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.
Tao Dan turned out to be a rather busy little town, the marketplace and seat of government for the surrounding countryside. Ramshackle round huts with peaked roofs alternated with squat buildings of whitewashed concrete block. The streets were very narrow and extremely crowded. I was a new hand at the subtleties of guiding a bullock through heavy pedestrian traffic and after my beast came very close to trodding upon a little yellow infant, I gave up riding him and walked in front of him, my hat down over as much of my forehead as possible and my head and shoulders stooped. I made my way through a market street where old women sat selling bunches of indefinable vegetables, turned a corner, made my way through the local cattle market, shrugged off a variety of offers for my bullock, and generally drifted through the busy little town. It would have helped if I had known precisely who or what I was looking for, but I didn’t. It would also have helped if I had felt better physically. I was perspiring again and was sure it would have an undesirable effect upon my complexion. I had the feeling that my digestive system might be ruined beyond repair, and my head was beginning to throb, a persistent ache that began at the base of my skull and worked its way forward from there.
What had become of Dhang?
I decided that he must have found the object of his search, but it seemed unlikely that he could still be busy with a woman. Even taking his youth and the fervor of his desire into consideration, the fact remained that one could only continue that particular activity for a certain amount of time. Of course, I thought, if he had given full vent to his desires, he might well have driven himself past the point of exhaustion. Even so, a night’s sleep would have brought him awake again. Of course he might have resumed the original activity, but I hated to think it of him. We were friends, after all, and I couldn’t believe he would leave me shivering in the underbrush forever while he screwed himself silly.
What, for that matter, had become of Tuppence and the Kendall Bayard Quartet? I had the feeling that they were the prisoners of whom the old man had spoken and that they were somewhere in Tao Dan. But where were political prisoners lodged in Tao Dan? I didn’t know and I didn’t trust myself to ask directions.
I found one street that was a little less crowded than the others and hitched the bullock at the curb, tying his lead rope to a small concrete pillar erected for that express purpose. I shuffled along the street, then followed a small crowd of men into what seemed to be a cafe. Inside, men were drinking out of small handleless cups of tea. I couldn’t have any tea because I didn’t have any money. I moved to the rear of the cafe and tried to stay as deep in the shadows as possible. A dozen conversations went on at once around me. I listened to them in turn. The dialect was difficult for me to follow, and most of the conversations seemed to revolve upon the various problems inherent in the life of a peasant in Laos. The agricultural trade terms were largely unfamiliar ones, and I was pretty much at sea.
Until at length I heard a large, heavy man with a deep voice begin to talk about a criminal event that had transpired during the night. A small crowd gathered around him, anxious for details. I shouldered my way forward and listened to the storyteller.
He knew his trade well, beginning slowly, letting the excitement build. “And so you know the girl of whom I speak,” he said. “Her father is the commanding officer of the troop garrison. Just a young thing, she is, with the softest and purest skin, and a waist one could span with one’s hands, and breasts exquisitely shaped like cups of tea, and hair like fine black silk…”
He paused for a chorus of oohs and ahhs.
“And this stranger appeared, no one knows from where. A young man, crude in his ways, and followed the girl down the street. Some say she did not know she was being followed” – he lowered his voice – “and others say she well knew a man was behind her, and let her hips sway from side to side, eh? Eh?”
A low giggle rose up from the crowd.
“And he followed her, or perhaps she led him, into the house of her father. The house of her father!” The crowd bubbled at the thought, a mixture of indignation from the puritans and grudging respect from the libertines. “And in the house of her father, in the bed of her father, this wayward one prepared to take her. Some say he meant to force himself upon her and to overcome her resistance with beatings and terror” – again the voice went conspiratorially soft – “and others have it that no terror was necessary, that the girl would have willingly participated in what he wished!”