Goi laughed and got to his feet. All his confidence had returned and he swaggered toward the swaying detective. “Look at you. You’re broken and sick and probably riddled with disease. You can barely walk. What do you propose for our showdown? Checkers?”
“Look at yourself,” said Phosy. “Without your money and your bodyguards, you’re a toilet mop. Except toilet mops smell better.”
“So! Hand to hand.”
Goi tossed aside his pistol and strode up to the policeman. He laughed. “I’m told two days of lying in shit isn’t the best preparation for battle.”
Phosy stepped up and took a deep breath. His eyes seemed unable to focus. It took all his effort to remain standing.
Goi was cocky now, shadowboxing to taunt his weak opponent. “Come on, sick boy,” he said. “You really should have kept the gun. You aren’t half the man you think you are.”
Phosy took one more step toward him and sank to one knee.
“Oh, poor policeman. You realize the only way you’ll win this fight is if you accidently collapse on top of me. But wait. That might not be such a bad idea after all, because look what I’ve just remembered.”
Goi unclipped the leg pocket of his army fatigues and drew out a forty-centimeter blade with a wooden handle. “Surprise!” he said. “Nice, isn’t it.”
Armed now, he marched toward Phosy, swinging his blade left and right, swishing it through the air like a pirate’s scabbard. Three meters from the confused detective. Two. One. Swish, swish.
“Bye,” he said, and pulled back the blade to strike.
Phosy reached behind his back to his belt and produced a Browning nine-millimeter. He fired once into the foreman’s knee and watched the man drop to the grass with an incredulous look on his face.
“Surprise,” said Phosy.
The foreman’s eyes asked a question, but his voice was gone.
“What you saw me throw away back there was a branch,” said Phosy. “The quickness of the hand deceives the eye. Why the hell would I want to fight someone like you hand to hand?”
He pumped another bullet into Goi’s left foot and enjoyed the scream.
“Please don’t kill me,” begged the foreman. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I did. Honestly. I barely sleep. The ghosts haunt me every night. I’ll do better. Give me one chance, and I’ll atone.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Phosy, and fired one more round into Goi’s outstretched hand. He screamed and cried and rolled into a ball on the ground.
“I think he has enough holes in him now,” came a voice.
Phosy sagged to his knees and let go of the gun. He’d used the last of his strength. His body was shaking.
Comrade Xiu Long, the last Chinese trade delegate, came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “We don’t want him completely dead,” he said in competent Lao.
A number of men, armed but not in uniform, came out of the tree line and lifted the still-screaming foreman. When he saw Xiu Long, he switched to Chinese. Pleading. Crying. Accusing.
In Lao Xiu Long said, “You’re going home now, Comrade Goi. Kindly shut up.”
13
The Tears of Madame Daeng
“And all the time he could speak Lao,” said Phosy. “And I had no idea, you lovely devil. And you had a doctor with you, such a versatile man. And you—I mean, he—tended my wounds and gave me awful concoctions that would clear the inevitable infestations from my internal organs. So beautifully done.”
Amongst the medications the doctor had given Phosy was a brew that not only helped him forget the state of his skin, but also made him overly amorous. It was a side effect all those present could handle, even now as he sat beside the older Chinese official, squeezing his thigh. The same doctor was currently pumping Siri full of pharmaceuticals that had yet to be recognized by a health department anywhere in the universe. He was resting beneath a tree under the watchful eye of Madame Daeng. For some reason, everyone felt confident now that Siri’s health was in the hands of the new enemy.
“Of course he does,” said Phosy, still rambling on. “Exactly what kind of policeman am I? Of course my best friend in the world speaks Lao. The Chinese selected him to run the trade mission in Udomxai for five years, didn’t they? A man can pick up an awful lot of Lao language from pretty girls in five years. Right, Xiu Long?”
He squeezed the man’s thigh again. Xiu Long made no objection. Phosy looked up at the audience. Before him sat Civilai, Madame Chanta and the Lu elders. The schoolroom was the last surviving building in the village, so this was their town hall.
