The Woman Who Wouldn't Die

11

‘I told him. I told him where they were,’ she said.

Dtui and Phosy lay side by side and wide awake on their thin mattress on the floor. Malee was sound asleep. She was apparently not nearly as traumatized by the morning’s events as her mother.

‘Stop it,’ said Phosy. ‘You couldn’t know.’

‘I’m sure he’ll go there.’

‘You can’t be certain. You know how hard it is for a foreigner to travel around the country unaccompanied by some Lao official. Even if he tried there are checkpoints all the way. Without a travel document he won’t get past any of them.’

‘He’ll find a way. I looked into his eyes, Phosy. He’s crazy but he’s calculating. I think he was talking about his cancer and how little time it had given him. I’m sure Dr Siri did something to him in the past and this insane man wants revenge.’

‘Look, first thing tomorrow I’ll go to the German embassy. They handle French visas now the French embassy is shut. I’ll see if they have copies of visa applications. They should have a photo attached. I’ll bring what they have and show you. We’ll find him.’

‘That’s no help at all to Siri and Daeng. I know what this man is capable of, Phosy. I was this close to the metal bar that beat the hell out of the fire victim. He burned down Daeng’s shop. He was going to kill your wife and daughter for no other reason than that I knew Siri. If it weren’t for the glass breaking …’

‘Stop thinking about it. You’re safe. Malee’s safe.’

‘But who could it have been? The voice?’

‘I imagine someone overheard the conversation and decided to help.’

‘Phosy. How many people do you know who speak English? I mean, those that haven’t already swum across the river. This man was fluent. And he had a gun. He saved our lives.’

‘And if we ever find him I’ll pin a medal on him. But, in the mean time, how about trying to get some sleep?’

‘I won’t sleep until I know they’re safe.’

Phosy raised himself on to one elbow and smiled at his wife. By the light of the moon he could see the dark shadows around her eyes.

‘We’ll get them out of there and back to Vientiane long before the Frenchman finds them,’ he said. ‘I put Sergeant Sihot on a boat this afternoon. It’ll stop overnight in Xanakham but tomorrow morning he’ll be in Pak Lai. They can all take the first ferry back here. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t back already.’

‘How could they be?’

‘I contacted Comrade Civilai before he left Luang Prabang and told him about the fire. They have working telephones up there. He should have arrived in Pak Lai around midday. Once Siri and Daeng hear what happened I wouldn’t be surprised if they jumped straight on the ferry and headed home.’

The only indication that Comrade Civilai wasn’t dead was the occasional fart loud enough to cause the boat-race guests to turn in his direction. Madame Daeng shook her head.

‘He’s not going to be much use to us until at least tomorrow morning,’ she said.

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Siri. ‘I reckon we could bottle that flatulence and sell it as cooking gas.’

‘There. That’s why I married you. Class.’

‘I thought you married me because I have an enormous intellect.’

‘I’ve known much bigger intellects,’ she smiled. ‘Intellects that can maintain their intelligence all through the night. Intellects that-’

‘All right. You’ve made your point most eloquently. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese invasion of Sanyaburi; how do you propose we find out what they’re really up to?’

‘I think we can arrange it so that the engineers tell you themselves.’

‘They’re hardly likely to just blurt it out.’

‘Not to you directly, but to each other.’

‘Ah! Once more she thrusts me into the enemy camp as a spy. No fear for my life.’

‘They didn’t hear you speak Vietnamese, did they?’

‘I wanted to. I bit my tongue.’

‘Then you should hang around them.’

‘What is my motivation? What Sherlockian disguise should I don?’

‘You could play drunk.’

‘Ah, a challenge.’

‘What challenge? You do it all the time.’

‘Do it, yes. But act it? That’s a different kettle of gin completely.’

It was late evening. Siri and Ugly approached the small tent compound with two purloined bottles of Mekhong whisky.

‘If you insist on coming along,’ Siri whispered, ‘the least you can do is stagger.’

