Thirty-Three Teeth

by Colin Cotterill

  “Good. Then first, I’d like you to go to the least political temple you can think of in Luang Prabang and tell the abbot that we have two bodies here that would very much like to be buried. As the deaths were violent, there probably won’t be a cremation ceremony until the spirits are settled, but it would be nice if they could be buried on temple ground.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “Secondly, I have to go to a place called Pak Xang this afternoon.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh, what?”

  “Comrade Houey said you’d be going back to Vientiane this afternoon. The helicopter’s waiting.”

  “Comrade Houey made a mistake. I have some business of my own here. I’ll be going back tomorrow. Do you think you can find me some transport to Pak Xang?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “And I suppose it’s time for me to report to the comrade about my findings. It would probably be better if he came here so I could show him what I’ve got. But it’s up to him. Wherever we are, I doubt he’ll be very happy with what I have to say.”

  “He never is.”

  “I see that.”

  “Asian? Damned Asian? Is that the best you can do?” The district chief had come to the room with a short blunt man who seemed to be some type of bodyguard. He nodded aggressively at the end of each utterance that passed the boss’s lips.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that isn’t good enough. It takes you three hours and all you discover is that these two could be from anywhere?”

  “In Asia, yes.”

  “Some genius you turned out to be.”

  “There is one other thing.”

  “What?”

  “Tomorrow morning I need to go and see the crash site.”

  “Well, you can’t…. What crash site?”

  “Where the helicopter came down. These two were pilots.”

  “Who the hell told you?”

  “They did.”

  “Eh? Well, you’re wrong. Totally wrong.”

  “Am I? Let’s look at the facts. They were burned in a sitting position. They wore uniforms. Originally they were wearing helmets but I assume your rescue team helped themselves to souvenirs.”

  “How could you…?”

  “They were strapped in with seat belts and couldn’t get away from the fire. The blast at their feet was extreme and the flames spread so fast, I’m assuming they were covered in fuel from the explosion. That tells me they were carrying a lot of spare gas in the cockpit, which in turn makes me think they expected to be traveling a long distance or carrying a lot of weight.

  “And of course, the fact that they’d both been shot a number of times didn’t give them much of a chance of getting out of the burning chopper. The closeness and angle of the bullets suggest they weren’t traveling very fast. That’s why I’m assuming it was a helicopter rather than a plane. I’ve retrieved the bullets, all AK47, LPLA issue. So whoever these two gentlemen were, they were probably gunned down by our people. How am I doing?”

  Houey looked at the nodding guard and laughed. The man laughed nervously back.

  “Our visiting genius from the capital has been doing a lot of guessing. Too bad he isn’t much of a guesser.” He turned to Siri. “No, Comrade. You’re wrong.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Houey huffed, and the two men left the room without further comment.

  Miss Latsamy stepped into the doorway after they’d gone. Staring at the window, she said “Uncle, can you ride a horse?”

  It was barely a horse. It was more a pony with a paunch. But Siri had ridden many such creatures in his time in the mountains. Indeed, he quite relished the thought of returning to the saddle. Pak Xang was about fifteen kilometers from Luang Prabang, a distance he used to cover regularly between villages in his days with the Viet Minh.

  But the old Lao saying “A year away from the nipple can make a baby nauseous of breast milk” was coined neither for fun nor for scholastic debate. His motorcycle saddle had made him soft. Five kilometers out of town, he negotiated the animal out of its happy canter and into a more leisurely trot. Old dears on bicycles with huge bundles of lemon grass overtook him. The journey took ninety minutes, not much faster than if he and the animal had changed places.

  Forbidden Fruit

  Still sore, Siri walked away from his sister-in-law’s simple house feeling even sadder than when he had arrived. Everything about Wilaiwan reminded him of his wife. The way she smiled, her walk, even the widow’s peak that stood on her forehead like the prow of a great white ship.

