“My God,” Lit said. “You mean he was alive when he went into the concrete?”
“It looks that way,” Dtui confirmed.
“What a terrible way to die. Who could have done such a thing?”
“I’d have to suppose, judging from the size of the original body, that it was somebody of enormous strength,” Siri replied.
“Or several people,” Dtui added.
“Yes, indeed. Good point. Comrade Lit, do you think the president would object if we used the meeting room in his house as a makeshift morgue?”
“I have the key,” Lit told him. “But he’ll be here next week for the concert.”
“If we haven’t worked this out by then, we never will, son. It doesn’t take me that long to concede defeat.”
Judge Haeng came back from another half day of fussy domestic disputes in his courtroom. A city whose criminals and potential criminals had all been incarcerated, in which crime had been abolished, was a dull place for a magistrate. He walked past the desks of the Justice Department clerks, who sat sweating into their clunky typewriters. They nodded with little enthusiasm as their young boss went by. In the year since he’d taken up his position fresh from Moscow, he hadn’t spoken to any of them civilly. Usually he addressed them through Mrs. Manivone, the senior clerk. When he approached her desk, she stood politely and smiled her meaningless smile. She wore a neatly ironed khaki blouse and a black pasin ankle-length straight skirt. Usually, she was equally unruffled.
“Good health, Judge Haeng.”
“Has he gone?”
“Who?”
“The freak at the morgue.”
She sighed. “If you mean Mr. Geung, they collected him last night. He should be there on Wednesday.”
“Good. Excellent.” He set off for his office.
“It’s just …”
He turned back. “What?”
“Well, I’m not sure I understand, Judge. Everybody’s very fond of Mr. Geung.”
“Fond? Fond? Are we running a government department or a home for social outcasts? I’m very fond of my grandmother”—Mrs. Manivone didn’t believe that—“but I wouldn’t give her a responsible job in the national morgue. What image would foreign visitors take home if they came and saw a moron working for the state?”
She had a number of possible responses to that but, under her breath, all she managed was, “One of compassion?”
“What was that?”
“I don’t think Dr. Siri’s going to be very pleased about it when he returns.”
The judge sauntered back to her. “Oh, you don’t?”
“No.”
He leaned on her desk and raised his voice so the others could hear. “And remind me—does Dr. Siri work for the Justice Department?”
“Yes, Judge Haeng.”
“And am I the head of the Justice Department, missy?”
Manivone once again reminded herself she had three children to feed. “Yes, Judge Haeng.”
“So, does he do what I tell him, or do I do what he tells me?”
“Well, neither, in fact, as I’ve seen, Comrade.” It was a rash comment, albeit true. She knew there was a Party slogan on its way.
“Now, don’t get fresh, Comrade Manivone. Every bee in the socialist hive is as important as the next. But if the worker doesn’t show respect to the queen, the honey does not flow as sweetly. Remember that.”
“Yes, Judge Haeng.”
He looked around at the clerks, whose heads snapped back to their work. He smiled and walked smugly to his office. It would have been a spectacular exit had the door handle not stuck again. He swore at it and finally fought his way into the room before slamming the door.
“God save the queen,” mumbled one clerk to the muffled laughter of his colleagues.
As the truck drove farther and farther from Vientiane, Mr. Geung’s anxiety level increased. Some of the soldiers feared that something might burst inside him. To them he seemed like an animal caught in a trap, one who might bite off his own foot in order to escape. Even the sergeant felt a pang of guilt as he watched Geung shuddering on the bench. But he had his directive: delivery to a work team in the north. The order had come from the Justice Department so he was in no position to argue. Once the sun had gone down, their prisoner stopped responding to the soldiers’ questions, and no attempt to cheer him up was productive. They couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of Geung’s feeling of guilt for letting his friends down, or how terribly lonely and sad he was.
The unit was to spend the night at the Eighth Battalion camp just outside Van Khi. The truck pulled into the fenced compound and Geung looked up to see the gate close behind him. There was no escape.
The Missing Moron
An autopsy has one purpose: to solve mysteries that surround a death. If, after three hours, the original mysteries remain and have been supplemented by even deeper mysteries, one should begin to consider the procedure a failure. Siri and Dtui looked at each other with every new unanswerable question and shook their heads. Admittedly, the condition of the corpse made their task a good deal more difficult. The cement had been laid in late January so the body had slowly mummified over the subsequent five months. Everything had contracted to the point that wounds or any traces of disease would have become hidden in the tight carapace which the skin had become or the tangle of knots beneath it.
However, three small oddities had presented themselves right away. First, clenched tightly in the right fist was a key— a long, thin type with a circular top and an uncomplicated shape at the bottom. Second, and no surprise to either of them, the corpse’s teeth were pink, indicating the man had probably died a violent death. Third, sticking up from the concrete where the victim’s chest had laid, they found a long broken fingernail, although the corpse’s own nails were trimmed short. It was coated in some type of varnish that had kept it in good condition. They could only conclude that the nail had originally been embedded in the victim’s skin.
