The Merry Misogynist

16

Phan sat naked and cross-legged beneath the tree he'd selected on his previous visit. He welcomed the ravenous red ants and vampiric mosquitoes that chewed at his flesh. Eventually they too would learn he was invincible. By the light of the candles he looked through the documents one last time: the registration of marriage, the housing certificate, the laissez-passers, permission from the Social Relations office, bank statements, a police letter verifying that he was unmarried and not wanted for any crimes, birth certificate, Party membership record, and, just for icing on the cake, a full curriculum vitae.

He lay back on the itchy grass and sighed. How wonderful it was to live in a state where the actual person was no longer important. Everything existed only on paper, including him. A man who merely walked the earth with nothing but breath and a strong beating heart was no longer a man in the Democratic Republic of Laos. God had been replaced by an earthbound bookkeeper.

"I carry identification, therefore I am," he said. And in this incarnation he was Phumphan Bourom of the Irrigation Department: a senior engineer with a degree from East Germany. He would overwhelm the village with his paperwork, let them mull over it, knowing there was no way for them to verify its authenticity before the wedding. It was all signed and stamped by respected cadres in the capital. The village heads would co-sign the forms and give the go-ahead for a ceremony that had already been planned. It was inevitable because the responsibility had been removed from their shoulders. There was nothing a local administrator liked more than having someone else make decisions for him.

Than sat up on his elbows and looked for the eleven billionth time at the celestial error between his legs, hoping that overnight it might have made up its mind. This way or that? One or the other?

His mother had made that call early on in his life. She'd thought the little dresses and pink ribbons from the missionary's sewing box might prod her son?daughter off the fence.

"But she's getting so tall," dumb Father had said. "The face isn't a girl's at all."

Mother ignored him. She persevered. She even coached her only child in the arts of womanhood.

A mockery at school.

Every single waking day a nightmarish humiliation.

Swimming through rocks.

The word 'Miss' was on his national identity card so this gawky, hairy-chinned female, still in his mother's pink ribbons, waded uncomfortably through life to the age of fourteen. And then, all at once, the strings snapped.

There was a war on. Neighbours were shocked but not particularly surprised to find the husband and wife hacked to death in their own home with a machete. The odd daughter was missing, presumed violated and dead. And Phan's life began. It was an awful, violent period in Laos, but his country wasn't unused to such brutality. There were unnecessary deaths and, in the confusion, identities became vacant. Phan began his metamorphosis, stepping out of one skin and into the next and the next, becoming more confident with each shedding. He tried on other men's lives as if he were trying on shirts at the market. He was a patriot fleeing the Royalists, a deserter escaping from the Reds, a pacifist seeking refuge from aggression. With each stage he deliberately became more of a man in his own mind. And to complete the transition — to prove that he had been meant to be male all along — he decided to take a wife.

He knew how to talk to girls. He'd been one. He'd heard them gossip and understood what they expected. He was in Luang Nam Tha in the north, living the life of a man whose papers he'd taken: a man who lay wounded on a battlefield. After learning a little about his family and history Phan had finished him off with a bayonet. In the skin of this man, Phan had met a girl. She was beautiful and innocent and so in love with him he could sense the warmth emanate from her body when they were close. He felt something for her too, although he wasn't sure what to call it. He believed, somewhere in his confusing emotional spin drier of a soul that this was the solution to the puzzle. Everything would find its true place once he became a husband.

The ceremony had been simple: sweet, and low-key with only her close friends and relations. He'd charmed them all. They loved him. They'd set aside a room for the newly married couple behind the family house. It was a simple thatched building. As sound travelled unimpaired through bamboo the parents had arranged to be discreetly absent.

Phan had planned it in his head. It was to be a slow, romantic night. As they held each other in the lamplight he would explain his circumstances. She might be a little surprised, but she would hear him out. After a moment of thought she would tell him that she loved him for himself — that everything else was unimportant.

But the drink had turned her mind. As soon as they were alone, she tore at his clothing like some wild beast. He held her off, tried to engage her in conversation, but she seemed unnaturally obsessed with his body. "Very well," he thought, "let her see me. That might work just as well." But first she touched him between the legs, then she sat back to look, and her mouth fell open. She ceased her attack and fell backwards against the wall of the building. The posts and beams shuddered. It was the mocking expression on her face, not the subsequent laughter that left a scar branded on his soul and closed down his heart. It was a look of disgust — one that he would see in the eyes of every woman he met from that day forward.

