Siri found Miss Latsamy in the City Law Administration Office where she worked for three dollars a month. She was stamping official seals onto documents that stood in rectangular towers across her desk. She looked up when he came in.
“Ah. Hello, Uncle.”
“Hello, Miss Latsamy. I was hoping you could tell me where I might find Comrade Houey.”
She looked up at the clock on the wall.
“I don’t think you can. He’s preparing for…for the…” she didn’t know what to call it “…the thing.”
“The thing?”
Miss Latsamy looked across at the lady at the desk opposite, who raised a well-crayoned eyebrow. She said nothing.
“It doesn’t really have a name, I don’t think, Uncle. Comrade Houey called all the shamans to a meeting in the Town Hall. Anyone who refuses will be arrested. They all have to bring their paraphernalia with them, because there’s going to be a…”
“A thing.”
“Right.”
“What time’s the meeting?”
“Seven. But it’s only for shamans.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Miss Latsamy. Don’t you know I’m the embodiment of a thousand-and-fifty-year-old holy man from Khamuan?”
She eyed him up and down. “You don’t look it.”
“It’s very kind of you to say so.”
Teacher Chanmee arrived at the morgue early in the afternoon. She was there on the bed of a pickup truck when Dtui got back from lunch.
“Hot, isn’t it?”
“Damned hot.”
“This is for you, Mrs.”
The hospital driver was keen to get a signature on his chit and offload the body.
“If you called me ‘Miss,’ I might think about it.”
Mr. Geung arrived just as she was signing. He wheeled out the morgue trolley and took the new guest to the examination room. As he was preparing to slot her into the freezer, Dtui came up behind him and looked at the body.
“See that, Mr. Geung? Those marks are almost identical to the ones on Auntie See.”
He continued to prepare the teacher for storage.
“Let…let’s w…wait for the Comrade Doctor.”
“Wouldn’t you trust me to cut her up, pal?”
“Dr. Siri is a…a doctor.”
“And what am I?”
“A girl.”
“What about when I come back from four years’ study in the Soviet Union with a coroner’s certificate? Will I still be just a girl then?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“Then you…you…you’ll be an old girl.”
He kept his face straight for as long as was humanly possible, then snorted his laugh. She picked up the bone cleaver and chased him around the dissection table.
Dtui was the unbreakable one. She was the survivor of a litter of children who all left life before puberty. Had they lived, she would now have five brothers and five sisters. But they hadn’t been as lucky or as hardy or wily as she proved to be. She went beyond the point that had taken most of her siblings: the crossroads where childbirth and death meet. Without the assistance of immunization, her body had fought off all the usual childhood diseases, and the curse of accidents had passed over her roof to give grief to the next household.
Her mother, Manoluk, had invested eleven lives of love into her surviving daughter. When her soldier husband was lost in one more meaningless battle, she brought her to Vientiane. Here she cooked and cleaned and washed for strangers and pushed Dtui through school. It wasn’t until her daughter stood on the platform receiving her nursing diploma from the wife of the viceroy that she allowed herself to relax.
Cirrhosis took her almost immediately. It was as if the bacteria itself had waited for Dtui to graduate. Years of bad diet and poor living conditions took their toll on her tired body, and by her daughter’s third paycheck, Manoluk was already too weak to work.
The morgue position paid only a dollar a month more than the wards, but for Dtui every dollar counted. She didn’t particularly like the idea at first. She’d entered nursing to keep people alive, not put them in jars. But the morgue dollar and another from overtime paperwork helped pay for the drugs that kept her ma alive.
The previous coroner had been a kind man, a pencil-thin bachelor trained in France. He helped Dtui out whenever he could, but he was helping many others on his modest salary and she didn’t like to ask for more. He had escaped across the river with all the others, not knowing what punishment his sophisticated family name might bring down upon him.
The Pathet Lao takeover could have been a disaster for Manoluk, had Dtui missed any paychecks. Nobody was sure whether they’d keep their jobs in the new regime, or be paid, or be sent for re-education. Dtui and Geung went to the morgue every day as usual and mopped and dusted and whacked cockroaches, waiting for some news of their fate. But in the beginning it turned out that the new system worked in their favor. The government made a demonstrative point of helping the disadvantaged. Although money became scarcer and virtually disappeared after two drastic devaluations, Dtui was able to stock up on rice and canned supplies.
