Six and a Half Deadly Sins (28 page)

Siri’s single room and the old house that contained it had been blown to bits by a mortar. But Siri spoke fondly of his nights at his kitchen table looking down at the dirty stupa and watching nature slowly reclaim the altars and the spirit houses. Only the prayer hall remained unforested, and it was there that a large photograph of Dr. Siri sat on an easel in the entrance.

There had been few photographs of the doctor, so like his house, his passport photograph had been blown up until it was almost unrecognizable. The face was a blur, but the studio had kindly touched up his white hair and eyebrows and given him green eyes. Though it was an abstract Dr. Siri, visitors still laid flowers in front of it. There were no florists in 1979 Vientiane, so posies had been collected from the forests or stolen from the front garden of families who
had fled. Crazy Rajhid brought a two-meter jasmine bush. Nobody objected.

Reluctantly, it seemed, ministries had sent along representatives to pay their respects to a man who had been a thorn in their arses for too many years. They sat in rickety cane chairs and stared into space as they listened to one of the few monks who could remember all the sutras. He had been imported from Mixai Temple across the way. There were no actual ministers or vice ministers in attendance because the Party line was still that religious ceremonies fell under the auspices of superstitious nonsense. Party members who were in need of a blessing for this or that had taken to smuggling in monks in the dead of night to perform secretly in their houses.

Judge Haeng, still aspiring to become a minister, had sent a note to say he was sorry he couldn’t come, but he had been called to an urgent meeting down-country. Two of the mourners had seen him sipping cocktails at the Anou with a girl with what they politely referred to as “a remarkable set of breasts.” But despite the lack of safari suits, the hall was far from empty. In fact, it was rocking. When word got out of Dr. Siri’s demise, even though they faced a day of docked wages, the common folk had put a halo of red around the date on their calendars. Hay Sok Temple hadn’t seen such a gathering since the old regime. Groups sat in the shade of banana trees playing cards. Others reminisced with their favorite Dr. Siri stories.

The body lay on a teak bench under a white silk shroud. The left arm was exposed, held out above a pewter bowl of blessed water. The white-clad mourners had formed an orderly queue, almost unimaginable in any other branch of Lao society, and were using an engraved cup to pour lustral water over the open palm. They laid sandalwood flowers and lilies across the shroud and shuffled on to enjoy the breakfast feast spread on tables beneath parasols outside.

“It’s not a bad turnout, really,” said Siri.

“Most respectable,” said Auntie Bpoo.

“I thought being dead might be more … more depressing.”

“Death’s what you make of it.”

“Yes. Nice. Really nice.”

“Look at all those people. Some traveled overnight without
laissez-passer
s, took their chances avoiding military checkpoints, just so they could be here. They’ve camped outside in the grounds. Do you know them all?”

“Not half. There are those I’ve seen, but most, if I’ve ever met them, I’ve forgotten where and when.”

“But they remember you. That’s the important thing.”

“I imagine most folks wouldn’t have a chance to observe. There’s something sort of angelic about sitting up here looking down on your own funeral. Oh, look. There’s Madame Lah, the baguette woman. I almost married her, you know. I’m surprised she’s here. I thought she hated me.”

“She probably does. Funerals are good for muttering curses under your breath when your turn comes in the queue. When she gets to your hand, she’ll probably break your finger.”

“Don’t be cruel.”

“The dog’s a nice touch, lying there beside his master. I should have had animals at mine.”

“You did—pigs, goats, buffalo.”

“They were grilled. I don’t think that counts.”

“Ugly’s more than just a dog, anyway. He was somebody relevant in a previous life.”

“Oh, don’t. Once you start getting into all that mumbo jumbo, you’ll be stepping around cockroaches in case they were your granny. He’s a dog.”

“No. Look at him. Don’t you think he knows what he’s doing? He’s on duty. Vigilantly protecting me from evil.”

“He’s asleep.”

