Love Songs From a Shallow Grave (2 page)

“Smart lady,” Siri said.

“She certainly put us in our places.”

“Nice lips.”

“Exceptional.”

“They did remain clenched when you mentioned your warts, though.”

“They did.”

Civilai opened the unlocked door of his old car and sat behind the steering wheel. Siri climbed into the passenger seat. They sat for a moment staring at the unpainted side wall of the building. As the concrete absorbed the endless rains, Siri fancied he saw the outline of New Zealand stained there, or it could have been a twisted balloon poodle. Following a disastrous year of drought, the farmers had smiled to see the early arrival of the 1978 rains. It was as if the gods had awoken late and, realising their negligence, had hastily attempted to make up for the previous year. The rain fell heavily and ceaselessly – three times the national average for April. The Lao New Year water festival celebrations – a time to call down the first rains of the year – were rained out. The earthen embankments of the new rice paddies were washed flat, the bougainvilleas had been rinsed colourless. The earth seemed to cry, “All right. Enough.” But still it rained. It was nature’s little joke. Like the Eskimos with their four million words for snow, the Lao vocabulary was expanding with new language to describe rain.

Today the water hung in the air like torn strips of grey paper.

“What is that?” Civilai asked.

“What’s what?”

“That noise you’re making.”

“It’s not a noise. It’s a song. I have no idea where I heard it. I can’t get it out of my head.”

“Well try. It’s annoying.”

Siri swallowed his song.

“What do you think they’ve got on me?” he asked. “I mean, the DHC.”

“Huh,” Civilai laughed. “I knew it. You
do
want to be a national hero.”

“I do not. I’m just…curious.”

“About your warts?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, where do I start? How about your abrasive personality?”

“Personalities change. And history has a way of smudging my character, don’t forget.”

“So I heard. All right…” Civilai beeped his horn for no apparent reason. “There’s the spirit thing.”

“How could they possibly know about that?”

“They probably don’t know the specifics. Not that you actually chat with ghosties. I doubt they know that. But they must have heard the rumours. This is a small country. People like Judge Haeng must have accumulated a good deal of circumstantial evidence of your supernatural connections.”

“But no proof. By its very nature he can’t have accumulated evidence.”

“No.”

“Then they don’t have anything.”

“All right. Well, they probably don’t like your Hmong campaign, either.”

“It’s hardly a campaign.”

“You walked up and down in front of the Pasason News office with a placard saying ‘WE NEED ANSWERS ON THE PLIGHT OF OUR HMONG BROTHERS’. People have been shot for less. You seem to have it in your mind that the government has a policy to intimidate minorities.”

“It does.”

“Well then. With that attitude I can see the central committee making little pencil crosses beside your name, can’t you?”

“Things have to be sorted out before it’s too late.”

“You’re right. If I were the Minister of Pinning Things Onto Chests I’d make you a Knight of the Great Order of Valour right away. Sadly, I’m just a retired has-been.”

They sat silently for another moment, watching the moss grow.

“Thirsty?” Civilai asked.

Siri twisted around on his seat. The leather squeaked under his bottom.

“Perhaps just the one.”

∗

To celebrate their impending hero status, Siri and Civilai partook of one or two glasses of rice whisky at a cigarette and alcohol stand behind the evening market. The proprietor was nicknamed Two Thumbs. A dull sobriquet, one might argue, no more spectacular than a fellow called One Bellybutton or Ten Toes. But Two Thumbs’ uniqueness lay in the fact that both of his thumbs were on the one hand. Nobody could explain it. It was as if one of his thumbs got lonely in the womb and swam across the narrow channel of amniotic fluid to keep company with its twin. It was the talking point that attracted smokers and drinkers to his stall. There was nothing else remarkable about him. In fact, he was almost completely devoid of personality, as dull as laundry scum.