He'd strangled her to death that night there in her parents' back room. He'd driven his medical supply truck a hundred kilometres south to the outskirts of Nam Tha, parked beside the highway, and carried her body into the undergrowth. It was all over. But as he headed into the town in search of a new battlefront and a new identity, thoughts of his untouched bride flooded his mind. She was his. In the eyes of the Lord Buddha and the Royalist government, she belonged to him. She'd sworn her devotion. He had the paperwork to prove it. The fact that she was dead didn't terminate that contract. He could still have the honeymoon he'd imagined in his dreams.

It took him most of the day to put together the equipment and supplies he needed. When he found her again he was dismayed to discover her body so ravaged by nature in such a short time. But it didn't matter. He wined and dined her, told her his secret, and at last, he gave her the pleasure she'd so obviously craved. He tied her to a tree with ribbon and, as he sat naked admiring his new bride, he became aware of a powerful joy that had welled up inside him. He had never experienced such elation. The feeling was deep in his groin, exactly as he'd always imagined it to be. He had experienced some kind of sexual pleasure. He was complete.

That seemed far in the past to him now. There had been so many disruptions since then. Political changes were being made all around him. After the ceasefire in '72 he moved to Vientiane and adopted an identity nobody could question. A lot of new people were arriving and leaving each day. The Royalists could see the inevitable Red sun dawning on their empire and, one by one, they slipped across the river, unannounced, under cover of darkness. Than had merely stepped into the shadow one of them left behind. He found work, did well, and as good men were hard to find in the empty city, he was offered a position with the Census Department. It was ideal: travel, anonymity, a veritable factory of documentation. Everything was set for him to prove his masculinity again and again without fear of discovery.

He had wrested possession of the truck from the imbecile and left him doing some inane, unnecessary task. Than would spend this night here in the bridal suite remembering each detail of the honeymoons he'd enjoyed with his five wives and the pleasure he'd given them. He'd dream of tomorrow's wedding and the seduction of the bright and beautiful teacher, Wei, and he'd sleep the sleep of a man — a real man.

Phosy drove into Natan at nine a.m. He stopped once or twice to ask directions to the house of the resident government cadre, but it wasn't really that difficult to spot: the largest wooden building on the main street. They parked opposite and stepped down from the jeep to stretch like waking cats. It had been a bone-jarring ride, and they were exhausted. For Phosy it had been a day of particularly slow hours. The administrator came out of his house before they could knock or shout hello. He was a young man relying on one or two chin hairs to lend him an air of authority.

"Can I help you, Comrades?" he asked. Phosy and the policemen showed him their identification papers.

"We are here on a very serious police investigation," Phosy told him. "We need to contact the team collating the census data immediately."

"You mean immediately now?" the cadre asked.

"Unless you know of any other type of immediately."

"Well, that might be a problem."

"Why?" asked Phosy.

"The census people did pass by earlier, and they presented their credentials. But after they left here they were due to split up. They said they've got data to collect from twenty districts in two days. The only way they can do that is to set up three bases to make it more convenient for the collectors to get to."

"Presumably they told you where they'd be based?"

"My deputy, Comrade Sounthon, organized it for them. But he's off on a night hunt with the locals. You know? Headlamps, shooting lorises and other nocturnal game."

"Animals too drowsy to run away," Daeng remarked.

"Does anyone else have any idea where we can find the census collators?" Phosy asked.

"One or two people, Comrade Inspector, but they're all out on the hunt."

"Damn."

"Have you had an old fellow on a motorcycle here this evening asking the same question?" Daeng asked.

"Not that I've heard, Auntie, and I hear most things."

Daeng involuntarily squeezed Phosy's arm.

"What time are you expecting your deputy back?" the policeman asked.

"Sun-up usually."

Phosy looked at his weary passengers.

"All right. Then we could use a few hours' sleep. Can I trouble you for accommodation?"

"Guesthouse is just around the corner, Comrade. Turn left at the tyre repairers."

What the cadre had described to be the cheapest rooms in the province had every right to be. The kapok mattresses smelled of sweat and worse, and the stuffing had coagulated into lumps. The patter of tiny feet on the tin roof hinted at an all-night squirrel hoedown. Phosy had long since given up the thought of sleep. He sat on the veranda steps drinking weak tea from the communal thermos and waited for the sun. He hadn't said anything to Daeng but he was worried about Siri. Out here they weren't far from the Thai border. Rebels occupied the hills and insurgents crossed the river to create havoc. Bandit gangs and renegade gunmen often hijacked lone vehicles. A Triumph motorcycle in good condition would be quite a catch. He hadn't thought to ask at the police boxes they'd passed whether they'd sighted the doctor, and now, deprived of sleep and mad at everyone, he imagined all the fates that might have befallen his friend.