The queue of mourners snaked past the body, some stopping to dribble a little water, others splashing as if they were bailing out the
Titanic.
But most passed as quickly as they could. Too much time spent with a dead body was like standing in the rain and hoping for pneumonia. There were lost spirits in temples looking for new souls to inhabit.

Mr. Geung and his fiancée, Tukda, had walked respectfully to the body, but when the lab assistant reached the outstretched hand, he grabbed it and fell to his knees. “No!” he cried. “Don’t g-g-go, Comrade Doctor. I love you.”

The prayer hall fell silent for a moment. Then the chatter and the chanting continued. Tukda pulled at his arm, and reluctantly, Mr. Geung got to his feet and walked on.

The guests of honor sat alone on chairs at the four compass points: Madame Daeng, all in white, north; Civilai, south; Inspector Phosy, east; and Dtui, west. This seating arrangement had nothing whatsoever to do with a Buddhist ceremony. The four nodded their respect to the mourners. Four traveling monks, their dark brown robes grubby from the road, left their alms bowls beside the photograph like restaurant diners checking their wet umbrellas at the door. They were weary and had obviously traveled far to attend this funeral.

“Should we expect some wise men from the East?” Bpoo asked. “Camels, perhaps?”

“What can I tell you?” said Siri. “My fame knows no bounds.”

He looked at the faces of the monks. One was elderly, two middle-aged and muscular, the last young, tall and skinny. Siri didn’t recognize them, but he’d treated many men in battle who later entered the monkhood in thanks for being given a second chance at life. The sutra soloist monk looked at them, perhaps hoping they might join him and give him a little break from his chanting, but they ignored him and
joined the queue. When they reached the body, the younger monks muttered some words of praise and passed on. The older monk took the cup from the bowl in his left hand and gently held the wrist of the corpse in his right.

Siri saw Ugly’s ears prick up and eyes spring open. He looked at the body and the monk, and at first, he saw nothing. But then he witnessed something quite bizarre. The monk was checking for a pulse.

“This one,” he shouted.

The hand protruding from the shroud grabbed the wrist of the monk. The four guests of honor leapt from their chairs, each drawing weapons from beneath their baggy white shirts. The mourners gasped and ran for cover as Comrade Inthanet the puppet master—posing as the corpse—pulled the shroud from his body, pointed and shouted, “Aha!” All eyes turned to the lead monk, who froze for a few seconds, the cup still in his hand. Then he and his fellows reached for the hems of their robes. They were packing too.

Now, anyone who’s ever engaged a monk in a gunfight will know a saffron body cloth does not lend itself to a fast draw. Only one was able to retrieve his Colt 45 in time, but before he could aim it, Nurse Dtui was on him, and he was flat on his back on the floor. Mourners charged the other monks. Mr. Geung dived at the ankles of the largest and brought him down. The residents of Siri’s house soon had the younger of the monastic group bound. Only the elder monk still stood.

Comrade Noo, the Thai forest monk, arrived with a six-meter bamboo ladder and ran it up to the roof beams directly above the funeral table. A plywood partition that had been designed to look like a part of the ceiling structure was pulled aside, and to the amazement of everyone not involved in the subterfuge, Dr. Siri crawled out and began climbing down the ladder.

The elderly monk screamed and spat and swore and used all his strength to get away. But Daeng had a firm grip of his wrists behind his back, and of course, the old monk was not a man. The Lizard had reached that age when time sucks back one’s skin to leave an asexual skull. She was slight but had a masculine jaw and ravaged skin, and few people would have looked twice at an elderly monk to check his gender. She drew on all her strength to break free but she was running on nostalgia. There was a time that she could have overpowered a strong man, but she was old now and had nothing but vengeance to hold herself together.

