Colin Cotterill - The Merry Misogynist

She shrugged and giggled and knelt by the bucket.

"Have you had champagne before?" he asked.

"No."

He kicked off his shoes and sat cross-legged on the quilt. He started to peel off the foil from around the cork.

"There's a shop in Vientiane," he said. It was as if he were just reading his lines but not investing any emotion into their delivery. "They have imported luxury items for foreign dignitaries. You can get a lot of exo — "

His eyes had wandered to his bride. She had unbuttoned the top of her blouse and rolled down the collar so she could wash. Her long neck was exposed and, at last, the feeling came to him. It was like a powerful drug that coursed through his veins and made him feel twice the man he was.

"Enough," he said. "Come over here." He fought to keep the anxiety out of his voice. She walked to the edge of the quilt and stepped out of her shoes. She reached for the silver belt that held up her phasin.

"Should I…?"

"No," he said. "I mean, not yet. We have all the time in the world and I want this to be special. Come and sit here."

He patted a spot beside him and quickly put the glasses there as a barrier. She knelt, then eased herself into a polite sitting position with her legs out to one side. He could see that her hands were shaking. It wasn't a cold night. He knew she wanted him, like they all did. He closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath to calm himself.

"One, two…"he began in English.

"Three," she said, and the champagne cork exploded high into the starry sky. He heard it land somewhere at the rear of the truck. He was quick enough to have the sparkling wine in the first glass before it spilled.

"You've done this before," she said and reached for the glass.

"No, wait," he told her. He poured his own drink then put down the bottle before reaching for the small plate of hors d'oeuvres. "There are customs in Europe about how to do this. You'll have to get used to all this when we move there. This is caviar — real Russian caviar. You have to…"

"I've heard of it," she said. "They say it's very expensive. You really shouldn't sp — "

"All right, and one of the customs is that you listen to the customs. There'll be time to talk later." He smiled, embarrassed by his lack of control. "To drink champagne after taking a mouthful of caviar is an experience like no other. You'll think you're in heaven. But the rule is that you have to close your eyes when you eat it."

"So many rules. I'm surprised the Russians — "

"Here," he said, holding out a spoon piled high with small dark pearls of sturgeon roe. "Close your eyes and imagine we're sitting on a balcony overlooking the Black Sea."

She giggled again. He wanted to slap her.

"Go on. Close them."

She closed her eyes.

"Now open your mouth but keep your eyes closed. You have to promise to keep them closed until it's all melted in your mouth."

She opened her mouth. With his right hand he placed the spoon on her tongue and she closed her lips around it. Meanwhile, his left hand reached into his shirt pocket, took out a small envelope, and held it over her glass.

"What's that?" she asked.

He looked at her face. Her eyes were wide open. Rules! Rules had to be obeyed.

"I told you to shut your eyes." He was furious. He poured the powder into her glass and swirled it around. He was somehow able to hold his temper. "It's another surprise," he said. "A love potion."

Her laugh now was less spontaneous, more affected than before. She looked into his angry eyes.

"Where's yours?"

"What?"

"If it's a love potion, shouldn't we both — ?"

He grabbed the bottle and hurled it with all his might at the tree. It didn't break, merely bounced back in their direction. The champagne spewed across the quilt. She squirmed backwards.

"Phan, what's happened?"

"Just drink the damned champagne, will you?"

"No, you're scaring me."

"For Christ's sake! Why is this so difficult?"

He was across the quilt and had his forearm around her neck before she could react. He held her as if she were a calf ready for branding. She tried to pull his arm away but he was fearfully strong. His grip was unbreakable. Still confounded by what was happening, she reached for his hair with her free hand. She tried to yank at it but to her astonishment it just came away from his scalp with a slight tearing sound. She looked up at him, at the candlelight playing off his bald head, at the look of rage in his eyes. She had no idea who this man was.

She kicked and flailed her legs as he dragged her back across the quilt to where the champagne glasses still stood on the small tray. He took hold of her drink and squeezed her neck tightly. He held the glass in front of her mouth, waiting for her to gasp for breath so he could hurl the liquid down her throat.

"Drink it," he snarled. He was crying with frustration. "You've spoiled it. There were rules and you broke them. You've ruined the whole thing."

Her fingernails clawed at his flesh but he seemed not to notice. She clamped her lips shut and he threw the champagne in her face. He kept hold of her glass and smashed it against his. It left him with a stem and a jagged point in his fist. He held his new weapon in front of her face and drew his arm back to get full force. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, waiting for the inevitable.

There came an almighty crack. The grip around her neck loosened and her attacker slumped against her. She opened her eyes in time to see the glass drop to the quilt. Phan was still draped over her but without strength — without life. She fought his body off hers and fell back, panting, onto the quilt. Her shirt was ripped almost off. Her hair had broken free of its bun and hung across her face. Phan lay as if asleep on his side of the bed. His face on the pillow wore an angelic smile, but his hairless skull was cracked like an egg. A puddle of red yolk spread beneath him.

Wei swept back her hair and looked up. Standing beside the quilt was an old man with green eyes and snowy white hair. He seemed drugged and woozy. She could hear his breaths like saw cuts on teak. In his right hand he held a fifty-centimetre monkey wrench, the largest you could find in a standard Lao toolbox.

It was a rare treat. Mr Inthanet had somehow managed to convince his ex-fiancee, Miss Vong, that he didn't actually have a wife in Luang Prabang. Or at least that he hadn't seen her for so long that some sort of statute of limitations was now in place that technically made him single. The engagement was back on, and she'd given him permission to use the teacher training department truck that Sunday. It meant that everyone from Siri's house at That Luang, plus one or two stragglers, could make the trip out to the Buddha Park. The fantasy park at Xiang Khuan had been built in 1958 by an eccentric mystic called Luang Pa Bunleua. It housed a collection of concrete interpretations of various scenes from the Ramayana and other mythical tales as well as Buddhist and Hindi deities.

Luang Pa himself had been deported the previous year for antisocial behaviour, which many had taken to mean antisocialist behaviour. The Party was a little overwhelmed by a man so steeped in religious convictions that he would build a theme park to the gods. Luang Pa's first task upon arriving in Thailand had been to build a brand-new Buddha Park in Nong Kai, even grander and weirder than its predecessor. Rather than bulldoze the Lao site, the government declared it a national park and hoped children would grow up believing the huge stone figures were Thai cartoon characters with no religious connections.

It was a busy place on weekends. Goodness knows there was little enough entertainment in the country, and locals gravitated to the ex-deities as if the monuments had some drawing power of their own. There were a few army and government vehicles in the car park and some motorcycles, but most people found their way to the Buddha Park by public bus. The department of road transport had laid on extra buses on weekends to cater to the numbers.