The Merry Misogynist

8

As he rode back towards Vientiane, Siri considered every astonishing fact he'd learned. He couldn't bring himself to believe it. Ngam had been a pretty baby. The parents had been astounded they could ever have produced such a prize. They changed her name to Ngam, which meant beautiful, to reflect her looks. They knew she'd grow up to be as pretty as a picture. But Mongaew, her mother, understood that to be truly beautiful in Asia, a girl had to be white. In all the advertisements, in the magazines, in the travelling film shows before the takeover, all the classic beauties had skin as white as china.

When she herself was little, Mongaew had fantasized about her own life. If only she were white, she might grow up to be Miss Sangkhan at the provincial festival parade. She'd get to carry the four-faced head of Phanya Kabilaphon on the decorated chariot. It was all an unreachable dream. She was neither white nor particularly attractive. But now she had been blessed with a miracle: a girl child who might truly grow up to win the competition. If only — if only they could keep her skin from the sun. So Mongaew and Boonhee invented an illness for her, an allergy that prevented her from exposing her skin to sunlight. She'd seen a specialist in Thailand, she'd told the neighbours. The girl might die if she were to go outside in the daytime.

Ngam, of course, had believed her parents and done as she was told. She played at home with her brothers and covered herself from head to foot when it came to harvest time. A kindly teacher from the local school felt sorry for the girl and volunteered to come by in the evenings to give her vitamins and a modest education. When Ngam reached sixteen her mother used the money she'd put aside to record her daughter's beauty at a professional photographer's in Phonhong. She sent the resulting snaps to the organizers of the festival. One committee member came to the farm to see the girl, to verify that the beauty they'd seen in the photograph was not a trick of the light. She had been astounded that such a vision could rise up from these humble origins. She assured the parents that their daughter was guaranteed a spot in the next year's competition, and — off the record — that Ngam was so lovely the organizer couldn't see anyone beating her.

Mongaew was elated. She knew exactly what this meant. Every year, the winner of the Miss Sangkhan beauty pageant was handed a substantial sum of prize money. She would receive countless offers to advertise beans and cement and farm implements and soft drinks, all for a fee. But, most important, what wealthy man would not want to marry the most beautiful girl in the province? What a prize she would be. Money would flow onto Mongaew's head like honey from heaven. All the planning, the inconvenience, would have been worth it. All their financial problems would be over. Mongaew had gambled with her girl's life and won.

The following year, amid the political upheaval, and with the Royalists scurrying across the Mekhong, the Miss Sangkhan beauty pageant had been cancelled. "Next year," she was told. "Next year everything will return to normal, and your daughter will take the Miss Sangkhan crown." But in some stuffy socialist meeting, a decision was made that beauty competitions were one more vestige of the decadent society the Party was trying to sweep out. The shows insulted women. They were cattle markets. They were demeaning. And so, all beauty pageants were banned immediately.

Ngam had reached her peak at sixteen. Few winners of the Miss Sangkhan crown had been older than seventeen. She was aging rapidly, and there was no indication that the Pathet Lao would change its mind. The world of Mongaew and her family had come crashing down. But there was hope that their daughter's beauty might still rescue them from poverty. In desperation, Mongaew started taking her girl to night-time wedding receptions in the district. Some evenings they'd walk for two hours to the house of the happy couple. Mongaew had decided that if Ngam was not to be the star she deserved to be, at least she would be married to a local man with influence. Perhaps the son of a cadre.

And one night, her revised prayer was answered. The man from Vientiane was so dashing. He was supervising a road project, staying with the headman, well mannered with a wonderful sense of humour. He was groomed and polite, and he had a truck, of all things. Mongaew fell in love with him at first sight. And, it was evident to everybody in attendance that night that the visitor had an eye for Ngam. Things seemed to happen so fast from there on. It was like a fairy tale played at three times its normal speed: an engagement, love letters from the capital, a brief return visit, a reception and, in the blink of an eye, their daughter was gone. All Mongaew had to do now was sit and wait for the cheques to arrive. But all she got was a coroner from Mahosot and news that her precious daughter was dead.

As Siri rode along the dirt highway, he couldn't get the thought of the charming stranger out of his head. Phan, the nickname of a hundred thousand: Sisouphan, Thongphan, Bouaphan, Houmphan, all whittled down to Phan. No address, no family name, no photographs. He came. He saw. He destroyed. Already Siri had the antagonist taped to the dartboard of his mind. At last, somebody to blame. Someone to hate. A small lead in the case. A family to claim a lost body. A very successful day, but not a happy one.

"You're late," Daeng told the cinnamon-coated man who'd arrived at her shop after dark. There was a bright flash from the vegetation across the street. They both looked up in time to see a man with an old-fashioned camera turn and run down the riverbank.

"I think someone just took a candid photograph of us," said Daeng.

"Pasason Lao newspaper doing a photographic feature on celebrity couples in Vientiane, I wouldn't wonder." Siri smiled.

"You're sure it wasn't the Department of Housing?"

"No, they're such nice people. Why would they go to so much trouble?" They walked hand in hand into the closed shop. "What time is it?"

"Nine."

"Too late for a palace hunt?"

"It's up to you. You look exhausted."

"You can't see how I look. I have a two-centimetre-thick layer of grime on me. A quick bath and I'll be fine. I could use some excitement."

