The Coroner's Lunch

by Colin Cotterill

  “I am not.” Lao Jong’s uninvited intrusions were beginning to get as annoying as his gummy smile.

  “The dogs know it.”

  “What dogs?”

  “They all know who you are. They know what lives inside you.”

  “The only thing living inside me is nausea. This stuff is making me feel ill.”

  “It shouldn’t. It’s all from the forest.”

  The crowd of men around Siri was beginning to blur. The alcohol was deceptively strong, and the topic of conversation was giving him the willies. But deep down in his agnostic scientific soul, he wanted all this talk of ghosts and mediums to be true. He wanted there to be something else, something illogical. He’d been confined and restricted by science all his life, and he was prepared to break free.

  But this? This was all talk: all superstitious claptrap from a bunch of old drunk village Hmong. They got lucky. Everyone has dreams. The dog comment was just a guess. Basically it was all crap. He stood shakily, excused himself, and asked to be taken to his bed. The whisky was beginning to make him confused. Two of the men came smiling to prop him up from either side and began to lead him off. But before they had gone far, Tshaj called out to him.

  “Yeh Ming.” Siri and his props turned back. “I speak a few words, just enough to get by. But no one else at this table tonight speaks Lao.”

  That was the last thought to enter Siri’s swimming head. They walked him to the guest hut and laid him down, but he wouldn’t remember any of that. He was unconscious long before.

  It shouldn’t have surprised him, given all the talk and the setting and the whisky, but his dream that night was a spectacle.

  He was dressed as a Hmong of a thousand years hence. For reasons known only to the Great Dream Director, he was riding Dtui’s bicycle through a fairy-tale jungle. He didn’t see the trees as trees, but rather as the spirits that inhabited them. They twirled together from the roots to high up in the sky. They were kind and welcoming, just as Tshaj had described them. Many were women, beautiful women, whose long hair curled into, and became, the grain of the wood.

  It was a happy place; he seemed to know all the spirits, and they liked him. But the bicycle was squeaky and its noise awoke a black boar that had been asleep behind the bushes. Its fangs were still bloody from a kill. The tree spirits called out to Siri, warning him, but he seemed unable to move. The bicycle was locked with rust. Heaven knows why he didn’t get off and run for his life.

  The boar charged. He looked up at the spirits but they couldn’t do anything to help. When he looked back, a small woman was standing between him and the boar. She seemed fearless, even when the boar leaped from the ground and soared through the air toward her. Before it could strike, she held up the black amulet in front of its face, and it turned from muscle and fur into a black sheet of burned paper. It floated harmlessly to the ground and crumbled.

  She turned to Siri. He’d expected to see the sweet face of Auntie Suab, but instead it was the same old man’s face with its betel-nut red mouth that had lain dead at the feet of the Vietnamese in his previous dream. (He must have been making a guest appearance.) He ignored Siri and went from tree to tree ripping down the spirits and the nymphs and putting them into a Coca-Cola bottle. Even before the bottle was full, the trees were empty of spirits, and he vanished. All that was left was Siri on his rust-locked bicycle surrounded by trees that were now just wood.

  He heard the sound of chewing, and looked back over his shoulder to see that the jungle floor behind him was a vivid green. The color seemed to vibrate as it reflected in his eyes. And as he watched, the carpet of green spread closer and closer to him. And when it was close enough, he could tell that this was a swarm of green caterpillars. He looked back; everything in its path had been destroyed, devoured by the hungry insects.

  The bark of the trees around him was stripped away, the leaves were gone in seconds, and slowly the tree trunks were leveled. When there were no more trees, the caterpillars caught sight of Siri. They crawled all over him and Dtui’s bicycle, and just as they’d eaten everything else, they began to chew their way through him as he watched calmly. It tickled. Very soon, Siri could feel himself inside the caterpillars.

  A flock of crows swooped down and ate the caterpillars that contained small bits of Siri. Then whales somehow managed to eat the crows. And the whales were swallowed up by volcanoes and suddenly Siri, or at least bits of Siri, was in every creature and every geological feature on Earth. It was one hell of a good finish.