These peculiarities had been comparatively easy to spot. The others took longer. For example, they hadn’t discovered the bullet hole in the chest until much later, and only after a meticulous inch-by-inch fingertip examination of the skin. Siri was able to insert a French crochet needle deep into the minute aperture but couldn’t make contact with the bullet. They decided that they would have to wait to make an internal examination.
There were a number of characteristics that suggested the man wasn’t Asian. The bone structure of the face and the fullness of the lips suggested that the corpse was negroid. Siri assumed that to a degree this could have resulted from postmortem distortion but the skin itself was darker than he’d ever seen due to mummification. The corpse’s teeth confirmed Siri’s hypothesis. Dtui had been able to carefully chip the concrete away from them to reveal the shape of the palate. The upper incisors formed a deep U, and that strongly suggested the dead man had been of African ancestry.
The dissection of the body hadn’t produced a great deal more information. Dtui and Siri were mystified by such a neat hole with no trace of a bullet. The channel didn’t pass completely through the body, but no amount of searching had turned it up. This they added to their list of questions.
Lit came to hear their findings. He sat with them around a thermos of tea and three tin cups on the veranda of the guesthouse. It was four in the afternoon and surprisingly quiet. They hadn’t yet got around to discussing the victim.
“Looks like the policemen got lost,” Dtui said, noting that the trucks hadn’t returned. Siri hadn’t thought to tell her of his suspicions as to their fate.
Comrade Lit was more forthcoming.“The American lackeys won’t be back tonight,” he told her quite casually. Siri was used to the labels the Party attached to the officials of the old regime, but he saw Dtui’s eyebrows rise as if she was seeing a different version of the chief. She shouldn’t have been surprised. A cadre didn’t rise to the position of security head at such a young age without knowing how to tightrope walk along t
he Party line. It was an ever-swaying line and it was easy to fall off.
“Why not?” Dtui asked.
“They’ve been transferred to a camp,” Lit told her.
“Really? I didn’t see them loading their suitcases onto the truck this morning.”
“No.”
It was a no that Lit anticipated would mark the end of this line of inquiry, but he didn’t know Dtui.
“How can they be transferred without their belongings?”
Siri could see her stepping very close to the edge. Lit had been most polite all day, but staunch Party members didn’t expect to be questioned; they weren’t used to it.
“I think we should talk about our cement man,” the doctor said.
But Lit wished to continue. “They won’t need belongings where they’re going, Nurse Dtui.”
“No belongings?” Dtui stood at the very edge of the crumbling precipice. “No clothes? No toiletries? No mementos of home?”
“No.”
“Why on earth not?” There was suddenly a vacuum between the two.
“Because they have to learn to live without them.”
“Live without clothes? It’s cold up here at night. They’ll catch their deaths.”
“That may be the case. Those who aren’t able to adapt to new conditions naturally become their victims.”
Siri tried again. “I think we should—”
“Adapt? What? Do you expect them to grow thick body hair overnight?” She had plummeted down into the chasm and was beyond saving.
Lit straightened in his seat and spoke loudly. “We aren’t animals, Comrade Dtui. Of course we provide them with a blanket each and basic supplies. But we expect the early days at Seminar to be hard for the corrupt American lackeys who have lived fat lives bleeding the masses. Their own excesses have softened them. We’re giving them an opportunity to become valuable members of society.”
“Through hard labor and cruelty?”
“Dtui!” Siri raised his voice. He was becoming annoyed, not by the questions, which he considered valid, but because she’d failed to recognize the right time to keep her mouth shut.
Lit was on the attack now. “Your type never takes the trouble to understand.”
“My type? And what exactly is—”
“Shut up!” Siri smashed his tin cup down hard onto the table. Tea bounced out of it and splashed across the varnished wooden surface. “Both of you. I didn’t travel four hundred kilometers to argue ideology. We’re here to discuss a crime, and a horrible crime at that. Would you both mind showing a little professional discipline?”
It was the closest Dtui had ever seen her boss come to throwing a tantrum. She suspected he was bluffing but she knew she’d pushed too far. “Sorry, Doc. You’re right.”
Lit still glared at her but spoke to Siri. “You’re right, of course, Dr. Siri. What information do you have for me from today’s inspection?”
With a sigh of relief, Siri described the condition of the corpse and the peculiarities they had found. Dtui kept silent.
“In conclusion,” Siri said, “it appears that the gentleman was shot, then, still alive, was held under the wet cement until he, in effect, drowned. It was certainly the cement that killed him, although I imagine the gunshot wound would have weakened him considerably. It punctured a lung.”
“And you believe he was black,” Lit added, now nothing more or less than a sober investigator of crime.
“I wouldn’t bet my life on it but I strongly suspect so. That would have to make him Cuban.”
“Why?” Dtui asked, breaking her silence.
“The only dark-skinned foreigners you’re likely to find up here are Cubans,” Siri said. “Mr. Castro has been very generous with aid and personnel. There used to be a joint Cuban-Vietnamese hospital project not far from here.”
“They’re still here,” Lit told him.
“Really? Is Dr. Santiago still in charge?”
“He’s managing the hospital aid money, I believe. I wouldn’t say he’s in charge of anything.”