"Have you eaten?"

"I wouldn't say no to a number two. I hope you sold enough noodles this week to pay for the cost of today's petrol."

"Can't you claim it on your expense account?"

"I'm a coroner playing policeman. Who's going to pay for that? Phosy was uncontactable in the north, so I took it upon myself. Nobody rewards individual initiative in this regime."

"Don't worry, my love. I'll support your intrigues even if I have to resort to selling my body." She kissed his dusty cheek. "As long as you tell me exactly what happened today, in gory detail."

"Accompany me to the bath, Madame Daeng, and I'll disclose everything."

The map was beautifully illustrated like a wayward doodle, but its intricacy made it hard to follow. The river was easy enough to identify as it was a long chain of tiny smiling fishes. The outline of Nam Poo Fountain was the easternmost point. The Kokpho turn-off, which ultimately led to the airport, was marked with an aeroplane. Daeng drove them about four hundred metres beyond the intersection and parked. There were still patches of forest on this stretch of the river, and it felt so remote it seemed impossible that there was a city just half a kilometre away.

"All right," Siri said, holding his torch up to the map. "There's something that looks like a snake drinking from the river."

"Hmm. You'd expect snakes to change location from time to time, unless it's a dead one."

"Or unless it's a pipe. Perhaps it's not drinking at all."

"An overflow?"

"It could be."

Siri waded through the tall lemongrass to the river's edge and waved his light up and downstream. There was no obvious plumbing. He was about to return to the road when he felt some kind of mound beneath his feet. It was more solid than the crunchy clay all around. He traced its path with his foot until he arrived at the mouth of a pipe.

"Any luck?" Daeng called out.

"More like divine inspiration. I was right on top of it. I'm at the serpent's jaws."

"Is it wide enough to crawl through?"

"Perhaps for an Indian fakir. Not for two old souls like us."

He returned to the bike and looked at the map once more.

"Then it's easy," said Daeng. "We follow the pipe at surface level."

They shone their lights across the road in the direction from which the pipe originated. There was nothing but bush. It was a long vacant lot between two empty houses. It seemed to be crammed with all the remaining monsoon forest in the country.

"How do we get through that?" Siri asked.

"Determination," Daeng replied and produced a frightening machete from her shoulder bag. She crossed the road and shone her beam along the green barricade. Siri joined her. "Right, down there," she said.

She had picked out a low, dark tunnel of leaves that looked like a small animal track.

"That would involve crawling," Siri pointed out.

Daeng was already on her hands and knees hacking at the leaves.

"I'll go first and let you look at my bottom," she said.

"Aha, lead on, my Amazon."

The slow, bestial crawling lasted no longer than five minutes before they arrived at a clearing. This was no accident of nature. The clearing was a perfect square, twelve by twelve metres, probably levelled for a building project then abandoned. At its centre, just as the map promised, was Crazy Rajid's palace. In the illustration it had all the splendour of the Taj Mahal with domes and minarets and a platoon of guards. In the real world it was a structure made entirely of old television sets. They were piled six high in one continuous square with no apparent entry point. They appeared to be cemented together with river mud. The turrets were formed of radiograms spaced along the parapet. Siri and Daeng stood behind their torches in awe of its weirdness.

"Now how do you suppose he did that?" Daeng asked.

Siri shook his head and laughed. "Offhand I see three possibilities. One, the TVs were already abandoned here and he just rearranged them into a palace. Two, they were dumped in the river by the consumerist Thais and washed up by the overflow. Or, three, he just rescued dead and dying TV sets from around the town and carried them here. Whichever it is, it's good to see he hasn't been wasting his time for the past ten years."

They walked around the outside of the structure to see if there was a way in. There was not.

"You don't suppose he's inside there, do you?" Daeng asked.

"Rajid, are you in there?" Siri called.

There was no answer.

"How do we get in?" he asked.

"Must be a magic word. What was the old Roman spell?"

"Abracadabra."

"Abracadabra," Daeng repeated.

Nothing happened.

"Well, as we've solved the riddles and come all this way," Siri decided, putting down his pack and walking to the television wall, "I think we only have one way to claim our prize." He reached up to the top of the wall and pulled at the volume control of one of the smaller sets. As one might expect, river mud does not make a particularly effective cement. The mortar crumbled and the set fell at Siri's feet. "Aha," he sang. "We have breached their defences. The palace will soon be ours."

Daeng joined him in his pillage and within seconds they had a fairly large gap through which to step. At the centre of the compound lay the open grate of a large drain. This was obviously Rajid's entry and exit point. Apart from some fifty forks jabbed into the earth all around, the only furnishing was a cardboard box. Siri picked his way between the forks and opened the flaps.

"Anything interesting?" Daeng asked.

"Bones," Siri told her.

"My word. Whose?" She was on her knees again inspecting the cutlery.

"They're old. I mean very old. And there's broken pottery in here and what looks like hair."

"Oh dear."

"What is it?"

"The forks. They're gravestones."

"Eh?"

"Frogs, by the look of it although I'm not planning to go through the lot to see if they're all the same."

"I remember he has a fondness for amphibians."

"Does any of this help us to know where he's gone?"

"Not at all."

"But you have to admit he is a wonderfully peculiar little chap." She used the fork to replace the dirt on the frog she'd just unearthed and said a short prayer for its soul.