  The sisters had been born nine months apart: yield from the sibling production line so common in well-off families of the old regime. Boua, his wife, had been the middle child of nine and the only rebel. While her family was in the royal capital working under the king’s patronage, Boua was in France training to overthrow the royal family and rescue her country for communism.

  She had returned to Laos after eight years, with ideals and a rather baffled doctor husband called Siri. But she never came back to Luang Prabang. Instead, she dragged her lover through the jungles of Vietnam and northern Laos and joined the Pathet Lao in their struggle against tyranny.

  Now she was dead, and Siri had come to let her sister know how she had lain on a grenade and pulled the pin to end the confused misery that haunted the final years of her life. In some way, she had expected to erase the depression that had infected her and then spread to her sad husband.

  But, of course, he didn’t tell her. How could he? Honesty can be a dirty gift. It can muddy a sparkling stream of memories. So he said there had been a raid. She’d died a brave patriot as she’d lived, full of hope for a new regime.

  Wilaiwan received the news passively and silently, and together they’d sat on the old wicker chairs on the veranda and let tears roll down their faces without embarrassment.

  As there wasn’t but an hour of daylight left, she invited him to stay the night. Her husband had caught two juicy catfish that were keen to be eaten with some homemade rice wine. So Siri went for a walk to build up an appetite and a better mood.

  He crossed the dusty intersection that marked the center of the village and found the riverbank. There, he followed a river, creamy brown like slow-moving café au lait. He stepped carefully to avoid setting off the dog fart flowers. The setting sun seemed to walk along the opposite bank, dodging between the trees. Toward Luang Prabang, stodgy hills were patchy with slashed fields that looked from a distance like painful skin grafts.

  Although there was no fence to announce it, he soon found himself in a fruit orchard. A longboat was moored against a simple wooden dock. The trees were neatly ranked but showing the effects of neglect. They were swollen with fruit. Some had rotted and dropped to the grass below. The sight may not have caused a flicker of interest to any other traveler, but to Siri it was uncanny. It baffled him that there were no signs of bird or insect damage. No animals had come to steal the luscious fallen oranges or nibble at the low-hanging pears. He walked along the rows; mangosteens, rambutans, rose apples, all proudly ripe and unviolated. It was astounding. Apparently, not even man, the most insatiable predator of all, had been scrounging from this Garden of Eden.

  There was a feeling there. Not his usual creepy “somebody dead hanging around” feeling, but an aura of sorts: a protection, as if something were watching over the trees and the spirits that resided in them. He felt safe under its gaze.

  He was curious to know where he was and to learn more about the exotic strains of fruit, many of which he’d never seen before. He walked up and down the lush green rows. They’d have needed three or four waterings a day through this particularly dry summer season to keep them so bountiful. It wasn’t till his last sweep that he came upon a gardener.

  The old man wore a conical Vietnamese hat tied under his chin with a bright red cloth. He had on a navy blue peasant’s jacket and shorts. He stood inside the canopy of an orange tree, pruning up into the branches. Siri
couldn’t make out much of his looks.

  “Good health, friend,” Siri began.

  The man didn’t interrupt his work to reply. “How would you be, friend?”

  “You have some remarkable fruit trees here.”

  “Thank you. I’m afraid they’ve been neglected of late. I haven’t been able to get out here for some time.”

  The man’s voice was soft, somehow worldly and, Siri thought, kind. He guessed he was around his own age.

  “I don’t seem to recognize a lot of these varieties.”

  “No? Know fruit, do you?”

  “Most of the jungle types, and the usual imports.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t have seen a lot of these. If you’ve got a few minutes, grab those pruning clippers and give me a hand to cut back some branches. They won’t get a lot of attention from now on.”

  “That’s a shame. Why not?”

  Either the man didn’t answer or Siri couldn’t hear through the foliage. He looked in the basket, where he found an elegant pair of pruning clippers and a beautifully gilded set of shears in the shape of herons necking.