"Can't sleep, Inspector?" Phosy turned his stiff neck to see Daeng behind him in the candlelight. She came to sit beside him on the step, and he poured her tea.

"The kids up too?" she asked.

"No, they're made of putty. They could sleep on a pile of jackfruit."

"Jackfruit sounds quite comfortable compared to the beds in there."

The indigo sky had begun to pass through less depressing hues on its journey to blue, and the sounds of happy voices hummed in the distance.

"I wonder if that's our hunting party returning," Phosy said.

"I do hope so. I would like to get away early."

Phosy smiled. "Oh, no, Madame Daeng. You blackmailed your way onto the jeep yesterday. You aren't going to get away with that again."

"Inspector, you wouldn't leave a girl alone in the wilds?"

"There's a good restaurant on the main street. You can swap noodle stories with the owner. This is a police inquiry, not a tour. You'll stay in town and we'll pick you up on our way back."

"You're sure you can't use an extra gun?" She patted her fat handbag.

"If I thought for a second you'd brought a weapon with you, I'd have you in handcuffs right now."

"Why didn't I get offers like that before I got married?"

"Madame Daeng!"

"All right. I'm joking. I'll swap recipes and crochet while you're away doing manly things."

"Good."

The voices had become louder now, and a small posse of happy hunters loomed through the morning mist along the unlit street. At first it appeared they were dressed in large animal suits, but it was merely that they were festooned with carcasses. If there was a more frightening gallery of rare, beautiful, and bleeding creatures, Daeng hadn't seen it.

"Have a successful night, boys?" she called.

"Fantastic, auntie," said one.

"Half of them just fell out of the trees from the shock of hearing gunshots," said another. They all laughed.

"Bravo," she clapped.

"Which one of you is Sounthon?" Phosy asked.

A short, plump man wearing a lei of big-eyed lorises stepped forward. "I am."

"Well, I'm Inspector Phosy from National Police Headquarters, and I need the locations of the three census takers."

"Comrade," the man laughed, "I've just come back from — "

"Look! I don't care whether you're just back from the northern front full of bullet holes. I want the locations and I want them ten minutes ago."

Sounthon had arranged accommodation for the visitors in three villages that were central to the collection zones. They were thirty kilometres apart and formed a perfect triangle on the map. But the deputy had no information as to which collector was staying at which location. They'd have to go and see for themselves. Phosy and the two young officers were nine kilometres from the first site, a village called Ban Noo. It was only the absence of vegetation and a thin layer of sand that distinguished the road from the surrounding landscape. The journey had been more rock than roll.

"What do we do if he's there?" asked one of the fearful officers.

"We talk to him," Phosy said, concentrating on keeping the jeep on the track. "We ask a few pertinent questions. We check out his attitude. We say we're just making a few inquiries and we'd like his cooperation. We start with things like work, his routines, marital status, family — the usual. Then we hit him with something direct like, "Have you ever met a woman called Ngam in Ban Xon?" We look into his eyes and see if there's a reaction. And we take it from there."

"Then we shoot him," came a voice. Madame Daeng's smiling face loomed in the rear-view mirror as she rose from behind the back seat. Phosy slammed on the brakes and ran into a tall clump of swollen-finger grass. All three men turned to see her, large as life, clutching the roof.

"Madame Daeng? What the…?" Phosy yelled.

"I told you I could scrunch up to almost nothing," she smiled.

"But where were you?"

"Under the tarpaulin behind the back seat."

"There's barely ten centimetres down there."

"I'm pliable."

Phosy was furious. "Get out!" he said.

She laughed. "What, here?"

"I told you to stay at Natan."

"You want me to walk all the way back there on my arthritic legs?"

Phosy hammered his fists against the steering wheel.

"Madame Daeng, if you were a man I'd punch you on the nose, I swear I would."

"If you did, even if I weren't a man, I'd punch you back."

The young officers laughed.

"You two can wipe those smiles off, right now."

"Listen, son," she said, "believe me, I can help. If I thought I'd hamper your investigation I wouldn't have come. Really I wouldn't."