“I find one learns far more from conversations one is supposed not to understand than by being proactive,” said Xiu Long.
“See?” said Phosy. “He speaks better than me. Proactive? I mean, how does he know words like proactive? He’s gorgeous.”
“All right,” said the Lao government’s delegate for Chinese affairs, also known as Civilai to the illegal immigrant Chinese ex-head of trade. “So you first came down here with Phosy under the premise of observing an investigation into an altercation between two village heads.”
“That is intrinsically correct,” said Xiu Long. “In fact we’d been looking for an excuse to cross back into Laos for a long time. We’d been investigating Guan Jin, also known as Foreman Goi, for some years. We have what I suppose you might refer to as spies dotted here and there, so we were aware of the level of influence the foreman wielded.”
“So you did care about the plight of your Lu laborers?”
“Of course. We care about anything that adversely affects our international trade balance.”
“Right. Well, that’s very caring of you.”
“I was interested to see how your inspector fared against such a notorious villain,” said Xiu Long.
“How did I fare?” grinned Phosy, taking the time for one more squeeze.
“You were exemplary.”
“Exemplary. Did you hear that? He’s so lovely.”
“I cleared it with our people to coordinate with Inspector Phosy to collect evidence against Guan Jin,” said Xiu Long. “But our efforts were thwarted to some extent by the invasion of Vietnam, the expulsion of Chinese road crews from Laos and troop maneuvers along the Lao border.”
“Maneuvers that spilled over onto our side,” said Civilai.
“Pure hearsay,” said Xiu Long with a smile. “By the time we’d worked through the horrendous mountain of paperwork that results from the wholesale movement of troops, we’d lost touch with the inspector. Our chief spy on the work crews had been sent back to China, and his replacement had trouble locating Inspector Phosy.”
“I was underground lying in shit.” Phosy smiled and squeezed the Chinese knee once again.
“Indeed you were, Inspector. And for that I apologize. We blinked at a very important second. Our new man was a skilled craftsman who secured a position on the remaining maintenance team. He’d also had experience on Goi’s bodyguard detail in the past. He was there the day they pulled Phosy out of the warehouse and dragged him to the edge of the crevasse. The worker pushed him over the edge, and he fell thirty meters. Fortunately the cliff was at the edge of a sand quarry that had filled with water. Our man pulled him to the bank. The inspector was in a terrible condition, however. A lesser man would have succumbed to those injuries.”
“Succumbed,” said Phosy drowsily.
“Foreman Goi had apparently received important news at that moment,” said Xiu Long. “He and his men leapt into their trucks and fled, leaving just the one guard at the warehouse. Our man had stayed behind and hidden in the bushes. He was able to overpower the guard, release the other prisoners and go to the aid of Inspector Phosy. The warehouse was located no more than twelve kilometers from the border, and as you know, Comrade Civilai, we happened to have a large number of men at our disposal. We brought in a unit with a medical team and cared for the victims and took photographs for evidence. Inspector Phosy still had the authority to approve a joint operation.
We decided to go after Foreman Goi.
“We had heard all about you and Dr. Siri by then, of course, Comrade Civilai. The brave politburo man who drove into an invading army and prevented serious border transgressions. Quite a feat, Comrade. I had made a similar recommendation myself but had been ignored. Through our network and reports of sightings of your laissez-passer at checkpoints, we were able to trace your comings and goings during your stay here. It became clear that you were visiting Lu villages and investigating the construction sites along our new roads. If you were able to collect any evidence against the foreman, I would greatly appreciate your sharing it with us.”
“I have enough evidence to make your noodles curl, comrade,” said Civilai.
“Excellent. Excellent. When we heard of your meeting with the headman at Seuadaeng Village and your interest in Foreman Goi, we had someone follow you here. We were all in pursuit of the same prey. We weren’t sure what to expect, of course. We arrived shortly after, and our men took up positions in the hills and waited. But not long after you arrived, a Chinese truck traveled along the road above the village. We knew the license plate. It contained Goi and his henchmen. They stopped two kilometers along the road, waited until nightfall and made their way back here. When they started to herd the villagers to one central point, it was evident what their plan was. We intervened. Goi’s men had torched some huts, and we weren’t in time to stop the spread of the fire, but we did save the lives of most of the villagers.
