The Woman Who Wouldn't Die Page 21

  The nurse parked her bicycle in front of the Happy Dine Indian Restaurant and removed Malee from the sizeable shopping basket. The restaurant owner was gushingly polite until he realized she wasn’t there to eat. But the restaurant was empty so he had no excuse not to point her to the kitchen. Mr Bhiku, large and shirtless, sat on an upturned bucket reading an ancient copy of Bangkok World. When he saw Dtui he dropped the paper and crumpled into a deep nop. He was a man who considered himself to be every other man’s inferior. Dtui returned the nop and pulled the old chef to his feet. Malee reached out to him and he wrapped his dark fat fingers around her light, tiny ones. His smile lit up her face.

  ‘Hello, Mr B,’ said Dtui. ‘I’m looking for Jogendranath.’ Crazy Rajid’s actual name.

  ‘Oh, goodness. What has he done now?’ asked Mr Bhiku.

  ‘Well, I believe he might have saved the life of me and my daughter here.’

  Mr B’s face gave off a glow like a two-bar electric heater.

  ‘If that is so, I would be most delighted,’ he said. ‘Most delighted indeed.’

  ‘Have you seen him lately?’ she asked.

  ‘Sadly, not for four days. He was given to sleeping here in my open-air kitchen but I have seen neither hide nor hair of him since Sunday.’

  Crazy Rajid’s walkabouts were legendary so this was not a matter of concern to either of them.

  ‘When he gets back, could you tell him that Malee and I would really like to see him.’

  ‘I most certainly will,’ he said. ‘And how is your handsome and hardworking police husband?’

  ‘He’s fine. He’s off training the untrainable in the north-east. Should be back in a day or two.’

  ‘Give him my regards.’

  *

  It wasn’t until she was almost back at the nursing school that a thought entered Dtui’s head. One that she couldn’t shake away. Nobody had seen Crazy Rajid since Sunday. Sunday was probably the day that Hervé Barnard had crossed into Thailand in order to enter Sanyaburi from the rear.

  Could Rajid really have followed the Frenchman across the border? And if so, what chance of survival would a mentally disturbed Indian have on the Thai side?

  Siri and Daeng were actually living in Siri’s allotted house at That Luang. Daeng’s restaurant was a shell but it was a tough shell and somehow the block had held up. There was no roof, of course, and they had no money to begin refurbishing, but there was promise. Of Siri’s splendid library there was no trace. In Phnom Penh, he had shed tears at the sight of all the tomes from the national library ruined by rain and smoke. But that had been a premeditated act by the Khmer Rouge. The books had been the enemy. His own library was an innocent bystander shot with a stray bullet. It wasn’t the same. His books died loved. There would be more.

  The house refugees had started to filter back. Pao and Lia were already in their room. Comrade Noo, the Thai forest monk, had reclaimed his wooden cot on the back balcony. With the position of Head of Housing Allocation currently unfilled, and the file of Dr Siri temporarily sequestered by the police investing Comrade Koomki’s death, there was every hope that the Siri residence would soon dance to the tune of companionship once again. But, this night, it was just Siri and Daeng sitting alone on the front step.

  ‘So?’ said Daeng.

  ‘So what?’ said Siri.

  ‘Why haven’t you said anything about my book?’

  ‘I said it was good.’

  ‘You said it was good that I’d finished it. I’m still waiting for the review.’

  Siri looked at the stars that dotted the tarpaulin of night above his head.

  ‘It’s history, Daeng. A personal historical document. I’m not about to make fun of your spelling and grammar.’

  ‘I don’t want you to. I want to … to know how it made you feel.’

  ‘As in …?’

  ‘As in … Damn it, Siri. I’ve confessed to … to using intimacy to extract information. I’ve slept with men I didn’t love. Men I hated.’

  ‘A lot of women sleep with men they hate. But they’re usually related.’

  ‘Siri!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How can you be … be near somebody like me after you’ve read all that?’