That’s how things still were. Manoluk had her better and worse days. Mostly she just lay and read. Like the mysterious monk had predicted, ma was having a better year. Her cirrhosis wasn’t getting any worse, but she still needed medical attention that wasn’t available in Laos. If Dtui got the posting to the Soviet Bloc, she could live dirt-cheap and send the living allowance back. It was double her salary. Girls she knew were doing just that.
She could dream of finding a wealthy man to marry and end all their suffering, but although the Lord had blessed her with intelligence and kindness, He hadn’t made her slender or pretty enough, so their future was in her hands.
She sat in the dim glow of the desk lamp staring at the molds in front of her on the desk. She was wearing her Chinese overalls and a thin layer of red dust. Earlier, at the hospital garden allotment, she’d been assigned to rescue as many
gaaw
turnips as she could from the impenetrable crust of the back lots. Those that hadn’t been baked by the heat had become inedible fossils.
She should have gone straight home to see how Manoluk was doing, but instead she’d become fascinated by this case. She’d made agar casts of the teethmarks on teacher Chanmee and was comparing them with the two other sets. Whatever had savaged the teacher had also bitten deep into the throat of Auntie See. There was no doubt about it.
Although the front morgue door was open, she heard a knock on the frame outside. She called out: “Who is it?”
“Civilai.”
“Come in, Comrade.”
Civilai walked through the dark vestibule and into the office.
“Hello, Dtui. Siri not here?”
“He’s not back yet.”
“Ah, those Luang Prabang girls.”
“He sent a message this afternoon that he’s trying to get a flight. There’s some problem with his paperwork.”
“You surprise me.”
“They say he can’t get a laissez passer out of Luang Prabang because he didn’t have one to get in. So, officially he shouldn’t be there.”
“Ridiculous. This was official business.”
“It was, but the doc didn’t come back when he was supposed to. He missed his helicopter ride. I think he upset the local governor as well.”
“He never gets too old to break the rules, does he? I’m convinced if he weren’t the national coroner, he’d be in prison.”
Dtui sucked air through her clenched teeth.
“What is it?”
“He might end up in prison anyway.”
Civilai shook his head and went to sit at the doctor’s desk. “What’s the old dog done now?”
“I don’t know, Uncle. But two uniformed policemen have been here twice looking for him. They say they have a warrant.”
“What for?”
“His arrest.”
“What on earth do they think he’s done?”
“They wouldn’t tell me.”
“I’ll get Phosy to look into it. We can’t have our only forensic surgeon locked up. I’ll see what I can do about his travel pass, too.”
“Thanks, Comrade.”
He looked around at the office. “Hot, isn’t it?”
“Damned hot.”
“What’s that you’ve got there?”
“Teeth marks.”
“Aha.”
He carried his chair over to her desk and looked at the clear gray molds. He poked a finger into the side.
“This looks like….”
“It is.”
“Very ingenious. Did you think of it?”
“I was just about to, but Siri got there first. A second case came in today with identical marks to those on the old lady. We think it’s a bear.”
“In Vientiane?”
“One escaped from the garden of the Lan Xang.”
“Not that old dishrag? It hardly seemed alive. But I bet it had a chip on its shoulder. Now I see why Siri had me hunting for an animal expert.”
“Did you find one?”
“I certainly did. He apparently knows something about bears, too.”
“Good. I can’t wait for Siri to get back and sort this all out.”
Civilai looked at her through his thick glasses. “Well, don’t then.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t wait.”
“You mean I…?”
“Siri always says you’re five times smarter than he is, not that that’s so difficult. But you seem like a very able young lady. I’ll arrange the paperwork, and you can go talk to the fellow.” Dtui’s smile surpassed the glow from the lamp. “If you think you’re up to it.”
“You bet your red flag I am, Uncle.”
“Good. That’s settled then.”
“What do I need paperwork for?”
“You can’t just waltz up and start chatting to foreigners, you know.”
“He’s foreign?”
“Russian. Like the vodka.”
“Oh.”
The pervading atmosphere of socialist xenophobia in and around Vientiane had added to the culture of mistrust. Although there were very few actual spies, there were enough imagined ones to keep everyone on their toes. The Lao didn’t dare go up to a foreigner in the street, because they didn’t know who might be watching or what they might be thinking about the relationship.
