A Taste of Cockroach Page 5

  ‘That’s Kam Oum,’ Kam said dully.

  ‘Maybe the King can give him enough to go away,’ Henri said hopefully.

  ‘Nothing will be enough,’ Kam said.

  ‘But why?’ Yvette said. ‘This city didn’t do anything. The city didn’t kidnap his brothers. It was Siam’s soldiers, and they have all gone. Kam Oum can’t be angry with Luang Prabang.’

  Kam shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter with those bandits. My village had nothing. Just a few bags of rice and a couple of animals. But that was enough. My family, everything, gone in a night.’

  Henri stared at the swaggering bandit across the river for a while, but then he turned to the Pha Bang. As if he couldn’t let go.

  * * *

  For five days Henri had forbidden Yvette to go to the city, while he cautiously kept on visiting his gold agents. But on the fifth night she rebelled. During those five days, her only information about what was happening across the river came from Henri and the men from the expedition. Kéo, a tough farmer and one of Pavie’s closest friends in the expedition, told her the Haw bandits were a rough bunch. A few of them were deserters from the French army. And there were a few of them strolling around the Luang Prabang.

  There had been brawls in the streets of the city but the King seemed to have calmed things … Yvette was hoping that none of those brawls had involved Kam.

  She watched pirogues loaded with rice and fish move past Paclung to the Haw camp and everything seemed all right – until several wounded men arrived from the city. The brawls had been getting worse. Henri made a final trip to the goldsmith on the fifth night.

  In the evening, a deep mist came down the Mekong. Yvette was walking on the river bank. She couldn’t even see the city across the river, but she could hear. There was splashing – a lot of splashing – in the direction of the Khan River. To her, it sounded like many people were sitting in pirogues but they didn’t know how to paddle properly. She could also hear some low muttering.

  She ran back to the village through the mist and collided with Pavie and several of his men. ‘Quick, quick!’ she shouted. ‘Haw bandits are creeping up to the city!’

  Pavie peered into the mist. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I heard pirogues, a lot of them.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Yvette hurried back along the bank with Pavie and the others until Pavie wheezed to a stop. ‘Can you hear them?’ she said.

  Pavie waved her quiet as he propped his arms on his knees. Then he heard the paddles and the mutters in the mist. ‘Yes, they’re moving in.’

  ‘We have to tell them …’ She was thinking of Kam, not Uncle Henri.

  Pavie glared at her, as if to say: I don’t need a little girl to tell me what to do. ‘Kéo?’ He turned to the short farmer. ‘You have to go across the river, I’m sorry.’

  Kéo shrugged.

  ‘You have to go to the King. Tell him what’s happening.’ Pavie took his revolver out of his holster and passed it to him. Kéo had been a farmer when Pavie had picked him up in Cambodia, but he had learned to use guns in Pavie’s expeditions.

  Kéo bowed his head and pressed his hands together as if the gun was a candle. He walked quickly to the village’s pirogues and was swallowed by the mist.

  And then Yvette realised that Kam would find out about the Haw attack when Kéo reached the palace, but there was no way to warn Uncle Henri. He was a mean, cunning old man, but still, he was the only family she had …

  Yvette started to ask Pavie for permission to go with Kéo, but then stopped – she realised he wouldn’t allow it. So she hurried away from Pavie and his men to where the village’s pirogues were pulled up. Even then, she almost missed Kéo’s boat. He and four villagers had slid a pirogue into the Mekong and were about to leap on. She splashed into the water and caught the stern.

  ‘What is the trouble?’ said Kéo.

  ‘Um, for a moment Monsieur Pavie forgot about Uncle Henri, so I am here. To help.’

  ‘Monsieur Pavie wants you to cross the river tonight?’

  She jumped into the pirogue. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  Kéo shrugged, as if to say: I don’t know French customs, or French little girls, and it’s nothing to do with me.

  He and the others piled into the pirogue and paddled furiously across the river. Halfway across, the drum at the Golden City wat began beating fast. Yvette thought: they have seen the Haw pirogues, but what can they do?

  As the pirogue slid to the palace’s wharf, Kéo leapt for the dark steps and started to race up the path. But when he heard frightened shouting and screaming in the streets he stopped, pulled his revolver from his belt, and looked back.

