Disco for the Departed

by Colin Cotterill

  Siri had immediately warmed to Civilai’s middle path so he, too, had been ostracized by the top men of the Party. While Boua soldiered on in her attempts to educate a nation of proletariat, Siri hung up his red flag and became a full-time doctor. That was probably when his wife’s love for him began to dim. In Siri’s heart, the love light never went out. He loved her until her death, but he knew she’d already begun to consider her husband a disappointment. Through all that time, only his friendship with Civilai had kept him rational, and as the Party dumped more and more meaningless duties on Civilai, it was Siri who offered encouragement and hope to his friend.

  The photograph before him showed one more symbolic handshake with one more foreign official. It was another snap for the diplomatic album. Civilai had told Siri he was becoming the Mickey Mouse of the new regime. He—

  “Comrade?” Siri looked up to see the guard whose station was at the upstairs partition standing, drained of color, in the doorway. “You’re a doctor, right?”

  “That’s right,” said Siri.

  “Come with me quick.” He didn’t wait for a response, but turned on his heel and ran back up the stairs four at a time. From his many years of experience, Siri knew that ten seconds saved by sprinting up a flight of stairs rather than walking rarely made a difference, apart from possibly killing the physician as well as the patient. So he took the stairs one at a time and was met by the flustered guard on his way back down.

  “Hurry up,” the guard said. “It’s a life-and-death matter.” Despite the urgency, he’d spared the time to relock the upstairs door before going for Siri. His hands shook now as he attempted to insert the key into the padlock. Siri reached the top landing just as the man burst through the first door and ran along the corridor to a second. That, too, was locked. Siri wondered what ferocious beast required such security measures. As he walked past the first room, he looked in through the open door. Three expensive-looking leather suitcases sat on one of the beds. On the floor was a large tray of seedlings and small pots containing cuttings.

  “In here,” shouted the guard. “He’s not dead yet.”

  On the only bed in the next room, convulsed in pain, frothing at the mouth, was a middle-aged man with greased hair wearing simple but expensive pajamas. On the floor beside the bed, lying on its side, was a brown glass bottle. The label was in Russian but the universal skull and crossbones left no doubt as to its contents. Siri prized open the man’s eyes and looked into his pupils. He then forced open the man’s mouth to see his tongue and sniffed at his breath.

  “They was cleaning the rooms after them others left. Stupid bitch must have left the cleanser in the sink. Don’t know how he got hold of it. Must’ve been on his way back from the toilet and grabbed it without me seeing. Stupid bastard. It’ll be me that gets shot if anything happens.” The guard was ranting, pacing up and down the room. “Hospital! Can we get him to the hospital? Can you fix him up? Doc? Can you, Doc?”

  “Listen, Comrade,” Siri said, looking up at the frantic guard. “ I can’t do anything with you stomping around like a rampant capitalist. I want you to go down to the kitchen and get the ladies to boil two liters of water. Stir in a handful of salt and about 30 cc’s of cooking oil. Don’t come back till it’s all ready.”

  “Right.” The guard abandoned his charge and sped to the kitchen. The poisoned man still squirmed in agony on the bed.

  “It’s OK,” Siri said. “He’s gone. You can stop now.”

  The man flinched for a second but then began to growl deep in his throat. “Hos-pital.”

  “You and I both know that isn’t going to happen, don’t we now?”

  “Dy-ing.”

  “Come on. You’re no more dying than I am. In fact, I probably look in worse condition than you do. Exactly what did you think this little show would achieve?”

  The man spat the remainder of the foam from his mouth and looked up angrily at Siri. “Who in blazes are you?”

  “Dr. Siri Paiboun.”

  “Egad. What are the odds of there being a bloody doctor in a place like this?” He sat up and shook his head.

  “It was a good show. I doubt anyone else would have dared get close enough to smell the toothpaste. I imagine the staff would have thrown you in a truck and carted you off to the medical center in Xam Neua. But I still don’t see what good that would have done you.”

  “No? Well, it’s simple. There wouldn’t have been security in a hospital. I could have sneaked out.”

  “And gone where?”

  “I don’t know, man. Stolen a car? Headed south?”

  “You obviously don’t realize where you are. There’s one road in the direction of Vientiane, and there are some hundred PL and Vietnamese encampments you’d have to pass through on the way. Are you really that desperate to get killed?”

  “Better to die fast from a bullet than after the slow torture your people have planned for me.”

  “How do you know what we’ve planned?”

  “I’m not stupid. I know how you do it. Hard labor, primitive conditions, no access to medicines.”

  “I survived for thirty years in those conditions. Why couldn’t you?”

  “You obviously don’t know who I am.”

  “Oh, I know very well. But that doesn’t answer my question.”

  The man shook his head and looked out the window. “I’ve never had to fend for myself. Just the merest sniffle and I was pumped full of drugs. I have no natural immunity, no resistance, no stamina.”

  “You’d be surprised how quickly your body adapts.”

  “No. It will kill me. I’m certain. Listen. The guard will be back as soon as he completes the ridiculous mission you sent him on. How about you and I come to some … arrangement?”

