Thirty-Three Teeth

by Colin Cotterill

  “Then I should abandon hope of papayas growing any time soon.”

  It reminded Siri he should dig up the machete before it started to rust. They laughed again and listened to the swish of the duster and the humming of a happy woman, born to clean.

  It was as Siri was riding off on his motorcycle and Inthanet was closing the gate behind him that Mr. Soth, the neighbor, realized how cruelly he’d been cheated. He stood on a chair on his veranda and could see over the wall. There was a pair of them. He was mortified. How dare they? How dare anyone make fun of him?

  Of course, it hadn’t just been a case of mistaken identity. Inthanet had had to go to some effort to look like Siri. There was the walk of course, that tumbling forward walk that moved Siri around as fast as it did. But Inthanet had been a very fine actor in his day. There were some minor kapok additions to his eyebrows and the donning of Siri’s favorite blue peasant suit, and Inthanet didn’t even recognize himself. How could the neighbor know it wasn’t Siri?

  The doctor had seen Soth on the morning of the felling of the speaker pole. After all the secrecy and planning, it was infuriating to be caught red-handed in a suburb where not a soul wandered after midnight. He’d honed his machete to an edge so fine, it could slice through communist red tape. He’d figured on no more than ten swings to bring down the nasty speaker and he’d be back in his cot before the world was any the wiser.

  How could he have taken account of mysterious Mr. Soth? How was he to know the man’s habits? What right did he have to be awake at such an unhealthy hour? There was nothing to do in that place before dawn. But there he was, awake and brimming with vigilance.

  On the flight from Luang Prabang, Siri and Inthanet had hatched this plot, along with several other contingencies. Dtui had told her boss on the phone about the visiting policemen and Tik, the old shaman, had been overwhelmed with a premonition of Siri rotting in jail. So Mr. Soth’s initiative and Siri’s arrest were both inevitable. The play was written and the action followed the script. But there was to be an unexpected last act.

  Apart from being a creep, Mr. Soth was also a bad loser. He hadn’t reached the economic heights and moral depths he occupied today by accepting humiliation. Revenge didn’t have to be too complicated. A simple killing would do.

  It was lunchtime, so Siri drove directly to the river, parked beneath a golden shower tree, and walked over to Civilai and Phosy on their regular log. Both men were eating with their right hands and fanning themselves, geisha-like, with their left. The cheap Singha Beer logo fans from Thailand barely managed to slide the sweat across their foreheads. There was no natural movement in the air, and the river edged along so slowly it threatened to stop completely.

  “Got anything to eat?” Siri asked.

  “Will you listen to that.” Civilai looked at Phosy without bothering to greet the newcomer. “The man makes over fifteen dollars a month, and he still has the gall to mooch off poor folk like us.”

  “Come on, you old miser. I know you’ve got a stash there in that bag.”

  Civilai reluctantly reached into the brown paper parcel and pulled out one of his wife’s healthy sandwiches. Their bread habit had taken hold in France during their studies. Rightly or wrongly, but mostly wrongly, doughy white bread had been one of the few luxuries they’d dreamed of through their decades in the jungle.

  Where the young men had baser, more animal priorities when sent to Hanoi for training or meetings, Siri and Civilai’s first saliva-ridden thoughts were of crusty French baguettes and sumptuous fillings. They’d been delighted to see the cheap bread industry alive and well when they marched into Vientiane in ’75, and proceeded to make up for time lost in the wilds of Houaphan.

  “Hot, isn’t it?”

  “Damned hot.”

  “Damned hot.”

  “I’ve got thirty-three teeth.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “No, really, I—”

  “I think this temperature’s driving everyone a little batty,” Civilai said.

  “What’s the latest?” Phosy asked.