The remaining foreign teachers or long-term residents found themselves with fewer and fewer friends the longer they stayed. Maids and gardeners and drivers had to report weekly to the Department of Foreign Affairs. They reported car registration numbers, overheard conversations, and names of suspicious visitors. It was frightening to imagine such power in the hands of a maid.
Although the politburo was keen to accept foreign aid from the Soviets and Vietnamese and to invite their experts to act as advisers, they didn’t actually want too much mixing with the common people. So it was that Dtui spent a sleepless night worrying about her date with the foreign devil on the following morn.
She’d never spoken to a white man before.
The compact Luang Prabang Town Hall was more romantically lit than usual. They’d brought in an extra supply of beeswax lamps, as per instructions from the Department of Culture. They certainly weren’t to use electricity, as the manual said it disturbed the natural harmonics. The building was draped in white threads, and candles on small clay stands burned along the perimeter walls.
If there had been any tourists, this would certainly have been a highlight of the slide show back home. Except that they wouldn’t have gotten in. Siri stood in the shadows opposite and watched a bizarre parade of witch doctors arriving, as if out of various dreams, to be frisked by two tough soldiers at the gate.
Those without spiritual connections were turned away and joined the large crowd of bemused locals gathered beyond the wall. They pointed to well-known but barely-seen shamans like stars arriving at the Oscars. One wizard-like man with thick white hair down to his naked knees drew “ahh’s” of admiration from the gathering. Two short round Hmong women, like zeros, came together with a stick-like man in red.
There were old ladies in white sheets wheeling barrows of artifacts, men in eyeless hoods guided by young children, animals in sacks squealing anticipation of a sacrifice, small troupes of cymbalists clattering around intoxicated mediums, and transvestites in makeup brighter than the lamps. The carnival of freaks was interspersed with wise folks who had found shamanism thrust upon them and had no desire to turn themselves into circus performers.
Siri attached himself to the tail of the parade and flashed his ID. Once inside, he was overwhelmed by the humidity and the scents of the assembled witchery. Incense smoke of contradicting spells tangled like clothes in a washing machine. Excremental odors of petrified piglets and body sweat and cheap cigarettes all wafted through the room.
The authorities had laid out folding wooden chairs in neat rows as if this were a gathering of normal people attending a political seminar. On the raised platform stood a table with four seats and name place-cards. As yet, the owners of the names had not taken their seats. They were waiting for the assembly to settle down before making an entrance.
But this was an assembly of the unsettleable. They sprawled and faced about and ambled around, greeting old friends and arguing old scores. They turned their chairs into walking creatures that mingled with them. And soon the raised table was a forgotten focal point overlooking an unruly scrum. It was all most sociable, but terribly un-socialist.
Siri was content to squat against the side wall and watch the show, but the white-haired man caught sight of him and walked unsteadily over. As he got closer, Siri could see there was little more to him than hair. He was a skeleton painted pale pink.
“Yeh Ming, Yeh Ming. How would you be?” the old man asked. He seemed truly delighted to see Siri, or whoever it was he saw. He held out a sprig of finger-bones that Siri shook carefully. The sound of the man coming down to sit beside him was like a wind charm being lowered to the ground. Siri was surprised that his hidden shaman was so obvious to this old man.
“You know Yeh Ming?”
“Certainly. Certainly. How could I not? You’re an ancestor to many of us.”
“You know, I haven’t actually met Yeh Ming myself. I only found out about him last year.”
“You could do worse, boy, much worse. You see that particularly obnoxious looking woman there with the glued hair? She carries around the unsettled spirit of Sisadtee, who died a horrible death. She spends all her time seeking revenge on those who cut off her limbs.”
“Is there any chance that I could talk to you about Yeh Ming? There are a lot of things I need to learn.”
“Why not? Why not? Come by tomorrow, around the second sunrise.”
“Where do I find you?”
“You know the Pak Ou caves?”
“I’ve heard of them.”
“I’ll wait for you there.”
“When exactly is the second sunr—?”
His question was drowned out by the shrill blasts of two referees’ whistles. The sound cut through all the chatter. The four local dignitaries had arrived at the high table and were being ignored. The men at either end had taken out their whistles to shut up the audience. Between the blowers sat Comrade Houey and his tough friend who was, according to his name card, the head of Provincial Security.