When Siri started to trip over his own feet, Ugly did the same. Siri decided there was something particularly eerie about that dog.

‘One more step and you’re dead,’ came a voice. Siri looked to one side and saw a sentry sitting cross-legged beneath a Leaning-Egg tree, an AK-47 on his lap. He’d spoken in Vietnamese and, as Siri wasn’t supposed to know the language, he waved and staggered on. Not even the sight of the weapon being raised and trained in his direction caused him to halt. In fact it brought on a song which Siri belted out in grand voice for all to hear. The men sitting around the campfire jumped to their feet. Some reached for their weapons. Siri threw his hands into the air, a bottle in each.

‘I bring alms from the secret capitalists,’ Siri shouted in Lao, ‘to share with my Vietnamese brothers.’

‘What’s he prattling on about?’ someone asked.

‘No idea. He’s as drunk as a wonky fishing rod,’ said another.

Good, thought Siri. They don’t speak Lao.

He performed a little jig in the light of the bonfire.

‘Shoot him,’ someone said as the majority returned to their places around the fire.

‘Take the bottles from him and then shoot him,’ someone else suggested.

Then he noticed Ugly.

‘Look at that damned dog. He’s even more drunk than the old fella.’

From Siri’s lead, Ugly was reeling this way and that and enjoying the laughs he got from his audience. The only officer in the group stepped up to the old drunk and relieved him of his bottles.

‘You speak Vietnamese, Granddad?’ he shouted.

Siri replied with the first verse of ‘They stand to conquer. They squat to pee.’ A rude song the Lao enjoyed singing about their Vietnamese counterparts. The young engineers had obviously never heard it. The bottles, uncapped, were working their ways in conflicting circles around the fire gazers. Each man took a generous swig to impress his mates.

‘OK, you can piss off now,’ said the officer to Siri. ‘Job done. Go back to your intestine-eating, monkey Lao.’

Siri laughed heartily and repeated the sentence with awful pronunciation. The engineers cheered.

‘Monkey Lao,’ they toasted.

‘Monkey Lao,’ Siri laughed. He reached into his shoulder bag and produced a smaller bottle of whisky. He took great pains to unscrew the top. Once decapitated, he held the bottle aloft.

‘Monkey Lao!’ he shouted.

‘Monkey Lao,’ they all repeated.

He was the star turn in this evening’s cabaret. The Vietnamese were laughing and pointing at him and his inebriated dog. Siri began to glug down the drink like a man with a great thirst. They all watched in amazement.

‘He can drink,’ said one of the soldiers.

‘Twenty dong says he falls on his face before he gets to the bottom of the bottle,’ said the officer.

‘I’ll take that bet,’ said one young man.

He clapped a beat for Siri to swallow to and the others joined in. The pace slowed as the doctor’s Adam’s apple began to rise and descend more laboriously but still he swallowed. And, with his eyes closed, he drained the last of the cold tea and overturned the empty bottle above his head. He smiled, bowed to acknowledge the applause of the soldiers, and fell nose first into the recently mown grass. Ugly took a few tentative steps towards him before lying down and playing dead.

The grass had actually been quite comfortable. Siri had fought off sleep until the last engineer had retired to his tent. He was about to return to the guest house when he looked to his left to see Ugly twitching through a deep dream and smiling as if it were a naughty one. Siri paused for a moment too long and he too was plunging through layers of places he’d never seen in real life, only to land in a den of iniquity. He was in a gogo bar in Thailand. The signs were in Thai. The girls on the stage in front of him were in bikinis and stiletto heels. It was certainly a step up from naked Frenchmen. All around him were Western men in loud Hawaiian shirts. But the greatest shock of all was the soundtrack. He could hear everything.

‘See all this?’ came a voice, shouted above the ear-splitting music.

Siri turned to see an old man staring out over the dance floor. He was dressed well in a dazzling flowery tie and a starched white shirt, but there was little of him inside it. He seemed frail and used up. In his hand was something that looked like Coca-Cola but it was in a beer mug and had a straw poking out of it.

