The Second Biggest Nothing

by Colin Cotterill

  “Religious connections?”

  “You really think I’d be proselytizing at my age? No, it’s a good thing. Call it a gift. Would you be able to distribute it?”

  “Is it bigger than an elephant?”

  “Smaller than a house lizard.”

  “Then I think I can. For you.”

  “Excellent. I’ll have all the details for you beforehand, I promise.”

  “And the other matter?”

  “Right. I have a friend.”

  “You do?” she looked surprised. “When did that happen?”

  “Touché. This friend is exhibiting certain, what could be called symptoms. And as a doctor I am concerned because the symptoms suggest to me a condition—one that I have been expecting for some time.”

  “Siri, you aren’t the type of doctor who needs a second opinion. Why are you telling me? Treat him!”

  “I’m not his doctor.”

  “Who is?”

  “You.”

  Porn blew on her tea even though it wasn’t that hot.

  “And you think I’ve misdiagnosed a patient of mine?” she said.

  “I hope not.”

  “Then you’ll have to tell me his name. I’m full-time here at the Union. I have very few patients these days, and they’re only at my house some evenings and during the weekends. If I’m making bad decisions because of overwork I need to know about it. What’s his name?”

  “Civilai Songsawat.”

  She sat up straight then laughed again.

  “Civilai?”

  “Yes.”

  “Our Civilai?”

  “The one and only.”

  “Siri, I haven’t seen Civilai as a patient for three years.”

  “You didn’t see him last week after Daeng’s physical? He was arriving at your house as she left. He said you gave him a clean bill of health. Told him he was in great shape. Just had a touch of diarrhea.”

  “I did examine Daeng, and, yes, Civilai did arrive as she was leaving. But I didn’t examine him. He brought me homemade scones and we chatted for twenty minutes until my next patient arrived.”

  “You’re not his doctor?”

  “No. He insists you’ve been his doctor for so long he would never dream of seeing anyone else. He said it would be a betrayal. I daren’t interfere.”

  “The lying bastard,” said Siri. “He’s not once let me examine him.”

  “Why would he lie about something like this?”

  “Because he’s a stubborn old bastard. Because he knows he’s sick and doesn’t want to worry anyone. He’s too proud to let anyone take care of him.”

  “What symptoms have you seen?”

  “Loss of appetite, nausea, bruising, and he’s been hiding his jaundiced eyes behind dark glasses hoping I wouldn’t notice. He’s been in bed for a couple of days with his supposed diarrhea. I believed he was getting treated by you. If you’d considered it serious I was sure you’d get in touch with me. I should have—”

  “Do you have transportation?” she asked.

  Chapter Twelve

  Let Me Get This Straight. You’re Dead?

  It was certainly the worst movie Jane had ever made. It was in competition for the worst movie made by anyone. But Siri believed that no man, having watched Barbarella groaning through her ten-minute orgasm in the excessive pleasure machine, could have avoided milking the goat when he got home. It was blatant soft-porn sci-fi and he and Civilai were disappointed that she’d agree to make it. But that didn’t stop Siri from putting up a Barbarella poster in the mobile ward to cheer up the injured soldiers.

  And here he was piloting the throbbing pink 41st-century spacecraft, looking through the windshield at a blackboard dotted with fairy lights that was supposed to be the universe. And supposedly floating in that two-dimensional space at the end of a rope was Civilai in a Chinese postman’s uniform.

  “What are you doing out there?” Siri shouted. “You’re ruining the scene.”

  “The scene ruined itself,” said Civilai without the benefit of a microphone. “Will you stop trying to rescue this movie and its low budget special effects? Here I am supposedly in space with no oxygen tank, and I’m dangling rather than floating. With Jane in the driver’s seat, nobody noticed the scenery. But you . . . ?”

  “What exactly are you doing in my dream?” Siri asked.

