The Woman Who Wouldn't Die

4

I was two months short of my fourteenth birthday when I killed my first Frenchman.

‘Do you think it’s all right to start like that?’

‘It’s your story. Start any way you like.’

‘I don’t want to sound racist.’

‘You could qualify it.’

I was two months short of my fourteenth birthday when I killed my first Frenchman.

At the time it didn’t matter that he was French, or European, or even a man for that matter. I killed him because he was evil. Because I had no choice. It was several more years before I developed a penchant for killing men just because they were French.

‘That might be considered just a tad …’

‘I’ll cut it out later.’

There were those who said I’d been driven to it by the Fates. I was born in December 1911, slap in the middle of the Chinese revolution. My grandfather named me Daeng to mark the event. Daeng is usually a nickname but he told everyone his granddaughter of the revolution would be known to everyone as Red. The bamboo hut in which I first opened my eyes was in a minority Lao Teung village in Savanaketh Province. Ours was a district famous for a three year uprising against French taxes. Very few of our men lived to boast of their bravery. My father had been one of the unlucky ones.

I was born into a country called Laos that had already spent a quarter of a century as a jewel in the French colonial crown — a crown that included the three provinces of Vietnam, Cambodia, and us. We were a small, particularly dull jewel. Our French lords described us as The least urgent souls on earth with a thousand obstacles and superstitions to interfere with the accomplishment of work. Their profits from Laos never amounted to more than one per cent of their total revenue from Indochina. We were a terrible disappointment. In fact we weren’t even a country before the French came along, just a hotchpotch of diffuse tribes stirred together to make the paperwork easier. As I grew up in my mother’s house it seemed like the most natural thing in the world that the pale-skinned, easily sunburned gods should be our masters and mistresses. Like the deaths of newborn babies from preventable diseases and the enslavement of our healthy men, that was just the way of it. It was our penance for being a country too stupid to administer itself. Too lazy to work. Too indifferent to rebel. How fortunate we were that the masters recognized our inadequacies early. They shipped in Vietnamese labourers to build, farmers to work our land, and administrators to keep us in our place. None of the clerks or the section heads at our regional government office spoke Lao. Vietnamese and French were the languages of administration.

Of course, to learn French it would have helped to have gone to school. There was one down in the town. But it was exclusively for the children of the gods and the sons of the wealthy Vietnamese. So, we Lao of little ability struggled as best we could, picked up words here and there and kept our fingers crossed that we didn’t get ill. There was a small regional hospital but that too was reserved for the service of the French and Vietnamese. Growing up in my small Lao Teung village, this was my normal.

‘Siri. I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon,’ said Seksan. ‘Madame Daeng not with you?’

‘Her head’s giving her some trouble. In fact she can’t find it.’

Seksan laughed. He had an infectious giggle.

‘I’m afraid we hit the bottles a little too hard last night,’ he said, opening the embassy gate to let his friend in. ‘In fact, I’m surprised to see you up so early. What can I do for you?’

‘I was wondering whether I could take a quick peek at the embassy’s top secret files.’

Seksan laughed again but noticed that Siri wasn’t smiling.

‘You’re serious.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re asking me whether I’d allow an ex-member of the Lao Issara, a sworn enemy of the French colonists, who proceeded to wage war against my adopted country for twenty years, to thumb through the embassy’s secret files?’

‘Yes.’

‘You do realize there are several legal and diplomatic arguments as to why I probably shouldn’t allow it?’

‘Well,’ said Siri. ‘If they’d made you ambassador I’d listen to those arguments. But they gave you a broom and a toilet brush and told you to keep the place clean. Right now this is just a sprawling compound of quaint little buildings with no diplomatic status at all. I’m betting the staff didn’t bother to take anything with them because they’re expecting us to beg them to come back any time soon. I mean, if they left the wine …’

Seksan smiled at him.

‘There’s a store building full of files,’ he said.

‘There you go.’

‘I have orders to set light to it if the compound is taken over.’

‘If they’re prepared to burn them, they can’t be worth that much, can they now? Give me an hour.’

‘I might come and have a look for myself.’

