"Seventy-three years have happened."
"Have you had a medical examination I don't know about?"
"No. It's…ah, bo ben nyang."
Siri arrived at the shop at the end of the noodle rush hour. Daeng was dishing out supper as fast as the pot could boil. If the Thai secret service had trained their binoculars on her shop that evening, they would never have believed Laos was undergoing an economic crisis. They'd have considered the second devaluation of the kip to have been a ruse and rumours of financial ruin to be a dastardly communist plot. But they wouldn't have known the real reason everybody flocked to Daeng's shop. A bowl of the most delicious noodles north of the Singapore equator cost the equivalent of five pence and few could refuse such a temptation. There was nobody like her in the capital. Even travellers from outside the district had begun to turn up as word spread. Delicious food, low prices, minimal chances of contracting hepatitis.
Siri sneaked in over the fence and through the back door. He whistled to Daeng, who turned around from her kettle.
"Psst. Is the coast clear?" he asked.
"Darling, you're alive," she shouted. A dozen diners looked up and Siri retreated behind the door frame. "I was sure Housing had assassinated you."
Siri hurried to the staircase and held up two fingers, which signified Daeng's special Number Two, seasoned with tree frogs and jelly mushrooms. Then he vanished upstairs.
By eight thirty the tables were wiped and the shutters pulled. Nobody stayed out late any more unless they were Eastern European experts or connected to somebody important. Daeng went up to see how her husband was doing. He was scooped over his desk. She kissed the lighter of his ears.
"People our age don't do that," he said.
"Then they're mad." She kissed him again. "What are you doing?"
"I'm reading a Hindi riddle."
"And we mere humans struggle with the Lao Huksat newsletter."
"It's been translated."
She pulled over a rattan stool and sat beside him, her hand on his thigh. He told her about his meeting with Crazy Rajid's father and the incredible fact that the silent and troubled Rajid could write beautiful poetry. Daeng said it reminded her of a rubber plantation, such a clutter of trees that seemed to have no order at all until you looked at them from the right angle. Then they were all lined up and parallel.
"So, what do — we have from our demented poet?" she asked.
Siri held up the paper and recited like an ancient scholar, Beneath the old French lady's skirt Black lace and too much pink The cold daughter of the daughter Hides in a dark corner.
"It probably rhymed in Hindi," Daeng decided.
"And made sense," Siri added.
"But it is potentially cracking good fun. Like a treasure hunt clue. Let's go for it."
"Bhiku seems to think the old French lady is one of the colonial buildings on Samsenthai."
"He does? So let's go there."
"Don't you want to relax after a busy day?"
"What I want after a busy day of noodling is to use my sadly inactive brain. Grab a torch. I'll get changed into my mystery-solving outfit."
They decided to walk the short distance to the three colonial buildings on the main street. Daeng firmly believed that arthritis could be cured by ignoring it completely, that it would give up and go away. So far the ploy hadn't worked. Odd lamps burned in closed shops along their way. The streetlights attached to public buildings were poorly placed and seemed to leak light rather than express it. They cast deceptive shadows on the footpaths that might have been ruts or two-metre-deep holes. Luckily, Siri and Daeng had their torches with them.
When they arrived at the first of the three old ladies, it was evident that the new generation of government officials retired early. Only four of the fifteen or so windows shone dully with electric light. Like most of the houses of the moneyed families of the old regime, this ancient lady had been hurriedly converted to accommodate several families. They all shared one bathroom and lived their lives crammed in one room. Senior Party members sometimes had two. Siri had lived in such a house when he first came to Vientiane. There was no supervisor to make complaints to. If something broke down, as things often did, the residents would get together, pool their resources, and fix it. That, as they said, was what communism was all about.
There was nobody to ask permission from, so Siri and Daeng decided to nose around. Colonial homes in the tropics generally were built without basements because in the monsoon season they tended to fill with water that ruined everything in them. They decided to skirt the building from the outside, shining their torches. They arrived back at the front door with nettles attached to their trousers but no hint of lace undergarments.
"I suppose we should go inside," Siri suggested.
"After me," said Daeng, scooting up the step.
The front door was solid teak, obviously very old. When they pushed, there was a defiant creak from the hinges. Three rooms led off the long passageway that stretched before them. The hallway itself was covered in once stylish — now sadly worn — linoleum. A staircase on their left rose darkly to the second floor. Two rooms on the right were residences. Hasps had been attached to the outsides of their doors and one had a name on a small rectangle of card taped beside it. It was too dark to read it. The only light in the hallway came from the third room, a bathroom on the left beyond the stairs.
Attracted like moths to the light, Siri and Daeng went in. It was spotlessly clean. Different coloured plastic bowls and scoops seemed to demarcate each family's spot.
"See a trapdoor anywhere?" Daeng asked. She exhibited none of the characteristics of an interloper sneaking around someone else's house. She had been a spy for the Lao underground so a stranger's bathroom presented no threat to her.
She sat on one of the tiny plastic stools. "Come on, Siri, use your imagination. He came here every Friday as a child. He would have had a chance to explore. All the adults are sitting at the table drinking wine, having a good time. Young Rajid wanders through the house by himself. Think like Rajid."
"Perhaps I should take off my clothes and play with myself."
"That's the spirit."
Siri stopped pacing. "No, that's it. Think like Rajid. He may be a scholar deep down, but on the surface he's a randy beast. What if we're thinking too deeply?"
"The old French lady's really an old lady? One of the neighbours?"
"And the lace…"
"Is her underwear. And there's too much pink under there. Brilliant! All right. How does he get to see her undies?"
"Well, assuming she didn't strip off at the dinner table I'd say we're in the most likely place."
"Nowhere to hide in here, really, and the window's too high."
Siri sat on the Western toilet and looked around.
"There," he said, pointing at the baseboard in which there was a small rectangular grate no bigger than a business envelope.
"He must have been a lot smaller when he was young." Daeng laughed, getting on her knees to take a look.
"The stairs," Siri said. "This grate is directly under the staircase." He was hurrying towards the door when he bumped into a muscular man in a towel. "Good health," he said.
"Good health," said the man, obviously surprised to have collided with a strange old gentleman in his own bathroom. He looked at the old lady on her hands and knees on the bare concrete.
"We're just about to move in," said Siri, "so we've come to…to…"
"To measure for curtains," Daeng helped him out. She climbed to her feet and followed Siri into the hall, taking more time than necessary to study the man's torso. He blushed and hurried to close the door.
"Curtains?" muttered Siri as they walked to the stairs.
"Yes."
"In the bathroom?"
"Why not? You would have said something like toilet inspector."