Curse of the Pogo Stick

by Colin Cotterill

“Cashew cakes.”

  “Did you eat any?”

  “Nnno! Cashews make me f … fart.”

  “Where did you put them?”

  “ … and burp.”

  “Geung, where are they?”

  “On the f … filing cabi … net.”

  Dtui moved so fast Geung wasn’t sure she’d ever been there. He followed. She wasn’t in the cutting room or the vestibule. He eventually caught up with her in the office. She was on her knees on the file-littered floor beside one of the auditors. Both men appeared to be taking a nap. There was froth around their mouths as if they’d just cleaned their teeth and not rinsed. The cashew cake box was upside down on the ground. Dtui was taking one man’s pulse, raising his eyelid. From the expression on her face it was evident the men weren’t really asleep at all.

  “Th … they’re dead?” he asked.

  “Yes, pal. Dead as Uncle Ho.”

  At that evening’s meeting, Phosy summed up the events of the day for the team. The box and its brown-paper wrapping with Dr. Siri’s careful but barely legible handwriting were undoubtedly genuine. The parcel had been postmarked November 29, two days after Siri arrived in Xiang Khouang. According to the central Bureau de Poste, there were so many VIPs in the north, the Xiang Khouang office had doubled its efforts to distribute mail daily. The package would therefore have traveled on the army transport the following day. As the clerk at Mahosot collected the hospital’s mail each morning, the parcel more than likely arrived in the mail room—actually a spare desk in the clerk’s office—on the first of December. That was the day of the bombing attempt. Somewhere amongst her other duties, the hospital mail clerk would get around to checking names against the list of patients and pencil in the ward or department number. The duty orderly known to Mr. Geung as the post lady would then distribute the mail the following morning.

  As she certainly wasn’t in Xiang Khouang during that period and as she had very good reason not to go near the Bureau de Poste, the Lizard had to have intercepted the parcel in the mail room on the day she planned to blow up the coroner. As his name was marked on the package as sender, she had to know the doctor wouldn’t be there. She probably took the parcel hoping she’d be able to do some more damage with it. She had carefully removed the wrapping and interfered with the contents. At the Lycée Vientiane, Teacher Oum was currently experimenting with Dr. Siri’s famous color tests to determine what poison was used. She’d told them she’d get back to them in the morning.

  The clerk had no recollection of the parcel either disappearing or reappearing, although she remembered penciling in the morgue building number when it first arrived. She admitted she had spent most of her day out of the office but as the Lizard’s photograph had been posted all around the hospital, it would have to be assumed the woman had used an accomplice to return Dr. Siri’s package to the unattended parcels pile.

  Phosy, Dtui, Madame Daeng, and Civilai sat in silence around the slightly warped table. Although there was nothing more they could have done, they all, unreasonably felt responsible for the auditors’ deaths. Mr. Geung was taking it worse than any of the others and hadn’t spoken since the bodies were discovered. They knew they should have been more careful. They should have warned the clerk to look out for strange packages. But a parcel from Dr. Siri himself? How could any of them have suspected …?

  “So, to sum up,” Civilai said, “we’re no better off than we were last meeting and we’re two auditors short. We don’t know anything new apart from the fact that the Lizard may or may not have an accomplice—more than likely an entire underground cell.”

  “And we have no better idea of how we can find her,” Dtui added, just to make them even more dispirited. For a while, the only sound in the small noodle shop came from the ceiling lizards slurping up parked moths and the ice in the bucket shifting as it melted. They all jumped and their hearts skipped a beat when a woman’s loud voice burst upon their meditation.

  “Excuse me!”

  The metal shop-front shutters pulled together like a huge concertina but tonight they were open a foot to let in some air. A well-dressed woman in a traditional Lao costume was peering in through the gap. One of the armed policemen had accompanied her to the door. They all laughed to mask their embarrassment. What kind of investigation team were they to be frightened to death by an old lady?

  “Sorry, love,” Daeng shouted. “We’re closed.”

