The Woman Who Wouldn't Die

6

When Madame Daeng awoke next morning the sun was already smiling full-faced through her window. In Vientiane she awoke naturally before the sun appeared and began her preparations for the restaurant. But here she could sleep soundly, uninterrupted by obligations. She looked to her right. She was alone. The bathroom was one floor down and she assumed her husband’s ancient bladder had driven him there. The muscles in her legs contracted and grabbed cruelly at her nerves as she swung them off the mattress. With her feet on the ground she waited for them to announce that they were ready to begin the arduous task of carrying her around for another day. The first half-hour was always the hardest. Momentum took her to the open doorway and on to the balcony. There was a strong flowery scent in the air as if Mother Nature was excited. The air was cool and fresh. It was second honeymoon weather.

She leaned on the balustrade. The regatta practice had begun. There were signs of improvement. The boats were colliding less frequently. There were fewer men and women overboard. One boat even appeared to have its oars in the air and back in the water in time to the cox’s drum. For a while. But the Uphill Rowing Club still splashed around like a drowning cricket. She could hear the sounds of the oars clattering together and the laughter of the old ladies.

She leaned over the rail to see whether she could catch sight of Ugly and his minions on the freshly cut grass below. But there were no dogs. Or perhaps there was one. In the shade of a Rhinoceros-Droppings tree sat Siri on one of their deckchairs. He was staring transfixed at the face of Madame Peung who sat opposite him with her trim old-lady bottom on the other.

My mother and I lived in that small laundry room for the next nine years. All my school years had been spent ironing. I considered myself bright. I’d learned to read and write Lao at the temple but there was nothing to read in my language. So I taught myself to read first French, then Vietnamese and I found a great assortment of books and magazines left behind by travellers. There was no mention of Laos in any of them. It made me feel even more that I was an insignificant person living in an insignificant country. I learned that the world worshipped money. Only the sons and daughters of the royals were sent overseas to study and they came back having laundered out all that dirty Laoness from their personalities. They were more French than Asian.

It saddened me that I had no value. Nothing to contribute. The Vietnamese boys were always trying to date me. I’d been flattered at first. They wore the best clothes, rode new bicycles. A couple even had motorcycles. But they weren’t wooing me so we could drink cafe au lait and discuss politics. I was Lao. I didn’t even make it on to the pecking order. I saw the Lao girls give in to them. They all needed somebody to love them in whatever way was available. But they couldn’t have me. They tried but I was handy with a knife even then. Nobody messed with me. I’d inherited my father’s fire. My mother told me stories about him. How he marched up to the administrator’s office in his handmade straw sandals and announced that there would be no taxes paid that season.

‘What do we get for our taxes?’ he’d asked the government interpreter. ‘We have no roads. No clean water. No help when the crops fail. You take our men for slave labour to grow your coffee and mine our gems. And then you have the gall to tax us for the privilege.’

My father returned from that first meeting with fifty lashes across his back. That night he sat shirtless at a bonfire and one by one the men walked passed him and spat raw rice liquor into his wounds. They drank through the night heaping curses upon the white gods. By sunlight they were prepared for their first riot. The revolution spread through the hills. The French called in more soldiers. My father recruited more fighters. And for three years they matched the French arms with Lao grit.

He told his men,

‘Individually, the French are clerks and bookkeepers. Weedy men resentful at being posted to this sweaty country with its mosquitoes and biting centipedes and godless brown people. But you put enough clerks and bookkeepers together and arm them and they think they can do whatever they want. One of us is worth ten of them. Twenty.’

But they did put enough clerks and bookkeepers together and they put down the riots and then there were just the women and children. And what could we do against the might of a great European nation?

The official from the department of Housing was short. Not legally a midget but unlikely to reach 140 centimetres in his remaining lifetime. He stood in the open doorway of the hotel room looking up at the tall Frenchman.

‘Oui?’ said the Frenchman.

Comrade Koomki introduced himself in Lao, then broken Vietnamese, then Russian. The Frenchman only knew four words of Russian.

‘I don’t speak Russian.’

