“You’re all mad,” Phosy decided. “And who is that clown in there birthing her? Why aren’t you doing it?”
“The clown in there is Dr Bountien, the head of gynaecology,” Siri said patiently. “Although he may know more egg jokes than most, he is probably the best man in the country for this job. The reason I’m not doing it myself is that I’m a coroner, Phosy. The skills don’t overlap.”
“It’s just not good enough,” Phosy huffed. Neither Siri nor Civilai was certain what ‘it’ was.
“The world will seem a better place as soon as you see your daughter,” Siri told him.
“Why’s it taking so long?”
It occurred to Civilai that he had no cause to pace so he sat cross-legged on the dry grass. “Honestly, Phosy,” he said. “You’re acting like you’ve never had children before.”
“I haven’t. Not live and in person. My ex always managed to produce when I was far from home.”
“It could have been that you were far from home more often than not,” Siri commented.
“Which in turn might explain why she’s his ex,” Civilai added.
“Will you two stop bullying me? Can’t you see I’m tense?” They all heard a shrill sound like a whistle being squeezed out of a sparrow. “What was that?”
“If I’m not mistaken, that was the sound of Dtui Junior making her debut,” Siri smiled.
“Are you sure? Is it supposed to sound like that?”
“If she’s got that much wind already, I think you should be very proud of her.”
When the door finally opened, the nurse carrying five-minute-old Malee looked up at the cloud of insects and immediately covered the new arrival’s face with the towel. She ran a few metres until she was clear of the plague then turned to ask who the father was. Siri and Civilai both put up their hands but it was Phosy who stepped forward. The nurse unveiled the tiny girl, and Phosy’s face lit up like the fairy lights at the That Luang Festival. He looked at his friends with a smile so bright the insects left the lightbulb and started to circle around the inspector.
“I’m a father,” he beamed.
As the theatre and the maternity ward were in different buildings, the nurse hurried away, leaving Phosy by himself. Siri was about to remind him that he was a husband as well as a father, but the policeman had already started for the door. He knocked once and was told to go around the side where Dtui was recovering in an alcove.
“She’s all right?” Phosy shouted through the door.
“Fitter than I’ll ever be,” replied the doctor.
Phosy punched the air and started for the side door. He paused, turned back, and hugged first Siri then Civilai – then Siri again – before vanishing around the side of the building.
“Funny. I didn’t get the impression he was the hugging type,” said Civilai.
“He’s a strong lad,” wheezed Siri.
12
IN A STUPA
Madame Daeng always slept as if there were no cares in the world. She smiled in her sleep and chewed the corners of her mouth. At times her eyes would roll inside their lids and the lashes would twitch. Siri thought he wouldn’t mind if he never slept again in his life as long as he had her to watch.
When the Saturday night noodle rush had subsided, Daeng had gone to the hospital to sit with Dtui and the baby. She’d stayed there until past ten. When she returned to the shop she’d found her husband going through the items from Rajid’s box. Mr Tickoo had stopped by earlier to see whether there had been any progress in the search for his son. He confessed that he’d been having very negative feelings that day. He looked through the box of treasures but they meant nothing to him either. He and Siri parted with a sense of hopelessness. Neither man had the heart to say what he believed: that Rajid was probably no longer of this world.
Siri told Daeng that he would come to bed soon, but he remained at his desk, running his fingers over the dry bones, waiting for a message that didn’t come. He was still wide awake when he finally climbed into bed. Although he had no inclination to sleep, he closed his eyes and visualized Si Muang Temple. He pictured Rajid hanging around there, making a nuisance of himself, perhaps flashing at unsuspecting ladies as they made offerings. He could imagine the Indian annoying the abbot by climbing the walls of the prayer chamber and hanging upside down from the eaves. In the wet season he’d…
Siri’s body became rigid. He opened his eyes. His heart was pounding. He shook Daeng and was surprised at how quickly she came to life, sitting up alert. Siri was already out of bed pulling on his trousers.
