Colin Cotterill - The Woman Who Wouldn't die

Phosy raised himself on to one elbow and smiled at his wife. By the light of the moon he could see the dark shadows around her eyes.

‘We’ll get them out of there and back to Vientiane long before the Frenchman finds them,’ he said. ‘I put Sergeant Sihot on a boat this afternoon. It’ll stop overnight in Xanakham but tomorrow morning he’ll be in Pak Lai. They can all take the first ferry back here. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t back already.’

‘How could they be?’

‘I contacted Comrade Civilai before he left Luang Prabang and told him about the fire. They have working telephones up there. He should have arrived in Pak Lai around midday. Once Siri and Daeng hear what happened I wouldn’t be surprised if they jumped straight on the ferry and headed home.’

The only indication that Comrade Civilai wasn’t dead was the occasional fart loud enough to cause the boat-race guests to turn in his direction. Madame Daeng shook her head.

‘He’s not going to be much use to us until at least tomorrow morning,’ she said.

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Siri. ‘I reckon we could bottle that flatulence and sell it as cooking gas.’

‘There. That’s why I married you. Class.’

‘I thought you married me because I have an enormous intellect.’

‘I’ve known much bigger intellects,’ she smiled. ‘Intellects that can maintain their intelligence all through the night. Intellects that-’

‘All right. You’ve made your point most eloquently. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese invasion of Sanyaburi; how do you propose we find out what they’re really up to?’

‘I think we can arrange it so that the engineers tell you themselves.’

‘They’re hardly likely to just blurt it out.’

‘Not to you directly, but to each other.’

‘Ah! Once more she thrusts me into the enemy camp as a spy. No fear for my life.’

‘They didn’t hear you speak Vietnamese, did they?’

‘I wanted to. I bit my tongue.’

‘Then you should hang around them.’

‘What is my motivation? What Sherlockian disguise should I don?’

‘You could play drunk.’

‘Ah, a challenge.’

‘What challenge? You do it all the time.’

‘Do it, yes. But act it? That’s a different kettle of gin completely.’

It was late evening. Siri and Ugly approached the small tent compound with two purloined bottles of Mekhong whisky.

‘If you insist on coming along,’ Siri whispered, ‘the least you can do is stagger.’

When Siri started to trip over his own feet, Ugly did the same. Siri decided there was something particularly eerie about that dog.

‘One more step and you’re dead,’ came a voice. Siri looked to one side and saw a sentry sitting cross-legged beneath a Leaning-Egg tree, an AK-47 on his lap. He’d spoken in Vietnamese and, as Siri wasn’t supposed to know the language, he waved and staggered on. Not even the sight of the weapon being raised and trained in his direction caused him to halt. In fact it brought on a song which Siri belted out in grand voice for all to hear. The men sitting around the campfire jumped to their feet. Some reached for their weapons. Siri threw his hands into the air, a bottle in each.

‘I bring alms from the secret capitalists,’ Siri shouted in Lao, ‘to share with my Vietnamese brothers.’

‘What’s he prattling on about?’ someone asked.

‘No idea. He’s as drunk as a wonky fishing rod,’ said another.

Good, thought Siri. They don’t speak Lao.

He performed a little jig in the light of the bonfire.

‘Shoot him,’ someone said as the majority returned to their places around the fire.

‘Take the bottles from him and then shoot him,’ someone else suggested.

Then he noticed Ugly.

‘Look at that damned dog. He’s even more drunk than the old fella.’

From Siri’s lead, Ugly was reeling this way and that and enjoying the laughs he got from his audience. The only officer in the group stepped up to the old drunk and relieved him of his bottles.

‘You speak Vietnamese, Granddad?’ he shouted.

Siri replied with the first verse of ‘They stand to conquer. They squat to pee.’ A rude song the Lao enjoyed singing about their Vietnamese counterparts. The young engineers had obviously never heard it. The bottles, uncapped, were working their ways in conflicting circles around the fire gazers. Each man took a generous swig to impress his mates.

‘OK, you can piss off now,’ said the officer to Siri. ‘Job done. Go back to your intestine-eating, monkey Lao.’

Siri laughed heartily and repeated the sentence with awful pronunciation. The engineers cheered.

‘Monkey Lao,’ they toasted.

‘Monkey Lao,’ Siri laughed. He reached into his shoulder bag and produced a smaller bottle of whisky. He took great pains to unscrew the top. Once decapitated, he held the bottle aloft.

‘Monkey Lao!’ he shouted.

‘Monkey Lao,’ they all repeated.

He was the star turn in this evening’s cabaret. The Vietnamese were laughing and pointing at him and his inebriated dog. Siri began to glug down the drink like a man with a great thirst. They all watched in amazement.

‘He can drink,’ said one of the soldiers.

‘Twenty dong says he falls on his face before he gets to the bottom of the bottle,’ said the officer.

‘I’ll take that bet,’ said one young man.

He clapped a beat for Siri to swallow to and the others joined in. The pace slowed as the doctor’s Adam’s apple began to rise and descend more laboriously but still he swallowed. And, with his eyes closed, he drained the last of the cold tea and overturned the empty bottle above his head. He smiled, bowed to acknowledge the applause of the soldiers, and fell nose first into the recently mown grass. Ugly took a few tentative steps towards him before lying down and playing dead.

The grass had actually been quite comfortable. Siri had fought off sleep until the last engineer had retired to his tent. He was about to return to the guest house when he looked to his left to see Ugly twitching through a deep dream and smiling as if it were a naughty one. Siri paused for a moment too long and he too was plunging through layers of places he’d never seen in real life, only to land in a den of iniquity. He was in a gogo bar in Thailand. The signs were in Thai. The girls on the stage in front of him were in bikinis and stiletto heels. It was certainly a step up from naked Frenchmen. All around him were Western men in loud Hawaiian shirts. But the greatest shock of all was the soundtrack. He could hear everything.

‘See all this?’ came a voice, shouted above the ear-splitting music.

Siri turned to see an old man staring out over the dance floor. He was dressed well in a dazzling flowery tie and a starched white shirt, but there was little of him inside it. He seemed frail and used up. In his hand was something that looked like Coca-Cola but it was in a beer mug and had a straw poking out of it.

‘All this is mine,’ said the man. His voice was that of somebody who couldn’t hear himself talk. Like a man listening to loud music on headphones.

Siri was delighted. Just as Madame Peung had taught him, by not fighting it he was able to attain other elements. The sound was unpleasant — some awful pop thing — but it was an achievement. He hardly dared talk to the old man in the hibiscus tie for fear that it would all go away. But he knew he had to.

‘Who are you?’ Siri thought he’d said, but nothing came out of his mouth. He yelled his question. ‘WHO ARE YOU?’ but again he produced not a sound.

‘Relax, Siri,’ he told himself. ‘Don’t fight. Enjoy the show. Smell the tobacco. Order something.’

He looked around for a beer mat and a pen.