Colin Cotterill - Thirty-Three Teeth

Phosy, still high on fear, took in every detail of the surroundings. The music was playing loudly from an old cassette recorder that sat on the workbench. The play button was obviously faulty. It was taped down with cellophane tape.

Between Siri and Inthanet was a white sheet spread on the ground. It was stained red here and there from the severed head of a pig and a small butcher’s display of other dismembered internal organs. Phosy hoped they were animal. This orgy of blood was set off prettily with bananas and mangosteen and young coconuts, all laid out like decorations on a large wedding cake.

A tray holding a ceremonial banana-leaf cone sat atop the chest. Other leaves fanned out from its base interspersed with ripe banana slices. Four pairs of beeswax tapers, a cut flower, and a stick of magic incense jutted from the cone-like quills. Unspun cotton threads and pungent jasmine hung from the structure as if they’d fallen there by chance.

On the tray base were a silver knife, coins, and several brightly polished stones, and defying gravity at the apex of the cone sat an egg. Phosy had seen similar constructions often at weddings and birthdays and he knew there was to be a basee ceremony. But this one was much fancier than any he’d seen in his life.

“Siri, I …”

“Shush. He’s coming back.”

Inthanet emerged from his prayer trance and seemed to notice Phosy for the first time, even though he’d been staring straight at him the whole time.

“How are you, son?” he asked.

“Fine.”

Not true.

Inthanet took the egg from the cone and held it out to Phosy, who let it lay in his palm. The old man then lit the tapers from each of the four victory candles and held them between his palms. He caused the smoke to waft three times around the basee cone and once around Phosy’s face. He passed the tapers to Siri who repeated the procedure while Inthanet recited a Pali incantation.

After a few minutes, Inthanet took hold of the basee tray with his right hand and Phosy’s egg hand with his left. His eyelids flickered shut. Phosy raised his right hand with his palm facing his right ear. Siri returned the tapers to the cone and rested one hand on each man to complete the circuit. Inthanet continued to chant with a seriousness befitting the situation.

When he re-emerged from his trance, he took a thread from the cone. He dragged it three times across Phosy’s wrist before looping and tying it there. The three men then took strings from the cone and continued to tie them around each other’s wrists until all the thread was used up.

Inthanet, with one final flourish of language, took the egg from Phosy, broke it on the ground, and inspected the inside of the shell. It was unstained, almost perfect. He smiled at his co-mediums, and they knew the signs were good. Their leader removed the tray from the chest and laid his palm flat on the lid.

Mumbling quietly to himself, he slowly raised his hand. The lid creaked and lifted with it, as if his palm were a strong magnet. It was evidently powerful enough to raise even the eyebrows of the watchers. When the lid was open and leaning against the workbench, Inthanet looked down into the chest and smiled as if he were greeting old friends.

“So, how have you been, my lovelies?”

He nodded to Siri, who opened a bottle of rice whiskey that had been sitting amongst the road-kill on the sheet. He poured some into a plastic cup and handed it to Inthanet. He in turn knocked back one or two sips before filling his mouth with the remainder. He leaned over the casket and blew out a fine spray of the liquid through tight lips.

“There, that should wake you up.”

Phosy was dying to take a look inside the chest, but he felt too much like a part of the ceremonial display to change his position. However, things soon became clear. While Siri lit a cigarette from one victory candle, Inthanet reached gently into the box and lifted out the leader of the Xiang Thong puppets. He was a pearl-faced prince in once-glittering robes. He was eighteen inches from the tip of his bare feet to the top of his winged helmet.

Inthanet took a second swig of whiskey and sprayed the puppet’s face. It almost seemed to grin with its new shine. Siri had seen this face before. It had been in his dreams. He hadn’t imagined it was a puppet. It had cheered from the roof as the ministry official plummeted to his death. It had danced for him and the king. It had looked down at Siri when he was trapped in the box. He realized now that he had been inside the royal chest looking out through the matte black eyes of these marionettes.

Siri handed the lighted cigarette to the old man, who took a drag and blew smoke into the prince’s face. These indignities were apparently gestures of respect to the puppet spirits. Phosy thought how at-home they would be in some seedy puppet bar. The gesture was repeated lovingly for each of the forty figures.

He called them all by name and passed on funny anecdotes about them to his audience. He told of how the green-faced demon was a devil with the ladies. Once, the troupe had hired a particularly pretty puppeteer. On a number of occasions she would wake up in the morning to find the demon’s white fangs smiling beside her on the pillow. The girl’s door was always locked and there was no way for anyone to bring the demon into her room. She soon deserted the troupe.

Another puppet was a slim dancing girl with a pointed headdress. One day an old puppet master was so carried away with the drama of a scene that he accidentally let go of the puppet’s stick as she was leaping. She soared up to the rafter and was embedded into the wood by her hat. She was soon rescued, but the indignity was too much for the dancing girl. The next morning, they found the puppet master wedged at the top of a tall champac tree with no recollection of how he had gotten there.

One, a smoking puppet, refused to go back into the chest unless he was allowed to take a puff of the cigarette himself with his big cheeks. The cigarette burned bright when it touched his lips and smoke came from the puppet’s ears, even though he was as solid as soap.

Time seemed to be of no importance. When all the puppets were laid out across the workbench in neat rows, Phosy looked at his watch and realized the sun would soon be rising. The cigarettes had all been smoked. Two whiskey bottles lay on their sides empty. The final candle huffed its final sliver of gray smoke just as the lid of the chest was being shut.

“You won’t have any more trouble with them,” Inthanet sighed. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m tuckered out. Can we go home now?”

The two white-haired men woke in a sweat at noon. It was the devil of a hot day without a whisper of a breeze to be had anywhere. It was the type of day that could wilt a metal gatepost. The only thing preventing Siri and Inthanet from waking earlier was the mental exertion of last night’s ceremony. They were so drained, they could have slept through a house fire.

Siri looked over from his cot, Inthanet from his hammock.

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Damned hot.”

They smiled and scratched and sat up.

“You’ll be keen to get back to Luang Prabang now, I suppose,” Siri said. In their brief time together, Siri and the old showman had become good friends.

“Not at all. Not at all. I’m sixty-eight, brother, and this is my first time away from the north. This is like winning the provincial lottery. How else would I get a free ride on my first-ever airplane? How else would I get to see the great southern capital and reside in a splendid mansion? This is the most fun I’ve had in decades. We found the puppets and got them settled and we pulled a magnificent fast one over your grumpy neighbor. All fun, Siri. All fun. I intend to drag this out for as long as I can. May even do a bit of sightseeing. In fact, you may never get rid of me.”