The Rat Catchers' Olympics

by Colin Cotterill

When she got back to her room, Dtui found a note from the telephone exchange. A Mr. Phosy had tried to call her on three occasions. He would call again at 8 p.m. Moscow time. Her heart sank with fear for her daughter. It was 7:50. She hurried downstairs and across the Square of Nations. By eight she was sitting on one of the comfortable armchairs watching the wall of phone booths where colorful and noisy athletes shouted across oceans in a fruit cocktail of languages. There were tears from those who missed their families, laughter, frustration, elation. Nobody cared who was listening. Every heart was out there on public display.

  “Mrs. Dtui,” came a voice over the speaker.

  Dtui went to booth number seventeen as she was instructed and picked up the handset. It was unnecessarily heavy and she wondered if that was a deliberate ploy to limit the length of calls. Her stomach was swarming with the ugliest of butterflies.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Dtui, it’s me.”

  His voice was so close she could have reached out and caressed his cheek.

  “It’s Phosy,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “Is Malee all right?”

  “She’s fantastic,” he said.

  She was relieved but irrationally mad at him for causing her this grief.

  “She asks about you every day.”

  “Listen, Dtui. I’ve been very lucky and a kind gentleman called Comrade Thonglai Zakarine has put in a direct telephone link from my office so we could keep him informed of the wellbeing of his son, Comrade Manoi, who’s a student in Moscow. His father has heard rumors that someone might be out to harm Manoi. Could you tell Comrade Daeng and Siri that if there’s any news they should call me at this number, immediately? If the telephonist didn’t give it to you, the number is 8567999.”

  Dtui repeated the number.

  “Your Auntie Arpy says hello and hopes you’re continuing your studies and having a good time,” Phosy continued. “Oh, and I’m afraid Comrade Noo might be on his way out. Mr. Geung says to tell Siri that the monk has lost his feet. And . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I guess that’s everything. Give my best to everyone.”

  “Phosy, I—”

  And the line buzzed and died right there in her hand. She felt the telephone get heavier.

  “All right,” she said loudly in English for the neighboring booths to hear. “Yes, really. Don’t worry.”

  She laughed loud and long.

  “Yes,” she yelled. “I love you too.”

  Day six was a proud one for the Lao team. Siri’s namesake, christened Siri II to avoid confusion, boxed mid-morning. He made it to the end of the bout. A hundred and eighty grueling seconds. He lost on points by a huge margin to an enthusiastic Iranian but he’d given everything he had and more. The Lao supporters were noisier than ever. Someone had found a drum and the Lao athletes and supporters sang along to the beat and cheered and danced in their seats. The bongo countries, Cuba and Brazil and the like, picked up on the Lao vibrations and the boxing commentators had to yell into their microphones to be heard.

  This was followed by a mad rush to the Lenin stadium for the heats of the men’s two hundred and eight hundred meters. The Lao had a competitor in each event. The supporters’ club had picked up a few straggling Americans and Chinese and one confused Japanese lady in her forties. It appeared that nobody had told her Japan would be boycotting the Games. As she and the others had no team of their own to cheer they became honorary Lao for the day. After an x-ray, the drum was allowed into the stadium and the supporters began their concert from the second it arrived.

  Chom the rat catcher waved at them from his starting blocks of the two hundred meters. He’d seen his first starting block three weeks earlier at orientation. He wasn’t so confident in spikes, either. He would have happily taken them off and run in bare feet but polyurethane wasn’t nearly as friendly as grass. The pistol shot resounded around the half-full stadium and Chom kept a close watch on the backs of his competitors as they headed off. But when he crossed the finish line the cheer from the stands was even louder than that for the winner. It was what the drafted American fans started to refer to as “The Lao Cheer.”

