“What’s it doing on the floor, Geung?” she asked.
“Teacher Ou … d-d-dropped it?”
“I bet she did. So this was what she was last reading.”
Dtui went through the pages. There were no bookmarks or dog-ears. There was nothing highlighted. “But what was she reading? What was it that made her leave in a hurry and drop the book?”
Then she remembered the last word her friend had spoken.
“Paris,” she said. “Something to do with Paris.”
She turned to the index. There were two entries under Paris; Paris: 1968 Toxicological conference, and Paris Green.
She turned to the latter and read aloud in English for Geung to hear but not to understand.
“Paris Green: According to the British Medical Journal of June 1877, it was reported that cases had been brought before the notice of the medical profession in which severe symptoms were experienced by patients who were being slowly poisoned with arsenic. This slow poisoning was going on at the time very extensively due to an arsenical coloring matter contained in the green calico lining of some bed curtains and the green muslin, which was much used for ladies’ dresses’ coloring. For months and months, this source of poison was not discovered, and the symptoms were treated as those of natural disease. This lining containing a green coloring pigment known as Paris Green was, doubtless, producing severe suffering. Dr. Debus, the Professor of Chemistry in Guy’s Hospital, made the examination of the bed curtain lining above alluded to; and thinking that other green-colored goods might also contain arsenic, he purchased some muslin of a very beautiful pale green tint for analysis. It proved to contain upwards of sixty grains of an arsenical compound (Scheele’s or Paris green) in every square yard, and this was so slightly incorporated that it could be dusted out with great facility.
“ ‘Imagine, sir,’ the doctor exclaimed, ‘what the atmosphere of a ballroom must be where these muslin fabrics are worn, and where the agitation of skirts consequent on dancing must be constantly discharging arsenical poison. The pallor and languor so commonly observed in those who pass through the labors of a London season are not to be altogether attributed to ill-ventilated crowded rooms and bad champagne, but are probably in great part owing to the inhalation of arsenical dust shaken from the clothing of a number of poisoners.”
Dtui looked at the green strand in the slide. She understood enough of the article to know what had happened to Teacher Ou. “Oh, Geung. That was it. We didn’t have colds. We were both suffering from arsenic poisoning. But why is it that I got over it, but she didn’t?”
Geung was holding up the slide to the light from the high louver window.
“It … it’s the same color,” he said.
“As what?”
“As the chair cover.”
Dtui scrambled to her feet and looked back at the chair. Geung was right. On the seat back was the half skirt that Siri had left behind for Ou to examine. She was using it as an attractive chair cover. She’d sat at this desk every day between lessons, exposing herself more and more to the poison. It wasn’t flu that had killed Teacher Ou. It was Paris Green. In ten days it had destroyed the system of a healthy young woman. What chance, at their age, would Siri and Daeng have?
It had been a long morning, and Siri and Daeng were feeling the worse for it. Daeng had been right. A good meal and a bath had improved her husband’s mood but not his health. Still they followed the treasure trail of pha sins with no idea where or into what it might lead them. They had spent the morning in search of American Mae, who incorporated gold thread into her skirts. She had worked for the eccentric American doctor, Dooley, in the sixties and still lived nearby, they were told. They found her, as was usual in Laos, by being passed from hut to hut, from person to person, until they were rewarded by an, “Oh, yes. She lives near the old fort. I’ll show you.”
Civilai insisted on staying in the jeep with his highly addictive new friend on his lap while Siri and Daeng walked to the house. They found American Mae sitting on the floor with her family, about to start their midday meal. She was thin, as were her relatives, and she had a curiously wide parting that was starting to look like the pate of a Japanese samurai. Ignoring apologies and protests of, “Really. We’ve just eaten,” the family insisted the visitors join them for a bite to eat. And a bite was all they seemed to have. Siri and Daeng nibbled sparingly and apologized for their diarrhetic uncle in the jeep who never ate.