  “Not a dream, Siri. This is the reality. You speeding out to Kilometer Six on the back of Dr. Porn’s motor scooter, that’s the dream. You with a heart thick as sticky rice, tears streaming down your face, that’s the dream.”

  “This feels like one of Auntie Bpoo’s mind tortures,” said Siri.

  “No. Sorry. Bpoo’s off in her trailer sulking. I don’t know what you said to her, but it really upset her. She’s wearing a football kit, boots and all. So you can’t blame her. She has nothing to do with this scene. This is just your imagination and me, old pal.”

  “And what’s the moral?” Siri asked.

  “There has to be a moral?”

  “Usually.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Civilai, attempting to cut the rope with a nail file. “How about, ‘All good things come to an end.’ I like that one. Or, there’s always, ‘Don’t trust people who drink too much.’ Which reminds me, I’m supposed to warn you and Daeng to cut down on the rice whisky intake. I know there’s a canary’s chance in a jet engine that you’ll take any notice of that. I certainly wouldn’t.”

  “So, let me get this straight. You’re dead?”

  “Brilliant.”

  “How does it feel?”

  “Death?”

  “Yes.”

  “It feels like . . . I don’t know. It feels like I’m a part of the big it.”

  “A part of what?”

  “Mass.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, you know when they take the unexploded ordnance to the smelting works and melt it all down and it sort of blends together and you can’t tell what was a bombie and what was a wok because it’s all one? Well, that’s what this is except there are no unexpected explosions. You can’t tell a tree from a Boeing 747 from a toothbrush. It’s all a big blancmange. I was going to do the tennis racket gag to give you a laugh, but there are none over here. Or, at least, they’re no longer identifiable. Shame. It would have been a good exit line.”

  “We had some good times,” said Siri.

  “A million of ’em, but let’s steer clear of clichés, shall we?”

  “Are you scared?”

  “A little bit.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go first.”

  “A bit sooner than the universe had in mind, but we’ll be together soon enough.”

  “Thank you for making this easier for me.”

  “What are friends for?” said Civilai. (Although he vehemently denied having said it.) “All right. You get back there to your devastation and grieving, and I’ll catch up with you on the set of a much better movie sometime soon.”

  The nail file severed the rope and the backdrop became a long, stretched-out lava lamp display and Civilai was sucked into it. He shouted, “Wheeeeh.”

  And he was gone.

  Dr. Porn’s fifteen-year-old motor scooter sounded like a Harley Davidson in the silent compound. The heavily armed guards at the gate had been undecided as to what to do, so they waved the bike through. Elderly Party members and their wives tended to look alike after seventy. You could never be too cautious. The lights were all on at Civilai’s house. Porn stopped in front of the gate. Madam Nong was on the front steps hugging her knees. Sitting beside her, mirroring her actions, was Rajhid, the crazy Indian. He was dressed, which seemed appropriate, and his hair was greased up into a point like a pencil. How he knew . . . how he got there . . . what he was thinking, nobody would know
. But he was there.

  Madam Nong seemed not to notice the motor scooter until it was silent. She looked up to see Porn and Siri looking down at her.

  “You’ll want a drink,” she said.

  Her face was ashen but dry. Her skull seemed to have grabbed at her face and pulled it tight.

  “Where is he?” Siri asked.

  “In bed,” she said. “I’ll get him for you.”

  It was a line so common to her lips she didn’t even realize she’d said it.

  Dr. Porn sat on the other side of her and put an arm around her shoulder. Siri stepped over them and took off his leather sandals before going into the house. He walked through to the bedroom. Civilai’s body in Muay Thai boxing shorts and an Apocalypse Now T-shirt lay comfortably on the mattress. There was no question that he had a smile on his face. There was a chair beside the bed.

  “Anyone sitting there?” Siri asked.

  There was no objection so he sat beside his friend. In the films you only had to pass your palm across the eyes to close the lids. In reality you had to poke and prod and wrestle the bastards shut. So, even though it was a little bit creepy, Siri left the eyes open. They were as yellow as mustard. There was nothing to say. On the bed was a body that had once belonged to a great man. It was empty of soul and mind now, so there was no point in engaging it in conversation. There’d be time for that later.