Comrade Koomki shook his head, looked at his shoes, held up one index finger and ran off along the corridor. Ten minutes later there was another knock at Barnard’s door. This time there were two visitors. Comrade Koomki had returned with a dirty man in gloves. He was barefooted and wore a large straw hat.

‘Who are you?’ asked Barnard.

‘I am the gardener,’ the man replied in very good French. ‘My name is Apsara.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘Because this man asked me to come.’

‘And who is he?’

‘He would prefer not to say.’

‘Why do you speak French?’

‘In the old regime I was the night manager here. I’m being retrained from the grass roots up. I shall return.’

‘So?’

The gardener and Comrade Koomki spoke together in Lao.

‘The comrade’s cousin sells spices at the morning market. She heard you asking for Daeng Keopakam. Nobody there knew that name. But the comrade here remembered it. The lady in question has since married and has a new surname. He knows where they live.’

‘And when so many comrades in so many government departments refuse to give me this information, why is this nameless comrade prepared to deal with me?’

More Lao.

‘The comrade wants to know whether you intend to do any harm.’

‘And do you recommend I give him a positive or a negative response to this?’

‘The comrade has just lost his position due to them. He is keen to have revenge on your Madame Daeng and her husband. He would be pleased if some ill fortune were to befall them. He would also like a more fiscal reward.’

‘Then tell him I can promise both riches and ill fortune in large helpings.’

‘Then I believe you two can do business.’

Nurse Dtui had been through a rough day at the chalk face. Her first-year nurses fell into a giggling fit every time Dtui poked her ruler anywhere near the midriff of the plaster dummy of a man with all his organs visible. The spinal injuries teacher was off with malaria so Dtui had to teach back-to-back classes all day. And, not for the first time, the administrators had announced that, due to problems at the treasury, the staff would be receiving its salary in vermicelli rice noodles this month. Even without the rapidly growing daughter strapped to her back, Dtui would have creaked under the weight of responsibility. There was a Lao proverb that called teachers the engineers of the soul and Professor Dtui was starting to wonder whether she had the right nuts and bolts for the job.

She arrived at the police dormitory at nine p.m. The lights were on in every room but hers. Why had she chosen the only conscientious police inspector in Vientiane? She walked past a slim man who was sitting cross-legged on top of the bicycle shed. From a distance he’d looked like some geometrical diagram. As it would have been foolish for a robber to lie in wait in front of the police dormitory, she assumed he was an off-duty policeman and passed him quite calmly.

‘You Dtui?’ he asked.

‘Depends,’ she said.

‘I’ve got a letter for Dtui from her Auntie Daeng.’

‘You could have slid it under the door,’ she said.

‘Then I wouldn’t have got my other half, would I?’

‘Half of what?’

‘The five US greenbacks she promised me.’

‘Then it’s really not your night, is it.’

She fumbled for her door key.

‘It might be important,’ he said.

‘Then I’ll find that out when she comes back to Vientiane.’

‘Come on. I’m a poor boat pilot. She promised.’

Dtui turned to him and put her fists on her hips.

‘You see this uniform?’ she asked. ‘Am I an airline pilot? No. I’m a nurse. And do you know what that means? If they have money to pay me, I earn twenty of your precious greenbacks a month. If you think I’m going to give you a week’s salary for a note, you’re dreaming.’

‘She promised.’

‘No she didn’t. Now, go away.’

‘I walked up from the port just to give you this. My cargo’s still down there. Anyone could walk off with it. I’m doing you a favour.’

‘Then you’d better hurry back.’

Dtui inserted the key in the lock and stepped into her room with nothing more to say. She turned on the light and sighed. She missed the old days when people did favours for purely moral credit. Two minutes later, the letter slid under the door and mumbled curses could be heard heading off into the night. She left the letter lying there, plugged in the kettle, untied the knot that held her daughter and lowered a sleeping Malee on to the mattress. She envied her daughter’s slumber. She told herself for the millionth time how clever she’d been to produce such a beautiful child and how lucky she was that the father was still around. Distracted, perhaps, but devoted.