"I know your history. But that was…"

"Then you know I can only be an asset. Siri's up here somewhere and, brave as he is, I want to be around to…to support him. That's what couples do. And, Phosy, a steering wheel can only take so much abuse."

Phosy gave one last punch then put his hands on his head. He knew when he was beaten.

"Let this be a lesson to you boys," he said to the policemen. He left it there, and they didn't ever learn what the lesson was. Phosy reversed out of the grass and drove in silence to Ban Noo.

Comrade Ying Dali, the one-time North Vietnam region 6 boxing champion, now gone to seed, sat beneath a camouflaged tarpaulin receiving piles of paper from two colourful characters: one with a cheroot hanging from her lip, the other with a crossbow strapped to his back. Phosy killed the overheated engine and watched.

"According to Siri's description, he's one of the two junior officials," Daeng said. Phosy kept quiet.

They waited until the boxer was alone before strolling across to him. They were in a village so basic the main house was a thatch of twigs. They were well-plaited twigs but really nothing to stop a good wolf puff. It was a picturesque place with a stream, like an illustration for a month on a calendar: heaven, unless you had to live in such an isolated place with no power or sanitation or medicines. The boxer stood when the strangers reached his lean-to.

"Comrades?" he said.

Phosy introduced himself and his men, ignoring Daeng completely. He announced that they were investigating a murder in the district. It was a small untruth only in that the offence had not yet taken place. He hoped he wasn't tempting fate.

"Can you tell us exactly how your system here works?" he asked Ying.

"Well, it's quite simple," Ying began. "We draw up an area into grids. We come in and identify literate people. We pay them a few kip, and they take our questionnaires off to the surrounding minority villages. We come back two weeks later, and they bring us the results. We check that everything's in order, pay them the rest of their fees, and give the documents to the section head to collate."

"Comrade Buaphan?" Phosy asked, consulting an imaginary list in his notebook.

"That's right."

"How do you get them to him?"

"Depends. If he's busy he sends the driver. But he prefers to drive himself. He's a bit touchy about his truck."

"And is that the only communication you have — the truck? I mean you don't have walkie-talkies or such?"

"No, they don't work over these distances, and the mountains block shortwave signals as well. So we rely on the truck to ferry messages back and forth."

"So for long periods you wouldn't know what the other two men are up to, whether they're at their bases or not?"

"Well, that's true. But I mean, we can tell. If the work's not done we know who's been slacking off. Comrade Buaphan's always efficient."

"Do you know anything about Comrade Buaphan's personal life?" Phosy asked.

"No. He's a bit of a loner. When we aren't on the road — I mean, outside office hours — we never see him."

"Does he have family?" Daeng asked from her rearguard position out in the sun. Phosy turned and glared at her.

"He had a wife once, I believe," the boxer replied. "Somewhere up in the north. She passed away."

Phosy took a step to his left to eclipse Madame Daeng. "Have you seen him with any women? Girlfriends? Doing any socializing on these trips?"

"No, but like I say, apart from the journey out and back we don't see each other that much. Why? What's he done?"

Phosy ignored the question. "How do you get along with him?"

"He's all right. He can be really charming at times. He knows some funny stories when he's in the mood. But I don't get the feeling he's in this type of work for the social contact. I think it's the isolation he likes, being up here in the hills. It can be addictive, I have to admit."

Madame Daeng had sidled around to get shade from a cow's-earring tree. She was biding her time until Phosy ran out of questions. Her chance came sooner than she'd expected.

"Well, thank you…" Phosy began. Daeng put up her hand. "What?"

"One last question," she said and smiled too sweetly for him to refuse.

Phosy waved her on.

"There are women at your office?"

"Yes, about half a dozen."

"How does Buaphan act around them?"

"Act?"

"Yes, is he friendly? Does he flirt?"

Ying laughed. "One thing I could never imagine is Comrade Buaphan flirting with the women at the office. If you wanted a playboy you couldn't go past my office mate, Nouphet. He's the charmer. But Buaphan, no ma'am. He's really not that type."

"What type is he?" Phosy asked.

"Well, he's…don't get me wrong. I get along with him OK. But Buaphan can be a bit…self-important. It's as if he thinks he's better than other people. It doesn't worry me, but I know the clerks and the cleaner and the drivers complain about him treating them like servants. They gossip about him a lot."