  “Yeh Ming.”

  Siri knew neither where nor, momentarily, who he was. He looked up to see the pretty face of a girl like a tree nymph looking down at him.

  “The elders wish to invite you to breakfast.”

  She was speaking Hmong, and he understood. She blushed at his smile and left him alone. He was on the floor of a simple hut on a mattress of straw. He felt immaculate, invincible, and incredibly hungry. When he sat up, he felt something at his neck. It was the black amulet. He didn’t take it off.

  The jeep came to pick Siri up after ten. The guards had called through to headquarters earlier and warned them that the doctor was acting oddly. They were afraid he might have been doped. They reported the previous night’s proceedings.

  At headquarters, Siri jumped from the jeep like a young man and strode into the hidden commander’s office. The men there looked up at him; he thought he detected some mistrust in their eyes.

  When he saw the doctor, Kumsing rose and walked over to him. “Outside.” He took Siri’s arm roughly and led him through the door. When they were far enough away from the building, Kumsing spoke angrily. “All right. Suppose you tell me just what your game is.”

  “Well, I used to box.”

  “You know what I mean. What exactly have they sent you here to do?”

  “They sent me to answer your request for a coroner.”

  “And I suppose it’s just a coincidence that you speak fluent Hmong?”

  “Given that there’s only one coroner in the country, you’d have to assume yes, it is a coincidence.”

  “Why didn’t you see fit to mention it to me?”

  “Well, firstly because it’s none of your business. And secondly because I didn’t know.”

  Kumsing looked at him in amazement. “Didn’t know? You didn’t know you could speak Hmong? Don’t insult my intelligence, Doctor.”

  “I promise you, when I arrived in Saravan, I couldn’t speak a word of it. But I believe there may be a scientific explanation for that.”

  “What’s that round your neck?”

  “It’s a magic amulet.”

  “My men tell me you’ve been here before. The Hmong knew you. You omitted to tell me that, as well.”

  “Well, I probably forgot. It was a long time ago. About a thousand years, to be exact. At that time I defeated twenty thousand Annamese with an ox horn. I have to assume it was a rather large one.”

  Kumsing’s expression turned from anger to concern. “They haven’t…done anything to you, have they?”

  “You mean hypnotized me and turned me into a lunatic? No. I don’t think so. This is the way I’ve always been. It was quite an amazing visit, mind you.”

  “Did you get the samples?”

  “Their potions? No. They didn’t use any. Captain Kumsing, I suggest you come to your office with me and listen to a most strange tale. Twenty-four hours ago, if someone had told it to me, I would have had them committed to an asylum. But, like me, I think you’ll eventually come to believe that there may be only one way to save your life.”

  The Exorcist’s Assistant

  The village elders were dressed in their Sunday best and standing at attention when the jeep arrived that evening. As per instructions, only Siri and Kumsing were on board. Kumsing had driven. The village guards had reluctantly pulled back to the post on the road. The two visitors were at the mercy of Meyu Bo Village. Kumsing was already having doubts.

  Siri and the elders greeted eac
h other in Hmong. He’d explained his theory to the captain that morning. Siri had been born in Khamuan. He’d lived there for the first ten years of his life. He knew nothing of his parents. When he was about four, he went to live with an old woman. But if his mysterious family had been Hmong, or if they’d lived in a Hmong area, he would have absorbed a lot of the language and spoken it.

  His scientific explanation was that the language had remained dormant for all these years, but was reawakened by this exposure to Hmong people. Kumsing found it hard to believe, but Siri felt a good deal more comfortable with that explanation than with the alternative. He’d check its likelihood with the professors at Dong Dok College when he went home.

  The elders led the two men to Lao Jong’s hut, where an ornate shrine had been set up facing the door. An ornamental sword was embedded in the earth in front of it. Two trays sat on the altar. One was decorated with a banana-leaf cone, other banana-leaf origami, and flowers. An unshelled chicken’s egg sat proudly at the summit of the cone, defying gravity. The second tray contained small portions of foodstuffs, alcohol, and betel nuts all shrouded in white unspun cotton threads.

