The Coroner's Lunch

by Colin Cotterill

  “Have you interviewed the locals?” Siri asked.

  “The Hmong? They just deny everything. They aren’t likely to give up one of their own. They’re peculiar people, all that spirit-worship mumbo-jumbo. It wouldn’t surprise me if they have one of those witch doctors with his own factory turning out poisons and crazy drugs.”

  “How far is it to the nearest village?”

  “Four, five kilometers. Why?”

  “I need to go and talk to them.”

  “Oh. That won’t do you any good.”

  “Captain, the only way we can isolate the drug, if there was a drug, would be to find out what varieties they use out there. Get samples and take them back to do tests in Vientiane. Until that happens, we won’t know the cause of death, and you can’t arrest anyone. Are you with me?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Good. I’ll need a driver.”

  “You want to go now?”

  “No time like the present.”

  “But it’ll be dark in a few hours.”

  “Then it’s just as well that I’m not afraid of the dark, isn’t it?”

  They were driving along an overgrown gully similar to the one by the airfield. Siri suspected these tracks couldn’t be seen from the air, and were probably set up by smugglers. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was just like this, a tunnel through jungle. It was no wonder the Americans had been unable to shut it down. The Hmong must have learned the trick from their enemy.

  Captain Kumsing had opted not to come along on this journey. He’d sent Siri with a driver and a younger captain. The driver was the friendlier of the two.

  Siri asked whether they’d be able to see the project site on the way.

  “No, sir. It’s over that way about thirteen kilometers.”

  “Really? Seems a bit odd you’d set up a crop substitution project so far from the villages you’re helping.”

  The driver laughed. “Yes, sir. It does, doesn’t it?”

  The captain glared at Siri, but it didn’t stop him smiling. In fact he kept smiling until a large black shape came hurtling at the windscreen with a thud. The shape flapped against the glass and flew up over the roof of the cab. Siri and the captain both shielded their eyes, but the driver seemed used to it.

  “Damn thing.”

  “What on earth was that?”

  “Crows, sir. They get sport out of buzzing our transport.”

  “Crows? Is it normal to find crows this far from cities? I thought they were flying rats.”

  “I’m not a bird man, me. I know a lot about fish, but—” The crow came at the truck again, this time at the side window where the captain slapped at it. He fought to get the window up, and the angry bird bloodied his hand with its beak.

  “Shit!”

  Siri helped fight it off until the window was up and the bird flew back into the trees. The driver wound up the window on his side.

  “Never seen one as frisky as that. Must be the time of day. You know, I say crows, plural, but I guess there might just be the one. Those brown chest markings, I recognize them. I’ve seen that fellow before.”

  The captain sucked at the blood on his wrist and mumbled under his breath. Siri reached into his pack for antiseptic.

  “You want me to look at that?”

  “It’s nothing.” And he didn’t mean it wasn’t a serious wound. He meant it was nothing. He held up his wrist and in spite of the blood they’d all seen, there wasn’t a mark.

  The driver whistled. “Now, that’s odd.”

  As they neared the village, they passed an army guard post. The sentry waved them through. The road opened into a clearing where thirty or forty bamboo-and-grass huts sat on either side of a small stream. Narrow paths criss-crossed in all directions, and at every intersection there was a small structure like a bridge, too small for even a child to cross. The newer ones were decorated with flowers and incense sticks. Older ones had been ignored and left to fall into decay. The driver saw Siri looking.

  “They’re bridges so the lost souls can find their way back to their bodies.” He laughed.

  “Heathens,” the captain muttered. Every tree on their way in to the village was circled with colored cloth and white strings. Many had trays of offerings and piles of stones in front of them. Siri thought it was all rather charming, and somehow familiar.

  Two more armed soldiers came to meet the truck. The army appeared to be providing very generous security to the villagers of Meyu Bo. One of the soldiers was holding a walkie-talkie and was telling headquarters that the doctor had arrived.

