The Merry Misogynist

lean-to. There wasn’t an ounce of fat between the three of them. The youths seemed drugged with ennui.
    “Good health,” Siri said with a big smile on his face. They returned his greeting, apparently unfazed to find a stranger in their midst. “I’m looking for Comrades Boonhee and Mongaew.”
    “Well you’ve found Boonhee,” said the man, returning Siri’s smile. “What can I do for you, brother?”
    Siri sat beneath a short chicken-guts tree and fanned himself with the manila envelope he carried.
    “I’m too old for this,” he said. “All this travelling will have me in my grave.”
    “Long time before that happens I’d bet,” said Boonhee. He brought over a plastic ice bucket with a screw top. Inside was a small tin cup floating in water. Siri forwent his aversion to unidentified liquids and helped himself to a cupful. The water was hot but deliciously sweet, probably due to a high concentration of streptococcus.
    “I’m Siri Paiboun from Mahosot Hospital in Vientiane,” he said.
    “I reckon I’ve been there once,” said Boonhee. “You lost?”
    “No, I’m in the right place. I wanted to talk to you about your daughter.”
    “Ngam?” The man seemed pleased. “You’ve met her, have you? How’s she doing?”
    “Comrade Boonhee, has she been in touch with you since she left?”
    The farmer laughed. “Look around you, brother. It’s not the easiest place to contact.”
    “I can see.”
    “So, what did she say? Are they off to overseas yet?”
    “Is that what she told you? That they’d be leaving the country?”
    “It’s what the young man told us: Phan. Said he was getting posted to…I don’t know, some country over in Europe somewhere. Her mother’d remember the name of it.”
    “When was the last time you saw Ngam?”
    “The party. The night of the ceremony. It was the seventh.”
    “Comrade Boonhee,” Siri sighed, “does Ngam have a small mole, here?” He touched his temple above his ear.
    “A small one, nothing a bit of make-up wouldn’t – wait, what are you doing here talking about our Ngam’s mole?”
    Siri sighed again and removed the photograph from the envelope. “Mr Boonhee, can you come and sit over here with me, please.”
    “I can stand well enough.”
    Siri held up the photograph to the farmer who, despite his courageous words, was rocking unsteadily.
    “What? Where’d you get that? That…that’s not a normal picture. Why’s her eyes closed?”
    Siri often wondered how wealthy he would be if he’d received a franc for every time he’d said, “I’m sorry.”
    “What you sorry about? What is this?”
    “Ngam’s dead, Comrade.”
    The two lethargic boys stood and ambled over to look at the photo. Boonhee couldn’t find words.
    “I’m from the morgue,” Siri said. “I’ve been waiting for her family to get in touch. She needs a ceremony.”
    Boonhee’s face twisted into a confused, working-out-a-puzzle type of expression. He looked up at Siri as if the answer might be somewhere on the doctor’s face.
    “Her mother’s going to be…I don’t know. What happened?”
    “She was murdered, strangled to death.”
    There was the longest pause before Boonhee asked, “Do you know who did it?”
    “No.”
    Another gap.
    “Does Phan know?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Someone should tell him.”
    Siri left the obvious conclusion to find its own way into the farmer’s mind.
    “Do you know how we can get in touch with him?” the doctor asked.
    “He’s with roads.”
    “The Highways Department?”
    “Something like that. The people that build the roads.”
    “So you don’t have an address, papers, any way to contact him?”
    “Ngam had all that. She took it all with her.” Siri could see that the man was forcing himself to stay on his feet so as not to lose face in front of the boys.
    “Do you remember his family name?” Siri kept pushing.
    “Ngam would know all that.”
    “You didn’t sign the marriage documents?”
    “We don’t write nor read. Not me or her mother.”
    “Where is your wife? Perhaps she’d remember something about him.”
    “She’s over at Nit’s place helping out.”
    “Comrade, I’m sorry to keep asking questions. I know this has to be hard for you.”
    “You can ask.”
    Unless it surpassed all physical means, grief wasn’t something you shared with strangers in Laos.
    “Do you have any pictures of the wedding?”
    “Why do you want them?”
    “Well, if we don’t have an address for Phan