Six and a Half Deadly Sins (2 page)

“And pray,” she said, “that it looks as stunning as yours, Madame Daeng.”

Siri’s wife—recently turned sixty-seven—wore her hair gray, wild and short, a style that complemented her handsome face. And on this day it was a face that sported a smile as bright as Venus. Siri often found himself gazing at his woman with great pride even on days when he knew the smile was a vestige of a buzz from her opium tea. It had been many years since Madame Daeng last walked with grace, not since the rheumatism first started to knot her ankles, then to bind the muscles and tissues of her legs into an excruciating macramé. Some days she could hardly get out of bed. Unlike morphine, opium didn’t make the pain fade into the background; it allowed you to face it in a mellow battle and conquer it, to feel less like a victim. The victories of late had become shorter and less convincing.

“It’s Thai Lu,” said Chanta. “Unmistakably.”

“How can you tell?” Siri asked, looking down at the old
pha sin
stretched across the table between them.

“Well, one reason is that most Lao
sin
s have the pattern band at the bottom, a
tin sin.
A decoration around the hem.
The Lu prefer their brocade high up and leave the hem plain. That’s the first indication. Although different Lu groups have their own styles, there are one or two regional peculiarities. You’ll notice that the weft here is vertical. The Lu often weave the front and back horizonally then cut and sew them at the sides so the design matches. It’s also longer than most. The Lu traditionally wore their skirts high below the breasts, what we call an empire waist. That …”

As Chanta went into more detail, Daeng looked into her husband’s eyes and saw a familiar glazing. “Sister,” she said, “this is what you explained to me earlier. I think the doctor would prefer you to just tell him where you believe this
pha sin
came from. He has a short attention span.”

“Doctor,” said Chanta, “this is a very heavy handspun cotton designed for cold weather the type of which we have in the north. As I’m sure you know, the Lu settled in several provinces in the north but never very far from their roots in China. The Lu are more likely to have black or indigo hems. But I’ve seen other samples with green in the north. I’m quite certain this
sin
comes from Luang Nam Tha.”

“Luang Nam Tha?” said Siri.

“I believe so.”

“Then that is where we shall go.”

Siri took Madame Chanta home on the back of his Triumph. He had opted not to ask whether a severed finger was a feature of the Luang Nam Tha
sin.
Due to her lack of bulk and her billowy clothes, his passenger had almost blown off the saddle twice, so he’d slowed the motorcycle to a crawl. This in turn led to her picking up a cough from the exhaust fumes. She thanked him and suggested that fate would draw them back together very soon.

When Siri returned home, Madame Daeng was still seated
at the backyard table. She’d been joined by four of their housemates: Comrade Noo, the Thai forest monk, currently incognito in a singlet and Bermuda shorts; Mr. Inthanet, the puppet master; the silent wandering woman whose name and background they still hadn’t learned, even after three months of cohabitation; and Crazy Rajhid, the Indian street person. Rajhid had joined the household, which now comprised eleven vagabonds and exiles, just a week before. He’d arrived at the ever-open front door with a perfectly fine suitcase and asked in perfectly fine Lao, “Where do I sleep?”

This from a man who had not spoken for two years. So shocked were they all to hear words come from his mouth, Siri and Daeng pointed to a corner of the large living room, where he chalked an outline of himself on the decorative green tiles and hadn’t spoken again. They decided that this technically meant Rajhid was no longer homeless. Siri and Daeng would never refuse a person in trouble, but if the truth were to be told, they’d never expected to be living together with this menagerie of waifs and strays.

Until a few months earlier, the couple had lived above Daeng’s famous noodle shop down by the river. Siri had reveled in the intimacy and privacy, rare commodities in a city where families were crammed together in single rooms in the old French villas. Above the shop, he would read from his illegal library of classics and spend blissful hours in uninterrupted conversation with his wife. There they could retire to the bedroom without stepping over sleeping bodies or allowing frightened children to curl up between them.

