The Merry Misogynist

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,