  Siri looked around the tidy bedroom. A glass cabinet with crockery and an unused tennis racket. Framed photographs on the dresser: Civilai and Nong in their sixties and their forties and back and beyond. The colors fading into memory until there were only pastel ghosts in ghostly locations. One photo of Siri and Civilai each shaking a hand of the last governor general of Indochina, a bogus smile of gratitude on his bloated face. One photo of the two couples: Siri and Boua, Civilai and Nong, black and white, a professional picture from a man who made a living from his art—the Eiffel Tower looming over them, the date, 1931. And Siri realized his hands were wet and noticed the steady drip from his cheeks but could not stop it and did not want to. He heaved the tears up all the way from his chest like an old pump emptying a flooded basement. He groaned out each spurt. Nobody came to investigate.

  And when he was dry and silent he continued his study of the tidy room. And his eyes rested upon the bedside cabinet and a single pill box and the handwritten label attached to it:

  Dr. Porn Chaisak Clinic. December 1st, 1980.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Begone the Boulangere

  Death to the Oppressors was postponed if not abandoned completely given the circumstances. There was a cremation to arrange, and the greatest challenge was to relieve the Politburo of the responsibility of organizing a state funeral for an ex-Politburo member. Nong and Siri and all who loved Civilai, and Civilai himself, wanted a quiet, intimate ceremony so they could say goodbye in their own way. No cavalcade. No trumpets. No insincerity. No long meaningless wait.

  Daeng had kept close to her husband these past two days, watching his smiling eyes, hearing his witty banter with the customers. Even when Mr. Geung and Tukta returned from their vegetable honeymoon and resumed their duties at the restaurant, Siri stuck around, wiping tables, washing bowls, hanging thirty kilos of blanched chicken bones on the lines in the back garden. But he didn’t leave the building through the front entrance in all that time. It was as if the road outside might drop into the river at any moment.

  On the third day after the Ferrari deaths, Phosy and Sihot arrived at the shop. It was the eve of the grand ceremony of the fifth anniversary of the republic—what Siri had begun to refer to as “the second biggest nothing.” The news of the two dead journalists had been met with sadness in the West, but, given the recklessness of their accident, not much respect. The obituaries mentioned their wild pasts as if it were inevitable they’d have sticky ends. “It’s how they would have wanted to go.” No mention that perhaps they didn’t want to go at all. Articles leaned heavily toward apologies to the Lao for spoiling their celebration. The bodies were sent to Australia and the case was closed.

  “Is he in?” Phosy asked.

  Daeng was presiding over the usual madness of noodle primetime.

  “He’s upstairs,” she said. “Try to get him out into some fresh air, will you?”

  “Do you think he can handle any more bad news?” Phosy asked.

  “I don’t know what he’s thinking or feeling,” she said. “It’s as if he’s inside a big puzzle, and he’s trying to think himself out of it. He’s certain one of the stories from his past has sparked something here in Vientiane. He’s sure the death of the journalists is connected to the two letters and the man who sent them. But now that Civilai’s death is a part of it too, he can’t seem to rest until he’s worked out the how of it.”

  “Well, Daeng, what I have to tell him isn’t going to make him feel any better,” said Phosy. “I think you should come up and hear it too.”

  She delegated noodle duties to her returnees and followed the detectives upstairs. Siri had formed a sort of nest in the skirt room and had notes all around him as if he were trying to solve a gigantic riddle. They went with him to a room at the back that contained nothing other than themselves.

  “The bread woman,” said Phosy.

  “Lah, I was afraid of that,” said Siri.

  “What about her?” Daeng asked.

  “She died on the second,” said Sihot. “Apparently of natural causes.”