  “Surely you don’t mean financial?”

  “I have access to more money than you could ever imagine. If you could get me to Thailand, I c—”

  “What would I do with money?”

  “Do? What would anyone do? Live a comfortable life. Be free.”

  Siri laughed. “If you don’t mind my saying so, in your present predicament you’re hardly a glowing advertisement for the combination of wealth and freedom. But, good try, boy. You know, you’re quite unlike your father.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “We met. We spent a night together drinking rice whisky and sharing philosophy. I haven’t spent a great deal of my life in the company of royalty, unless you count playing cards, but I was impressed. He was more resigned to fate than you seem to be.”

  “He’s a defeatist.”

  “He’s a realist. He was here, wasn’t he? And the queen?”

  “They took them away last night. Did you see the room they forced them to stay in? Disgraceful. Goodness knows what awaits them out there in the jungle.”

  “You’re afraid.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Fear helps us survive. I’ve spent a larger portion of my life being afraid than I have being in control. But here I am. Forget this escape idea, son. It won’t help you or your family. Play the game. Find a tall tree somewhere, a tree that’s survived all the coups and massacres of history. Go to that tree and dig a hole near its roots and bury your pride there. Invest all your royal heritage into the majesty of that great tree, stash it there, and become the simple, humble person they’ll ask you to be. Suffer the indignities they inflict on you and impress them with your will. Win them over with your humility. I know that’s what the king and queen will attempt to do.”

  “I … I can’t.”

  “You can. And it will have a deeper and longer-lasting impact than any bravado, any heroics, any royal histrionics you have in mind. Show them you’re a person of character. They won’t know how to respond to that. There’s nothing more disheartening to a bully than a man who doesn’t get scared.”

  Siri picked up the bottle from the floor. The crown prince looked forlornly ahead of him. “Why did
they separate us?”

  “To break your will. You didn’t actually drink any of this, did you?”

  “It was empty.”

  Siri laughed. “You see? You’re a very resourceful lad. You can survive a hundred reeducation camps.”

  The guard came running into the room. He held the handles of the steaming pot with rags wrapped around his fingers. The entire kitchen staff was behind him.

  “It’s done,” the guard said. “What should I do with it?”

  “Throw it down the toilet,” Siri told him. “Better still, boil some decent vegetables for dinner.”

  “What? But you said …”

  “I seem to have performed a medical miracle without it and brought the prince back to life. There won’t be any more problems. We won’t have to boil him in oil after all.”

  “Thank you. Thank you, Doc. Thank you.” The guard mumbled the words a hundred times. The thanks, of course, were for the preservation of his own skin. He had no interest in the well-being of his royal charge.

  Before Siri left the room, he saw the bamboo klooee on the desk. “Ah, so this is the weapon that’s been inflicting pain on us since we got here. You only know the one tune?” he asked.

  “And I can’t even get that right.”

  “When I see you next, you’ll have a thousand tunes of the jungle, and you’ll be playing them to the envy of the birds in the trees. Mark my words.” He gripped the prince’s arm and smiled at him. “Give my regards to your father when next you meet him. He’s an impressive man—with an impressive son.”

  Divine Impotence

  Mr. Geung had left the forested mountain slopes and entered a valley that contained the first rice fields he’d seen on his walk. The rice stubble crunched under his feet. Everything seemed so dry, so dead. His country had been politicked into a drought. With every postrevolution month that passed, the Pathet Lao government was learning how much more difficult it was to run a country of warm bodies than it had appeared to be on paper. For ten years in the caves of Huaphan, the dream had always been to gain power. As few of the cadres honestly believed that dream would ever come true, no detailed plans were laid for the future. No practical policy of public appeasement was worked out. Nothing spoiled a good popular uprising more than the presence of people and the need to satisfy their unreasonable demands.

  In Laos in 1977, the population was becoming more and more restless. The new leaders had been given over a year to show what they were capable of, but successes were rare. Some folks even dared to suggest that the communists were no better than the Royalists. The euphoria of victory was slowly giving way to politburo paranoia, and the resulting measures had caused even more dissent. In an effort to discourage large public gatherings, festivals were either cancelled completely or greatly restricted. They were trimmed of religion, culture, and superstition, which naturally left very little to celebrate. Dr. Siri had compared this with allowing the wearing of spectacles but banning the use of glass lenses.

  One such muted celebration had been the May Rocket Festival. Obviously, the combination of disgruntled villagers and large quantities of gunpowder was more than the authorities could tolerate. The government banned gatherings in built-up areas and restricted all activities to remote fields policed by both uniformed and quite obvious plainclothes soldiers. Female spirit mediums who normally gave the festival its meaning were barred from attending. There was to be no alcohol, no raucous music, and all activities had to be completed before nightfall. The amount of powder allowed for each bamboo shaft was so niggardly that many of the homemade rockets barely left their launchpads. They lurched a few meters into the air, then fizzled, and fell to earth. There were spontaneous screams of panic from the fleeing onlookers but few cheers of delight.

