Love Songs From a Shallow Grave (14 page)

“Nice young fellow. I don’t get to see him as much as I used to.”

“Did you give him your ‘I don’t know who the real enemies are any more’ speech?” said Siri.

“For some reason he tends to steer our conversations around to food and literature. He did hint that he thought the revolution had come five years too soon.”

“Huh, he really thinks five more years would have made us better prepared?”

“No, his point was that in five years time people like Dr Siri and me wouldn’t be around to complain about everything.”

“He mentioned me? I’m touched. Did he have too much to drink and drop any top secret information? Plans to invade China? Racing tips?”

“In fact, he asked me a favour. That was the subterfuge behind the candlelit dinner. He wants me to go to Kampuchea.”

“Permanently?”

“Four or five days. They’re on some public relations kick. Having a reception of some kind.”

“Really? I haven’t been there since the forties. It was still Cambodia in those days. Boua and I had just been recruited by the French to set up a youth camp in the south. They sent us to Phnom Penh for orientation. One of the prettiest cities in Asia. Marvellous time. I’ll never forget it. Me and Boua walking hand-in-hand along the Boulevard Noradom.”

“A story I’m sure Madame Daeng would love to hear.”

“No secrets between us, old brother. Although it might be true there are times I paint the truth with slightly less bushy brushes than it warrants. You know? I can’t say I’ve heard much news from our southern neighbours since the Reds took over.”

“Nobody has. Not even the president really knows what they’re doing. He was there on an official visit not so long ago, but they didn’t let him out of his box. This trip would be a chance to chat socially with the people in charge, visit some of the collectives, you know the thing.”

“And you said yes?”

“Of course I did. Free trip overseas, all expenses paid, luxury accommodation, the best food and wine in Indochina. Who wouldn’t?”

“But – and there’s no offence intended here – why you?”

“Because I’m witty and charming…”

“I know. I know. But this sounds like something the PM or one of the politburo boys would jump at.”

“I did ask that, trying very hard not to make myself sound unworthy, and he suggested there might be just a tad of political tension between the Khmer Rouge and Hanoi. Since I dropped off the edge of the Central Committee, they stopped showing me the high-end communiques. I have no more idea what’s going on over there than you do. But I do know the KR haven’t been sucking up to their old colleagues the way Hanoi would have liked. I imagine we’re under pressure from Vietnam not to send a top-level delegation. I’m the B team.”

“They will brief you on all this before they put you on the plane?”

“No doubt they’ll brief both of us.”

“Us being…?”

“He asked me to nominate a travelling companion. I nominated you.”

“You what? Are you mad? No, of course you are. And he agreed?”

“Without hesitation.”

“Just how many bottles did you two get through?”

∗

Malee slept on the cot in the spare room while her mother and Daeng unpacked books from hemp gunny sacks.

“Are you sure you’re supposed to have these?” Dtui asked.

“Absolutely not,” Daeng replied with gay candour.

“Then you might get in trouble.”

“I’m sure there’s a hit squad at the Ministry of Culture loading their weapons as we speak.”

“What are you going to do with them all?”

“Make shelves.”

“Madame Daeng, you really can’t be planning to put them on display?”

“Siri’s afraid they’ll get rain-damaged in the attic. Some of them are quite valuable. The doctor believes there’ll come a day when the paranoia dies down and owning foreign language books won’t guarantee you a four-year trip to a seminar camp. Oh, don’t look so worried. We aren’t planning to put them down in the shop. This door’s usually kept locked. Siri can come here after work and sit on the cot and indulge himself in one of his many vices in peace.”

“Where did they all come from?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m not really in a hurry to go home.”

Daeng smiled drily and filed that comment under D in her mind. “They’re from a temple,” she said.

“A French temple?”

“No. A good old-fashioned Lao temple that just happened to have a French language library. Some of the oldest were donated by missionaries many years ago. The novices studying at the temple were taught general subjects through the medium of French. The brighter ones were allowed to borrow books from the library. Siri went to that temple school before they accepted him into the southern lycee.”

“Really? It must be ancient.”