All those privileges had been taken from them by a homicidal maniac with two cans of benzene and a Bic lighter. The walls still stood, but the books and the privacy were charred memories. Siri’s previous accommodation had fared little better—blown to smithereens by mortars—and he was
developing a reputation of being a clumsy householder. Some would say it served him right—that his personality attracted disasters. Men his age shouldn’t get into so much trouble. They believed if he just toed the line and did as he was told, he could enjoy his retirement in peace. But he was bored to hell and back. Without his library he had no vicarious lives to live. Without his morgue he had no exercise for his overactive brain. Without a vacant room he could no longer prove to his wife that he was a remarkable man in many ways. He’d begun to doubt himself.

And that was exactly why the finger in the
pha sin
had come as such a blessing.

He sat on the bench beside Daeng and shuffled her along with his bottom to make space for himself. He squeezed her knee, wondering whether she could feel it.

“So let’s go,” he said.

“Where?” asked his wife.

“To Luang Nam Tha,” said Siri. “Nice scenery. Cool weather …”

“Drug warlords and violence,” added Inthanet, who had the house franchise for pessimism. The old puppet master bore more than a passing resemblance to Dr. Siri and had, on one or two occasions, doubled for the doctor to get him out of scrapes. He felt he’d earned the right to be ornery.

“Ah, old fellow, you’re thinking about the old days,” said Siri. “Of the Hor Chinese bandits and the French opium riots. We’re a socialist state now. The far north’s as safe as a stroll down Samsenthai Avenue on a balmy evening. What do you say, my wife?”

“How do we get there?” she asked.

“That’s the spirit.”

“No, I mean, how, practically, would we go there? It’s not like we have functioning public transport. We can’t just wander down to the airport, buy a ticket and hop on a plane. Not
that we’ve got any money to afford it. Just getting the
laissez-passer
s could take six months.”

“I know that,” said Siri. “But don’t forget I’m acquainted with a lot of influential people.”

“That’s true,” said Inthanet, “but none of them likes you.”

“Blackmail,” said Noo, the monk.

“See?” said Siri. “There’s always a way.”

“I think you’ve exhausted all your resources for dishonest leverage,” said Daeng.

“Nonsense,” said Siri. “There’s always Judge Haeng. Need I remind you the seedy little man is firmly in my pocket? He can ever be trusted to do something untrustworthy.”

He smiled as he thought about a letter that was rolled safely in the shaft of his Burmese shooting stick. Were it to be shown around to the powers that be at the Ministry of Justice, it would signal the end of the young judge’s career and, almost certainly, of his life. Blackmail indeed. The ultimate persuasion.

“Hmm, you won’t get much luck there,” said Inthanet.

“Why not?”

“You haven’t heard what happened?”

“No.”

“He’s out of Justice. They’ve got him running a training course at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs pending an inquiry.”

“What did he do?” asked Daeng. “He was head of Public Prosecution last time I saw him.”

“There were rumors,” said Inthanet.

“About what?”

“Suggestions he had a stable of young women cached around Vientiane.”

“Well, he does,” said Siri.

“Turns out he beat some of them up, and they went to the Women’s Union. They put pressure on Justice to investigate. Justice had no choice but to move him to an inactive post.”

“Who’s he training?” asked Daeng.

“Domestic staff.”

Siri and Daeng both laughed. The silent woman’s eyes twinkled.

“What on earth does Haeng know about domestic service?” asked Siri. “And what’s it got to do with Foreign Affairs?”

“It’s a spy school,” said Inthanet. “Anyone working for foreigners in Vientiane has to attend. All the maids, the gardeners, the cooks—they’re all highly trained undercover operatives.”

“Nonsense,” said Siri.

“All right, perhaps they don’t get down to the microcameras and the phone bugging and the James Bond level of spying, but they do have classes on eavesdropping and personal document browsing. They have to file a weekly report on all visitors to the house, car registrations, names.”

“Good grief,” said Siri. “What has our world come to? How do you know all this?”

“My fiancée,” said Inthanet. “She’s a cook. She’s had to take the course to get her license.”

“I thought your fiancée was a basket weaver,” said Daeng.

“No, that was my previous fiancée. This is a more serious engagement.”

“You do know you don’t have to propose to every woman you go out with?”

“Madame Daeng, you’d be surprised how grateful women can be when a man even mentions marriage. They develop an ability to see beyond his flaccid muscles and wrinkled demeanor.”

