Disco for the Departed

by Colin Cotterill

  “All right,” he said aloud, his words bouncing around the inside of the cave. “Then there had to be another key in someone else’s possession. Whoever that was—and let’s, for argument’s sake, say it was Isandro—must have taken out whatever was in the cupboard and put a bat in its place. Perhaps it was an accident and he didn’t see the creature fly in. But why would he bother to relock an empty wardrobe?” Siri was no expert on the eating habits of bats. All he knew was that they tasted like duck and were very good for your health. But he assumed a bat could live no longer than two weeks without food or drink. That would suggest Isandro had still been in the cave for several months after his friend was killed.

  He knew there were more holes in his hypothesis than there were pots in the Plain of Jars. But at least now he had one; it gave him something to work from. He spent the next half hour searching through the contents of the room. Everything was veiled in a shimmering layer of spiderwebs that reflected the torchlight like frost. There was one knapsack; small piles of clothing; a shaving and washing kit; some Spanish language books; candles; two Soviet-issue Makarov Pistolets, both unloaded; small packets of dried rations—tea, coffee, powdered milk; a tray of what had once been vegetables—now fossils; matches; and an old flashlight whose batteries had leaked and left a crusty white layer on everything around it.

  If the sacrificial items had been removed from Kilometer 8, there was no sign of them in this room or anywhere in the president’s cave. If Odon had continued to practice black magic upon his return, he’d practiced it somewhere else.

  Siri was surprised to find the passports of both men inside an old tin can standing on a makeshift shelf. With them were bundles of Lao kip rolled in rubber bands. They were beautifully printed with a broad-jawed, crew-cut king glaring defiantly, but, as a result of two devastating devaluations and a switch to the watery liberation kip, they presently had no value beyond the aesthetic.

  Siri had seen enough and he was feeling claustrophobic. He went back to the side door and stepped into the glaring daylight. As his eyes became used to the dazzle, he looked down to see that his dark blue safari shirt and black trousers had picked up a thick layer of white dust. He was about to slap at himself to shake it off when he noticed the dust was moving. He scooped the side of his hand against his sleeve and looked more closely. He was surprised but not startled to find that he was covered from collar to cuff in tiny white spiders. As he’d cleared away their webs in order to search the room, the owners had one by one attached themselves to his clothing. He looked admiringly at himself—millions of tiny spiders reflected the sunlight like a slowly shifting Elvis Presley suit.

  Siri arrived back at Guesthouse Number One to find Lit’s jeep parked out front. He wondered why it was that he was doing most of the work on this murder inquiry himself while the head of the security division made brief guest appearances and took a lot of notes. As he was climbing the front steps, an answer of sorts came to him. Lit, just as Santiago had suggested, was an administrator. He was faithful to the Party and was being promoted vertically—this month, head of security; next month, head of sanitation. It had very little to do with ability and everything to do with trust. He’d never been a policeman, had no investigative training, and didn’t have a clue how to handle this, his most serious high-profile crime. He had men under him who might have been competent police officers, but he couldn’t be seen relinquishing control over anything so important. So Siri was his solution.

  “Dr. Siri, I didn’t think you’d ever return,” the chief said, rising from his seat to shake the doctor’s hand.

  “Comrade Lit, you could have come by Kilometer 8 at any time. You knew where I was.”

  “Didn’t want to disturb you all. I know how hectic it can get out there. Come to the dining room. I brought us some Vietnamese beer. I can’t wait to hear how our investigation’s going.”

  The beer turned out to be a mistake. It was warm and slightly flat, and Siri knew from experience he’d have a thumping headache the following morning. But the debriefing was pleasant enough. Omitting only the encounter with the spirit of Odon and the bat, he told Lit everything exactly as it had happened—the altar, the sacrifices, the secret hideout in the president’s cave. Lit took notes and looked impressed. That seemed to be the sum total of his contribution. He’d had no luck locating Colonel Ha Hung’s family and hadn’t found anyone who’d seen the two Cubans returning from Hanoi. Siri wondered whether the man was actually trying.