“Are we going somewhere?” she asked.
“Do we still have the sledgehammer out back?”
“Unless it walked somewhere.”
“Good. Are you coming?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She began to throw on her clothes with the same urgency as her husband. “Where are we going?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
They stopped first at Mahosot, where Siri retrieved the bamboo stepladder from behind the morgue. He alerted two night orderlies and told them to follow him on their bicycles. It was just as well the police were all tucked up soundly in bed because they might have seen something suspicious in a couple on a motorcycle speeding through Vientiane at two in the morning with a stepladder and a sledgehammer. Siri skidded to a noisy halt on the gravel in front of Si Muang Temple. He hoped he wouldn’t find the gate locked. In the old days it was unthinkable that the temple might not be available for troubled souls twenty-four hours a day. But the country had entered a period of suspicion and fear, and even monks slept behind locked gates.
They were in luck. There was a chain wrapped around the two gates giving the impression they were padlocked, but they were not. Siri unwrapped the chain noisily, not caring whom he woke up. The more the merrier. He and Daeng carried the ladder between them while Siri hoisted the hammer, and Daeng held a torch. They went directly to the stupa and set up the ladder against the structure. It barely reached the renovation work.
“You steady me and I’ll go up,” Siri said. He knew if this had been anything but a temple stupa, Daeng would have wanted to elephant-mouse-ant him about it, but there were deep-rooted Buddhist taboos against women climbing religious structures. He was on his own and there was no time to lose – perhaps none at all. Daeng tucked the torch into his belt and squeezed his hand.
“There’s just a hint of sacrilege in what we’re about to do,” she told him as he climbed up the steps with his sledgehammer slung over one shoulder. “There’d be a lot of explaining to do if we’ve – heaven forbid – got this wrong.”
Siri wasn’t in a talking mood. He saved what little breath he had for the job at hand. He couldn’t get into a position to use both hands on the hammer, so he grabbed the ladder top with his left hand and grasped the heavy sledgehammer in his right.
Only four monks and the abbot remained at Si Muang, and they’d all been roused by the sound of the chain being removed. By the time they reached the stupa, Siri had already made an impression on the new brickwork.
“What in the name of all that is sacred are you doing?” shouted the abbot.
Daeng called up to Siri, “My love, I might be forced to kill a monk or two tonight. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me if I’m sent to hell.”
The abbot stopped in his tracks.
“My goodness. They’re both mad. Stop them!” he told his acolytes.
He stepped back and let the monks make the advance. They prowled forward. Daeng reached into her shoulder bag and produced an extremely long knife. She brandished it halfheartedly, and the monks froze.
“Look, I’m really sorry about this,” she said. “I personally have nothing against the temple. In fact, I’ve been a fairly good Buddhist all my life. But I will be forced to use this if you come any closer.”
She looked up at Siri, who was flagging. He wheezed in counterpoint to the thumps of his hammer on the brickwork. She turned back to
the stunned monks and smiled.
“Perhaps I could ask,” Daeng continued, “exactly when was the renovation here completed?”
“If he has a problem with renovations we could always discuss it like sensible adults,” the abbot said. “There’s really no need to – ”
“If you could just answer the question,” Daeng said.
“About three weeks ago,” said the soccer monk.
Daeng heaved a sigh. “Thank goodness for that. We might be on the right track then. If you’d said three months it would have been one of those embarrassing moments you see in the comics.”
She laughed but nobody joined her.
“Does anyone know what in hell she’s talking about?” asked the abbot.
When the two orderlies arrived from Mahosot, wheeling their bicycles, the scene that confronted them defied common sense. Dr Siri was up a ladder battering a hole in one of the city’s oldest stupas with a sledgehammer. His wife was holding back five monks with a carving knife.
They looked at each other to be sure they were both seeing the same thing.
