Curse of the Pogo Stick (21 page)

Civilai, frustrated by all the interruptions to his narration, threw out his arms dramatically for the final scene.

“So – Phosy and Dtui are in the house of the enemy with barely a minute to live. Daeng and I had been given time to contact Phosy’s squad using the password he’d told them to expect. We gave them the address and arranged to meet them there. Our mission was to keep our adversaries occupied till they arrived.”

“Armed to the teeth,” Madame Daeng joined in, “Civilai and I enter the house, him from the rear, me from the front. Our allies are surrounded by armed killers. “Drop your weapons,” we shout, as one would.”

“But they didn’t,” said Civilai.

“And there they are pointing their guns at Phosy and Dtui – ”

“And us pointing our guns at the villains.”

“And the Lizard woman laughs and says, “If you carry a gun, you have to be prepared to use it. And I happen to know you aren’t.””

“That’s when Daeng shot her,” Civilai said triumphantly.

“What?” Siri turned to his betrothed.

Daeng blushed. “Only in the leg.”

“And I was so impressed I shot one too.” Civilai smiled. “I got him in the thigh, I believe. The others dropped their weapons. Then this little squad of policemen charged in and Phosy ordered them about and it was all over.”

Mr Geung clapped his hands.

“We got in touch with the Security Division,” Phosy said, “and told them who we’d caught and they sent the whole damned army over. They’d learned from earlier mistakes so they bundled the Lizard and her cronies off up to the old military stockade at Phonhong.”

“So where have you been since?” Siri asked.

“It appears we’ve become a revolutionary government in the eyes of the world, rather than a rebel insurgency,” Civilai said. “We have to observe a certain protocol. The Vietnamese advisers told us we should try the gang of four as traitors rather than just shoot them. They said we would gain more leverage if their crimes were brought out in a military court. It would certainly discourage other plotters.”

“So that’s where we’ve been,” Dtui said. “Three solid days of giving evidence, all on the record. They went by the morgue and picked up Geung.”

“I…I…I told them about the cashew cakes…m…making me fart,” Geung boasted.

“There were no end of witnesses shipped in from all over. They connected the Lizard to this and that act of terrorism,” Civilai said. “They filmed the whole thing. They wouldn’t let us go till the tribunal was over, and we were in the middle of nowhere so we couldn’t contact anyone.”

“Which reminds me,” Siri interrupted. “Speaking of wives and forgiveness…”

“Fear not, Siri,” said Civilai. “I sent a message to Madame Nong as soon as they released us from security this afternoon. She’s probably packing for her next Women’s Union excursion as we speak.”

“So you stayed for the verdict?”

“The four of them had kept silent,” Phosy said. “They knew there was no point in putting up a defence. They were found guilty of treason.”

“And the punishment?”

“A firing squad in the morning,” Daeng told him. “They asked if we’d like to stay and watch but we were keen to get home to our loved ones. The driver had us back here by seven. We went directly to the Russian Club. We’d been at the stockade for three days. We needed to unwind and eat some decent food.”

“And the bill?”

“I was leaving the courtroom,” Dtui said. “Actually, it was a tent, and the Lizard asked permission to give me something. She told me how impressed she was with us. She said perhaps her country wasn’t in such bad hands after all with people like us around. And she gave me her ring off her finger. She said it wasn’t that valuable but it should be worth enough to get us a good night out on her. She said the manageress at the Russian Club had taken jewellery from her before when she didn’t have any cash, no questions asked. She was right. The whole bill was covered.”

“So the ring was probably worth four times that,” said cynical old Civilai.

They all sipped at their coffee now and drank water to sober up. One of the whisky bottles hadn’t been touched at all. A mellow, satisfied feeling melted over them like honey. Two jobs well done.

“And there I was thinking I’d had an interesting few days,” Siri said.

