The Woman Who Wouldn't Die Read online

  ‘Hmm,’ said Madame Peung, as if mulling over a minor plumbing problem. ‘I know now why his body wasn’t found.’

  ‘Why?’ asked the minister.

  ‘He was trapped on a boat. It was a large boat and he was inside the cabin when the vessel capsized. It flipped over and he was unable to get out. He drowned.’

  ‘Where?’ asked the minister.

  ‘Not far from here, as I already intimated. It’s about ten kilometres upriver. I am still visualizing the landscape.’

  ‘Why, after all these years, has nobody noticed a boat submerged in the river?’ asked Daeng.

  ‘That’s a good question, Madame Daeng,’ said Madame Peung. ‘I think it’s because, well, I don’t feel water around him. It’s more claustrophobic than that. Perhaps he’s in a cave? Or, no. In fact, I believe he and the boat might be encased in mud.’

  ‘That’s not unlikely,’ said the minister. ‘There are long, deep stretches around these parts. In places the river can reach a depth of sixty metres. In some spots you could sink a pirogue and the silt and mud just sucks you down. Over time I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a sunken boat vanished completely.’

  ‘Oh, my word. This is a major project,’ said Madame Ho. ‘Call in the engineers, husband.’

  ‘Now wait!’ said the minister. ‘I can’t requisition a unit of men just like that. What would I tell their commanders?’

  ‘You’re the Minister of Agriculture,’ she reminded him. ‘You don’t have to tell them anything. You give the order. They come running. Not terribly complicated.’

  Siri let out a silent puff of air. If he’d had a wife like this he would certainly have shot her long ago.

  ‘Before I start calling for reinforcements I hope you don’t mind if I go and take a look for myself,’ said the minister, although his sarcasm had a pleading element to it. ‘Madame Peung, would you care for a short helicopter ride?’

  ‘Oh, that sounds like fun,’ she said.

  ‘Right then,’ said the minister. ‘My helicopter is only fitted with four passenger seats. So that’s—’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said the witch, ‘but I’ll have to have my brother along. I may be in need of another brief trance as we get closer to the site.’

  ‘Then we’re full,’ said the minister. ‘You, your brother, me and Dr Siri.’

  ‘Why him?’ said Madame Ho and Daeng at exactly the same time.

  ‘He’s the coroner,’ said the minister. ‘There might be bodies down there. I’ve never seen my brother without his skin on, so if we find him I’d need a formal identification. That would avoid having to bring in troops. We can ship his remains home and be done with all this nonsense. You do have his medical records with you, don’t you, Siri?’

  Siri tapped his shoulder bag.

  ‘I don’t actually swim that well,’ he said.

  ‘Never mind,’ said the minister. ‘If there’s anything in the water I’ll have the pilot and the mechanic bring it up to the bank.’

  Siri could see that the minister was sold on the idea that Madame Peung would be able to pinpoint the whereabouts of Major Ly. He’d arrived sceptical but was now a believer. As evening was fast approaching, they scheduled the flight for first thing the following morning. Siri was every bit as excited about the trip as Madame Peung.

  It was then that the French made a seriously bad call. The Thais were posturing again, claiming this stretch of land, moving that boundary line. The French knew that we Lao showed little loyalty or gratitude to our colonial leaders. They were certain we were so spineless we would side with anybody, and the Thais – at a great stretch – were our ethnic counterparts. Our histories were interlaced (usually with the Thais sacking and pillaging our cities). But thanks to a little cardsharpery at the diplomatic level, the Thais had claimed the west bank of the Mekhong as their own and a third of our Lao brothers and sisters now found themselves on Thai soil. There were more ethnic Lao in the northeast of Thailand than in Laos itself.

  So, in response to this Thai flirtation, the French administrators decided to instil in us a pride in our nation. They organized youth movements across the country. The larger towns held Lao camps where teenagers were gathered to hear about the great Lao kings and famous battles against the cowardly Siamese. They printed anti-Thai propaganda for us to read around the campfire. But something else happened at those camps. The same national pride the French hoped might turn us against the Thais turned round and bit the hand that beat it. The camps formed a foundation for what became a movement to overthrow the colonists. And I was there at the camp in Pakse. Too old to register as a camper, I signed on as a cook.

