The Delightful Life of a Suicide Pilot

by Colin Cotterill

  12/17/1941

  I was walking by the river with Taigou, taking in the scents of the wildflowers, when ahead I saw Major General Dorari sitting on a rock looking far too grey for such a colorful day. I approached him and saluted.

  “Major General, why are you looking so sad?” I asked.

  It wasn’t my place to ask such a question to a senior officer so I expected a rebuke. But Major General Dorari had been a schoolteacher in his civilian life and I could see there was gratitude behind his scowl.

  “Toshi,” he said. “I am in trouble. I moved to that large colonial house on the skirt of the hill but it was too big to take care of alone so I hired a young Lao girl to clean and cook for me. She is beautiful and reminds me so much of my granddaughter whom I miss terribly. I befriended her. But the father of my maid found I had recruited the girl and he believes the worst. He has threatened to kill me for defiling his daughter.”

  I knew my general would never do such a terrible thing so I took it upon myself to help him. That evening, I had been invited to a wedding party for one of our road builders. I had become friendly with the Lao and was invited to celebrations often. As ever, I was the only Japanese in attendance. I knew all the village headmen would be there including the father of my general’s maid. I do not drink a great deal, unlike the Lao, who drink to excess. But they have good reason to do so. I placed myself in such a position that I was certain most of the guests could hear me and I began my anecdote in my most polished Lao language.

  “Major General Dorari Momoyotsu, our commanding officer, is the son of a samurai,” I began. I knew I already had my audience rapt.

  I continued.

  “Before the samurai headed off to battle, he would have his oldest son, Momoyotsu, deliver his sword to the blacksmith for cleaning and sharpening. His father’s only instruction was that he should always hold the sword in two hands and walk carefully, looking down always for stones and potholes.

  “‘Because the samurai sword can sense when its carrier is being disrespectful,’ his father told him.

  “And year after year the samurai took his sword into battle and was victorious. Momoyotsu entered his teens, and probably because he had an absentee father, he got into bad ways, listening to racy music, smoking, and chasing girls. And one day he completely forgot about collecting the sword from the blacksmith. He was with a pretty village girl as the sun was setting when he remembered. He leapt from the haystack and started to run, forgetting his belt. He sprinted to the blacksmith and banged on the door, waking the owner. He grabbed the sword from its rack in one hand and ran for all he was worth to the barracks. It was dark. The road was rocky and pocked with potholes. He’d been drinking strong rice wine so he didn’t see one particularly deep divot. He tripped, his trousers fell to his ankles, the sword spun from his hand and sliced off his penis and testicles with such precision the medic at the barracks was certain Momoyotsu was a girl child.”

  There were tears from my audience that night, mostly from the men. Every one of them had reached instinctively to his groin when the story was told. The following morning, not only did the headman’s daughter report early for work at the major general’s house, not only did the headman deliver her himself, not only did he bow to the major general, but he also brought him a freshly picked jackfruit, which he handed to the general with a knowing nod.

  Siri looked up from the diary to see Phosy standing over him.

  “Good read?” asked the policeman.

  “I’m not sure,” said Siri, getting to his feet. “Have you heard of Noh?”

  “The word?”

  “The Japanese performance. I went to see it once in Paris. In my mind it went on for weeks. It’s conducted at a pace that would make snails envious. You stay in your seat because you think something is bound to happen but it rarely does. You go to the bathroom and when you come back they still haven’t completed the sentence they started before you left. It’s like watching a rock erode.”

  “And the diary’s like that?”

  Phosy unlocked his office door and gestured for Siri to enter. A secretary ran in after them with a ledger full of papers to sign. The official day had begun. Phosy sat at his nice teak desk, a memento from one of his less-than-honest predecessors. Siri sat on the sofa opposite.

  “He writes very nicely,” he said. “He’s reached a proficiency in Lao that should make us all hang our heads in shame. But there are endless pages where he goes into great detail about clearing bushes and swimming in the river with his dog and getting the right balance of manure to mulch his infuriating vegetable garden. He’s just started to tell stories, which is fun, but I’m over halfway through the diary and I’m starting to lose faith in him.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I just get the feeling he’s making stuff up.”

  “I thought you liked fiction.”

  “I do, in its rightful place. And I must say I’m getting fond of the introduction of make-believe in government reports. But this is supposed to be a diary. Listen to this.”

  Siri flipped to a page he’d marked with a sliver of paper and read.

  “‘I’ve noticed how Corporal Yatsusuki continues to gain weight. Yatsusuki is a builder and carpenter. We’d just completed a dormitory building for officers and as we were leaving, Yatsusuki got himself stuck in the doorway. It took four of us to unwedge him.’

  “See, Phosy? How many people do you know so wide they get stuck in a doorway? And there’s this.”

  He turned to another marker.