In its heyday, the two-tier C’est La Vie had plied between Vientiane and Luang Prabang during the high-river months, taking joyful French families and off-duty squaddies on an exotic Mekhong River cruise, a highlight of their time in Indochina. Until the river started to attract snipers, the C’est La Vie, now renamed King Burom, did the same trip with Americans, who, you may recall, were technically not in Laos at all. They would hire the good old King and escort their ‘girlfriends’ and crates of bourbon on romantic overnight cruises. Take photographs of one another’s backsides and throw up over the side. Good for the fish, they said. But now the old girl had lost that international romance. There were so many layers of paint on her she’d become amorphous. Under the Party moniker of Voyage of Harmony, she chugged up and down the river picking up chickens in rattan cages and trussed pigs and burlap sacks of dried manure. And every now and then she’d take a passenger, the few whose laissez-passers were in order. And then there’d be someone for the old river pilot to converse with on the eighteen-hour journey from the new capital to the old.

Rather than sit cross-legged on the splintery deck, Siri, Daeng and Mr Geung had brought their own folding chairs. They’d even been thoughtful enough to bring along a fourth for Comrade Civilai. He was on his way to Luang Prabang on one of his many post-retirement functions. He’d refused the helicopter ride, arguing that his haemorrhoids acted up at altitude. Instead he would leave a day early and enjoy a leisurely cruise with his best friends. He liked to grumble about the assignments they gave him here and there yet, to be honest, that feeling of being needed was a drug. But, of late, this cooperative bunkum was getting him down. He’d sit for hours in meetings with sensible farmers trying to convince them that socialism would make them all equally wealthy. And he’d wait for that old-timer to put up his hand and ask, ‘And will the system share the poverty just as fairly?’ Civilai wanted to shout ‘Yes.’ The floods and the droughts would distribute misery evenly to all the co-op members. And the politburo would sit back and scratch its head and come up with a new system for next year.

Civilai’s enthusiasm for the doctrine he believed in had won hearts in those early years. He was a communicator. He was a faithful party member. And then he got old and one day over breakfast — it was eggs lightly fried in soy sauce with a sprinkling of grated onion, he remembered quite clearly — he’d looked up from his plate and said to his wife, ‘It isn’t working.’

Peasants didn’t want to wait a year or two for group rewards. They wanted profits now, or at least enough to feed the family tomorrow. They’d do whatever it took to succeed. There wasn’t one system that would keep everybody happy. You needed a mix. But as soon as he started to advocate eclecticism his future in the politburo began its downward slide. It reached a hell that he was lucky to have escaped from with his head on his neck. So now, here he was heading off into rural villages that had survived quite nicely for hundreds of years without once hearing of this Karl Marx fellow, and reading to the elders from the manual. He didn’t ask for questions at the end of his talks. They gave him a drink, asked after his family and waved him off. Nothing ventured. Nothing gained.

‘You don’t sound that enthusiastic,’ said Siri. They were passing the elephant hills of Ban Chang. Civilai sat between Siri and Daeng on his deckchair slurping coconut water directly from the shell.

‘It’s doomed,’ he said. ‘We’re all doomed. The end of the world is nigh.’

‘Well,’ said Daeng. ‘I must say they couldn’t have chosen a better diplomat to enthuse the masses.’

‘Doomed,’ said Civilai.

Siri and Civilai had a lot in common. They had both studied in France and returned to fight the revolution against the oppressors. They had both joined the Pathet Lao and lived in harsh conditions in the fields of battle. And now they shared another badge of courage. Both were missing their left earlobe. Siri’s had been bitten off in a fistfight. Civilai had recently made the mistake of putting his ear in the path of a speeding bullet. The doctor believed it was a deliberate act on the part of the politician, who envied Siri’s deformity of valour. But the old men were once again a matching set.

‘Are you going to have time to stop over in Pak Lai on your way upriver?’ Daeng asked.

‘No. They want me there at the weekend. But if you’re still around on Monday I’ll abandon ship and celebrate the end of the world with you.’

‘How sweet of you,’ Daeng laughed.

‘I’d rather hoped I might meet your witch on board,’ said Civilai.