  ‘I’m not going to let you read any more till it’s finished.

  ‘Is this the part where I arrive on the scene?’

  ‘Why on earth would I find that important enough to include in my memoirs?’

  ‘I bet you loved me at first sight.’

  ‘You’re so vain.’

  When the French and the Vietnamese came to inspect us, we sang Lao songs and learned what native plants could be used as balms against burns, and waved little paper Lao flags we’d made during art and craft sessions. And when they were gone, our teachers told us about the French atrocities.

  Like me, the young people there had seen no worth in themselves and the camps gave us a value. And two of our teachers had studied in France but they weren’t royals. Through their own hard work and raw ability they’d earned degrees in Paris and even though they could have stayed in Europe and made a lot of money, they came home to help develop their people. One of them, a nurse called Bouasawan, whom I wanted so much to be, taught us about the uprising of the lower classes throughout the world. Her husband, Dr Siri Paiboun (and there was the reason I wanted so much to be Boua), was a dashing, funny, intelligent man who taught us the real reason we should be proud. Not because some ancient king massacred another’s army but because we were human beings. We had rights. We deserved respect.

  The seeds of the Lao Issara – Free Lao – movement were watered in those camps and many of our youth went on to be leaders in the uprising. The French realized too late that engendering a pride in Lao nationhood was perhaps not such a good idea after all. They disbanded the camps but there was no disbanding the hearts of the Lao now joined in comradeship. The damage was done. We knew who our enemy was, and he wasn’t Thai.

  7

  Village of the Undead

  It had been a long time since Inspector Phosy didn’t have bad weather to grumble about. Drought had given way to monsoons, to flash floods, to dust storms. Crops had been lost to locusts. Plagues of mosquitoes had been unleashed when they flooded the land for the new dam and with the humidity being what it was, dengue, the bleeding fever plague, was rife.

  But here they were on a bright Sunday morning chugging along on his lilac Vespa motor scooter. A cool breeze massaged their faces; Phosy, Dtui and Malee. A family outing that didn’t involve digging. Not dirt anyway. They were in no hurry so Phosy sat on 30 k.p.h., which gave him ample time to avoid disappearing into a pit or running into a stray pig or swallowing flies as they sang. Ban Elee, their destination for the day, was forty-eight kilometres from Vientiane off Route Thirteen, an unspectacular straight road passing lookalike villages every ten minutes or so. Once Phosy had read Daeng’s letter, there was no question that he would make this trip. Madame Daeng wasn’t one to waste anybody’s time.

  They arrived stiff from the ride and stretched and clicked joints and walked around the bike to get the circulation back in their legs. There was nothing to confirm that they’d arrived at their destination apart from the odometer on the Vespa and the word of a farmer they’d spoken to earlier. There was no signpost and nothing remarkable about Ban Elee to distinguish it from every other village.

  ‘You lost?’ called a woman who sat on a flimsy balcony threading jasmine on to a garland string.

  ‘Can’t be lost if you have no idea where you’re going,’ Dtui replied and smiled at he
r.

  This was to be their tactic for the day. Unplanned tourism.

  ‘From Vientiane, are you?’ asked the woman.

  ‘How’d you know?’

  ‘It’s only city people would waste good petrol going on a joyride in this day and age.’

  ‘We saved up for it,’ said Dtui. ‘We wanted our daughter to see the countryside while there’s still some here to see. Introduce her to some good country people.’

  ‘And where’s that accent from?’

  ‘Udomxai. I’m a northerner. I miss the countryside too.’

  The woman chuckled. Her large breasts jiggled as she did so.

  ‘You know? My husband just brought us down some custard apples. Sweetest little buggers you ever tasted. Come up and sample a few, why don’t you?’