Dr Siri had only one last swing left in him. He defied gravity, gripped the hammer in both hands, lifted it above his head, and sent it crashing down onto the seriously wounded brickwork. The sledgehammer bounced out of Siri’s hands and passed not four centimetres from his wife’s head. Siri clung to the ladder in time to prevent his backward tumble. Seen from the ground, his mission appeared to have failed. The doctor prostrated himself against the stupa, desperately searching for breath.
“Siri, this would be an embarrassing moment to die,” Daeng called up to him.
Siri recovered, put his hands out in front of him, and pushed. What was left of the renovated brickwork caved inward, leaving a jagged triangular window some sixty centimetres by thirty.
“My Thor,” cheered Daeng.
“Oh, my heaven!” said the abbot.
Siri reached to the back of his belt and took out the torch. He pressed the switch and climbed the last step in order to see inside the stupa. The original walls were eighty centimetres thick, which explained why the new brickwork had been so hard to dislodge. He’d put all his effort into weakening the old masonry around the new cement. As he’d hoped, the workers had been too lazy to make the patch any thicker than the eye could see. He pulled himself through the narrow gap and edged forward. There was a narrow chimney of space at the core of the stupa, and he leaned over the precipice so he could look down into the bowels. The ancient bricks crumbled as he progressed. He recognized the earthy, wormy smell that rose to greet him.
“Rajid?” he called. “Rajid?” Siri’s lungs ached, and the mustiness of the air caused him to struggle for breath. He heard his own voice as a whisper. There was a rustle from below, barely audible, perhaps caused by insects. Siri pulled himself forward until he was looking directly down. He shone his light, and there below him on the dirt floor was the crumpled body of Rajid in a space no wider than the inside of a mail box.
“Are you dead, Rajid?”
Siri could see crusted blood on the Indian’s head and, from his perch, he couldn’t make out any breathing. There was no movement, no sound. Siri grabbed a chunk of brick and tossed it down into the hole. It hit Rajid on the shoulder. There was still no reaction.
“Wake up, damn you,” Siri shouted. He wanted desperately to climb down into the hole but had no more energy. His head was growing woozy. He grabbed another brick and threw it into the pit. This time he hit Rajid on the side of the head. The effort dislodged a shower of brick dust. There were one or two seconds when Rajid vanished in the cloud, then, when the thin air cleared, Siri saw that one of the Indian’s eyes was open slightly. The light of the flashlight caught its secret. It was an eye one blink away from death.
Not for the first time, Siri awoke in one of the private patient rooms at Mahosot. An oxygen mask covered his lower face. He wondered what had happened to him this time. His mind travelled back over some of the other disasters he’d awoken from over the past two years: the house that had fallen on him, the maniac’s attack, the possession, the electrocution, and of course the drowning. It was a wonder he woke up at all any more. But he was glad he did.
Life really was something to hang on to for as long as possible. It wasn’t until you were on the verge of losing it that you appreciated its worth.
Whether it was as a result of the oxygen or the sleep he couldn’t say, but he’d honestly never felt better. He took off the mask and looked around the room. The two-year-old Royal Thai Ploughing Ceremony calendar still hung on the wall, and the paint was still Wattay blue like the airport. But the buffaloes looked happier than they had a year earlier and the walls jollier. He gazed down at his own body and he was Johnny Weissmuller, alias Tarzan from the movies. Everything was perfect with the world, and he knew in his heart that Crazy Rajid had survived his ordeal and that it was all due to him.
For a couple of days there was nothing but sunshine and joy. Siri was a hero, albeit with a very small following. Dtui was a mother, albeit with a surprisingly small baby. Rajid was alive, and Civilai had won a prize for his pumpkin pie at the kilometre 6 Lao Patriotic Women’s Association cake-making fair.
