Anarchy and Old Dogs (Dr. Siri Paiboun) (4 page)

It was somewhere between 2 and 3 a.m., and only Dtui, Siri, and Phosy still remained beneath the canopy of dark leaves in the temple yard. Twice, the abbot had risen, bleary-eyed, to remind them that his monks had to be up at five to collect alms, so could they keep the noise down? Twice, the mourners had apologized and continued their anecdotes in respectful whispers. But large quantities of rice whisky tend to play havoc with a body's volume control. It didn't take long before they were laughing and singing and shouting messages to Manoluk, who lay shrouded in cloves and tobacco leaves in the prayer chamber just behind them. You're only dead once, and the guests wanted this to be a good send-off for their old friend.

The last of the other mourners had staggered home before 1 a.m. and, although they were exhausted, the three comrades felt obliged to maintain a vigil. They were huddled together around the last inch of an orange candle. There was no breeze to disturb the flame or cool the sticky night.

"You'd tell me, wouldn't you, Doc?" Dtui said through lips she couldn't quite feel. Rice whisky doesn't numb, it anesthetizes.

"Tell you what?"

"If she comes to see you."

"Manoluk? Don't be silly. The spirits only contact me if they're restless. What's your ma got to be unhappy about?"

"Well, the fact that she's dead," Phosy suggested.

When you're drinking with a corpse, there's no such thing as irreverence. Comments like that had them all rocking with laughter. They heard a loud cough from the abbot's hut.

"All right," Siri whispered. "I concede she might not be too delighted about being dead, but she certainly has no grievances about the way Dtui looked after her all those years. No mother could ask for more love and dedication from a daughter."

They toasted to Dtui.

"Well, just in case she does," Dtui said, "even if it's to say hello and tell you what her new teak house in Nirvana's like. You'd let me know, eh?"

"I promise."

Phosy staggered off to water the gooseberry bush beyond the temple gates. There was a blissful silence, which in Laos can incorporate a lot of noise. There's the humming and buzzing of insects and the distant howling of dogs. Somewhere a wind chime is disturbed by a lizard. House timbers stretch and groan. Water drips from a leaky tap into the huge stone temple pot. But, as any Lao would tell you, these are just musical accompaniments to make silence more interesting.

"I knew, you know?" Dtui confessed.

"Knew what?"

"That she was going."

"Of course, we all had an idea."

"No. I mean, I knew exactly when. Last night. I hurried home to spend the last few hours with her. That's why I wasn't at the vegetable co-op."

"Auntie Bpoo told you?"

Dtui smiled at her boss. "You went to see her, didn't you? Didn't I tell you?"

"There was something disconcerting about her. I have to admit she may have certain ... gifts."

"She told me not to waste my time sitting there with her."

"Just like that? She didn't force you to sit through a poem?"

"Oh, there's always a poem first. Nobody has the foggiest idea what they're all about. Yesterday was something about magic tinderboxes you can speak into and hear voices from faraway lands. Still, it makes her happy. She only asks that you listen. What did she tell you?"

"Me? Just a lot of bunkum."

Dtui giggled. "Really? So why do you suddenly think she's legitimate?"

"I didn't say that exactly. I just ..."

Phosy had returned from his garden adventure and decided now was as good a time as any to fall across one of the trestle tables. It collapsed beneath his weight and its empty glasses and bottles crashed to the ground. If the rolling of eyes had a sound, it would certainly have been heard from the abbot's hut at that moment. Siri and Dtui helped Phosy back to his seat even though they were no more coordinated than he. They all agreed they needed a drink to calm their nerves after the excitement.

"It's a resounding pity Civilai couldn't be here tonight," Phosy said. He sounded remarkably sober for somebody who'd just broken a dozen rented glasses and a previously untouched bottle of Vietnamese snake hooch. Civilai was their only friend on the politburo and a kindred spirit. The fictitious date of birth Siri had conjured up for his official documents was May 21, 1904. It coincidentally turned out to be two days after Civilai's actual birthday, so Civilai took delight in calling him "younger brother." They'd studied socialist doctrine together in Vietnam, had been there at the founding of the Pathet Lao, and each had alienated about the same number of senior Party members. They were undiplomatic old coots who were too stubborn to play the political game by the rules. For Civilai, who was on the Central Committee, this was a major disability. Nobody in any position of authority bothered to listen to him anymore. He only had Siri to vent his frustrations on. That--and their love of food and a good stiff drink--was what made the two men so close.

"Where is he anyway?"

Phosy's question had already been answered several times throughout the course of the evening.

"He's back in the USSR," Dtui reminded him. "Like the Beatles."

"Who?"

"He'll be back tomorrow or whenever the Soviets let him go. I'm not telling you again."

"They have beetles in the USSR?"

"Never mind."

"Poor old fellow's become a cocktail Party member," Siri lamented. He shifted his chair backward so he could see the sky but found there were no stars in the muggy soup above them. He wondered whether storm clouds might be gathering at long last and completely forgot his point.

"I don't think I understand that," Dtui said.

"All right, just look at him. He's the one they send to attend conferences but they don't let him speak. They put his name down for all the shows and concerts and he's always the first one up on the dance floor. He has to meet all the visiting big nobs and take them to dinner and on to whatever tickles their fancies. He's become so adept at small talk he's lost the ability to make big talk. He said he feels like the comedian who warms up audiences before the star comes onstage."

"So why doesn't he retire?"

"Oh, Dtui. If they let us retire from the Party, do you think either of us would still be here? We're symbolic old relics. They need people like us around to impress the young fellows coming up through the ranks. A statue would do the job better because stone doesn't answer back. But we aren't enough of a threat to justify an assassination so they have to put up with us."