  The consequences of this debacle reached far beyond the disappointed villagers and their wasted day. The Rocket Festival was a fertility rite. The noise and gaiety should have awakened the gods of lust from their yearlong slumber. The spirit mediums would remind the roused deities that the time had come to send the rains and replenish the paddies. The phallic rockets would stimulate a heavenly orgy and the sexual juices would spill over onto the land. Thus would a rich harvest result.

  This was what the villagers believed. The new leaders had no place in their soulless socialist hearts for such mythology. Marxist-Leninist doctrine had no time for fairy tales. Buddhism and animism were sins against rational thought, and logic would always prevail in a communist system. They’d see, these simple folk. The rains would come in May as they always had, and the populace would begin to believe in socialist order.

  The subdued May Day celebrations passed with the same lack of enthusiasm as had the Rocket Festival. May gave way to June and the gods of fertility still slumbered. The skies remained clear and the rice fields cracked and turned to dust. By July the people had no doubt that the new government was responsible for this unprecedented drought. Socialism was having a negative effect on the weather. This was clear to even the most simple of minds. The government’s attempts at quelling dissent had only succeeded in exacerbating it.

  All Mr. Geung knew of this was that the fields crunched under his feet, but his new boots made light of the terrain. They’d belonged to the old lady’s husband, who had no use for them in his funeral pot. They were too small for her son but they fitted Geung to a T and made him feel proud to own them. She’d given him a large pack of dried food and smeared him with a foul-smelling ointment she promised would keep off even the vindictive dengue-bearing mosquitoes that plagued the land.

  “W … we should f … f … follow the road,” he told Dtui, who marched beside him. “But n … n … not be on it.” The old lady had dragged his story from him over breakfast and was sure the soldiers from whom he had escaped would be searching for him.

  “Stay close to the road but not on it,” she’d told him. “If a car or truck comes from behind you that isn’t the green of the army, beg them for a ride. Stay away from anything green. Got it?”

  The words were embedded in his brain but some of the concepts hadn’t taken root. “From behind you” was surely confusing, because if he turned around, anywhere could be behind him. And as he always looked out through the leaves of trees, it seemed that everything he saw passing along the road was green.

  Geung had walked for the whole day. The urgency of returning to the morgue was his impetus. He ached. He wheezed. His anxiety rose and fell, as if he were riding to Vientiane on the back of a dragon. But when he heard a loud crack and saw a bloodstain appear on the front of his shirt, he was surprisingly calm.

  “A … a … a bullet wound,” he said as if assessing his state for observers at the morgue. He stood still and watched the red rose grow into a country, one of the countries in Dtui’s atlas that she tried to convince him contained millions of people. What tiny, tiny people they must be. The stain grew to something like the USSR before Geung’s eyes. He became pale and dropped like a fence post to the ground.

  More panic. More emergencies and disasters. Soon, emergencies fell into a sort of natural ranking: drop-everything emergencies, do-what-you-can emergencies, and you’ll-justhave-to-wait emergencies. Disasters, too, had their own ratings: unavoidable, did-the-best-we-could, my fault/your fault. Then there were godlike moments when a decision had to be made as to who most deserved to die. By the afternoon of her second day, Dtui wondered whether her heart had shrunk. She felt less. People had become less human. Death had become less of a tragedy. Her patients weren’t blacksmiths or housewives, they were percentages. “With this little skill and this little pharmaceutical backup, this patient—let’s call her number seven—has a forty percent chance of survival.”

  It amazed and saddened her that, in order to do her job properly, she had to stop caring. With all his years of battlefield surgery, she understood now that Dr. Siri must have been working the percentages for a long time. It hadn’t made him cold, just philosophical. The burden was less if he lost patients when the odds we
re against him. Dtui had to play it that way, too, at Kilometer 8.

  The lull came midafternoon. They’d sent two up the slope. They’d stabilized three. Dtui was on an adrenaline high that lifted her like a flying carpet. Tired though she was, a sledgehammer to the head couldn’t have put her to sleep. She prowled the wards like a large unblinking polar bear. She bullied patients to stay alive, ordered medicines to work. At the end of the ward, the Hmong orderly, Meej, was searching without hope for a vein on the chopstick-thin arm of a patient. Meej was a stocky, good-looking man in his twenties. Like Dtui, his natural expression was a smile.

  Dtui massaged the patient’s arm until a faint bluish shadow appeared, which she speared with the hypodermic. Within seconds the patient was connected to his drip and she steered the intern outside.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Drowned,” he confessed.

  “You and me both. Just keep a score of the ones you save. That’s how I do it. Don’t count the others. They would have gone anyway.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  “I wanted to ask you about Mrs. Duaning.”

  “Is she dead yet?”

  “Weak, but holding on. What I was curious about was the blood on her feet.”

  “Ah, that. It’s an old superstition. If there’s something seriously wrong, the relatives daub blood on the feet.”

  “Medically wrong?”

  “Sometimes, or sometimes mentally. It keeps the evil spirits out.”

  “But this blood appears all by itself.”

  Meej laughed. “No, it doesn’t.”