  “Er, at the hospital they told me I might be able to find Nurse Dtui here,” the woman’s large voice belted forth.

  Although this was certainly not the Lizard, there was a pervading atmosphere of nervous tension among the group. Any stranger presented a potential threat.

  “Who shall I say is looking for her?” Phosy asked.

  “She doesn’t know me,” the woman yelled, “but my name’s Bounlan. My cousin’s just getting over hepatitis at Mahosot.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Thank you. It’s just … well, I saw the poster there in the ward.”

  “Have you seen her? The woman?” Phosy stood and walked over to the door. The visitor was in her sixties and wearing too much makeup. He wondered whether she was a traditional singer on her way to work.

  “No,” she said. “Well, not recently anyway.” She lowered her voice at last. “But I know who she is.”

  Eat, Drink, and Be Unfaithful

  It was normal for Hmong men to take their meal around the main hearth and the women to eat together at a smaller grate. But here in the main house, Siri, the seven women he’d flashed at earlier, and one man of about Siri’s own age sat together in one friendly circle cross-legged on a straw mat. The pigs had been banished to the yard but a white dog paraded around the perimeter of the circle and was rewarded with tidbits. The animal wouldn’t have been so lucky at any other village Siri had been to. Everyone in the house had plugs of folded mint leaves protruding from their nostrils. The body of the old lady continued to hang from the main pillar. Before the meal the girls had treated her with some sweet ointment that had temporarily hidden the stink, but it wasn’t long before the rotting organs overpowered the scent and all the guests were forced to plug their noses.

  Siri had more questions than a new history examination paper but it was impolite to jump straight into them before the time was right. He hoped that moment would come soon because curiosity was killing him. The old man opposite was presumably the village elder. The concept of headman and leader and supervisor and such had been imposed on the hill tribes by the colonists. Left to their own devices, each household and family group would look after itself without need of a figurehead. The host had a face as leathery as a monkey’s palm, spiky white hair, and a wispy mustache. He moved with difficulty, a condition Siri assessed to be due to some form of lumbago. But there was nothing wrong with his humor, and when the women had led Siri down to the house, he’d gushed over the old doctor as if the two celestial brothers had floated down on their cloud for tea. But there had been no actual conversation.

  Siri had been given a cup of some herbal concoction and the old man and the seven women had set about preparing the feast. The sun was rolling over a far hill when it was finally time to eat. They lit several more candles around the corpse and set two oil lamps as the centerpieces for their dinner. Since they’d met, they’d all referred to Siri by the name of his resident spirit, Yeh Ming.

  “Yeh Ming,” the old man said. “We are honored to have you here at our meal. Eat as much as you are able. We have rice whisky to make you as drunk as you could ever hope to be. We have more food than you could eat in two more lifetimes. And, as you see, we have many beautiful girls who …”

  Siri interrupted him before he could say anything embarrassing.

  “Can I have your name, brother?”

  “I am Long,” said the elder.

  He then pointed his finger at each lady in turn around the mat. The youngest was Yer. Ber was round and jolly and reminded Siri of Dtui. Bao was by far the pretti
est. Chia was perhaps the oldest and had a wicked leer that Siri endeavored to avoid. Phia was a smaller version of Ber but just as round. Dia was rather manly and Nhia seemed to belong exclusively to Elder Long. She leaned against him as he ate and topped up his bowl long before it was empty. Yer, Ber, Bao, Chia, Phia, Dia, and Nhia: Siri hadn’t a chance in hell of remembering them all.

  “Where are the other villagers?” Siri asked.

  “What you see is what there is,” Long told him.

  “The men? The children?”

  “All gone.”

  All this was said good-naturedly as if there were nothing mournful in their departure. It left Siri uncertain as to their fate.

  “Even my dear wife, Zhong, has gone,” Long smiled, pointing to the central pillar.

  “When did she pass away?”

  “Just two days ago.”

  “Is it normal to hang her there like that?”