  Ten minutes later there was a good-sized gathering on that small balcony and Malee was being bounced from lap to lap, showing no preference for stranger or relative. A dozen villagers had naturally gravitated to the lei-threader’s hut and they already knew that Dtui was a nurse, Phosy was a policeman, and Malee would be either a doctor or a psychologist. The latter was something of a gamble as Laos didn’t have a psychologist but Dtui predicted there’d be a huge demand by the time her daughter graduated. This was the village life that Dtui so missed. These people were four hundred kilometres from her own village but they were still her people. There was an old saying: people of a different village are herbs of a different garden. But she knew that wasn’t true. She believed that somewhere in a sixty-people grass hut village in Kenya there was a lei-threader and a bicycle repair man and a seller of zinc watering cans, and if some cosmic lightning strike were to magically transport her there, she’d know exactly how to act and she’d be accepted. Villages were about people.

  Phosy was advising some elder about the construction of a dyke. Dtui took advantage of his distraction by leading them in to the investigation.

  ‘That’s a splendid house up there on the buff,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t mind living in a place like that. Is it yours, Headman Gop?’

  The old man laughed.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to live there,’ he said. ‘Neither would you.’

  ‘Why not?’ Dtui asked.

  ‘It’s haunted,’ said one teenage girl, as skinny as a raindrop down a window.

  There were a few nervous laughs. Some looked at her as if she’d spoken out of turn. But Dtui knew they’d be unable to resist the country habit of telling a good yarn.

  ‘Don’t make fun of me now, girl,’ said Dtui.

  ‘Do you not believe in ghosts then, Nurse Dtui?’ asked the headman, his good eye attempting to pick her out amid the crowd.

  ‘I’ve never seen any nor heard a story that could convince me,’ said Dtui.

  ‘Then hear this one,’ he said. ‘That house you covet up there on the hill, it belonged to a royalist general and his wife. Like most of ’em, the general was more intent on making money than on soldiering. They say he got a small fortune tucked away. All he had to do was stay alive and they’d have enjoyed a very comfortable retirement. But he went and stepped on a mine instead and left the woman a rich widow. He was from here, a son of the earth, but she saw herself being a cut above all us. Plastered her face in make-up just to let us know she could afford it. She lived in that house up there with one live-in girl – hired us to do all the manual work: cut down her papayas, clean her toilet. So we weren’t what you’d call close. Then, three months ago, give or take a week, she got herself killed.’

  ‘No? How?’ Dtui asked.

  ‘She’d been away on one of her business trips,’ said the lei-threader, taking over the story. ‘She was gone longer than usual. Wouldn’t have known she was back if it weren’t for that noisy old truck she arrived in. She had a girl working for her at the house. Lived in a single room at the back. She’d be the one come down to do the shopping. But that evening, the girl didn’t come down to get the old lady any food. Just picked up some petrol at the hand pump. So we assumed her majesty had brought something back from the town. We all went to bed, as normal. When the fighting was on we didn’t take much notice of shots in the night. But there were these two shots and we all woke up. It sounded close, you see. We have our own, what you’d call, security force. We take it in turns to patrol with a rifle. We thought it was the guard shooting at something. But one of our lads who was in the military said it sounded more like a handgun.’

  ‘I knew it was a handgun,’ said the headman.

  ‘So, we all ask around and see that everyone in the village was accounted for,’ the lei-threader continued. ‘And Ott, who was on duty that night, comes running from the back fields and says he thinks the shot was from the hill. From Madame Peung’s house. So up we all go, none of us in a hurry to run into a gunman. And the live-in girl comes running out of the bushes in a red fit. “She’s dead,” she shouts. “The widow’s dead and they took my pig.” We had no idea why she was going on about pigs but sure enough, there’s the widow’s body lying in a pool of blood on her bed. Hole through her head.’

  ‘We didn’t catch the gunman,’ said the headman. ‘We assumed it was a burglar. There are a lot of old soldiers begging and living rough. Madame Peung’s house would have been an inviting target, away from the village as it is. We heard the truck drive off so he must have stolen that. We took the widow’s body down to the temple and sent a message on to kilometre fifty-six. That’s the nearest police box to here. What we’d normally do is contact the family of the deceased and get them to organize the cremation.’