  ‘Yvette! Stay there!’ he called.

  She nodded at him and sat down in the pirogue with the village paddlers. She wanted to go back across the river right then, never mind Uncle Henri.

  The mist lifted in patches and she saw people rushing from the banks, shouting at each other. People were running down from the lanes, jumping into the river and trying to catch hold of pirogues and bamboo rafts. But the people already on them were pushing them away. Yvette saw a red flame flare brightly from deep in the city and heard people shrieking, yelling, howling from the streets.

  Yvette turned away from Luang Prabang and was staring at her trembling hands when Henri ran down to the palace wharf with a heavy bag. He saw her, skidded to the pirogue, threw the bag to one of the paddlers – almost knocking him into the water – and jumped aboard.

  ‘Good girl, good girl!’ Henri gasped. He grabbed his bag back and slapped the paddler. ‘Quick, paddle home!’

  Then she heard desperate shouting near the public wharf.

  ‘That’s Kam! We’ve got to save him!’

  ‘No, we go home.’ Uncle Henri waved the paddlers away.

  ‘What is he saying?’ Yvette hissed in desperation. For a brief moment she wondered why Kam was coming down the public wharf instead of the palace wharf.

  ‘Help!’ Kam shrieked in Lao. ‘We’ve got the Pha Bang!’

  Henri jerked around. ‘Ah … Go over there.’

  The villagers paddled furiously towards the wharf. People were jostled across the wharf and pushed into the water. Yvette heard splashes as the pirogue came close, and saw a girl swirling past, her eyes wide with fear, but she was swimming.

  Then the villagers were alarmed and stopped paddling. Several monks wobbled down the lane, carefully carrying something wrapped in golden material. Kam and some other boys were trying to protect the monks from the panicking people rushing past them, but they were losing. A fat man knocked Kam against a swaying monk and for a moment all the monks seemed about to crash down with the heavy bundle. But they managed to save themselves by dancing around the cobbles.

  ‘Watch it!’ Kam yelled. ‘That’s the Pha Bang!’

  Then Yvette saw what was causing the panic. At the top of the lane were a bunch of Haw bandits with flaming torches and gleaming swords. They were roaring at the frantic people, waving their torches around and slashing at men in an effort to reach the golden Pha Bang. One of them, maybe Kam Oum, was waving his sword in fury. A building behind him erupted in flames.

  But the monks were on the wharf now and some paddlers moved their pirogue closer to take the Pha Bang from them. The statue was almost out of the Haw bandits’ reach.

  And things happened. The fat man reeled across the wharf, looking around with wild eyes for an escape. Some shots were fired from the palace – was that Kéo’s revolver? The fat man spun towards the shots, tangled up his feet, and began to fall from the wharf. Just as the pirogue came out from underneath the wharf.

  The paddlers threw their arms up in defence as the fat man crashed onto them and capsized the pirogue. The paddlers, the fat man and the capsized pirogue whirled past Yvette’s pirogue and there was no time to help them.

  Kam, still on the wharf, looked about in horror and then he saw Yvette and her pirogue. ‘Come in, come in!’ he shouted.

  �
��Yes, yes, move!’ Henri waved the pirogue’s paddlers on. He breathed, ‘Stupid boy.’

  The village paddlers moved quickly to the wharf. Two of them grabbed dangling ropes as another sprang up, placed his feet on the narrow rim of the pirogue, and reached for the wrapped statue. The monks slowly lowered it to his hands and another paddler guided it into the pirogue.

  Kam kept shouting: ‘Be careful, be careful, it is very heavy. The Pha Bang is solid gold!’

  It seemed to make the statue heavier in the paddlers’ hands. They fumbled with it and almost dropped it to crash through the bottom of the pirogue. They managed to hold it, but the Haw bandits were driven mad by Kam’s shouts and hurled themselves onto the wharf. For a moment they were no more than four metres from the wobbling Pha Bang – but the people on the wharf had also heard Kam and knew that their Pha Bang was being saved. They pushed back against the swords and torches for one second and that was enough.

  Yvette felt the weight of the statue in the pirogue and yelled: ‘We’ve got it, we’ve got it!’