  “It’s not unknown,” Long told him. “If we had more space we might have laid her on a platform. But as we all sleep here together in the one house now it seemed more practical to hang her up. She always said she wanted to be close to the central beam when she went. As you know, Yeh Ming, the floor is the earth, the rafters represent heaven, so the pillar is the journey the ancestors take from life to death. This gives her a leg up, so to speak. We’ll bury her tomorrow.”

  It was Siri’s view that tomorrow couldn’t come a moment too soon.

  “It isn’t the way she would have liked it, but these are odd times,” Long continued. “I wanted to invite friends and neighbors from other villages. She was a popular woman. There would have been a few hundred people here. But … well, you know how things are now. Of course, my great shaman, I won’t insult you by asking you to preside at the ceremony. That wouldn’t be right. But we’d be glad to have you there as guest of honor. If you don’t mind.”

  Siri didn’t actually see that he had a choice. He was a helpless captive after all. The women kept topping up his cup and filling his plate. He wondered whether the time was right yet to find out why they’d brought him there. There were courtesies and there was probably a diplomatic way for him to inquire but he didn’t know what that was, so …

  “Why am I here?” he asked.

  “Aha,” said Long. “Don’t try to fool us with your trickery.”

  The time obviously wasn’t right. Siri tried a different tack.

  “Can I ask you about my … abduction?” he said.

  “What do you need to know?” Long asked. He was throwing back the misty white liquor as fast as the cup could be refilled and it seemed to be embalming him fast. His movements were much stiffer now and his speech was beginning to sound like a tape recorder whose batteries had run down.

  “Well, I’m assuming you’ve brought me here deliberately. Or, rather, you’ve brought Yeh Ming here for some purpose. How did you know where to find me? How did you know I was on the road?”

  “The music of the kwee. The music kept track of you.”

  “That’s very impressive.”

  “That, and the wireless. The rebel base over the ridge got hold of your route and travel plans. They told us when you’d be passing.”

  Siri was a little disappointed. He liked the image of being lured to his destination like some rat from Hamelin.

  “Yeh Ming seems to be something of a celebrity around these parts then,” Siri smiled.

  “Oh, everywhere, Yeh Ming. Not just here. Everywhere the Hmong live they sing of you. I know you are the only one who can rid us of the evil that’s come over us.”

  “I was afraid you might say something like that.” Siri shook his head. “So it was the rebels from the base who ambushed the convoy this morning?”

  “Oh, no. The rebels have more important things to do. No offense.”

  “So … ?”

  “We were the kidnappers, sir,” said young Yer. It was the first time any of the women had addressed him directly.

  Siri looked around the mat at the angels of innocence who smiled serenely and glowed brightly from the whisky.

  “You? You organized the whole thing? The avalanche? The gun attack? The …” He couldn’t think of the word for tranquilizer. “The sleeping poison?”

  “My general here,” said Long, pointing at Bao, one of the least likely of the group to be a fighter. Obviously, somewhere deep down Siri still believed pretty women didn’t need to be good at anything. The Women’s Union would have his name on a blacklist if they ever found out. It was tough being an old man from a patriarchal society in the new Laos.

  “You’re a formidable soldier,” he told her.

  She nodded in agreement and, having been spoken to, she countered with, “And you were a fearless foe. The orange was very tasty.”

  The women all laughed. Not polite Japanese giggles but hearty real-woman belly laughs.

  “And, forgive me, Yeh Ming,” said Ber. “You’re mistaken about one thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “It wasn’t this morning we brought you here. It was yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Sorry,” said General Bao. “We mixed the potion a bit too strong. We’ve only used it on wild ponies before.”

  They all laughed again.

  “I slept for twenty-four hours? I don’t usually manage more than five hours a night. It’s no wonder I’m rested.”

  “And who’s in your bed to give you only five hours of rest?” asked Chia, which again produced a round of laughter.

  The alcohol was rough but effective and the women grew prettier with every cup. Siri assumed he too was getting younger and more handsome as the evening wore on. But at some stage in the celebrations Madame Daeng entered his head. Dtui found her way in there too and Geung and the odd assortment of characters living in his house in Vientiane.