“I’ll tell him you said so.” Waking briefly, Malee gurgled and smiled before closing her eyes again. “I see she has her mother’s sense of humour.”

“She’s already a lot funnier than me, Madame Daeng.”

And, with perfect comic timing, Malee let out a little fart in her sleep. The two women broke up like giggly schoolgirls.

“See what I mean?” said Dtui. “OK, tell me about the books from the temple.”

“All right. In a nutshell, Siri was a very keen student. He’d been sponsored by a wealthy French spinster who paid for his further study in Paris. Once he arrived, he discovered they didn’t accept his lycee qualifications from Laos so they made him repeat high school there before he could go on to study medicine. Not difficult for Siri but a terrible waste of time. In the interim, his benefactor passed away so Siri was forced to work for a few years to save up the money for his studies. He went to university, married his lovely Boua, graduated and spent some time as an intern. None of which is relevant to the books other than to show you that it was a very long time before he could return to Laos.

“He and Boua were working in the south and Siri returned to his temple school library often. The collection had expanded significantly since he’d been away. He borrowed books and taught the odd classes to the novices. The monks liked him. Respected him for what he’d achieved. The revolution came and was won and the monks in Savanaketh were worried. They loved their books and, although not with the rabid fervour of Marxist regimes in other parts of the world, the Pathet Lao were symbolically destroying foreign-language books in Vientiane and Luang Prabang. So the southern monks closed the library and hid the books. They were afraid the stash would be discovered some day and that they’d be punished.

“Last week, a rice truck arrived from the south. It stopped just there outside the shop. It was piled high with rice sacks. I tried to explain to the driver and his assistant that I hadn’t ordered any rice. In fact mine is a noodle shop and I don’t even sell the stuff. But they said Dr Siri had ordered it himself ‘for a special project’. When he came home for lunch and saw our new wall of rice sacks he was as bemused as me. He opened one. It was padded with hay and inside that were these. The whole library. The monks had decided to make Siri the custodian.”

“Ignoring the fact they could get him and you arrested.”

“I suppose they trusted his resourcefulness.”

“And his master plan is to build shelves?”

Daeng laughed. “Well, they do say if you want to hide something you should make it so obvious nobody notices it. He’s been as happy as a whistling duck since they arrived. His precious Voltaire has been lurking in the bottom of his cloth bag for a fortnight.”

“Can you read them?”

“My French was barely good enough to convince the colonists I wasn’t a threat…appropriate for my lowly standing in society. “
Oui, Monsieur. Non, Madame
.” Poor enough that they’d happily leave top-secret information lying open on the desks I swept around. But not good enough for Voltaire. There is a small set of French primers I’ve been working through. I’m not sure why. I’m not expecting the French to invade us again any time soon.”

They worked silently for a few minutes removing the books from their sacks, unwrapping the hay, sniffing the old bindings. Daeng was about to set off along a subtle chain of questions to discover the reason for the unpleasantness in her friend’s marriage. But Dtui saved her the trouble.

“Phosy has another woman,” she said, not looking up from the books.

Daeng coughed her surprise.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. She expected Dtui to put up a fight but the nurse merely pursed her lips and her eyes swelled with tears. “Dtui?” Daeng slid across the wooden floorboards to sit beside her friend. Malee stirred and twisted before settling down. “Dtui?”

“I’m sorry,” Dtui smiled. “I promised I wouldn’t cry when this happened.”

“What? What’s happened?”

“Like I said. I’m in the wife bank. Safe. He’s free to go off and make deposits in other accounts.”

“You didn’t just make that up on the spur of the moment.”

“My ma used to say it all the time.”

“That was your ma, and those were different times.”

“Men haven’t become different creatures.”

“That’s true, but I still don’t believe it.”

“It’s a fact.”

“You have proof?”

“I don’t need any, auntie. A wife knows. I see all the signs. It was my own fault. He didn’t tell me…hasn’t ever told me he loves me. In fact, dumb old me, he’d come right out with it, hadn’t he? Said he didn’t love me but he’d do the right thing. Said he liked me. Liked me and respected me. And what does desperate fat Dtui do?”

