Read Online Thirty-Three Teeth by Colin Cotterill - Free Book Online Page B

lait. He stepped carefully to avoid setting off the dog fart flowers. The setting sun seemed to walk along the opposite bank, dodging between the trees. Toward Luang Prabang, stodgy hills were patchy with slashed fields that looked from a distance like painful skin grafts.
    Although there was no fence to announce it, he soon found himself in a fruit orchard. A longboat was moored against a simple wooden dock. The trees were neatly ranked but showing the effects of neglect. They were swollen with fruit. Some had rotted and dropped to the grass below. The sight may not have caused a flicker of interest to any other traveler, but to Siri it was uncanny. It baffled him that there were no signs of bird or insect damage. No animals had come to steal the luscious fallen oranges or nibble at the low-hanging pears. He walked along the rows; mangosteens, rambutans, rose apples, all proudly ripe and unviolated. It was astounding. Apparently, not even man, the most insatiable predator of all, had been scrounging from this Garden of Eden.
    There was a feeling there. Not his usual creepy “somebody dead hanging around” feeling, but an aura of sorts: a protection, as if something were watching over the trees and the spirits that resided in them. He felt safe under its gaze.
    He was curious to know where he was and to learn more about the exotic strains of fruit, many of which he’d never seen before. He walked up and down the lush green rows. They’d have needed three or four waterings a day through this particularly dry summer season to keep them so bountiful. It wasn’t till his last sweep that he came upon a gardener.
    The old man wore a conical Vietnamese hat tied under his chin with a bright red cloth. He had on a navy blue peasant’s jacket and shorts. He stood inside the canopy of an orange tree, pruning up into the branches. Siri couldn’t make out much of his looks.
    “Good health, friend,” Siri began.
    The man didn’t interrupt his work to reply. “How would you be, friend?”
    “You have some remarkable fruit trees here.”
    “Thank you. I’m afraid they’ve been neglected of late. I haven’t been able to get out here for some time.”
    The man’s voice was soft, somehow worldly and, Siri thought, kind. He guessed he was around his own age.
    “I don’t seem to recognize a lot of these varieties.”
    “No? Know fruit, do you?”
    “Most of the jungle types, and the usual imports.”
    “Well, you wouldn’t have seen a lot of these. If you’ve got a few minutes, grab those pruning clippers and give me a hand to cut back some branches. They won’t get a lot of attention from now on.”
    “That’s a shame. Why not?”
    Either the man didn’t answer or Siri couldn’t hear through the foliage. He looked in the basket, where he found an elegant pair of pruning clippers and a beautifully gilded set of shears in the shape of herons necking.
    “You take your gardening seriously.”
    “It isn’t something you can half do.”
    Siri went to the orange tree beside his friend’s and started on the old, low branches.
    “It’s peaceful here. How come you haven’t been able to come?”
    “It’s the new regime, Brother. They’re very strict here in Luang Prabang. They don’t like us moving around too much.”
    “But this is a thriving orchard. It needs someone to look after it. You could feed a battalion of soldiers just from the produce here. You could certainly keep the villagers nearby alive.”
    The old man stopped clipping. “Hmm. Could do, I suppose. Except the people in these parts are somewhat loath to sample the fruits from this particular garden.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “I take it you aren’t from around here.”
    “No. I’m part of the invading hordes. Spent most of my troubled life in the jungles of Houaphan and North Vietnam.”
    “Ah. You’re one of them. That explains it. Then you wouldn’t know whose orchard this is.” There was a pause. “It belongs to the Royal Family, or