‘Not a good sailor, evidently,’ said Siri. ‘The Ministry of Agriculture flew her up in a helicopter yesterday.’

‘She didn’t have her broomstick?’

Madame Daeng looked baffled.

‘Just the two of us, older brother,’ said Siri. ‘Just the two of us.’

Mr Geung joined them on the upper deck clutching a whole cleavage of coconuts.

‘More,’ he said and sat on the deck with his sharp machete lobotomizing them one by one. Ugly chewed on a half shell that was his alone. Siri had entrusted the dog to the care of Mr Bhiku David Tickoo, the father of Crazy Rajid and the head cook at the Happy Dine Indian restaurant. Crazy Rajid spent his mute days wandering the streets of Vientiane or bathing naked in the river but many nights he would sleep behind the restaurant. Siri’d had a little business to discuss with him the night before their departure and he took the opportunity to chain the dog to the restaurant’s back fence. After a plate of beef curry, Ugly seemed perfectly content to spend a few days there. When Siri and Daeng arrived at the ferry that morning, Ugly had been there waiting for them, tail wagging, a big smile on his deformed face. How he knew about the ferry trip nobody could say.

‘And what news of your handsome paramour, Madame Daeng?’ Civilai asked.

‘I’m starting to wish I hadn’t told you about him,’ said Daeng. ‘Nobody else knows.’

‘You had no choice,’ said Civilai. ‘I am a man of influence. I can open doors. My minions at the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Interior are hunting out his arrival documents as we speak. Any chance he’s just here to shake hands with old foe? Love across the Atlantic? World peace?’

‘We can hope,’ said Siri. ‘Goodness knows the French spread so much goodwill and happiness while they were here.’

‘Nuts?’ said Geung.

As our working men had been disposed of horribly and publicly to end the rebellion, our village soon started to break up. My mother and sister and I travelled to Pakse in the south where Ma and me found laundry work. I was eleven. My sister, Gulap, was sixteen but she couldn’t help us. She was a victim of what I later learned was called cerebral palsy. At the time they called her a spastic. She could neither speak nor walk but she was easily the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. She smiled continuously. An irresistible smile. I was a daisy to Gulap’s rose. I talked to her all the time. I told her stories. I know she understood me.

Our laundry was behind a large auberge. We did the wash for the guest house and took in laundry from the resident foreigners around the town. It was there that I learned to read and write and cook. I was a curious girl and I was always pestering people to teach me something I didn’t know. I was tired of being an ignoramus. Gulap would spend her days smiling at the world from a chair beneath the Buddha tree in the back yard. I always believed there was a magic word you could say to her and the mistake that distorted my sister would be rectified. I began by learning my own language and tried every word on her. When that didn’t work I decided it had to be a foreign magic word. I started to collect French from the guests in the auberge. Every day I’d gather half a dozen new words, run back to our room and attempt to free my sister from her demon.

And that was how I met Claude. He was a doctor from Paris. He was kind and patient and so unlike the other French men. I hardly noticed how unpleasant he looked: fat and ginger-haired, his teeth stained grey from wine and cigarettes. None of that mattered because Claude offered to save Gulap. The doctor travelled with a Vietnamese, a shifty man with a paunch and hair greased flat to his skull. They would come to stay at our auberge every twenty days or so. They’d stay two nights. The Vietnamese spoke Lao. He told me that Claude would treat my sister free of charge because he liked me. When I told this to my mother she was so happy she cried all over the newly ironed pillow cases. We dreamed of the day that Gulap would be able to talk to us. Tell us how she felt.

Dr Claude kept his word. He treated her twice. When his work at the hospital was over, he and the Vietnamese carried Gulap to our room and for half an hour or so they did whatever it took to remove the evil spirit from my sister’s soul. They didn’t let me see, of course. It was dangerous for somebody unqualified to be present, they told me. I even believed I was seeing an improvement in my sister. She was trying so hard to speak. She became so excited the second time she saw Dr Claude arrive. She clapped her curled hands and …

‘I can’t do this. All it does is remind me of how stupid I was.’

‘You were thirteen.’

‘Surely common sense comes long before that.’

‘Some people never get it. Write!’

