The Merry Misogynist dsp-6 Page 3

  "How is it?" Civilai asked, watching his best friend chew on the crusty shell.

  "It tastes less like tree bark than usual," Siri admitted.

  Siri had considered cancelling his luncheon date. That morning's autopsy still haunted him. His anger hadn't subsided but he'd long since learned to keep his feelings to himself unless sharing them would help with a case in some way. He could fool most people most of the time, but he knew bluffing astute Civilai would be another matter. And perhaps it would be useful to get his friend's thoughts on what had transpired in Vang Vieng the previous day.

  "Come on, little brother," Civilai pleaded. "I've used her exact recipe. I bribed her with a half bottle of rum to get it."

  "And it's a commendable effort. But you need more than a recipe. You need all those elements that can't be accounted for: the patina of the kiln, the sweat of the workers, the experience. A real baguette is a time capsule of every little stage that's gone into the making of it."

  "So you don't like it?"

  "I didn't say that. It's pleasant."

  "You're a tough audience, Siri. I should know better than to ask on one of your bad days."

  "What makes you think I'm having a bad day?"

  "Your face is as long as that thing."

  He raised his chin towards the Mekhong. The river was almost humble in March, like a large dirty puddle doing its best to fill its banks. Once again, the dry-season gardeners had planted their vegetables along its shores and marked off their allotments with string and slips of paper with their names or marks on them. That was the limit of the security system. They figured that if someone was so hungry they were forced to steal a head of lettuce, then they deserved to have it.

  "Got anything to drink in that bag?" Siri asked.

  "From your tone, I'm assuming you wouldn't settle for chrysanthemum juice?"

  "Something with a bite."

  Civilai fumbled deep in his old green kit bag and emerged with a flask. He unscrewed the cap, took a whiff, and handed it to Siri.

  "It'll probably go down better if you don't ask me what it is," he said.

  Siri took a swig and felt a handful of burning tacks embed themselves in his liver.

  "Ouch! Holy Father of the Lord Buddha," he said.

  "Potent, isn't it?"

  "We used something like this to strip paint off tanks."

  "Give it back then."

  "Not on your life." Siri took another swig.

  They sat for a while, willing the flies to leave them alone, admiring the industry of a river rat ferrying mushrooms to and from her hole.

  "How's Dtui?" Civilai asked, allowing Siri his own sweet time to tell what was troubling him.

  "A month short of giving birth to what looks like a small bulldozer," Siri said.

  "And the marriage?"

  "They seem content."

  "I meant yours."

  "Me?" At last a happy thought. "I'm a very lucky man, old brother. I'd forgotten what a pleasure it was to watch a woman breathe in her sleep…see her chest rise and fall."

  "Steady, you'll be writing poetry next." Siri was silent. "You haven't?"

  "Only a short one."

  "You're like me, Siri. Can't get through life without a woman. Too bad you'll have to settle for just the one."

  "One what?"

  "Wife. Our friends up at the roundabout are introducing a law against polygamy. I know the average lowland Lao in his right mind can't handle more than one wife, so it would appear to be one more kick in the testicles for the hill tribes."

  "How do you find out all these things?"

  "They keep me in the loop. A driver comes by once a week with politburo news, a copy of Lao Huksat newsletter, and a calendar of meetings I don't bother to go to. Want to know the highlights of the week?"

  "Go on, make me laugh."

  "My favourite is the fact that they've decided all spirit houses have to be registered."

  "By the occupants?"

  Civilai laughed. "Oh, and there's a new ban on contraceptive devices, not that anyone could afford one anyway. It appears they're offering rice tax deductions to families with more than three children. Got to shore up the dwindling proletariat."

  "They offering to feed them too?"

  "Not as far as I know. Then there's the usual list of Western paranoia measures: a moratorium on blue jeans to go with the one on long hair. And they'll be sending inspectors around to coffee shops to make sure the lighting isn't too dim."

  "So you can see the stains on the tablecloths?"

