The Second Biggest Nothing

by Colin Cotterill

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Civilai, “allow me to present Cindy, the new star of our movie.”

  Things were uncomfortable for a while. Cindy said “hello, how are you?” to everyone in impressive Lao and they all replied politely. Daeng invited their guest in for a cup of coffee. Cindy thanked her and said water would be fine. Coffee gave her migraines. Civilai leaned back against his car looking admiringly at his Brigitte Bardot. He had obviously not heeded the decision of the production committee that finding even a minor role for pretty Cindy would be a push. A starring role would be a feat of superhuman effort. Daeng decided it would be better to break the news to her sooner rather than later. It would probably shatter the girl’s dreams but sometimes you had to shoot the pony rather than watch it hobble its way to a slow death. She took Cindy up to the phasin skirt room and got straight to the point.

  “You’re very pretty,” she said.

  “Thank you,” said Cindy. “It has its drawbacks.”

  Daeng didn’t bother to ask what they were.

  “I’m afraid you can’t star in our movie,” she said.

  “I can’t?”

  “No. In fact I can’t even imagine a small part for you.”

  Cindy looked through the window. A flock of terns chose that moment to fly south. The sun reflected silver off their feathers.

  “Thank God,” she said.

  “What?” said Daeng.

  “Your Civilai was so insistent,” said the woman. “I met him at one of our diplomatic social events. Several of them, in fact. He brought up the movie idea. I was totally against it but our head of mission suggested I cooperate. We can’t afford to upset your government given our shaky status here. I’ve only just arrived so I didn’t have much choice.”

  “You’ve only just arrived?” said Daeng. “But your Lao is . . .”

  “I was an IVS here in ’69. I was building latrines and laying pipes for a year up country. Not everyone bothered to learn the language. Most said it wouldn’t serve any purpose once we left. But I loved the sound of Lao and I have an ear for it, I guess.”

  Daeng looked at the young woman: simple clothes, unfussy hairstyle, straight-talking, obviously older than she looked. She must have known what an effect her looks had on men, men like Civilai.

  “Did he flirt with you?” Daeng asked.

  “Civilai? Yes, he flirted. He flirted like old men flirt, happy enough with a smile and a blush and a peck on the cheek. Just enough to let him imagine being back there when he was twenty and still available.”

  “He’s been married to the same woman for forty-four years,” said Daeng.

  “Madam Nong. Yes, I know. He talked about her the first time we met. I got the feeling he was telling me he was happily married just in case I fell head over heels in love with him. He didn’t want to disappoint me.”

  Daeng laughed.

  “My Siri leaves it to the last minute to mention he’s already taken just to be sure the young ones fall for him, and they do. But he isn’t dangerous.”

  They clinked their water glasses.

  “I’ve read the script,” said Cindy. “I got a copy from the Women’s Union. My reading’s not that clever, but I got through it. A week with my head in a dictionary. But we don’t have a lot else to do at the consulate these days.”

  “What did you think?” Daeng asked.

  “Part historical, part political, part magical, part absolutely ridiculous. But what a ride. It would make a great movie.”

  “You think so? We’ve only got the one camera.”

  “I can help with budget.”

  “You can?”

  “Sure. At the consulate we don’t have an agenda anymore. But we have discretionary funds. We have a green light to help with education and the arts. No offence, but there aren’t that many cultural activities going on right now. Your movie would qualify. What do you think?”

  Cindy was invited to participate in the second production meeting that afternoon, and they came up with a budget that wouldn’t break the State Department. They had a late lunch together except for Civilai, whose weight seemed to be dripping off him like wax from a temple candle. He settled for water. Bruce offered to take Cindy back to the consulate in the Willys jeep he’d picked up for next to nothing. They could see his pilot light burning just by being around her. He wasn’t the best-looking young man to have fallen for her but he had ambition and a sense of humor. She seemed to like him. She screamed as the jeep left the ground and hit the empty road.

  Which left Siri, Daeng and Civilai to go over the contents of the letter.

