Colin Cotterill: Thirty-Three Teeth

“You know we could never replace you, Little Brother. You’re a legend,” Civilai replied.

“A legend?” Siri slid up the hammock to a sitting position. “Isn’t a legend something that’s long-winded and not widely believed?”

“You’ve got it.”

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Damned hot.”

This was the hot-season anthem that could be heard ad infinitum around the capital. It had been a particularly hot year so far, so it got even more repetition than usual.

For the first time, Siri noticed the cloth bag that Civilai held on his lap. “You bring me something?”

“Nothing you’d be interested in.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

“The Soviets have been courting us. They want permission to build a satellite dish to spy on the Yanks. While we think about it, they pepper us with these little incentives.” He teased the cap of a bottle from his bag.

“Vodka?”

“Moskovskaya; best you can get. But I don’t suppose you’re thirsty.”

Siri was off the hammock and rattling around in the kitchen for a second glass before the word thirsty had left Civilai’s lips.

The late morning had become late afternoon.

“I don’t know how the Russians can strink-this-duff.” Civilai’s slurring turned the comment into one long word.

“Me, too. No wonder the women are hairier than the women.”

“Men.”

“Where?”

So had the conversation deteriorated. There were two modest glassfuls left in the bottom of the bottle. The friends sat side by side on the long, uncomfortable wooden cot. The garden wasn’t moving at all, but they swayed like survivors in a lifeboat. Civilai looked up at a rolled mosquito net tied above their heads.

“You sleep out here, Li’l Brother?”

Siri shook his head from side to side. “Yes.”

“What’s the point of having a house?”

“That’s it. That’s the very something I asked Judge Haeng. But he wouldn’t let me have the garden without it. He said-Siri put on the whiny high-pitched accent of his young superior- ‘We are senior members of the party, Comrade Siri. As such, we have to lead by example. Sleeping in trees should remain the exclusive domain of the primates.’ I was surprised he knew what a primate was.”

“What have you got against houses?”

“Houses I have not a nothing against. But this isn’t a house. A house is an airy wooden thing on slits that-”

“Stilts.”

“I said that. On slits, that creaks when you walk around. It sways in heavy winds and leaks in the rainy season. This? This is a sarcahoph … a … a saroph … sarpho … sarcophagus.”

“Well said.”

“What is this regime’s fixation on concrete?”

“Sustainability. This house will still be here in a thousand years, after ten generations of your wooden houses have fallen down. Remember the three little pigs.”

“That’s it. It’s a sty.”

“It’s not.”

“Then it’s a tomb. I feel entombed. It’s so morbid in there.” “How can you, of all people, complain about morbidity?”

“I’m a coroner. Not a corpse.”

Civilai laughed and leaned back against the wall. “How are your ghostly friends, by the way?”

Siri looked at him to see whether he was about to make fun of his spiritual connections-as he always did.

“There hasn’t been a lot of activity since the floating Vietnamese last November. But then again, we haven’t had too many mysteries lately.”

“They only come out in times of confusion?”

“No. They’re around all the time. They all make an appearance, but they don’t ne-cessessarily do anything. I get an old lady sitting opposite me in the office late-he hiccupped- excuse me, at night. She just sits there. I keep waiting for her to do something, flash me a tit or some such, but she just sits, chewing betel, staring at me.”

“You know, Siri, sometimes you scare the daylights out of me.” Civilai leaned over and poured the remains of the Soviet bribe into their chipped glasses. “We should finish this up before it eats through the bottom of the bottle.”

“A toast to the illustrious Union of Sovalist Republicists.”

“I don’t think you need any more.”

They quaffed the dregs and Siri got unsteadily to his feet. “Thank God that’s over. Now we can have some deluscious coffee.”

The late afternoon was becoming evening.

The shadows from the instant jungle had fallen across the two pickled patriots and were climbing the concrete wall behind them. The chewy coffee was shocking them out of their Sunday stupors. Civilai made one last attempt to encourage his friend to feel at home.

“I think this place is quite charming.”

“Then I’ll move in with your wife and you can live here.”

“Let me think about that.”

“It was supposed to be a reward, but it’s more like punishment, Older Brother. I’ve got busybody Miss Vong on one side of me and some corrupt local official from Oudom Xay on the other.”

“Surely you could shout that a little bit louder.”

Siri ignored him. “I’ve got a goddamned loudspeaker blaring out diatribes against the non-communist world right there at the corner of the street from five A. goddamnedM. I couldn’t be any more unhappy.”

“All you need here is a good woman to turn it into a home. I don’t suppose you’ve-”

“Don’t.”

“I was only wondering if you’d-”

“Don’t.”

– ”contacted her. That’s all.”

“No. And I won’t. Don’t ask again.”

“Seems silly to me.”

Siri sulked for a moment or two. There had only been one woman, one date, since Boua had died. It was a disaster of a date. Siri knew Lah was a woman he could love. The feeling was returned. Auntie Lah had custom-made baguettes for him at her cart opposite Mahosot Hospital from the first week he arrived there. They joked, they flirted, and she made no secret of the fact she liked him.

Once Boua, his only love, his long-departed wife, had given her postmortem permission, he went at that new romance like a teenager. On the night of the fateful date when he first saw Lah waiting there, glamorous and preening like a Likay queen, the butterflies in his belly had almost lifted him from the seat of his motorbike.

She ran over on her unfamiliar heels and sniffed the air at his cheek. He felt the brush of her lips, and parts of him that had been in hibernation for many years began to stir. It was all marvelously portentous. He was at the precipice overlooking what he knew could be a wonderful final cycle to his life.

He was about to leap when she handed him the gift. It was beautifully wrapped and expensively heavy. She said it was something she’d found at the morning market. She said it was as if it had spoken to her. She believed it could stymie his run of bad luck. He opened the box, and all his hope caved in like some badly built temple stupa.

In the cardboard coffin lay a black amulet eroded by decades of hopeful fingers. It was attached to a fraying leather thong. Siri knew it well.

Lah smiled, expecting a smile in return from her dashing beau. But, instead, the expression on his face frightened her. His unkempt white eyebrows gathered at the center of a furrowed brow. He shook his head slowly and asked “How could you do this?”

“Wha-?”

Siri had sped off on his motorcycle clutching the amulet in his left hand, without saying another word. She watched him go with her cherry-red bottom lip hanging open. Of course she had no idea what she’d done. She thought she was showing him a kindness. She thought she was giving him a token of her affection. But it had turned out to be doom. She never saw him again and never understood why.