  It would be heard again ninety minutes later when Kilakone the high-schooler ran the eight hundred meters. He led from the gun and hit the inside lane in the lead after the first turn. Photographs were taken at that moment which would become famous back in the Lao PDR. But Kilakone had run the first two hundred meters faster than he had ever run in his life and still he hadn’t shaken off his opponents. He’d sprinted the whole way, perhaps hoping his body might respond to his enthusiasm. By three hundred meters he was neck and neck with the runner from Burma. They were ten meters behind the field. Were it not for the sound of the Lao Cheer from his countrymen and women in the stands he might not have bothered to complete the second lap at all. The Burmese retired so Kilakone did not officially come last and every head in the Lenin stadium turned to see what had happened when he crossed the finish line to an enthusiastic ovation.

  But two minutes later the Lao supporters were gone, hurrying back across the complex to the boxing arena where Maen was about to compete in the featherweight qualifier. His Mongolian opponent had more the appearance of a wrestler than a boxer and in the buildup he seemed excited and disoriented. But at the sound of the bell he attacked like a fighting bull, and Maen’s role in the ring was more that of self-defense than of competition. He did get in two respectable punches in the first round, which were met with shouts of olé from the Lao-friendly crowd. The referee stopped the fight in the middle of the second round even though Maen gave the impression he could have withstood no end of punishment. He left the ring to a resounding Lao Cheer. For a man who’d spent two nights in a Soviet jail it had been a magnificent performance.

  Fatigued from their sleuthing, Civilai and Siri had foregone the pleasure of watching boxers and runners and had instead joined Avgusta for the matinee showing of Merry-Go-Round from Hungary and an afternoon showing of The Loves of a Blonde. But they had reluctantly passed up the opportunity to watch the evening screening of Andrei Rublev because they had decided instead to watch a man walk. Even though they’d pumped up the egos of every member of the team with their patriotic rhetoric, in their minds there was only one athlete in the squad they considered to be a serious contender. Inspired by the atmosphere at the stadium there was no telling what Khamon might achieve. But, of course, that didn’t prevent the old boys from making fun of the sport.

  “Is it before or after the hundred-meter dawdle?” Siri asked.

  “It’s next on the agenda to the three-kilometer stroll,” said Civilai.

  But however slow the event, they liked and admired the man who had performed his way onto the Lao Olympic team. So they joined the ever-expanding Lao crowd in the Lenin stadium. They’d only see the beginning and the end of the race in the flesh but an enormous screen would cut back and forth between the walkers and ongoing field events. Nobody on the Lao cheer squad was particularly interested in watching a bearded Englishman toss a metal ball twenty meters.

  “Really useful that in battle,” said Siri. “The enemy would need extremely poor reflexes to be hit with one of those.”

  “How was the film?” Daeng asked.

  “The first was a little too avant-garde for me,” said Civilai. “Brilliant but of no entertainment value whatsoever.”

  “Yet you sat through the whole thing?” said Daeng.

  “You’d have us leave and insult the director?” said Siri.

  “Was he there?” she asked.

  “Just us and the projectionist,” said Civilai. “But directors are very sensitive. They know when people walk out of their films.”

  “Even when they’re dead,” said Siri.

  “You’re at the greatest sporting event of your lives and you sit in an empty cinema watching movies you don’t und
erstand,” said Daeng. “You do know you’re both complete idiots, don’t you?”

  “Not complete yet,” said Siri.

  “We’re working on it,” said Civilai.

  They were interrupted by the crack of a starting pistol. The twenty-kilometer race walk had started. Thirty-four men waddled around the stadium like ducks. They would complete one lap before leaving through the huge stadium doors to begin their scenic walk along the riverbank. The Lao Cheer was buried beneath the stadium roar. Time seemed to be less than urgent to the walkers. They ambled along the back straight toward the exit. Even the Lao with binoculars had trouble picking out Khamon in the pack. But still they chanted his name and beat their drum. And, all too soon, the walkers were gone. The large screen followed the leaders for a few minutes, then switched to the ladies’ high jump.

  Civilai turned to Dtui. “So what exactly did Phosy say?” he asked, continuing their attempts to decipher the policeman’s phone call from the previous evening.

  “I can tell you what he didn’t say,” she replied.

  “That,” said Siri, “would be an endless list. Let’s stick to his actual words.”

  She talked them through the phone call again.

