‘I very much doubt a month of practice would improve matters too much,’ said Siri.
‘I can’t-’
Daeng’s thought was interrupted by a loud knock at their door. The door wasn’t locked so they both shouted, ‘Come in!’ but the knocker did not do so. Siri was out of breath by the time he reached the handle. He opened the door and was confronted by a short but very attractive woman around Daeng’s age. She wore a beautiful Lao phasin and a crisp white blouse. Her thick hair was fastened in a chignon with two gold hairpins. Behind her was a Chinese-looking man of the same height. His head was shaven and, for some reason, he wore a long white nightshirt.
‘Doctor Siri,’ she said, not a question. Her smile was that of a much younger person. If her teeth were false they’d been fashioned by a craftsman.
‘Yes?’ said Siri, suddenly aware he was dressed in nothing but a threadbare towel.
‘I am Madame Peung,’ she said in impeccable French. ‘People have been calling me Madame Keui of late so that is the person you might have been expecting. But, what’s in a name? Please call me whichever you wish.’
Siri was about to hold out his hand but the visitor put her palms together in a nop. The authorities had outlawed the bourgeois salute but it still felt right. If he hadn’t been holding up his towel with one hand he would have returned it. The bald man merely nodded.
‘My brother, Mr Tang, lost the power of speech after an explosion when he was in the military,’ she said. ‘Neither can he hear. But he has great sense. He feels our meanings.’
Then, in Vietnamese, she said, ‘I hope you’re enjoying your retirement. It must be difficult to know what to do with your days now.’
Siri was fluent in both French and Vietnamese but of course both were spiced by his Lao. Yet there was something peculiar about this woman’s languages. It was as if … as if she were speaking to him with his accent. As if she’d borrowed the words from him.
Madame Daeng joined them at the door.
‘We have guests,’ she said. ‘Why haven’t you invited them in?’
Siri made the introductions as they all walked to the veranda. Madame Peung and Tang sat on the deckchairs. Siri sat on the railing, being careful to keep his knees together. Madame Daeng found herself dragging the heavy wooden chair over to join them. Madame Peung proved to be most agreeable for a witch. After talking about their respective journeys, bemoaning the cost of goods at the local markets, and one or two jokes, the three communicators had apparently broken the ice. So much so that Madame Peung decided they were close enough for her to toss a few sticks of dynamite into the embers of bonhomie.
‘Before he shot me, I was as Lao as you two,’ she said.
‘Sorry?’ said Daeng.
‘You’ve heard I speak Lao with a Vietnamese accent,’ she said. ‘But before the break-in to my house two months ago, my Vietnamese and French had been quite basic. After I was shot I found myself channelling Hong Phouc, a Vietnamese mandarin of the late nineteenth century.’
‘How badly were you injured?’ Daeng asked.
‘Oh, I was killed,’ she said.
It’s not easy to keep a straight face when the person you’re talking to insists they were once dead. She’d delivered the line so deadpan that both Siri and Daeng smiled at her, expecting a punchline. But she continued.
‘They still haven’t caught him, the murderer. So they don’t know why I was targeted. He didn’t take anything from the house. Hong Phouc suggests that it was part of the vast cosmic plan. The same man shot me on two separate occasions. The second bullet didn’t do any harm at all.’
‘Because you were already dead,’ smiled Daeng.
Before becoming involved with Siri and his band of merry ghosts, Daeng would probably have made a joke at this juncture and dismissed the woman as a nutcase. But she’d heard of so much weirdness from her husband that almost anything was possible. Almost. Siri, on the other hand, was so engrossed his knees drifted apart.
‘Evidently,’ said Madame Peung, averting her eyes and letting out a gut laugh that suggested she was every bit as bewildered by it all as Daeng. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it? On the night I was shot for the first time, all I remember was looking up from my bed to see a strange man leaning over me. I heard a crash from the gun. Three days later I awoke in the same bed at exactly the same time. Of course I didn’t know then that three days had passed. I thought it was the same night and the shooting was a dream. I took the torch, went to the bathroom and had the longest pee I’ve ever had in my life. I didn’t think it would ever end. I passed the mirror and I was … different. I was younger. Oh, not by a lot but enough to notice. And my body was in better shape. I wondered whether that trip to the bathroom was part of the dream. I was confused. I returned to the bed and slept till morning. I was awoken by a scream. My live-in girl was standing in the doorway to my room with her hands over her mouth. I asked her what was wrong. She screamed again and ran off. I didn’t see her again.
‘I went down to the village to see the headman. But as I walked past the houses all I heard were screams and the slamming of doors. I asked what was wrong but nobody would talk to me. There was one old woman I had befriended many years before. She made charcoal. We used to talk a lot. She was the only one who wasn’t afraid of me.
‘ “Of course they’re scared,” she said. “The menfolk carried your body down to the pyre yesterday and we watched you go up in smoke. You were killed by an intruder three days ago.”
‘I was astounded.
‘ “Of course it’s a mistake,” I told her. “It must have been somebody else. Someone who looked like me.”
‘ “It was you, sure enough,” she said.
‘ “Then, who am I?” I asked.
‘ “Who indeed,” she said.
‘For the next few days I tried to make contact. I went to everybody I knew. People whose children I’d seen as babies, watched them grow up. I’d bought goods from their shops. Some of them had worked for me at the house. Of course I knew all this but I couldn’t convince them that I was me. And there was this awful Vietnamese accent. So, slowly, I retreated to my house and started to live like a hermit. Then people began to come. Strangers. They said they’d heard that I’d been reborn and wanted me to help them locate relatives on the other side. The first few visitors I threw out angrily. But after they’d gone I had dreams. It was true. Those lost relatives really did come to me. Hong Phouc introduced them. I really could see them. Talk to them. It frightened me. I didn’t know what it all meant so I called for my brother to come and stay with me. He wasn’t surprised at all. Our family always knew he had some innate gifts that he could not express. He has been a great comfort to me.
‘When more strangers came I listened to them and I helped them find the bodies of their relatives. It was all quite simple. They tried to give me rewards but I didn’t want their money or their jewels. Every visitor I swore to secrecy. “Do not tell anyone else what I do here.” But still they came. And after two months I got the first visit from Madame Ho, the minister’s wife. And that, dear doctor, is why I am here. And some of your questions at least have been answered.’
‘Siri, you’re drooling,’ said Daeng.
During the remarkable tale, the doctor had lowered himself from the railing and sat cross-legged but discreetly in front of the witch. Madame Daeng retreated inside.
‘But how? How do you talk to them?’ Siri asked.
‘The same way I’m talking to you,’ Madame Peung replied, ‘except I use my mind. Look down there.’
They looked through the railings towards the river.
‘Do you see her?’ she asked.
‘The woman on the rock?’
‘That’s the one. Ask her why she’s here.’
‘I can’t. I mean, the only way I know how to ask is with my mouth. I could shout at her.’
‘That wouldn’t work. She’s trying really hard to talk to you.’
‘You see? I’m a failure.’