Anarchy and the Old Dogs

Free Lao

Siri told all this to Civilai under the tarpaulin of a rather special noodle stall overlooking the Mekhong ferry ramp. The lady owner, Daeng, began her day at four in the morning just to have everything perfect by lunchtime. But apart from being a noodle perfectionist she had many other arrows in her quiver.

At the hotel, when they’d returned from the cinema the previous night, Siri had casually mentioned Madame Daeng, the cook to the night clerk. Siri held out little hope that his old friend would still be there after all these years. That’s why he’d been so surprised by the reaction. The clerk had laughed and told him more people in Pakse knew the name Madame Daeng, the cook than they did President Soupanouvong. He’d told Siri where she could be found and, sure enough, here she was.

She still had the keen, all-seeing eyes and the fine delicate features that had fascinated so many young men back when. The look of shock on her face could have drained the river for ten miles in each direction. She’d tossed the noodle sieve into the boiling water, hobbled over to her famous doctor on legs stiff with rheumatism, and thrown her arms around him. Ignoring the stares of the mystified diners, Siri and Daeng could feel the strong beating of each other’s hearts as they stood locked together like hands clasped in prayer. From his stool beside the noodle cart, Civilai had timed the embrace at a minute, but for the old comrades it was an exchange of missed decades, of battles and loves and losses, of friends departed and disasters shared.

Siri had first met Daeng thirty-seven years earlier at the southern youth camp where he and his wife, Boua, were serving with the Free Lao movement. Daeng had been their cook. At first that was all the remarkable young woman had done, but she soon demonstrated skills and determination far beyond the wok. In 1940, the French had urged the Lao to set up the youth movement in answer to Thailand’s posturing about shifting its eastern border into Lao territory. It was intended as a mechanism to engender nationalistic feeling against the Thais. When Siri and Boua returned from their studies in France at the end of ‘39, the camp in Champasak had been their first posting. They’d spent two years training young medical interns, teaching French, and molding young minds. What the French didn’t realize was that the youth camps they were sponsoring around the country had a well-hidden and brilliantly conceived agenda. In them the foundations were being laid for ousting the French oppressors. It was from the youth initiative that the Lao Issara-the Free Lao movement-was born, and Siri and Boua had been instrumental in its creation in the south.

When the youth camps were finally closed down by the French for becoming too radical, the Free Lao began its subversive acts of rebellion. Madame Daeng, then a miss, had tagged along with the rebels, cooking, tossing the odd grenade, joining in the campfire plots. She was an inspiration to the young Lao who had grown strong from her noodles, and she was a valuable ally to Siri and Boua. But in the confusion that accompanies a guerrilla war, they’d lost touch. Siri and Boua had gone to Vietnam and Daeng remained in the south. And now, on Siri’s first day back in Champasak, they had been reunited.

Siri introduced her to his cousin, “Pop,” and she looked at Siri with a wry smile on her sun-rusted face. She’d always been able to tell when he was lying. She greeted the “cousin” and told Siri their reunion proper could wait. For the time being, she promised them the best lunch they’d ever tasted in their lives and went to fish the sunken sieve from its tank. Siri knew from experience that this wasn’t an idle promise. When the huge bowls arrived in front of them, the aroma was poetry enough to make them lose the threads of their morning adventures. The piquant spices caressed their palates and reminded them how many years it had been since they’d really tasted food. Even Siri in his nullified state could pick out every herb, root, and legume. He forgot Civilai, just as Civilai had no further interest in him, until the last spoonfuls of broth had made the trip north.

It was Civilai who spoke first. “That… that was…”

“I know.”

“Let’s take her back to Vientiane,” Civilai said, only partly in jest.

“She could have a real restaurant there, not sweat out her days for ferry passengers under a grimy tarpaulin for fifty kip a plate. She should be rolling in money.”

“Believe me, brother,” Siri said, “Madame Daeng is the type of woman who could roll in whatever she pleases. If this is what she’s chosen it’s because it makes her happy.”

“Even so…”

“All right. You’ve heard enough of men in baths and silly wives. It’s your turn. Tell me about the post office.”

“I wish I had a long funny story with a happy ending.”

“No luck?”

“The fellow there looked at the envelope and the postmark and told me, quite logically, that it could have been brought in by anyone. Some two hundred people a day come in with letters. They pay their money, get their stamps, he cancels them, and throws the letters into a big sack. The sorter goes through them, puts them in smaller sacks, and puts them on the bus.”

“Didn’t he recall a customer who came in every fortnight with a letter to Vientiane?”

“Siri, there wasn’t even a surname on it. It was a letter to a PO box. What could possibly jog his memory? I prodded him so hard he lost his temper with me and threatened to call the police.”

“Huh, no danger there. But I’m glad you’ve built up a good relationship with the mail service.”