  “Ah, so he called her Comrade Daeng once more,” said Siri. “He doesn’t trust the telephone system either. We should be careful what we say.”

  “We don’t exactly have anything to say, do we?” said Daeng. “Haven’t we given up on assassination theories?”

  “Certainly not,” said Civilai. “We still have a possible assassin in the squad. We just don’t have the resources to follow everyone.”

  “I don’t see the shooters here,” said Dtui.

  “Their dormitory’s empty,” said Civilai. “The Red Army has invited them to enjoy a week at the barracks at some other place I can’t pronounce. They kindly let me know this morning after they’d left.”

  “How far is it?” Siri asked.

  “Still inside the city limits,” said Civilai. “If there is an assassin in the group there’s nothing stopping him jumping on a train.”

  “We’d drive ourselves barmy trying to keep track of all the participants,” said Siri. “Let’s just focus on helping Phosy solve his Vientiane murder.”

  They were drowned out by the screams of the Lao crowd around them and their international fan club. The drummer beat his drum. Daeng squeezed Siri’s arm and he looked up at the big screen. Already the race walkers had settled on a pace and the field had stretched out. A group of thirty had progressed to the front. The lead camera was on a truck beside the front three of these and amongst them, shorter than the other two, was Khamon.

  “Look at him go,” said Civilai.

  The Lao flags waved and the supporters cried out his name and nobody else in the stadium knew what the fuss was about. But the Lao had drawn attention to themselves. One stadium camera found the drummer and zoomed in on the vociferous group. And there they were on the big screen and probably on TV around the world.

  The Lao screamed their delight and danced an impromptu lamvong conga line around the drum, waving at themselves on the screen. Peels of good-natured laughter rippled around the stadium. This was replaced by a Lao groan of disappointment when the main screen returned to the high jumpers. An Italian with legs comprising eighty percent of her body was about to take her final jump but the Lao weren’t interested.

  “He’s going to win it for certain,” shouted Chom the rat catcher, maps of sweat seeping through his T-shirt. “And I’ll miss it.”

  “How so?”

  “Interview,” said Chom, modestly.

  “What for?”

  “It’s just TV,” he said, attempting to keep the smile off his face without success.

  “You’re going to be on TV?” said Daeng. “That’s great.”

  “I’m a bit nervous, to tell the truth,” he said. “It’s only a community thing, they said. They talk to professional people here for the Olympics and they ask how we do things at home compared to the Soviet Union. I’ll be with my mate from Botswana.”

  “Are you taking Roger?” she asked.

  “No, auntie. The TV station’s got its own interpreters. I’ll tell you later how it went.”

  He hadn’t been gone a minute when the stadium screen returned to the race. The Lao contingent looked up with open mouths like fish staring at a lure. The coverage began with the second camera car showing a competitor being disqualified for walking in some illegal manner. The Lao feared that their man might have fallen to the same fate. But then the picture returned to the front three, who had stretched their lead. There was a ten-meter gap to the fourth-placed walker. Leading the three was an Italian. He was followed by a Belarusian and, to the delight of the crowd, a Lao. The Lao Cheer made up for its tardiness with its volume. There were those who thought there must have been a murder rather than a miracle as the Lao men and women screamed with delight.

  Once again the camera singled out the Lao supporters and caught an overjoyed Dr. Siri and Daeng doing their moves on a seat. For those who had never heard of Laos, this was a fitting introduction.

  “He looks really comfortable up there,” said Civilai, glaring at the screen.

  “Wouldn’t it be something if he won?” said Dtui.

  “Don’t hex him,” said Civilai.

  “He seems to be the only one wearing a T-shirt,” said Siri. “All the others are in skimpy singlets.”

  “Perhaps he’s cold,” said Daeng. “He trained in the tropics. We have to assume he knows what he’s doing.”

  The camera truck followed the three walkers with the river in the background and small pockets of onlookers in their “might be seen on TV” fashions. They’d covered five of the twenty kilometers and Khamon looked as calm as a lull in a monsoon.