INDIGNATIONHOOD

H
mong New Year passed virtually unnoticed in Vientiane and, as December held no other significant dates for celebration, January arrived unannounced. The weather for once, gave nobody cause for complaint. The sky was blue and cloudless and the city was fanned day and night by cooling breezes. Locals had taken to wearing mufflers round their necks and socks inside their flip-flops. Walkers everywhere crunched through unswept leaves. The pool at the Ian Xang Hotel was off-limits because the water was cold and the lifeguard refused to jump in if anyone got into trouble. Although the Lao wouldn’t have their own new year for another three months, the West was calling this 1978 and hailing it as the dawning of the age of computers. Half a million were already in use around the world and predictions were that this number might double by the end of the century. Like the news of Charlie Chaplin’s death and the decision by Sweden to ban aerosol cans, the revelation passed Vientiane by without even staring in the window.

For reasons best known to himself, Judge Haeng had taken to using a cane following the trauma of his ordeal in the north-east. There was nothing at all wrong with his leg but Siri assumed that once the cast was off his arm he had no cause to tell strangers of his bravery otherwise.

“There must have been thirty of them,” he’d declare, gazing out into the misty beyond of his memory. “Tough, mountain warriors, trained to kill. They picked off Siri straight away but I was able to evade them for four days, living wild in the jungle. Surviving off the land. Hampered by life-threatening injuries, I relied on training from my days in the underground to get through it all. A good socialist must be ambidextrous: able to chop down a mighty teak tree with his left hand and darn a shirt with his right. You have to understand the jungle to love and respect it like a wife.

“After a while I felt concerned about Dr Siri. He isn’t a young man and we must have compassion for our senior citizens. I went in search of him. I feared not for my own life but ultimately I succumbed to my injuries and to the dreaded malaria. See this bruising on my hands? Further evidence of the ravages of the disease.”

Siri had smiled when the story made it back to him. Only Haeng could have caught malaria at that altitude. It wasn’t till the Hmong were forced down to lower elevations that the mosquito joined the list of their enemies. Siri waited for the day when he’d be summoned to the Department of Justice to find Haeng with a nose so long he couldn’t get out of his office. Siri, meanwhile, had one or two cases a week to keep himself and his team moderately busy.

Nothing more was heard of the Lizard and her cohorts but a nasty thought had crossed Siri’s mind. These were the days when people could vanish without a physical trace and, over time, be deleted completely from memory. But one matter still lingered and made the old doctor shake his head from time to time. Why, he wondered, would a woman about to be executed make a gift of a valuable ring to the very people who had condemned her to death? Was it merely a final act of bravado from an arrogant woman or had there been one spell left in her cauldron? According to the Security Division, the firing squad had done its duty on the morn, but would they admit to losing the Lizard a second time? The manageress still presided over her clients at the Russian Club and nothing untoward had happened to suggest anything had gone wrong. Siri had nothing but a creeping tingle at the back of his neck to keep him company.

Fortunately, he had something else to occupy his mind. Following his return from Xiang Khouang, Siri had taken up a cause. He had canvassed both the Lao and Vietnamese military in an effort to make them accountable for their handling of Hmong refugees. He wanted a commitment that they would have safe passage when fleeing to Thailand. It was Civilai’s opinion that if Siri hadn’t been friendly with certain influential members of the military he too would have vanished without a trace for such foolishness. Siri countered that he was just reminding them of their own policy.

“According to your politburo, the Hmong are Lao citizens,” he told Civilai. “The official line is, “All Lao citizens are equal before the law irrespective of ethnic origin.” They have the same rights as we do.”

“And we have rights?”

“By comparison.”

“Keep on pushing the army, you stubborn old fart, and we’ll see how strong your rights are.”

So Siri, being Siri, kept on pushing. He ran into the same rehashed diatribe about national security and the US-led insurgency but not one sensible argument as to why unarmed women and children and old people posed a threat to the nation. If they were dangerous then surely the army ought to be glad they were leaving. It soon became clear that the issue was not a centrally agreed upon policy but rather left up to the whim of the regional army commander in each of the provinces. He heard that some units coming across caravans of Hmong escorted them back home and sent the seniors for re-education, where they learned that this was a multicultural society and even the most impoverished and ignorant had an opportunity for advancement. But the officers he spoke to also conceded there might be the odd patrol leader with a well-founded grudge who would execute first and consider the moral implications later over a drink.