‘All this is mine,’ said the man. His voice was that of somebody who couldn’t hear himself talk. Like a man listening to loud music on headphones.

Siri was delighted. Just as Madame Peung had taught him, by not fighting it he was able to attain other elements. The sound was unpleasant — some awful pop thing — but it was an achievement. He hardly dared talk to the old man in the hibiscus tie for fear that it would all go away. But he knew he had to.

‘Who are you?’ Siri thought he’d said, but nothing came out of his mouth. He yelled his question. ‘WHO ARE YOU?’ but again he produced not a sound.

‘Relax, Siri,’ he told himself. ‘Don’t fight. Enjoy the show. Smell the tobacco. Order something.’

He looked around for a beer mat and a pen.

‘That one over there,’ said the old man, pointing at one of the dancers. ‘She arrived yesterday. She’s a beauty. I get to interview them all, if you know what I mean. She’ll be raking it in once she gets the countryside out of her skin.’

Siri breathed. Relaxed. Paid attention. He looked around for clues. Why was he here? Madame Peung had told him to take charge of moments like these. Not to sit and watch the show but to direct it. So he left his seat. The scenery had trouble keeping up with him as he walked to the stage. Here and there he’d see a gap into the next dream. Fat men lined the bar like brooding chickens in a coop. Young girls, fresh from the farm, massaged the fat thighs and squeezed the fat cheeks. He looked at their faces. Did he recognize anyone? Would somebody pass him a note? What was the message here? He turned back to look at his seat and the old man in the white shirt sitting beside it. He was sipping his Coke through a straw. The strobe lights lit him in blues and reds and blinding whites and in one of those flashes, just for a second, there was something familiar about him. Where had he …?

Siri smiled. He went to a vacant stool in front of the stage and watched the dancers. He had his answer. There was nothing to do now but enjoy the show. Or so he thought.

He felt a tap on his shoulder — another new dream experience; touch. He turned to see Comrade Koomki of Housing with a beer in his hand. Only his head looked different somehow, as if it had been reassembled without care: a puzzle whose unmatching pieces had been forced to fit together. He had a marvellous suntan. Siri, for want of a better response, gave him a polite nop. It was courtesy. It seemed likely, having seen the comrade in two spirit dreams now, that the poor man was dead. Koomki did not return the nop. In fact he took a mouthful of his beer and spat it at the doctor. If it had ever been wet it was no longer so when it reached Siri.

‘I’m here because of you,’ said Koomki.

Siri didn’t immediately see the problem. He was in a bar full of beautiful women and he had a cold beer. It was hardly purgatory. But, as yet, Siri couldn’t tell him so. With every second that passed, Koomki’s tan grew darker. It was currently burnt sienna heading towards oak. Siri willed himself to speak.

‘How did you die?’

But nothing came out.

‘They say I have to tell you this,’ said the diminutive comrade. ‘They say it might chalk up a few points in my favour. You see? I might have inadvertently been responsible for something that will happen to Madame Daeng. I’m not particularly sorry but I put one of the living angels of hell on to her. He’ll be-’

They were interrupted by an elderly woman in a miniskirt who asked whether either of them would be interested in the ‘special show’ that was about to start upstairs. Siri declined and she started to lick his nose. It wasn’t an unpleasant experience. Comrade Koomki was indigo and the bar had started to smell of hay. Ugly’s tongue was as soggy as an overripe durian. When Siri opened his eyes the dog stopped licking.

‘I got sound,’ Siri told him.

Siri arrived at his room at six to find the door open, the floor littered with empty bottles and cigarette butts, and Civilai sleeping peacefully in the bed beside a rather good-looking man with a moustache. Both were, fortunately, fully dressed. There was no Madame Daeng to be seen but Siri wasn’t overly concerned. She had set out the night before with two more bottles of Mekhong whisky to lure the cruiser captain and his mate into a confessional. She had a way with sailors. Siri took his toilet bag down to the communal bathroom to shower and freshen himself for what would likely be a full day. When he returned to the room, Civilai was sitting up in the bed rigid as an old hinge, eyes bulging, with a ghastly pallor on his face.

