember was looking up from my bed to see a strange man leaning over me. I heard a crash from the gun. Three days later I awoke in the same bed at exactly the same time. Of course I didn’t know then that three days had passed. I thought it was the same night and the shooting was a dream. I took the torch, went to the bathroom and had the longest pee I’ve ever had in my life. I didn’t think it would ever end. I passed the mirror and I was … different. I was younger. Oh, not by a lot but enough to notice. And my body was in better shape. I wondered whether that trip to the bathroom was part of the dream. I was confused. I returned to the bed and slept till morning. I was awoken by a scream. My live-in girl was standing in the doorway to my room with her hands over her mouth. I asked her what was wrong. She screamed again and ran off. I didn’t see her again.
‘I went down to the village to see the headman. But as I walked past the houses all I heard were screams and the slamming of doors. I asked what was wrong but nobody would talk to me. There was one old woman I had befriended many years before. She made charcoal. We used to talk a lot. She was the only one who wasn’t afraid of me.
‘ “Of course they’re scared,” she said. “The menfolk carried your body down to the pyre yesterday and we watched you go up in smoke. You were killed by an intruder three days ago.”
‘I was astounded.
‘ “Of course it’s a mistake,” I told her. “It must have been somebody else. Someone who looked like me.”
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