  “People at home will be worried about me,” he said. “Is there any way you could get word to my friends that I’m safe?”

  “Don’t worry, Yeh Ming.” Long swayed as he spoke. “I’ll get word to Vientiane through the rebels. They’ve got a good network.”

  Siri thanked him. “And what about the people in the motorcade with me yesterday?”

  “They were unhurt,” General Bao told him. “We aren’t real soldiers. We don’t kill unless it’s really necessary. We fight to survive. Only one of your party got lost.”

  “Lost?”

  “He ran into the jungle. Your soldiers searched for him for many hours.”

  “I stayed to watch,” said Phia. “I’m fat but I can hold my breath and disappear like a hungry ghost.”

  “It’s true, she can,” laughed Yer.

  “The soldiers gave up. They had to clear the road before it got dark. They went back the way they came.”

  “The one that fled,” Siri asked. “What did he look like?”

  “He ran like a man with no backbone. His face had raspberries growing from it.”

  “Judge Haeng,” said Siri to himself. “Do you know where he went?”

  “I watched for a long time, Yeh Ming. He had no sense of direction. The soldiers called and he went the opposite way. He’s probably still walking in circles.”

  “But any man with instincts can survive up here,” General Bao pointed out.

  It struck Siri that the type of instincts employed by the judge probably wouldn’t help him. And he’d been alone in the forest for two days. Although Siri had admired the heroes of French literature during his studies, he’d secretly envied the callousness of the villains. Fantômas and Thénardier were so completely without scruples they must have enjoyed remorse-free lives. Siri often regretted having morals. This was one of those occasions. He briefly imagined the young judge being eaten alive by red ants or stung by the lethal toothbrush spider. Would life be better at the morgue without him? Probably not. They’d bring in another prodigy from the Eastern Bloc and Siri would have to start the training all over again. He had no choice.

  “The boy in the jungle with the r
aspberry face is Yeh Ming’s assistant,” he said. “Without him I cannot perform … whatever it is I’ve been brought here to perform.”

  “Are you sure, Yeh Ming?” General Bao asked. “He couldn’t even help himself.”

  “That’s true,” said Siri. “But a great shaman has to have a weak-minded person in his entourage to … to confuse the spirits. Empty vessels make the most sound, don’t forget.”

  “All right,” said Bao. “If you say so, Yeh Ming. We’ll look for him tomorrow, after the funeral.”

  “Don’t take too many of my troops,” slurred Elder Long, who was teetering on the edge of consciousness. “We have to finish tapping the opium before we leave.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Ah, Yeh Ming, Yeh Ming. Why do you play with us like this? You see all and you know all.”

  “No, actually I …”

  “I see. You want us to understand ourselves by speaking out.”

  “No, I really …”

  “No problem, Yeh Ming. I respect your wisdom. Soon the end is coming for all of us. We chose the wrong side. Or the wrong side chose us. Whatever! We have to leave. So many of our brothers and sisters have joined the big march to escape the land of the Red Dragon. Soon it’ll be our turn. Turfed out again by the bastards.”

  His girlfriend, Nhia, whispered something in his ear and he pushed her gently away.

  “I am not. I am not drunk,” he said, waving his arm around in front of him like the trunk of a mad elephant. “And if I am drunk it’s only because I’m in the presence of the great Yeh Ming, and because my sweet wife”—he raised his cup to her and dropped it on his lap—“is dead and smelling like a rotten foot too long in a boot. And because I have to walk a million mountains to another place that doesn’t want me.”

  “Where are you going?” Siri asked, hoping to get a few more snippets of information before the old man collapsed, but it was too late. Long buried his head in Nhia’s bosom and sobbed.

  “To America,” Bao told him.

  “You’re walking to America?”

  “Only as far as the anarchists across the Mekhong,” Chia said. “They say it’s easy from there. ‘Look hungry and helpless, say you worship the big American chief, say you hate communists.’ And there you are in a rocket flying to the other side of the earth. Never have to work again.”