While they worked their way down the list from the handbook, Siri decided to describe the case. Given Dtui’s reaction, he was reluctant to spoil Oum’s day, but he knew in the small world they shared, she’d hear about the strangling sooner or later. He left the part about the pestle to the very end. Oum dropped the pipette into a glass bowl with a crash and pushed herself back on the chair.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “There was no delicate way—”
“No, Siri. This story. I’ve heard the selfsame thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“The beautiful girl strangled, tied to a tree … the pestle.”
“How could you have heard it so soon? It only happened on Friday.”
“No, Siri. It happened a long time ago.”
“Where did you get it from?”
“Here, at the school. It’s one of those legends the kids pass around to scare the daylights out of each other. I put a girl in detention when I heard her telling it. I thought it was sick for children to be coming up with stories like that.”
“Well, believe me, Oum, this wasn’t a story. When did you hear it?”
“A year ago? Maybe two.”
The anger rose in Siri’s throat. “He’s done this before, the bastard. Do you remember the student?”
“Kumdee Vilavong. She’s also big on dirty jokes and scandal. I put her in detention all the time. I’m quite fond of her.”
Siri stood. “Can we go and talk to her?”
“What? Now?”
“Yes, right now.”
Hindipendence
The lunchtime rush at the Happy Dine Indian restaurant was over and the proprietor was sitting with his waitress in the open frontage looking at the street. At eleven, they’d sprinkled the pavement out front with a watering can. For about thirty minutes it kept the dust from flying into the tin lunch trays. They’d repeated the dousing at twelve and one. It was 1:15 and no evidence of their efforts remained. The hot sidewalk had devoured the water as soon as it made contact. That might explain, in some small way, why the lunchtime rush had numbered five people, one of whom had brought his own drink. Everybody agreed the Happy Dine had gone downhill since the old regime.
A motorcycle went past, braked, and turned back. It kicked up a dust storm. The waitress pulled up her T-shirt to cover her nose and exposed her belly. The proprietor looked down forlornly at his once white shirt. Dr. Siri emerged from the cloud and cast a faint shadow across both of them. He quickly explained that he’d already eaten lunch, thus curtailing their excitement before it got out of hand.
“I’m here to see your chef,” he said.
“We have nobody here of that name,” said the proprietor. He was one of the southern Indians who had weathered the takeover of ’75. His accent was so thick, it would have stuck to the wall if you’d thrown it. Siri wasn’t absolutely sure it was Lao he was hearing.
“The father of the crazy man who walks around the streets?” Siri tried again.
“My chef is not available for other positions. He is bonded,” said the proprietor.
Siri stared at him.
“He’s out the back, uncle,” said the waitress. The young man glared at her, but she ignored him.
Out the back actually meant “out the back.”
The kitchen was at the rear of the restaurant in the yard roofed over by a large green tarpaulin with grease stains. Attached to a cross beam were two remarkable fans. Someone had come up with the bright idea of removing the covers and attaching long streamers to the blades. The intention had obviously been to keep insects away from the food and keep the cook cool at the same time. But the weight of the streamers had slowed the rotors to such a pace that the device merely stirred the hot air and the flies together like ingredients in a large stew. A fat man in a navy blue undershirt and long black trousers was on the far side of the small yard washing dishes in a bucket.
“Excuse me,” Siri said.
The man looked over his shoulder with a shocked expression. His was a bulbous chocolaty face with a nose that looked like it might pop. He dropped the dishes into the unsoapy water and hurried over to Siri, wiping his hands on his belly. He crouched as he walked in order to keep his head below the visitor’s. He smiled broadly and rocked his head and performed a very wobbly version of the Lao, hands-together nop. Siri was afraid the man might drop to his knees.
“Yes, sir? Yes, sir?” he said, apparently delighted to see Siri. This out-of-shape Indian was in his fifties, and Siri doubted the man had known a year of those fifty when he wasn’t being bossed or bullied. He had the air of a man whose idea of Nirvana was a place where the canes were shorter and the whips merely made of horsehair.
