The Woman Who Wouldn't Die

5

On Friday morning, Siri and Daeng awoke to a completely different Mekhong. Far and near, the villages had washed the three years of grime from their longboats and those with leftover paint that hadn’t hardened in the cans had spruced up the old ladies of the river. By whatever means, they’d dragged them to the water and, with thirty-six hours to go before the races began, old crewmates with rusty joints were relearning the pleasures of rowing.

Before the change of administration the races had been annual. Betting on the results had become endemic. Wealthy landowners brought in athletes to replace the less serious rowers on their local crew in order to safeguard their bets. One by one the locals lost their seats to outsiders and became viewers. But these were socialist days and an edict had been passed around saying that only those born within the sound of an elephant’s trumpet from the village could crew its boat. And on this gloriously sunny but chill morning, the motley crews of out-of-shape villagers puffed steam into the cold air. There was no doubt there were no athletes on display this day. It seemed hardly possible that more incongruous teams would ever be gathered. Different ages, genders, builds, sizes of girth, levels of disability and mental state; all were on display.

The boats were sturdy and long, accommodating anywhere from thirty to fifty rowers in each. Most were hand carved from solid timber and stank from a hundred layers of linseed oil. All of the crews were in need of professional coaching. The starboard to starboard rule of passage had never entered the rule books of the Pak Lai races. They floated sideways. They collided. They laughed. They formed logjams of boats held together with oars and careened downstream. They laughed some more. Siri and Daeng watched the circus with tears of mirth rolling down their cheeks. Their favourite was one bright green boat whose crew seemed to be on the waning side of sixty. Most of the women had a smudge of red where their teeth used to be. They chewed cuds of betel and grinned horribly. One particularly gaunt man appeared to be the village headman and he shouted instructions that were either ignored completely or met with howls of derision. As they seemed to have trouble fighting against the current, Daeng lovingly nicknamed this crew the Uphill Rowing Club.

‘Do you suppose they’ll get it right by tomorrow?’ Daeng laughed.

‘I very much doubt a month of practice would improve matters too much,’ said Siri.

‘I can’t-’

Daeng’s thought was interrupted by a loud knock at their door. The door wasn’t locked so they both shouted, ‘Come in!’ but the knocker did not do so. Siri was out of breath by the time he reached the handle. He opened the door and was confronted by a short but very attractive woman around Daeng’s age. She wore a beautiful Lao phasin and a crisp white blouse. Her thick hair was fastened in a chignon with two gold hairpins. Behind her was a Chinese-looking man of the same height. His head was shaven and, for some reason, he wore a long white nightshirt.

‘Doctor Siri,’ she said, not a question. Her smile was that of a much younger person. If her teeth were false they’d been fashioned by a craftsman.

‘Yes?’ said Siri, suddenly aware he was dressed in nothing but a threadbare towel.

‘I am Madame Peung,’ she said in impeccable French. ‘People have been calling me Madame Keui of late so that is the person you might have been expecting. But, what’s in a name? Please call me whichever you wish.’

Siri was about to hold out his hand but the visitor put her palms together in a nop. The authorities had outlawed the bourgeois salute but it still felt right. If he hadn’t been holding up his towel with one hand he would have returned it. The bald man merely nodded.

‘My brother, Mr Tang, lost the power of speech after an explosion when he was in the military,’ she said. ‘Neither can he hear. But he has great sense. He feels our meanings.’

Then, in Vietnamese, she said, ‘I hope you’re enjoying your retirement. It must be difficult to know what to do with your days now.’

Siri was fluent in both French and Vietnamese but of course both were spiced by his Lao. Yet there was something peculiar about this woman’s languages. It was as if … as if she were speaking to him with his accent. As if she’d borrowed the words from him.

Madame Daeng joined them at the door.

‘We have guests,’ she said. ‘Why haven’t you invited them in?’

Siri made the introductions as they all walked to the veranda. Madame Peung and Tang sat on the deckchairs. Siri sat on the railing, being careful to keep his knees together. Madame Daeng found herself dragging the heavy wooden chair over to join them. Madame Peung proved to be most agreeable for a witch. After talking about their respective journeys, bemoaning the cost of goods at the local markets, and one or two jokes, the three communicators had apparently broken the ice. So much so that Madame Peung decided they were close enough for her to toss a few sticks of dynamite into the embers of bonhomie.

‘Before he shot me, I was as Lao as you two,’ she said.

‘Sorry?’ said Daeng.

‘You’ve heard I speak Lao with a Vietnamese accent,’ she said. ‘But before the break-in to my house two months ago, my Vietnamese and French had been quite basic. After I was shot I found myself channelling Hong Phouc, a Vietnamese mandarin of the late nineteenth century.’

‘How badly were you injured?’ Daeng asked.

