Curse of the Pogo Stick (9 page)

Siri had been given a cup of some herbal concoction and the old man and the seven women had set about preparing the feast. The sun was rolling over a far hill when it was finally time to eat. They lit several more candles around the corpse and set two oil lamps as the centrepieces for their dinner. Since they’d met, they’d all referred to Siri by the name of his resident spirit, Yeh Ming.

“Yeh Ming,” the old man said. “We are honoured to have you here at our meal. Eat as much as you are able. We have rice whisky to make you as drunk as you could ever hope to be. We have more food than you could eat in two more lifetimes. And, as you see, we have many beautiful girls who…”

Siri interrupted him before he could say anything embarrassing.

“Can I have your name, brother?”

“I am Long,” said the elder.

He then pointed his finger at each lady in turn around the mat. The youngest was Yer. Ber was round and jolly and reminded Siri of Dtui. Bao was by far the prettiest. Chia was perhaps the oldest and had a wicked leer that Siri endeavoured to avoid. Phia was a smaller version of Ber but just as round. Dia was rather manly and Nhia seemed to belong exclusively to Elder Long. She leaned against him as he ate and topped up his bowl long before it was empty. Yer, Ber, Bao, Chia, Phia, Dia, and Nhia: Siri hadn’t a chance in hell of remembering them all.

“Where are the other villagers?” Siri asked.

“What you see is what there is,” Long told him.

“The men? The children?”

“All gone.”

All this was said good-naturedly as if there were nothing mournful in their departure. It left Siri uncertain as to their fate.

“Even my dear wife, Zhong, has gone,” Long smiled, pointing to the central pillar.

“When did she pass away?”

“Just two days ago.”

“Is it normal to hang her there like that?”

“It’s not unknown,” Long told him. “If we had more space we might have laid her on a platform. But as we all sleep here together in the one house now it seemed more practical to hang her up. She always said she wanted to be close to the central beam when she went. As you know, Yeh Ming, the floor is the earth, the rafters represent heaven, so the pillar is the journey the ancestors take from life to death. This gives her a leg-up, so to speak. We’ll bury her tomorrow.”

It was Siri’s view that tomorrow couldn’t come a moment too soon.

“It isn’t the way she would have liked it, but these are odd times,” Long continued. “I wanted to invite friends and neighbours from other villages. She was a popular woman. There would have been a few hundred people here. But…well, you know how things are now. Of course, my great shaman, I won’t insult you by asking you to preside at the ceremony. That wouldn’t be right. But we’d be glad to have you there as guest of honour. If you don’t mind.”

Siri didn’t actually see that he had a choice. He was a helpless captive after all. The women kept topping up his cup and filling his plate. He wondered whether the time was right yet to find out why they’d brought him there. There were courtesies and there was probably a diplomatic way for him to inquire but he didn’t know what that was, so…

“Why am I here?” he asked.

“Aha,” said Long. “Don’t try to fool us with your trickery.”

The time obviously wasn’t right. Siri tried a different tack.

“Can I ask you about my…abduction?” he said.

“What do you need to know?” Long asked. He was throwing back the misty white liquor as fast as the cup could be refilled and it seemed to be embalming him fast. His movements were much stiffer now and his speech was beginning to sound like a tape recorder whose batteries had run down.

“Well, I’m assuming you’ve brought me here deliberately. Or, rather, you’ve brought Yeh Ming here for some purpose. How did you know where to find me? How did you know I was on the road?”

“The music of the
geng
. The music kept track of you.”

“That’s very impressive.”

“That, and the wireless. The rebel base over the ridge got hold of your route and travel plan. They told us when you’d be passing.”

Siri was a little disappointed. He liked the image of being lured to his destination like some rat from Hamelin.

“Yeh Ming seems to be something of a celebrity around these parts then,” Siri smiled.

“Oh, everywhere, Yeh Ming. Not just here. Everywhere the Hmong live they sing of you. I know you are the only one who can rid us of the evil that’s come over us.”

“I was afraid you might say something like that.” Siri shook his head. “So it was the rebels from the base who ambushed the convoy this morning?”

“Oh, no. The rebels have more important things to do. No offence.”

“So…?”

“We were the kidnappers, sir,” said young Yer. It was the first time any of the women had addressed him directly.