  “You take your gardening seriously.”

  “It isn’t something you can half do.”

  Siri went to the orange tree beside his friend’s and started on the old, low branches.

  “It’s peaceful here. How come you haven’t been able to come?”

  “It’s the new regime, Brother. They’re very strict here in Luang Prabang. They don’t like us moving around too much.”

  “But this is a thriving orchard. It needs someone to look after it. You could feed a battalion of soldiers just from the produce here. You could certainly keep the villagers nearby alive.”

  The old man stopped clipping. “Hmm. Could do, I suppose. Except the people in these parts are somewhat loath to sample the fruits from this particular garden.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I take it you aren’t from around here.”

  “No. I’m part of the invading hordes. Spent most of my troubled life in the jungles of Houaphan and North Vietnam.”

  “Ah. You’re one of them. That explains it. Then you wouldn’t know whose orchard this is.” There was a pause. “It belongs to the Royal Family, or what’s left of it.”

  “All right. Then that might explain why the people aren’t stealing His M’s tasty fruits. But I don’t really see how it keeps the birds and the bugs away.”

  “Ah, yes. Very observant of you. That is a little harder to explain.”

  He moved out from his tree and went to the next in the row after Siri’s. Through the leaves, the doctor saw him in patches. He had a slow, somewhat pained gait but kept his back straight. He had the bearing of a Royal gardener. No doubt about it. Siri could almost feel the old fellow’s pride at tending such fine trees. It seemed cruel for the Party to keep him away from a job he loved.

  Once he’d entered the next orange-leaf umbrella, the man said “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, friend, but Luang Prabang is rather a magical place. There are many stories I could tell you.”

  The sun had given up hope, and Siri was aware he had a walk ahead of him in the dark. He lowered the clippers and sighed. “How did you get here, old fellow?”

  “Boat.”

  “Do you suppose they’ll let you come back tomorrow?”

  “No. This is the end.”

  He made it sound like something other than a ban on gardening. If this were really his last visit, this pruning would seem to be more an act of desperation—or rebellion. Siri came out of his blackening hood of leaves and stood in the open. A large moon was already in the ascent.

  “Then are you going back to town tonight?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I have to go to my sister-in-law’s for dinner. But I’d be very interested to hear your stories. Couldn’t you stay here tonight and go back in the morning?”

  “It would upset an awful lot of people,” the old man laughed. “But I suppose I could. A raspberry to them all.”

  Still, he hadn’t emerged from his own shroud of oranges.

  “That’s good. Listen. I’ll see what food I can rescue. You must be hungry. Maybe a bottle of rice whiskey? How does that sound?”

  The clipping stopped. “That’s very kind of you. Yes, very kind. I’ll be here. Look for the fire.”

  The gardener’s hand reached out through the leaves as if it belonged to the tree itself. The wrist was white with a thick wad of tied strings. The hand was blistered from the day’s exertions. Siri shook it and felt a sudden stab of sadness. This was a man at the end of hope. He needed cheering up.

  Farewell the Women’s Unionist

  It was about this time, probably as Siri was passing through the village on his way to Wilaiwan’s house, that primary school teacher Chanmee was riding her bicycle along Khouvieng. The old bull testicle trees arched over the lane and blocked the moonlight. Without lamps, it was only her white blouse that gave her any substance on that dark stretch of road.

  She hated traveling in the dark, but Wednesday was the meeting of her branch of the Lao Women’s Union. She had to attend. This was always a scary journey for her. At times, a car’s headlights would illuminate her way briefly, then plunge everything back into darkness.

  She was straining her tired eyes for tree roots and potholes. No cars had passed for several minutes, and the street was so black that she decided to climb down from the bike and walk beside it. It was eerily quiet on that stretch, and the squeak from her front wheel was her only comfort.