After lunch, with the sun still hidden behind a thick mist, Mae led them into her pretty garden where the frangipani and mimosa blooms looked like snow on the bushes. She took them through a gap in the broken fence and along a path that ended at a small cottage. After hearing a highly abridged version of their venture to the north, not including the murder of the weaver or the presence of twenty kilos of heroin in the jeep, Mae had told them about the old guesthouse and insisted they stay there while they continued their quest. She too had a plastic bag for them that had been left by the same plain woman.
“This is where Dr. Tom stayed,” she told them while they settled in. She pointed through the window at a long gray building in need of a coat of paint. “The clinic is just over there. There’s nobody staying here. I keep it clean out of habit, mainly.”
The Lao knew all about the Muang Sing medical team. The old clinic had once been occupied by Dr. Tom Dooley, the American upper-class dandy who had dedicated much of his life to work with the poor—although he never suffered his hardships in silence. He was a master of self-promotion. The building was situated opposite the old French military compound on the road to Ban Khuang. Some had seen Dooley as a saint. Others called him a glory-seeker and a CIA plant. But whatever his motives, a lot of people in the north who would otherwise have died from the absence of medical care had survived. The Chinese had hated him and his team and made daily radio broadcasts to say that they were practicing witchcraft and murdering babies. To have upset the Chinese so seriously, Civilai considered the Americans to have been doing something right.
The guesthouse had three actual beds with spring bases, a refrigerator and a piano. Civilai hid the stash under his bed and joined the others in the living room. Daeng, coughing heavily now, was laying out the sins on the floor.
Siri opened Mae’s plastic bag and took out the latest. “They’re all Thai Lu,” he said, recognizing the pattern.
“It’s from Muang Xai,” said Mae.
“There it is again.” Daeng laughed. “The weavers’ grapevine. Tell us, Mae. How can you tell where it’s from so precisely?”
“Auntie Duang in Muang Xai has been having trouble with her loom for a couple of years. It’s an ancient monster, impossible to get spare parts for. It’s like a typewriter that has one broken key. A weaver can recognize the effects of a broken loom. Weaving a pha sin is like raising a child. You have mishaps. You have moments you’re proud of and others when you know you could have done better if you’d concentrated. By the time you’ve completed a skirt, you can make out all the characteristics and the flaws and the happy moments you’ve been through together. It’s like recognizing your own daughter. You see this loose gathering here?”
“Barely,” said Daeng.
“That’s a result of the comb not beating evenly. The wood of the frame is warped.”
“So we’re looking for Auntie Duang in Muang Xai?” Civilai asked.
“It’s hers for sure,” said Mae. “But if you’re going to see her, I’d better warn you about her.”
“What?”
“She’s a little bit … eccentric. Some of the locals call her Auntie Voodoo.”
“I’ll be sure to make a note of that,” said Civilai, no longer shocked by such a warning.
“I don’t think there’s anything in …” Siri began. He had felt around the hem of the new sin but found nothing. So he began to cut away the stitching. “No, wait. There is something.”
He reached in with two fingers and pulled. It was brown tape, the type used in cassette reco
rders. It was about three feet long. “I don’t suppose your Dr. Tom left a cassette recorder behind, by any chance?” Siri asked.
“You think something’s recorded on it?” Civilai asked.
“Fat lot of use if there isn’t,” said Siri.
Mae explained that some of her neighbors had radios to pick up the Chinese music station, but cassette recorders were far beyond their budgets. So the tape would have to wait. She left them to relax, but none of them could sleep. Instead they sat in the living room, staring at the odd gallery of sins spread out on the floor.
“Five sins, five clues,” said Daeng.
“Technically, four and a half,” Siri reminded her.
“Nice collection though,” said Civilai, who was clearly coming down with the flu too. “Do you suppose they spell out some message if we arrange them right? Some semiotic signal? How’s your naval training, Siri?”
