by Tom Robbins
Technically, Col. Patt Thomas was incorrect when he mentioned that tanukis are indigenous to Southeast Asia (Thomas gleaned that information from his circus program). This is not a point to quibble about, however, for tanukis have resided in the mountains of Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia for a century or more. When and how they arrived there is not known. What we do know is that in the last half of the twentieth century, N. procyonoides spread into Central Asia, the old republics of the USSR, and has been occasionally sighted as far west as Russia and Finland. There have even been one or two reports of tanukis in the French Alps!
At a time when many species of wildlife are being driven into extinction by the grandiose arrogance and prolific bad habits of the human race, tanukis seem to be . . . well, if not actually multiplying, at least fanning out. What this portends, or if it portends anything at all, is not a matter for immediate speculation. If the reader is not in a rush, however, she or he might take a moment to imagine tanukis in France.
Imagine the faux badgers in the pine woods of the alpine foothills. Picture a tiny contingent of them actually taking clandestine residence among the shrubs and rocks of Paris’s Bois de Boulogne. Picture Himself, late at night, scampering on all fours like one of those chubby little mutts Parisians adore, scooting down Boulevard Saint-Germain, weaving in and out among the legs of shadows, snatching pommes frites off the tables of sidewalk cafés, maybe even darting into Les Deux Magots to yank a freshly decorked bottle of Hermitage Côte du Rhône from the grasp of some literary luminary such as Gérard Oberlé or Jean Echenoz; draining it behind a clump of rose bushes in the darkened Jardin Luxembourg. . . . No. No.
No, it’s impossible, really, to form a mental image of Tanuki in such a setting. It’s just too incongruous to compute. Upon a will-o’-the-wisp, one’s mind can set a snowflake derby, even a crown of thorns; but a top hat or beret is quite another matter. It is, in fact, not easy to picture Himself at all. When one dwells for very long on Tanuki, the folds of one’s thoughts grow as slippery as frog skins, the pen in the hand becomes a stalactite, the screen shines green like owl piss, the keyboard sprouts a greasy mustache. As if an audio wrench has been tossed into the cognitive machinery, a faint but persistent sound attacks the inner ear: the drumming sound, one intuits, that the heart used to make before the heart was domesticated and yoked; the thump of pure appetite (so pure it is almost holy); the pounding pulse of some sweet and terrible unnamed joy. Pla-bonga pla-bonga pla-bonga.
As Dickie Goldwire chewed mayonnaise sandwiches and paced the floor of his hut, Mars Stubblefield and Lisa Ko lounged on brocade cushions and sipped champagne at the big house across the divide. Between sips they talked about America.
The Asian woman described, to the best of her ability, hip-hop and Harry Potter, election fraud and Plymouth Cruisers, body piercing, reality TV, Britney Spears, glass art, working-class golf, kiddie obesity, and something called “political correctness”; and after she had reported on current fads, styles, and preoccupations, she briefly addressed the state of the union. Shaking her head, she said, “Your country seems to have everything and yet has almost nothing. It’s unbelievable. In that vast, beautiful, powerful land of unprecedented abundance live some of the most unhappy people on earth. Oh, generally speaking, they complement all that affluence by being generous and energetic and, except for their ruling class—which is wormy with evil like ruling classes everywhere—rather decent. But they’re chronically depressed and dissatisfied. Chronically. Have you heard of Prozac?”
Stubblefield nodded. Thanks to the periodic reports that Dern and Dickie brought back from Bangkok, he was somewhat aware of the astonishing rate at which his countrymen gobbled antidepressants. That knowledge, in fact, permitted him to justify, however spuriously, his own participation in the pharmaceutical business. (Incidentally, thanks to his venturesome comrades, he was also vaguely cognizant of some of the aforementioned fashions, pop icons, etc. That he wasn’t considerably more informed was due to the fact that he’d long ago forbidden the presence of a shortwave radio, satellite dish, computer, or telephone in Villa Incognito. The villa had its own small hydroelectric generator, but the power it produced was used primarily for spinning jazz on an old turntable, and, of course, for refrigeration: no one, not even in La Vallée du Cirque, liked warm champagne.) “In our Declaration of Independence,” he said, “we consecrate ourselves as a nation to the pursuit of happiness. That in itself is an admission of habitual discontent. One needn’t pursue what one already possesses.”