Siri looked around the that at the angels of innocence who smiled serenely and glowed brightly from the whisky.

“You? You organized the whole thing? The avalanche? The gun attack? The…” He couldn’t think of the word for tranquillizer. “The sleeping poison?”

“My general here,” said Long, pointing at Bao, one of the least likely of the group to be a fighter. Obviously, somewhere deep down Siri still believed pretty women didn’t need to be good at anything. The Women’s Union would have his name on a blacklist if they ever found out. It was tough being an old man from a patriarchal society in the new Laos.

“You’re a formidable soldier,” he told her.

She nodded in agreement and, having been spoken to, she countered with, “And you were a fearless foe. The orange was very tasty.”

The women all laughed. Not polite Japanese giggles but hearty real-woman belly laughs.

“And, forgive me, Yeh Ming,” said Ber. “You’re mistaken about one thing.”

“Oh?”

“It wasn’t this morning we brought you here. It was yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“Sorry,” said General Bao. “We mixed the potion a bit too strong. We’ve only used it on wild ponies before.”

They all laughed again.

“I slept for twenty-four hours? I don’t usually manage more than five hours a night. It’s no wonder I’m rested.”

“And who’s in your bed to give you only five hours of rest?” asked Chia, which again produced a round of laughter.

The alcohol was rough but effective and the women grew prettier with every cup. Siri assumed he too was getting younger and more handsome as the evening wore on. But at some stage in the celebrations Madame Daeng entered his head. Dtui found her way in there too and Geung and the odd assortment of characters living in his house in Vientiane.

“People at home will be worried about me,” he said. “Is there any way you could get word to my friends that I’m safe?”

“Don’t worry, Yeh Ming.” Long swayed as he spoke. “I’ll get word to Vientiane through the rebels. They’ve got a good network.”

Siri thanked him. “And what about the people in the motorcade with me yesterday?”

“They were unhurt,” General Bao told him. “We aren’t real soldiers. We don’t kill unless it’s really necessary. We fight to survive. Only one of your party got lost.”

“Lost?”

“He ran into the jungle. Your soldiers searched for him for many hours.”

“I stayed to watch,” said Phia. “I’m fat but I can hold my breath and disappear like a hungry ghost.”

“It’s true, she can,” laughed Yer.

“The soldiers gave up. They had to clear the road before it got dark. They went back the way they came.”

“The one that fled,” Siri asked. “What did he look like?”

“He ran like a man with no backbone. His face had raspberries growing from it.”

“Judge Haeng,” said Siri to himself. “Do you know where he went?”

“I watched for a long time, Yeh Ming. He had no sense of direction. The soldiers called and he went the opposite way. He’s probably still walking in circles.”

“But any man with instincts can survive up here,” General Bao pointed out.

It struck Siri that the type of instincts employed by the judge probably wouldn’t help him. And he’d been alone in the forest for two days. Although Siri had admired the heroes of French literature during his studies, he’d secretly envied the callousness of the villains. Fantomas and Thenardier were so completely without scruples they must have enjoyed remorse-free lives. Siri often regretted having morals. This was one of those occasions. He briefly imagined the young judge being eaten alive by red ants or stung by the lethal toothbrush spider. Would life be better at the morgue without him? Probably not. They’d bring in another prodigy from the Eastern Bloc and Siri would have to start the training all over again. He had no choice.

“The boy in the jungle with the raspberry face is Yeh Ming’s assistant,” he said. “Without him I cannot perform…whatever it is I’ve been brought here to perform.”

“Are you sure, Yeh Ming?” General Bao asked. “He couldn’t even help himself.”

“That’s true,” said Siri. “But a great shaman has to have a weak-minded person in his entourage to…to confuse the spirits. Empty vessels make the most sound, don’t forget.”

“All right,” said Bao. “If you say so, Yeh Ming. We’ll look for him tomorrow, after the funeral.”

“Don’t take too many of my troops,” slurred Elder Long, who was teetering on the edge of consciousness. “We have to finish tapping the opium before we leave.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Ah, Yeh Ming, Yeh Ming. Why do you play with us like this? You see all and you know all.”

“No, actually I…”

“I see. You want us to understand ourselves by speaking out.”