“Once across the Mekhong on a log was as close as I got to the navy,” said Siri. “You know, I think the sins are just the laissez-passers. They get us from one place to the next. I think the locations are important. What we have to do is collect all the clues and work it out from there.”
“To be honest,” said Daeng, “we have no idea how many there might be.”
“Too true,” Civilai agreed. “This prankster could keep us snapping at the tidbits she tosses for us indefinitely.”
“We should give it a couple more days,” said Siri. “We’ll head off to Muang Xai early tomorrow when we’re rested up. Enjoy the scenery.”
“Well, this adventurer has no intention of going anywhere tomorrow,” said Daeng.
The men looked at her in surprise.
“What? I’m no good to anyone with this cold,” she said. “My plan is to wrap myself up in blankets and sweat the blighter out of my system.”
“Perhaps we should all do that,” said Siri.
“Oh, husband. You could no sooner sit still all day than I could dance the tango in stilettos.”
“Good,” said Civilai. “Girls always were a burden on road trips. Just you and me, Siri. Off to the wilds of Muang Xai.”
“Didn’t you have a Chinese invasion to uncover?” said Siri.
“Exactly,” said Civilai. “We’ll be passing right through the heart of Udomxai, the most logical province from which to launch an attack on Vietnam. Why else would the Chinese have built all those roads to Dien Bien Phu if not to invade the place?”
The next morning with the scenery a blur and the sun nowhere to be seen, Siri and Civilai set off on the trip to Un Mai. There had been one contentious moment when Civilai headed for the door with the stash over his shoulder.
“What do you think you’re doing, brother?” Siri had asked.
“We can’t possibly leave a defenseless woman alone with twenty kilos of heroin.”
“And you would sooner take it through half a dozen military road checkpoints?”
“I have a letter which states that I represent the government.”
“You do know most of those boys won’t be able to read your travel documents? But they do have a nose for drugs.”
Reluctantly, Civilai had secreted the stash beneath the lid of the old piano. He sulked as they drove away. Daeng, wrapped in a blanket, had waved them off from the front steps.
When they were out of sight, which didn’t take long, she turned back, hobbled into the house and locked the door. Shedding her itchy blanket, she walked to the piano and lifted the lid. She took one plastic bag to the sofa, then retrieved her service penknife from her pocket. This was something she badly needed to do. Her husband would never have approved, but some forces were stronger than love.
She dug the knife into the pack, releasing a gentle cloud of white powder. She breathed it in and could already taste its influence. This was the real thing.
“We appear to be on the wrong road,” said Civilai.
“We aren’t on the road yet,” said Siri. “We’re visiting some old friends.”
“Since when did you have friends?”
Siri ignored him and pulled up in front of the two-story wooden building, then turned off the engine. The mist crawled around the yard like on a B-grade horror movie set. Siri beeped his horn, and Bobby poked his head through the window.
“Breakfast?” he shouted.
“Do you have a cassette recorder?” Siri called to him.
“Of course.”
“Then yes to breakfast.”
They ate waffles slathered in syrup and drank sweet black coffee. The Americans had brought a huge food hamper with them, but supplies were running low. PEA continued to send them hardship packages, though not much in the way of edibles from overseas made it through the Lao postal service. Bobby sat at the table splicing the section of tape onto an unwanted cassette. It took him no time at all. He pressed PLAY on the old cassette player, and they heard a few seconds of a tune that was familiar.
“Simon and Garfunkel,” said Lola.
“That’s the name of the song?” Siri asked.
“The singers,” said Bobby. “The song’s called ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters.’ ” He translated the segment from the tape. “Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.”
“I think we have the full lyrics upstairs,” said Lola.
“No need,” said Siri. “I think that was the only part we were supposed to hear.”
Bobby was ecstatic to have an ex-politburo man in his house. He took several photographs to send home and even asked for Civilai’s autograph.
“Is the song relevant to something?” Lola asked.
