Colin Cotterill - Thirty-Three Teeth

“More than I care to.” He walked over and joined Siri on the incinerator. “A weretiger is a tiger spirit that can from time to time possess the soul of a woman or man.”

“And vice versa?”

“What do you mean?”

“Could it be a man who turns into a tiger?”

“We are talking about spirits, Yeh Ming. Spirits don’t turn people into animals. They may make them believe they are this or that beast, but there’s no physical manifestation.”

Siri was taken aback.

“What? What about werewolves?”

The monk laughed.

“I’d say you have wasted too many hours watching motion picture films.”

It was true. Siri and Boua had sat through many hours of Lon Chaney with a face like a chihuahua biting into the necks of unsuspecting village folk. Given all that had happened to Siri over the last fifteen months, the least he expected was a parade of ghouls and monsters.

“Then explain this,” he said. “A man is released from Don Thao. He claims to be the host of a weretiger. A few days later comes the first of three killings, all showing evidence of a tiger’s bite and scratch marks.”

The monk looked perplexed.

“I cannot.”

“Is there a possibility?”

“As it indeed happened, there has to be a possibility. But in all these years, I’ve never seen or heard of such a thing.”

Siri shook his head and looked up at the huge moon.

“Do you think there could be a connection with the moon?”

“When did the killings take place?”

“The first was on the eighth. Then the tenth and eleventh.”

“The moon isn’t symbolic of spirit activity, but it is a great source of energy that unleashes a number of innate abilities and quirks. There are theories that the full moon can trigger electrical impulses in the mind. Not all insanity is connected to evil spirits.”

“Where do they hang out? Weretigers.”

“You mean apart from within the souls of humans?”

“Yes.”

“When they aren’t of this world, the Hmong believe they go to the other earth. It is a landscape not unlike the mountains they live their mortal lives on.”

“How do they get there?”

“You enter the other earth through holes in the ground or networks of caves. These lead you to a great body of water where spirits and humans can converse. It’s there that the supreme God, Nyut Vaj, decides whether you are eligible to enter the eternal Kingdom or whether you will have to float in purgatory.”

“I see. So all I have to do is find the other earth and I’ll have our friend, Mr. Seua.”

Siri climbed down from the incinerator and reached out a hand to the nameless monk, who ignored the gesture.

“Yeh Ming …?”

“Yes?”

“There’s no doubt these people were killed by a tiger?”

“Or some other large cat.”

“Then have you considered the possibility it was a real tiger?”

“We thought about it. But how could a wild cat run free in Vientiane without somebody seeing it?”

“What if it isn’t free?”

“You mean if it’s captive? It belongs to someone?”

“Do you know anyone who keeps wild animals?”

Siri’s mind raced to Dtui’s report of her visit to the circus school. He thought of the Russian and his puma. He had a mental image of the trainer late at night walking his big cat at the end of a leash. It was far-fetched but perhaps the only logical explanation, unless the monk was wrong about weretigers and werewolves. Surely Hollywood hadn’t made it all up.

“I may. And that reminds me. If there’s no such thing as a coincidence, I have one more for you to explain. I believe a bear might have sought me out and paid me a visit last Tuesday morning. Is there any connection between Yeh Ming and wild animals?”

“There’s an inseparable connection between Yeh Ming and all nature. Animals sense that.”

As he walked from the temple, one thought nagged at him. At Silver City, the interpreter had told him Dtui hadn’t been there long. He had said it was a flying visit. What if he’d been lying? But why would he? And what could Siri do if he had? The compound was a fortress, and he had no pretext to get inside. He was flustered and anxious and in such a state he couldn’t think as clearly as he’d like.

As it was close, he stopped again at Dtui’s room. He was disappointed but not surprised to learn that she hadn’t come home. So as not to worry Manoluk, he told her they had a case that might go on all night. He brought her a meal from the night stalls on Koonboulom and administered her medication. He did his best to appear calm; but all the while, his thoughts were on Dtui and what could have become of her.

He was in the back, searching for a glass into which to transfer the guava juice from its plastic bag. He pulled back a cloth on a low shelf and was surprised to find a row of textbooks. He squatted down and looked at the titles. They were in English but the words were similar enough to French to get the drift: Fundamentals of Surgery, Chemical Toxicology, Oncology, Urology, Basics of Nursing. Then there were dictionaries: English-Lao-English, English-Russian. And every book was twice as fat as it should have been because the pages were crammed with notepaper.

He selected the Surgery text. In Dtui’s tiny handwriting, on every page there was a detailed description in Lao, and presumably a translation in Russian. There must have been thousands of such sheets. Siri was overwhelmed for a number of reasons. He walked across to Manoluk with the textbook in his hand.

“Manoluk, does Dtui understand English?”

“She didn’t in the beginning. I think she’s got the hang of it now. She only reads and writes it. Can’t speak much. The problem’s going to be the Russian. She has to learn the whole thing again in a new language.”

“You think she actually knows what it all means?”

She gave him a look reserved for mothers whose daughters have been insulted.

“No, I didn’t mean it to sound like that. She’s an intelligent girl. But this stuff is hard enough in our native language. Learning it in two others is unbelievable. How long’s she been doing this?”

“Since before she graduated as a nurse. She originally planned to try for a scholarship to America. That was in the old regime and there were a lot of dollars around. So she started going through her old nursing textbooks, translating line by line. Then you folks came and took over, and all the American funds went out the window. So she started all over again with Russian.”

“I think she might have told me.”

“Well, she-”

“What?”

“She was afraid that if anyone knew she had other languages, they’d move her from the morgue.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Well, one, she got to like the work you do there. I think she’d like to be a, what do you call it?”

“Forensic surgeon.”

“That’s it. And two, you don’t actually have a lot of work in the morgue. Nothing’s so urgent that it can’t wait till morning. It’s a sort of eight-to-five job. She knows if she worked in the wards, they’d put her on shifts and get her translating and stuff. She wouldn’t have time for her study. She’s at it every night. She writes out little test sheets in Lao so I can test her, though I don’t really have any idea what it’s all about. She’s the one with the brains in this family.”

“So it seems.”

Dtui never failed to amaze him. All this time, she’d been preparing herself for further study, even before he recommended her for a scholarship. What he’d thought was an act of kindness on his part was actually the inevitable fulfillment of her plan. She was studying overseas with or without his help.