  Half a dozen village elders had been herded together into a reception committee for the eminent guest from the capital that they didn’t want. They were to stand a few paces back until called upon to offer a sincere welcome.

  “Don’t expect anything in the way of manners,” the captain told Siri when they were out of the truck. “They’re an ignorant lot.”

  One of the guards led Siri to the elders, who stood counting their toes like schoolchildren. They knew not to speak until they were spoken to.

  “Elders of Meyu Bo, this is Dr. Siri Paiboun.”

  Despite their own status, the four men and two women held their palms together high in front of their faces as the army had instructed them. They were surprised when Siri returned the nop, beginning even higher and with a deeper bow. That was when they bothered to look at him, and that was when they noticed. They all noticed. They stood transfixed by the sight of the little doctor who stood in front of them.

  The elders looked sideways at each other to be sure they were all seeing the same miracle. Siri and the soldiers began to feel uneasy. The captain spoke.

  “Don’t just stand there like buffalo. Don’t you have something to say to your guest?”

  There was another embarrassing silence before the village headman, Tshaj, took one hesitant step forward. His hands were still pressed together in front of his face. His Lao was strongly accented.

  “It is you, is it not?”

  “I hope it is,” Siri said. He stepped forward to shake the headman’s hand, but the old man retreated back to the others.

  “Heathens,” said the captain. It was obvious he felt no compassion for the proud race that had been his enemy for over a decade.

  The elders were huddling and chattering nervously in Hmong. They were plainly confused about something, their nops still frozen in front of them.

  The driver stepped forward and shook his head. “I’ve seen ’em nutty before, but they’re breaking all the records today. They usually can’t wait to get all this official stuff over and done with and get back to whatever fool thing it is they do here.”

  Siri attempted to take another step forward, but this time all the elders retreated together. He didn’t know what to make of it.

  “Is there something wrong?”

  “How did you come here?” one of the women asked.

  “Yak-40.” There was silence. “I flew.”

  The elders chattered again even more excitedly. Then the same woman boldly ventured forward from the group and reached out for Siri’s arm. Her hand was shaking. She seemed relieved when she found flesh and bone inside his shirt sleeve. She reported back to the others, and the atmosphere automatically changed.

  They all gathered around Siri, touching him, smiling, asking questions in Hmong as if he was a long-lost friend. The military men didn’t know what to make of it. The captain called out to him. “You been here before or something?”

  “Never,” Siri smiled.

  “Mad, all of ’em.”

  The elders half-led, half-carried Siri off to the meeting hut. He was baffled but enjoying the attention. They sat him in the place of honor on the floor facing the doorway, and brought water and sweets for him to eat. The soldiers, they just ignored.

  Again and again they tried to ask him questions in Hmong. Each time he told them in Lao that he didn’t speak the language. They laughed. He laughed. The soldiers yawned.

  Finally
the elders settled in a circle around him, leaving a few respectful meters either side of him. Their numbers had swollen now to about twenty. They all introduced themselves, but the only names he remembered were Tshaj, the headman, Nabai, the woman who had inspected him for flesh, Lao Jong, a tall, grinning, toothless man, and Auntie Suab, the second lady elder, who was tiny. She smiled so sweetly that Siri could tell she’d broken many hearts in her life. The captain sat unsmiling inside the doorway with his boots pointed at the circle.

  Slowly the light dimmed as more and more villagers came to peer at the amazing sight in the meeting hut. They blocked out the light in the doorway and the windows. The eyes of the children filled the gaps between the banana-leaf walls. Siri could have led them on longer, but he started to feel guilty for taking advantage of this mistaken identity.

  “This is all very pleasant,” he said. “But it’s true what the soldiers said.” He was surprised to hear himself use the Hmong word for soldiers. He must have picked it up somewhere. “I really am Siri Paiboun from Vientiane. I’m the coroner [he used the expression ‘ghost doctor’ to help them understand] at Mahosot Hospital. I’m sure I look like someone you know, but I’m afraid I’m not him.”