“The inspector had seen you frog-marched in the direction of the school, and we followed them with a dozen men. We surrounded the schoolhouse. Our men had no clear angle to get off shots at Goi, but when the shooting began inside, we had no choice but to take out the guards and create as much chaos as possible. One of our team reported sighting two enemies climbing the hill behind the school. When we entered the schoolroom and found no sign of Goi and Silo, we knew where they’d gone. We took the pathway to the hilltop, and—against my objections, it must be said—Inspector Phosy insisted on conducting the arrest himself. As we were merely visitors, we stood back as we were told. Fortunately, Foreman Goi survived his injuries from that encounter and is well enough to travel to Peking. There he will face trial for his crimes against nationals of the PRC. Like your good selves, we do not consider our ethnic minorities to be any less Chinese than ourselves, or any less deserving of justice. Once he wakes up, I shall extend a formal invitation to Inspector Phosy to attend the trial.”
Phosy was snoring gently with his head on Xiu Long’s shoulder.
They took it in turns to suck rice wine through straws from the ceremonial pot and dedicated their round to Phosy and to the demise of a tyrant who had made their lives a misery. It seemed that everything bad had been erased. That, after a long period when everyone lived in fear, life could continue. Even when the gathering became rowdy, Phosy did not wake up.
It was when the dregs in the pot had started to taste more of water than of spirit, and the fatigue of the night’s events began to drag them down and lure them to bed, that Civilai looked to the open doorway and was immediately struck sober. He’d known Madame Daeng for a considerable time, but he’d never seen her cry. She leaned against the doorframe, and tears raced down her face.
“Daeng, what is it?” he shouted.
14
Above and Beyond
Dr. Siri’s funeral was conducted at Hay Sok Temple on Sethatirat Road. During his early years in Vientiane, Siri had lived in a single room that overlooked the dusty, underloved grounds. He’d watched as, one by one, the monks had left the order until there was only one full-time abbot. And Siri had never been too sure whether he was human or spirit.
Siri’s single room and the old house that contained it had been blown to bits by a mortar. But Siri spoke fondly of his nights at his kitchen table looking down at the dirty stupa and watching nature slowly reclaim the altars and the spirit houses. Only the prayer hall remained unforested, and it was there that a large photograph of Dr. Siri sat on an easel in the entrance.
There had been few photographs of the doctor, so like his house, his passport photograph had been blown up until it was almost unrecognizable. The face was a blur, but the studio had kindly touched up his white hair and eyebrows and given him green eyes. Though it was an abstract Dr. Siri, visitors still laid flowers in front of it. There were no florists in 1979 Vientiane, so posies had been collected from the forests or stolen from the front garden of families who had fled. Crazy Rajhid brought a two-meter jasmine bush. Nobody objected.
Reluctantly, it seemed, ministries had sent along representatives to pay their respects to a man who had been a thorn in their arses for too many years. They sat in rickety cane chairs and stared into space as they listened to one of the few monks who could remember all the sutras. He had been imported from Mixai Temple across the way. There were no actual ministers or vice ministers in attendance because the Party line was still that religious ceremonies fell under the auspices of superstitious nonsense. Party members who were in need of a blessing for this or that had taken to smuggling in monks in the dead of night to perform secretly in their houses.
Judge Haeng, still aspiring to become a minister, had sent a note to say he was sorry he couldn’t come, but he had been called to an urgent meeting down-country. Two of the mourners had seen him sipping cocktails at the Anou with a girl with what they politely referred to as “a remarkable set of breasts.” But despite the lack of safari suits, the hall was far from empty. In fact, it was rocking. When word got out of Dr. Siri’s demise, even though they faced a day of docked wages, the common folk had put a halo of red around the date on their calendars. Hay Sok Temple hadn’t seen such a gathering since the old regime. Groups sat in the shade of banana trees playing cards. Others reminisced with their favorite Dr. Siri stories.