  Kam swung down to the pirogue and clutched the statue as the villagers grabbed their paddles. Three young monks stepped after Kam, sat, and found paddles in the bottom. The ropes were released and the pirogues swung free.

  ‘All right, we’re away!’ she yelled at the people on the wharf.

  They seemed to understand her as they melted away from the bandits, allowing them to stumble to the edge of the wharf. The bandit leader shouted at the pirogue and waved his sword in the air, and Kam raised his head from the wrapped statue and grinned at him.

  The bandit’s long, thin moustache quivered and his face started to turn black. But then he pulled an old pistol from his oily belt and pointed it at the pirogue – at Yvette! She tried to shrink into the bottom of the pirogue. The bandit shrieked, but he didn’t fire. He put his gun away and looked around. For one moment, the Paclung pirogue was out of trouble.

  But suddenly the villagers and the monks in the pirogue were paddling backwards, as if they were trying to reverse the rushing current of the Mekong. Yvette turned from the wharf to the bow and saw that the King’s pirogue was sliding from the palace’s wharf. The royal paddlers were churning the water and Kéo was fighting a Haw bandit at the stern. The King was sitting in the middle, staring at the city.

  The two pirogues didn’t quite hit. The royal paddlers slewed the boat as they saw the village pirogue sliding towards them. The villager at the bow put his hand on the royal pirogue and pushed the pirogues clear while bowing his head. That push seemed to help Kéo throw the bandit into the water.

  Kéo saw Yvette and Henri holding the wrapped Pha Bang and waved them on. ‘Go to Pak Lai!’ That village was down the Mekong. Kéo looked at the King as if to confirm his order, but the King was just staring, as if in a dream. ‘Pak Lai,’ Kéo said again as the royal pirogue moved across the Mekong towards the village.

  Yvette was sliding into shock. She had seen the royal paddlers, and most of them were bleeding badly from slashed wounds. In the bottom of their pirogue their feet were awash with blood. Then she saw a strange light flickering across Kam’s face which held the same stunned expression as the King’s. Kam was staring over her shoulder and she turned …

  The city of Luang Prabang was blazing from the riverside to the base of the hill. The multiple roofs of the wats were hurling sheets of yellow and green fire to the night sky. The palace was a blazing bonfire, throwing streams of sparks to the buildings around it. As she watched, a tall wat shook and crashed down in an explosion of flames.

  Numbly Yvette thought this is what it means when a city is destroyed.

  Kam blinked and focused. ‘We have to move!’

  The bandits on the public wharf were getting into a pirogue to chase after the Pha Bang.

  But the village head paddler remained calm. He got Yvette to help Henri hold the Pha Bang, and shifted Kam towards the bow. The dead weight – Henri, Pha Bang and her – were in the middle of the pirogue, while the paddlers were at the bow and stern.

  It seemed to work with help from the paddlers’ knowledge of the currents and rocks in the Mekong. The bandits had a lighter boat, were tougher and stronger than Paclung pirogue paddlers, but they couldn’t get near them in a three-hour race.

  Until the shallows. Suddenly the Mekong spread as wide as a lake, but a wild lake. Before, Henri could hold on to the Pha Bang in the rips without much trouble, but not now. High, muddy waves hit the pirogue from everywhere, making the boat bucket and shimmy.

  ‘Help me, girl!’ Henri gasped.

  Yvette threw her body onto the statue as it lifted from the bottom of the pirogue and felt it settle. Henri flickered the shadow of a smile at her. ‘Good, good. Just hang on.’

  She stared at her uncle, the width of a hand away, and realised that now that he had his hands on the Pha Bang he would not let go. No matter what.

  They passed several capsized pirogues. They saw people clinging on to clumps of reeds in the middle of the river. Henri’s heavy bag bounced out of the pirogue, flashing gold chains as it disappeared into the river. He glanced at the swirling water, but did not move from the statue.

  Yvette stared at her uncle’s clutching hands. Someone has to stop him. You have to stop him.

