Thirty-Three Teeth

BENEFIT SHOW FOR THE NURSES’ MEDICAL FUND

For everyone on the Medical School football field that evening, this was the undisputed highlight of the Songkran celebrations. There had been so few events to cheer.

Politburo Directive 873 had basically put an end to spontaneous celebrations. New Year water throwing had only been allowed at designated spots under the watchful eye of pl representatives. There had been arrests of those who ignored the directive, and in places where anarchy reigned in large numbers, long lists of names were submitted to the authorities.

Due to the prolonged drought, water was throwable only from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and had to be taken from natural sources such as ponds and rivers. Water from the public supply was off limits under threat of a nine-thousand-kip fine. Most musician and comedian concerts had been cancelled, and the giving of alms to monks in the morning had been kept very low key. There were to be no outward signs of extravagance.

So, for people living in and near the downtown area, this show was pretty much it, and if it hadn’t been for Siri, they wouldn’t even have had this. In the late afternoon, the Medical

School football team had won the annual grudge match against the Law School, 13-8. They then started to set the field up for the entertainment.

Chairs for VIPs were laid out in twenty rows in front of a stage. These were cordoned off from the standing public by lengths of pink nylon string tied to bamboo posts. The team’s supporters were all made to leave the field and re-enter, this time paying their fifty kip. All proceeds were to go to the Nurses’ Fund.

By 6:30, most of the VIP chairs were full and the field was crammed with onlookers mumbling with excitement. Children and particularly short people were hustled good-naturedly to the front of the standing gallery, and people at the back stood on boxes and bricks.

In the sixth row of the VIP chairs sat Civilai, Mr. Geung, and Siri, in that order. They watched as the most “I” of the VIPs arrived fashionably late. The same people who had banned festivals and public gatherings were excitedly taking their seats in front of them, nodding and waving as if they’d organized this show themselves.

Civilai had maintained a foul mood for three days now. He’d spent much of his life as a frustrated Nostradamus. He knew what benefits or consequences there would be from decisions made or policy introduced at any given time. He really knew. But he’d rarely been able to convince the majority. No matter how often he’d been proven right, they still saw him as a noisy reactionary cog in the revolutionary machine.

The festival directive, he knew would be a disaster. The people were suffering. They’d tightened their belts at the behest of the new regime. They’d pooled their scant resources and given up their humble luxuries. And what reward did they get for their unselfishness? Zilch. They needed festivals and concerts and happy days now and then in order to forget their frustrations.

But the Party saw these gatherings as potential boiling pots of political unrest. They were afraid of young people, with the same fire that had once burned in their own breasts, raging through the village festivals and leading to a popular uprising. After eighteen months in power, paranoia had become a national symptom.

The first test would come in May. The popular rocket festival had been banned completely. “Too many people; too much gunpowder,” they’d said at the meeting. Civilai argued until he was no longer red in the face that you couldn’t just erase a festival that had been part of the culture for hundreds of years. The rocket festival was a fertility rite. It appeased the gods of the harvest and begged them to bring the rainy season. What would happen if the festival were banned and the rains didn’t start on time? What would the people think of their new regime then?

They scolded Civilai for his superstitious ways and voted him down-again.

“They’ll be sorry,” Civilai mumbled as the prime minister took his seat. “Look at those old fogies.”

“They’re all younger than you,” Siri reminded him.

“Only in years, Siri. In mentality they’ve all got one foot in the grave.”

“T… too… too bad Dtui can’t be here t… to… to see this,” Mr. Geung said, appropriately changing the subject. He sucked happily on his corn ice pole, a rare treat in those hard times. Civilai agreed.

“She’ll be up and about in a week or so. She should be here, considering that all her medical bills are going to be covered by this little performance.”

“And… and all the o… o… other nurses that get sick,” Geung reminded him.

“It’s a service the government should be offering, not you, Siri. We should-”

“Come on, Older Brother. Let’s enjoy this, can we?” Siri urged. “Take off your grumpy hat and relax.”

“Ha, grumpy hat.” Geung found that a hilarious concept and laughed contagiously. Civilai and Siri and a dozen people around them caught it.

“All right,” Civilai conceded. “I’ll enjoy myself.”

“Good.”

“On the condition that you tell me how you swung this little con.”

“Swung? Con? Civilai, this is a joint Ministry of Sport and Culture-Russian Embassy event. No swinging was involved. What do you mean?”

“Getting them both to agree to support your Nurses’ Fund, for one thing. That had to involve some very sharp political maneuvering, Dr. Siri.”

“Not really.”

A Ukrainian man with a guitar climbed up on the stage, sat on a rickety stool, and proceeded to warm up the audience with American folk songs translated into Russian.