Even with all the whistling, it was still some minutes before the chairs were turned and half-turned toward the stage and the noise had abated. One of the whistlers began a well-worn introduction to his boss.
“Respected comrade brothers and sisters, the Northern Lao Administration of the Democratic Republic is honored to have you here this evening. It gives me great pleasure to introduce the holder of no fewer than twenty-eight distinguished service citations, two medals of….”
He went on. Siri whispered to his partner: “Do you have any idea what this is all about?”
“Oh yes. Oh yes. But I came anyway. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”
“…His Honor, Comrade Governor Houey.” The other three men at the table applauded. The audience didn’t, although one of the sacrificial cocks crowed in its sack. Houey stood and looked with arrogance around the room.
“Comrade shamans,” he began. “This morning, the king and queen, the crown prince, and several members of the former royal family were transported, for their own safety, to the Northeast.”
There were dissatisfied murmurs from the crowd. Siri now understood where his helicopter had gone. Houey didn’t pause for effect. “As you all know, since December of 1975, the man you referred to as ‘king’ has been a normal citizen like you or me.”
“But without the respect,” someone shouted.
“Who was that?” Houey asked angrily.
“Sorry,” said the heckler in a softer voice. “It’s one of my malevolent spirits. I can’t stop his outbursts.”
Comrade Houey looked sternly at the simple man who was calmly whittling a wooden doll.
“Considering the harm the royals have done to our beloved homeland over the centuries, Comrade, your king can think himself very lucky that he’s still alive. If this were Russia, they would all have been in the pit long ago. You tell your malevolent spirit that.”
“He heard, boss.”
Some of the shamans tittered, and Comrade Houey got the feeling that he was being made fun of. He wasn’t a man who took abuse in any form. He had to bring these mumbo-jumbo charlatans into line. He was wearing a thick gray shirt, Lao style, outside his trousers. Through the material, he took hold of the butt of the handgun tucked into his belt. Most of the guests noticed the gesture but didn’t appear to worry about it at all. Houey continued.
“Because of the influence you people have been allowed over the years, most of the general population up here is in fear of the spirits. This seriously affects their concentration when it comes to studying the doctrines of Marx and Lenin. There isn’t enough room in the simple mind of the rural poor for conflicting influences. The only spiritual stimulation they need is of a political nature. One man, one doctrine.”
“Which one?”
It was the same rude spirit speaking through the whittler.
“What?”
“Well, you said there can only be one politico–spiritual influence, one doctrine. But you mentioned two: Marx and Lenin. That’s confusing for the brainless peasants. Which one do they choose, arsehole?”
“Guards. Take this man—”
“It’s not me!” the man protested.
“—and his malevolent spirit outside.”
Two men in uniform escorted the embarrassed shaman out of the room. He walked calmly, but his resident troublemaker protested and blasphemed all the way to the door and beyond it.
“Pagan commie leeches. King killers. Organ suckers!”
When he was gone, Houey took a deep breath and continued.
“I’m delighted to announce that on this historic day, marked by the long-overdue erasure of the vestiges of the illegal royal bourgeoisie, the so-called royal spirits are also to be disbanded.”
There was a shocked buzz of comments around the room. Some laughed.
“Quiet! I’ve called you here today because you are going to summon the spirits and give them an ultimatum.” The murmur became a sea of bold comments and jokes. The audience laughed at each one-liner, and order was lost. The men on the stage reached for their whistles, but a much calmer sound quieted the rabble. Siri’s partner had begun to speak. His voice
somehow threw a blanket of respectful silence over the others.
“If you please, Comrade Houey. It isn’t that easy.”
Houey looked for the source of the comment and saw the white-haired man and Siri for the first time. He became very angry.
“Is that you speaking, or are you a damned ventriloquist’s dummy as well?”
The man rose silently and far more elegantly than he had sat down. It was as if he were rising to full height in an elevator.
“No, sir. It is I. I am Tik Kwunsawan. I was the official court spiritual counselor to the late king. Forgive me for speaking out of line, but requesting the spirits to attend isn’t like calling pupils into a classroom. The conditions—”
“Well, Comrade Tik Kwunsawan, this is no request. If the spirits wish to be a part of the new democratic republican network, they have to toe the line. This is a State directive.”
“The State may as well order a rainbow, Comrade.”
“Sit yourself back down, old man. You don’t have any exclusive rights on the spirit world. Look.”