The drizzle continued to fall and the old grey umbrellas that offered respite from the hot sun did little to keep out the determined night rain. The straw mats upon which they would normally sit cross-legged had assumed the consistency of freshly watered post office sponges. So the old men each sat on small plastic bathroom stools with a third stool between them as a table. A fourth and final stool offered a perch for their bags and shoes. Two Thumbs sat on a regular chair with his cigarette display case parked upon two building blocks to his left, and his drink selection – actually rice whisky and slightly cheaper rice whisky – neatly displayed in the body of an old TV cabinet to his right. He sat watching over his three-umbrella establishment like a eunuch keeper of the crown jewels, silent and threatening.

“Tell me again why we come here,” Civilai asked.

“The ambiance,” Siri told him.

“Right.”

“And, for this: Hey! Two Thumbs!” Siri called. He and Civilai hoisted a thumb each. Two Thumbs gave them a two-piece thumbs-up with his left hand. It was his party trick. They never tired of it.

“Great!” they shouted, and threw back their drinks. They were on their second bottle and it was a wicked brew only two degrees short of toxic. They splashed their feet like children and wondered what diseases might be lurking there in the dirty ground water.

“I blame the Chinese,” Civilai decided.

“For the rain?”

“For everything. They’re responsible for all our ills.”

“I thought that was the French.”

“Huh, don’t talk to me about the French. I hate the French.”

“That’s most ungrateful of you. They did educate us.”

“Educate? They certainly didn’t educate me. I educated myself, little brother. Like you. We just used their schools and their books…”

“And their language.”

“And their language, granted. But we used them. We educated ourselves in spite of the French. But the Chinese. They’re sneaky bastards. I mean, really sneaky. The French…you have to admire the French.”

“I thought we hated them.”

“Hate? Yes. But you can admire people you hate. I admire their tactics. They steamroll in, shoot everyone, take over and treat us all like dirt. You see? You know where you stand with oppressors like that. But the Chinese? All through the war they were building roads. A damn war going on all around them and they have seven thousand military engineers and sixteen thousand labourers up there in the north building roads.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Good? Good? It’s devious, is what it is. You think they were up there building roads so we could move troops?”

“Yes?”

“No, sir. They were building roads ‘cause they knew one day they’d own us. They were putting in their own infrastructure, damn it.”

“Are you sure you’ll be able to drive home?”

“No problem. The roads are all canals right now. I just wind up the windows and float home. Where was I?”

“Discussing how to make a good pie dough.”

“Right. Right. So, ‘the monstrous plot’. That’s what the Vietnamese call it. The monstrous plot. They’ve got that right. Those Chinks have got their eyes on us. They’re carnivores. As soon as the timing’s right we’ll all be speaking Chinese and eating the sexual organs of endangered animals. You mark my words. And what’s all this Voltaire crap?”

“I suspect you’ve changed the subject.”

“What do you think you’re playing at, quoting Voltaire at a hero interview?”

“I’ve chanced upon one or two insightful books. I thought a quotation might help in my self-destruction.”

“Oh, I see. One minute you want to be a hero. Then you don’t. A hero has to be decisive, Siri. Into that phone box, on with the tights and the cape. Go for it, I say. Whether or not we deserve it is irrelevant. We either vanish into superfluity or we go down in history. Take your choice.”

“Voltaire said the superfluous is a very necessary thing.”

“You’re plucking my nostril hair, aren’t you?”

They raised their thumbs to the proprietor who responded obediently.

“She did have spectacular lips though, didn’t she?” Civilai recalled.

“They took me back, I tell you.”

They waved at the people two mats away who were celebrating a birthday. The group had a glazed bun with a candle in it. These were frugal times.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this…” Civilai began.

“Then don’t.”

“They’ve fixed the projector.”

“At K6?”

“They got someone in from the Soviet Embassy. Now, there’s another sneaky oppressor, the Russian overlords. Damn these subtle invaders. Good electricians though. Said it was a fuse problem. Fixed it in a minute. And…”

“What?”

“There’s a showing tomorrow afternoon.”

“You weren’t going to tell me.”

“It’s invitation only. All the big nobs will be there. Half the politburo. I only got a ticket ‘cause the foreign minister is in Cuba.”

“What’s showing?”

“Siri, you can’t go.”

“What’s showing?”