“You’re a dirty old man, Comrade Inthanet.”

The dirty old man smiled at the silent woman, who smiled back briefly.

“We have to rescue Judge Haeng,” said Siri. “Get him back at Justice where he belongs.”

“He’s a woman beater,” Daeng reminded him.

“He has flaws,” said Siri, “but I don’t see him beating anyone up, do you? He might hire someone else to do it, but he wouldn’t get his own hands bloody.”

“Am I right in thinking this new campaign has little to do with your respect for the judge and the pursuance of fair play?” asked Daeng.

“You’re absolutely right, Daeng. We have to get ourselves to Luang Nam Tha, and he’s the man who can get us there.”

The next day, Siri rode the old Pigeon bicycle along a dusty lane to the Lao Women’s Union. Ugly the dog trotted beside. The low grey building lay shrouded in well-cared-for vegetation. The fine weather that had begun sometime around August was now into its sixth month. This was something of a disappointment to the government. The floods and droughts of the previous three years had provided timely excuses for things going wrong. Now the only disasters were those they created themselves. Currently, as an excuse for the shortages around Vientiane, the authorities were blaming the Cambodian invasion and the humanitarian aid Laos was pumping into that country. In fact, their one-off aid package came to a paltry million dollars, and that had been borrowed from Vietnam. The markets were empty because the farmers had stopped producing more than they needed to survive.

The cool, sunny days of January were kind to the garden. In spite of the Party directive that all available space should be planted with vegetables and fruit, the Auntie’s Tendon, the Pulling-Down Elephant and the Farting Spirit flowers all vied for prominence in the front yard; the Maiden’s Breasts were resplendent in their yellow tassels. Clearly, the women of the union were aware that in hard times, the sight of a
beautiful garden had a most energizing effect. Siri took some time to sniff on his way into the reception area.

“Hello, Dr. Siri,” said the happy, hoppy young woman who came to meet him. She bounced from foot to foot and held out her hand. Handshakes had entered Laos with the French and been consolidated by Communism, but this new phenomenon of women offering their hand was hard for an old man to get used to. He never knew what to do with it. He tickled her fingertips.

“Hello, Boun,” he said. “Is your boss in?”

“She’s in a meeting,” said the girl.

“You know, if this country just allowed a couple of hours between meetings, we might actually have time to achieve something.”

“Are you still whinging, Dr. Siri?” came a voice from behind him.

He turned to see Dr. Porn heading a small posse of women out of the meeting room. As always, she looked neat but flustered. Sweat glistened on her hairless brow.

“Still no luck with the eyebrows?” Siri smiled.

“I was thinking of starting steroid injections,” she said. “But I couldn’t picture myself with a beard. Get in here.”

She took his arm and led him into her office. There was no door. For the next fifteen minutes, over a cup of tea, she told him all the details of Judge Haeng’s violent attacks on two young women. The evidence against the judge was overwhelming. He had arrived at their rooms in the dark while they were sleeping. He had spoken to them; then, with no provocation, he had beaten them. She showed him the photographs they’d taken of the two victims. Two days after the attack, the bruises were still prominent.

“What did the judge say?” Siri asked.

“He’s denied it, of course. Said he’d been set up.”

“Did the girls say he’d done anything like this before?”

“No. It appeared to be one insane night of frenzied violence. We weren’t in a position to have him tested for drugs or alcohol, but all the indications are that he was high on something.”

Siri shook his head.

Siri rode his old Pigeon over the hill to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ugly the dog continued to trot happily beside him. The day ran hot and cool in spasms as the air currents wrestled for dominance in the dusty city. The sun glided from cloud to cloud, and some flocks of birds headed south while others headed north. These were uncertain times.

The guard at the ungated entrance to the ministry was overweight. Siri recalled a health department memo circulated during his first year in Vientiane. It suggested that overweight people were not to be trusted. They symbolized overindulgence, a lamentable capitalist trait. To the doctor’s mind, the young man in unmatching fatigues was more a symbol of a glandular disorder and intolerance.

The guard yelled at Siri. “Hey, you! You can’t leave that bicycle propped up against the gatepost like that. And where do you think you’re going with that mangy dog? You’re not entering this building with that thing.”