… and seemed so excited.

Dr Claude and the Vietnamese hadn’t come for two months. I was anxious that they might not return. I asked at the auberge when the doctor was due back. The owner told me she knew nothing of a doctor. ‘Dr Claude and the tall Vietnamese,’ I said. ‘Claude?’ she laughed. ‘Claude is no more a doctor than I am a cabaret singer. Those two deal in bathroom attachments. They’re travelling salesmen, young Daeng.’

My sister, Gulap, the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, died giving birth. My mother had considered terminating the pregnancy but they wouldn’t let us in the hospital. Only the village shaman with potions you wouldn’t give a rabid dog, and midwives with rusty knives were available for people like us. So my mother put her trust in nature. And nature let her down. With medicine and the hands of a surgeon, Gulap might have survived. But she was in the hands of fate and it took my sister and her baby from us.

*

The Voyage of Harmony reached Pak Lai exactly eleven hours after leaving Vientiane. It didn’t feel that long. Siri had always marvelled at the timelessness of river travel. For hours they hadn’t seen anything the early French explorers wouldn’t have experienced a hundred years before. All right, perhaps they wouldn’t have seen so many 333 Beer bottles floating nearer the towns or Che Guevara T-shirts on fishermen. No odd TOA paint cans lined up for shooting practice. But, basically, the cruise could have been before history. Before the ridiculousness of war. Before the greed of generals and the land lust of politicians. This river had defied it all and survived. Still her willowed banks bowed to the passing pirogues. Still the grey terns surfed the cool current above the water.

The pilot switched off his engine some hundred metres before the modest bamboo dock and waited for it to lure the boat home against the gentle current. There was barely a creak as the ferry kissed the old tyres that hung from the posts. Siri and Daeng had never been to Sanyaburi. It was a province that had often found itself changing nationality in the political lotteries. Civilai argued that the place was a victim of its spelling. On French and American maps there were no fewer than seventeen attempts at its transcription. More worryingly, there were three different versions on Lao maps. He argued that if it were easier to spell, a country might be more inclined to hang on to it. It was currently one of two Lao provinces with real estate on the west bank of the Mekhong, but that could change at any time. The players still sat around the board.

Siri, Daeng and Mr Geung were met at the dock by a smiling man in a grey safari suit and plastic flip-flops. He had a shaved head that rose gently to a cone like the sharp end of a coconut. Two twiggy men in football shorts and once-white singlets stood behind him. He had a booming voice.

‘Comrades. Comrades,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Sanyaburi.’

Ugly was the first to step ashore and the man kicked at the dog and missed. His flip-flop flipped and flopped into the river but he ignored it. Siri saw him as the type who would only wear flip-flops on formal occasions. He kicked off the other sandal, stepped across the gangplank and shook the hands of Siri and Daeng with great enthusiasm. He took one look at Geung and ignored him completely.

‘I’m the inspector of river traffic, the imports tariffs collection director general and I also have the honour of being the governor of this great province. My name is Siri Vignaket,’ he said.

Dr Siri was immediately resentful to have this man share his name.

‘It’s nice to be here,’ said Daeng who knew her Siri wouldn’t be saying anything. ‘This is Dr Siri Paiboun. My name is Daeng; I’m his wife.’

‘No need to tell me that,’ said Siri II. ‘I can see you’re a bit over the hill to be his mistress.’

His laugh shook leaves from the trees and frightened birds from the branches. Some people take days, even weeks to make a bad impression. Governor Siri had managed to alienate everyone in under three minutes. A remarkable feat.

‘Can’t have too many Siris, that’s what I say,’ bellowed the governor. ‘Right, old man?’

Daeng squeezed her husband’s hand. The sound of a titter could be heard from the other passenger on the boat who hadn’t bothered to get up from his seat and introduce himself.

‘His hearing’s all right, is it?’ asked Siri II. ‘Never mind. I’ve brought my men. They’ll carry your luggage up to the Peace Hotel. That’s where you’ll be staying. Top floor all to yourselves. Good view of the river. Double bed but I doubt you’ll be making full use of that.’

Again the laugh. Again the trembling trees.