  One thing that had been niggling at Siri was why the powers-that-be would spend a lot of money constructing a nice pathway from the president’s house to his cave, as the cave was deserted and nobody had shown a moment’s interest in it since it fell vacant. Lit reminded him that this was a historic site like Lincoln’s cabin or Hitler’s bunker and that, in the not too distant future, large parties of tourists would be making pilgrimages to Vieng Xai to see where the proud and glorious republic had taken shape.

  That reason satisfied Siri, although he had trouble imagining bus tours to Vieng Xai. They drank their beer from teacups, and Lit drove off into a mist that had arrived along with the night.

  Now Siri found himself sitting on the veranda with a strong coffee. He missed the sound of the klooee playing its single tune. The upstairs guard was gone, the plywood partition disassembled, and the rooms empty. None of the staff seemed to know, or was prepared to say, where the royal family had been moved to, but he doubted he’d ever see them again. The kitchen people had gone to bed and made Siri promise to take his cup to his room when he retired. The cups, like the plates and cutlery, were numbered and had to be accounted for at the end of each month.

  After two days at the busy hospital, he was enjoying the late-night peace of Vieng Xai. Despite having the makings of a city, it was still inhabited by country people who went to bed early and rose with the sun. He enjoyed the feeling of cold and a damp sky so low he felt he could stand on a chair and reach into it. He enjoyed the distant crowing of badly tuned cockerels and the barking of lemurs high on the karsts. He felt a marvelous peace. And then, as if the god of unhappiness had caught him enjoying himself, the blasted discotheque started up. It was no record player, no radio broadcast. The ground beneath him trembled from the bass. He heard youths whooping along to a chorus they didn’t know the words to.

  He hadn’t yet had the opportunity to go to his room, so his bag with its flashlight was still beside him on the seat. Something urged him to go and see for himself—to follow the beat and see where it led. An echo in a valley littered with stone outcrops can be deceptive, but he guessed the sounds were coming from the direction of the military cave complex. It was about half a mile away, beyond the football field. He emptied the grounds of his coffee and put the cup in his bag. The walk would have proven difficult without the flashlight. There were no stars, no moon, and with all the guesthouse staff in bed, no lights from anywhere to guide his way. Only the throbbing of the ground beneath his feet and the increased volume of the music gave him direction. But something odd began to happen as he pursued the sound. He got rhythm.

  Siri and Boua had slow danced in little student cafés in Paris during their years of study. When they’d returned to Laos, they’d enjoyed the drunken lumwong circle dances, a slow-motion swatting of mosquitoes to music. But none of these demanded a great sense of rhythm, which was just as well because Siri didn’t have one to speak of. He wasn’t a natural head nodder or foot tapper, yet here he was, amazingly, walking in time to the beat. His hips were actually swaying. The middle finger of his right hand began to strike repeatedly against its thumb like a match on a damp box. It was a bizarre but not totally unpleasant experience. He felt some inexplicable connection to the music that he wouldn’t previously have believed possible.

  He crossed the potholed football field and headed along the dirt track that led to the general’s house and the army caves behind it. He’d been to them a number of times. Above were the cave apartments of the military hierarchy. Be
low was an enormous natural cavern that had been converted into an auditorium. There was a concrete stage at one end with a deep orchestra pit in front of it. The ground rose in gentle tiers to the rear wall where the mouth of the cave was wide enough to let in natural light during the day and a current of cool air at night. It had a flow of spring-water to quench the thirst of concertgoers and acoustics to shame La Scala.