Once she’d poured the hot water on to her instant noodles she closed her eyes and imagined grilled chicken and turnip and fresh garden cabbage. But her subconscious did nothing for the rehydrated pasta. She owed socialism a debt of gratitude. She thought how much fatter she’d have been if she actually enjoyed her meals. It wasn’t until she was halfway down the bowl of virtual food that she reached for the letter. There were two photographs and a page of handwriting torn from a notebook. Daeng sent her regards. Told her how pleasant Pak Lai was. How much she was looking forward to the boat races. Then she made an unusual request.

The unproductive half of Saturday — unless you happened to be teaching an intensive course to silly nurses — and all of Sunday, were the days the Lao were given to rest their weary joints. To be certain the populace didn’t waste this opportunity, the Party had arranged joyful activities during which a comrade might get together with new friends and laugh and sing uplifting songs. Inevitably, the activities involved the use of garden tools or nails or large tubs of wet cement. The Party would provide a packed lunch of sticky rice and foodstuff fermented to the point of micro-organism meltdown. Nobody was forced to enjoy these adventure weekends. Yes, your neighbourhood chicken counter might take note of your name if you were found lounging in your home. Yes, there might be hold-ups with your rice ration at the co-op. Yes, your name might appear on the list of suspected insurgent sympathizers pinned to the village noticeboard. But, yes, a citizen was perfectly free to choose what he and his family did with his weekend. Madame Daeng had asked Dtui and Inspector Phosy to give up an entire Sunday to conduct a little investigation.

Dtui was only too pleased.

The man calling himself Herve Barnard sat in the closed noodle restaurant on Fahngoum that Madame Keopakam, now Madame Paiboun, aka Daeng, had made her home in Vientiane. The back door hung by its hinges and the bloody tyre iron lay on the table in front of him. He’d already ransacked the upstairs rooms. The bedroom. The messy library with its hundreds of French books. The desk in the small office. There was an album. Black and white photographs of youths at a camp. There was Daeng, the way she’d looked when he’d fallen in love with her. He stared at her. Emotions crashed into him like a multi-vehicle pile-up on an icy motorway. Before her he’d loved nobody. And since? How could he ever trust a woman after that? In five short months she had taken away all those parts of him that gave a person potential. She had been that moment. The fulcrum. The point when everything became unbalanced. As long as she continued to breathe the same air as him, create currents in the same atmosphere, his ever-shortening life would be intolerable. She needed to be gone so that he could die.

He could already smell the smoke. The album. The books. The desk. Soon the entire restaurant. Not spite, merely a tactic of war. Wherever they were they’d hear about this. They’d hurry back. They’d find the body. She would be distraught and vulnerable and distracted and he would kill her. It was the only way to find peace.

The Minister of Agriculture, ex-General Popkorn, and his wife arrived by helicopter at eleven a.m. The last celebrity to make an appearance in the province had been Ai Dum the country music singer and the crowd then had been marginally smaller. But, of course, back then, there hadn’t been cadres going door to door dragging comrades from their hammocks. Back then they hadn’t come ‘to make a good show for the province’. They’d come because they enjoyed a good dance and a sing-song. The crowd of several hundred this Saturday was subdued because they knew the minister would neither sing nor dance, and just as well, perhaps. As he walked through the aisle they’d created for him they seemed unimpressed. Another old man in a grey safari suit.

But what a wife. Madame Ho was every bit as colourful as the old royal regatta pennants. She dressed in Western style in a white and orange frock daringly short to show her lamb-hock calves, and yellow high heels that defied all the principles of foundation engineering. She was a buffalo teetering on half-centimetre points. She was plastered in make-up that from a far distance might have made her look gorgeous. But as she passed the half-heartedly cheering locals with their little Lao flags, they could all see that the cosmetics did not follow the contours of her features. Hers was a deleted and redrawn face whose pencil lines still showed through.