  “‘I was looking for Taigou’—that’s the dog—‘and I found him behind the mess tent. He had another teakettle stuck on his head.’ What do you make of that?”

  “That dogs are stupid?” suggested Phosy.

  “No. It means Toshi is so bored with his own diary that he’s started to invent stories. His life is so uneventful, so perfect, that he has to make negative things up. And here I am reading it waiting for the punch line, sure that something devastating is going to happen, but when it does I won’t know what’s real and what’s not.”

  “Then stop reading it.”

  “Of course I can’t,” said Siri. “Daeng wants us to go to Thakhek to walk in Toshi’s footsteps but his feet aren’t going anywhere I’m interested to follow.”

  “You could always . . .”

  “I am not turning to the last page.”

  “Up to you.”

  “But we do plan to go to Thakhek regardless. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to write us up a couple of laissez-passers.”

  “Are you going on police business?” Phosy asked.

  “In a way.”

  “What way would that be?”

  “We’re friends of the chief inspector of police?”

  “Is that why you came here?”

  “In part.”

  “Then I hope you have better luck with the other part.”

  “Right. Well, because you are the least corrupt man ever to sit at that very expensive desk, we assumed you wouldn’t write us travel documents. I would have been just a little bit disappointed if you’d agreed. But we still plan to go and now you owe us a favor.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. You’re forcing us to travel to another province without laissez-passers, so we need you to find us transportation that doesn’t involve paperwork.”

  “Siri?”

  “You can do it, we know you can. You of all people can circumvent the awkward bureaucracy and send us on our way legally.”

  Phosy laughed.

  “I’ll ask around,” he said. “I can’t promise anything.”

  “That’s all we can hope for.”

  Phosy escorted Siri to the door, his arm around the old boy’s shoulder.

  “How did things go in Vang Vieng?” Siri asked.

  “Ah, that’
s why I was late.”

  “Sihot couldn’t find the girl?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “We can’t find Sihot.”

  Chapter Four

  Tales of the Riverbank

  2/2/1942

  I was walking along the riverbank, watching the sunlight reflect silver off the backs of the low-flying terns, when up ahead I saw my friend Private Oshiira sitting beside a pool bathing his flaky feet. He looked a little sad. I approached him.

  “Why do you look so sad?” I asked.

  “Why, it’s nothing to bother you with, Major,” he said.

  “Come on, old fellow,” I said. “It’s such a nice day, nothing could bother me.”

  “Well,” he said, “my father always told me a man should find himself a skill and perfect it and offer it to those who don’t possess that skill. After thirty years in the army it appears that my skill is cleaning latrines.”

  “And you are very good at it,” I reminded him.

  “Don’t get me wrong. It’s true. I am a genius when it comes to getting a shine out of old taps. You could eat your dinner off the floor when I’ve finished mopping. So I took my skill to the town temple, and through the Japanese interpreter, I offered to clean the temple whenever I was off duty. The abbot seemed very pleased. To me it was like a sign from heaven that my skill had been accepted. On my first evening I washed and polished all the Buddha images, especially the one they called the Great Lightness. They all shone when I’d finished. But the next evening when I returned, the abbot led me to the Great Lightness and looked at me with disappointment in his eyes; and deservedly so. The face of the Great Lightness was smudged and greasy and had no shine at all. I couldn’t understand what had happened.

  “That evening I dedicated an hour to the Buddhas, and before I left, the Great Lightness was shining brighter than even my most famous bathroom attachments—work that was mentioned in war dispatches to Tokyo. But the next day and the next, the abbot awoke to a grimy, greasy, smudged Lightness. And today he told me he didn’t want my services anymore. That’s why I’m so sad.”

  It was a true mystery, one that I was determined to solve. At nightfall I crept into the temple grounds. The moon was just a sliver but it afforded me enough light to see a queue of local women each bowing to the Great Lightness, saying a prayer and holding the Buddha by the ears and kissing his face with lips greasy from sticky rice and fermented fish. This behavior was quite rightly abhorred by the Buddhist council, which is why the ladies came under the cape of darkness. I learned later, you see, that the Great Lightness was believed to bestow sexual prowess on husbands and fertility on wives.

  My course was clear. The next day I instructed Private Oshiira to leave his toilet brush and bucket at the foot of the Great Lightness.

  “But I never use a toilet brush to clean the Buddhas,” said Oshiira. “That would be sacrilegious.”

  “You know that, and I know that,” I said. “But the ladies of the night do not. I guarantee that one small trickle of doubt in their mind will curb their overenthusiasm. The Great Lightness will welcome the dawn with a smile on his face. You watch.”

  And so he did.

  Siri had taken to reading diary excerpts to his staff in the evenings. Mr. Geung and Tukta were addicted. It was like following a radio drama, they said, without the drama. They all knew that Crazy Rajhid was secretly listening in the shadows of the riverbank. And with every mention of Taigou, the teakettle-wearing dog, Ugly growled deeply beyond the shutters of the shop. It occurred to Siri that they were probably hosting Vientiane’s first post-American book club.

