“And the Sangharaj hasn’t been allowed out of the country since the takeover,” Daeng added.
“The only way they could have met up in that time was if the Thai monk went to Laos,” said Siri.
“So he’d need . . .”
“. . . a visa,” they said together and shook hands.
They walked over to where the uncomfortable soldier stood sweating. He stood out in the bus terminal like a polar bear in a pig farm.
“We’ll be going now, son,” said Daeng.
The soldier didn’t know what to do or say.
“If your boss asks,” said Siri, “you can tell him we know where the Lao monk has gone, and we’ll sort it all out for him.”
“I don’t think they’ll blame you for losing us,” said Daeng.
The coach boy shouted the imminent departure of number twenty-two: the next service to Nong Khai. His bus was already edging slowly out of its allotted spot. Siri and Daeng had no trouble catching up with it and hopping on board. In fact, Madam Daeng stepped off the running board and jumped back on, just to show off. The officer cast a despondent figure behind them in the bustling terminal.
6
A Disturbing Sexual Disorientation
If it were possible, the second visit of Civilai and Madam Nong to Ban Toop was met with even less fanfare than on the previous day. It was like driving into a deserted nuclear test town in the Nevada desert.
“It’s ten o’clock,” said Civilai. “Where is everyone?”
“Probably all gathered at the meeting hall awaiting your arrival,” said Nong with little conviction.
They drove slowly along the same dusty main street past the same French colonial building. They stopped this time at the headman’s house, identifiable from a small hand-painted sign that read, Headman Noulak. This time, Civilai himself went to knock on the ill-fitting door. Front doors in Laos rarely remained closed during the day. At first there was no sound from inside. He knocked again and waited. Then . . .
“Just a minute,” came a woman’s voice.
It was an uncomfortably long minute before a comely woman with prematurely grey hair came to the door.
“If you’re here for Lak, he’s not back from the cockfight,” she said. “If that really is where he’s gone. Not that I care. Sooner he rumwongs with someone else’s wife than with me, I say. Wake me up at two in the morning and tell me he’s got an itch.”
Civilai had no idea how to react but he had an odd feeling that he was being lied to. The woman’s words seemed too much like a performance.
“I’m Civilai Songsawat,” he said at last. “I was invited here to meet a Comrade Maitreya.”
He detected a look of disdain, although he wasn’t sure if it was meant for Maitreya or himself. She looked over his shoulder at the jeep.
“Not sure if he’ll help you much with that,” she said. “He’s more into bicycles and motorbikes. But you could try. He’ll look at it for you, but I wouldn’t put too much faith in him.”
“Where can I . . . ?”
“End of the village, left over the little bridge. You’ll see the truck tire hanging from a fig tree. That’s his yard.”
Civilai sat confused in the passenger seat as they crossed the small bamboo bridge. He was on his way to meet the next Buddha and the only comment about him so far was, “I wouldn’t put much faith in him.” The bare fig tree with its suspended tire leaned out across the track, more like a deterrent than a welcome. Behind it was an untidy mechanic’s yard that reached around a small open-fronted house. The building was made of brick rather than local wood, which suggested the mechanic had, at some point, made a reasonable living from his business. But the condition of the rusty parts lying around and the absence of wheel ruts on the sand frontage implied that it was past its heyday.
At the sound of the jeep’s engine, a jolly man, shirtless with a belly like a medicine ball, came running from the house. He had pleasant enough Chinese features, a bubble nose and a poor attempt at a mustache. He was probably in his fifties.
“I can fix it. I can fix it,” he shouted.
Even when the passengers alighted, he seemed more interested in the jeep than in them. He spat on a rag and walked over to wipe mud off the side mirror.
“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.
Civilai massaged his eyeballs through his eyelids. The mission was caving in all around him. He’d expected this to be a fun wined and dined weekend with a group of yokels attempting to convince him their representative was the Buddha incarnate. It had turned into a disaster. When he opened his eyes the first thing he saw was the sign over the workshop, tasitu engine repair shop. Tusita was the name of the heaven where the previous Buddha had spent time in transit awaiting his rebirth. They couldn’t even spell it right.
“So this is the Tasitu Engine Repair Shop,” said Civilai, intending to embarrass, but without luck.
“That’s right, Uncle,” said the man. “You’ve found it.”
“And you’re Comrade Maitreya?” Civilai asked.
“Right again.”
“Comrade Maitreya, the next Buddha?”
The man laughed and looked embarrassed. “Yeah, I get that a lot,” he said. “Now, what did you say was wrong with your jeep?”
“The carburetor’s running a bit slow,” said Civilai.
“No it’s not,” said the driver indignantly. He was from the politburo motor pool, a band of men like the Hell’s Angels but more intense. They took their engines very seriously. You didn’t insult a politburo motor pool driver’s carburetor. But this driver had spent a good deal of time with Civilai, and they had signals. Civilai licked his top lip, which meant, “Play along and I’ll explain later.” The driver reluctantly played along. He agreed that the carburetor could use some work.