‘Good morning,’ said Siri. ‘Are you going to introduce me to your boyfriend?’

‘Siri,’ said Civilai, ‘Madame Daeng’s shop has been burned down. Everything in it has been destroyed.’

Siri stared at his friend, wondering whether he’d just returned from a frightening dream. He sat on the edge of the bed and tightened the cap of his toothpaste before returning it to the pink plastic container Daeng had bought for him.

‘I should have told you when I arrived,’ said Civilai. ‘God, how many days ago was that? I should have grabbed you both and taken you back to Vientiane on the ferry. I forgot all about it. I don’t know what they gave me on that boat but … Siri?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you in shock?’

‘I don’t believe so.’

‘You don’t seem that upset.’

‘If it’s true …’

‘It’s true. Phosy phoned me before I left Luang Prabang.’

‘Well, then it’s just a building. It wouldn’t be the first building I’ve lost. Do you know if the chickens got out all right? That’s the first thing Geung will ask.’

‘Siri, are you mad? All your papers. Your books.’

‘Just things. They came to me by chance. They left me by chance. Madame Daeng is safe. As long as nobody was hurt.’

‘Siri … there was a body in there.’

Siri bowed his head and nodded.

‘Comrade Koomki.’

‘Good Lord. How did you know …?’

‘I had a visit last night. In a dream,’ said Siri. ‘I imagine he set fire to the place. Can’t say I blame him. He probably lost his job because of me. I’d most likely set fire to your house if you ruined my life.’

‘That’s good to know. But listen. Dtui did an autopsy on the-’

‘She did? That’s excellent. Good for her.’

‘But she seems to believe the little comrade was beaten to death before the fire was lit.’

‘Ah. Then it’s true.’ Siri nodded.

‘What’s true?’

‘The Frenchman.’

‘What Frenchman?’

‘The one who came looking for my wife.’

‘That Frenchman?’ said Civilai. ‘Last thing I knew, that Frenchman was an old flame.’

‘Yes. It appears it might be a little bit more complicated than that. There’s a chance he might be here to … hurt her. If Dtui was right, and I’m certain she was, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Frenchman was responsible for both the fire and the death.’

‘You’ve been holding something back, haven’t you?’

‘I did a touch of research. My good lady wife has a file at the French embassy as thick as an Angkor lintel. Or, rather, the mysterious Fleur-de-Lis has a file. In all that time nobody linked Daeng to the famous spy. It was astounding how much chaos one woman can cause. I was barely twenty pages into the file and she’d already reduced De Gaulle to tears.’

‘Wait! How could you do research at the French …?’

‘The mind is such a terrible thing to steep in alcohol.’

‘That’s where you put them, you sly old bastard. That’s where you hid all your housemates. Slap in the middle of the city.’

Civilai started to laugh but his throbbing head caused him to stand down.

‘My goodness, how I love you,’ he said.

At this point the hungover bed mate slipped from the mattress, nodded and fled for the door.

‘I hope I haven’t come between you two,’ Siri laughed.

‘So, the files,’ said Civilai.

‘I had nothing to go on, really. I looked for the name Herve Barnard. Nothing. I’m sure there’ll some day be a way to cross-reference piles of paper without licking your forefinger so many times you become dehydrated. I spent most of the night in the archive room. It was quite by chance that I found the letters. I didn’t want to waste time reading other people’s private correspondence, but there was one box file full of letters all from the same person. They dated back to 1956. His name was Olivier Guittard. The earliest was sent from Saigon and it asked casually whether the French post in Pakse had garnered any more recent intelligence on the person they referred to as the Fleur-de-Lis. I didn’t go through the whole lot but those I scanned read like a growing obsession. This Guittard character seemed to have been seeking out French officials and military personnel who were, or had been, stationed in the south of Laos. Even back then Guittard had started to collect reports and anecdotes. He’d taken it upon himself to reinvestigate every case that was attributed to Fleur-de-Lis.