He held up the stapled booklet that was in front of him on the table.
“This is the official manual, issued by the Department of Culture in Vientiane, for the summoning of spirits.”
No joke could have drawn a bigger laugh than that. Not even Tik, rejoining Siri on the floor, could hold back his laughter. Siri recalled his visit to the Ministry the day after the suicide. He imagined the officials in one of those bare offices poring over the texts to remove all the religious and royal references from the ceremony. He was surprised there was enough left to make a manual. But it was significant that they hadn’t seen fit to ban the practice altogether. Too many of the country’s remaining three million people had come through life on the wings of the spirits to banish them completely.
The whistlers brought the crowd back to order, but before Houey could continue, the glue-haired woman asked: “If you can do it all with that little book, why do you need us at all?”
“Right,” echoed the audience.
Houey shook his head and smiled. “This is the very essence of socialism, my sister. We work together as a team. You help me and I help you. Despite our differences, despite our deep resentments and doubts, cooperation turns us into one single body. We are all here ultimately for one purpose.”
“And what is today’s purpose, Young Brother?” Tik asked in his quiet voice that still carried to the rafters of the building. Houey nodded to a sheet of paper in his colleague’s hand.
“We shall be giving the spirits this ultimatum.” Tik held back his smile. “They will have three choices. Three choices are very fair, I believe, considering the State has no legal obligation to them. The first—”
“Wait,” Tik said. “If these are conditions for the spirits, they should be here to listen, don’t you think?”
Siri looked around. It was obvious that the shamans were confused. How could they bring the spirits to a place like this? Houey consulted with his table mates. “That won’t be necessary.”
“How else can we be sure to get the message to all of them?” Tik asked.
“We were thinking you could sort of pass it on to them once we’d left, or when you got home.” Houey seemed to be getting paler.
“Goodness me, no. Much easier if they hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. Let’s bring them here.”
“That really isn’t—”
“Brother and sister shamans,” Tik said in a louder voice, slowly rising to his full height, “let us invite the spirits to attend their final meeting.”
“I don’t th—”
But Tik had already begun a peculiar dance. He chanted in a tongue that neither Siri nor the others present had ever heard. If anything, it bore a close resemblance to a North American Indian rain dance.
Tik moved slowly toward the throng, raising his hands to call down the spirits and stamping his feet in time with his chant. At first the shamans looked on as if senility had taken him. But then one Hmong little lady zero stood and followed him, copying his rhythm and his gestures. She chanted counterpoint to his bass.
The men on the stage looked sideways at one another, not knowing how to react or what to say. This wasn’t what they had planned. One by one, the shamans stood and joined the line. One child dragged her hooded father by the hand. A toothless gash appeared on one ancient woman’s face, and she leaped to her feet, twirling and yelling like a young girl.
Siri had never attended a mass séance before and he was unsure of the protocol. But there was one point of which he had no doubt: there wasn’t a hope in heaven or hell that this fiasco would bring any spirits into the Luang Prabang Town Hall. He laughed to himself, got to his feet, and joined the conga.
The rhythm was strong now, and all the guests were riding the giant eel around the room. Those with instruments played them. Those without screamed and whooped and looked upward to the invisible heavenly ropes, down which the imaginary ghosts would descend. Without warning, Tik stopped and turned his head so suddenly toward the top table that the four men held on to their heartbeats. The room shushed.
“They’re coming,” Tik said in a whisper. He looked up, reached his hands to the ceiling and seemed to swell up. “Welcome.” All the others followed suit. Some twitched, as if the fit of the arriving spirits didn’t match their bodies. Some gulped them in like air. Some took handfuls of them and forced them into their ears.
And, like a sudden audience of zombies, Tik and the shamans turned toward the stage as slowly as melting ice, as silent as the graves from which the spirits had supposedly come. With eyes large and unblinking, they stared at Houey with their teeth bared.
The cadres on the stage were apparently in some kind of trance too. They looked down on the sea of drooling, staring people possessed by god knew how many angry spirits. It was a situation the manifesto hadn’t prepared them for. The crotch of the Security Officer’s trousers was already a noticeably darker green than the rest of his uniform. Siri could just see the parchment-white face of Comrade Houey. He had to give the governor credit: he didn’t run. In fact, although his voice trembled, he attempted to continue his speech.