“No,” said Siri. “We’re just practicing our English.”
“So,” said Civilai. “We have one finger, one bullet, a clay pipe stem, a Chinese banknote, a stash of heroin and a song about a bridge.”
The old pair was driving through the mountains of Na Maw on a road that had obviously been built with one jeep and two hand-pulled carts in mind. In the two hours they’d been traveling, they hadn’t seen another vehicle. The unkempt vegetation reached out to them on both sides, caressing Agnes’s flanks. Every now and then they’d be stopped by boulders broken loose from the overhanging rocks. The pair had briefly considered climbing down and rolling the rocks out of the way but ultimately used the jeep’s thick metal bumper to clear a space.
“I don’t think you can count the stash,” said Siri.
“Even so, it’s pretty obvious.”
“You’ve worked it out?”
“Simon and Carbunkle are singing about a bridge when a goat herder comes by and says, ‘Would you mind shutting up, because my goats can’t get to sleep, and I want to sit back and smoke some weed in peace.’ Simon and Carbunkle don’t take any notice of him and keep singing. He offers them twenty yuan, two months’ salary, to stop their racket, but no luck. So he goes home, gets his rifle and shoots Carbunkle’s finger off. End of story.”
“How much of Bobby’s cold medicine did you take, exactly?”
“Siri?”
“Yes?”
“Do you really think it was wise to leave Madame Daeng back there alone with all that dope?”
Siri slammed on the brakes, and they slid to a stop. “What exactly do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean … considering her little opium problem.”
“Opium isn’t a problem. Arthritis is a problem. Opium is the solution.”
“And there I was thinking you were a doctor.”
“Your point?”
“Is that you know better than I do that opium isn’t a solution to any ailment. It just makes you forget you’ve got it for a little while until it wears off and you need some more. And as the pain gets worse the more you need. Heroin is a step up into the big league. That’s an awful lot of temptation we’ve left with her.”
“Daeng isn’t stupid, Civilai.”
“No. But she’s suffering.”
7
Warped
Inspector Phosy slowly came to in pitch darkness and
all he could feel was pain. The stink of excrement was all around him. His wrists and ankles were bound. When he turned his head and moved his mouth, one side of his face cracked like partridge eggshells underfoot. He could smell his own dried blood. He didn’t know where he was or what was expected of him. As a soldier he had spent time behind bars, had been tortured and beaten. But he’d known and understood his enemies back then. Knowledge was a powerful tool. But here, Phosy was shrouded in ignorance.
He rocked from side to side and shimmied back and forth and decided he was in a pit the size of a grave. His hands were tied behind his back, and he didn’t want to think about the slime upon which he lay. He had no idea how long he had been in his pit, but his stomach rumbled and his throat was parched. The Buddhists had a neat assortment of hells, but most provided fellow sinners to keep a man company. Isolation and deprivation of the senses were far worse than purgatory as far as Phosy was concerned.
American Mae was awoken from her afternoon nap by the sound of banging. She retied her light cloth skirt and walked to the front of the house. The sun had finally found a niche, and its light blurred the body that stood in the open doorway. In one hand the visitor held a pestle which she was using to beat against the wooden doorframe.
“Sister Daeng?” said Mae. “Is that you? You frightened me.”
As she neared the door, it was clear to Mae that Madame Daeng was not in perfect array. She had hitched up the pha sin she wore to a point just above her knees. Her blouse was open at the top to reveal her bra.
“Let’s go,” said Daeng, swaying slightly despite hanging on to the doorframe.
“Where would you like to go, sister?” asked Mae. She was face-to-face with Daeng now and could see the woman’s pupils were mere pinpricks.
“A miracle happened,” said Daeng.
“What is it?”
“My legs. They’re cured.”
“Sister Daeng, why don’t we go back to the cottage and have ourselves a cup of—”
Six and a Half Deadly Sins Page 12
