by Graham Joyce
I decided to put things right with the old woman. Since most of the villagers were working in the poppy fields, she was easy to find. Squatting outside her hut, which was adjacent to the one housing the generator, she was smoking.
When I say she was smoking, she was puffing away on a length of bamboo almost as tall as she was, and the diameter of your average domestic rainwater drainpipe. Blue clouds of smoke wafted around her as she puffed contentedly.
‘Opium?’ I gestured at the pipe.
‘Tabac,’ she said. ‘Tabac.’
I squatted next to her, tapping myself on the chest. ‘Me Danny. Danny.’
She got the idea, and told me her name was Nabao, though she never did seem happy with my pronunciation. Laying her stove-pipe aside she led me into her hut.
Inside it was wonderfully orderly and the dirt floor was neatly swept. Some bits of furniture – stools, small tables – were rustic and improvised but there were incongruous objects like a modern chest of drawers – flatpack, possibly – and a wardrobe. The strangest article was a plastic Fred Flintstone clock; it hung on the wall telling the correct time from inside the transparent plastic sleeve in which it was first purchased.
Nabao took a cloth bracelet from the table and tied it to my left wrist. Chattering constantly she attached a small metal disc to the bracelet. She squeezed the bracelet and made sure the disc couldn’t come adrift. I got the impression it was some sort of lucky charm.
Under a table I spotted a small fluorescent strip-light wired to a car battery. Since it was still connected I assumed the car battery was drained. I tapped the battery. ‘No good?’
Nabao rubbed her fingers together to indicate the cost of replacing or recharging the battery. It occurred to me to give her the money to get someone to replace it, but then I had a better idea. The cable from the generator to the radio ran behind her hut. There was that bit of spare wire I’d seen beside the cartons of Calpol. It would only take me a few minutes to take a spur off the main cable and she wouldn’t need a car battery.
Twenty minutes later we had illumination. I had to shut down the generator for a couple of minutes, but when I started it up again and came back to her hut, Nabao was shrieking and spinning and dancing like a teenager. She squeezed my arm and chucked my cheek and slapped her knees. I wished all my customers at home could show half the gratitude for a bit of light.
It was the best thing I ever did in that village. It was also a big mistake.
28
You will have noticed that I have failed to report certain details concerning the attributes and customs of the hill tribe with whom we spent those days. The omission is deliberate. Over the short period in which I lived in that remote village I came to respect its small population and to view its activities from a different perspective. Even now I fear for the survival of the village, and I want to give nothing away which might act as a clue to its precise location and identity.
For this reason I have said little about the traditional costume worn by the villagers, or I have planted one or two misleading details. About the construction of the houses I may have lied. One or two names might be unreliable. These people live hand to mouth, raising the poppy out of the dust by the labour of their bent backs; I don’t want to be the one who tipped off the Thai government forces who come to torch their crops.
It was from Jack that I learned quite a bit about opium growing in the region. The Americans in Vietnam, through the good offices of the CIA, built links with the minority tribes in the border regions of Thailand and Laos, particularly with Hmong guerrillas. Soon the CIA had an army of three hundred thousand mountain-conditioned guerrillas trained to battle the Lao communist forces. In the mid-sixties, to help the Hmong and to encourage loyalty, the CIA made available the services of its own airline, Air America, to ferry Hmong opium to transit points for distribution further afield.
Most of this opium was processed into what Jack called top-grade Number Four heroin and shipped to Saigon. From there it was transported by corrupt officers of the South Vietnamese government to the USA, creating the heroin epidemic of the 1970s.
The opium bandits currently operating out of these hills had prospered directly out of that wartime activity. If I was looking to lay blame for Charlie’s plight I could always find a place for the CIA high on my list.
But of the hill tribe with whom we stayed, what shall I say? That in the cultivation of the poppy their prowess and knowledge rivals even the Hmong. That they match the Akha or the Yao in silversmithing, or that their embroidery skills outstrip the Kareni. That some of the women file their teeth to sharp points, and that polygamy is permitted. That they divide into sub-groups, like the Lahu. And that they originate as a people from Tibet, as do the Lisu.