If there were two greater film buffs in Laos they had yet to surface. Since their school years in Paris, mesmerised by the magic of Clair, Duvivier and Jean Renoir, Siri and Civilai had been addicted to the images on the silver screen. Wherever they happened to be they would seek out a cinematic projection. They could happily sit through anything, from the dullest training film  such as last week’s 
The Maintenance of Dykes
, to a Hollywood blockbuster with Vietnamese subtitles. The old boys had seen them all. And, most certainly, once the scent of cinema was in Siri’s nostrils, there was no way they could keep him out.

∗

That annoying song had been playing in his head all the way back but Siri made it home just before the curfew. Across the road on the bank of the Mekhong river, Crazy Rajid, Vientiane’s own street Indian, sat beneath a large yellow beach umbrella. He returned Siri’s wave. Siri was surprised to find the shutters ajar at the front of their shop. A handwritten sign taped to the shop’s doorpost read, “All welcome in our time of sorrow.” Siri had known Madame Daeng since long before she became a freedom fighter against the French and a spy for the Pathet Lao. But she and Siri had been married only three months. Both widowed, they had recently found one another and a peculiar magic had entered their lives. Not a day went by without wonder. And this odd situation was certainly a wonder. He looked cautiously inside the shop and found a trail of lit temple candles leading across the floor and climbing the wooden staircase. He smiled, locked the shutters, and began to extinguish the candles one by one. Beyond the contented clucking and cooing of the chickens and the rescued hornbill in the backyard, there was no sound.

He reached the top balcony and entered their bedroom. Madame Daeng sat all in white at the desk with her head bowed. Her short white hair was an unruly thatch of straw Their bed was illuminated with more candles and surrounded with
champa
blossoms. He laughed, walked across the room and put his hand on his wife’s shoulder but she pulled away.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. “I’m in mourning.”

“It’s all right. They said I don’t have to die right away. They can pencil me in later.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re the spirit of my heroic dead husband come to taunt me. Be gone with you.”

She waved a lighted incense stick in his direction.

“You do realise there’s something disturbingly erotic about all this, don’t you?”

“You’re an ill man, Dr Siri.”

“And you’re a most peculiar wife, Madame Daeng. Do I have time for a bath before I’m laid to rest?”

It was some time around two a.m. when Daeng awoke and sensed that her husband wasn’t sleeping. The night clouds had blanketed the stars and moon. Across the river that trolled grimly past the shop, Thailand was enjoying one of its customary power failures. There were no lights skimming across the black surface of the Mekhong. All around them was a darkness so deep it could never be captured in paint. She spoke to her memory of the doctor.

“Not tired?” she asked.

She heard the rustle of the pillow when he turned his head.

“No.”

“That nightmare again?”

“No, I haven’t slept long enough to get into a nightmare with any enthusiasm. Daeng?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think I’m hero material?”

“Of course I do.”

“I mean, seriously.”

“I mean seriously, too.”

“They said I have faults.”

“A hero without faults is like an omelette without little bits of eggshell in it.”

He was silent for a few seconds before, “An omelette with eggshell isn’t – ”

“I know,” she laughed. “Look. It’s the middle of the night. What do you expect? I’ll have a better example for you in the morning. But, yes. You’re not only hero material, you’re already a hero. It doesn’t matter what the idiots at Information say.”

“You’re right.”

“I know.”

They listened to the darkness for a while.

“Oh, and by the way,” Daeng said. “I forgot to mention, Inspector Phosy came by earlier He wants you to get in touch with him. Said it’s urgent.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that when I was still dressed?”

“I didn’t want you running off and deserting me in my hour of need. Plus, I don’t get the feeling it was that type of emergency.”

“What do you…? Oh, you mean the other type.”

“I swear he’s turning into a Vietnamese. If it was police business he’d be here banging on the door. But I doubted it was. Everything in his personal life is suddenly urgent.”

“Why on earth does he need to consult me on domestic issues? You were here. Why couldn’t he ask you for advice?”

“He’s a man, Siri. You lot still aren’t ready to admit in front of a woman that you’re clueless.”

“How did I ever make it through seventy-three-point-nine years without you?”