Siri stared into his drink as he contemplated that point and suddenly felt sorry for himself. There followed another period of Lao silence during which he realized he and the abbot were the only ones still conscious. Phosy and Dtui lay with their heads on the bare wood of the tabletop, snoring back and forth. Siri smiled at the bodies. He felt victorious, like the last man standing in a battle. He took his glass of whisky to the prayer-hall steps and held it in front of his face.

"Manoluk," he said. "Looks like just you and me. These young folks today have no idea how to have a good time. Want to dance?"

There were always good arguments against going to work directly from an all-night drinking binge at a temple. One--

perhaps the only one--in favor was that after opening the morgue doors to make it look as if business continued as usual, one could always retire to the Mahosot Hospital canteen, where they served the muddiest and most evil coffee in the country. On top of the congealed brown sediment sat barely a mouthful of liquid coffee. No sooner was it cool enough to drink than it was necessary to order another. But that mouthful would be remembered deep into old age and could cut through a hangover like a cyclone through a barn.

Siri, Dtui, and Phosy had defied a hundred deaths balanced on the Triumph and arrived at the morgue at five. Now, at seven, their minds were buzzing like hornets in a jam jar. They'd lost the ability to blink, and they had smiles painted across their faces just like those contented people in the propaganda posters: UNITED WORKERS ARE HAPPY WORKERS. Four Mahosot coffees could do that to a person, too.

Finally, they found themselves back at the morgue.

"I feel like bathroom mold," Phosy said, his voice like a plow dragged over rocks.

"Never mind," Siri told him, "only ten hours and we can all go home and get some sleep."

Dtui was squeezing her own wrist. "I'm afraid there may be some blood left in my alcohol stream. We're medical personnel; we should know better. Stimulate my brain, someone, before it pickles. Give me a job."

"I'm afraid the morgue is devoid of murder," Siri told her.

"Then give me some old case to go over again. See if I can solve it quicker this time."

"Perhaps you could help us with our dentist mystery," Siri suggested. "Our own investigation was somewhat lacking."

"Lacking?" Phosy said. "Didn't I find the house ... the wife?"

"Indeed you did," Siri said. "And brilliant detective work it was, too. But I fear the whole story we heard was as convoluted as the note."

"You didn't believe her?"

"Have you ever played chess, Phosy?"

"Most certainly. Once we'd castrated the pigs and plucked the chickens, and as soon as we'd worn our hands raw digging ditches, me and the other orphans would rush home for a quick game of chess before stacking the rice husks."

"A simple no would have sufficed."

"Then no. But I take it you have."

"It was one of the few distractions in Paris that didn't cost any money. They played in the parks. I started off watching, fascinated. Then I began to play myself. I didn't ever make it to the position of grand maitre, but I won the odd game. The thing is, in the winter when we couldn't play outside, there were competitions in the newspapers. They'd plot out the game in symbols and you had to work out the next best move. So I know the abbreviations, and not one item on the dentist's list has any connection to chess."

"So, the widow was lying," Phosy said.

"Or her husband lied to her. She hadn't learned chess so he could have told her anything. And didn't the invisible ink story seem just a little too pat? His friend was playing a prank? Come on. He may have been able to con his wife, but not a team of hardened cynics like us. Let's take another look at the list and see what else we can come up with."

Siri went to the cutting room and stood in front of the blackboard they used to chalk up weights and lengths. With one eye on the note, he copied the list noisily. The generously donated Chinese chalk snapped itself into fractions as he wrote, leaving him with a tiny stub between his thumb and forefinger as he scratched the last symbols. He stepped back between Dtui and Phosy like an artist admiring his work. They stood there studying the list before them: standing, studying, staring, swaying. The characters merged and curled together like clothes in a spin dryer and the three would probably have stayed there all day transfixed by the meaningless letters if they hadn't been interrupted by a shrill cough. They turned but there was nobody behind them. The sound had come from outside the morgue.

"Who's there?" Siri asked. But he had to wait for a reply.

"I have a note for Dr. Siri Paiboun," came a young voice.

"That's me," Siri said. "Come on inside."

"Er, I think I'll just leave it here," said the voice.

When Dtui went to the front step she found a white envelope on the welcome mat and saw a young girl in the black
phasin
skirt and white blouse of the lycee fleeing across the hospital grounds.

"Looks like the kids at the lycee still think this place is haunted," Dtui said, handing the letter to Siri.

"Can't imagine why they'd think that," said Phosy. He looked over the doctor's shoulder. "Is it from Oum?"

"Well, I'll be ..." Siri smiled. "Our Australian spy has cracked it."

"Thank God for that. I was going giddy staring at this list."

"She says it came to her in the middle of a geography lesson. She hasn't had time to work out the whole thing but she says she knows the key. It's here, at the top."

"The number 22?" Dtui asked. "I was going to say that."

"Of course you were." Siri retrieved another stick of chalk from the drawer and wrote "Biweekly" beneath the first set of characters. "Oum says that if we count back twenty-two places in the English alphabet from each letter in the note, words are spelled out. You go back twenty-two places with the numbers too. This is all she had time to establish. All we need is an alphabet and a little patience."

Dtui copied out the English alphabet on a sheet of paper and taped it beside the blackboard. Letter by letter Siri wrote out the cipher as Phosy counted back and Dtui called out the correct characters. Once they'd reached the bottom, Dtui looked at the latest version of the note. It had three distinct parts. She translated the first.

She concentrated her attention then on the second part. "After the first part, there's just a list of letters and numbers under the heading 'New Players.' "