Thirty-Three Teeth

by Colin Cotterill

  “I think you’ll find they’re both Lao royalists.”

  “What do you know?”

  “There was an attempt, the day before yesterday, to take my family and me out of the country. One of the helicopters was shot down. I imagine that’s where your fliers are from. I’m sure your LPLA people would like to confirm that they had connections to the old Royal Lao Government. The helicopter crashed in the grounds of That Luang temple. You should go and take a look there.”

  “Is that why you’re leaving?”

  “They want me somewhere less accessible from Thailand.”

  “You seem to be taking it all remarkably calmly.”

  “I’m resigned to it. It’s been coming for some time.”

  “Since the abdication?”

  “Long before that, I’m afraid. Our royal line has lost its kwun.”

  Even born-again-agnostic Siri was shocked to hear such a statement. Lao tradition had it that all living beings were in possession of a kwun: something between a soul and a spirit. Humans were said to have thirty-two kwun. In times of bad fortune, some of the kwun may flee, and shamans are called in to invite them to return. Only in serious illness or death does the kwun desert its host completely.

  Siri looked at the man’s wrists, heavy with loops of unspun white thread. When begging the kwun to return, it was usual to circle the wrists of the unlucky one with strings and knot them. Somebody close to the king had been doing some serious negotiating with the spirit world.

  “You really believe that?”

  “There’s no doubt.”

  “When did it happen?” He refilled the coconut shells.

  “When I came along.”

  “Now, you’re just being hard on yourself.”

  “It’s a fact. Indisputable. In my father’s time, he and my uncle, Phetsarath, were in harmony with the spirits. This orchard was theirs. Are you sensitive to necromancy, Dr. Siri?”

  “I’m afraid I am.”

  “Then you can probably feel the spirits of the trees here and the hold they have over this region. I’m told it’s very strong. I cannot feel it myself. The whole of Luang Prabang is evidently bristling with the ghosts of previous kings and queens and their offspring. There’s been a magical connection between the Royal Capital and the occult since the days of my great ancestor, King Fa Ngum. It was he who brought the first spirits to this place. He had thirty-three teeth, you know?”

  “He what?”

  “Thirty-three teeth. It’s almost unheard of. The Lord Buddha also had thirty-three, and although he never mentioned it, the dental records showed that my uncle had thirty-three teeth as well. It’s a sign, an indication that you’ve been born as a bridge to the spirit world.”

  “And you believe all this?” Siri asked as he began to use his tongue to count the teeth in his own mouth.

  “There’s been too much evidence to doubt it.” Siri noticed for the first time that a cricket had come to rest on the old king’s shoulder. “Do you recall that your Viet Minh friends tried to invade Luang Prabang in the early fifties?”

  “Yes.” Siri lost count of his teeth.

  “What reason did they give for their failure?”

  “Hmm, let me think. Something about the place being heavily fortified and manned with well-armed French militia.”

  “Ha. So I thought. The French didn’t get here in time. All we had was a handful of old retainers with rusty hunting rifles. A crochet society could have invaded us. The advisers told my father we were doomed and that he should flee.

  “But he stayed. That night, he gathered the shamans, and they called on the spirits to protect the capital. The following day, the Viet Minh were advancing upon us. They were so cocksure, they were already divvying up the spoils as they marched. But suddenly they began to fall.”

  “In what way?”

  “Just drop. A number were taken by some mysterious palsy. They lost all their strength. Their eyes rolled in their sockets and they couldn’t speak. More and more fell to this mysterious disease, until the commanders called a halt to the advance. They had to drag the stricken men back on bamboo travoises.

  “Their medics couldn’t fathom what ailment had struck them down or how to treat them. But the next day, they awoke, right as rain. So they came at us again. And the same thing happened.”

  “I admit, I didn’t hear that version. I would have remembered it if I had.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “Over the last six months, I’ve started to believe almost everything.”

