Colin Cotterill - Thirty-Three Teeth

“Come on, you old miser. I know you’ve got a stash there in that bag.”

Civilai reluctantly reached into the brown paper parcel and pulled out one of his wife’s healthy sandwiches. Their bread habit had taken hold in France during their studies. Rightly or wrongly, but mostly wrongly, doughy white bread had been one of the few luxuries they’d dreamed of through their decades in the jungle.

Where the young men had baser, more animal priorities when sent to Hanoi for training or meetings, Siri and Civilai’s first saliva-ridden thoughts were of crusty French baguettes and sumptuous fillings. They’d been delighted to see the cheap bread industry alive and well when they marched into Vientiane in ‘75, and proceeded to make up for time lost in the wilds of Houaphan.

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Damned hot.”

“Damned hot.”

“I’ve got thirty-three teeth.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No, really, I-”

“I think this temperature’s driving everyone a little batty,” Civilai said.

“What’s the latest?” Phosy asked.

“Well, top of the loony list is that most of the politburo are talking about banning festivals because they encourage spontaneity. ‘Over my dead body,’ I say. Then this morning, the Thai foreign minister announced that the Lao king, whom we all know is presently holidaying in the sunny wilds of Houaphan, was rescued from Luang Prabang by a crack Thai guerrilla unit and would see out his days on Thailand’s sunny southern island of Phuket.”

“I really do have-”

“Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific, the Yanks, following a brief experiment with enlightenment, have reintroduced corporal punishment. I think everyone needs to take a nice cold shower. I even got a peculiar phone call from your nurse this morning, Siri.”

Siri was sulking and didn’t respond.

“I’d settle for an air-conditioned office,” Phosy lamented.

“The cutting room at the morgue’s got ac,” Siri reminded them. “You could both come and hang out there. I’d even let you-”

“I don’t think we need to know, thanks.”

“How’s your body double?” Civilai asked.

“I can’t think what you mean.” Siri sat between the two men and unwrapped his lunch. “I personally don’t see any similarity between Mr. Inthanet and myself. Do you, Inspector?”

“You’re both conniving old bastards.”

“I mean, physically.”

“Come on, old fellow. We’re waiting to hear about your friend and the complete royal puppet story.”

“And a few missing details about last night,” Phosy added.

Siri washed down a mouthful of bread with a swig from Phosy’s iced coffee flask. The ice hadn’t survived the day.

“Well, it isn’t really that complicated, boys. Older Brother, do you think you could wave that thing a bit harder? It’s hot here.”

Civilai hit him with the fan.

“Thank you. Where should I start? When I was in Luang Prabang, I asked around about the chest I’d seen at the Ministry. When I described it, I was put in touch with our friend Inthanet. He was one of the five surviving keepers of the Royal Xiang Thong temple puppets. They’d been quiet for a while.”

“I seem to recall that my cabinet banned them from using royal language in performances, and the puppets refused,” Civilai grinned.

“That’s right. The chest was ceremonially closed and stored at Xiang Thong. It was your classic puppet-politburo standoff. But the puppets had no intention of coming out, so it looks like the government went in after them.

“Some men in safari suits came one day and grabbed the chest. Nobody was sure who they were or where they were planning to take the puppets. The abbot charged with their safekeeping was shown a government directive that the chest was to be moved for security reasons. When the abbot asked for details, they told him it was all confidential. There wasn’t much he could do about it.

“And that’s how the chest ended up in the archive department of the Ministry and why all hell broke loose. You see, the chest can’t be opened by just anyone whenever they feel like it. The spirits of the puppets are incredibly powerful and amazingly temperamental. They were already-”

“How can puppets have spirits?” Civilai interrupted.

“What?”

“Puppets aren’t people, and they aren’t dead. So how-?”

“Ah, but the puppets are made of balsa, and before the wood to carve them is cut from the tree, the puppet-maker has to get permission from the tree spirits. The balsa is a gentle wood and spirits are plentiful in it. When they learn that the wood is going to be made into the image of a person, it’s awfully tempting for the more nostalgic spirits to jump ship and settle in the form of the puppet. It’s as if they’ve returned to their lost host.

“The balsa spirits attract others to the puppets: dead puppeteers, artisans, dancers, until each one has a personality and a force of its own. Inthanet knows all of them and how to open and close the chest without offending them. When I told him I’d seen the royal seal on a box at the Ministry, he was only too pleased to come with me to Vientiane. He’s quite a character. You’d like him, brother. He’d never been out of Luang Prabang in his life.”

Phosy stood and walked toward the crest of the riverbank before it dropped steeply to the shallow river.

“All right. That explains who Inthanet is. Now let’s cut to last night. I still have one or two little mysteries of my own to solve. When was this ceremony planned, may I ask?”

“Originally we weren’t going to do it until the weekend. We’d booked a little orchestra, and they weren’t free till Saturday.”

“You booked an orchestra?”

“Just half a dozen traditional instruments. And we should have spent longer paying respect to local balsa trees. But you messed all those plans up with your impatience.”

“Impatience? I’d been making excuses to my boss for a week.”

“Patience shouldn’t expire, son. Everything comes to he who waits.”

“Especially early retirement.”

“When I heard at Mahosot that you were on your way to open the chest, I knew you were in trouble. I raced home and picked up Inthanet and whatever paraphernalia he had ready. We were really pushing our luck with the cassette recorder. The spirits much prefer live music. We swung by a balsa copse and briefly explained what we intended, and got a sort of emergency go-ahead from the spirits there.

“All the time, I was picturing you, haunted by some angry spirits, leaping headfirst through the upstairs window. I was so relieved when we got there and didn’t see your effeminate motor scooter parked nearby or your impatient body splattered in the road.”

“I bet I could have made it all the way to the fountain. But, tell me, how did you get up to the seventh floor without going through the damned door?”

“Inthanet recited a magic mantra and spirited us up through time and space. I felt my body dissolve like sugar in water, and all the parts rose into the air. It was the most wonderful sensation. One minute we were at the fountain, the next we were with the chest.”

They stared at him, open-mouthed.

“You can not be serious.”

“No. Just kidding. We broke in through the side door on the ground floor.” Civilai hit him again with the fan. “Then we used the other stairwell from the fifth to the seventh.”

“What other stairwell?”

“Funny you, as a clever detective, didn’t notice a whole staircase.”

“There was no-”

“Certainly was. We came to the locked door and I thought we’d have to break it down. But Inthanet sensed there was another way. It was at the other end of the building, boarded off, didn’t have a door. The hardboard was just glued on. It came away very easily. The stairs were riddled with white ant, but if you kept to the sides … There was another board at the top.”