“Do you speak Lao?” Siri asked.
The man nodded several times. “Yes, sir. How can I help you?”
“You could stop bobbing up and down for a start. I’m getting motion sickness.”
“Very well. Yes, sir.”
Siri pulled over two bathroom stools and signaled for the man to sit on one. But as soon as Siri sat on the other, the Indian dropped to the floor like a sack of soft noodles. It appeared to be familiar territory for him so the doctor conceded.
“What’s your name?” Siri asked.
“Yes, sir. I am Bhiku David Tickoo.”
“May I call you Bhiku?”
“Sir, I would be an honoree.”
“Very well, I’m here about Rajid.” Bhiku smiled silently. “You don’t know who that is, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“Thought not. It’s the name we’ve given to the young man who walks half naked around the streets.”
“Ah, sir. Then that would be my son, Jogendranath, as named after the great reformist.”
“Really, well that’s quite a mouthful. Could I just call him Rajid for now?”
“As you wish, sir.”
Without warning, Bhiku climbed uneasily to his feet and hurried into the shop. Siri wondered whether he’d offended him by renaming his son, but he returned in seconds with a glass of misty water. He lowered himself to the ground once more before handing it to Siri.
“Forgive me, sir. Where were my manners?”
Siri knew better than to drink unidentified water so he merely touched his lips to the surface.
“Thank you, Bhiku. I was wondering whether you might know where Rajid is right now. Nobody’s seen him for ten days.”
“I know this, sir. I too am very concerned.”
“Does your son ever tell you about places he likes to go? Places where he hides out?”
“Sir, it is sad that I am to say this, but my poor son has not uttered a word since our family tragedy.”
Siri personally knew that not to be true but he didn’t see this as an appropriate moment to say so.
“If it’s not too difficult for you,” Siri said, “I’d like to hear that story.”
“Oh, sir. It is such a small tale for such a great man to waste his time with.”
Siri laughed. “Dear Bhiku, I really am not a great man.”
“Forgive me for begging to differ, sir, but you are Dr. Siri Paiboun. You were pointed out to me at the hospital. You are the greatest man in the entire hemisphere.”
Siri wanted to laugh again but it felt oddly irreverent to do so. He absentmindedly took a sip of his water. “You shouldn’t believe everything my wife tells you,” he joked to shake off the embarrassment.
“I have seen it with my own eyes. My son adores you.”
“He does?”
“Yes, sir. He has informed me of your nature and your ability.”
“You said he can’t speak.”
“And that is true, sir. But he writes.”
“Cr … Rajid writes?”
“Indeed, sir. He writes beautifully. I taught all of my children as my father had taught me. Although my son’s body and mind have been taken by the Asuras, his true self is still with us in his script.”
“Could I see it?”
“I am d
elighted to show you, sir. Unfortunately, you cannot read his words for yourself as they are in Hindi, and he writes in old verse. But there are several stanzas dedicated to you, Doctor.”
Siri was astounded. Crazy Rajid, aka Jogendranath, had always been a character on the fringes of Siri and Civilai’s lunches, swinging in trees, bathing naked in the Mekhong, occasionally masturbating. The thought that he might, like a coma patient, have been aware of everything that was being said, while unable to express himself, made Siri feel a sudden pang of guilt. The two old men could be unkind at times.
“What did he write?” Siri asked.
“Yes, sir. He mentions your kindness, and the kindness of your friends. You brought him clothes, fed him, included him in your celebrations. I know that others treated him well—it is the Lao way to be kind to those less fortunate— but I feel that you did not look down on him.”
Siri was touched.
“I’d like to hear about your tragedy,” Siri said.
“If you insist, sir. In a nutshell, we—my wife and two daughters and two sons—were traveling to Burma by boat. For a better life, it was. I had been offered work in a factory there. Alas, the boat was not as strong as our resolve. There was a storm. Only myself and Jogendranath survived. We were adrift for four days. By the time we were rescued, my son had lost hold of his sanity.”