  “Well, top of the loony list is that most of the politburo are talking about banning festivals because they encourage spontaneity. ‘Over my dead body,’ I say. Then this morning, the Thai foreign minister announced that the Lao king, whom we all know is presently holidaying in the sunny wilds of Houaphan, was rescued from Luang Prabang by a crack Thai guerrilla unit and would see out his days on Thailand’s sunny southern island of Phuket.”

  “I really do have—”

  “Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific, the Yanks, following a brief experiment with enlightenment, have reintroduced corporal punishment. I think everyone needs to take a nice cold shower. I even got a peculiar phone call from your nurse this morning, Siri.”

  Siri was sulking and didn’t respond.

  “I’d settle for an air-conditioned office,” Phosy lamented.

  “The cutting room at the morgue’s got AC,” Siri reminded them. “You could both come and hang out there. I’d even let you—”

  “I don’t think we need to know, thanks.”

  “How’s your body double?” Civilai asked.

  “I can’t think what you mean.” Siri sat between the two men and unwrapped his lunch. “I personally don’t see any similarity between Mr. Inthanet and myself. Do you, Inspector?”

  “You’re both conniving old bastards.”

  “I mean, physically.”

  “Come on, old fellow. We’re waiting to hear about your friend and the complete royal puppet story.”

  “And a few missing details about last night,” Phosy added.

  Siri washed down a mouthful of bread with a swig from Phosy’s iced coffee flask. The ice hadn’t survived the day.

  “Well, it isn’t really that complicated, boys. Older Brother, do you think you could wave that thing a bit harder? It’s hot here.”

  Civilai hit him with the fan.

  “Thank you. Where should I start? When I was in Luang Prabang, I asked around about the chest I’d seen at the Ministry. When I described it, I was put in touch with our friend Inthanet. He was one of the five surviving keepers of the Royal Xiang Thong temple puppets. They’d been quiet for a while.”

  “I seem to recall that my cabinet banned them from using royal language in performances, and the puppets refused,” Civilai grinned.

  “That’s right. The chest was ceremonially closed and stored at Xiang Thong. It was your classic puppet–politburo standoff. But the puppets had no intention of coming out, so it looks like the government went in after them.

  “Some men in safari suits came one day and grabbed the chest. Nobody was sure who they were or where they were planning to take the puppets. The abbot charged with their safekeeping was shown a government directive that the chest was to be moved for security reasons. When the abbot asked for details, they told him it was all confidential. There wasn’t much he could do about it.

  “And that’s how the chest ended up in the archive department of the Ministry and why all hell broke loose. You see, the chest can’t be opened by just anyone whenever they feel like it. The spirits of the puppets are incredibly powerful and amazingly temperamental. They were already—”

  “How can puppets have spirits?” Civilai interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Puppets aren’t people, and they aren’t dead. So how—?”

  “Ah, but the puppets are made of balsa, and before the wood to carve them is cut from the tree, the puppet-maker has to get permission from the tree spirits. The balsa is a gentle wood and spirits are plentiful in it. When they learn that the wood is going to be made into the image of a person, it’s awfully tempting for the more nostalgic spirits to jump ship and settle in the form of the puppet. It’s as if they’ve returned to their lost host.

  “The balsa spirits attract others to the puppets: dead puppeteers, artisans, dancers, until each one has a personality and a force of its own. Inthanet knows all of the
m and how to open and close the chest without offending them. When I told him I’d seen the royal seal on a box at the Ministry, he was only too pleased to come with me to Vientiane. He’s quite a character. You’d like him, brother. He’d never been out of Luang Prabang in his life.”

  Phosy stood and walked toward the crest of the riverbank before it dropped steeply to the shallow river.

  “All right. That explains who Inthanet is. Now let’s cut to last night. I still have one or two little mysteries of my own to solve. When was this ceremony planned, may I ask?”

  “Originally we weren’t going to do it until the weekend. We’d booked a little orchestra, and they weren’t free till Saturday.”

  “You booked an orchestra?”