  They didn’t reply, just stared at him, smiling. He wondered whether they understood.

  “Just who do you think I am?”

  “You are Yeh Ming,” the headman said without hesitation. The villagers all around them gasped.

  “I wish I were,” Siri laughed. “He must be quite a warrior. What does he do, old Yeh Ming?” The expression quite a warrior was a Hmong phrase he didn’t remember knowing.

  Auntie Suab spoke quietly and seriously, as if this were some type of test. “Yeh Ming is the greatest shaman.”

  “Yeh Ming has supernatural powers,” Tshaj added. “One thousand and fifty years ago, you…he…drove back twenty thousand Annamese with just one ox horn.”

  “A thousand and fifty years ago?” Siri laughed again, and all the Hmong laughed with him. They were a good audience. “It’s true I am beginning to show my age, but a thousand and fifty years? Don’t be cruel to an old man.”

  Nabai spoke. “This isn’t the body you used then. You couldn’t fight off half a Vietnamese with the body you have now.”

  “That’s very kind of you.” That was another Hmong expression. It was obviously a very simple language if he could pick it up just by being around these people. “But if I’ve changed bodies, how do you know it’s me?”

  The captain finally lost interest in this fiasco and went off to eat with the guards.

  “A body is easy to shed,” Tshaj explained, “but the eyes will always be there. You can’t replace the river-frog emeralds. Zai, the rainbow spirit, turned two river frogs into emeralds to thank the first shaman for giving him more colors. They’re passed from body to body.”

  So it was his eyes. It all came down to the fact that he had green eyes. Through the course of the discussion and the meal that followed, he wasn’t able to convince them he wasn’t a one-thousand-year-old shaman, not even by showing them his motorcycle license. Even when they’d persuaded him to stay the night with them, and the captain and the driver had gone back and left him in the charge of the permanent village guards, he still wasn’t comfortable. He felt embarrassed to be receiving food and lodging on the strength of his similarity to Yeh Ming. But he was having a good time.

  The business he’d come to resolve had been shuffled to the side somehow. But he thought that as a respected imposter, he’d eventually get more answers than the captain. He was sitting at the edge of the village under a rustic pavilion with the senior men. They were into the second bottle of the most delicious fruit-flavored rice whisky he’d ever tasted.

  “I want to tell you all why I’m here,” he said.

  Tshaj interrupted him. “We know why you’re here.”

  “You do? Why, then?”

  “You’re here for the dying soldiers.”

  “That’s true. Can you tell me what killed them?”

  “Yes.”

  Sweet Auntie Suab arrived at the crucial moment. She was a maker and distributor of amulets and she carried a large collection to the table.

  Tshaj was annoyed. “Suab, this is a men’s meeting.”

  “I’m so sorry, brother. But this can’t wait until morning.” She dumped the assortment of pendulums and amulets and religious and sacrilegious artifacts on the table in front of Siri and stood back. Siri laughed.

  “Oh, God. Don’t tell me I have to wear all these.” The others laughed too.

  Suab shook her head. “No, Yeh Ming, only one. I blessed one of them with your spell.”

  “Which one?”

  “You’ll know.”

  “How?”

  “It’ll come to you.”

  Siri raised his eyebrows and looked down at the thirty-something medallions in front of him. He’d pick the wrong one and perhaps they’d take him more seriously as a coroner. The odds were in his favor. He knew it would dispel the magic of the evening, but perhaps that was a good thing.

  He reached across the table for the largest amulet. It was an ugly, dust-covered lump. He felt sure if Suab had blessed an amulet for him, she would have doused it, or anointed it, or at the very least dusted it off. This was easy.

  But as he reached across, the ever-dangly button on his shirt cuff became anchored on something. He lifted his arm to find he’d hooked a small black prism on a leather thong. The amulet was so old that any characters or images that had once been etched on it were now rubbed away.

  “Yes.” Auntie Suab said with a sigh. “Yes.”

  “No, wait. That wasn’t fair. Best out of three?” But it was over.