“I don’t – ”

“She says, ‘Oh, OK.
Like
is good. I’ll take that. I have all the love we’ll ever need. Maybe, with a little patience, your
like
will grow a few more leaves over the years, a blossom or two. That’s plenty. Once Malee came along I thought she’d bind us together but she didn’t. Even the
like
’s started to wilt.”

“Dtui, you can’t – ”

“First he became this super-vigilant father: “Don’t talk to her like that. Don’t give her too much of this.” Then he started with the one-word answers to long questions, the grunts, the late nights, the working weekends.”

“I – ”

“The, ‘I’m really tired, I can’t.&rdsuo;”

“Perfume? Lipstick stains?” asked Madame Daeng.

“Who can afford perfume and lipstick in this day and age? And you don’t need forensic evidence, Madame Daeng. You know when your man’s drifting away.”

∗

Later that night, once Siri had slammed the door of Civilai’s cream Citroen, reminded him to turn on the headlights, and sent him floating off home, he showered, cleaned his teeth and joined Daeng in their room. She was sitting on the foot of the bed brushing her hair without a recognisable aim or outcome.

“How did it go?” he asked.

Daeng was silent. “The talk?” he reminded her.

She turned her head towards him and stared into his river-frog green eyes.

“He’s having an affair, Siri.”

Siri laughed.

“He is not,” he said.

“Either that or he’s having a mental breakdown, because only a man out of his mind would exhibit all the signs of having an affair if he wasn’t actually having one.”

“Daeng, you were supposed to put her mind at ease. Not join her.”

“I’m not sure any more.”

“Why not? You know Phosy. He’s married to Dtui and to his job. How on earth is he going to find any extramarital time between those two?”

“You have to ask him, Siri.”

“Ask him if he’s fooling around?”

“Ask him straight out. You’d recognise if he was lying.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“Please.”

He sighed. “All right.”

She sniffed at the fine hair on his cheek.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s the penalty you pay for having a perfect partner who causes you no strife. You have to do all your suffering through other people’s relationships.”

“I suppose.”

“Any gossip from increasingly cantankerous Civilai?”

“Ah, right.”

“What is it?”

“I might be popping over to Cambodia for a day or two.”

BULGARIAN 101

T
he shackles have chafed my skin. I am certain an infection is bubbling beneath the metal ankle bracelet. One problem with being a doctor is that you’re instinctively obliged to analyse the roots of every ailment. You can’t merely sit back and enjoy the misery, ignorant of what’s happening to you. Not surprisingly, understanding my medical conditions has never made me feel any better
.

For some never-to-be-explained reason, my mother angel has joined the audience. She must have smuggled herself in the luggage. She’s sitting cross-legged at the far left side of the classroom by the door, gnawing on her betel. I’d introduce her to you but you probably don’t speak Lao. She’s just one of your number, twenty or so spaced-out spirits watching the show. I try to imagine the scene from your point of view. Siri, naked, chafed, incontinent. Heavy monk, tears in his eyes. Could this be a climax at the end of a very dull play? An operatic final scene. If nothing comes of this I warrant you’ll expect your money back. Am I right? But wait, the heavy monk begins to speak
.

“
What’s that you’re eating, brother?
”

“
Burnt wood,” I tell him. “It appears the kids set fire to the blackboard before they graduated. I took the liberty of breaking off the corner of the frame. I hope these fellows don’t withhold my security deposit. They look like a tough bunch
.”

I can feel myself weakening. I can feel the energy and will sapping from my old body. But it isn’t hunger that drives me to eat the blackboard. It is a hope that the charcoal at the core of the charred wood might act to remove the toxins from my body and stop these runs. It’s unlikely, but worth the try
.

“
I admire your spirit,” says the heavy monk. “I used to have a sense of humour. They took that from me as well.” He looks at me with a dramatic sincerity. “Old doctor, I feel my days are numbered. Do you mind if I unburden myself before they take me?
”

I decide to play him along
.

“
You mean like a confessional?
”

“
Is it exclusively for Catholics?
”