  “In my uncle’s case, I saw it for myself. We would spend a day with him in Luang Prabang, then someone would arrive from Vientiane and tell you he’d spent the same day with him there. He could be at two or three places at once. On one occasion, I saw him rise from the ground. He just levitated.”

  “Ah, so this isn’t the first time you’ve tried my sister-in-law’s homemade rice whiskey?”

  They both laughed.

  “But, Dr. Siri, I don’t have any of these gifts. When I was born, the shamans predicted that the kwun would leave the royal line along with me, that I wouldn’t live out my reign. When my father died, I knew I didn’t have the power to hold on to the magic that had helped us survive for so many centuries.”

  Siri shook his head. “No. This is history, my friend. A revolution has nothing to do with appeasing the spirits. You’re a victim of politics, not destiny.”

  “I agree that there are semantics involved. Even from the practical point of view, I have little leverage. My supporters have all fled. I have two confidants that I would trust with my life, but most of the entourage gave us lip service until they knew our fate. If my father were here, the kwun would show him the way to overcome your politics. It hasn’t shown me. I’m told it’s getting weaker day by day. When they move us from Luang Prabang, the connection will be severed. Our will cannot survive a move.”

  “Ah. Don’t be so cheerful. They’ll just put you up in a camp for a few months, give you some Marxist propaganda to memorize, then bring you back a new improved born-again commie royal. They’ll hold you up as an example for the masses.”

  “There will be no coming back.”

  “Now, why do you have to talk like that?”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. Let’s speak of more delightful things—to counteract the bitter agony of this paint thinner we’re drinking.”

  “Thank God for that. I was starting to think you were actually enjoying the stuff.”

  “May I ask how your revolution’s going?”

  “Revolutions always go more smoothly around a campfire in the jungle than they do in real life.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I say you don’t come across as a hardened socialist.”

  “It’s a bit of an anticlimax.”

  “I understand. I heard your prime minister’s inspirational speech on the radio. I think the expression he used was ‘no major achievements in the first year of office.’ I was sure he could have found one little thing to boast about.”

  “I think the takeover took us all by surprise. It happened so suddenly.”

  “Twenty years is hardly sudden,” remarked the king.

  “Ah, but that’s just it. All the sitting around tends to make you stodgy and lethargic. You get to wonder whether your revolutionary dream will ever come true. Then—poof—there you are running a country. The PL was swept into power in Laos on the back of the angry North Vietnamese dragon.”

  “You’ve always held on to its tail.”

  “That’s true. But I believe we’re a more gentle version.”

  “The hundred thousand people that fled across the river didn’t appear to think so.”

  “They were running away from the unknown rather than the reality. We’re quite sweet, really.”

  The king sipped at the whiskey and turned the natural grimace it produced into a wry smile. “So you haven’t been sending officials from the old regime to concentration camps?”

  “
I think the Party refers to them as re-education camps. They’re like holiday camps with barbed wire and hard labor. Look, I know what you’re saying. I share some of your concerns. I don’t like locking people up for their beliefs. But I also understand that—at least in these early days—there’s a need for stability. The LPRP can’t afford to have vocal dissent stirring up anti-government feeling. They’ve got enough problems without that.”

  “But—”

  “And you have to admit that your old government officials and military and police weren’t exactly angels of purity. The Security Council’s been uncovering evidence of unbelievable corruption all the way up the ladder.”

  “I’m sure it won’t take your new officials long to master the fine art of graft. Greed is sadly inherent in the soul of man.”

  “Again, I agree. But we do have a lot of good people. They really have the well-being of Laos at heart. You don’t spend half your adult life in caves if your intention is to make yourself wealthy. They may not be popular in the towns, but let’s not forget that eighty-five percent of the population works the land. With all due respect, the old regime pretty much let them get on with it. You bought their products at a fraction of market value and didn’t do a thing to help them through droughts and epidemics.”