  "Dim lighting apparently leads to lasciviousness and lewdness."

  "Which in turn leads to pregnancy and a higher population. I wish they'd make their minds up."

  "It would all be hilarious if it weren't true."

  "How's our old friend collectivism?"

  "It's all in the advanced planning stage."

  "They're really going ahead with it? They're madder than I thought."

  "Collectivism: the gathering of farmers who have nothing to meet once a week to distribute it."

  "That just about sums it up. The communists in Russia introduced it to help the peasants rise up against the oppressive landlords. We haven't got any oppressive landlords."

  "They'll probably hire one or two before they start the programme."

  "I'm sure I'd be on their list."

  "How so?"

  "I'm about to go to jail for absentee landlordism and pimping. A fifty-centimetre-tall official from Housing came by this morning and told me I have to give up my house."

  "And all the freaks it contains?"

  "They think I don't live there."

  "You don't."

  "I know."

  The two old men smiled and shared a banana.

  "Hot, isn't it?" Civilai said at last.

  "Bloody hot."

  "This place seems to switch from the cool season to the bloody hot season without passing through a tepid or a lukewarm season on the way. You'd expect to find Crazy Rajid stark naked in the river on days like these."

  "Hmm, now you mention it, I haven't seen him walking aimlessly around town for a while."

  "Me neither."

  "I hope he's all right." Siri's brow furrowed.

  "I'm not sure how you'd go about checking up on an insane homeless Indian. He might have just curled up and died and nobody would be any the wiser."

  "I think I'll ask around. But for a few wonky genes here, and an overdose of vodka there, it could be you or me walking endless circles around Nam Poo Fountain in our underwear."

  "Speak for yourself. You know what Nietzsche says about madness?"

  "No."

  "Me neither."

  Siri laughed. "Ah, Civilai, you're a waste of perfectly good skin and body parts."

  He took another swig of the vindictive spirits. He detected a hint of turnip but he really didn't want to ask what it was made of. It hurt his insides and he decided it was exactly what he needed. He decided also that it was time to tell Civilai about his morning.

  All Siri wanted to do after lunch was go home and sleep, but he'd arranged to meet Inspector Phosy at the morgue. Saturday was officially a half day; so when he returned, Dtui and Mr Geung had already left. He unlocked the door and went directly to the cutting room. He unfastened the freezer and pulled out the drawer. His beautiful Madonna was wrapped in a blue plastic sheet that he rolled down as far as her neck. He took a step back and looked at her pale mask of a face. She had been so lovely. What had led to this? Why could he not rub some consecrated sticks together and summon her spirit? Why was his supernatural power so ineffective when he could most make use of it? One or two answers from the beyond and he'd have the bastard who did this. He hated his own psychic impotence every bit as much as he hated the maniac who had erased this beauty's life and stolen her dignity.

  "She must have been very pretty."

  Siri hadn't heard Phosy arrive. The inspector — upright, middle-aged, and muscular — looked none the worse for his
seven months of marriage to Nurse Dtui. He ate like a horse, but it melted off. He had raven black hair that Dtui assured everyone didn't come from a bottle, and a keen, curious face.

  "Did Dtui tell you everything?" Siri asked, forgetting his greeting manners.

  "Yes, she was home for lunch. She wanted me to tell you she was sorry for — "

  "I understand. Do you have any idea who'll be handling this case? I want to be involved."

  "You already are," Phosy told him. "It's me."

  "I thought you only handled political issues these days."

  "It was Comrade Surachai's idea. He's the committee member who rode in with her this morning. He knew about me from Kham, my old boss. Surachai has some clout with my chief. The folks up at Vang Vieng are frightened there might be a killer on the loose. So let's get to it."