He heard more disturbing rumours that the new Soviet planes were being used to drop liquid chemicals on caravans of refugees although that wasn’t a policy anyone he spoke to cared to discuss. Whatever the truth, an alarming number of refugees fleeing their homes werent reaching the camps in Thailand and Siri didn’t like that fact. But, as Civilai said, he was getting closer to that ‘Has anyone seen Siri lately?’ moment. For a month he had attempted to beg a brief interview with Commander Khpumki, the chief of staff of the armed forces. He’d known the lad in the field and had once removed a bullet from his intestines. Under fire in the jungle he’d considered their relationship to be a close one. But Khoumki had risen through the ranks and left all those non-profit forest love affairs behind. Now he was inaccessible and would have remained so had Siri not crossed the line.

It was obvious that playing by the rules wasn’t getting him anywhere so he resorted to the unthinkable. He spent one afternoon in the cutting room painting a large sign. It read:

WE NEED ANSWERS ON THE PLIGHT OF OUR HMONG BROTHERS

There hadn’t been a protest since the PL dragged students onto the street to rally spontaneously against the fascist dictatorial military clique in Thailand. That had been a year earlier. Nobody was foolish enough to hassle a paranoid government at a time when civil rights was a luxury of the decadent West. But the lone Siri took one afternoon off work and carried his placard down to the front of the Khaosan Pathet Lao News Agency office. On his way he stopped at various government departments, the police station, and Madame Daeng’s shop to announce his intention. He was at the gate of the news agency no more than five minutes before a truckload of soldiers arrived and wrestled him onto the back of the truck.

This was a dilemma for the authorities. Siri was a forty-something-year member of the Party and a borderline national hero. Everyone in the politburo knew him. He had friends in the military who respected him. Plus, as there were no laws, he couldn’t technically have broken one. They weren’t able to quietly spirit him away as he’d been very loud in stating his intentions. He’d gathered a nice crowd and there were photographs of the arrest. They could have arranged a small ‘accident’, of course, but instead they called him into the office and asked him what exactly he wanted.

An invitation was delivered to him the day after his release by a surprisingly tall guard in an unprecedentedly ironed uniform. It read:

Commander Khoumki requests the company of Dr Siri Paiboun at his private residence for a soiree on January 14. Formal evening attire. 6 PM. RSVP
.

Siri rolled his eyes when he showed it to Dtui.

“So now the head of the socialist armed forces is having a soiree? A man who ran operations from a cave in Huaphan is telling people how to dress? There must have been a chapter in the manual I missed: “How to Fill the Velvet Slippers of the Royalists without Anyone’s Noticing.” The arrogance of it.”

“So you aren’t going?”

“If there’s no other way for a knave to greet a king I suppose I have no choice. Dust off my purple tuxedo, miss. I shall go to the ball.”

The commander’s house was so new the smell of paint overpowered the incense. It looked at first glance like an early attempt at man-powered flight that had crashed and crumpled. It was obviously something Khoumki had seen in a magazine and ordered built. It stood In the centre of an acre of land surrounded by an eight-foot wall topped with broken bottles set in cement. All around it were rice fields, and the damp from the paddy had already started to turn the base of the whitewashed walls yellow.

One of the six armed guards at the gate checked Siri’s invitation and ID card and searched his motorcycle for concealed insurgents. Eyeing his sandals and collarless shirt with distaste, they let him pass. He parked at the end of a row of shiny black limousines and made his way to the marble steps. Another guard in full dress uniform saluted him reluctantly and seemed to smirk as Siri passed through the large double doors. A servant briskly shepherded him through the house, giving him mere seconds to savour the framed pictures and the brass candle holders and the grand piano tucked away in rooms on either side of him. Before he knew it he was outside the back door feeling like a morsel of food that had been swallowed and evacuated in one movement.

He stood on the porch and took in the scene. It was an ostentatious soiree on a vast lawn. The grass was so new the squares of turf sat like grids on a game board. The players, either in uniform or national dress or shirt and tie were positioned mid-tournament, all tactically vying for a crack at the commander. They held glasses with shrouds of tissue. Siri wondered whether that might have something to do with not wanting to leave fingerprints. The great man himself stood in an overly decorated dress uniform with his chest pushed pigeonlike toward the house. He had a throng about him.