‘This is all we have,’ said Daeng with admirable restraint.

In his clenched fist, Siri held a canvas BOAC airline bag he’d once won in a tombola. It contained his travelling mortuary kit and a few clothes. His was a wash-and-re-wear philosophy. Daeng had her small backpack over one shoulder and three light deckchairs at her feet.

‘Travel light, do you?’ said the governor.

‘Weren’t you ever in the military?’ Daeng asked.

‘Me? Hell no. Mug’s game.’

‘How could you avoid it?’

‘By using this old fella,’ he said, tapping his index finger against his forehead and leaving the visitors in doubt as to whether he’d avoided military service by using his head or his finger.

‘I was very proud of you,’ said Daeng.

They sat on the edge of the double bed in the Peace Hotel penthouse suite. At least that was how the landlady had described it. It was indeed the entire top floor of a three-storey building but there was masonry evidence to suggest they’d intended to turn it into four separate rooms but had run out of money. The bedhead leaned against the north wall. There was a brisk twenty metre walk to the wardrobe at the south. A heavy wooden coffee table with a hot thermos of tea and a full-sized chair occupied the west wall and four doorways opened on to the balcony to the east. Only one of them had a door attached.

‘I wanted to …’

‘I know you did,’ said Daeng. ‘But we’re on holiday. No point in starting a vacation under lock and key.’

‘He’s …’

‘I know he is. Let’s take a look at the view.’

They walked out through the second doorway.

‘At least it won’t get stuffy,’ said Siri.

‘And there is a mosquito net.’

The view made up for almost everything. It was splendid. The weather continued to be ideal. From their eyrie they could see the tail end of Civilai’s ferry chugging its way around the bend upriver. Pak Lai was nicely laid out. There was something English about its large village green. You’d expect cricketers to walk out on to it after tea. Of course they’d need machetes rather than cricket bats as the grass had been left to its own devices for too long. The two unemployed porters were in the grounds below thrashing at the overgrown weeds with ancient scythes. A woman across the river propelled her coracle with an old frying pan. The dogs of Pak Lai had obviously been waiting for the coming of the alpha messiah because a dozen of them were following Ugly, up to their elbows in the river, rooting for crabs.

‘We should bring Geung up,’ said Daeng. ‘He’d enjoy the view.’

The landlady had taken one look at Mr Geung and suggested he’d probably be more comfortable on the bunk in the back of the chicken coup. Siri told her that, as tempting as that sounded, his assistant would rough it in one of the guest house rooms.

‘It’s the boat races,’ she’d said. She was a large woman whose eyebrows were very close to her hairline. In moments of surprise they merged.

‘And that means what?’ Siri had asked.

‘All the rooms will be full,’ she’d said. ‘There’ll be a crowd down from Sanyaburi municipality. People from Vientiane. The races have been cancelled the last three years. There’s a lot of interest.’

‘Then it’s just as well we arrived before them,’ said Siri. ‘And as a show of good spirit, Mr Geung will give up his chronological right to the bunk in the chicken house.’

So, now, Mr Geung had a room to himself in the guest house. Beside the bed he’d put his Thai plastic chicken alarm clock that awoke him with a ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’ and his framed photograph of his beloved, Tukda, the prettiest Down Syndrome canteen worker at Mahosot Hospital. Everything was poised for an enjoyable few days. All they were missing was the witch. According to Siri the governor, she had refused first option on the Peace penthouse in preference for a private room at the old French colonial building at the back. Apparently, she wanted a room with a door. There was no accounting for taste.

Siri and Daeng were on their deckchairs with an early evening cocktail. Thai brandy and more Thai brandy without ice, courtesy of the horrible governor. The sky to the west was crimson but the sunset was wasted way back behind the jungle and the hills. But, when it arrived, they knew they’d have front seats for the moon-rise. And that, as everyone knew, was the time when spirit energy was at its most potent.

‘Any sightings?’ Daeng asked.

‘Anybody specific in mind?’

‘I suppose I was wondering about the minister’s brother, Ly,’ said Daeng. ‘I mean, if his body really is here and his spirit’s in limbo, I imagine he’d be getting, you know, worked up.’

