Thirty-Three Teeth (14 page)

“You won’t have any more trouble with them,” Inthanet sighed. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m tuckered out. Can we go home now?”

The two white-haired men woke in a sweat at noon. It was the devil of a hot day without a whisper of a breeze to be had anywhere. It was the type of day that could wilt a metal gatepost. The only thing preventing Siri and Inthanet from waking earlier was the mental exertion of last night’s ceremony. They were so drained, they could have slept through a house fire.

Siri looked over from his cot, Inthanet from his hammock.

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Damned hot.”

They smiled and scratched and sat up.

“You’ll be keen to get back to Luang Prabang now, I suppose,” Siri said. In their brief time together, Siri and the old showman had become good friends.

“Not at all. Not at all. I’m sixty-eight, brother, and this is my first time away from the north. This is like winning the provincial lottery. How else would I get a free ride on my first-ever airplane? How else would I get to see the great southern capital and reside in a splendid mansion? This is the most fun I’ve had in decades. We found the puppets and got them settled and we pulled a magnificent fast one over your grumpy neighbor. All fun, Siri. All fun. I intend to drag this out for as long as I can. May even do a bit of sightseeing. In fact, you may never get rid of me.”

“You know you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. Just let me know when you’ve had enough, and I’ll put you on the flight home.”

“That’s a deal.”

Siri stared at his roommate and seemed to be weighing up just how close their friendship had become.

“Inthanet.”

“Yes, brother.”

“Could I ask a favor of you?”

“Certainly.”

“It’s quite an unusual one.”

“As if this isn’t wholly an unusual trip.”

“Okay. Don’t go away.”

Siri went into the room where he had piled his clothes and fished his flashlight out of his pack. He came back to the cot where Inthanet now sat and plonked himself beside him.

“I want you to count my teeth.”

Inthanet rolled back with laughter. When it eventually subsided and he realized this was no joke, he took the light and shined it into the doctor’s open mouth.

“Wah, you certainly have a healthy looking set there, brother. I’ve lost most of mine, but this is quite a plantation. Do you mind if I use a finger? I don’t want to lose count.”

Siri could only gargle an okay, as the finger was already on the back molar and sliding around to the incisors on the bottom deck.

“But I suppose that’s one of the benefits of living with nature all those years. No sweets to rot your teeth away. I’m a sucker for candy, I am. We used to give sweets to the kiddies who came to the puppet shows, but I ended up eating more than they did.”

Siri wanted him to stop talking and concentrate on the counting. He didn’t know anyone who could do both at the same time with any accuracy. The finger continued to trip along the row.

“I was going to get some of those false ones, but I thought better of it. I mean, you never really knew whose mouth they’d been in before yours or what they’d been chewing on. So I make do with the dozen I’m left with. Yours are beautiful, though. Just gorgeous. Better than a lot of young fellows.”

He pulled out the finger and wiped it on his loincloth. “Sorry, I suppose I really should have washed this before I put it in your mouth. Still, no harm done.”

“Did you count them?”

“Not much point being in there if I didn’t, brother.”

“How many have I got?”

“Thirty-three, brother. Thirty-three.”

“You don’t s…”

“Cooee.” The sound of a woman calling them came not from outside the house, but from the back room a few feet away from where they sat on the porch.

“Anyone home?”

The men looked around to see the annoying Miss Vong in the back doorway.

“Yes, I thought I heard voices.”

“Miss Vong, come in, why don’t you?” Siri mumbled.

“Good morning, Mr. Inthanet.”

“Good morning to you, Miss Vong.”

They exchanged a warm smile that surprised Siri.

“You two are acquainted?”

“Of course,” she said. “You abandoned the poor man on his first night here. He was all alone. He would have starved to death if it hadn’t been for me.”

“It’s true, Siri. Miss Vong brought me a super home-cooked dinner, and she even cleaned up the place a bit.”

“I’m sure she did.”

“I’ve brought you two lonely bachelors another little treat. I just fixed up a batch of spicy minced fish.”

As she went into painful detail of how she had prepared this unspectacular dish, Siri lamented the ground that had been lost. Over the previous month, he’d triumphantly reduced the number of charity housework invasions to a trickle. Now, Inthanet’s arrival had given her new incentive. Inthanet would have to go.