  “Even with the funny stories it’s still dull,” said Daeng.

  “We’re getting to know the characters,” said Siri.

  “Siri, there’s an invasion going on all around. The Japanese are rampaging through Singapore. They’ve already purged Malaysia of its ethnic Chinese, and here we are hearing about a group of peculiar noncombatants living a dull life in Thakhek. And, to be honest, I’m starting to think that even if you did turn to the last page, they’d still be peeling turnips and scrubbing toilets. And we don’t know why a pilot is digging ditches two thousand kilometers from the nearest action.”

  “It’s coming, Daeng. Trust me. How about one more page before we turn in?”

  “I don’t know,” said Daeng. “There’s some rather interesting mold growing on the back garden wall I was hoping to watch this evening.”

  “One more page. One more page,” chorused the staff.

  Siri laughed, turned the page, and read:

  12/16/1942

  I was walking along the riverbank marveling at the thought you could swim to another country and that everything was so different on the other side.

  “He certainly does a lot of riverbank walking,” Daeng interrupted.

  “Do you want me to read this or not?” Siri asked.

  “Yes, please,” said Daeng. “But I bet you a week’s income he meets someone who’s sad.”

  “Daeng?”

  “Sorry.”

  Ahead I could see the outline of Captain Jame Nomishige with his one eye and one leg. His head was bowed. He seemed to be deep in thought so I decided to walk past him. But he looked up and called to me.

  “Major Toshi,” he said. “May I ask you a question?”

  “See? Not sad at all,” said Siri.

  “Just read it,” said Daeng.

  “Of course,” I replied.

  “I am old now,” he said. “As you know I am an expert in my pastime.”

  “Of course I know,” I said. “You are a grand master of shogi. You have won many Japanese chess competitions.”

  “I only aspire to be a grand master, Major Toshi. But I have not been able to reach that next level; the echelon above technical skill. When I lose, and I do not lose often, I am defeated by people who overcome me at a psychological level. Every week I play against a general who passes through Thakhek with his unit. I lose to him regularly even though I’m certain my approach is technically sound.”

  “Then you obviously need to get inside your opponent’s head,” I said.

  “And how would I go about that?” he asked.

  “By reading his mind,” I said.

  The following day we went to the quartermaster’s storehouse and picked up a ladder. We took a ledger from the stationery department and then selected a fine black and blue cockerel from the barracks farm. For my pièce de résistance I went to the pharmacy and ordered a special cocktail that I would pick up later. That night, Captain Jame invited the traveling general to the new mess building.

  “How have you been?” the general asked.

  “I knew you would say that, sir,” said Jame.

  “What?”

  “I knew what you were going to say,” said Jame. “I’ve been seeing a local shaman and he has taught me how to read people’s minds and see the future.”

  “Nonsense,” said the general.

  “Then how could I know what you were going to say when you arrived?”

  The general laughed heartily.

  “Captain Jame,” he said. “‘How have you been?’ is a fairly common greeting, don’t you think? You don’t have to be a mind reader to guess that.”

  “Then let’s try something else,” said Jame.

  He took the ledger and a pen from his day pack. He opened the ledger, looked into the general’s eyes, and started to write. But as he was writing, his lips curved into a smile. He laughed and closed the book.

  “What’s so funny?” asked the general.

  Jame opened the ledger and held it up for the general to see. On the page was written, “What’s so funny?”

  The general still wasn’t impressed.

  “That wasn’t mind reading,” he said. “It was just a trick. You
could be certain I was going to say something like that.”

  Jame turned the page, looked into the general’s eyes, and started to write.

  “You don’t—” the general began, but he was interrupted by the sound of scratchy footsteps on the tin roof.

  “What the devil?” said Jame.

  The footsteps grew louder then just as suddenly, they stopped. There were a few seconds of silence before they heard an almighty “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

  “There’s a damned chicken on the roof,” said the general.

  Jame smiled and held up the ledger and showed the words he’d written: “There’s a chicken on the roof.”

  “Now, you know I couldn’t have predicted that unless I had a gift,” said Jame. “I missed the word ‘damned’ but you’ll have to forgive me for that. I’m still a beginner don’t forget.”

  Jame could see that the general was swaying but he needed one more example of the one-legged man’s new skills to be convinced.

  “Let’s play a few games,” said the general.

  “Not tonight,” said Jame. “You aren’t feeling well.”

  “I’m feeling just fine,” said the general.

  “You can’t fool me, General,” said Jame. “You have an upset stomach. You’re wondering whether you ate something bad at lunchtime. You’re hoping it won’t be a nasty case of diarrhea that will keep you up all night. We can play tomorrow when you’re feeling better. Good evening.”