The ministerial arrival was recorded in photographs and they all knew that the caption — Local agronomists show their admiration for their minister — would appear in the next edition of Siang Pasason, which nobody ever read. They hurried ex-General Popkorn to the governor’s house. Governor Siri was in the dark as to the purpose of the visit and the status of all the players he’d been told to accommodate. The official line was that this was an event to pass on the Party’s hopes that the boat races might stimulate camaraderie amongst the proletariat and show the country folk that a little cooperation can achieve a great deal. And that this message would trickle down to cooperative farmers. He had no idea that the minister was in Sanyaburi to evoke a ghost.

After refreshments, the minister went to the river, made a long speech to the assembled boatmen and women, then cut a ribbon suspended between a tree and Miss Sanyaburi, 1978, in traditional dress. And thus the Pak Lai boat race festival was officially opened. The minister waved, shook the governor’s hand and told him he needed a private room to speak with his aides. This room had already been organized and tables had been arranged into a rectangle with all the chairs facing inward to an island of imitation flowers and a handwritten card welcoming Our Dear Friends from Vientiane. The governor was more than a little miffed to have been excluded from this gathering.

Attending the closed meeting were the minister and his wife, Madame Peung and her brother, Tang, Dr Siri the coroner and his wife, Daeng, and a retarded fellow whom the minister assumed to be some part of the ceremony. The minister sat at a ridiculous teak throne dragged in at great expense to make an impression. To his left sat Siri. The general remembered the old doctor from numerous battlefront campaigns. Like many of his ministerial colleagues he had great respect for the doctor’s skills behind the front line, patching up wounded comrades and saving lives. But, also like his colleagues, he found the old man’s reluctance to take orders a reflection of his anarchistic leanings. He was to be avoided socially. There had been a circular to that effect. The party line was that Dr Siri Paiboun had been ideologically tainted by too many years in France and the early onset of senility. It didn’t however stop them from using his various skills whenever their own were lacking. And, on this day, in this room, Siri was the minister’s only ally.

‘Stack of lizard poop,’ he said, leaning towards Siri.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Spirits and digging up the dead. Best left where he fell, as far as I’m concerned, Siri. Rest in peace, isn’t that what they say? No need for all this.’

‘I was under the impression you’d signed all the travel documents for us to be here,’ said Siri.

‘Certainly I did. It was the only way I could shut her up.’

On the word ‘her’, he’d raised his chin in the direction of his colourful wife. Siri looked at the woman. He recalled that the Ministry of Culture had issued a list of culturally unacceptable fashion statements. On it were long hair for men, clipped hair for women, revealing shorts and skirts, uplifting brassieres and, as far as he could remember, make-up. The list had obviously passed Madame Ho going in the wrong direction. She was ablaze with cornfield yellow and fresh-bruise purple and Wattay blue. Siri was certain if anyone struck a match in front of her she’d go up like a rocket. She was loud, too, and spoke Lao with the same linguistic prowess as Yul Brynner speaking Thai.

‘I take it this wasn’t a love match,’ said Siri, not caring in the least how offensive the question might have sounded.

Popkorn glared at him, then smiled.

‘Her family had a fleet of cargo ships out of Hai Phong. We needed the concession. They needed someone to marry their daughter.’

Siri admired her hairy ankles and the quote, ‘Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends,’ sprang into his mind. Undefeated as a general. Massacred as a husband.

The minister leaned forward and addressed the group.

‘Can we get this damned thing over with?’ he said.

His wife glared at him. Madame Peung stood and smiled at the old soldier.

‘Comrade Popkorn,’ she said. ‘I’m terribly sorry to have imposed this journey upon you. I know you’re a busy man. But I needed to be here in person in order to cross-reference the location of your brother’s corpse. I know that you believe this is all a lot of nonsense. Three months ago I would have felt exactly the same. Then, suddenly, something remarkable happened. I woke up as a different person. I was, you might say, in another reality. And I suddenly had a gift.’

Siri looked at her. She did not emote. Nor did she prance. She spoke calmly and used simple Lao. She told her story the way a baguette seller might describe the day she’d won a minor prize in the Thai national lottery. There was excitement in her eyes but not boasting. Siri hung on her every word. He might even have been smiling. At least that was how Madame Daeng noticed it. All this and the main feature had not yet begun. Brother Tang sat to one side ripping up crude paper cartoons of money and clothes and gold bullion.