  “Bruce didn’t believe for a second it was fiction,” said Daeng. “We might have to include him in on this.”

  “I doubt he imagined his return to Laos would be as full of excitement as it’s turning out to be,” said Siri. “Beautiful blondes and death threats.”

  “The question is,” said Civilai, “when do we start to take it all seriously?”

  “As you’ll be the first to go,” said Siri, “I suggest we stake you out over there beside the road like a house bantam and wait to see what bites you.”

  “Right,” said Daeng, “we lie in wait and catch him in the act of whatever horror he has planned for you.”

  “I don’t feel much peer support in this venture,” said Civilai. “Have you alerted Phosy?”

  “His people are going through the journalist files you left with me,” said Siri. “We don’t exactly have anyone at Interpol, so we can’t verify that they’ve all told the truth in their CVs. But he sent copies to all the embassies and asked them to do background checks. They have no obligation to comply.”

  “I’m not sure I understand the letter,” said Civilai. “What is all that about cogs and clocks?”

  “My interpretation is that he’s already set in motion whatever plans he has,” said Daeng. “Either he’s already hired someone to do the nasty . . . or there’s a bomb in the basement on a timer,” said Siri. “Luckily, we haven’t got a basement.”

  “What if it’s a riddle,” said Civilai. “What if there are clues in his notes that will allow us to stop the ticking clock?”

  “I don’t get the feeling he’s that accommodating,” said Daeng, fishing the first note from her apron and turning it over to Dtui’s translation. “The only thing that isn’t immediately obvious is the line, ‘I have already deleted one of your darlings.’ Does that mean he’s already murdered one of your loved ones, Siri?”

  “A few years back my dog was killed violently,” said Siri. “I was very fond of her.”

  They heard a brief growl from the street outside.

  “Siri, you know what I’m getting at,” said Daeng. “Your first true love.”

  “Boua?” said Siri. “I’d prefer not to talk about her.”

  “Why?” Daeng asked.

  “Because whenever I do, you sink into a foul mood for two or three days.”

  “That’s just a woman thing,” said Civilai. “Always comparing themselves to their predecessors, even when the ex is dead.”

  “Shut up, Civilai,” said Siri and Daeng in tandem.

  “It’s true,” mumbled Civilai. “Now look what you’ve made me do.”

  He headed off to the bathroom for the umpteenth time.

  Once he’d gone, Daeng said, “I think we need to talk about her. Even at the expense of my flimsy female attitude. If this note refers to her, it means the killer was around when you were in Vietnam.”

  “It was suicide,” said Siri.

  He’d read Boua’s suicide note so many times the paper had crumbled to dust. He read the final sentences now in his mind. Can you ever forgive me for what I’ve done to you, and for what I have to do this evening? This is the only escape for us two. Her one true love: communism, had been a disappointment. It had failed her. And once her vision was cle
ar, she could see how she’d ignored and belittled the man who’d stood beside her for better and, decidedly, for worse. Thus, two hearts had been broken and she could not live with herself.

  “Or it was made to look like suicide,” said Daeng. “There are those who doubted the official report.”

  Daeng had never seen the suicide note and Siri had never mentioned it. That was the only real secret between them. He felt uncomfortable to be a part of the conversation now.

  “By the time you got back to the camp they’d already cremated her,” Daeng went on. “So there was no evidence. Nobody really knows what happened. Around that time was there somebody you upset? Someone who might kill your wife but be prepared to wait twenty-five years to find you?”

  Chapter Seven

  Saigon, 1956

  I arranged to meet Civilai in a coffee shop for old times’ sake. We chose the Hotel Continental in District One because it attracted journalists and writers, and, as cinema people we fitted right in. Civilai intended to travel down on the train from Hue having crossed the seventeenth parallel on foot. I’d sneaked into the south from a field hospital in Ban Tangon on the Ho Chi Minh trail, although then it was still known as the north-south passage. I was a major general in the North Vietnamese army medical corps at that stage. The title was far more glamorous than the position. It seemed that no matter how many stars you had on your epaulette, the blood was always just as red, the mosquitoes just as thirsty and the chances of survival just as random.