From Ying, the boxer, they learned at which of the three locations Buaphan was based. In order to get there they had to return along the track they'd just taken and go all the way back to the intersection with the main road. There they were to head north, away from Natan, until they arrived at the small village of Nahoi, where Comrade Nouphet, the playboy, was billeted. The village was at a second turn-off that led up into the mountains to the remote outpost where Buaphan had chosen to spend his time.

Phosy had yielded the driving to one of his men, who had his nose up against the windscreen studying the rocks ahead. Phosy sat in silence, riding the bumps.

"I could drive if you get tired," Daeng said.

"No!" snapped Phosy, still deep in his huff.

"You know?" Daeng said. "It doesn't make sense. Something worries me about all this."

"And something's worrying me," said the policeman, with a finger pointed at her nose. "And do you know what that is? It's you. I swear, old lady, if I have to tie you up and duct tape your mouth to keep you quiet, I will have no hesitation."

She wasn't offended. He was a nice boy who had commanded men in the jungle. He was just a little too fixated on authority. She knew he'd get over it. She smiled serenely and watched the birds that fluttered from the bushes as the noisy jeep approached.

The main road was only marginally better than the track. At the first intersection they were only five kilometres from Natan and Phosy considered making that detour to drop off the heavy weight that had attached herself to their party. But the drive to and from the first base had taken four hours and he couldn't afford to waste any more time. He reassumed the role of driver on the way to Nahoi and decided it would be wise to stop off there to check as to whether Comrade Nouphet had seen Buaphan or the truck. While Daeng and the two officers went to the small roadside market to buy food and drink for the next leg of their journey, Phosy walked into the village to find the second census collator.

It was an untidy place decked out all in brown, courtesy of the road dust. He was given directions by a six-year-old girl who had a two-year-old at her hip. She walked him up the dirt path to the headman's house, where the man from Vientiane was staying. The headman was sitting on a homemade rocker on his porch. He was dark and bony like leather stretched over spare washing-machine parts. He waved as Phosy approached.

"Good health," the man said in very strongly accented Lao. "You looking for the boy?"

"Good health," Phosy replied. "The census collector, yes."

"He's up there someplace." He pointed over his shoulder in the direction of the range of hills behind the village.

"Far?" Phosy asked.

"Could be by now. He left at midday. Said there was some problem with forms or something. Somebody took the wrong ones, I believe. Same thing happened last time."

"He walked up?"

"Took the truck. There's a piddling little track goes up there."

Phosy considered this for a moment.

"He took the census truck?"

"No, he took mine."

Phosy looked at the poor surroundings. "You have a truck?"

"Some Royalist coward abandoned it here when he was fleeing the PL. I don't get to use it much, what with petrol being the price it is. It was just sitting growing weeds. When the boy was here last time he fixed it up. He gave us a few kip for petrol and said he'd have it back by tomorrow. He's good with motors, that boy — wasted on paperwork. He could make a nice living as a mechanic, I reckon."

The conversation on the way up to Buaphan's encampment was exclusively about Nouphet and his truck. Phosy had allowed Daeng into the discussion only to recap Siri's comments about the boy.

"The doctor said he was keen eyed, seemed to notice things," she recalled. "He might have mentioned he was good-looking."

"Might have?"

"I was cooking lunch at the time. But you do know what this means?"

"You'll probably enlighten me."

"I see we have not one but two suspects. Young Nouphet is good at fixing motors, and I'd guess every decent-sized village has at least one old truck lying around in need of repairs. He seems just as likely a suspect as Buaphan. I think you need to — "

"I know what my responsibilities are."

"Of course you do, I'm sorry."

"I'll question Buaphan. If he's our strangler, I'll know."

"Policeman's intuition?" Daeng smiled.

"It's a little like doctor's intuition. I remind you we're here following up on a guess by your husband."

"It's certainly more than a guess, Inspector. And I remind you your policeman's intuition hasn't done you much good so far in this case. Siri has a sixth sense about these things."

"Then let's hope his sixth sense hasn't put him in a grave somewhere."

He sucked air through his teeth as if to vacuum the words back, but it was too late. A veil had dropped over his passenger's face. Phosy hadn't meant to say it. She'd goaded him. Her constant interference had forced him to it. Her smile had become pinched and her glazed eyes stared at the sky. In an attempt to right his mistake, Phosy tacked on, "Of course, we all know how indestructible Siri is."

But the damage was done. For the rest of the journey up the winding mountain road, Daeng had nothing to say.