  Tshaj went up to the captain. “You bring?”

  Kumsing displayed all the outward signs of calm skepticism, but when he spoke, his voice trembled. He handed over his old uniform shirt. “Here, but I don’t want candle wax and ash all over it.”

  Tshaj took it from him and folded it flat. Lao Jong’s wife lifted the second tray on the altar. It had been sitting on a third, empty tray upon which Tshaj placed the shirt. The woman then replaced the tray of offerings on top of the shirt. Kumsing’s essence was now present in the ceremonial paraphernalia.

  The elders retied the long white cotton threads that looped down from the wood rafters, circled the altar, and fanned out to the door jambs.

  “Please wait, sir.” Tshaj sent Kumsing to sit with Siri on the ground.

  An audience was gathering slowly. It was important that everyone in the village attend this evening. It was the only way to discover who harbored the malevolent spirit; the Phibob. The Phibob could not possess its victims directly and inflict harm on them. It chose a living soul to hide in. This allowed it to channel evil from all the aggrieved spirits toward the aggressor. The hosts rarely knew they carried the Phibob.

  “I don’t know about this, Siri. If the men found out….”

  “If the men found out, I bet they wouldn’t be surprised at all. They weren’t born soldiers. I bet a lot of them would recall rites like this from their own villages. Anyway, I’d also bet they know already.”

  “What makes you think this isn’t just a plot to discover who’s commanding the project now? Why should they want to help me?”

  “Survival.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If the commanders of the project continue to die, what do you suppose the army will do?”

  “They’ll assume we have been attacked by the Hmong.”

  “And wipe them out.”

  “We aren’t barbarians, you know.”

  “Really? You’d be surprised what your army’s doing in the name of rooting out insurgents. Chemicals are being rained down on villages suspected of harboring Hmong resistance. One more little village wouldn’t make much difference. That’s why. They want to be spared. The only way to do that is to placate the spirits and keep you alive. If it works, you’ll have to beg forgiveness for every tree you cut down from now on.”

  “I’d be a laughingstock.”

  “Better a live laughingstock than a dead unbeliever. But it’s up to you.” It was hard for Siri to convince him of something he wasn’t convinced about himself. He didn’t know why he believed this was Kumsing’s only chance. He hadn’t expected that his description of his night in the village would have been enough to persuade the captain to accompany him. But the young man was so desperate, he would have tried anything.

  Siri looked around at the unlikely cast of this night’s drama. It all seemed so ridiculous. Lao Jong, dressed all in red, was attaching tiny cymbals to his fingers. His wife was tying a hood around the top of his head. Tshaj was lighting the tapers and candles. The sickly sweet scent of the incense mixed with the smell of the beeswax lamps.

  Auntie Suab was working the crowd, handing out amulets like a peanut seller at a soccer game. Most of the village had arrived already. The elders and key figures were on the floor inside, the rest standing or sitting on benches outside. Despite the numbers, there was no sound. Even the babies lay silent against their mothers’ breasts.

  “Is this dangerous?” Kumsing whispered.

  “Don’t know. Never been to one before. You’d better shut up now.”

  Lao Jong, with his hood still pulled back from his face, knelt at the altar and offered up the tray of snacks and liquor to his own teacher and all the teachers before him, way back to the time of the first and greatest shaman. His wife lowered his hood, and he gently tapped the finger cymbals together in a slow rhythm. His wife took up a gong and began to beat in time to his rhythm with the thigh bone of a wading bird.

  Lao Jong slowly began to chant a mantra that was in no language Siri had ever heard, yet somehow he seemed to know it. Somehow he seemed aware that Lao Jong was calling for the great gods, the angels, the good spirits to come to him, to use him. He rocked gently back and forth next to the altar and summoned the spirits. For thirty minutes he chanted, and no one grew restless. People seemed hypnotized by the rhythm and the movement. There was still no other sound.