‘It sounds like he’s already found his own direct line through the witch. He wouldn’t waste his time banging his head against my locked front door when he’s got an ever-open spirit-flap to her.’

‘So you’re not getting any vibrations?’

‘You know, Daeng, it’s not so much an energy — more like visions. I see them all the time. It’s just another dimension laid on top of this one like cartoon cells. You draw Daffy Duck on one layer and superimpose it on to another. I see both dimensions.’

‘How can you tell them apart?’

‘The living and the dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘The living are better dressers. The dead have this permanent “too long in the washing machine” look. Their colours are all washed out. Their lines are a little smudged.’

‘I don’t know why I’m always putting myself up for this, the hairs are already standing up on the back of my neck. But … can you see them now?’

Siri gazed across the river.

‘Yes.’

‘Shit.’

‘It’s not that scary, Daeng. Most of them are just lying around waiting. You know how you try to make a booking through Aeroflot and they ask you to come back to the office again and again to see how your application has progressed? Well, it’s like that. Most of them seem resigned to the fact that they’re on their way to the next incarnation, or the promised land or hell, whichever travel agent they’ve booked with.’

Daeng poured them two fresh glasses.

‘So how do you think it works?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘Religion.’

Siri laughed.

‘That’s a bit heavy for six p.m. after just the one glass, don’t you think?’

‘I’ve asked you before when you were halfway down a bottle but you always make a joke of it.’

‘Why is it important?’

‘Oh, you know. If something happens to me I’d like to be prepared.’

‘You’re in your sixties. If you haven’t settled on a tour company yet you probably never will. You’ll be travelling solo. And, besides, I won’t let anything happen to you.’

‘Oh, Sir Siri. My hero. But tell me anyway.’

‘There isn’t one answer, Daeng. I know from experience that the spirits of the dead often hang around. This knowledge is a heavy weight to bear. It makes you want to have your brain laundered. I’m nothing special so it’s quite obvious that legions of similarly haunted people throughout history have borne this weight too. So, throughout time, I’m convinced all these confused spirit-seers got so freaked out they needed to find a way to explain it to themselves. Form logical parameters to make sense of it.

‘Like you, I grew up in a remote animist village. But then I went to school in a Buddhist temple. I underwent a strict Catholic education in France. I was perfectly content to accept the grand Shee Yee of the Otherworld and the Lord B, and Jesus and his mother as my spiritual icons as long as I didn’t have to spend too long on my knees. I would have settled for a committee. I just wanted order. But once I started to see my own ghosts I understood what these religions were all about. They were clubs set up by people like me to stop themselves going mad. You know what I really think happens? You die. You wait for your number. There’s a bit of time to take care of unfinished business. And you pass on. And, as you don’t come back, nobody actually knows what you pass on to. But that description has never been acceptable. People wanted an ending. They didn’t want to vanish into thin air. So these great religious gurus made some endings up. The more comfortable and happy your ending, the more members signed up and paid their fees. And it’s what the masses wanted. They ate it up. And the kings and emperors started to add rules and regulations to subjugate the commoners and keep ’em in line. And so they invented hell and told you if you coveted your neighbour’s mule you wouldn’t even get into the clubhouse at the end of it all.’

Siri took a sip of his brandy and smiled towards the river.

‘Nice,’ said Daeng. ‘The “You Just Die” philosophy of religion. I doubt you’d fill many seats on the holy day. But I suppose that’s fitting for a coroner. Except you know they don’t just die. I thought you’d seen the Otherworld?’

‘I did. But you would have noticed I wasn’t dead at the time. I was just in a trance. And as far as I can work out, the only spirits I see are the ones with unfinished business. But, I can’t know that for sure. I had no idea what I was seeing and no control over what happened there. I have this gift-cum-curse and I don’t even know how to switch it on and off.’

‘Is that why we’re here? An audience with the witch medium?’

‘No … Perhaps. I’m so close, Daeng. I feel it. I know I can communicate with these spirits. It shouldn’t be that hard. You see that fellow over there on the rock?’

‘No.’