  “Just half a dozen traditional instruments. And we should have spent longer paying respect to local balsa trees. But you messed all those plans up with your impatience.”

  “Impatience? I’d been making excuses to my boss for a week.”

  “Patience shouldn’t expire, son. Everything comes to he who waits.”

  “Especially early retirement.”

  “When I heard at Mahosot that you were on your way to open the chest, I knew you were in trouble. I raced home and picked up Inthanet and whatever paraphernalia he had ready. We were really pushing our luck with the cassette recorder. The spirits much prefer live music. We swung by a balsa copse and briefly explained what we intended, and got a sort of emergency go-ahead from the spirits there.

  “All the time, I was picturing you, haunted by some angry spirits, leaping headfirst through the upstairs window. I was so relieved when we got there and didn’t see your effeminate motor scooter parked nearby or your impatient body splattered in the road.”

  “I bet I could have made it all the way to the fountain. But, tell me, how did you get up to the seventh floor without going through the damned door?”

  “Inthanet recited a magic mantra and spirited us up through time and space. I felt my body dissolve like sugar in water, and all the parts rose into the air. It was the most wonderful sensation. One minute we were at the fountain, the next we were with the chest.”

  They stared at him, open-mouthed.

  “You can not be serious.”

  “No. Just kidding. We broke in through the side door on the ground floor.” Civilai hit him again with the fan. “Then we used the other stairwell from the fifth to the seventh.”

  “What other stairwell?”

  “Funny you, as a clever detective, didn’t notice a whole staircase.”

  “There was no—”

  “Certainly was. We came to the locked door and I thought we’d have to break it down. But Inthanet sensed there was another way. It was at the other end of the building, boarded off, didn’t have a door. The hardboard was just glued on. It came away very easily. The stairs were riddled with white ant, but if you kept to the sides…. There was another board at the top.”

  “I’m embarrassed.”

  “No need to be. I’m sure the people working there had no idea either. It was probably boarded over long ago when the steps got dangerous. Now, give me a break. I’m getting hungry.”

  He smiled and took a large bite out of the sandwich.

  “I guess I was lucky, then,” Phosy decided. “Thank you. But you really should have told me what you had lined up.”

  “You’re quite right,” Siri chewed. “I apologize. But I was a little preoccupied with being arrested and put on trial.”

  “Darned lucky you weren’t convicted to go with it,” Civilai added.

  “Surely you don’t still believe I’m guilty.”

  “I tell you, Younger Brother, I certainly wouldn’t want to live next door to that man after all the embarrassment you’ve caused him.”

  “Don’t worry, Brother. I’ve met people like him before. They talk a lot, but deep down they’re all cowards. I’m more afraid of living next door to Miss Vong. By the way, did I mention to anyone that I have thirty-three teeth?”

  It was too hot to drag lunch out any longer, and Siri wheeled his motorcycle to the hospital parking lot. It was already around two, and he was feeling like a schoolboy who’d skipped classes for half a day. He hadn’t seen Mr. Geung for over a week, and he hoped the poor fellow wasn’t bogged down with bodies.

  As he walked into the low concrete building, he called out in his friendliest voice: “Anybody in this morgue still alive?” There was no reply. “Hello?”

  Mr. Geung came scurrying out of the office half in panic, half in relief at seeing Siri. He was too flustered to speak. He was rocking fit to roll over.

  “Calm down, Geung. Calm down.”

  Siri led him back into the office, sat him down, and rubbed his shoulders till his breathing returned.

  “Now, slowly.”

  “It…it…it’s Dtui.”

  “Yes?”

  “Shhh…she’s dis…appeared.”

  Saloop, the lifesaver, had eaten a healthy rice-and-scrap lunch with his fiancée at the ice-works yard. The owners there liked him and encouraged him to hang around. He was different from the other dogs who seemed to only have one thing on their minds.