“Siri, I-”

Daeng interrupted them with two more bowls of noodles. The old warriors were as stuffed as steamed rice sausages but these dishes exuded a scent so erotic it would have seduced a palace eunuch. Daeng winked and they dipped their spoons into the broth. A whole new taste, a whole new love affair.

After several minutes of blissful slurping, Siri managed a sentence. “Show me the envelope,” he said.

Civilai handed over the letter and watched as his friend studied it.

“I know. You’re going to dust it and fingerprint everyone in the province.”

“No, genius. And don’t mock. I’m having a remarkably successful run with my Inspector Maigret franchise. What mon copain would do is narrow things down by trying to find out where one could obtain an envelope such as this.” He turned it over and noticed something for the first time. “Well now look at this, older brother.”

“What?”

“In the corner here. It looks like a little cross in pencil. Someone’s apparently tried to rub it out but they didn’t erase it completely. What do you suppose this means?”

“In the West it’s the symbol for a kiss. I don’t suppose the Devil’s Vagina might have been secretly flirting with the dentist’s wife? An affair behind his back?”

“Mйnage а trois d’espionnage? More likely, the shop that sells them uses the cross when they’re counting them out, marking every ten or so. What do you think?”

“I think you’re clutching at straws.”

“But it isn’t impossible.”

“It once rained tadpoles in Luang Prabang.”

“All right. So that gives us one more lead to pursue. There can’t be that many places selling envelopes in Pakse. Then there’s the Devil’s Vagina himself.”

“Or herself.”

“Exactly. It is rather ambiguous. I think it’s worth asking around. See if the name elicits any reaction.”

“Reaction other than taunts and ridicule?”

“Your reticence suggests you’d prefer me to handle the vaginal probing.”

“Not at all. I’ll have a stab at it. You can do the envelopes.”

“We can get Daeng on to it, too.”

“Siri, I don’t think…” But Siri had already called over his old comrade, leaving Civilai shaking his head and mouthing some unheard warning. Daeng sat with them, wiping her hands with a cloth.

“You two aren’t leaving here until every last spoonful of that is inside you,” she said.

“Fear not,” Siri told her. He took her hand. “We will have completely licked the pattern from the bowls by the time we exit. But, in the meantime, we have a little mystery we would like to get you involved in.”

“Ooh, how exciting. I love a challenge.”

“I know you do. My cousin and I are in search of a devil’s vagina.”

Daeng roared with laughter. The late diners looked over at her and smiled.

“Well, I’ve had some requests in my time,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Most men your age are looking for something a bit softer, farm lasses straight off the bus, for example.”

“I don’t think it’s an actual female organ,” Siri said. “More likely a person’s nickname or the name of a place. You ever heard of it?”

She laughed again. It made her face glow like a teenager’s. “The name of a place? No. I’m sure I’d remember it if I’d met someone who was born in the Devil’s Vagina.” The thought set her off into another laughing fit and she dragged Siri and Civilai into it with her.

“Don’t worry, boys,” she said when the mirth had subsided. “I’ll ask around.”

Siri caught a worried glance from Civilai. He leaned closer to Daeng.

“Just be careful who you ask,” he said.

She didn’t need clarification. She seemed to read enough from his tone to realize she was getting into something sticky.

“Siri, my love, you’ll never change, will you? Always the clashing hero off on some quest to save mankind. But you’d better put some of that hero time aside for me while you’re here. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

Further up beyond the ferry ramp, a man stood in the doorway of a soon-to-be-demolished French villa. His eyes were trained on the two old men sitting at the noodle stall. He didn’t need to use his binoculars because his eyesight was keen. His military training had given him the expertise and the patience to fulfill his mission. There was no hurry.

“How’s she feeling?” Civilai asked. He was in a wicker chair by the window of his room. Siri had stopped off at the long distance phone booth at the Bureau de Poste on his way back. He sat on the bed and sighed.

“I don’t know. She has a knack of always sounding cheerful, even when the weight of the world is on her shoulders.”

“Do you suppose she’s angry that we weren’t there for it?”

“No. The one thing you can be sure of with Dtui is that she doesn’t hold a grudge. She knows why we’re here. If it weren’t for the cremation she’d probably have jumped on a bus and joined us already.”

“How did it go?”

“All right, she said. Nice ceremony. The monks got sloshed afterward. She wonders whether they aren’t just Royalists hiding out in saffron till the heat’s off. But they knew the chants so nobody complained. A lot of her ma’s friends were there, hospital people. Phosy was with her.”

“Any news from him?”

“Nothing about the dentist’s wife. A dead end, he says. He managed to get the blood sample to someone at the Swedish forestry project. They promised to take it down to Bangkok next trip and get it looked at. Otherwise Dtui and Phosy are just sitting around, waiting for orders from us. Dtui did say Judge Haeng was asking why I was still in Pakse.”