  Siri was delighted. He'd worked with Phosy on a number of cases; he thought they made a splendid team. Siri had been ramrodded into the coroner's job, but it did give him the opportunity to vent his detective proclivities. As a penniless young medical-school student in Paris he had been deprived of the type of raunchy entertainment other men his age sought. Instead, he'd found solace in the two old-franc cinema halls and in libraries where Maurice LeBlanc, Gaston Leroux, and Stanislas-Andre Steeman took him on noir journeys through the nettle-strewn undergrowth of the criminal world. His hero, Inspector Maigret, had convinced him that there could be no better career than that of solving crimes and putting blackguards behind bars.

  There hadn't been much detecting to be done in the jungles of Vietnam and northern Laos in his army days; so his dream, like most of the dreams men harbour, had turned to snuff and been huffed away by history. Until now.

  "Where do we start?" Phosy asked, a question every closet member of the surete de police yearns to hear. Although brilliant in his own way, Phosy never pretended to be anything he wasn't. He knew his limitations.

  "You already have a picture of the girl?" Siri asked, although he knew Phosy's subordinate, Sergeant Sihot, had arrived that morning to meet the body and taken a Polaroid instant photograph. The camera was one of the police department's latest crime-fighting tools.

  "Sihot went back with the cadre to Vang Vieng. He'll show the picture around and try to get an identification."

  "Good." Siri nodded. "Then I suggest we look at the pestle."

  Rinsed clean now and tagged, the object sat innocently on a shelf above the dissection table.

  "It's not your common or garden variety," Phosy noticed, weighing the heavy, blunt tool in his hand. "Unusual size; somewhere between a cooking implement and a medicine crusher."

  "Black stone. Looks expensive," Siri agreed.

  "I'll have someone show it around, too, and see what we can come up with. Does the body tell us anything?"

  Siri walked to the corpse and pulled back the plastic wrapping. He held up the callused fingers and indicated the sunburned ankles. He and Phosy ping-ponged ideas back and forth for almost an hour but still they were unable to come up with anything plausible. The state of the corpse left them both baffled.?

  Dtui usually put her foot firmly down on any plans her husband might have to work on the weekend, but this case had become personal to her. She'd told him to do everything he could to avenge the girl's death. He would leave that afternoon for Vang Vieng to join Sergeant Sihot. Siri vowed to invest more thought into the condition of his Madonna while the policemen were away.

  To the great displeasure of many, Madame Daeng's noodle shop was not open on Sunday. This was Siri's day off and she insisted on spending every one of its twenty-four hours with her husband. He had no objection whatsoever. They both loved to walk but Daeng's arthritis limited their treks. Invariably, they would head off on Siri's motorcycle to beauty spots that in another era would have been crowded with happy people. These days they often enjoyed their picnics alone.

  But Siri had designated this Sunday a Vientiane day. The capital was somewhat ghostly when they set out at nine. Stores were shuttered, many for so long the locks had rusted to the hasps. Houses were in permanent disrepair. The dusts of March had settled on the city like a grey-brown layer of snow. Roads, even those with bitumen surfaces, looked like dirt tracks. There were no obvious colours anywhere, only shades. Even the gaudiest billboards had been reduced to a fuzzy pastel. The most common sounds they heard as they cruised the streets were the sweeping of front steps and the dry-clearing of throats.

  Theirs was not an aimless tour of the city. Siri and Daeng passed all the spots at which Crazy Rajid had been a feature: the Nam Poo Fountain, the Black Stupa, the three old French villas on Samsenthai, and the bank of the river. As far as they knew, that was the young man's territory. Siri stopped at every open door he passed and chatted with neighbours. Yes, they knew Crazy Rajid, although not by name. Siri began to wonder whether he and Civilai might have christened the poor man themselves. Some had given the vagrant food; most had offered him water at one time or another. Some had tried to engage him in conversation, but it appeared that nobody other than Siri, Civilai, and Inspector Phosy had ever heard him speak, and even to them he had uttered only a word or two.