  Only Captain Kumsing huffed in frustration again and again. The smoke was irritating his eyes. The gong and the cymbals were buzzing in his ears. He thought he was going to throw up.

  Then, almost undetected at first, the repetition of the mantras grew faster, and the volume rose. Lao Jong’s breath was becoming strained and, even though his face was hidden, all there could tell he was in a trance. His arms began to twitch. He rose quickly to his feet, and his whole body and his head jerked in increasingly violent spasms. It was neither a dance nor a fit. Unseen deities were jostling for position inside his body. Lao Jong, the toothless farmer, was gone. Not one person there believed this specter in front of them was the man who had gone into the trance earlier.

  Although he could see nothing, the shaman appeared to look around the room. His focus fell on Siri, who shrank back as everyone looked in his direction. His hopes of attending his first exorcism as an observer were soon gone. Lao Jong’s body fell, not like a person, but like a tree crashing to the floor of a forest. It fell hard, face first, at Siri’s feet.

  Siri was sure Lao Jong had knocked himself out. His head was inches away, unmoving, unbreathing. Siri reached his hand forward to see if he could help. But in the speed of a breath, in one swift motion, the shaman rose to his feet. It was as if a film had been reversed. As if the tree had been unfelled. The crowd gasped.

  The new owners of Lao Jong’s body leaned over the stunned doctor and brought the palms of the shaman’s hands together in front of the hood. The deities spoke in their own voice, a voice that could never have belonged to Lao Jong.

  “Yeh Ming. Tell us where the evil spirit Phibob is lurking. Whose body has he chosen? Who is the host?”

  Siri was overwhelmed. This was a grave responsibility. Why him? Every eye was fixed on him, an actor who’d forgotten his lines. He gazed around the room and through the open windows. He looked at every face, every man, woman, and child, hoping there’d be a sign, an arrow or something, a flashing light. But he saw nothing and conceded defeat. “How the hell should I know?”

  Even though the shaman’s body had come no closer, Lao Jong’s gnarled hand somehow shot forward and grabbed Siri’s wrist. A sliver of pain shot through his arms and down his legs. It was as if his nerves were being over-stimulated. Then that energy traveled up through his body and settled at his neck. The amulet, which had been so cool against his skin, began to burn like a white-hot ember. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. He yanked
at the leather to take it off, but the thong held. Worse, the amulet burned. It burned through skin, through muscle, to the bone. There was the sizzle of flesh. He tried to wrestle the thong over his head now, but the leather constricted, tighter and tighter, like a garrote. He couldn’t breathe and he knew he was going to die. He was going to die an agonizing death. He was choking, but nobody came to help him. Nobody came to pull the burning amulet from his skin. He could understand none of it. Kumsing sat beside him as if nothing were happening. Couldn’t he see the flames? Smell the burning flesh? He was writhing with pain, kicking his legs, yanking at the thong. Then in his death throes he saw her. She sat beneath the window smiling serenely like an angel.

  Kumsing saw none of this. He only saw Siri gaze calmly around the room, close his eyes, and breathe deeply. Then Siri re-opened his eyes and looked directly at an old lady beneath the window at the farthest point from the altar.

  Siri knew now who was killing him. The amulet had been a screen to stop him seeing Phibob. In his dream, she’d collected together the spirits of the jungle and released the plague of insects. It was her. Auntie Suab was hosting the malevolent spirits. Phibob was in her. He looked at her through the slits that were left of his eyes and she smiled. And the smile was red, not with betel, but with the blood of revenge. Suddenly he could see them, the unsettled souls of the troubled dead. They sat inside her. And with the last of his strength he raised his hand and pointed at the old lady under the window. And although his hearing was draining away along with his life, he heard her speak. He’d never heard such a sound. The voice that came from her mouth contained the voices of many, gruff, angry voices, voices of generations of lost souls. They belonged to the spirits of men and women who had suffered violence and indignation, unsettled ghosts denied a resting place. They all spoke from the mouth of the tiniest, most gentle lady in the village: “Fuck you, Yeh Ming. You’ll be cursed for this. Believe us. You will be cursed.”