“So, you and he … ?”
“Some work in Burma, sir, until the junta put a crackdown on us illegals. Then to Thailand and casual work. Then a kind Punjabi invited us here. I had cooked for him in Rangoon. He was coming to open this restaurant in Vientiane. He sadly is demised now. It is his son who runs it today.”
His life story had been told in five minutes, and there was sorrow in his large puffy eyes.
“And Rajid?”
“He has periods when he remembers me. At other times I am absent from his mind, sir. We have not spoken since the final day on the boat.”
Siri knew the Indian could speak. He’d heard him. He wondered what blockage there was between son and father. What was Rajid thinking that made him ignore the man who had carried the boy’s infirmity like a boulder on his back across a continent? Siri looked at big, soft, smiling Bhiku and wondered what wicked fate had dragged his life into the bogs.
“Bhiku,” he said. “You strike me as an intelligent man. You read Hindi, and you speak my language quite beautifully… .”
“You are too kind, sir. I also have smatterings of Thai and Burmese … not to mention English.”
“That’s what I thought. So why—and there’s no offense intended here—why are you groveling about in this depressing restaurant earning … what do they pay you?”
“Food and board, sir.”
“Then that’s even worse. Why are you here earning nothing at all when you could hold down a decent job?”
Bhiku smiled. “It is my fate, sir.”
“What does that mean?”
“My wife and I … and my children, we were born untouchables. Our caste dictates that we were destined to suffer—and life has certainly proven that to be true, sir.”
“Oh, Mr. Tickoo.” Siri shook his head and sighed. Not for the first time, a very strong urge came over him. If this wasn’t a needy case he didn’t know what was. Before he was taken by the wormy woman, Siri was determined to rescue Rajid’s father from servitude and set him free. He just had no idea how to go about it.
“All right.” Siri came back to the here and now. “Let’s talk about where your son might be.”
“Yes, sir. I have no awareness of this. I too am most worried. I have spent all my free time scouring the streets and the river. I even reported it to the police but they laughed at me.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. When was the last time you saw him?”
“Twelve days ago.”
“Well, I met someone who saw him ten days ago, on the Thursday.”
“I expected to see him on the Friday. He always used to go to the old French mansion on Fridays and stop off here first with a verse.”
“Any idea why he went there?”
“Oh yes, sir. My old employer bought that house from its French owner. He lived there during the heydays of Vientiane. So much life and vitality in the city then. Those were the days when the Americans still painted the town green. The restaurant was terribly popular. We had a singer, and we made as much on drink as we did on food. I had three coworkers. We only closed on Friday. And every Friday evening, our employer would invite the workers to eat at his house. It was a tradition. For Jogendranath it was the only time he sat down with what could be called a family and ate a civilized meal.
“It didn’t occur to me at the time, but I imagine it brought back memories of our own family. When our old owner passed away and his boy took over, the tradition was stopped. But my son continued to go to the house. There was no explaining to him. That’s when I realized how important the Friday meals must have been. He knocks on the door every week at 5:30.”
“But for the past two weeks he hasn’t knocked,” Siri said. “Do you think something might have happened to him?”
“He is my son. I have worried about him every day of his life. I used to go to him and try to convince him to come home, but I have to admit that I lost him some time ago. Now he is a child of the streets and all the dangers it contains.”
“But his writing?”
“Sometimes he drops it off here. At others he leaves it at the door of the old house. I believe that is the location of the first riddle.”
“Riddle?”
“Yes, sir. He is very classical, my son. I believe that but for the tragedy, he would have been a scholar in the classics. A university lecturer. Of course our caste would have prevented this but I believe in my heart he had the ability. In his odes he writes that he is a prince. In order to find his palace of the One Hundred and Eleven Eyes, the common man must solve three riddles. The first riddle talks of the lace beneath the old French lady’s skirt. I wonder if he sees the colonial building as an old French lady.”