“It’s actually kind of touching,” Lisa said, “how Americans can be so proud, so full of adolescent bravado, and on the other hand be so transparently insecure.”
“Self-importance and self-doubt are usually interchangeable. They’re two sides of the same coin. But you know all that. You’ve always known it.” He refilled her glass. “So tell me, my dear,” he said, making an effort to sound facetious, “how many of my miserable brethren have you awakened from their medicated trance?”
She scoffed, as he knew she would. She waved her free hand. “Don’t be silly. That’s not remotely in my domain. The tanukis and I, we travel from city to city and put on our little act. Hip-hip, hoo-hoo, pla-bonga pla-bonga. People do get a certain delight out of it, but nobody’s inspired to rush home and flush their Prozac down the toilet.”
No, he didn’t suppose anybody was. And yet he’d never been able to entirely divest himself of the notion, the suspicion, that there was something below the surface of Madame Ko’s circus act (indeed, of most of Lisa’s actions), something obliquely instructive, a physical if subtle manifestation of an arcane philosophical system. Aside from the fact that she’d shared with him a curious assortment of Zen-like pronouncements that she’d inherited from her mother and whose impact on her worldview, while persistent, was not always easy to categorize, there was precious little evidence to support such a notion. Obviously, the presence in her mouth of that alleged transgenerational implant, to which she gave such ominous if unspecified importance, amplified the dimensions of her mystique, yet an oral bump was hardly the foundation on which a civilized man built his opinions.
Stubblefield was well aware that, justified or not, he’d always been a bit in awe of Lisa, and that any expression of that awe usually ended up embarrassing them both; he because it put him at an intellectual disadvantage, she because . . . well, perhaps she was just being coy. In any case, he was not on that occasion inclined to press the issue further. He’d take her at face value, as if she was what she was—and possibly she was.
“Only a show,” she said, as if reading his mind. “And now I’ve got to hurry back to it.”
“So soon? Ow, did you hear that? My poor heart is rupturing.”
“That was a belch!” She wagged a finger at him and laughed. “If I can reach Vientiane tonight, I can get a flight out in the morning. But what about you and Dickie? My plan was to be back in Laos by late October. . . .”
“That’s right. For the wedding. Well, as best man, at least I’ll get to kiss the bride.”
For a moment they stared at each other, and one needn’t have been a detective or a psychiatrist to deduce from that stare that there was not a place on that bride-to-be’s body he hadn’t kissed a hundred times. Fighting back a blush, she went on, “Well, those plans are up in the air for now. Sooner or later somebody’s bound to come looking for you. You seem to be taking it lightly, but you must know you’re in danger.”
“Shame on the man who isn’t.”
“I’m leaving you my cell phone number. Call me when or if you run. I’m unsure where Dickie could even run to. He may not be able to market his rubies anymore, and obviously Dern never brought him the money for the last batch. He—”
“Stop fretting. I’ll take care of him. Personally, I think the U.S. government is the least of Goldwire’s problems.”
Lisa had been smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress. She stopped abruptly. “What do you mean?”
Stu
bblefield didn’t answer, his face revealed nothing, but they both were well aware that he was referring to her “implant.”
The folder that had lain on Colonel Thomas’s desk, the second folder, now rested on a linen-clothed table in an old-line San Francisco restaurant, an oak-paneled dining room noted for its crab louie salads and sourdough bread, the fare at which Operations Officer Mayflower Cabot Fitzgerald cautiously nibbled that lunch hour, as if encouraging his stones to gather moss.
