Six and a Half Deadly Sins (25 page)

“Fear not,” Siri said, taking the letter and ripping it open. “I’ll live long enough to discover what this show is all about.”

Madame Chanta called to a wine-bottle shaped woman and spoke to her in Lu. The woman ran off. “We’re getting you something,” Madame Chanta said. “Something natural.”

Siri laughed as best he could. “I’m in this state because of local remedies,” he said. “I’m being naturopathed to death. What I need is some good old chemical compounds in familiar wrappings. Something so far from the tree that no natural
contents are even mentioned on the packet.” Then he buried his mind in the thick wad that was Dtui’s letter.

“You’re Lu?” said Daeng, ignoring her husband.

“My father was,” said Chanta. “My mother was Lao Loom. She was a buyer of
pha sin
s for the royal family. I continue her work in a small way in projects for the Union. I train country girls to master the skills that a generation of wars has wiped out. Even here in the north, weaving is a dying art. On your journey you’ve seen what’s left of a Thai Lu cottage industry that just thirty years ago boasted a hundred and eighty looms. Mothers and daughters working together. When I traveled around the north collecting
pha sin
s and laying out the clues for you, I was shocked at how few Lu weavers remained.”

“All right,” said Civilai. “Very sad, but why did you set up this corny treasure hunt? Why couldn’t you just stop off at the Minorities Committee and tell them what you suspected? The police department, even?”

“I lodged a complaint there a year ago, comrade,” she said. “I went back every month to see what had been done about it. I’m always told it’s pending. That there were more pressing matters. I think that means they didn’t believe me.”

“I understand that,” said Daeng, “but at the very least, couldn’t you have come to me and Siri and told us directly what you suspected?”

Chanta sat at a spare desk and smiled. “Sister Daeng,” she said, “do you recall a visit you paid to the union earlier in the year? You were telling us about the delegations you received from the downtrodden, the victims of crime and abuse.”

“I do recall that,” Daeng said.

“And do you also remember telling us about the problem you had discerning fact from fiction? About the storytellers who engaged you both in fantastic flights of fancy? Of tales that were just too bizarre to be true?”

Daeng nodded.

“But in all those visits,” Chanta continued, “did you ever hear of anything so farfetched as an ugly, small-statured man with no physical strength who was able to establish a reign of terror? Whose name made grown men tremble? Who had been able to fund a drug empire from the blood of hundreds of his own tribe? You don’t know me very well, Sister Daeng. There was no reason for you to believe a story from me than from any other of your couriers of the implausible.”

“And so, the mystery hunt.”

“One day, Dr. Porn and I were discussing Dr. Siri’s fascination with cinema and crime fiction. I had a script that I really wanted somebody to read, but you had a queue of needy. I had to pitch my screenplay in a way that would really …” She stopped for a minute as a noisy Chinese truck crawled past the village on the main road. “… that would really distinguish my story from all the others.”

“And how could you fail to get my attention with a finger in a skirt hem and a tasty clue to its origin?” said Siri.

“I knew Madame Daeng would seek out an expert on
pha sin
s from the north, and that expert would naturally be me. The only mystery was the color of the cloth you showed me. I knew Auntie Kwa only used blue cloth, so I was shocked when you showed me the
sin
with the green hem in your garden that evening. But I was unable to contact Auntie for an explanation.”

“I still don’t get it,” said Auntie Kwa. “I’d posted my blue material as Madame Chanta instructed me. I greased the paper so the frank stamp would be worn off in transit and didn’t put a return address. I was expecting you to come and see me, but I had no idea why the cloth had changed color. So I just played along. Sent you on to the next clue.”

Siri held up the letter in front of him. “I believe I can explain exactly how that happened.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Auntie Kwa. “We’ve all been wondering.”

“So you’re all in on it?” said Civilai.

“We had to get you up here,” said Chanta. “To get you personally involved. To meet the players. To understand why we little people can’t do anything to stop the horror that has taken over our province.”