  This was to be the site of the following week’s Friendship and Cooperation Concert, an all-star event to mark the signing of the Lao-Vietnamese Twenty-Five-Year Treaty of Cooperation and Friendship. All the old cave dwellers would return for a nostalgic weekend. They’d entertain their foreign guests in the smart new houses, and on Sunday night, bring them to this underground marvel to watch the top Vietnamese dancers and musicians perform. Then, they would lumwong themselves to rice-whisky oblivion before being carried back to their lodgings. Siri had asked Lit why all the entertainment was Vietnamese. Huaphan province protruded geographically into its neighbor like a large lady’s bottom sticking out of a bathroom window, but as far as the doctor knew, it was still Laos. Lit recited all the appropriate propaganda—“showing respect to its Vietnamese guests,” “learning from more experienced performers,” but he hadn’t been able to explain why Laos couldn’t produce one act to impress its visitors.

  These thoughts were going through Siri’s left-right bobbing head as he reached the vortex of the noise. He told himself this must be a rehearsal. They were testing the sound system, checking the acoustics for the microphone. Disco music was all they had on tape. It was a logical explanation and he could probably bring himself to forgive them. He’d spent his last thirty years around soldiers for whom the phrase “following orders” overrode all social and moral considerations.

  The thick gooseberry bushes that had once disguised the mouth of the cavern had been cleared, so Siri walked unhindered up to the entrance. There was a high stile fashioned out of stone that he had to climb over before reaching the steps that led down into the hall. But from the top of the rock he was able to see all the way to the stage. His breath left him. He sat on the stile with a bump. A second later and his legs would have given way. The concert hall was full—full to overflowing—full to rib-crushing, joint-jumping insanity. He had no idea where the music was coming from. There was no deejay on the stage, no visible sound system, but the music was loud and throbbing. He tapped his foot to the beat and scanned the assembled throng in disbelief. These weren’t trendy young kids in wide-collared shirts and flared trousers. They were common folk. They were farmers, mothers with babies strapped to their backs, old men. The only teenagers he saw wore stained uniforms and confused expressions as if they’d stumbled in by mistake. Rarely in Huaphan had such a diverse crowd assembled in one place to share an experience so enthusiastically.

  Apart from a fondness for jazz, Siri had no interest in American music and would have failed the simplest quiz on its origins and genres. But either from Dtui or the other nurses at Mahosot, he’d heard the word disco. He’d been amazed at how it had managed to squeeze through the gaps in anti-American feeling. After he’d learned what it was called, he heard it often on Thai radio broadcasts. It was for sale on the black market for commandeered U.S. belongings. Lao bands sneaked numbers into their repertoires and fooled the government spies into thinking it was ethnic tribal music. And here it was now in the concert cave in Huaphan.

  Circulation had returned to Siri’s legs and they were swaying like windshield wipers to the music. His brief feeling of panic had turned to excitement. He’d known immediately what these enthusiastic partygoers had in common. They’d all been deprived the opportunity to enjoy life without fear. They were the innocent victims of the endless war. All they asked was to live their simple lives, but they’d made one mistake. They’d been born in a province that had become a political front line. For reasons they didn’t really understand, they were the enemy, and what good is war, what is its point, if nobody suffers? The dancers at the disco-cave concert had all suffered to varying degrees, then the suffering had stopped. They had died. Siri had never been exposed to anything like this magnitude of spiritual boogie. He was a relative novice. He’d heard voices but never seen such a sight as this. Three ghosts were a crowd to him.

  A week earlier, he would have smiled and gone home at this point. There would have been nothing to be gained by staying. But tonight he found himself walking down the steps to join the dancers. He knew he was hosting a spirit with rhythm and who was he to begrudge the man his final bop? No one showed any hostility toward the old doctor. Nobody paid attention to him. It was as if he were the only one who wasn’t there. He pushed his way politely through the crowd without actually making contact and began moving in ways he’d never before moved.

  A half hour later he was still there, still dancing. He was exhausted but he couldn’t stop. He knew the anatomy of the human body intimately and could account for aches in every one of his muscles, but he was just a vehicle tonight. His failing breath wheezed like a Bulgarian air-conditioning unit. The music seemed louder, thumping against his ears. People crowded in on all sides. Flashing lights from nowhere blinded him. One spotlight seemed to pick him out—spot prize—top dancer—crowd recedes—he struts his stuff alone—the microphone: “Hey!”

  He said, “Hey.”