  Suab gathered up the failed medallions and, with a satisfied smile, walked off to leave the men and the blessed amulet to their business.

  “That was weird,” Siri conceded.

  “Aren’t you going to put it on?” one of the men asked.

  “Certainly not. I’m not about to start believing all this nonsense.”

  “Then you won’t be pleased to hear how the soldiers died,” said Tshaj.

  “Don’t tell me it was voodoo.” He disguised his unease with another giggle, but noticed how Lao Jong and a man so dark Siri could barely see him exchanged a guilty look. Because it was one of his duties as head of the village, Tshaj assumed the role of story-teller. The others refilled the glasses and leaned back in their seats.

  “The soldiers came half a year ago. They said they were coming to help us. They said they needed to clear forest land so we’d have somewhere to plant crops to replace our opium.

  “We’ve always grown opium. We don’t do much with it ourselves. Use it as medicine sometimes, eat it when there’s no food. But it was our only cash crop for a long time. It was good enough for the French. They bought every kilo we could produce. And the Americans refined it in Vientiane and sold it to their own troops in Saigon.

  “But the good People’s Democratic Republic decided it was a terrible thing. They said we have to substitute something else for it. Something healthful. If you ask me, I’d say they just wanted to keep our income down, so there’s no chance of our funding an uprising.

  “We’ve been watching the soldiers clear the forests, and we’ve been waiting and waiting to see what substitute crops they were going to plant for us. Hectares and hectares they’ve cleared.”

  Siri nodded. “I thought as much. Do you know where they’re selling the timber?”

  “Oh, yes,” the dark man said. “It goes through Vietnam and gets shipped off to the enemies of the Chinese, to Formosa.”

  “Really? I wonder just how much of those profits is being shared with the government.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference to us,” Tshaj said. “If the army gets the profit, or the government gets the profit, it’s all the same to us out here. We don’t get anything.”

  Lao Jong spoke up from the far end of the long table the Americans had left as their on
ly memento. “The animals are fleeing from the saws, so we have to go further to hunt. Some of our young men are away for weeks at a time, looking for game. The water in our stream is polluted by the silt that’s running down from the hills. But these are just physical problems.”

  “Yes, they’re only physical problems,” Tshaj continued. “We’ve suffered many physical ills over the years and survived. That’s not what frightens us here. It wasn’t physical things that killed your soldiers. As you know well, Yeh Ming, powerful spirits abide in the jungle. [Siri rolled his eyes.] Most are kind, helpful spirits, but there are many malevolent lost souls out there. They leave the bodies of the troubled dead and reside in the trees with the nymphs and the ghosts.”

  “A bit like sub-letting, you mean?”

  Tshaj ignored the smiling doctor. “When we cut down a tree for our huts, or to make space to plant crops, we ask for permission from the tree spirits. We make offerings, sacrifices sometimes, as our own shaman sees fit. Usually, the spirits will move on without blaming us. After all, we have to live together, share what resources we have. That’s the way it has always been.

  “Some of the trees in these parts are as old as the land itself. The spirits have become powerful here. When the soldiers came, they didn’t ask permission. They didn’t show any respect. They didn’t sacrifice a buffalo or consult a shaman. They just started cutting. And they cut and cut and hauled the timber away in trucks. They cut hundreds, thousands of trees.

  “Can you imagine? Even the most benevolent spirits have become evil. They all seek revenge.”

  “The tree spirits killed the soldiers?” Siri knocked back his liquor and his glass was refilled. “How did they do that, exactly? Lightning?”

  “Possession.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  Toothless Mr. Lao Jong leaned forward onto the table and looked into Siri’s eyes.

  “You, of all people, should know about that.”

  “I should?”

  “Think of your dreams.”

  Siri shuddered. “What do you know about my dreams?”

  “I know you can’t keep the spirits in any more.”

  “I—”

  “Mr. Lao Jong is our Mor Tham, our spirit medium. He can see. He knows you’re a shaman.”