‘You’re all in doubt,’ said Madame Peung. ‘I would be too. But the spirits come to me with ease. It’s as if I can pluck them out of the air at will. Let me take this one, for example. Madame Ho.’

The minister’s wife let out a Pekinese whelp.

‘Since our session together when we discussed your sister she has visited me often,’ said Madame Peung. ‘But I am sorry to tell you her bones will never be reunited with those of your ancestors. She was afraid of the socialist takeover. She boarded a refugee boat headed for Australia. It was not seaworthy and it sank in the deep ocean. I am sorry. Nobody survived.’

The minister’s wife gasped then burst into tears.

‘Kiang,’ she sobbed. ‘Kiang. Why didn’t you stay? I could have found you a gullible husband in the military. You would have been safe.’

The minister’s eyes rolled to the ceiling and back. He rarely travelled with his wife and everyone could see why. Madame Peung left her seat, squeezed through a gap between the tables and knelt in front of the Vietnamese woman. She held her hand.

‘Kiang took something of yours to remember you by. Was there something you both treasured?’

‘Our cat, TinTin,’ said Madame Ho.

‘TinTin is there with her,’ said Madame Peung. ‘They both miss you.’

‘That’s lov … lov … lovely,’ said Mr Geung.

Madame Daeng’s eyes joined the general’s on the ceiling.

‘I really don’t want this to be a circus,’ said Madame Peung. ‘I’m usually alone with the victim’s relatives. But in order to find the minister’s brother I need a sympathetic audience. Let’s not forget I’m new to all this. I can feel the hostility in the room. It doesn’t help. So, excuse me for what I’m about to do.’

She turned and looked directly into Daeng’s eyes. It was all the doctor’s wife could do not to turn away.

‘The red-haired man is with us,’ said Madame Peung.

Just that and Daeng closed in on herself like a frond of sensitive grass. She didn’t want to hear any more.

‘He has been punished over and over for what he did to your sister. He holds no grudge against you. There is no threat from him. From others, yes. But not him.’

Daeng said nothing but the witch had reached an icy hand inside her chest and pulled out her deepest tumour. She could feel the cold space that remained there.

Like a chess master playing several games simultaneously, Madame Peung walked around the rectangle of tables to where Mr Geung sat. She reached out her hand and he looked at it unaware that he was expected to take hold of it.

‘Geung,’ she said, ‘your father is sorry. He will always be ashamed of the way he treated you.’

‘My father is … is … is …’ said Geung.

‘He’s gone, Geung,’ said Madame Peung. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, he’s not,’ said Geung.

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Mr Geung surprised everyone by smiling at this news. But he had no more to say. He was a man with an elaborate network of lights and sounds that played inside him like a tightly wrapped pinball table, but few of them could be seen or heard from the outside.

Meanwhile, Madame Peung had arrived at the seat of Dr Siri. She knelt in front of him, smiled and took his hand. He doubted anything she had to say would cause him any great concern. He was wrong.

‘Would you like to hear from Boua?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said, instinctively. His hand now grasping hers tightly.

‘I mean …’ he continued. ‘No. But thanks.’

There were any number of reasons why this would not be a particularly appropriate time to chat celestially with his dead wife. Not least of these was the presence of his current wife seated opposite.

‘I understand,’ said Madame Peung. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps some other time.’

She turned and, still on her knees, crawled before the minister.

‘The energy is right now, Comrade,’ she said. ‘We can find your brother.’

Inspired by the show he’d witnessed, Minister Popkorn had no hesitation. He pulled the black and white photograph from his top pocket. It showed a dashing Lao soldier, arm in arm with a younger and skinnier Popkorn. They were posed in front of the Hanoi opera house. Attached to the photo with a paper clip was a small plastic photo envelope. She looked at him quizzically.

‘My wife thought it might help,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘He spent-’

‘He spent some time as a monk,’ Madame Peung interrupted. ‘When he was first ordained they cut off his eyebrows. For some reason he kept them. He was a little strange like that. He said that if anything ever happened to him you should plant them and grow a new him.’