  ‘You know? I’ve been thinking about it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Did you always hate it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Was it always really awful or did the thrill become a drug?’

  Daeng lowered her face from the freckled night sky and stared at her husband.

  ‘Siri …’

  ‘You’re a passionate woman, Daeng. My goodness, do I know that. Once you realized you held that weapon, and that you could use it on any one of those faux empereurs and destroy them any time you liked, that’s an awful lot of power to hold in your gut. Oh, you must have been full of that power. Bursting. I wouldn’t be surprised if the adrenalin channelled itself right to your pleasure nodes.’

  ‘I didn’t …’

  ‘And, as a result of that, I wonder if in subsequent years you didn’t sit on your noodle stool after the lunchtime rush and start to feel guilty about it all. Not the lies. Not the subterfuge. Not even the killing. That was all unavoidable. But the fact that you enjoyed it. The fact that there were times you took pleasure from those men. That your work had given you an excuse to break out of your culture and be promiscuous. There was even something about the awful times that made you happy, because you could always see the final scene played out in front of you. You knew your victims would suffer one way or another. And, Daeng, I tell you, if the French army had been all female, I would have been at the front of the queue of volunteers.’

  She laughed.

  ‘I doubt you would have been recruited,’ she smiled.

  He leaned away from her.

  ‘Madam, are you casting aspersions as to my prowess on the mattress?’

  ‘Not at all. You’re a veritable gymnast. But women like to look up at their men. French military Amazons would tower over you, my husband. You’d need stilts just to dance with them.’

  ‘I’d win them over with my boyish charm. We’re all the same height lying down, you know. And, no matter how ugly they were, I would engage them boldly for the nation.’

  ‘Now you’re making fun of me.’

  ‘No I’m not. I’m just telling you I admire you for what you did. That, if roles had been reversed …’

  ‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you’re a man, and men are lauded in our society for the number of times their pestle hits the mortar. I’m a Lao woman. Do you honestly believe if that document were published, there wouldn’t be an outcry about my morality? That mothers wouldn’t tell their daughters, “If you continue with your loose ways you’ll end up a Madame Daeng”?’

  They were silent for a long time. They both knew she was right. He took her hand and massaged her palm with his thumb.

  ‘So you wrote it for me,’ said Siri.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Siri?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What was so funny about my spelling and grammar?’

  It was the night of Auntie Bpoo’s Phasing Away party. Siri and Daeng had debated not going. It seemed … weird. Were it a wake, at least you’d know what to wear. Everybody had a white or black wardrobe for such occasions. But to arrive at a party knowing that the host-cum-hostess would be kicking the bucket sometime in the middle of it all, made you want to take your funeral clothing in a plastic bag and change when the time was ripe. But Siri was concerned that nobody would show up at all. That Auntie Bpoo would die alone and friendless – a lonely, wandering spirit for eternity. And so Siri and Daeng spruced themselves up and decided to make the best of it. And there was one more reason for attending. Inspector Phosy had been off in Vieng Xai since before their return and would have arrived back in Vientiane late that afternoon. They’d all bul
lied Nurse Dtui to drag him along. There were numerous questions about his investigation of Madame Peung that still had no answers.

  Auntie Bpoo had told them to meet her at the Russian Club at six. The Russian Club was neither Russian, nor a club. It was one of the few surviving nightlife venues in Vientiane still standing on the bank of the Mekhong. It was a large wooden restaurant whose only walls surrounded the kitchen. The rest was open to the elements. It held on to its licence and its profits by catering to the large Eastern European expat community. It had an endless supply of beer and other more expensive tipples such as vodka, leading one to believe that the owner had friends in high places. The restaurant was always full and it often stayed open after curfew. Siri had bemoaned the choice of venue.

  ‘I doubt she’ll even be able to book a table,’ he’d told Daeng.

  It was therefore not a total surprise when they arrived at the club fashionably late to be met by military guards in full uniform including holstered weapons. They were standing out front checking invitations. There were large placards in Russian and English apologizing to esteemed regular guests for the fact that the restaurant would be closed this evening as it had been booked for a private function.