“Why? Well, it’s obvious. Complications with the case.”

“That’s what I told her to say. The possibility of other homicides by domestic appliance. I hinted at an assassination attempt with a vacuum cleaner. I might have to conjure up something more credible if we stay here much longer.”

“We’ve barely started.”

“Done nothing at all, as far as I can see.”

Their time in Pakse had yielded nothing. The envelope search took longer than Siri had expected. He soon learned that all the shops in Pakse sold pretty much the same things, contraband from either Thailand or Vietnam. There were few stores that didn’t sell envelopes. But none of the owners recognized the brand or style. The only thing he learned from his search was that the sender probably hadn’t bought his envelopes in Pakse. It was frustrating. It always seemed much more straightforward in detective novels.

Civilai’s pursuit of the Devil’s Vagina had apparently gone no better. As it turned out, his initial fear of being recognized had been grossly overestimated. Without his large black-framed glasses there was little to connect him with the grinning statesman in the grainy photographs in Pasason Lao. In fact, it was soon apparent that people in the south didn’t read. He didn’t once see a coffee-shop patron poring over the week’s news or a young office girl hurrying to finish a romance novel on her lunch break. To Pakse, Civilai was just a peculiar old man dressed like a farmer on holiday.

Like most outsiders, he was not to be trusted. He asked Siri one evening, “If anyone knew, do you think they’d tell a stranger in the street?”

No, they both knew it was a waste of time. Civilai busied himself with setting up his network of trustees. He was spending more time by himself. The dentist lead was getting fainter by the day but Civilai seemed to be more occupied. Siri would come back from a day of fruitless detecting to find him surrounded with handwritten notes. He’d always say, “We might be getting somewhere,” without giving away many details, and for a while, Siri believed there might be hope of an organized resistance. But one day he returned to find his friend particularly flustered and frustrated. The question Civilai asked was confirmation to Siri that they were lost.

“What about your-you know-other friends?”

Civilai had thus far avoided asking the “s” question. The fact that he was pursuing it now suggested to Siri that earthly channels had failed. His confidence crumbled like river salt.

“I seem to have become spiritually impotent,” Siri confessed.

“Oh, I say.”

“I know. I feel like a sinking ship, being deserted. I haven’t had any contact with the supernatural for over a week. I’ve even stopped dreaming.”

“Damn! Isn’t it always the way? When you really need a ghost there’s never one around.”

And, at exactly that second, like a convenient stage direction in a bad play, there came a loud knock at the door that made the two old fellows jump out of their skins. Civilai scrambled around for his dark glasses, and Siri, laughing, went to the door. The knocking became more intense.

“You’ll give yourself splinters,” he called. “I’m coming.”

With Civilai adequately disguised, Siri opened the door to find a small bony woman of around thirty standing in the doorway. She had on a well-worn green blouse and an oft-scrubbed green phasin skirt. Her head was bowed to hide her face, which left him with a view of thinning hair and a broad, uneven part. Her weather-beaten hands clasped a cloth bag in front of her.

“Are you the doctor from Vientiane?” she asked, without looking up.

“Yes. Can I help?”

“The fat policeman said I should come. He said you knew stuff about dead bodies.”

Siri stepped out to join her in the hallway and pulled the door to. Still she didn’t look up.

“Well, it was very nice of Officer Tao to recommend my services,” he said. “But actually I’m in the south on official business. I’m not sure I can…”

She looked up into his face. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen and tight with grief.

“It’s just… my son.”

“What about him?”

“They pulled him out of the Mekhong down at Sri Pun Don last night. He was in his school shirt with the badge. I sewed his name on it.” She paused to catch her breath. “That’s how they found me and let me know. I’d been looking for him for a week. It’s just me since his dad ran off but all the neighbors was looking. We went down to get the body. Brought it back today. We all know something’s not right.”

“In what way?”

“Our place is on the river, Doctor. We’re fishing folk.

Sing; that’s my boy, Sing could swim before he could walk. There wasn’t no way he could of drowned.”

“Accidents happen, Comrade. Even to experienced swimmers.”

“That’s what the police said. That’s why they refused to do anything about it. But things ain’t right, Doctor. I could take it, perhaps, if I thought he just drowned. I could live with it. But I know something else happened to him.”

“You think he was interfered with?”

“No, sir, not like that. We’re all river people. We’ve all seen drowned bodies before, plenty of them. But my Sing… just doesn’t look right. There’s something odd about the way he come out of the water.”

“And you want me to have a look.”

“We… we can’t pay you much.”

“Couple of fresh fish, perhaps?”

She smiled, tight-lipped. “That would be no problem at all, sir.”