Maitreya was so pleased he ran into the house and reemerged in a shirt with the words lead mechanic embroidered on the back. “Only for special occasions,” he said. He popped the bonnet and salivated over the contents beneath. “Lovely piece of equipment. Lovely. It’s been a while since I had any quality mechanism in my yard.”
He climbed in the driver’s seat and turned over the engine. He listened like a piano tuner to the cords. “Not much wrong with it,” he said.
The driver refused to watch, so he went for a cigarette. Madam Nong sat in the shade of the workshop. Civilai joined the mechanic beneath the bonnet. He watched the man expertly manipulate the carburetor.
“Live here alone?” Civilai asked.
“Now I do,” said the mechanic. “Dengue took the wife before we could start a family.”
“I’m sorry,” said Civilai. “Not got around to finding somebody else?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m destined to walk this earth alone.”
“So you are the Buddha.”
Maitreya laughed again. “It’s a pity my parents didn’t name me Mohamed,” he said. “The Buddha jokes get old really fast.”
“But you named your yard Tusita.”
“It’s Tasitu. It’s a kind of joke. I changed it when my dad died. He was the religious one. He’s the one who named me. He had high hopes for his only son. He was convinced I’d be the next Buddha.”
“Why?”
“Dreams. He used to make my mother insane with his dream interpretations. Even on his way to the pyre he was still going on about it.”
“So you don’t believe you’re the Buddha?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said the mechanic. “Look around. Don’t you think if I was the Buddha I’d fix the place up a bit? Splash of paint. A few flowers. I’m just a mechanic.”
“The last Buddha was just a millionaire prince. You can never tell what’s around the next bend. Somebody believes it’s you. I was sent here by the Supreme Sangha Council in Thailand to c
heck you out.”
“I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey. Somebody’s pulling your leg.”
“So it seems.”
“And you know what the funniest thing is, Uncle?” said the mechanic.
“Not yet.”
“I’m not even Buddhist.”
Even the motor pool driver had to admit the engine was running more smoothly than he’d ever heard it.
“That man has some sort of magical touch,” he said.
The mechanic had tightened a few nuts and cleaned a couple of tubes and did the familiar “Up to you,” when asked how much he wanted for his labor. And perhaps that was a good ploy because Civilai had given him more than the job was worth. And, on the off chance Maitreya turned out to be the next Buddha after all, it wouldn’t hurt to have him remember a generous tip back when he was still an unknown.
“Have you concluded your investigation?” asked Madam Nong. They were on their way back to the small but comfortable guesthouse in Pak Xan.
“I’m almost embarrassed to take the Thais’ money,” Civilai told her. “He shouldn’t even have been on their list. But they don’t just take anyone’s word that they’re the Buddha. The claim must have come from a credible source. And I didn’t see anyone credible in that place. I doubt they would have taken the word of the dead father. The man was obsessed, fanatical about fathering the next almighty. He must have been devastated the boy turned out to be so ordinary. Good mechanic but light on sanctity.”
The jeep pulled up in front of the guesthouse, and Civilai took his wife’s hand as they walked up the uneven stone steps. They were looking forward to an evening meal and a beer or two. Since the Bier Lao factory had been taken over by the government, no one bottle of beer tasted like the next. But the locals in Pak Xan ferried Singha over from Thailand on the same rafts that exported refugees. Civilai was not one to enjoy surprises when drinking beer. Singha guaranteed a consistent taste with that consistent chemical hangover.
The evening meal was only available to guests who ordered it in the morning. Few restaurants bothered to keep food on speculation. Civilai and his wife were about to go to their room to freshen up before dinner when a wispy old woman with gaps in her hair came up to them in the small reception area.
“Are you the ones?” she asked.
“We are two of the ones,” said Civilai. “Which I suppose would make us a two.”
As usual, his attempt at humor fell on deaf ears.
“I heard you’re looking for Maitreya,” she continued.
“How did you hear that?” Civilai asked.
“Voices.”
“Right. And how might you be connected to Comrade Maitreya?”
“I gave birth to him.”
“Ah, so you’re his mother.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But . . .”
“He would have told you about his father. Dad did this. Dad did that. Right? It’s his favorite topic.”
“You didn’t get along with your husband?”
It was as if a steel veil dropped over her face.
“I’ve never had a husband,” she said. “I’ve never had a man.”
“If that’s the way you prefer to remember it,” said Civilai, gesturing to Nong that he’d prefer to be under the shower to standing there.
“It’s the way it was,” she said. She pulled an ancient roll of paper from her shoulder bag and handed it to Civilai.
“It’s from the hospital,” she said. “It’s in English, but I can help you with that. It says I gave birth to that boy on February fifteenth, 1927. It says the boy was healthy. It says there were complications because in order to birth the child they had to surgically remove my intact hymen. Perhaps you’ll have to ask your wife what that means.”
•••
From Thailand there were two ways to obtain a visa for Laos. The first involved traveling to Bangkok and showing an official invitation from somebody on the Lao side. Even with a sponsor the wait could take weeks before the passport was stamped.
