The Merry Misogynist

cutlery.
    “They’re old. I mean very old. And there’s broken pottery in here and what looks like hair.”
    “Oh dear.”
    “What is it?”
    “The forks. They’re gravestones.”
    “Eh?”
    “Frogs, by the look of it although I’m not planning to go through the lot to see if they’re all the same.”
    “I remember he has a fondness for amphibians.”
    “Does any of this help us to know where he’s gone?”
    “Not at all.”
    “But you have to admit he is a wonderfully peculiar little chap.” She used the fork to replace the dirt on the frog she’d just unearthed and said a short prayer for its soul.

9
THE LAO PATRIOTIC WOMEN’S ASSOCIATION
    S iri sat on the wicker chair in front of Madame Daeng’s shop, going through the contents of the box one more time. In total, there were ten mostly broken bones, five shards of pottery, and a small tangled mass of hair. Daeng was inside preparing the breakfast so their conversation was shouted.
    “I can’t imagine where he got all this stuff,” Siri yelled.
    “What?” She couldn’t hear him above the sound of the charcoal cracking in the flames.
    “I say, some of these shards seem really old.”
    “How does the bone look in the cold light of day?”
    “None of them is complete but I’d say this one is part of a humerus.”
    “How can you be sure it’s not a goat’s hind leg?”
    “Please, madam. I’m a professional.”
    In fact, Siri wasn’t at all certain. His experience was exclusively with human bones in human bodies. The context rather gave it away. He’d never studied the difference between human and animal bones and never performed surgery on anything with four legs. There might have been a course entitled ‘Etudes Ancienne Comparee et Methodique des Squelettes de Caprines et Vertebres Humains, 101’, but, if so, he had long forgotten it. For all he knew, the human humerus might have been identical to the hind leg of a goat.
    He rubbed his eyes to get them to focus. He’d slept poorly. Another nightmare had awakened him at two a.m. It was her: the ugly pregnant woman with the worms and the dead dog. He woke with such a heavy weight on his chest it was as if she had been sleeping on top of him. He could almost smell her sweat. His lungs wheezed. Daeng had awakened too and asked him if he was all right. He’d considered telling her the truth but there were times when the truth didn’t help anybody.
    He looked up as a man in a postal worker’s uniform pedalled up on a bicycle whose parts were clearly held together by string and wishes.
    “You’re open then?” the man said, stepping from the precarious machine.
    He arrived at the shop at the same time every morning and said the selfsame thing every time. Normally he’d settle on a table near the entrance without waiting for a response, but today he surprised Siri by handing him an envelope.
    “What’s this?” Siri asked.
    In most places, a postman handing over a letter would not prompt such a question. But Lao postmen had recently ceased their habit of delivering letters. As the populace and the government cultivated their respective paranoias, fewer people were prepared to hand over their secrets to anyone in a uniform. Notes would be delivered by bus drivers or friends allowed to travel up-country or relatives going off to ‘re-education’ camps.
    Almost everything from outside the country passed through a Bureau de Poste department known as the Sensitive Issues Section. There mail was opened, read, censored with black ink, and put in large wooden crates for collection. Anything in a foreign language was deemed too sensitive for the Sensitive Issues Section largely because there was nobody on staff who could read it. These letters were filed and never seen again.
    “It’s a letter,” said the postman. “I recognized your name so I thought I’d bring it along. Sorry it’s open.”
    Siri took it. “Thank you, Comrade. Has it been…?”
    “I think they looked at it and realized it was from a child so there aren’t any marks on it.”
    The postman went into the shop where he was greeted warmly by Madame Daeng. Other customers were arriving on foot. The aroma must have worked its way around the downtown area already. Siri took a moment to appreciate the large Lao farm implement dedication stamp that took up a quarter of the envelope then pulled out the single sheet of lined notepaper. At first glance, it did appear to be written in a child’s hand, but he noted that