“We suspected the worst at Seuadaeng when we heard the shots,” said Auntie Kwa. “We went there hoping to reclaim the bodies and cremate them. But they were buried in concrete. All we could retrieve was one finger. We knew who was responsible, so the little finger was symbolic. For a number of years we preserved it in formalin and displayed it on our altar. We had no idea there would be other atrocities.”

“How many maintenance teams were there?” asked Civilai.

“It went on for a year,” Chanta told him. “All the workers who disappeared were Lu from the Chinese side. Foreman Goi assumed that because they were Chinese, the Lao Lu wouldn’t particularly care what happened to them. He figured we were too self-centered and stupid to notice what was going on in our midst. But we’re the same blood. Our ancestors lived and worked and fought alongside one another. We all heard the rumors, but it took us some time to believe them. None of us wanted to imagine that a man could be so despicable. Foreman Goi was smart. There’s no denying that. He got the work done. He could communicate with both sides, keep the books straight, iron out little administrative bumps. His only problem was the unreliable Thai Lu workers who—according to him—ran off on payday to the nearest booze shop and were never seen again. Drunkards, every one of them. Philanderers. They felt sorry for him in Peking. They admired how he could be so efficient in the face of such an unreliable workforce. How he could always recruit new workers. He was their star.”

She seemed exhausted from the telling of her story. The villagers standing around the room hung their heads as if desperation were too heavy a hat to bear.

“So, Dr. Siri,” she said, “what were the Thai Lu to do? The complaints from families didn’t come through the official bureaucracy. They arrived along traditional routes: word of mouth and familial ties. And where did the telling end? With a rare educated Lu woman in Vientiane who taught people how to weave. How else could she tell her tale other than through the cloths that bound our people together? I’m afraid not all of our weavers could join us here today; Madame Duang in Muang Xai apparently slipped back into some other dimension. And of course we lost our sister in Muang Long.”

She squeezed the hand of the weaver standing beside her; the weaver bowed her head in respect.

“But her death was not in vain,” Chanta continued, “because in that simple scene you were able to witness the natural escalation of Goi’s empire. In that first year, he makes enough from robbing the dead to buy up a stock of opium. From there he brings in chemists from China to produce pure heroin. He has his mobile team passing the villages to pick up the stashes and send them back across what is a very porous border. With the latest events—the invasion and all—there’s been a mad rush to pick up long-term stashes like the one in Muang Long and get them out before all the road teams are kicked out of the country.”

“Do you think Goi’s left already?” Daeng asked.

“No,” said Civilai.

They all looked at him.

“It was part of the arrangement,” he said. “We asked the maintenance team to stay and continue with their program to make all the roads passable. It was a sort of token gesture to let the Chinese know we’re just bowing to international pressure. He’s here somewhere.”

“And I imagine he’s stopped massacring his work crews,” said Siri. “By now he’d have a loyal team, a sort of personal entourage of thugs to protect him. It’s what all the tsars do.”

Daeng looked at Siri and smiled. She knew this addendum was for her benefit. Drug lords did not take kindly to the theft of their hard-earned stashes or the murder of their henchmen.

The remainder of the day was something akin to a United Nations workshop, albeit with practical outcomes and a budget that ran to a few baskets of sticky rice. The weavers and the elders and the visitors from Vientiane split into groups and drew up a list of contingencies and resources and other considerations to successfully wage war with a drug baron. They skipped the
how will this make you feel?
part of the process because it was damned obvious they’d all feel a lot better knowing they weren’t going to be murdered in their bedrolls at night.

One of the major components of the resulting plan was the immediate involvement of Inspector Phosy, who, the weavers were convinced by their visitors, would stop heaven and earth to capture a freak like Goi. Siri had been disappointed not to make contact with their friend while he was in the north, but a villager was dispatched to Luang Nam Tha post office to attempt to make contact with the inspector upon his return to Vientiane. Just that small hope seemed to make everyone feel much calmer about events.

The Lu prepared a huge meal for their saviors and talked confidently yet drunkenly of a grassroots militia that would turn the tide against the pervading drug politics in the north. Siri had retired early and was unconscious the second his head hit the pillow. Before retiring for the night, Madame Daeng walked Chanta to a bench in the little village square.
The path was lit by a vast ocean of stars. They held hands as they bathed in its glow.