The body lay on a teak bench under a white silk shroud. The left arm was exposed, held out above a pewter bowl of blessed water. The white-clad mourners had formed an orderly queue, almost unimaginable in any other branch of Lao society, and were using an engraved cup to pour lustral water over the open palm. They laid sandalwood flowers and lilies across the shroud and shuffled on to enjoy the breakfast feast spread on tables beneath parasols outside.
“It’s not a bad turnout, really,” said Siri.
“Most respectable,” said Auntie Bpoo.
“I thought being dead might be more … more depressing.”
“Death’s what you make of it.”
“Yes. Nice. Really nice.”
“Look at all those people. Some traveled overnight without laissez-passers, took their chances avoiding military checkpoints, just so they could be here. They’ve camped outside in the grounds. Do you know them all?”
“Not half. There are those I’ve seen, but most, if I’ve ever met them, I’ve forgotten where and when.”
“But they remember you. That’s the important thing.”
“I imagine most folks wouldn’t have a chance to observe. There’s something sort of angelic about sitting up here looking down on your own funeral. Oh, look. There’s Madame Lah, the baguette woman. I almost married her, you know. I’m surprised she’s here. I thought she hated me.”
“She probably does. Funerals are good for muttering curses under your breath when your turn comes in the queue. When she gets to your hand, she’ll probably break your finger.”
“Don’t be cruel.”
“The dog’s a nice touch, lying there beside his master. I should have had animals at mine.”
“You did—pigs, goats, buffalo.”
“They were grilled. I don’t think that counts.”
“Ugly’s more than just a dog, anyway. He was somebody relevant in a previous life.”
“Oh, don’t. Once you start getting into all that mumbo jumbo, you’ll be stepping around cockroaches in case they were your granny. He’s a dog.”
“No. Look at him. Don’t you think he knows what he’s doing? He’s on duty. Vigilantly pro
tecting me from evil.”
“He’s asleep.”
The queue of mourners snaked past the body, some stopping to dribble a little water, others splashing as if they were bailing out the Titanic. But most passed as quickly as they could. Too much time spent with a dead body was like standing in the rain and hoping for pneumonia. There were lost spirits in temples looking for new souls to inhabit.
Mr. Geung and his fiancée, Tukda, had walked respectfully to the body, but when the lab assistant reached the outstretched hand, he grabbed it and fell to his knees. “No!” he cried. “Don’t g-g-go, Comrade Doctor. I love you.”
The prayer hall fell silent for a moment. Then the chatter and the chanting continued. Tukda pulled at his arm, and reluctantly, Mr. Geung got to his feet and walked on.
The guests of honor sat alone on chairs at the four compass points: Madame Daeng, all in white, north; Civilai, south; Inspector Phosy, east; and Dtui, west. This seating arrangement had nothing whatsoever to do with a Buddhist ceremony. The four nodded their respect to the mourners. Four traveling monks, their dark brown robes grubby from the road, left their alms bowls beside the photograph like restaurant diners checking their wet umbrellas at the door. They were weary and had obviously traveled far to attend this funeral.
“Should we expect some wise men from the East?” Bpoo asked. “Camels, perhaps?”
“What can I tell you?” said Siri. “My fame knows no bounds.”
He looked at the faces of the monks. One was elderly, two middle-aged and muscular, the last young, tall and skinny. Siri didn’t recognize them, but he’d treated many men in battle who later entered the monkhood in thanks for being given a second chance at life. The sutra soloist monk looked at them, perhaps hoping they might join him and give him a little break from his chanting, but they ignored him and joined the queue. When they reached the body, the younger monks muttered some words of praise and passed on. The older monk took the cup from the bowl in his left hand and gently held the wrist of the corpse in his right.
Six and a Half Deadly Sins Page 21