  But today it was too hot to sit around and spoon and she wasn’t in the mood for romance, so he took a leisurely stroll back home. He’d been enjoying the company of the man from the north and felt he should be there more to look after him. People were hopeless on their own.

  He stopped to sniff at an occasional post and wall to make sure there were no interlopers in his territory. But sniffing stale urine on a full stomach in that heat naturally made him feel queasy. That’s probably why his canine senses weren’t as keen as usual. It probably explains why he didn’t notice the movement in the yard before he smelled the scent. But the scent was unmistakable.

  He hadn’t had a great many opportunities to sample chocolate. It was a luxury so rare, they didn’t even have any at the Lan Xang Hotel. Yet once, when he was a puppy, some rich foreign lady had given him just enough to get him hooked. He’d followed that lady for blocks until she shook him off, but the taste was with him for life.

  He didn’t get his second fix until fifteen years later when he and Siri moved out here to the suburbs. Those neighbors—the kids that ate better than the president—they had chocolate one day. The scent wafted through the air and pulled him by his nose out of a deep sleep. He went to their gate and saw them chewing on bars of the stuff. They teased and taunted him, pretending to give him some, then pulling it away.

  It was more than he could take. He feigned a loss of interest, coiled the inside of his neck like a spring then just as the boy was about to pull the bar away he snapped at it. The kid only just got his fingers away in time. He dropped the bar and Saloop strode off with it, victorious. The children ran inside to tell their mother of the vicious dog that attacked them and took their chocolate.

  That was a fortnight ago, and he’d been waiting for a chance to get back into his new drug of choice. This was it. Their gate was open and one of the kids had left a half bar of chocolate right there in the middle of the path, melting under the hot sun. It was too easy. He’d probably be as sick as a…well, he’d probably be sick, but anyone who’s ever suffered an addiction knows you can’t fight it.

  He walked slowly along the rock pathway, listening carefully for movement inside the house, but not many people were planning on coming out into the sun on a day like this. And suddenly it was under his nose. He sniffed at its glorious milky sweetness, let his tongue dip into the gooey paste and slurped it up.

  Life didn’t get any better than this: a house in the suburbs, a caring master, the love of a good bitch, and chocolate. For a second he wondered if he’d ever been happier.

  In Search of Dtui

  “A fat one?”

  “She is quite large, I suppose.”

  “Yeah. She was here. You know where she works?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  “For the RR29.”

  “RR29?
”

  “It’s the regulation complaint form that accompanies official telephone calls to law enforcement departments.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Illegal access to government documents. They said I’d need to find out where she works before they can do anything—especially seeing as she didn’t technically steal anything. So, do you?”

  The man sat at a small desk in a room so crammed with piles and boxes of papers, one match would have sent the whole building to ashes in minutes.

  So, this was it, Siri thought to himself looking at the vaguely Chinese features of a face slowly adopting the shape and color of a sheet of paper. This was what all the triplicates and quadruplicates came to. Hundreds of officious cadres like this, processing endless documents by hand, passing them on to other paper-faced clerks in other offices, and filing them away in rooms like this. What a system.

  This was the filing section of the Department of Corrections. The only appointment marked in Dtui’s log for today was:

  8:30 CORRECTIONS

  “So, do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Know where she works.”

  “No. I have no idea.”

  “Then how did you know she was here?”

  “You just told me.”

  “But why here, at Corrections?”

  “It was next on my list. We’re investigating her. She’s tried this kind of thing before.”

  “Who’s we?”

  Siri produced his well-thumbed letter of introduction from the Justice Department. He was learning that in most cases, just having a document was enough to get him into places. Few bothered to read the long stodgy wording. The letterhead was enough. The clerk sensed he was already involved in a matter of intrigue.

  “What’s she done, then?” the clerk asked.

  “She goes around impersonating a nurse, you know, goes into this department and that, claiming this and that.”

  “Damn. I knew there was something fishy about her. Didn’t look like any nurse I’d ever seen.”