  ‘See? What did I tell you?’ said Siri. ‘That really stuffs up Auntie Bpoo’s plans. I bet she didn’t know about this. You’d think a fortune-teller would have predicted it.’

  ‘Don’t you be so hasty,’ said Daeng. ‘Who’s that sitting over by the railing?’

  Siri looked up to see a table of friends waving; Phosy, Dtui, Mr Geung and his fiancée Tukda, Civilai and his wife, Noy.

  ‘How the hell did they get in?’ Siri asked.

  ‘I’d say this is Auntie Bpoo’s party,’ said Daeng.

  ‘Don’t be … How could she?’

  Siri walked up the steps where he found a large hand on his chest. He looked up into the face of a middle-aged man in uniform.

  ‘Invitation,’ said the soldier.

  Daeng followed demurely behind her husband.

  ‘Take your hand off my chest, son,’ said Siri. ‘Do you honestly believe I’d be here without an invitation?’

  ‘No. But if I don’t see it, I don’t believe it,’ said the military bouncer.

  ‘You obviously don’t know who I am,’ said Siri.

  ‘You’re Dr Siri,’ said the soldier. ‘You took a chunk of shrapnel out of my knee once.’

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘No invitation, no entry. Sorry.’

  ‘If I ran past you, do you think you could catch me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then the operation was a success.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then?’

  Madame Daeng laughed and produced her invitation from her sequinned soirée bag. The soldier looked at it and nodded for her to pass.

  ‘Where’s mine?’ called Siri.

  ‘You threw it in the bin, remember?’ Daeng told him. ‘Said it was ridiculous to take an invitation to a funeral.’

  She walked to the top of the steps, turned around to see the sad sight of her husband behind the barrier, then relented. She returned to the guard and produced a second invitation.

  ‘I rescued it,’ she laughed.

  The place was crowded. The tables were full and others stood around. In 1978 Laos, it was rarely necessary to raise one’s voice. There were the late insect choruses and monsoons on tin roofs and thousand-amp speakers at large gatherings but being heard at social events had hardly been a problem before this. There was no music in the Russian Club that night but everyone was shouting. There was a selection of beverages on each table and an open bar for those who had nowhere to sit. There were spirits and, to Daeng’s delight, red or white wine. They had asked a passing waitress whether she might open a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon for them. She produced a beer bottle opener and left it on the table for them. Fortunately, Civilai remembered that his Swiss Army knife had a corkscrew attachment.

  ‘What on earth is going on here?’ Siri asked.

  ‘Auntie Bpoo’s last stand,’ shouted Civilai.

  ‘Has anyone actually seen the party girl yet?’ Daeng asked.

  ‘Not a sign,’ they shouted.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ said Inspector Phosy. ‘She’s a street fortune-teller. She reads the cards at five hundred kip a pot. Where did the money come from for all this?’

  ‘She obviously has other resources,’ said Dtui.

  Daeng stood up.

  ‘Look,’ she shouted. ‘How about we wander down to the river’s edge with our respective bottles so we can actually hear ourselves speak?’

  ‘We … we might lose our table,’ said Geung.

  ‘Look at us,’ said Civilai. ‘Do you think anyone would dare take the table of such a scary group?’

  Mr Geung laughed and they upped and followed the narrow dirt path to the water. There was a concrete foundation down there for what was once a boat landing. It made a perfect seat.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Civilai. ‘Who are all those people up there?’

  ‘It would appear Bpoo has more friends than we thought,’ said Daeng. ‘And it’s invitation only so they aren’t all freeloaders.’

  ‘And who would have expected all this anyway?’ said Dtui.

  ‘All right,’ said Siri. ‘While we have a few minutes of quiet, let’s listen to what Phosy has to say about his investigation of the Vietnamese and Madame Peung. We’ve all been on the edge of our seats these past few days.’