‘Of course you can’t. He’s dead. But I should be able to call him over, sit him down here on the spare chair and ask him where he thinks he’s going. Ask him how he lost his arms.’

‘You think the witch can teach you to do that?’

‘It’s because of her and the word of a dead soldier that we’re all here. They do it all the time in Vietnam. They see the departed and ask them where the body is. If they can communicate, so can I. I’m sure it’s a question of confidence. Half the victory is in believing in yourself. You can’t tell me that faith hasn’t driven you through life.’

*

I was almost fourteen when I next saw Dr Claude and the Vietnamese. The bathroom fittings business was obviously doing well because they’d gone upmarket and were staying at the hotel in the centre of town. And they were travelling in a nice car. I’d delivered some laundry to the front desk and I saw them huddled at a small table. If they recognized me they didn’t react. I walked out and stood behind the outdoor barber stand opposite. My legs were like tofu. I couldn’t have gone back to the auberge if I’d wanted to. And I didn’t want to. I wanted to see where these devils were headed.

They could have walked but I suppose they wanted everyone to see their nice car. They drove it about two hundred yards and parked on the river bank not far from an open-air bistro. It was the type with hostesses in sexy clothes. The type the men liked; too young and just stupid enough. I’d sprinted to catch up with the car and I was out of breath when I threw myself under a hedge near where they parked the car. I watched them eat from there. I watched them drink. I watched them fondle. I’m not sure I had it in my mind to kill those two men. I don’t remember what was going through my brain. Perhaps I merely wanted them to feel what my mother and I had felt every day since we’d lost Gulap. And I had to do it then, that night, because I was afraid I’d never have the opportunity again.

It was getting late. Claude and his whore left the table and she propped him up as they walked along the river bank. He was drunk as a prince. The car was parked on a slight bluff with a scenic view of the Mekhong. They got in and there was some hanky-panky in the front seat. I’d learned all about hanky-panky at our auberge. The car rocked a little. Then there was nothing. Five minutes later the young lady of the night stepped out of the car and staggered back to the bistro. I came out of my hiding place and looked through the rear window. The moon lit up the river with a cheesy yellow glow. I could see the silhouette of Claude’s head. It didn’t move. I wondered if she’d killed him for me. But probably not. He was asleep. I’d heard all about men falling asleep at the wrong times as well. Too drunk to do his seedy business he’d decided to sleep it off.

I didn’t know anything about cars. Had never been in one. But I’d seen wheels before. I knew if you gave a handcart a good enough shove you could get it to move. I’d never heard of a handbrake and it wasn’t until several years later when I was learning to drive that it occurred to me that the spirits had left it off especially for me that night on the Mekhong. And even now I wonder whether I imagined what a laugh it would be if the car should roll all the way to the river and Dr Claude emerged angry and wet from the water. Or whether I hoped he’d be lost at the bottom of the Mekhong with all his sins come back in the form of river fish, snapping away at his nasty flesh. Or perhaps I just pushed to see what would happen.

It rolled more easily than I’d imagined. I barely leaned against the black boot and the car was on its way down the slope. It seemed to have a mind all its own. I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d wanted to. I lost sight of Claude’s silhouette when the car reached a sort of shelf and slowed a bit but in seconds it was over the ridge and nose-down headed for the water. The voracious Mekhong took the whole car in one gulp. I hurried to the ledge and looked at the bubbles — big, head-sized globs of air. Every second I expected the evil doctor to burst to the surface, coughing and spluttering and thanking his good Lord for delivering him safely from the edge of death. But he didn’t show. I was surprised to see people running past me, down to the river: foreign men and Lao staff and the Vietnamese and the curious girls. They’d seen it happen. And they all ignored me as if I’d had nothing to do with this. As if a car had taken a fancy for a dip all by itself.

Some men jumped into the water. They were probably drunk and showing off because the water was flowing fast and deep at that time of year. In fact the car was no longer where I’d put it. They found it a week later on the way to Basak. There was no ginger-haired man sitting in the front seat. At first that helped me sleep. Imagining my Dr Claude opening his car door, swimming across the river to live a nice life in Thailand. But that guilt didn’t last for long. One night, Gulap came to me and in perfect Lao she told me how she could rest much more easily knowing that man was where he deserved to be.