  Everyone considered him a feature of their landscape and all agreed, "Now you come to mention it, I haven't seen him for a while." The last time anyone recalled a sighting had been the previous Thursday. That meant the local crazy man had been absent for ten days. Details were sketchy at best. Nobody makes a note of seeing a street person. But the account of one witness was accurate enough to give Siri cause for concern.

  Ba See sold old stamps and coins from a tiny shopfront near the corner of Samsenthai Road and Pangkham. It was unlikely she made a living from it but she enjoyed sitting on her threadbare wicker armchair and watching the street.

  "Every Friday," she said. "Regular as clockwork for the past two years he'd turn up at five thirty a.m. on the dot. Don't know how he managed it. Never saw him wear a watch, or much else for that matter. He'd go over to the first of them colonials across the street." She pointed to three ancient French buildings behind a low white wall. At one time they'd been white, but time and weather had turned them as ugly as a smoker's teeth.

  "He'd go over and bang on the door," she continued. "No point in it at all. There are six families living in there, government workers from the provinces, and they've all got their own rooms. The front door's never locked. But he didn't ever go in. He just stood there knocking. People came down to see what he wanted but he never wanted anything. Only wanted to bang by the looks of it. Every damned week. Then, last Friday, he didn't show up. I was waiting for my regular five thirty bang but he didn't come. It surprised me. Even some of the women in the house came down and looked out the door like they were expecting him. Day before yesterday, he didn't come again. Must be something wrong."

  Siri and Daeng went to the old building and asked the few people who were home. They supported Ba See's story. Nobody had any idea why he knocked on the door every week, and nobody had seen him for the last two Fridays. Siri leaned his head against Daeng's shoulder blade. They were sitting on his bike. No greater love has any man than to let his wife have a turn at driving his beloved motorcycle.

  "So what do we do next?" Daeng asked.

  "If we had TV we could put an artist's impression of him on the evening news."

  "Failing that?"

  "Failing that I think we've come to the end of our leads for the day. Let's mark it down as ongoing and move on to the next impossible situation."

  "Your house?"

  "Are you up for it?"

  "If you are."

  They pulled up in front of Siri's old bungalow and conducted a quick surveillance of the property. There were some six children frozen like statues in the front yard. Daeng turned to Siri, who could only shrug. On the roof was what looked like a handleless red-and-white-polka-dot umbrella forming a dome in the centre of the tiles. A makeshift clothesline had been strung up between a tree and a very ornate spirit house, one that hadn'
t been there on Siri's last visit. An assortment of brightly coloured ladies' undergarments hung from the rope like distress flags on a ship. Thai religious music filled the street in front of the house, and one of the front windows bore brown tape in the shape of a cross.

  "I don't know," Daeng said. "Fighting the French in the jungles is one thing…"

  "Be brave, ma Pasionaria. A warning, though: I may have to feign anger. I'd appreciate it if you didn't burst out laughing."

  "I'll do my best."

  Siri's habit of collecting strays had begun when his original lodging was blown up and he was relocated to the suburbs. It hadn't seemed logical for a single man to live alone in such a mansion. Several down-and-outs had passed through over the previous year. Some had stayed. On the current roster, as far as he knew, were: Mr Inthanet, the puppet master from Luang Prabang; Mrs Fah, whose husband had been haunted to death, and her two children, Mee and Nounou; the two hopefully inactive prostitutes, Tong and Gongjai; Comrade Noo, the renegade monk fleeing the Thai junta; and a blind Hmong beggar, Pao, and his granddaughter, Lia, who had been swept from the road in front of Daeng's shop before the police could tidy them away. Then there were the baby twins, temporarily named Athit and Jun, awaiting collection, and that was a story in itself.

  Siri and Daeng walked toward the front door and paused to look at the frozen children.

  "I think they're dead," said Daeng.

  "Stuffed probably," Siri added.

  "You could do anything to them and they wouldn't feel it."

  "You mean if I stick my finger up one of their nostrils…?"

  Nounou, beneath the young lumyai tree, burst into laughter, and the others came to life giggling and pointing at their playmate.