‘He stayed with the French foreign service and was transferred hither and thither. But still he kept up this correspondence with the French embassy. The stamps are collectors’ items. Istanbul. Mauritius. West Africa. The writer spent most of his life on the road. Each letter was headed with a code number which I assume referred to his security clearance. If he was just a stalking nutcase, I doubt they would have kept his mail. Somewhere down the track he had an epiphany. Either that or he was prepared to state something he’d suspected all along. He wrote, “I have finally caught up with two ex-military men I had been seeking for some time. I am now convinced that Fleur-de-Lis was not an expatriate French or Vietnamese but a local. A Lao. An attractive female. She went by many names but operated out of a noodle shop in Pakse. It was at the ferry that she found her marks and wheedled her way into the inner circle of French administration.”

‘There were no internal memos attached to these letters so I doubt anyone took notice of them. They bore the initials of the clerk that received them and stuck them in the box file. The embassy in Vientiane had more important matters to deal with than the investigation of an ex-underground agent. All told, over the period 1954 to 1978, I counted fifty-nine letters. I looked up the writer in the files and found a record dating back to 1953. It was a notification of courier status that Olivier Guittard should be afforded all convenience to speed his travel between Saigon and Europe. He wasn’t even based here. But there was strict security around the couriers. They had to be clearly identified. I found his personnel file. The paper had greyed over time. The ink sucked back into it. It was hard to make out the words, but under “Physical description” I could just about read the sentence, “Distinguishing marks — smallpox scar over right eye”. It’s just as well you didn’t put us on the ferry back to Vientiane.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I imagine that was exactly what he wanted. Why else would he burn down Daeng’s shop if not to have us hurry back to salvage our lives from the ruins?’

‘You’d fly straight into his web.’

‘Quite so.’

‘Gad, I’m stupid.’

‘Only moderately. My guess is that being here is the safest place for Daeng.’

‘I … I think I have to throw up,’ said Civilai.

‘Downstairs,’ said Siri. ‘Second door on …’ But the old boy was gone and probably wouldn’t make it.

Siri picked his way through the atolls of empty beer bottles and the corpses of a million fire ants lured by the nirvana of lamplight the night before only to be denied enlightenment. He went to the balcony and breathed in the fresh sunrise. It was the day of the finals. The previous day’s losers were already working on their oarsmanship so they might grab a wild card entry to the final round. Even at this early hour they were laughing and exchanging insults.

Some twenty elephants on the far bank were knee-deep in the river, providing hosing services to one another. They’d been there since Siri first arrived, their mahout drowsing beneath a Laundry-Fruit tree with no particular hurry to move on.

And, upstream, he caught sight of the tail end of the naval cruiser before it made that long, sweeping turn east. And something inside him gave way like floors in a dynamited building. Daeng. Daeng would befriend the crew of that boat. Daeng would drink with them and get their information. With Civilai and a hundred revellers in Siri’s room, she would curl up on the deck of the boat and sleep off the booze. That was what they’d planned. But the boat had left and there was no sign of Daeng. He thought of Guittard and the twenty-year fixation. And he considered how a little money could secure the services of a pilot and pay off police checkpoints. And a sudden panic flooded over him. All the faith and admiration he had for his wife’s survival skills were suddenly hanging by a thread. She wouldn’t have been prepared. She’s out of practice. She’s not the woman she used to be. All these thoughts and the fear of spending the rest of his life without her coursed like a flash flood through his veins as he ran out of the room. He pushed past Civilai in the doorway and made for the stairs. Already his ailing lungs squeezed in on themselves. His breath came in short wheezy puffs. On the second floor landing he ran into Mr Geung coming out of his room. He too was in a panic. He hadn’t even stopped to dress. His neat pot belly hung over his Minnie Mouse undershorts. He looked petrified.