The minster was astounded.

‘It was … a joke,’ he said. ‘He liked to joke. He was a fun-loving young man.’

Siri, it had to be said, was a little perturbed that the general should hang on to his brother’s eyebrows, but he could see a real affection between the two men. He was more impressed with his witch with every revelation. Her melodic laugh. Her matter-of-fact telling of intimacies. The glint in her eye. She was, no doubt, the real thing. Her brother had already sensed that the time was right. He had lit incense sticks on either side of her chair and was tapping gently on a small, handheld drum. The smoke of burning spirit money rose from a large mortar behind him. Madame Peung returned to her seat. With everyone’s permission she began the ceremony to locate the body of Major Ly. She started with an explanation.

‘Places,’ she said. ‘All places are governed by the holy mothers of the pantheon. Before we contact them we need to pay homage to the wandering souls. They delight in the ashes of riches and finery. My brother is finding a rhythm that will ease me into a shallow trance, although I have to admit I don’t have trouble slipping away. I’m told that normally we need all the trappings and I should wear a red hood and all that, but I think that’s for the tourists. I merely wait for my spirit guide like a passenger on a train platform; when he gets here I’ll shudder a little as he enters my body and, from there on, he does all the work. If you could just be patient for a few moments. Thank you.’

Siri had been expecting a song and dance act. He’d attended enough exorcisms and seances — had even conducted one of his own, albeit like a drunk attempting to fly a jumbo jet. So he expected that at any minute the kaftaned assistant would drape the red hood over the medium’s head and beat the hell out of a tambourine until she fell into her trance. But Madame Peung merely put the brother’s photograph on the plastic-covered chair arm beside the minister, took hold of his wrist and found a pulse. She nodded to the beat and Tang the assistant beat in time to it on the drum.

Madame Peung smiled at Siri, sighed and lowered her eyes. The sounds in the room came from the drums and shouts and music speakers back down along the river bank. They all watched the medium. Tang was tapping the drum with two fingers but the sound seemed to vibrate around the room. Then, a hum, a deep melodic hum emerged from the back of his throat. It was unvoiced, monotone, hypnotic and seemed not to need an intake of breath in order to continue its seamless drone. Everyone in the room sank into its warmth. And then the witch shuddered. It was barely noticeable but everyone in the room, on edge, witnessed it. She nodded slowly. Smiled now and then. Laughed silently once. Then, after, some five minutes, she sighed. Her brother ceased his dirge and began to collect together the props. He seemed to know it was all over.

‘Hmm,’ said Madame Peung, as if mulling over a minor plumbing problem. ‘I know now why his body wasn’t found.’

‘Why?’ asked the minister.

‘He was trapped on a boat. It was a large boat and he was inside the cabin when the vessel capsized. It flipped over and he was unable to get out. He drowned.’

‘Where?’ asked the minister.

‘Not far from here, as I already intimated. It’s about ten kilometres upriver. I am still visualizing the landscape.’

‘Why, after all these years, has nobody noticed a boat submerged in the river?’ asked Daeng.

‘That’s a good question, Madame Daeng,’ said Madame Peung. ‘I think it’s because, well, I don’t feel water around him. It’s more claustrophobic than that. Perhaps he’s in a cave? Or, no. In fact, I believe he and the boat might be encased in mud.’

‘That’s not unlikely,’ said the minister. ‘There are long, deep stretches around these parts. In places the river can reach a depth of sixty metres. In some spots you could sink a pirogue and the silt and mud just sucks you down. Over time I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a sunken boat vanished completely.’

‘Oh, my word. This is a major project,’ said Madame Ho. ‘Call in the engineers, husband.’

‘Now wait!’ said the minister. ‘I can’t requisition a unit of men just like that. What would I tell their commanders?’

‘You’re the Minister of Agriculture,’ she reminded him. ‘You don’t have to tell them anything. You give the order. They come running. Not terribly complicated.’

Siri let out a silent puff of air. If he’d had a wife like this he would certainly have shot her long ago.