  The cameras returned to the high jump accompanied by another groan from the Lao and a laugh from the crowd. There were allotted seat numbers but during the qualifying rounds nobody seemed to care where you stood or sat. Or, at least, the ushers didn’t know how to control a gang of excited fans. The organizers just wanted the place full for as long as possible. They’d given free tickets to the trade unions and the military but it wasn’t easy to fill a 100,000-seat stadium.

  Siri and Daeng returned to order.

  “What were we talking about?” said Siri.

  “Phosy,” said Dtui.

  “Right, what else did he say?” said Daeng.

  “He sent regards from my Auntie Arpy,” she said.

  “And you don’t have an Auntie Arpy,” said Daeng.

  “No, but after we talked last night I remembered a game we used to play with our friend Ou at the Lycee.”

  “May she rest in peace,” said Civilai.

  “Oh, she is,” said Siri.

  “Well, Ou studied in Australia,” said Dtui. “She liked to drink. She had a lot of friends. There was a drinking game they played over there. I suppose, not so much a game as a mental exercise. One night she came over to our place and she taught it to us. It’s stupid but it’s really effective. It’s called Arpy.”

  “How does it work?” said Siri.

  “It’s a sort of way to disguise your language,” said Dtui. “In front of every vowel sound you insert the word ‘arp.’ So, in English the phrase ‘I love you’ would become ‘arp-I larp-ove yarp-ou”. It takes a while to work it out but once you get the flow you can become fluent. It’s great when you don’t want people to know you’re talking about them. It’s harder for the listener but because you know how it’s put together you can deduce what’s been said.”

  “Does it work with Lao?” Civilai asked.

  “Of course,” said Dtui. “Every language has vowel sounds. That night at the dormitory we played it in Lao. So, ‘I love you’ would become “karp-oy harp-uk jarp-ow.’ See?”

  “Then that’s the la
nguage you and Phosy can use to pass on our secret communications,” said Siri.

  “Well, look, I could teach you three easily enough.”

  “Old dogs. New tricks,” said Siri.

  “I don’t—” Dtui began but she was interrupted by another yell from the crowd as the coverage of the race continued on the big screen. Khamon was no longer in the front three. The trailing group had caught up with the leaders and positions had been juggled. The Lao was still in the group but had dropped back to around tenth position, twenty meters behind the leader. He still looked fresh and, well, what was twenty meters in the Olympics? The Lao supporters screamed and waved their flags. The stadium reacted. The camera found its favorite group once more. They’d become a feature. It was a pity so few people back in Laos had a functioning TV.

  The evening crawled in on the back of a pink sky and every five minutes the screen showed the progress of the walkers. Khamon lost touch with the leading group but whenever they caught sight of him in the pack the Lao Cheer would urge him forward. But then came a time when Khamon no longer featured on the screen at all. He was so far back there was no camera to film him. The terraces grew sleepy with occasional bursts of applause for jumpers and tossers but the race had lost its appeal. His teammates feared the worst. Khamon had given up or had been disqualified.

  The next stimulation for the drowsy supporters was when the stadium door opened to the sound of a cannon firing and a single trumpet fanfare. The first of the walkers, a lanky Italian, entered the arena. He was met with a tumultuous reception and a slightly begrudging Lao Cheer. There were those in the squad who still chose to disbelieve the drama they’d seen on the screen. TV was fantasy to them and not always credible. They fixed their gaze on the gate, expecting Khamon to charge into the stadium, but all they saw was a Russian and an East German followed by an assortment of wobbly walkers. But no Khamon.

  “Should we go and look for him?” Siri asked.

  “It was a great beginning,” said Daeng. “He did us proud whatever happened to him.”

  “He did that,” said Civilai.

  All the surviving walkers completed the race. According to the announcement, two had dropped out and seven were disqualified. The field events continued and the Lao considered going home for a drink. But they owed it to the walkers to give a final cheer to the winners. After forty minutes the medal platforms were carried out to the track and three adorable women in ethnic costumes stood before it. The Chairman of the Soviet Race Walk Association began presenting the medals to the winners. He was about to shake hands with the Italian when there came a disturbance from the far side of the stadium.