  In fact, the only person even vaguely likely to fall off his seat had been Siri. It had been a difficult few days for him. He’d done everything Madame Peung had suggested: the breathing exercises, the yoga, the cat’s whisker grass tea. He’d been patient with the spirits he saw. He’d tried not to judge. Not to tell them to their faces that they were scientifically impossible. As the witch had told him time and time again, he had to be an empty house with a sign out front saying VACANCY in large letters. He’d done just that but nobody had knocked on his door. He’d constructed no end of mental devices to lure them inside. He’d even strewn mental nails across the road out front so that souls passing on motorcycles might have a flat tyre and come in to use the telephone. Nothing had worked. But most frustrating was the fact that the used-to-be woman had not made an appearance. He was beginning to have doubts, and Phosy’s findings would help a great deal to maintain his faith.

  Phosy had brought along his notebook but he rarely referred to it. He took a sip of his whisky and coughed.

  ‘Madame Peung,’ he began, and coughed again, ‘was everything we’d heard about her. The wife of a general who got rich by diverting United States funding to his own projects. She was wiser than her husband it seems because she could see the direction this country was headed. Without his knowledge she contacted the Pathet Lao and provided them with donations to fund their underground operations. As a widow, once the PL took over the country, she was on their list of wealthy sympathizers. She made numerous trips to Hanoi and was responsible for a number of profitable deals. Everything seemed to be running as regular as clockwork until this past July when she went missing for eighteen days. I patiently awaited my turn at our central post office and talked to the manager at the hotel she always stayed at in Vietnam. We have a Vietnamese translator at HQ.

  ‘When she turned up after her mysterious disappearance, she’d told the manager that she had no idea where she’d been. She said she’d woken up in a small clinic somewhere and they told her she’d suffered a brain aneurysm and had been in a coma. The doctor had been very pleased with her recovery and released her. She paid her hotel bill in full and returned to Laos. That night, she was killed.’

  ‘Sounds like just a little too much of a coincidence to me,’ said Daeng.

  ‘I talked to her live-in girl about that night,’ said Phosy. ‘She said that Madame Peung had arrived late that afternoon with a truck and a driver. The driver had his hat pulled down over his eyes. There was a crate on the back of the
truck. The girl came out to help carry it but Madame Peung called to her from the passenger window and told her to go down to the village and bring ten litres of petrol for the truck. She didn’t know why the truck driver couldn’t go down there himself but she wasn’t one to question orders. By the time she’d lugged the container back up the hill, the truck was gone. Either the crate went with it or it was in the widow’s room, because the girl didn’t see it again. The door to Madame Peung’s room was shut and when the girl asked if she wanted dinner the old lady declined. But it appears that Madame Peung often went to sleep early after a long journey so the girl thought nothing more of it. She went to bed at about nine and, the next thing she knew, she was woken by a shot. She’d been in a deep sleep so she wasn’t sure she hadn’t dreamed it. But the second gunshot most certainly came from inside the house. She wasn’t particularly fond of the job or the widow but she heard footsteps running away so she took a look at the widow’s room. That’s when she saw the body. She ran out the back door and hid in the bushes until she heard the villagers arrive.

  ‘There were a couple of things she mentioned to the young officer but that he didn’t consider important enough to add into his report. One was the fact that, when she came back to the house with the petrol, one of the piglets was gone. The sow had given birth three days before and had stopped giving the babies milk. The girl had been weaning them by hand. They were penned up so it couldn’t just run off. She wondered whether a crow had snatched it. Then there was the fact that when she was hiding in the bushes she thought she’d heard a truck starting up down on the main road. Sound carries at night in the countryside and road transport is so rare you tend to notice. She admitted she didn’t know if it was the engine of the truck Madame Peung had arrived in.’

  ‘So, do we know who the driver was?’ Civilai asked.

  ‘Now I do, but that was a breakthrough that came as a result of the photographs of Tang and Madame Peung that you sent me, Madame Daeng,’ said Phosy.