  “And your communist brothers and sisters will.”

  “I think they’ll try.”

  “Then let us thank the Lord Buddha for that.”

  Even while his words were still floating there in the air, Siri wondered whether he really believed what he’d just said. So many of those jungle dreams seemed to evaporate when exposed to reality. Once the cadres moved into the cities, the shoes of the old regime began to fit them quite well. There was already a rumor that officials at the Agricultural Ministry were taking kickbacks and rerouting seed stocks.

  When he was at the temple in Savanaketh, Siri had read a translation of Animal Farm as a French primer. He had thought it was a story about animals on a farm. It wasn’t until it was condemned by the Communist Party in Paris as capitalist propaganda that he read it again as a political statement. He was starting to recognize some of the beasts.

  Time passed quickly, and the two old men discussed Orwell and Voltaire, Engels and Guizot and Vailland, Césaire, spiraling down to Simenon and Hergé, wisely veering away from politics as the liquor slowly took hold.

  In one of their last moments of sober clarity, Siri and the king had the brilliant idea of mixing Wilaiwan’s lethal brew with the juice of some succulent fruits from the orchard. The result was an ideal aperitif to accompany the fish and the rice, and the perfect antidote to depression.

  When the whiskey bottles were empty, the two men lay side by side on a mat of lush grass, exhausted from a final bout of laughter, invigorated by talk of literature and music, at peace and at one with the aromatic fruit. There, Siri watched the cricket on the king’s shoulder, licking its fingernails, and he slowly joined the old regent in sleep.

  As the spirits resided in the trees, and the fruit grew on those trees and that fruit was now inside Siri, it was no surprise that his sleep should be filled with the light and color of a spectacular dream.

  It was day. He was in the orchard, but the orchard was enormous. The trees stretched far into the sky. The tree spirits were everywhere, dancing, singing, having a thoroughly good time. It was an animated Hieronymus Bosch scene similar to the one he’d seen in a visiting exhibition at the Louvre in Paris. In fact, it was exactly that scene, except all the participants were Lao and not quite as naked.

  Male angels juggled ripe oranges that had once been the breasts of the nymphs who cheered them on. The grand old dowager, Lady Tani, strummed on her Lao harp beside her dazzling yellow banana tree. Gooseberry sprites performed aerobatics. The whispering ghosts moved from spirit to spirit, telling them their futures and collecting star fruits as payment.

  Siri and the king sat cross-legged beneath a mulberry fig tree, watching the extravaganza around them. Banyan tree angels stood guard behind them. His Majesty was in full white ceremonial garb, and medals glittered like treasure on his chest. A footman with a straggly gray beard dangling from the point of his chin stood a pace back from him.

  Cicadas sang in tune like a choir. Color-coordinated butterflies circled in swarms so dense, they changed the hue of the sky at will. The footman announced the arrival of guests, and the king looked to Siri to see if he approved. The doctor raised an eyebrow and waved his hand. It was a gesture he remembered from the bald king in the Hollywood film that had insulted Siam and thus delighted the Pathet Lao.

  “Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,” he said, for no other reason than it was the only line he remembered from that picture show.

  The footman returned with two handsomely hobbling pilots who, due to the absence of feet, carried their expensive leather boots under their arms. They were Lao and they greeted their king in royal language.

  “Sire, we shall try once more.”

  “We were betrayed, Lord. They were expecting us. There is a traitor in your camp.”

  With that, the footman exploded horribly, bits of him flying in all directions. Siri looked around to see whether there were accusing eyes pointed at him. But suddenly there were no eyes to point. When he looked back, the king was gone. All that remained was a plate of crispy fried crickets and a side dip.

  The pilots were standing back to back as if primed for an attack. The cowardly spirits were retreating to their trees, blending into the bark, merging with the branches, sinking into the roots. A wind rose, rustling the leaves. It grew until it began to shake the succulent fruits from the trees.