As, indirectly, the burning down of all his neighbors’ houses had been Siri’s fault, he agreed to rebuild the entire block. A relative in the refugee camp at Ban Vinai had died and left him a small fortune. The Lao administration had reached the stage where they preferred not to know where money came from, as long as it came. The officials at ministries whose duty it had been to trace the origins of donations and investments were now taking a small fee for not looking too closely. That Siri’s windfall had not been deposited in the Banque Pour Le Commerce Exterieur Lao was not a surprise, as putting money there was often like dropping ink into a pool and watching it dissolve.

Dollars arrived from somewhere every week to pay the builders, and a good, solid row of shop houses was being erected opposite the river. The spying Thais with their high-powered binoculars could only look on in awe at the rate of development.

Civilai too had seen a run of good fortune. He’d bought a Toyota truck in Thailand, which they’d floated across the river one night on a bamboo raft. The seller assured him it had belonged to a deputy governor who was killed in an
accidental drive-by shooting. The official’s own gun was still in the glove compartment, a sort of free gift. They sat, the three of them on their recliners on the bank of the river, but for once, they were not watching the syrupy Mekhong wend its way south. Instead, they were admiring brickwork over a glass of Glenfiddich. Only Ugly had his back turned to the building site.

“Do you suppose this is what capitalism feels like?” Civilai asked. He was twirling the Toyota key ring around his index finger.

“I’d rather like to imagine capitalists have to contribute a little bit of labor before amassing their fortunes,” said Siri.

“I labored for mine,” said Civilai.

“Really? What did you do, exactly?”

“I spent several days sitting in a jeep, the rear seat of which was packed with heroin. Given my propensity for hemorrhoids, that was a particularly painful endurance. Tell me the name of yours again.”

“Schistosomiasis.”

“I’ll never remember that. Doesn’t it have a friendly local name I can drop at cocktail receptions?”

“Try ‘snail fever.’ ”

“Snail fever? You almost died of snail fever? How embarrassing. How do you avoid it? Keeping your distance from French restaurants?”

Siri and Daeng laughed. Daeng threw an ice cube at Civilai.

“It doesn’t come from eating them,” said Siri. “They deposit parasites on your skin when you’re in the water. I probably picked it up that day we went to help the fisherwoman. It’s not that uncommon. You find it often in children.”

“And you, a qualified doctor, couldn’t even diagnose your own snail fever?”

“I’ve never had it before. It presents a bit like malaria, so I was confused. I’d associated the cold as a symptom, but it was
totally unrelated. We’d all just picked up the flu in Vientiane. Having the two at the same time meant my body was less able to fight it off. The local tonics I was taking weren’t strong enough to cope. Snail fever’s quite treatable if you have access to the right medication.”

“Unlike arsenic poisoning,” said Daeng.

“Exactly. If I’d been directly exposed to that, I’d be dead and gone by now. It helped no end that the first
pha sin
was kept in the plastic bag all the time. It reduced our exposure to it.”

“And there was your little mitten habit,” said Daeng.

“Right. That helped too. I always use plastic gloves when I’m handling evidence. It’s a policy I’ve tried to ingrain in the idiots at police headquarters. But even with gloves I feel that if all the
sin
s had been treated with Paris Green like the first one, the close proximity to them in my backpack would still have killed me. Of course we know now that it was only the original skirt that was treated. The Lizard had no idea about the treasure trail, nor did she know there was a finger hidden in the hem. She merely diverted the mail to see whether there was anything in there she could use against us. When she found the
sin
, she decided to bleach the bottom of it and redye it with Paris Green. She’s the type who’d have such things lying around. That was the bleach we found traces of on the finger.”

“Why didn’t the finger turn green also?” Civilai asked.

“The compound is more like a paint than a dye,” said Siri. “It didn’t penetrate the thick cloth completely. She’d probably have applied it with a brush. When it was dry, she washed off the residue, dried it and had it redelivered to our house. Then she sat back and waited for it to kill us. Of course it would have been far simpler for her to knock on the door and shoot us to death, but that isn’t her style. She needs people to know how clever she is.”