There had been answers to basic questions. It appeared that while there was still a crack in the side of the Si Muang stupa, Rajid had used his climbing acumen to sneak inside from time to time and dig up relics buried there. Some nights he might have slept inside. The bump on his head suggested he had fallen and knocked himself out at some stage. This was all conjecture, of course, as Rajid was still unconscious and would probably maintain his vow of silence when he came around. But, for whatever reason, he had been bricked inside the Si Muang stupa for three weeks. How he’d survived would remain a mystery. Some of the smaller cracks in the spire must have allowed air to enter. And Rajid was a creature of the earth, a brother to frogs. If there had been water for him to drink it had to have been deep and unpleasant. The only explanation that made any sense was that he’d found nutrients in the insects that abounded inside the old stupa. The spiders and cockroaches and worms had kept Rajid alive.
∗
Siri’s overnight stay in the hospital had been just a precaution. His friend Dr Davone informed him that a man with his lung condition probably shouldn’t be knocking down stupas with a sledgehammer. She also suggested Siri might find himself blacking out more often in confined spaces or at high altitudes without sufficient oxygen. She forbade him from engaging in scuba diving or mountain climbing in the Himalayas. Siri promised he would avoid both. But there was certainly nothing wrong with him on the day he was released from Mahosot, as Madame Daeng would gladly have testified.
∗
Monday rolled around and the feelings of goodwill and happiness were slowly eroded by memories of the evil that still gripped Laos. Perhaps those involved in the strangled woman case had deliberately blocked the thoughts from their minds and been grateful for a distraction. Perhaps they all needed to believe that the earth was still a safe place on which to live. But it soon became apparent that it was not.
There hadn’t been much news from the police investigation. Sergeant Sihot had interviewed everyone in Ban Xon who’d had dealings with Phan. The village headman still had the original letter of introduction from the highways division. It looked very official and had Phan down as Thongphan Ratsakoun. It said that he was surveying for an upcoming road project in the surrounding area and it would be greatly appreciated if the esteemed official at Ban Xon could assist Comrade Thongphan with accommodation during his stay. He had a small budget for food and any cooperation would be ‘remembered by the Central Committee’. The letter was authenticated with a circular red stamp and co-signed by the head of the Highways Department, who had his own, even more splendid red stamp.
In this age of mimeograph machines and typewriters with carbon paper, official documents like those in circulation in Laos were not terribly difficult to forge if a man had access to such equipment. Nobody was s
urprised to learn that there was no Thongphan Ratsakoun at the Highways Department or anywhere else on public file. It would take several months to go through the disparate police record data banks, but there was no point in looking up an obviously fake name.
The villagers who’d mixed socially with Phan at dinners and on the takraw court agreed that he was a top fellow: a very friendly and likable person. Nobody had any idea where he went during the day. They had the impression he’d have liked to have told them about his work but wasn’t allowed to. He had a truck but no driver, which was interesting. It suggested that he was independent, perhaps a section head. He was clearly someone with the ability to do everything for himself. He had class, some women said. Perhaps he’d come from a well-to-do family. He’d obviously travelled widely. He knew the country very well.
Where did he come from? Nobody knew. He’d moved around a lot when he was young. Army family perhaps? Somewhere in the north, although he had a central accent. He’d given everyone a life history so vague they could barely remember what he’d said. He’d answered most questions with a joke, and they were too awed by his position to embarrass him with an interrogation. Sergeant Sihot had come to the conclusion that this was a very cautious and cunning villain. He’d left no real trace.
Siri, Civilai, and Phosy were seated on the log overlooking the dwindling Mekhong. Civilai had catered all three lunches. It was a new recipe for homemade baguettes with genuine corned beef.
“How do you get hold of all this exotic fair?” Siri asked. He was actually enjoying his lunch. Civilai had hit on the formula. They were washing down the bread rolls with home-squeezed guava juice, courtesy of Mrs Noy. Civilai’s wife was slowly coming to terms with the fact that her previously absentee husband had become attached to the house. The kitchen was a place she was allowed to visit but which was no longer hers. Although Civilai still had the general bone structure of a grasshopper, he now had a more substantial body for her to cuddle on a cold night, so she didn’t complain.
Dr Siri Paiboun 06 (2009) - The Merry Misogynist Page 14