“No, I really…”

“No problem, Yeh Ming. I respect your wisdom. Soon the end is coming for all of us. We chose the wrong side. Or the wrong side chose us. Whatever! We have to leave. So many of our brothers and sisters have joined the big march to escape the land of the Red Dragon. Soon it’ll be our turn. Turfed out again by the bastards.”

His girlfriend, Nhia, whispered something in his ear and he pushed her gently away.

“I am not. I am not drunk,” he said, waving his arm around in front of him like the trunk of a mad elephant. “And if I am drunk it’s only because I’m in the presence of the great Yeh Ming, and because my sweet wife” – he raised his cup to her and dropped it on his lap – “is dead and smelling like a rotten foot too long in a boot. And because I have to walk a million mountains to another place that doesn’t want me.”

“Where are you going?” Siri asked, hoping to get a few more snippets of information before the old man collapsed, but it was too late. Long buried his head in Nhia’s bosom and sobbed.

“To America,” Bao told him.

“You’re walking to America?”

“Only as far as the anarchists across the Mekhong,” Chia said. “They say it’s easy from there. “Look hungry and helpless, say you worship the big American chief, say you hate communists.” And there you are in a rocket flying to the other side of the earth. Never have to work again.”

“Or live. Or be yourself,” said Long, emerging briefly from his bosom.

Nhia pulled his head back to her soft chest and continued to whisper in his ear. It was a sad moment. Siri looked down at his plate. It was piled high as the sacred mountain at Phu Bia with pork and chicken. His glass was filled to overflowing. A woman on each side of him had hold of a thigh as if they were about to make a wish and split him in two. And suddenly he was afraid.

For whatever reason, these people, these fine friendly people, had gone to a great deal of trouble to bring him here and he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to help them. He wasn’t a shaman. He didn’t know the rituals or the rites. He couldn’t bring them peace or happiness before they set off on their big walk. After seventy-three years he’d barely brought peace and happiness to himself. He knew he was going to disappoint them and, all of a sudden, he felt like a charlatan. Guilt sobered him. He politely removed the hands from his thighs, nodded at the still-full banquet mat, and got unsteadily to his feet. Long seemed to be asleep on the pillow of his girlfriend’s chest.

Siri walked to the doorway, removed his nose plugs, and breathed in the fresh cold mountain air. The moon hung over the village puffing out its cheeks and varnishing the hilltops all the way to Vietnam with a warm yellow glow. Nobody should ever have to leave such a beautiful place.

“The latrine’s over there.”

Siri turned to see General Bao pointing towards a dark fence. It stood out as if some celestial dressmaker had cut a rectangle from the hem of the star-filled sky. Emptying his bladder hadn’t been the reason for his exit but contact with the chill air suddenly made it feel like a good idea. He negotiated a seemingly bottomless pit designed for people with unnaturally wide stances, did his business, and returned to find Bao still standing there.

“Would you like to see the shaman’s house?” she asked.

“You had a shaman here? What happened to him?”

They walked together across the moonlit village compound.

“They called it ‘fire from a friend’. This village was in a Vang Pao area. It was clearly marked on the maps. We were American. But sometimes the Lao who flew the American planes were afraid to get too close to the PL anti-aircraft guns. If it was a Hmong pilot there was no problem. The Hmong are fearless. But the Lao Royalists, sometimes they got confused. They dropped their bombs any old where so they didn’t have to go back to the air base at Long Chen still carrying them. There’s a lot of empty land out here. Dropping a bomb usually doesn’t hurt anyone but the plants and the animals. And the plants and the animals are used to getting hurt. Our shaman, Neng, had never wanted to be a shaman. You know how it works.”

They arrived at the furthest house and Bao produced a ring of keys from her belt. She tried them one by one in the lock.

“You don’t opt to be a shaman,” she went on. “You get sick one time with an illness you can’t fix with medicine. And you have a choice. You die or you become a shaman. A learned man came from another village and gave him the ultimatum. Neng wasn’t in a hurry to die so he went for the second choice. Who wouldn’t? He’d been a good silver worker before, but suddenly he had to spend all his time with the ills and craziness of the village. We all loved him, actually. He was good at it. Neng wasn’t just playing the part. He took it seriously. He used his common sense to fix small problems, not wanting to bother the spirits for minor matters. But when it came to sickness and deep troubles of the heart and soul, he was really in control. He studied hard with his shaman master so he could be the best at what he did.”