On the first day he arrived in Laos, the man calling himself Herve Barnard had travelled south to Pakse on a false laissez-passer. He shook his head at how easy the commies made it to falsify documents. How had they ever won the war? It took him only half a day to find the man he was searching for. The Lao was still living at his old address. This information had recently become available following the declassification of official documents in Paris. Most of the material pertaining to the debacle at Dien Bien Phu was now in the public domain. Too bad for anyone mentioned in the files whose life depended on secrecy.

The Lao officer had once been the head of clandestine missions for the Lao Issara resistance movement and subsequently for the Pathet Lao in the south. The years had made him soft. There had probably been a time when he would have died rather than disclose information about his colleagues. But just two hours of torture, not even sophisticated state-of-the-art torture at that, and Barnard had the name he’d wanted: Daeng Keopakam. The Lao had died anyway, but bereft of honour. Barnard spat on his corpse.

Armed with the name, some old French charm and a seductive smile, he’d found the warm trail of Madame Daeng. She’d continued her lunchtime noodle restaurant shift deep into the American occupation. Then, for some pathetic, nostalgic reason, she’d taken over that same restaurant at the ferry crossing. How was that for ambition? What a mind to waste.

He thought back to their last night. He’d awoken and she was there beside him. She’d kissed his cheek and said good morning. She was beautiful, there was no doubt. Those deep dark chocolate eyes could take all the air out of a man in one blink. He’d looked around the room with heavy eyes. Everything seemed normal. His uniform on hangers in the doorless closet. His gun on the desk. His briefcase on the chair. Everything was as it should have been. Apart from an odd feeling at the back of his mind.

He’d heard the code name Fleur-de-Lis. It had not come from the French side but from the Lao. It had been given up to interrogators by a captured local spy. But he’d not known the agent’s true identity. Only that the Fleur-de-Lis had been responsible for most of the mayhem experienced by the French administration in the south. But, like Barnard, they’d all assumed the agent was a French official. A double agent. At the very least, a sophisticated Vietnamese educated in France. Espionage was a career for the upper classes, not the coolies or the corvee labourers. Nobody had considered for a second that the bane of all their security troubles could be a native.

And that was why it wasn’t until long after the mess to end all messes, after the humiliation, that the man now calling himself Herve Barnard finally put the pieces together. He was certain who Fleur-de-Lis was. He’d been in love with her which made her betrayal even more biting. Yet only he and she knew what had transpired that long sleepy night. And the years passed and he rose through the ranks and became a man with power. But his successes could never satisfy him because of that dreamless night in a bamboo room in Pakse.

And, as a man in his sixties, he was back. He’d stood at the ferry ramp and looked down at the tattered canopy of the noodle stand that had once belonged to Madame Daeng. It was lunchtime but the stools were unoccupied. The pot-bellied patron sat alone eating an orange, wiping his hands on his greasy undershirt. No finesse, thought Barnard. No class. Typical of these disgusting people.

He was back in Vientiane now. He had her name. They’d told him she’d come here twelve months earlier to establish a business in the capital. But the different departments: business registration, migration, housing, medical — none of them was prepared to give out information about a Lao citizen. Not to him. He was the enemy. The officials were cadres from the north-east who’d spent a lifetime fighting his kind. If they spoke French they didn’t let him know as much. When he’d returned with a translator they’d interrogated the poor woman about her relationship with this old farang. Not even offers of a finder’s fee could squeeze a sac of information from these dry old commies. He’d gone to the markets. There were still some French speakers there. Nobody knew of a Madame Keopakam. But Daeng? My word. There were Daengs aplenty, they told him. Fire a bullet in the air and it would likely land on a Daeng. He’d suggested there would be a reward to anyone who could locate his old friend, Daeng Keopakam, from the south and said his name was Herve and he was staying at the Lane Xang.

And that’s where he sat in his hotel room, waiting, choking in the smog of his chain cigarettes, fuming. The only way he could lighten his mood was by imagining Madame Daeng hanging by the ankles from a beam, and him with a brand new tyre iron.