“Come on.” Civilai leaned across Geung and spoke in a low voice. “How did you do it?”

Siri leaned over as well, but Geung found it all too funny, so he and Siri changed seats.

“You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“Who’d listen to me?”

“Okay. I blackmailed them.”

“Who?”

“All of them. The ministry people, the Russians.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Really. The head of the archive department at dsic was moonlighting at Tong Kankum market, selling fish during office hours. That, you have to agree, is against regulations. So he thought it would be a very socially aware thing to offer the proceeds of a concert to the sick nurses.” “In exchange for…”

“My silence.”

“Okay. That I can believe. But the Russians? What have you got that they want?”

“Well, it was Dtui, actually, who sparked my interest. When she went to see Ivanic, she said she saw this nocturnal panda they’d just smuggled in through customs. I’d never heard of an animal changing its sleep habits to suit the weather, so it got me suspicious. I checked with my spy at Wattay. There hadn’t been any flights, direct or indirect, from China during the period they claimed the panda had arrived.

“So I tried a little bluff. You remember the bear at the Lan Xang that started all this fuss?”

“Yes.”

“Everyone had believed it was too infirm to have made it out of the hotel compound without help. So I wondered what type of person might love animals enough, and have the resources, to rescue the poor old girl. The name of Ivanic popped up in my suspicious mind. What if he and his secret police friends did a raid to spring the bear and take her to the circus compound?”

“He didn’t?”

“He would have needed a good cover story to explain the sudden appearance of a bear, especially as most of the armed forces were out hunting for it. That’s when he came up with the Chinese panda alibi.”

“How do you turn a Malay black into a panda?”

“Bleach, and enough shadows to make sure nobody gets too close. Once I’d come up with that little theory, it seemed more and more plausible. So I approached the Russian with it.”

“Well done.”

“Being a good Soviet Communist, he came straight to the point and asked me what I’d want to keep my mouth shut. So, here we are: circus day.”

“Siri, apart from myself, you have to be the most devious old bastard I know.”

He threw back his head and laughed, put his arm around his friend’s neck and kissed him on the cheek.

“Get off.”

“That’s wonderful, really. It makes up for everything else. It honestly does. God, I love you.”

He kissed him again.

Civilai giggled through the entire show. The big Lao girls in their underwear tumbled bravely and climbed into swaying towers of bodies. Three jugglers kept a lovely bunch of coconuts in the air for the longest time. A clown in ever-falling trousers brought excited howls and hoots from the huge crowd.

At halftime, a Lao orchestra came on the stage, and in front of them a smartly attired Mr. Inthanet and some Fine Arts students presented a play with the Royal Puppets. It was a magical moment, and when it was over the crowd truly believed they’d been honored to see it. The puppets got the loudest cheer of the night. They would return to their teak chest pumped with pride from a magnificent performance that would be talked about forever.

For the final act, a wagon covered in a black cloth was wheeled in front of the VIPs. Ivanic, in his leather thigh-high boots and a frilled pink shirt open to the navel, pranced down from the apron of the stage like the ham showman he was. He shouted some indecipherable words to the audience and grandly pulled back the cloth.

The glistening black puma, elegant and frightening under the glare of the spotlights, prowled back and forth in the small cage, growling at the huge audience. They first gasped at the sight of the magnificent creature, then applauded. With his arm twirling through the air and his deep incomprehensible voice enthralling the onlookers, Ivanic walked to one side of the cage. The puma charged at him. He charged back and the two stood eyeballing one another through the bars. Ivanic reached up and pulled a large metal pin from the side of the cage and the entire front flap dropped to the ground.

The sudden intake of breath almost sucked the performers into the audience. The creature looked to one side and tensed with excited apprehension. There was nothing now between it and the front row of the VIP seats but warm air and a sudden charge of anxiety. The old men tensed. Some stood and prepared to run. The bodyguards on either side reached for their pistols and took a step forward.

The puma froze. The audience froze.

“Eat ‘em,” shouted Civilai.

But before any eating could take place, Ivanic stepped bravely forward into the void ‘twixt the drooling animal and the perspiring VIPs. With his back to the puma, he raised his right hand. There came a growl from behind him and the animal seemed to half squat, ready to spring. Some women screamed, but they were the ones too far to see the calm on Ivanic’s face.

Slowly and reluctantly, the puma sat.

“Damn,” Civilai said.

Ivanic raised his other hand, and the puma rose up in slow motion and paddled its claws through the air. There came a nervous round of applause from an audience afraid that a sudden noise might snap the animal out of its passivity.