‘Geung,’ said Siri, taking his friend by the shoulders. ‘What is it?’

‘Co … co … co … co …’

‘Slow down.’

‘Comrade Mad … Mad … Madame Daeng.’

‘Yes, what about her?’

Civilai had caught up with them.

‘She … she …’ Geung was trying his hardest. Siri massaged his shoulders.

‘That’s all right, Geung. Take your time. What about Madame Daeng?’

‘She … she slept with me.’

My spoken French and listening skills were a lot better than I let on. I could read well enough. I was working at the ferry noodle stand breakfast and lunchtime. It meant I got to see a lot of the French administrators and military as they waited in the short queue to cross on the car ferry. I’d go from jeep to truck selling little plastic bags of noodles or iced drinks. I’d sell little. Most of the foreigners thought our food was unhealthy and tasteless. But that wasn’t why I walked the queue. The point was to get noticed. My faltering French was better than most and the French housewives were always looking for staff. My selling point was that I was slow, borderline retarded — an act I worked on. They knew they could get me cheap. ‘Poor mental girl would just be so grateful for the opportunity.’

My looks were my Achilles heel. The frumpy foreign women didn’t hire anyone too good looking to tempt their husbands. So I made myself look as dowdy as possible. I dressed to appear fat. Wouldn’t wash my hair for weeks at a time. Blacked out a couple of teeth. But that wasn’t necessarily enough to stop the randy Frenchmen from having a go at me. The older military types were the worst. I had one or two tricks up my sleeve for them. My favourite was a letter I carried with me all the time. It was typed in French and signed — so it claimed — by a doctor. It said that this woman, Saifon (I had many names back then), was suffering from a highly contagious and incurable cocktail of vaginal herpes and syphilis. If any of my suitors doubted the veracity of this document, I had discovered a wild pomegranate that, when smeared on the skin, dried to a repugnant, pus-like finish. It was quite harmless but the looks on the faces often made me wish I carried a camera.

Only twice did I have, to resort to the razorblade trick. In my lunchbox I carried a blood orange, two plums, and a sweet local turnip. When working as a domestic servant in the French houses I was searched every day by the Vietnamese security guards. It was often no more than an excuse for the sleazy little men to have a feel. My fruit and vegetable lunch pack never caused alarm. They never looked closely enough at the sweet turnip to notice the fine slit into which I had inserted the razorblade. I always kept my bag close when I knew my master was on heat.

The early afternoon following too many glasses of Bordeaux at lunch is often the time their penises become larger than their brains — although neither would achieve record dimensions at the best of times. The moment arrives when he comes at you like a wild boar. He would prefer you begging and screaming, ‘Non, monsieur, je suis vierge.’ But if you share his enthusiasm it stops being rape in his mind and becomes passion. The French love that transition. His ego then readjusts his modus operandi. Your satisfaction becomes part of the show, a chance to let you see what a real man can do for a girl. And that, invariably, gives you a moment. As he removes his boots you reach for your lunch pack. He dives, panting, on top of you. His stinky sweat like a putrid bog. You reach for his testicles. He feels a warm flood of dampness … down there.

‘Oh, monsieur,’ you say.

‘Oui?’ he grunts.

‘Did you know that in a passionate state, pain inflicted in the area of the groin does not reach the brain for a full minute?’ (Of course my speech isn’t quite as eloquent as that but men rarely give thought to syntax at such a moment.)

‘What are you …?’

You hold up the blade in front of his eyes until he can focus. In your other hand the orange-bloody plums can only be two things. There is a moment of horror frozen on his face. He rolls to one side and looks down to where the crushed orange looks like the after-effects of a machete attack. He staggers bow-legged to the bathroom giving you time to adjust your clothing and leave the room, your dignity intact.