  ‘But we didn’t know anything about her,’ said the lei-threader. ‘There weren’t any papers or identifications in the house. Not so much as a photograph album. So we had to do it all ourselves. We had her laid out for three days in case anyone wanted to pay their respects …’

  ‘There wasn’t exactly a rush,’ said the skinny girl.

  ‘Then the boys carried her down to the pyre and up she went,’ said the headman. ‘It was all over. Or so we thought.’

  ‘It was the next morning we hear another scream,’ said the lei-threader. ‘The live-in girl had stayed on in the maid’s room up there and she comes running down the hill again. “She’s not dead,” she screams. “Madame Peung isn’t dead.” We assumed she’d been hitting the turnip wine early and went about our business. But then, what do we see but this figure walking down the hill. And the closer it gets, the more certainly it looks like the widow.’

  ‘We all pissed off inside our houses and barred the doors,’ said the skinny girl.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said the headman.

  ‘I was so scared my tongue curled back on itself and came out my rear end,’ said the lei-threader. ‘She walked right up here on the balcony. I could see her through that crack there as clear as I’m seeing you.’

  ‘You’re sure it was her?’ Phosy asked.

  ‘Not a doubt in my mind,’ she told him.

  ‘She came to me, of course,’ said the headman. ‘Which was only proper. But I was indisposed.’

  ‘You were hiding in your outhouse,’ said the lei-threader. ‘I could see you from the back window.’

  ‘Just taking care of my ablutions, is all.’

  ‘So, what did she do?’ Dtui asked.

  ‘She came to me,’ said a wrinkled old woman who had been camouflaged thus far by the grain of the wood. ‘She got her oven charcoal from me. I didn’t mind her, not like this lot. She’d give me a bonus at Lao new year. Nothing wrong with her. And she says, “Bung,” she says. “What’s going on here? Why’s everybody screaming and hiding from me?” Well, I told her, didn’t I? I told her, “Of course they’re scared,” I said. “The men folk carried your body down to the pyre yesterday and we watched you go up in smoke. You were killed by an intruder three days ago. You’re dead, madam.” And, you know? She turned as white as … well, she was really white. Can’t say I’ve been that close to a ghost before but she was so shocked she was dead I even felt sorry for her. She went
from door to door calling out people’s names. Insisting there’d been some mistake. That she wasn’t dead at all. She tried for a few days. She was polite about it. Friendly even. But nobody dared come out to greet her.’

  ‘I would have done,’ said the headman.

  ‘She seemed really confused,’ said the lei-threader. ‘Like she wasn’t prepared to admit she was dead. And I must say there was a lot about her that didn’t seem dead at all. She could ride a bicycle, for one. I mean, how many spirits do you know that can ride a bicycle? And she could write. She’d pin a note on the central pillar at the market with her grocery list on it. One of the cabbage women would take it halfway to the house and leave it under a tree on a chair. The money would be there waiting.’

  ‘So, is there no chance it could have been a mistake?’ Dtui asked.

  ‘Well, that’s what we were starting to think,’ said the headman. ‘That perhaps the woman who was shot wasn’t Madame Peung at all.’

  ‘It was,’ said the skinny girl. ‘We all saw her.’

  ‘And something like that,’ said the lei-threader, ‘and word gets around. People from the neighbouring villages came by to get a look at the used-to-be woman: Madame Keui. That’s what we all started calling her. And I suppose it was about a week after she was reborn that this drugged, crazy man staggers into the village holding a pistol. Dirty runt, he was. He stank to high heaven and must have been completely off his head. “Where is she?” he shouts. “Where is the woman who can’t be killed? I didn’t miss, you know? Never miss.” He was a serious gunman, that one. He had another pistol in the back of his belt. He meant business. We reckoned he had to be Hmong with that accent. Lot of Hmong round here.’