  Left were Siri and the two pilots in a storm-darkened vignette. One pilot turned to him and nodded. “We are grateful.”

  And with that, the two men burst into flames, burned to ash, and were blown away by the frantic wind. The tree leaves all around flapped in panic, as if in the grip of a monsoon. Alone, Siri listened to a roar of distant thunder, a roar of a beast, the gnar of terror. Toward the south, the trees were bending as if to clear the path of the creature that owned the terrible roar. The sky was black now, and Siri tensed for the storm.

  He was learning to be an observer in his own dreams. Years before, he had felt obliged to be a participant; he’d played the roles and assumed the appropriate emotions. But now he watched them like a man in the front row of an empty cinema. He convinced himself that he wouldn’t be killed by the villain or truly loved by the heroines.

  But something about the sound of the creature there that crashed through the jungle was a warning to him. This was beyond a dream, too real. It was a sign that he should expect to hear this sound in his waking hours and that it would be a critical moment. He knew somehow that he had to be aware of this sound because it had connections to the killings in Vientiane and could signal the end of him.

  And he awoke, or perhaps he didn’t, and he was in a box. It was black and musty and he could see nothing, but he knew he was in a box. Logically he assumed it was that final box, that he had succumbed to that incontrovertible last argument with nature. But no.

  He smelled the smoke of a cheap cigarette. He felt the warm spray of something mildly caustic against his face. It smelled of liquor. There was a creak, and the lid of the box opened and light rushed in on him. Faces looked down at him: blanched, unemotional faces. Some had lips the color of a new wound; some wore jewels that neither glittered nor suggested wealth; all had empty black two-dimensional eyes that tapered to lizard tails.

  Siri was small and shrunken, as if he were their toy. He looked up. They looked down. There were no sounds. For the longest time they stared up and down at each other, until the lid of the box slowly closed and Siri was back in the musty dark. But he had committed their faces to memory.

  When the actual morning brought its actual awakening, Siri was disoriented and alone. The scents of the heavy fruits were still all around him, but they seemed overly sweet, offering a final advertisement of their ripeness before all
was lost. The feeling of being protected was gone. He heard the scurrying of animals and saw briefly a marmot carrying off a ripe orange in its mouth. The branches buzzed with insects.

  He turned to his side and saw the indentation of the king, like a cartoon accident in the thick grass. In the dip where the head had lain, the cricket from the king’s shoulder lay dry and lifeless. Lao tradition had it that the kwun materialized in the form of a cricket. If that was true, the king had been right: the kwun had left him.

  999,999 Elephants

  Siri went to bid goodbye to his sister-in-law and her husband, who were already toiling in the rice field. They were making their contribution to the cooperative, which allowed them to work one small corner of the land they had once owned. It was the land Wilaiwan had been awarded as a senior court dancer. The royal seal on her document meant no more now than her bourgeois skills.

  “Thank you for loving my sister,” she said, pulling her saucer-shaped hat back from her eyes. She hadn’t asked where he’d spent the night. She’d learned not to ask too many questions, even of a relative. He’d already decided against telling her of his visit with the king. It would have been too distressing for a royalist to hear of the loss of the royal kwun.

  “It was my pleasure, and that’s the truth of it.”

  “I’m glad she had you.”

  “Wan, I have a small mystery I’m trying to solve.”

  “I doubt I could help with the type of mystery you’re engaged in.”

  “I’m not so sure. In Vientiane, there’s a teak chest with a royal seal. It’s about the size of a child’s coffin. It doesn’t have any keyhole or handle, and it seems impossible to open. I believe there’s some great force inside.”

  “I’m sure there are many such chests of looted royal treasures in Vientiane.” She bit her tongue.

  “I’ve imagined faces,” he continued, “white unemotional faces with extreme makeup and elaborate headgear. There’s also some connection with tobacco smoke and alcohol.” Her face showed some recognition. “Does that remind you of something?”