  But not now. The river current was lost in the sprawling shallows. Instead of racing towards the town of Pak Lai, the Mekong was winding round clumps of reeds, snagged logs, sucking eddies and curving back on itself. For a period, Yvette’s pirogue seemed to point its bow towards Luang Prabang and the bandits’ pirogue. When the bandits saw what was going to happen they shouted and cut across their current to slide into a clump of reeds. They were slicing across the meandering river to cut off the Paclung pirogue’s escape. The hunted paddlers increased their speed as they veered from the reeds, but they were rushing into a closing trap.

  ‘Faster, faster!’ screamed Henri.

  ‘Aihah!’ yelled the head bandit across the water.

  But then there was a shot across the water and a burst of fire. Pavie and his bamboo rafts had reached the shallows. Suddenly the bandits were in confusion. Three bandits leaped up from their pirogue and waved their paddles, others ducked down when the leader twisted on his seat and fired his gun. The pirogue reared from the river, throwing all the bandits into the reeds and the churning water. Yvette’s pirogue cruised past them as the paddlers sagged and for a moment lifted their paddles from the water.

  After a while the pirogue slid towards the wharf of Pak Lai and Uncle Henri slowly smiled. ‘Now, then …’ he said. He patted the wet statue. ‘That was a very close thing.’

  Kam nodded.

  ‘I think you should let me take this somewhere safe.’

  Yvette reared her head in exhaustion. ‘Kam …’ She was dragging a dead voice into a whisper of urgency. ‘You shouldn’t do —’

  ‘Shut up, girl!’ Henri hissed.

  But she couldn’t be stopped now. ‘Kam, you’ve saved the Pha Bang. Don’t lose it now!’

  Kam looked at Yvette, then at the wrapped statue and smiled slowly. ‘Yes, it is over. The Haw chased us for the Pha Bang but they lost. Now they know it is far away.’

  ‘Yes, Kam,’ Henri nodded with a smile. ‘The Haw has been beaten – today. But what happens when they come to this place? I can get this to the safety of Bangkok.’ He slapped the statue.

  ‘Don’t listen to him!’ Yvette said desperately.

  ‘You’re too tired,’ Kam dismissed Yvette with a shake of his head. He looked at Henri with interest. ‘You think it would be safer in Siam?’

  ‘Oh, much safer. I can get soldiers on the border …’

  ‘Well, I guess that would be the best thing to do,’ Kam said sadly.

  ‘Only until the bandits are gone.’ Henri was twitching a smile as he climbed onto the wharf.

  ‘You can’t do this …’ Yvette said, but she was ignored.

  Kam slowly lifted the statue. ‘It was a terrible night. We’ll never forget that. But
we can rebuild Luang Prabang again. Just so long as we have the Pha Bang.’

  ‘But you’re losing —’

  As the statue was moved from the pirogue to the monks on the wharf the sodden golden wrapping ripped slowly apart.

  Kam shrugged and smiled at Yvette. ‘Oh well, it did the job.’

  ‘Oh,’ Yvette said quietly.

  ‘We couldn’t risk putting the real one on the river, but now the Haw think it’s here, that’s all we needed.’

  The golden material peeled from a bronze statue of a Chinese soldier.

  Henri roared from the wharf. ‘You stupid boy!’

  THE BULL

  Most of the incidents here happened to me in the Victorian town of Portarlington around 1953. The things that you never let go …

  It was a hot Saturday, so hot that the tar on the road bubbled and the flies wouldn’t fly.

  But Mon was taking his fishing rod and bucket to the end of the pier to catch some fish. He didn’t know which fish were down there; he knew very little about anything in this small town. He had been there for long enough to spend a week at the school, but he figured that a fish is a fish no matter where it is.

  So he was walking on the pier’s baking planks, past the sandy beach, past some drooping kids tapping a flattened soft-drink tin. He passed several fishing boats, reached the wooden sea wall that sheltered the fishing boats, and thought about how big his fish was going to be …

  ‘Hey, new boy!’

  Mon squinted up at a boy sitting on the high sea wall where it jutted out from the pier. He had seen the boy – Dave – in school. ‘Hello,’ said Mon. ‘I’m Mon.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Dave said. ‘Whatcha doing?’

  Mon lifted his rod. ‘I’m going fishing.’

  ‘This is a good place to fish. Come up,’ Dave said.

  Mon thought a bit, then he shrugged. ‘Okay.’ He put the bucket and the rod against the wall.