“I imagine you’re starting to panic around now,” said Daeng.

“I haven’t slept a night since it all started,” Chanta confessed.

“You’ve done a great thing.”

Chanta looked at her role model. “That sounds like one of those ‘You’ve been a great asset to the company but …’ introductions.”

“Not at all. Well … perhaps a little,” said Daeng. “You are unquestionably brilliant, but don’t forget the best armies keep their generals way behind the front line. You shouldn’t be up here. You can better fight this fight in Vientiane.”

“You don’t think we can win this battle, do you?”

Daeng laughed. “Well, let me just think. You’re asking me whether I believe a small group of weavers can vanquish a tyrant who has enough money to buy half a country. I’ll be honest. You cut off the head of the
naga
, and within seconds a new head grows out of the neck. And you can hack away all day and night, and at one stage you notice that there are two heads now growing out of the neck. All you get is a lot of blood and a sore arm.”

“This isn’t exactly an inspirational talk.”

“It could be if you’re inspired at the end of it to go back to Vientiane.”

“Daeng, I’ve given these people hope.”

“And that’s enough. Now we go back to the capital and put together a strategy to overwhelm Goi. You don’t beat people like him on the battlefield.”

“Who are you?”

“What?”

“You aren’t Madame Daeng. Madame Daeng has always
encouraged us to take up a weapon and make a stand. To attack.”

“Oh, her. She’s having the night off. I’m the rational, logical Daeng.”

“No, she’s here. But she’s afraid she can’t give her full attention to the war.”

Daeng looked away, but Chanta leaned forward so she could see the face of the doctor’s wife. She could see the old lady’s eyes welling with tears. Her hands were trembling.

“She’s here loving her husband,” Chanta continued. “She’s the Daeng who wants a hospital close by. A pharmacy. She’s a Madame Daeng who’s afraid of the end of a dream.”

“Don’t talk such utter rot. How dare you?” Daeng got clumsily to her feet, still not looking Chanta in the face. “I brought you here to compliment you,” she said, “and you dare talk to me like this? Do you have no respect?” She hobbled off.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said Chanta. “He’s lived a good life.”

“Bitch!” was the last word she heard.

“You have to tell them, you know.”

“I don’t think it would help, Bpoo.”

“They have a right.”

“They’d just worry. Make it all messier.”

“Then Daeng, at least. You owe her that.”

“That’s funny. You giving me advice on dying with dignity. There’s only one way. Neat. Sudden. The world shocked that there’s no more Siri in it, a brief intimate ceremony and we can get on with the next act.”

Siri and Auntie Bpoo were sitting on a telephone wire, looking down at the Mekhong. They were on the Thai side, and they could see the sleepy village of Vientiane opposite. One red moon set over Bangkok to the south, and another,
even redder, set beyond the Chinese border to the north. A flock of chickens flew beneath them, skimming the surface of the river and squealing with delight.

“This is another dream, I presume,” said Siri.

“As opposed to …?”

“Premature reincarnation.”

“Are you in such a hurry to be dead?”

“I thought this might be—you know—orientation.”

“You really want to come back as a blue tit?”

“The flying part appeals to me. Holding on to a live wire with my toes is a challenge. It hurts. And I mean, how does one balance? Birds have little heads and unusually cumbersome bodies. The fulcrum is somewhere around their bladder.”

“For a dreaming person, you really are investing far too much time on details.”

“Right.”

“Have you tried them yet? The wings?”

“Should I?”

“No better time for a metaphor.”

“I just …?”

“Step off the wire, spread those glorious wings and trust to fate.”

Siri threw caution and himself to the wind, shouted “Yee-haw!” and dropped like a turd. Nothing he attempted would keep him airborne. He sighed and landed with an inevitable scatological splat on his bedroll. He had the taste of his own feathers in his mouth. He had a hand around his throat. It didn’t belong to him.

The hand that was not wrapped around Siri’s throat held a machete that glinted gently in the starlight. To his right he could see that Daeng had a knife to her throat. They had a brief moment to exchange a
this could be worse, but just in case it couldn’t, you know how much I love you
glance.