‘Oh, I was killed,’ she said.

It’s not easy to keep a straight face when the person you’re talking to insists they were once dead. She’d delivered the line so deadpan that both Siri and Daeng smiled at her, expecting a punchline. But she continued.

‘They still haven’t caught him, the murderer. So they don’t know why I was targeted. He didn’t take anything from the house. Hong Phouc suggests that it was part of the vast cosmic plan. The same man shot me on two separate occasions. The second bullet didn’t do any harm at all.’

‘Because you were already dead,’ smiled Daeng.

Before becoming involved with Siri and his band of merry ghosts, Daeng would probably have made a joke at this juncture and dismissed the woman as a nutcase. But she’d heard of so much weirdness from her husband that almost anything was possible. Almost. Siri, on the other hand, was so engrossed his knees drifted apart.

‘Evidently,’ said Madame Peung, averting her eyes and letting out a gut laugh that suggested she was every bit as bewildered by it all as Daeng. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it? On the night I was shot for the first time, all I remember was looking up from my bed to see a strange man leaning over me. I heard a crash from the gun. Three days later I awoke in the same bed at exactly the same time. Of course I didn’t know then that three days had passed. I thought it was the same night and the shooting was a dream. I took the torch, went to the bathroom and had the longest pee I’ve ever had in my life. I didn’t think it would ever end. I passed the mirror and I was … different. I was younger. Oh, not by a lot but enough to notice. And my body was in better shape. I wondered whether that trip to the bathroom was part of the dream. I was confused. I returned to the bed and slept till morning. I was awoken by a scream. My live-in girl was standing in the doorway to my room with her hands over her mouth. I asked her what was wrong. She screamed again and ran off. I didn’t see her again.

‘I went down to the village to see the headman. But as I walked past the houses all I heard were screams and the slamming of doors. I asked what was wrong but nobody would talk to me. There was one old woman I had befriended many years before. She made charcoal. We used to talk a lot. She was the only one who wasn’t afraid of me.

‘ “Of course they’re scared,” she said. “The menfolk carried your body down to the pyre yesterday and we watched you go up in smoke. You were killed by an intruder three days ago.”

‘I was astounded.

‘ “Of course it’s a mistake,” I told her. “It must have been somebody else. Someone who looked like me.”

‘ “It was you, sure enough,” she said.

‘ “Then, who am I?” I asked.

‘ “Who indeed,” she said.

‘For the next few days I tried to make contact. I went to everybody I knew. People whose children I’d seen as babies, watched them grow up. I’d bought goods from their shops. Some of them had worked for me at the house. Of course I knew all this but I couldn’t convince them that I was me. And there was this awful Vietnamese accent. So, slowly, I retreated to my house and started to live like a hermit. Then people began to come. Strangers. They said they’d heard that I’d been reborn and wanted me to help them locate relatives on the other side. The first few visitors I threw out angrily. But after they’d gone I had dreams. It was true. Those lost relatives really did come to me. Hong Phouc introduced them. I really could see them. Talk to them. It frightened me. I didn’t know what it all meant so I called for my brother to come and stay with me. He wasn’t surprised at all. Our family always knew he had some innate gifts that he could not express. He has been a great comfort to me.

‘When more strangers came I listened to them and I helped them find the bodies of their relatives. It was all quite simple. They tried to give me rewards but I didn’t want their money or their jewels. Every visitor I swore to secrecy. “Do not tell anyone else what I do here.” But still they came. And after two months I got the first visit from Madame Ho, the minister’s wife. And that, dear doctor, is why I am here. And some of your questions at least have been answered.’

‘Siri, you’re drooling,’ said Daeng.

During the remarkable tale, the doctor had lowered himself from the railing and sat cross-legged but discreetly in front of the witch. Madame Daeng retreated inside.

‘But how? How do you talk to them?’ Siri asked.

‘The same way I’m talking to you,’ Madame Peung replied, ‘except I use my mind. Look down there.’

They looked through the railings towards the river.

‘Do you see her?’ she asked.

‘The woman on the rock?’

‘That’s the one. Ask her why she’s here.’

‘I can’t. I mean, the only way I know how to ask is with my mouth. I could shout at her.’

‘That wouldn’t work. She’s trying really hard to talk to you.’

‘You see? I’m a failure.’

‘It will come, brother Siri. I can help you.’

‘You don’t know how pleased I am to hear that,’ said Siri.

They were startled by a flash. Madame Daeng had returned with her favourite Polaroid Instant camera and, before anyone could object, she had snapped the visitors for prosperity. She watched the print come to life in her hand before taking a second photo.

‘Just for the family album,’ said Daeng.

It was in the second photograph that she noticed the glint in her husband’s eye. It was a twinkle the type of which she hadn’t seen for a very long time.