Of course, you are then looking for another job but it’s worth it.

They sat under one of the recycled parachute tents by the river; Siri, Daeng, Mr Geung, Comrade Civilai and Ugly, drinking truly horrible coffee.

‘All right,’ said Civilai. ‘Forget the fact that your boat has gone without you. Let’s look at the positives.’

‘All right,’ said Siri. ‘I’m looking. No, it’s dark. What are they?’

‘For one, we have time to strategize.’

On the walk from the guest house — a walk during which Daeng apologized numerous times to Geung for curling up in his bed that morning — they had briefed her on the horrors that had occurred in Vientiane. Like Siri, she’d taken the news quite calmly. In fact she seemed more interested in the drama unfolding upstream than in her lost livelihood.

‘What is it with you two?’ Civilai asked.

‘So, this is the way it looks,’ said Daeng, ignoring the question. ‘The cruiser has indeed headed upstream, presumably with Madame Peung who has a Vietnamese accent and her deaf and dumb brother who may or may not whisper in Vietnamese late at night, and a unit of Vietnamese soldiers, but without their unbiased medical observer. I take it everyone has spotted the Vietnamese connection here.’

‘Did you get anything from the cruiser’s Lao captain?’ Civilai asked.

‘All I could tell was that he’d been briefed privately by the minister. He was under the impression they were there to retrieve the remains of Lao soldiers trapped in the hull of a boat. The minister’s brother was one of them. They’d bring out all the remains and have the coroner sort out who was who. He was told not to interact with the Vietnamese engineers which wasn’t that hard considering he couldn’t speak Vietnamese and they can’t speak Lao. He was angry about being the taxi service.’

‘Then that would suggest the minister believes that’s why they’re here,’ said Civilai. ‘What news from the engineers?’

‘They think it’s a boat rescue too,’ said Siri. ‘They were instructed to free a small vessel from the mud at the bottom of the river and winch it to the bank. They have sub-aqua equipment. They aren’t particularly happy about it. They were complaining about all that effort and manpower just for a few Lao bones.’

‘So, there you have it,’ said Civilai. ‘What’s the mystery here? It all fits. Brother. Bones. Ancestors. Happiness. Wife stops nagging. Minister gets some sleep.’

‘What do you make of it, Geung?’ Siri asked.

Mr Geung’s insights were invariably right on the money. Except he hadn’t spoken since his confession to the doctor that he’d slept with his wife. It was obviously worrying him. He had yet to stop blushing. There was, of course, nothing to be embarrassed about. Madame Daeng returns home after a late-night tipple with the navy to find two men asleep in her bed. Neither is her husband. She goes downstairs. Geung’s room is unlocked. She crawls beneath the mosquito netting, curls up in an empty space on the vast mattress and sleeps like a babe. Had she been less tipsy she would have considered Mr Geung’s fragile emotions and the fact that he had a fiancee back in Vientiane. Mr Geung, being Mr Geung, would have no choice but to tell Tukda of his indiscretion and the relationship would be on shaky ground.

‘You have to pun … punish Madame Daeng,’ said Geung as if the party in question were not sitting there in front of him.

‘I promise. I shall,’ said Siri.

‘She was bad.’

‘I know she was. I shall take the leather thong to her this very night.’ (She kicked him under the table.) ‘But in the meantime we’re working here. We are presented with a mystery which appears not to be mysterious. Given all we’ve been through, that in itself is mysterious. If everything is going as expected, why do we all feel so uncomfortable? Something is wrong, Geung. Tell us what it is.’

Geung looked away from the doctor and stared out across the river. The new day’s races were about to start but he wasn’t focused on the boats. He was quiet for so long they thought he was still sulking, until he said, ‘The ele-phants.’

‘What about them?’ Civilai asked.

‘Why are the elephants here?’

They all looked at the small herd, all bloated with water and the mahout rocking in the breeze in his hammock.

‘Of course,’ said Civilai. ‘That’s it.’