“Do you have all three riddles?” “Solving the first will lead to the second, and so on.” “Have you looked under the old lady’s skirt?” “Sadly, sir, I don’t have my son’s head for literature, or yours for science. I am a humble cook.” “Right. We can discuss that later. Do you have the full riddle somewhere?” “It is upstairs.” “Do you have time to translate it for me?” “It would be my pleasure, sir.”
Doomed
When Siri got back to the morgue there were three messages waiting for him. Unfortunately, their waiting area was between the ears of Mr. Geung. Nurse Dtui was off at a nursing lecture at the new Ministry of Health so the messages had been given orally to the morgue assistant. It took a while to extract them. The easiest to understand was that a small man and two taller men had been by asking where Dr. Siri was. The doctor knew exactly who they were and was pleased he’d been out of the office when they came. But he knew he had to go on the attack against the thugs from Housing. The second message was that Inspector Phosy would call, although the time had become lost in the muddle of juggling three pieces of information at the same time. The third message was impossible to decipher.
“A … she w … wasn’t her. But the other h … her was was on … on dragging.”
Siri knew his friend had reached his “full” mark and didn’t press him. He left Geung in the cutting room and went into his office to see if Dtui had left a note. Halfway across his room he stopped. There were a dozen worms squirming on his desk and they didn’t hurry away when they saw him. The same ominous feeling came over him, the vague scent of damp earth, the sense of time running out. He heard a step behind him.
“Dr. Siri?”
If his skin hadn’t been on so tight he would have jumped out of it. He turned to see the hospital clerk in the doorway.
“Yes?”
“Doctor? Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“You have another phone call.”
This time, Phosy was still on the line when the coroner reached the administration office. Siri wondered exactly how much red tape would have to be unwrapped to get a phone extension over at the morgue. He didn’t need all this exercise. His lungs had been giving him trouble of late. He wheezed once or twice into the mouthpiece.
“Siri?”
“Phosy?”
“Any news?”
“Lots. Just let me … catch my breath. You go first.”
“Nothing at all from the photo. I did meet a weaver who recognized the ribbon. She gave me the name of a shop in Vientiane that sells it. It isn’t available up here apparently. That might lead to something. And I’ve been sharing your theory about the shrouded rice worker. I got some interesting reactions to that. I told people to spread it around and one farmer got back to me. He told me the driver of the truck that picks up his excess rice for the government tax mentioned something similar once.”
“How similar?”
“Well, you know what stories are like up here. It was about a woman he’d seen working the fields who wasn’t really a woman.”
“And she was a … ?”
“The locals told the driver she used to be a woman—and this is from him, not me—but she drank from a cursed pool, and it turned her invisible. So they wrapped her up from head to foot so she wouldn’t frighten outsiders.”
“And he believed them?”
“He’s a truck driver.”
“Did your farmer recall where this invisible woman was seen … or not seen?”
“He couldn’t remember. But we’re looking for the driver. We’ve got his name. It shouldn’t take long. Are you ready to speak yet?”
“I am, and it’s important. Let’s hope we don’t get cut off. I went to the lycée and met teacher Oum. I mentioned the condition of our corpse, and she’d heard the same story from one of her students over a year ago.”
“The same story?”
“The beautiful girl, the strangulation, the tree, the pestle.”
“Shit.”
“Exactly. I went to meet the girl. She told me the story again exactly as she’d heard it: a mirror of our case. I followed the trail. We found the girl who’d told our girl and the boy who’d told her, and on and on. At last we arrived at a rather shy, quiet lass who’d started the whole ball rolling. She was from Luang Nam Tha in the north. The lycée’s still pretty exclusive, but she’d been awarded a Cuban scholarship from Comrade Castro. She was reluctant to tell us where she’d heard the story, but Teacher Oum bullied her into giving up her source. It appears she’d heard it from her sister, and her sister’s a nurse.”
The Merry Misogynist Page 6