The rest of the morning was spent in what Siri interpreted as a leisurely manner. Once Madame Peung and her brother had left them to return to the old French administration building behind the square, Siri and Daeng went down to one of the tents that had mushroomed along the river bank with Mr Geung and enjoyed some local rice porridge. Ugly stood guard. The minister would be arriving the following day and the witch had told them she had a lot to prepare so she wouldn’t be able to join them.

‘I don’t think you should be so pushy,’ said Daeng.

‘What do you mean?’ Siri asked.

‘If she wants to share her secrets with you, she will.’

‘I hardly pushed.’

‘No? “I would really like to watch your preparations.” “Do you need to be in a trance?” “Do they speak to you in voices you can actually hear?” You bombarded the poor woman.’

‘Those are the questions I want answers to, Daeng.’

‘It was just a little bit demeaning.’

‘I don’t-’

‘Mr Geung. How about another bowl for you?’ said Daeng. ‘I don’t know where you put all that food, really I don’t.’

‘I’m a va … va … vacuum cleaner,’ said Geung which caused laughter and led on to other subjects. Breakfast was followed by a leisurely stroll downriver followed by Ugly and some eleven disciples. Ever conscious of his wife’s arthritis, Siri asked several times whether Daeng would like to rest.

‘Siri,’ she said. ‘This isn’t the Olympics. I’m perfectly capable of walking.’

This told the doctor one of two things. One that she was secretly in pain and bluffing. Or, two, that she had remembered to bring her opium and really was feeling nothing. They found an idyllic spot to rest. Siri dozed. Mr Geung skimmed flat stones but was unable to surpass his record of two. And Daeng sat in the shade of a tree and wrote in her notebook. When they returned, it was almost lunchtime and they were all in a relaxed mood. It was too hot for the rowers to practise. A large pirogue was tied up at the dock. It contained just two teak logs but it already sat as low in the water as could be considered safe. Daeng left Siri and Geung and walked over to the pilot of the boat.

‘She’s probably going to give him a lecture on deforestation,’ said Siri.

‘It’s cruel,’ said Geung. ‘The tree sssspirits are not happy.’

Siri wondered whether Geung had learned about the malevolent spirits of the forest from him or whether he perhaps saw them himself.

‘So, what do you make of the witch, Geung?’

Mr Geung had met her briefly on Siri’s balcony.

‘She’s pretty.’

‘Granted. But what do you think of her? She claims she can talk to spirits just like you and I are talking now. Just one time I would like to grab myself a spirit and have a good old chat over a cup of tea. Maybe even Yeh Ming. Did you know I host a thousand-year-old spirit?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wonder if she … How do you know that?’

‘The second bottle of … of … of Johnny Walker in Xiang Kouang.’

‘There, and I used to be so disciplined. So, do you think she can talk to my shaman, Geung? Do you think she can teach me to?’

There was no answer.

‘Geung?’

‘Comrade Madame Daeng is pr … pr … prettier.’

‘Right.’

That night, Siri dreamed of Frenchmen. They had the appearance of the military. Short hair. Fit. That stature that comes from years of standing to attention. But there were no uniforms to confirm this theory. They were naked but it was certainly not an erotic dream. The Frenchmen were in hell. Despite its reputation as a forgiving religion, Buddhism has a fine selection of hells. There were hot hells and there were cold hells. These poor French blighters were in one of the coldest — Utpala. It was recognizable because their skin had turned the blue of water lilies. There were six of them and they were huddled together for warmth like penguins. As Siri watched, the huddle became a ruck and then a scrum. A rugby match was on in hell. The French played three-a-side. They leaned together and created a tunnel between them. General Charles DeGaulle himself was the scrum half. He leaned over, called out some indecipherable code and threw the ball between the legs. But the ball was not a ball. It was a head. Siri caught a glimpse of it before it disappeared into the scrummage. It was the head of his wife.

Siri awoke with a loud, shuddering sigh. The first thing he saw by the moonlight through the window was Madame Daeng’s head on the pillow. He was filled with dread. The eyes were open and shot with blood. Her lips were purple. He poked at her nose and the head rolled to the far side, off the pillow and landed with a clunk on the concrete floor.

Siri awoke with a loud, shuddering sigh. The first thing he saw by the moonlight through the window was Madame Daeng’s head on the pillow. She slept peacefully with a blissful smile on her lips. He took hold of the sheet and edged it down. Her head was, thankfully, attached to her neck which in turn held company with the rest of her. He hated those false awakenings. With too much adrenalin coursing through his veins now to sleep he watched his wife’s gentle breaths fill her chest before travelling through her body to her magnificent vital organs. She made it look so easy. He never tired of watching her breathe. Every night spent beside her was an honour.