Her arrival also poured soapy water over his revelation. He had thirty-three teeth: him, Prince Phetsarath, and the Lord Buddha. He wanted to shout it. He wanted to celebrate without Miss Vong.

“Vong, this isn’t the weekend, is it? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“Not this morning, Comrade. We’re off on a fact-finding mission to the southern provinces. We’ll be traveling overnight, so we’ve got the morning off to pack.”

His spirits rose.

“Will you be gone for many months?”

“Only four days. I’ll be back before you know it. I’ll take this into the kitchen and cover it.” She walked inside with the bowl of fish lahp. In the distance they heard her say “Whoo, this kitchen could do with a good dusting.”

“Not necessary, Miss Vong.”

Siri and Inthanet smiled at each other and made faces as they probably had behind the teacher’s back in primary school. Siri lowered his voice to ask: “What did you do with the dinner she brought you?”

“Not even your dog could get through it. I thought she might check the garbage can, so I gave it a decent burial over there under the papaya tree.”

“Then I should abandon hope of papayas growing any time soon.”

It reminded Siri he should dig up the machete before it started to rust. They laughed again and listened to the swish of the duster and the humming of a happy woman, born to clean.

It was as Siri was riding off on his motorcycle and Inthanet was closing the gate behind him that Mr. Soth, the neighbor, realized how cruelly he’d been cheated. He stood on a chair on his veranda and could see over the wall. There was a pair of them. He was mortified. How dare they? How dare anyone make fun of him?

Of course, it hadn’t just been a case of mistaken identity. Inthanet had had to go to some effort to look like Siri. There was the walk of course, that tumbling forward walk that moved Siri around as fast as it did. But Inthanet had been a very fine actor in his day. There were some minor kapok additions to his eyebrows and the donning of Siri’s favorite blue peasant suit, and Inthanet didn’t even recognize himself. How could the neighbor know it wasn’t Siri?

The doctor had seen Soth on the morning of the felling of the speaker pole. After all the secrecy and planning, it was infuriating to be caught red-handed in a suburb where not a soul wandered after midnight. He’d honed his machete to an edge so fine, it could slice through communist red tape. He’d figured on no more than ten swings to bring down the nasty speaker and he’d be back in his cot before the world was any the wiser.

How could he have taken account of mysterious Mr. Soth? How was he to know the man’s habits? What right did he have to be awake at such an unhealthy hour? There was nothing to do in that place before dawn. But there he was, awake and brimming with vigilance.

On the flight from Luang Prabang, Siri and Inthanet had hatched this plot, along with several other contingencies. Dtui had told her boss on the phone about the visiting policemen and Tik, the old shaman, had been overwhelmed with a premonition of Siri rotting in jail. So Mr. Soth’s initiative and Siri’s arrest were both inevitable. The play was written and the action followed the script. But there was to be an unexpected last act.

Apart from being a creep, Mr. Soth was also a bad loser. He hadn’t reached the economic heights and moral depths he occupied today by accepting humiliation. Revenge didn’t have to be too complicated. A simple killing would do.

It was lunchtime, so Siri drove directly to the river, parked beneath a golden shower tree, and walked over to Civilai and Phosy on their regular log. Both men were eating with their right hands and fanning themselves, geisha-like, with their left. The cheap Singha Beer logo fans from Thailand barely managed to slide the sweat across their foreheads. There was no natural movement in the air, and the river edged along so slowly it threatened to stop completely.

“Got anything to eat?” Siri asked.

“Will you listen to that.” Civilai looked at Phosy without bothering to greet the newcomer. “The man makes over fifteen dollars a month, and he still has the gall to mooch off poor folk like us.”

“Come on, you old miser. I know you’ve got a stash there in that bag.”

Civilai reluctantly reached into the brown paper parcel and pulled out one of his wife’s healthy sandwiches. Their bread habit had taken hold in France during their studies. Rightly or wrongly, but mostly wrongly, doughy white bread had been one of the few luxuries they’d dreamed of through their decades in the jungle.