“Ah, good. I know him well, or at least as well as two men can who don’t share a common language. It might be a good idea to pay a social call on the good doctor and see if they lost any Cubans around the time the path was laid.”
“Then, er, I can leave that line of inquiry up to you, Doctor?”
Siri thought it odd the security man would relinquish his role in the investigation to a mere coroner but didn’t bother to ask why. He enjoyed a bit of detective work. “Certainly.”
“Good,” Lit said. “Then I should get back to my office. I’ll check in with you the same time tomorrow. I’ve arranged for the kitchen here to provide you with food three times a day. The staff won’t have much else to do for another week.” He stood and nodded.
“Until the next batch of lackeys arrives,” Dtui told Siri. If Lit heard her, he ignored the comment and walked away. Once his jeep reached the dirt road, Siri glared at Dtui and shook his head.
“What?” she asked.
“You haven’t spent very much time around communists, have you?”
“You’re a communist.”
“There’s a vast difference between being a paid-up member of the Party and being a communist. Real communists take life quite seriously. If you don’t agree with their doctrine, then you’re the enemy.”
“Their doctrine? Dr. Siri, you’re one of them. It’s your doctrine, too.”
“And there were long periods when I truly believed. In fact, I still think a well-run socialist system could rescue the world from its lethargy and selfishness. But it’s something people should come to of their own accord, through common sense …”
“Not torture.”
“Correct. But it isn’t a situation you’re going to change by attempting to shout down people like Comrade Lit. Nobody shouts louder than a Red.”
“So how’s it going to change?”
“It’ll burn itself out.”
“But before then a lot of people are going to suffer.”
“And I don’t want one of them to be you. So keep that pretty mouth buttoned. And that’s an order. You aren’t going to make a dribble of a difference. You know what they say about loose tongues.”
“They fall out?”
Siri laughed. He never had been able to maintain an effective show of severity for any sustained period. Dtui sulked but she understood. She knew Siri’s views had been derived from years of trying to make changes from the inside and failing. His relationship with the woman he loved and was faithful to for almost forty years had brought him into the Communist Party and kept him there. But he’d been distant enough from it to see the Pathet Lao become the lapdogs of the Vietnamese, just as the Royalists had slobbered around the heels of the French and the Americans. He was resigned to the fact that his Lao brethren were destined always to be the fools of some bigger fools. He wasn’t a terrific example of a man who knew when to keep his mouth shut, but Dtui knew he didn’t offer advice lightly.
That night, exhausted though he was, Siri still rolled sleeplessly from side to side on the lumpy mattress. So many ghosts were calling to him from the fields. Impressionable young cadres were among them. He’d put many back together in field hospitals after their encounters with the Hmong resistance. They were telling him, “Look at us. What good did it do? All you did was fix us up so we could go and be killed in the next battle.” They were right. He didn’t want to listen to them. He wanted to sleep, but in sleep he’d have to face the malevolent spirits who lurked in the dark alleyways of his nightmares.
In the starless blackness of the chilly night, even with his eyes wide open, he could see none of the ill-matching furniture and not even the hand he held out before him. An invisible beetle was fluttering against the mosquito netting and he focused his attention on the buzzing of its wings. By imagining he could see it, by listening only to the buzz, he believed he could hypnotize himself asleep. And he was almost right. The voices had stopped, he was
dipping in and out of consciousness, and at exactly the moment he was about to fall, the infernal discotheque started up again. Even though it seemed to come from afar, the tremor of the bass worked its way across the ground like an earthquake, reaching the second floor of the guesthouse. It vibrated through the bedposts, through Siri.
What had happened to his country’s youth, he wondered, that they had developed such awful taste in music? This wailing of tortured Americans, could it be deemed music at all? He lost count of the number of grating tunes he had to endure before he finally found the sleep he craved.
In the sleep world it was quiet, a rare quiet for his dream. A crow sat high on a wire beside a sparrow. They were a long way above the ground. This was a wire that could only have existed in a dream, because a T-28 fighter passed beneath it, strafing the fields with its guns. Bombs plunged into the paddies and sank into the mud, none exploding. It was a silent dream without even the accompaniment of music. The crow preened the sparrow as if both were unaware of their positions in the caste of birds or their proximity to a battle. They were engrossed in one another. Nothing else seemed to matter. It was a peaceful scene: the birds preening, the T-28 strafing, the nonexploding bombs tumbling.
Siri was suddenly shocked to find himself standing outside his mosquito net. He was shuddering, clad only in his undershorts: a slightly chewy smorgasbord for carnivorous insects. He had no idea why he’d left the sanctuary of the mesh or why he was standing there. Now light from a full moon oozed through the curtains, and he saw that in the vacant bed on the far side of his room, a child lay. She was about four years old and malnourished. When Siri walked over to her she looked up at him.
“When did you get here, darling?” he asked. “Why don’t you have a mosquito net?”
She smiled. When she spoke, her voice seemed older than her apparent age. “I don’t have much time, uncle.”
“What can I do?”
“Take notice of what you see,” she said.
Disco for the Departed Page 4