And that they believe in spirits.
I tried to take a photograph of Nabao next to her new electric light, but even in her happy state, almost delirious with gratitude, she resisted most strongly. She turned her back, she waved me away. I was sorry to let the moment pass, but I had to respect her wishes.
Another time I tried to take some pictures of the villagers working the poppy fields. They became extremely agitated. At first I thought it was because they didn’t want incriminating photographs of themselves to fall into the hands of the police, but I learned that their fear of the camera was of a much more spiritual cast. They were perfectly happy to let me take a few snaps of the poppies in flower, or of the village huts; which I did, and which I still have.
My early notion, that the tribesfolk feared that their soul was being stolen along with their image, was inaccurate. It was a fear of who or what might want to get in the shot along with them. They did not want their image, Jack explained to me, to be trapped in the presence of any spirit which might have been passing at the moment the snap was taken. They feared that the spirit would not be able to leave them. They feared that the spirit would not want to leave them.
Images were living things. Images of themselves, photographs included, were living versions of themselves, at large in the spirit world.
In the middle of my dismissal of the primitive mentality the thought hit me that I had no photographs of myself and Charlie at Oxford: neither at the university nor in the town. I’d always dodged the camera’s eye.
Pleased with myself over the electrification of Nabao’s existence, I returned to our hut. Mick and Charlie were getting along like a house on fire. Charlie was sponging him down with a wet cloth. She had some jungle ointment which she’d put on his mosquito bites. They were laughing together when I entered the hut. ‘All those awful things you told me about Charlie,’ Mick said. ‘And none of them are true!’
This was meant as a joke. No, a half-joke. Or a jibe within a half-joke. Heck, I don’t know, but it rankled. But seeing her laugh made me feel good. I like to see people laugh. I like to see the laugh take over them, like a spirit that gets in them and pulls them out of shape.
‘I told Mick that anyone,’ Charlie said, ‘who would come through the jungle with my dad must be some kind of fucking saint.’
I don’t like that. Women swearing. Never have liked it. Back home I don’t even swear in front of Sheila.
‘It was hell,’ Mick said, ‘but if we can get out again, we’ll be laughing. Won’t we, Phil?’
‘I expect so,’ Phil said lugubriously. He looked hard at Charlie. ‘Though I have a strange feeling that it’s all going to be down to my sister.’
Charlie clouded over, running a hand through her hair. That mysterious power I’d identified in her darkened for a few moments.
‘You do want to go home, don’t you Charlie?’ I asked.
She hugged her knees and began rocking back and forth, pointedly failing to answer, so I put the question again. She closed her eyes, but hot tears squeezed out between them. She nodded her head, yes. I had the sudden notion that Charlie might be a prisoner here. ‘Is it Jack? Is it the villagers? Won’t they let you go?’
‘It’s not Jack or the villagers
,’ Charlie cried. Without warning she collapsed on to her pallet, convulsed by huge, gulping sobs that made it difficult to hear what she was saying. ‘It’s me!’ I thought I heard her say, ‘It’s what I’ve done!’
I tried to comfort her, but I was of no help. Phil stood next to me, breathing stertorously, ineffectually biting a knuckle. Mick got out of his bed and came over, himself wobbly on his feet. ‘Steady on,’ he said. ‘Steady on, little Charlie.’
We watched helplessly, all three of us shocked by the measure of her distress. When her sobs began to subside she fumbled under her mattress and produced a pipe and other paraphernalia. She looked me in the eye. Her body language defied me to challenge her, and I knew we were in for big trouble.
‘That’s not going to solve our problems,’ Phil said. ‘Is it?’
I looked at Mick. He shook his head, leave things be. I watched her shave a bit of opium from a small block, heat it on a pin and then drop it into the brass bowl of her slender pipe. She puffed away on the thing, looking at me unashamedly. Her face had hardened. Her hair had fallen over one eye and she gazed at me balefully from behind the stray lock.