The second method was to go to Nong Khai and see No-Nose Looi. Nobody living in the north could be bothered to travel all the way to smoke city for a visa. It was a predicament begging for a corrupt solution, and Looi was your man. He had what the Lao morals police referred to as “a disturbing sexual disorientation.” In other words he was gay and had been in a secret relationship with a junior official at the Interior Ministry. Like drug addicts or misfits with Down syndrome, homosexuals were treated with disdain by the Party. Looi and his lover were the acme of discretion. But the ministry fellow had read a Thai magazine article about an operation that could make a man’s nose as cute as a button. There were before and after photographs to prove it worked. He showed the spread to Looi and offered to sponsor a nose job in Thailand where plastic surgery clinics were springing up like toadstools. All of them offered promotional rates but no guarantees of success.
Looi had selected a clinic with the most impressive advertising and returned to Laos a month later without a nose. Not as cute as a button, but certainly the size and shape of one. The nostrils sloped upward, and he had to plug them with wax during rainstorms to avoid drowning. The junior official was appalled at the sight of it, and, rather than offer his love and support, he trumped up a charge to get his lover kicked out of the country and his Lao passport revoked. As the official was a happily married man with two children, nobody suspected ulterior motives.
In revenge, Looi forged himself a Thai identity card, set up an office in Nong Khai, bought used visa stamps from a disreputable officer at the Lao embassy in Bangkok and offered tourists an express Lao visa service. Anyone with money could get one. There was no vetting. It wasn’t cheap, but it certainly beat traveling to Bangkok and being humiliated. As there was no obvious difference between the actual and fake visa stamps, all sorts of criminals and ill-intents found their way into Laos. This caused an endless migraine to the ex-lover, whose job it was to monitor arrivals and be accountable for any foreigners misbehaving.
Siri and Daeng left Ugly outside and entered Looi’s office just before lunchtime. They found him sitting at a coffee table counting money. He had a fresh white bandage taped over his nose. He looked up and squealed with delight when he saw the couple. Before his exile he’d been one of Madam Daeng’s best customers. He adored her noodles and the only real downside of being thrown out of Laos was that he could no longer enjoy Madam Daeng’s spicy number 3. He’d even offered to sponsor a branch of her restaurant on the Thai side.
Before they could get down to business, Siri and Daeng had to hear all about Looi’s latest operation, where they’d attempted to graft a chunk of ankle bone onto his face.
“When that takes,” he said, “they’ll be able to start all over again with the nose. It’s exciting. I’ve selected a Marlon Brando from the menu. Of course, I’m having a bit of trouble walking right now, but that’s the way it is. Now, what can I do for you both?”
“We’re looking for a monk,” said Daeng. “Probably an abbot from the Thai side who could have made one or two trips over the river. Given the religious climate in Laos we’re assuming not too many monks are heading north.”
“They mostly go as delegates at the invitation of the United Buddhist Council,” said Looi. “And because it’s a government invite they’re obliged to get their visas through the embassy.”
“We’re imagining this fellow was traveling alone,” said Siri. “Maybe staying for a few days. Possibly a week.”
“Visiting the Supreme Patriarch?” asked Looi.
Siri’s white eyebrows bristled.
“How did you know?” said Daeng. “Yes, sir, that’s exactly where he was going.”
“Not he,” said Looi. “Them. There are three that go over often.”
“Together?” asked Siri.
“Not so far,” said L
ooi. “Single monks on pilgrimages, it looks like. Don’t forget, my customers don’t have to fill out forms, but I’m interested in why people want to go to Laos. So I chat while I’m stamping their travel documents, especially if they’re nice-looking. One of them was from the northeast, but I can’t say I asked him what town. Another was from Bangkok. Don’t know about the third. He wasn’t much of a talker. Unsociable type.”
“I’m betting on the one from the northeast,” said Daeng. “The Sangharaj headed northwest out of the Udon bus terminal.”
“So the old fellow finally skipped, did he?” said Looi. “Good luck to him. They treated him like dirt.”
“Are you sure you don’t remember anything about the local Thai monk?” asked Daeng. “A name perhaps?”
“I don’t keep records here. Too incriminating if they ever come for me. I do remember he said he was in a newish temple about twenty minutes’ drive from town, and he was often there by himself. But he was talking about his students, so I’m guessing it’s a temple that doubles as a school.”
Siri considered where the Lao monk might go. It would be somewhere low key. Probably deep in the countryside.
“I don’t suppose there’s a town near here called Nam Som?” he asked.
“There is,” said Looi. “It’s about two hours west of Udon.”
Daeng smiled. “You think the Sangharaj was telling you where he was going?” she said.
“‘You couldn’t find a thank you in a glass of ginseng juice,’ was what he said on the bus,” said Siri. “There’s the word ‘pra’—a monk—in ‘koprakoon’—thank you. And nam som is ginseng juice. And, to tell the truth we haven’t got anything else to go on.”
I Shot the Buddha Page 7