  “Hey, Comrade.”

  He said, “Hey, Comrade.”

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  He said, “Wha …” Siri looked into the bright spot and then beyond it. There was now just the one light. It was being held by a man in an army jacket several sizes too big for him and a knitted hat. He was directing his flashlight directly into Siri’s face. The doctor looked around at the cold, deserted limestone cavern.

  “You got no right to be here. What are you playing at alone in the dark?” the old watchman asked. “You drunk or something?”

  Siri stood bent forward with his hands on his knees, struggling for breath. His body had just completed the Alpine section of the Tour de France. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. But as soon as he had the breath and the strength, he started to laugh. The watchman was sure Siri was crazy and took a step back.

  “Sorry, Comrade,” Siri said at last. “Rehearsing for next week’s show.”

  “You don’t say. That doesn’t seem right to me, making an old fella like you perform. They should be ashamed of themselves.”

  “I’m a lot younger than I look, brother.”

  “Well, I suppose you must know what you’re doing. Don’t you stay here all night, now.”

  “I won’t. Thanks.”

  The beam swung around and the watchman followed it into an ominous tunnel on the far side of the auditorium. Siri remained standing in the center of the huge, people-less discotheque feeling more than a little silly, but somehow invigorated.

  A Thoroughly Decent Proposal

  Mr. Geung had been in the tree for eighteen hours. He could tell the time quite well but his watch was hidden safely under a loose tile beneath his bed at Mahosot. So eighteen hours was a guess. It could have been three hours or a week. He still had food and some water, but he was missing sleep. He hadn’t been able to work out how to catch a little shut-eye without falling to the ground. His shoulder ached but he’d changed the dressing as instructed and the wound looked free of infection. He was something of an authority on the look of wounds but only now realized how much they hurt. Climbing up the tree hadn’t helped in that regard. He was quite proud that he’d been able to get as high as he had with one arm. He’d never been much of a tree climber, but then again he’d never had such an incentive.

  The tiger hadn’t chased him up the tree, not in the sense that the animal runs, is about to pounce, and its prey is forced to scurry up to a high branch in panic. That hadn’t been the way it was. Geung had been sitting waiting for the sun to return to his shoulder strap when he first noticed the tiger at the edge of the clearing. The only time he’d ever see
n anything like it had been at the last New Year show. It had been apparent then, from the reaction of the audience, that large cats with fangs were fearsome creatures. By the end of the show, he’d been as nervous as all the other onlookers. The sense of danger is contagious, and that is just as well, for, without it, he might very well have gone over to the animal to make friends. If the tiger had been of a mind, she could have attacked and devoured Mr. Geung during any one of his eleven attempts to get up the tree. It was, however, daylight, and her prey was still strong. She had him cornered and weakness would finally overcome him.

  Dtui and Geung sat there in the tree exchanging jokes and laughing at their predicament. They kept each other awake. Once, when the tiger attempted to climb up after them, Dtui egged on her champion as he poked at the drooling mouth of the cat with a dry twig. It was fun having his friend there. Only fatigue and discomfort stopped it from being a most enjoyable adventure.

  Dtui was in the sleeping ward. Again the image of Geung came into her head. If only there had been a telephone in the morgue she might have phoned to see if everything was fine. The bed vacated by Mrs. Nuts was now being used by little Panoy. She still hadn’t regained consciousness but her pulse was as strong as a horse’s. Dtui could recognize the signs of a fighter. She’d already made up her mind to do all she could to reunite the girl with her relatives and see her settled into some semblance of a normal life.

  She stroked Panoy’s hair from her forehead and turned from the bed. To her surprise, Comrade Lit was standing in the doorway. With the sun at his back, he looked positively godlike. The new epaulets on the shoulders of his uniform glinted like wings. For a second she almost forgot she didn’t like him.

  “Nurse Dtui.” He nodded stiffly.

  “Comrade Lit. Can I help you?”

  “I’d be grateful if you could spare me a few moments.”

  “Shoot,” she said.