Inside the folder were the FBI background compilations on three American MIAs whose B-52 Stratofortress (dubbed “Smarty Pants” and “The Think Tank” by fellow airmen) had gone down on the western side of the Lao-Vietnamese border in 1973. The files on the trio were detailed and thorough, but for our purposes (whatever, exactly, our purposes might be), we need list only a few salient facts.
DERN V. FOLEY
Scholar athlete at Roosevelt High School.
Dreamed of playing fullback for University of Washington. When UW failed to recruit him, turned down scholarship offers from numerous smaller colleges. Said to have become angry and withdrawn.
Worked minimum-wage jobs (Pizza Haven, Dick’s Drive-in), took flying lessons from father, a Boeing engineer. Earned pilot’s license. Experimented with drugs.
Encouraged by mother, enrolled in Union Theological Seminary, intent on earning a doctorate of divinity.
During third year of study for priesthood, arrested for selling controlled substances. Two kilos of marijuana, fifty hits of LSD in his possession.
Due to clean record and high academic achievements (honor-roll student, president of Latin Club at the seminary), judge offered to drop charges if he would join the military.
Enlisted in air force. Accepted for flight training. Earned wings. Assigned to bomber group in Asia. Excellent combat record, but twice cited for insubordination.
Known interests: biblical history, dead languages, aviation, altered states of consciousness.
MARS ALBERT STUBBLEFIELD
Father was professor of astronomy at University of Nebraska.
Early in life, sent to school for gifted children in Lincoln.
At age sixteen, enrolled at University of Chicago. Three years later, graduated with double degree in anthropology and philosophy.
Studied at Sorbonne in Paris, and Trinity College, Dublin. Specialized in analysis of folk tales. Bummed around Europe. Impregnated daughter of high-ranking Belgian diplomat. Employed for six months as waiter at Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village, New York City.
Taught at junior colleges in Illinois and Nebraska. Reprimanded at both schools for unacceptable behavior (unorthodox dress, rants at faculty meetings, suspected sexual misconduct with female students). Published papers and essays dealing with traditional Asian influences on modern Western thought.
Married Lisa Szaborska, his former student and runner-up in Miss Nebraska contest.
Enlisted in air force, apparently on a whim. Accepted for flight training. Earned wings. Assigned to bomber group in Asia. Excellent combat record, though cited for insubordination and conduct unbecoming an officer.
Adept at talking his way out of trouble.
Known interests: art, literature, jazz, epistemology, food, wine, women.
DICKIE LEE GOLDWIRE
About him, we are already sufficiently informed.
At the Fan Nan Nan landing platform, Madame Phom dumped Madame Ko out of the wheelbarrow as though she were a sack of rice. Shrieking, Lisa grabbed the other’s wrist and pulled her down on top of her, and the two circus performers were rolling and giggling like a couple of rowdy schoolgirls when Dickie rounded the corner, carrying wildflowers.
Risking the deadly venom of bamboo vipers and foot-long centipedes, Dickie had picked the flowers on the slopes above the village. My Dickie, thought Lisa. Always so romantic, so tender. Then, noticing the several wild chrysanthemums in the bouquet, added, And so clueless. Although he’d been in her mouth nearly as many times as Stubblefield, he’d either never noticed or hadn’t thought to ask, unable to imagine that a polyp on her palate might possess the potential to sabotage his heart’s agenda. Her mood darkened as she wondered which would be most cruel of her, to jilt him or become his wife.
Well, there are no mistakes—and she had to start making her way to Vientiane. When he helped her to her feet, she kissed him, feeling him flinch slightly at the taste of Stubblefield’s champagne. She kissed Madame Phom as well, then followed Dickie back to his hut. While she packed, they spoke of the future, weighing their prospects on scales so scientifically imprecise they could counterbalance a watermelon with a toothbrush or, say, a wedding bell with a chrysanthemum seed.
“If I end up in prison, will you come visit me?”
“Probably not,” she said, not wishing to deceive him. Then, not wishing to distress him, either, she added, “But I’ll have my manager send you bread and mayonnaise.”
