My complexion was still very wrong, the effects of the sun on my forehead notwithstanding. I stuffed a wad of the old man’s pipe tobacco into my mouth and chewed it as if it were betel nut. It tasted terrible. I spat tobacco juice into my cupped hands and rubbed it all over my face. It burned in the shaving nicks like white phosphorus – although, come to think of it, it probably functioned as an antiseptic in the process. I checked the mirror surface of the cooking pot and decided that the results were not entirely ineffective. I chewed more tobacco, rubbed the juice on my face, and kept repeating the process until I was satisfied with the yellow-brown color I had achieved.
My big white eyes were another problem. I pulled at the skin just behind the corner of each eye – it produced the desired effect, but I would have had to staple the skin to the bone to maintain it. I experimented with squinting, which didn’t work, and with keeping my eyes half lidded, which was a little better.
The whole shape of my head was wrong, but there was nothing much I could do about that. The mouth, though, was the most glaringly bad feature. It was too big, the lips too prominent. I practiced drawing my lips in and making my mouth appear smaller, working both with and without the improvised mirror. This made quite a difference. One of the main reasons why people in different countries look different is that they learn from the cradle to handle their faces in certain ways. By lowering my eyelids and compressing my lips I did not quite manage to look Laotian, but I did succeed in rendering myself somewhat less conspicuous. I might not fool anyone who took a very close look, but maybe, with luck, no one would get that close to me.
A wave of nausea shook me. I went to the stove and picked up the pot of rice. It had been cooked in some sort of animal fat and was well seasoned. I was ravenous, and it tasted excellent, and even at that I had trouble getting the rice down and even more trouble keeping it down. I felt feverish and weak.
I wondered what had become of Dhang, and I wondered what had happened to Tuppence, and I realized suddenly that I had not thought of either of them since entering the old man’s squalid little hut. I felt rotten, and my prospects were not especially pleasing, but I was moving again, and that made a world of difference. It was the sitting still that had driven me half mad, that and the damned rain. Now at least I had something to do, a particular direction in which to point myself. I had to work for the French liberation of Indochina, that it might take its rightful place alongside Quebec and Algeria and Madagascar.
“You have changed,” the old man said. “Your whole face, it is very much different. You no longer look like a Frenchman.”
I never had, but that was beside the point. I put on the clothing he had brought me, a pair of loose-fitting olive drab trousers, a tan tunic, a pair of more elaborate sandals than I had been wearing. A large white coolie-style hat completed my costume and covered my shaggy brown hair, which had not been a part of the image I had wanted to project. I would have preferred to dye my hair black but couldn’t think of a way to manage that. Shoe polish would have done the trick, but where does one come upon shoe polish in the wilds of Laos?
Outside, a hump-backed bullock stood hitched to a rickety cart. The cart was piled high with straw. If I rescued Tuppence, I thought, she could hide under the straw while I drove the cart. If I found Dhang instead, I could hide under the straw while he drove the cart. If I didn’t rescue anyone, I could hole up somewhere and cook the bullock over a straw fire. If I was captured, the bullock could work for the greater glory of the beautiful France. If…
I was still a little feverish. It would come and go, waves of dizziness and nausea. I wondered if I could possibly have contracted rabies. Maybe I should have let the ghoulish doctor put needles in my brain. At least, I thought, I couldn’t have plague. Or cholera. What did that leave? Jungle rot, malaria, typhus, typhoid fever, dengue fever, trench mouth, gonorrhea – I could have almost anything, I decided.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “A slight touch of la grippe. I guess I’d better go now.”
“I have brought food-”
“I had some rice. I don’t think I’d better eat anything more just now.” My stomach toyed with the notion of returning what I had already eaten, but I managed to change its mind for it. “I wonder if you have heard any news of five black persons who were brought this way. Perhaps they are now in Tao Dan.”
“Five black persons.”
“Four men and a woman.”
“I have little contact with the world here. I sit in my hut, I work in the fields-”
“They might have passed this way any time within the last few weeks. They came from Thailand.”
“I know there are prisoners in Tao Dan. I have heard talk, but no one mentioned their color.”
“Perhaps it is they.”
“Perhaps. Are they the reason for your presence in this accursed land?”
“In a way.”
“You must be very cautious in Tao Dan. The times are dangerous, and the military police act with abandon. You speak the Khmer tongue, but when you came to the door of my hut, I knew at once that your accent was not of these parts. You would do well to speak as little as possible.”
“I know.”
“There are many among us who speak French, but of course it would not do for you to do so. It would be a hazard.”
“I’ll try to keep silent as much as I can.”
“That is good.” He smiled shyly. “I have brought a flask of rice wine that we might drink together. It is a poor local product. In the old days we would drink cognac, would we not? This is an inadequate substitute, but you would do me a great honor to drink with me.”
We drank a pasty white rice wine from a round tin flask. We drank to the glory of France, to Charles de Gaulle, to Napoleon, to Louis Quatorze. He capped the flask and told me to take it along with me, and somehow I managed not to. Somehow, too, I managed not to vomit up the pasty white rice wine. God knows how.
The fastest way to travel by bullock cart involves walking in front and tugging the bullock by a rope. This method is only slightly slower than walking alone unencumbered by bullock or cart, and considerably faster than riding in the cart and letting the bullock set the pace. I tried walking for a while but gave it up when I felt myself beginning to perspire. I didn’t want to sweat the tobacco juice off of my face, so I got into the creaking cart and let the bullock have it with a bamboo switch. This didn’t exactly put him in the thoroughbred league, but that was probably just as well; given the condition of the road – bumpy – and the condition of the cart – dilapidated – I don’t think a fast trip would have been advisable. I sat on the pile of straw, hunched forward to keep as much of my face hidden as possible, and let the bullock proceed at his own pace toward Tao Dan.
I spent the ride getting into character, teaching my eyes and my lips to behave as I wanted them to, teaching my body to adapt itself to the stance of a Laotian peasant. As my bullock and I neared the town, we passed other carts and an occasional car heading in the opposite direction. Now and then someone called a greeting, to which I would nod and mumble. Hardly an acid test, but I was encouraged by the fact that I did not seem to be attracting any attention.