But the opium calmed her. It softened her features and restored a tender expression to her face. Contrary to my expectations – that she would go into a trance of some kind – she became rational and lucid. I realised this was the condition in which I’d first encountered her awake. But it was like a bad dream for me to see this. For a moment I felt that this couldn’t be Charlie, and that in the orange candlelight of the darkened hut this was some demon impersonating her.
‘I did something,’ she said. ‘I did something stupid. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time. But now I have to pay for it.
‘When I first came here this village was on the trekking route. I was with an American boy called Ben. Nabao sold us some opium. The other trekkers weren’t interested but Ben and I were up for it. We smoked, but it didn’t seem to have much effect, so we had several pipes. Next thing we were giggling like idiots. We went outside looking for water. My legs had turned to rubber. We kept falling over, and crawling on our hands and knees, still giggling.
‘Then suddenly the villagers came running out of their huts. They were pointing at the sky and shouting. We couldn’t figure out what was happening. The villagers had gathered every saucepan and cooking bowl and tin pan they could lay their hands on and they started bashing them with sticks, making a huge commotion. It was terrifying. My hair was standing on end.
‘We finally realised what was happening. There was an eclipse of the moon. A quarter-eclipse. They were bashing their pots and pans and shouting at the moon.
‘Ben and I were staggering about in amazement, laughing again and hanging on to each other. Then Ben stumbled sideways and he grabbed me as he fell. We crashed into the spirit gate in the middle of the village.’
‘What’s the spirit gate?’ Mick wanted to know.
‘I’ve been to look at it,’ Phil said. ‘Demons carved in wood.’
‘I’ll explain later,’ I told Mick, cutting Phil off.
‘The gate got pushed over,’ Charlie continued. ‘Ben clambered to his feet, holding on to one of those carved penises. He still thought it was hilarious, but the villagers were completely silent. Stunned. They stood over us with bulging eyes. I knew we’d done something terrible. I tried to get Ben to put down the carving. Then one of the villagers started banging his cooking pot, you know, aggressively, right under our faces. The rest joined in. The din was awful. It went on and on. They screamed at us, banging these pots in our ears. I thought I was going to die. I remember vomiting and vomiting, and then I passed out.
‘When I came round I was in this hut. So was Ben. Someone had put a ring of burning candles around us. Then I fell asleep again, and when I awoke the candles had burned out and Ben was gone. He’d taken his pack and he’d left me.’
Charlie’s voice had become a monotone. She stared moodily at the floor. Mick suggested this must have been the time when Claire Marchant had arrived and stolen her passport.
‘Yes, my passport was taken. I remember someone coming in the hut and going through our things, but I couldn’t do anything. Nabao looked after me, as she has done ever since.’
‘Didn’t you ever try to leave?’ Phil asked.
‘Many times, Phil. In the following weeks there were occasional treks coming through. I packed my bag and got ready to leave with them. But I was never able to, because I can’t go outside the door.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘As soon as Mick is well enough, we’re out of here. We’ll hire some of the villagers to take us to Chiang Mai.’
‘I said I can’t go out of the door, Dad.’
‘We’ll pay them a king’s ransom and—’
‘Listen to me, Dad! Listen! You never listen!’
‘I think I see,’ Phil said.
‘See what?’
Suddenly Phil turned his volatile anger on me. ‘She’s told you she can’t go outside the door! It’s as simple and as complicated as she’s told you! Can’t you understand that?’
Understand it? No, I couldn’t understand it. Somehow I’d got it into my head that Jack or the villagers had some particular reason for keeping her there. I didn’t understand that her fear of the daylight was greater than her fear of spending the rest of her life in that miserable hut. ‘So what exactly are you saying, Charlie?’
She sighed, lit a cigarette, blew the smoke in a steady stream through her nostrils. ‘Someone put a hex on me for what we did.’
I wanted to laugh. ‘A hex?’
‘A spell. A charm. A curse. A malediction. How many ways do you need it making plain?’