  Boua and I seemed to be stationed apart more and more often. She was a lieutenant colonel at the nurses’ training facility in Dong Hoi. We saw little of each other. We’d returned to Laos from Paris in ’39, still in love, I supposed. Altogether, I’d been in Paris for seventeen years. I loved the place. I’d imagined us with a cottage in Montreuil, three kids, a garden with an apple tree, and a Pomeranian called Loulou. There’d be a back terrace where Loulou and I would sit on Sundays. I’d drink coffee and cognac while Boua baked tarts in the kitchen.

  Boua saw something slightly different. She saw hundreds of young Lao and Vietnamese being mowed down by French machine guns, their bodies rotting on battlefields. And over time, Loulou and the kids got fuzzier, and I could think of nothing more noble than returning to our homeland to overthrow the French—the same French who’d taught me and trained me and who’d brought me homemade petits fours to thank me for lancing their boils.

  By the time we left France, Boua had made me feel so ashamed of my selfish ideas that I’d deleted them. For many years, I swore I’d merely tolerated the bastard French and their capitalist values. The mysterious petits fours haunted me in nightmares. When I arrived in Laos, I was every bit as passionate. Boua was passionate for Laos, and I was passionate for Laos . . . through her. Same destination, different route.

  I admit I felt the adrenaline pumping as the steamer docked in Singapore, and we travelled north. We were warriors almost immediately. We spent our early years with the ragtag Free Lao militia fighting—or at least frustrating—the Japanese. In Vietnam, the OSS had identified groups of what they preferred to call “nationalists” led by a multilingual patriot called Ho Chi Minh: Civilai’s old buddy Quoc after a number of name changes. The Americans provided weaponry and training. With the French off in Europe rescuing their motherland from Hitler, the Viet Minh assumed the mantle of protectors of Vietnam. By the war’s end, the Vietnamese and Lao nationalists had accredited ourselves nicely, and we were certain we no longer needed the French. With trumpets blowing and new flags waving, we declared our independence. There was dancing in the streets, but they were slow dances to short tunes.

  Pumped up from their victory in Europe, the French returned to Indochina in numbers to resume their usurper role. But the management had changed in their absence. The French set out to nullify all that foolish talk of independence and endeavored to put down the local rebellion, but it was a rebellion that would not lay still. With help from the Chinese, the North Vietnamese grew stronger and their influence spread. The French had a fight on their hands.

  The Pathet Lao grew out of the Viet Minh momentum. Boua and I moved to the north of Laos where we trained medics and stitched up young boys who were fighting for the great cause of communism. But I noticed soon enough that not one of them knew, or cared, what communism was; they saw a banner of some sort that stood for equality and self-rule. But I’d lean over my patients by candlelight and listen to their whispered stories. And, without exception, they’d joined the Pathet Lao because they were tired of being shat on. They’d been shat on by the racist French, shat on by the corrupt Royal Lao army, shat on by fate, by the spirits, by Buddha. They just wanted a break from all that shit. And that was when my true passion for my country—a passion a longtime coming—took root. At last, I saw a point. The country boys put on a uniform and picked up a gun not because they stood for something, but because they wanted a fair roll of the dice. They didn’t want victory as much as they wanted peace.

  In ’54 the rebellion of hope spilled over onto the battlefield, and, in a fight that shocked the world, the French received a drubbing at the hands of a bunch of locals at a place called Dien Bien Phu. Boua and I were in Vietnam by then. We watched the final curtain from a ridge looking down at the despondent French army. I was saddened by the carnage, but I’d never seen my wife so joyful.