The Russian coolly folded his arms and put down his head. The puma lay down and, still snarling, rolled onto its back. Then, calm as you like, Ivanic strolled over to the platform of the cage where the puma lay and sat beside it. He reached out his hand with its fake crowd-pleasing shake and patted the beast on the belly.

There was a huge cheer from the throng. The VIPs clapped politely but not with any confidence. The cage was, after all, still open. Ivanic spotted Siri in the sixth row and nodded. Siri, as delighted as everyone else, nodded back. It was, they all agreed, the most magnificent New Year show they’d ever seen. A Brace of Epilogues

Siri was just leaving Hay Sok temple when he saw his nameless monk beside the exit. There he sat, quite unashamedly, on the back of a concrete lion beside the path where all the real monks could see him.

“I didn’t expect to find you here,” Siri said.

“And why not, Yeh Ming?”

“According to the abbot, you don’t exist.”

“Don’t you see me, Yeh Ming? Don’t you hear my voice?”

“I’m sure you exist, or existed as a person, but not as a monk at this temple at this time. I described your tattoos to him, and he swears there’s no such monk as you at his temple.”

“Perhaps nobody else noticed my tattoos.”

“Perhaps nobody else noticed you.”

“It’s possible. I find that more and more people fail to see things that are right under their noses. Tell me, did you solve your weretiger mystery?”

“Parts of it. I’m still not satisfied. But at least he’s dead.”

“Then I don’t see what there is to worry about.”

“I don’t know why he died.”

“It sounds like it was his time.”

“Yes. There’s no doubt about that. But if he killed himself, he did so in a most awful and bizarre way.”

“Describe it to me.”

“He ripped his own head half off. I don’t know what could possess a man to do such a thing.”

“I imagine any number of things could have possessed him.”

“For example?”

“I’ve seen such bizarre things before. Things even more horrible.”

“You have? I can’t imagine anything worse than ripping your own head off.”

“Oh dear, yes. Imagine that you looked at the end of your leg and saw that a rat had eaten your foot. It was still there, about to gnaw its way up your shin. Wouldn’t you do anything you could to shake that rat off?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t you hit it with a hammer if you had one-cut it with a sword?”

“Yes.”

“So all that’s necessary is to convince you there’s a rat on your leg. To a man who already has delusions that he’s a weretiger, I wouldn’t think it too difficult to convince him his head wasn’t his own. He would certainly believe his head was a poison toadstool or a blowfish-”

“Or a chicken?”

“It’s possible. He wasn’t ripping off his head. He was fighting off the illusion that had been planted there.”

“By whom?”

“Any one of a number of spirits. There are many watching over you. They’re always with you.”

“Are you one of them?”

The monk stood and smiled.

“Ah, no. I’m just an old monk.”

“Then you wouldn’t object to my shaking your hand, old monk.”

“It isn’t appropriate.”

He turned and started to walk into the dark shadows of the temple moon trees. Siri called after him.

“There’s an old woman. She has a penchant for betel nut. She was in the tunnel.”

“I know her,” the monk called back without turning round.

“She wasn’t one of my clients. I don’t recognize her.”

“You knew her, but you were too young to remember. She has more interest in keeping you alive than any of us.”

“Who is she?”

The monk was just another shadow between the trees now.

“Even coroners have mothers, Yeh Ming. Even coroners.”

The black Malay bear lay on her back and stretched her limbs like a well-fed housecat. She couldn’t stop this feeling of bliss from spreading to her smiling mouth. She had at last experienced kindness and it was a marvelous feeling.

She had more food than she could eat in a lifetime. She had a new fashionable design on her fur. Her wounds and sores had been treated, and she’d felt love from humans-a species she’d only ever known as hostile.

She’d escaped from the truck on the second night of her rescue when it stopped at the gate of Silver City. They were transferring her from a room at the Soviet clinic where her maladies were treated. She believed she must have been on her way to the abattoir. Her instinct told her to take advantage of this comparative freedom and seek out the shaman. It told her he was close by. She followed her nose to his house and lay in wait in the lot behind his yard.

Yeh Ming lived inside an old man. When the host slept, the bear asked the shaman for help. He allowed her to share thoughts for a time with her ancestors. He told her not to fear these new events in her life. She’d suffered so much unfortunate karma already, what remained could only be good. Her next life would be wonderful. She should seek out the people who had taken her from the hotel.

She thanked him and went to search for the gates of Silver City. It took her the longest time to find them. She was used up. Her natural senses were draining away. She wouldn’t see out this hot season, but her last months would be the happiest she’d known.

She lay on her back there in the large cage, took hold of a bunch of ladyfinger bananas in both paws, squeezed them like a concertina player, and sucked out the delicious fruit.