‘Sorcery,’ said Phil softly. He’d become a tiny compressed ball of excitement and loathing. ‘Sorcery.’
‘Shut up, Phil,’ I barked. ‘There is no fucking sorcery.’
Mick had to come between us. ‘Right, let’s everyone calm down,’ he said, meaning me and Phil. Charlie was perfectly calm. She was hugging her knees again. ‘This is going to need thinking through.’
I’d heard of something like this. Fear of the open space. Panic. Fear of the wilderness – I’d been there myself a few days ago, had I not? Agoraphobia. But I hadn’t come this far to find that the obstacle in my way to getting Charlie home was psychological. Psychology belonged to a world of credit-card payments and microwave ovens and people with too much time on their hands. It didn’t have a place in the jungle, and I said that, too.
‘You’re out of your depth here, Father,’ Phil said spitefully. He was enjoying my bewilderment. ‘Way out of your depth.’
‘Look, what would happen if we tried to carry you out?’ Mick wanted to know.
Charlie blinked, and stared at him for an unreasonable length of time. ‘The villagers did that to me one time. It made things even worse. Please don’t ever try it.’
‘Just asking, like,’ Mick said. ‘Just asking.’
We were deadlocked. Of all the difficulties I’d anticipated, this had been the last. Reduced to silence, we were at last disturbed by a commotion at the door as Nabao waddled in with a huge pan full of noodle soup. Chattering and giggling, she made a great fuss of me. Charlie and Nabao exchanged a few words. ‘I don’t know what you’ve done,’ Charlie said, making a bid to leaven the awful mood, ‘but she says you’re her boyfriend.’
Nabao patted my cheeks and performed a little dance as she went out again.
In grim fellowship we ate. The soup tasted of curry and ginger. I tried to get to the bottom of Charlie’s condition. All she could tell me was that as soon as she tried to cross the threshold she experienced hideous panic attacks, induced because she felt something tearing at her. She was in danger of being swallowed or sucked in by something voracious waiting outside the door. It tried to shake her from the hut to its jaws, she said, into which she might fall and never stop falling.
She knew she was being punished, she said, for damaging the spirit gate.
Phil was right in that I was way out of my depth. I looked at Mick and, for the second time that day, he just shook his head at me. I was trying to think of what to say or do when the village radio snapped off again. I remember going, ‘Oh!’
My urge to fix the damned radio was only an expression of my desperate need to do something practical, a flight from the real problem in hand. I got to my feet and hunted through my pack for a bottle-opener, thinking I might be able to hammer it into some useful shape. As I did so, Charlie stashed her opium paraphernalia under her mattress, and I saw a blade flash there, a blade not unlike the one Coconut had given to me. I continued to rummage through my pack. ‘Do you have much need for that knife?’ I asked, trying to sound casual.
‘Oh, some guy was pestering me,’ she said, whore-tough again, in control once more. ‘I can look after myself.’
‘Right.’ I shot a glance at Mick. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
The village was busy with activity. Dusk was falling, and having returned from the fields families sat cross-legged around steaming pans, cooking, whittling bamboo, smoking giant, fat tobacco pipes. I noted with some satisfaction that a few nods and smiles were beginning to come my way.
The generator was important to me. If I could keep the generator running, and if I could get my hands on some more cable to light a few huts, I might be able to win the help we needed. Now I knew Jack and his cronies weren’t actually keeping Charlie here against her will, I needed to ingratiate myself until Mick was fit enough to get moving.
Inside the generator hut I checked the plug cap on the motor, thinking maybe the vibration was working it loose, but this time the fault lay somewhere else. In the end, I didn’t even need to unscrew the cover plate, since it was merely resting loose over the machinery. A quick check revealed that the cable to the piston was shitted up and was breaking the circuit. I don’t know how it got so messy – there were leaves and twigs and all sorts in there – but I cleaned it off and whipped the generator into life again. I heard a small cheer from some of the villagers. The Lord of the Generator rubbed his oily hands together in a purely involuntary gesture.