  The international agreements were signed and the French dragged their feet until ’56, when the last of the actors were to leave the theatre. And there I was in the coffee shop at the Continental watching it all happen. They had a parade that passed right in front of me. The drums of the Moroccan Sharpshooters’ Band made ripples in my café au lait. In their big hats and their snowy-white uniforms and their confident stride, you’d never have guessed the French were the losers. Some of the crowd even cheered them as they passed. With nothing really to show for a hundred years of occupation, it struck me as particularly arrogant that they should hold their heads so high; that they should still be taller and heavier than us.

  I’d been there at the café for forty minutes still nursing my cup with no sign of Civilai. I wondered whether he’d been stopped at the border or shot trying to cross it. Those were oddly unpredictable days. It crossed my mind a few times that I was the enemy. The ’54 Geneva Agreement had sliced the country in half and we victors had been ordered to keep behind the line that divided a country we’d won. It was like the winner of the Tour de France being allowed to keep only the handles of the trophy.

  I’m not sure we really wanted the south anyway. It had been flooded by Catholics escaping some imaginary genocide in the north. The suburban slums of Saigon continued to spread out like an ink blot. It was impossible to know who was from where or to police the mayhem. The South Vietnamese security forces had been trained hurriedly and indifferently by the fleeing French, and the task of supervising a city in transition was beyond them. For a while, anyway, anything was available and possible.

  So, there I was, a Lao with no passport, undeniably an enemy agent, drinking coffee in the center of a city in denial. I could feel its incurable tumor. It still wore its foundation and its blush. Its pretty girls still cycled past in their beautiful silk ao dai, but you could see the bruises beneath the makeup. The men still strutted, but their heads turned often to look behind them. Saigon was keeping a brave face, but there was nothing holding the skin and bone together. A voice roused me from my thoughts.

  “Anyone sitting there?”

  I looked up and wasn’t at all surprised by what confronted me.

  “Did you really travel all the way from Hue with that tennis racquet?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” said Civilai. “Look around, little brother. French all over the city are trying to sell off their household items before they jump on the boat home. And imagine all those wealthy Catholic refugees who were forced to leave their china collections in the north. They would love nothing more than to pick
up a new set here in the south. But, goodness me, they don’t even have enough money to feed their fat children. They don’t even have a real roof over their heads.”

  He waved his tennis racquet in the air.

  “I picked up this beauty for almost nothing at a yard sale,” he said.

  Only Civilai would scour the suburbs to set up a joke.

  “Sit down before somebody challenges you to a game,” I said.

  It was good to see him. We shook hands, and the nerves in our palms exchanged a familiar intimacy. We had kept in touch as much as an endless guerilla war allowed. He’d gone his way after Paris, organizing, activating, agitating. He was the only Lao on the central committee of the Workers Party of Vietnam. I’d seen him on the stage in Tuyen Quang when our Free Lao movement was hijacked by the Vietnamese-designed Pathet Lao movement. He was already a celebrity then, a visionary, a revolutionary, a genius but still an idiot. We’d reunited by chance at seminars and in bunkers. Whenever there was a lull in the fighting we’d go out of our ways to meet up and see a film or two. That war would never have been the same without Civilai. I was always glad he wasn’t dead and he assured me that the feeling was mutual.

  The note that had brought me to Saigon had been written in Lao and was, wisely, cryptic. He knew I’d come. He ordered a pitcher of beer from the one nervous waiter. Cafés in Saigon were bombed from time to time just to keep the enemy on their toes. It would have been an ironic end to our relationship to be blasted by a North Vietnamese hand grenade. The waiter knew that thanks to the influx of refugees he could be replaced. We, on the other hand, could not.

  We drank our long-dreamed-of cold beer and caught up on the previous four months. I told him about the delta. He told me about Hanoi. We followed the progress of the drug trade. The Golden Triangle was producing half the world’s opium, and the French, who had distributed the drug to fund their occupation, were now trafficking the product to pay for their withdrawal. As was our tradition, I asked him about his wife, Nong, who was teaching at Ai Quoc College, and he asked me about Boua. His marriage always seemed happier than mine, and I found myself inventing a perfect relationship to tell him about. I’m sure he knew I was lying.