‘Before I start calling for reinforcements I hope you don’t mind if I go and take a look for myself,’ said the minister, although his sarcasm had a pleading element to it. ‘Madame Peung, would you care for a short helicopter ride?’

‘Oh, that sounds like fun,’ she said.

‘Right then,’ said the minister. ‘My helicopter is only fitted with four passenger seats. So that’s-’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said the witch, ‘but I’ll have to have my brother along. I may be in need of another brief trance as we get closer to the site.’

‘Then we’re full,’ said the minister. ‘You, your brother, me and Dr Siri.’

‘Why him?’ said Madame Ho and Daeng at exactly the same time.

‘He’s the coroner,’ said the minister. ‘There might be bodies down there. I’ve never seen my brother without his skin on, so if we find him I’d need a formal identification. That would avoid having to bring in troops. We can ship his remains home and be done with all this nonsense. You do have his medical records with you, don’t you, Siri?’

Siri tapped his shoulder bag.

‘I don’t actually swim that well,’ he said.

‘Never mind,’ said the minister. ‘If there’s anything in the water I’ll have the pilot and the mechanic bring it up to the bank.’

Siri could see that the minister was sold on the idea that Madame Peung would be able to pinpoint the whereabouts of Major Ly. He’d arrived sceptical but was now a believer. As evening was fast approaching, they scheduled the flight for first thing the following morning. Siri was every bit as excited about the trip as Madame Peung.

It was then that the French made a seriously bad call. The Thais were posturing again, claiming this stretch of land, moving that boundary line. The French knew that we Lao showed little loyalty or gratitude to our colonial leaders. They were certain we were so spineless we would side with anybody, and the Thais — at a great stretch — were our ethnic counterparts. Our histories were interlaced (usually with the Thais sacking and pillaging our cities). But thanks to a little cardsharpery at the diplomatic level, the Thais had claimed the west bank of the Mekhong as their own and a third of our Lao brothers and sisters now found themselves on Thai soil. There were more ethnic Lao in the northeast of Thailand than in Laos itself.

So, in response to this Thai flirtation, the French administrators decided to instil in us a pride in our nation. They organized youth movements across the country. The larger towns held Lao camps where teenagers were gathered to hear about the great Lao kings and famous battles against the cowardly Siamese. They printed anti-Thai propaganda for us to read around the campfire. But something else happened at those camps. The same national pride the French hoped might turn us against the Thais turned round and bit the hand that beat it. The camps formed a foundation for what became a movement to overthrow the colonists. And I was there at the camp in Pakse. Too old to register as a camper, I signed on as a cook.

‘I’m not going to let you read any more till it’s finished.

‘Is this the part where I arrive on the scene?’

‘Why on earth would I find that important enough to include in my memoirs?’

‘I bet you loved me at first sight.’

‘You’re so vain.’

When the French and the Vietnamese came to inspect us, we sang Lao songs and learned what native plants could be used as balms against burns, and waved little paper Lao flags we’d made during art and craft sessions. And when they were gone, our teachers told us about the French atrocities.

Like me, the young people there had seen no worth in themselves and the camps gave us a value. And two of our teachers had studied in France but they weren’t royals. Through their own hard work and raw ability they’d earned degrees in Paris and even though they could have stayed in Europe and made a lot of money, they came home to help develop their people. One of them, a nurse called Bouasawan, whom I wanted so much to be, taught us about the uprising of the lower classes throughout the world. Her husband, Dr Siri Paiboun (and there was the reason I wanted so much to be Boua), was a dashing, funny, intelligent man who taught us the real reason we should be proud. Not because some ancient king massacred another’s army but because we were human beings. We had rights. We deserved respect.

The seeds of the Lao Issara — Free Lao — movement were watered in those camps and many of our youth went on to be leaders in the uprising. The French realized too late that engendering a pride in Lao nationhood was perhaps not such a good idea after all. They disbanded the camps but there was no disbanding the hearts of the Lao now joined in comradeship. The damage was done. We knew who our enemy was, and he wasn’t Thai.