Candle in the Attic Window(69)
“What’s happened to Phirun?” I said, when I realized she had no intention of volunteering the information. Withdrawing a hand-rolled cigarette and a matchbox, she lit up and blew an ivory cloud in my face.
“Gone,” she said, her ghastly face obscured behind the smoke. “Met a bad end.”
“What happened?” I snapped, remembering I was no longer an ill-behaved child to be talked down to.
“Run off with a Viet,” she took a drag on her cigarette. “Went to Ho Chi and ain’t come back.”
“That’s it?” I asked, relieved.
“Bad end, eh?” The witch was clearly disappointed Phirun’s desertion of the village had not disturbed me. “Living with the Viets?”
“Let me help with your basket,” I said, the mud drying all over my back and legs encouraging me to get on with my penance or abandon it all together.
“You sound like a Thai,” she grumbled, but handed off her basket, and together, we walked slowly down the road, the emptied taxi soon passing us on its way back out of the jungle. “Why’re you talking like a Thai now?”
“I’ve been in Thailand,” I looked off into the eye-scalding brightness of the verdant foliage to hide my smile. “I’ve been training to be a doctor and –”
“Doctor?” the witch took a long drag. “Why’d you leave, then? Think a Thai knows more than me?”
“No, ma’am,” I said, leaving the road and following her onto the trail leading to her hut beside the landmine-riddled Dead Field. “I just wanted to learn a different kind of medicine.”
“Different?” she snorted. “Shitty Thai medicine’s different than the real thing, sure enough. That’s where you’ve been? Learning Thai tricks?”
“Ma’am, setting bones and stitching up cuts aren’t tricks” I said, reminding myself that her racism and hostility were but results of her upbringing, and she probably had dementia besides.
“Could’ve taught you that and more, had you shown a bit more sense.”
“As I said, I’m sorry –”
“Had another skilled set of hands about, could’ve saved your grandfather.”
“What?” I stopped, allowing the mosquitoes to swarm me and the fronds she had held back to whip my legs. “What about Grandfather?”
“Was my master what saved him when he lost that arm, but I helped, yes, I did. And had I a helper when we tried to get the demon out, it might’ve worked.” She clucked her tongue. “Get along, then. I’ve got guests waiting.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I followed her, blinking the sweat and tears out of my eyes. Grandmother wrote when he fell ill and said she was taking him to a doctor, and by the time my response received a response of its own, he had passed away. I assumed she had taken him out of the village, to a real clinic instead of –
“Coated him in chili oil, bound him tight, and kept the coals good, but it was tough, didn’t want to go. Took him with it.”
“Coals? Chili oil?” I stopped again, but seeing her advance over the twisted roots, I had to continue as well. “A demon? He had a fever, didn’t he?”
“Burning up,” she nodded, ducking under a plump vine. “So, I got him on the coals, but it still wouldn’t come up. Toughest little demon.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing; I knew rural healers like the witch used genuine natural remedies in conjunction with liberal quackery, but this seemed beyond all reason. That my grandmother would allow it surprised me even more, for she was a smart, semi-educated woman. Fevers can be fatal if medicine is not received, of course, but to roast him over coals would be a virtual death sentence to even a healthy man of my grandfather’s age.
“You witch!” I blurted out. “How dare you!”
She stopped and turned, her hut jutting out of the jungle over her shoulder. Her narrow eyes and sharp nose appeared stuck halfway between scorn and pity. I noticed the two well-dressed, middle-aged men from the cab standing by the door to her hut, watching us, but did not think anything of it until much later, after my anger and disgust were shed with the quarts of sweat flowing from me.
“I only work when I’m paid,” she said, snatching the basket from me. “And I’m only paid when folk come here. Me and the Thais got that in common, at least. You come back at dusk and I’ll teach you something they won’t have showed you. He won’t live out the night, to be sure, and looks like they’ve brought what I need.”
Much as I wanted to slap her or scream at her or even somehow calmly explain to her how what she did was wrong, wrong, wrong, I did what I had always done as a child when the witch told me something horrible – I turned and ran down the trail without looking back, her cackling laugh sending the cuckoos into flight. By the time I entered the village proper, I had calmed somewhat, and then my neighbors took turns swooping me up, and praising my maturity and beauty, and laughing at my bedraggled appearance, and welcomed me home with an embarrassing amount of fanfare. Grandmother saw at a glance that something other than emotion at my homecoming had darkened my countenance. After we had all eaten together in the village centre, she spirited me inside her – our – sweltering stilt-house to have a proper talk.
“You took him to see the witch,” I said, when she finally ceased her interrogation of my (long and dangerous) trip, my (obviously poor, without her cooking) health, and my (not too trampy) appearance.