Sometime after 1971, pro-Hanoi forces in Laos, fearing an American invasion, began moving prisoners of war farther away from the Vietnamese border, onto the western side of the frontier-defining Annam Mountains. One such ragtag group of POWs included the crew of the Smarty Pants. They moved slowly, for the terrain was rugged, unexploded bombs haunted the jungle like inert assassins, and Captain Foley limped on an ankle severely sprained when his parachute landed.
The soldiers who escorted the prisoners grew impatient. They were needed back at the border, and it was a long march to the interior camps. After several days, they hit upon the idea of turning over a few POWs at a time to local policemen for internment in village jails. They could be collected at a later date.
Stubblefield, Foley, and Goldwire were left in an open-air stockade located in the foothills a hundred kilometers or more from the U.S. bombardment zone. Villagers there, while fairly sympathetic to the leftist Pathet Lao and fairly disdainful of the right-wing National Union government that had won power in 1960 in an election rigged by the CIA, were less than fervently political. They farmed their rice and vegetables, fished their ponds, raised their families, held their festivals, practiced their unrefined brand of Buddhism. Once the novelty wore off, they paid scant attention to the trio of funny Americans in the town stockade, considering them just three more mouths to feed. Security was lax.
One cloudy April night, after Dern’s ankle had finally healed, the Smarty Pants crew broke out of its rickety hoosegow and reasoning that they would be more easily recaptured in the flats, headed upland to wilder territory. For a week the men slept by day, traveled nocturnally, often circuitously, gaining elevation but ever spooked by snakes, centipedes, and unidentifiable shapes and sounds. Did that purring rumble issue from the salivating chops of a menu-planning tiger? Was that drumming pla-bonga noise the happy host of Hell hammering the lids of their coffins? The moon bloomed like a radiation sore, every tree was ajitter with swinging intestines.
They came upon Fan Nan Nan by chance, and a lucky chance it was. Emerging from the canopied forest, the sky above them in a sudden fit of astronomy, they instantly liked the look of the place, trusted its vibe, we might say, trusted it to the extent that at daybreak they strolled—hungry, thirsty, dirty, fatigued—into the village center, where they stood brimming with fake confidence and genuine good will. Astonished villagers took them into custody but treated them hospitably right from the start. Stubblefield’s intuition had been correct: there was something special about Fan Nan Nan. It was to become even more special in a couple of years. Fan Nan Nan and Villa Incognito were made for each other.
Knock! Knock!
Who’s there?
James Michener.
Liar! You’re not James Michener.
You’re right. And you’re probably not a typical Michener reader. Nevertheless, if you don’t object, we’re going to wax Micheneresque very briefly, very lightly, in order to impart herewith at least a modicum of background detail.
Certainly, there’s no good reason to heap upon the reader’s plate the fossili
zed fruits of geological research. As for those who require geographical orientation, let them consult an atlas. Historically, we might note that the original Lao Kingdom congealed in the porous soup bowl of Southeast Asian tribalism in 1353 and endured centuries of successive invasions by neighboring powers, followed by French and Japanese occupation, before finally being toppled in 1975 by the drab fist of communism. However, since this report is not about Laos in the way that Michener’s Hawaii, Poland, and Texas were about those places, any wider historical perspective is probably irrelevant. The little nation’s enduring rural traditions, its strong spiritual flavor, its relatively sparse population, have already been implied. Beyond that, what’s left for our beneficial consideration is the composition of the population, inasmuch as it affected Fan Nan Nan.
The interesting thing about that population is not so much that it’s a mix of four separate major cultural groups, but rather—ignoring such ethnic differences as language, dress, religion, customs, and points of origin—that the groups are classified according to the altitude at which they’ve chosen to reside.
In Laos, the concept of upward mobility has been turned upside down and inside out. For example, the group that has dominated government and society for centuries—the Lao Lum—is a lowland culture. The Lao Lum live just above sea level, tending rice paddies along the Mekong River and its tributaries, and minding the country’s official business from the capital, Vientiane. The former aristocracy and what remains of the middle class are members of this group. They are followers of the Theravada school of Buddhism.