  Then there was the other sound. It came from behind her, somewhere off in the frangipani bushes. She stopped for a second to listen. It was a deep, steady growl like a painful snore. She assumed it to be a dog and wondered if it was injured. She’d never experienced any hostility from dogs, yet there was something sinister about this sound. It worried her enough to make her climb back on the bike.

  The bushes rustled and a twig snapped, and she pushed down hard and too hastily on the pedal to try to build up some speed. The tightness of her phasin skirt restricted her movement, and her shoe slid from the pedal. The bicycle veered to the right and dipped into a deep rut. She overbalanced sideways.

  Too slow to right herself, she tumbled onto the hard earth verge, the bicycle with her. She held her breath to listen for the growl. She looked around at the shadows. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. She laughed out loud at her foolishness.

  She untangled herself from the bike and was about to get to her feet when the creature was on her. The huge first bite muted her scream. Blood soaked quickly into the white blouse. In less than thirty seconds she was dead.

  Garden of Earthly Delights

  Two hours later, Siri was back at the orchard. His hosts were early sleepers, unused to company. In his sack he had two bottles of earthy rice whiskey, the remains of the river fish, and a container of sticky rice. This would be a fitting last meal for a man who loved his vocation.

  The moon had lit his path from, and back to, the orchard, like a lighthouse beacon guiding a foreign ship. He walked the aisles of fruit trees, breathing in their sweet nighttime scents. A blind man could have identified each tree.

  The gardener had abandoned his futile task and was sitting between Siri and a blazing fire. A good pile of lopped branches was at his side, and the smoke carried the scent of the trees they came from. The man was stockier than he’d appeared earlier, and he hunched forward slightly as he stared at the flames.

  Siri announced his arrival. “Good health, friend.”

  “Welcome back.”

  Siri put his aid package on the ground in front of the old man and the bottles clinked together as he pulled them from the sack.

  “This should soften the pain of saying goodbye to your friends here, eh?”

  He chuckled and turned to the old man. It was his intention to shake his hand to re-launch their friendship. But as he moved out of the line of the fire, the flames lit up the hooded eyes of the garde
ner. Siri froze. His own face must have reflected his shocked disbelief at what he was seeing.

  The firelight shone directly onto the man’s wide round features. The mouth spread slowly into a broad smile of neat teeth. It wasn’t a face Siri had seen in the flesh, but it was one he knew only too well. It was a face he’d seen on 8mm film in the caves of Houaphan, accompanied by the jeers and laughter of the cadres. It was a face he’d carried to the market, folded in his shoulder bag. It was a face on propaganda posters they’d used in hate sessions at endless political seminars.

  The man spoke through his smile. “I hope this doesn’t disqualify me from having a drink.”

  “It isn’t Dom Perignon.”

  “Thank goodness for that.”

  The king, into his second year of unemployment, leaned forward to shake the hand Siri had misplaced somewhere between them. “My name’s—”

  “Yeah. I know. Bugger me. This is one for the books. I’m Siri, Siri Paiboun. Am I supposed to…I don’t know…curtsy or something?”

  “I doubt that would do either of us any good. For heaven’s sake, sit down and open a bottle.”

  Siri did as he was decreed, but he couldn’t help laughing at the weirdness of the moment. He poured the whiskey into two half-coconut shells and handed one to the old man.

  “What exactly are you doing here?” Siri asked.

  “Bidding, as you rightly say, farewell to my trees. This is the place I’ll miss most. Good health.”

  He gestured the coconut shell toward his guest, then took a swig. Siri was already aware of just how awful the homemade brew was, but the king showed no reaction to it.

  “Good health.” Siri drank and winced. “Yecch. I reckon we could piss this out as weed killer by the end of the night.”

  They both laughed.

  “What brings you here, Comrade Siri?”

  “Some mysterious emergency. I’m the national coroner, for want of a better one. They asked me to identify a couple of crispy fliers. The local Party head expected me to tell him their names and addresses. In return, he wasn’t prepared to tell me a damn thing.”