Where the young men had baser, more animal priorities when sent to Hanoi for training or meetings, Siri and Civilai’s first saliva-ridden thoughts were of crusty French baguettes and sumptuous fillings. They’d been delighted to see the cheap bread industry alive and well when they marched into Vientiane in ’75, and proceeded to make up for time lost in the wilds of Houaphan.

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Damned hot.”

“Damned hot.”

“I’ve got thirty-three teeth.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No, really, I—”

“I think this temperature’s driving everyone a little batty,” Civilai said.

“What’s the latest?” Phosy asked.

“Well, top of the loony list is that most of the politburo are talking about banning festivals because they encourage spontaneity. ‘Over my dead body,’ I say. Then this morning, the Thai foreign minister announced that the Lao king, whom we all know is presently holidaying in the sunny wilds of Houaphan, was rescued from Luang Prabang by a crack Thai guerrilla unit and would see out his days on Thailand’s sunny southern island of Phuket.”

“I really do have—”

“Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific, the Yanks, following a brief experiment with enlightenment, have reintroduced corporal punishment. I think everyone needs to take a nice cold shower. I even got a peculiar phone call from your nurse this morning, Siri.”

Siri was sulking and didn’t respond.

“I’d settle for an air-conditioned office,” Phosy lamented.

“The cutting room at the morgue’s got AC,” Siri reminded them. “You could both come and hang out there. I’d even let you—”

“I don’t think we need to know, thanks.”

“How’s your body double?” Civilai asked.

“I can’t think what you mean.” Siri sat between the two men and unwrapped his lunch. “I personally don’t see any similarity between Mr. Inthanet and myself. Do you, Inspector?”

“You’re both conniving old bastards.”

“I mean, physically.”

“Come on, old fellow. We’re waiting to hear about your friend and the complete royal puppet story.”

“And a few missing details about last night,” Phosy added.

Siri washed down a mouthful of bread with a swig from Phosy’s iced coffee flask. The ice hadn’t survived the day.

“Well, it isn’t really that complicated, boys. Older Brother, do you think you could wave that thing a bit harder? It’s hot here.”

Civilai hit him with the fan.

“Thank you. Where should I start? When I was in Luang Prabang, I asked around about the chest I’d seen at the Ministry. When I described it, I was put in touch with our friend Inthanet. He was one of the five surviving keepers of the Royal Xiang Thong temple puppets. They’d been quiet for a while.”

“I seem to recall that my cabinet banned them from using royal language in performances, and the puppets refused,” Civilai grinned.

“That’s right. The chest was ceremonially closed and stored at Xiang Thong. It was your classic puppet–politburo standoff. But the puppets had no intention of coming out, so it looks like the government went in after them.

“Some men in safari suits came one day and grabbed the chest. Nobody was sure who they were or where they were planning to take the puppets. The abbot charged with their safekeeping was shown a government directive that the chest was to be moved for security reasons. When the abbot asked for details, they told him it was all confidential. There wasn’t much he could do about it.

“And that’s how the chest ended up in the archive department of the Ministry and why all hell broke loose. You see, the chest can’t be opened by just anyone whenever they feel like it. The spirits of the puppets are incredibly powerful and amazingly temperamental. They were already—”

“How can puppets have spirits?” Civilai interrupted.

“What?”

“Puppets aren’t people, and they aren’t dead. So how—?”

“Ah, but the puppets are made of balsa, and before the wood to carve them is cut from the tree, the puppet-maker has to get permission from the tree spirits. The balsa is a gentle wood and spirits are plentiful in it. When they learn that the wood is going to be made into the image of a person, it’s awfully tempting for the more nostalgic spirits to jump ship and settle in the form of the puppet. It’s as if they’ve returned to their lost host.

“The balsa spirits attract others to the puppets: dead puppeteers, artisans, dancers, until each one has a personality and a force of its own. Inthanet knows all of them and how to open and close the chest without offending them. When I told him I’d seen the royal seal on a box at the Ministry, he was only too pleased to come with me to Vientiane. He’s quite a character. You’d like him, brother. He’d never been out of Luang Prabang in his life.”

Phosy stood and walked toward the crest of the riverbank before it dropped steeply to the shallow river.

“All right. That explains who Inthanet is. Now let’s cut to last night. I still have one or two little mysteries of my own to solve. When was this ceremony planned, may I ask?”