  “That’s it,” said Siri. “She died on the second. The journalists—the collateral victims—died on the fifth. Civilai died on the eighth. This is it. This is the threat realized.”

  “We’ve already had the paranoia conversation,” Daeng reminded him.

  “Oh, Daeng,” said Siri. “How can this be paranoia? He’s following up on his threat but he’s making it look like natural causes. Look at the victims. Look at the order. And you’re next.”

  “I’m afraid it’s become impossible to ignore,” said Phosy. “Daeng, I need to put you somewhere.”

  She laughed. “We have some empty cupboards in the skirt bank room,” she said.

  “You know what I mean,” said Phosy. “We have to send you somewhere safe so I can work this out.”

  “I think that’s a splendid idea,” said Siri.

  “You do?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Siri, for the benefit of our guests here, can you tell us what happens when we arm wrestle?” said Daeng.

  Siri blushed.“I don’t see that as . . .” he began.

  “There’s a point,” said Daeng. “What happens when we arm wrestle?”

  “You beat me.”

  “Once or twice?”

  “I have an old war wound,” he said. “A bullet . . .”

  “Always, Siri,” said Daeng. “I always beat you. So what chance do you think you and your policemen friends here have of dragging me to a safe house and having me squeeze pimples off my backside while you stumble around trying to find the man who wants to kill me?”

  “Daeng, this is no laughing matter,” said Phosy. “He’s causing people to die.”

  “Then you’ll just have to catch him before he causes me to be one of them, won’t you?” said Daeng. “And if the cogs are indeed already in motion as he said, it would appear he’s already infected me with his evil magic. So there’s really no point in my going anywhere.”

  There followed the type of silence that comes from hitting a wall of obstinacy. Siri rebounded.

  “Phosy,” he said. “I have to do an autopsy on Civilai.”

  They looked at the doctor as if he were suffering from dementia.

  “Isn’t it obvious what he died from?” said Phosy.

  “I need to be sure.”

  “He’s your friend,” said Phosy.

  “He’s not anything anymore,” said Siri. “He�
��s dead. All I have there in the morgue is his slowly decaying flesh. But that meat can speak to me. People are dying in the order predicted and I want to know how he’s killing them and how to stop him.”

  He didn’t mention the box of pills he’d recovered from the bedside cabinet, nor the words “sooner than the universe had in mind” that had stuck with him since his conversation with Civilai’s spirit.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Reunion at the Morgue

  The reunion at the morgue was not a joyful one. The welcome mat at the entrance made nobody smile. Mr. Geung was too busy sweeping and scrubbing to respond to Dtui’s half-hearted jokes. And Dr. Siri had spent the last two hours with Civilai’s widow convincing her there was something to be gained by cutting open her husband. It was only because of Civilai’s respect for Siri that she finally agreed. That and the promise that the doctor would only go ahead with the autopsy if he found evidence of suspicious circumstances during his postmortem examination of Lah, the bread woman. Of course, Siri knew there was suspicion. He just had to be clever enough to find the explanations. He held only contempt for coincidence. Four deaths, six days apart, all predicted by the letter writer.

  He pulled up three chairs beside the corpse of the bread woman and he, Dtui and Mr. Geung sat there like hospital visitors.

  “Before we start,” said Siri. “Let’s plan our tactics. Let’s begin with the hypothesis that our nemesis was responsible for the deaths of the two journalists. In his letter he made it sound random, that he’d just kill someone as a show of his intentions. But what if it wasn’t random?”

  “You mean he had a reason to kill them?” said Dtui.

  “One of them had met someone he knew,” said Siri. “Perhaps our friend hadn’t planned to kill them, but they recognized him from the old days. His cover, whatever that was, was blown. He had no choice but to do away with them.”

  “You don’t think it was an accident?” said Dtui.

  “Before I went to see Madam Nong, I stopped off at the police car lot,” said Siri. “I took my boy wonder, Geung here, with me.”

  Mr. Geung snorted through his nose and laughed.