Disco for the Departed

by Colin Cotterill

  The neighbors came by regularly to bring food and drink and put balm on Geung’s dry skin. He remembered their faces. He remembered the old midwife, who had been old when she birthed Geung and was still old today. She used a syringe to drain the fluid from Geung’s ears, a duty she’d performed regularly while he was growing up, and as ever, hers was the first voice to enter his head when his hearing returned.

  “It’s lovely to see you back, young Geung.”

  Hearing brought him back to reality. He could make out questions now from the curious visitors and answer them. In a place with no electricity and no other entertainment, people came by to listen to his memories of the hospital and Dr. Siri’s morgue—the cases they’d worked on. Of course, his version was simplified and left out some rather vital details, but for the simple people of Thangon, that was probably not a bad thing.

  There was no way he could know what was slowly happening there in his old home. His father, the wise seer, in order to feather his own financial nest, had turned out children with the same regularity as a factory producing meatballs. The people of Thangon had said, “How clever he is, that Watajak. Seven kids and he’ll never have to work again.” And here he was today sitting in the shadows like a fool. Who respected him now? Who listened to him? He watched as people came to hear the wise words of his son. The moron had become a genius.

  Autopsy of the Pink Orchid

  The people from Vientiane had already arrived in Vieng Xai to set up for the concert. The following day, the flight from Hanoi would bring the entertainers. There’d be a day for rehearsals, then, on the Sunday morning, the delegates and Party chiefs would start to arrive. Comrade Khong was therefore most insistent that Dr. Siri should move the body out of the concert hall kitchen immediately.

  Comrade Khong was a severe man with a large chest and menacing eyes. No earthquake, no invasion, and certainly no autopsy would stand in the way of his carefully charted preparations for the Friendship and Cooperation Concert. The housekeepers were equally indignant about the slices of dismembered mummy littering the president’s meeting room. They, too, had to go. Absolutely barred from Guesthouse Number One, which was undergoing a top-to-bottom spring clean, the two Cubans were returned to the scene of the first act, the Kilometer 8 Hospital.

  Lit had spent the night writing and copying his detailed report. It lacked only one final paragraph outlining the findings of the last autopsy, that of Hong Lan, the pink orchid. Now he sat on the bench in front of the same middle-school classroom where Siri had spent his night with the buffaloes. None of the patients in the other buildings who looked out at him through their windows could work out why he was wearing a gas mask.

  If they’d sat beside him they would have known. Inside the classroom, sweating and confused, Siri and Dtui sat on either side of the skeleton that had once been a beautiful Vietnamese girl. They wore three surgical masks apiece over their mouths and noses. The middle mask had been liberally spread with aromatic Tiger Balm. But nothing could possibly take away the awful smell that permeated the room and everything in it. They’d laughed at Comrade Lit when he’d arrived in his mask. They’d told him their noses were used to the smell of death. But if the glass hadn’t been so restrictive, they would now have been wearing the extra two he’d brought along for them. In all their time in the morgue, they’d never smelled anything like this.

  One mummy; one body preserved as adipocere, but now reacting to the air; and one more, interred in a plastic body bag and subjected to the natural ravages of bacteria—each rotted at its own pace, each with its own unique scent of death. The combination was overwhelming, but the doctor wanted all three together to make comparisons and provide inspiration. During the autopsy of Hong Lan, they found their first similarity. Just as in the case of Isandro, what traces remained of the diaphragm suggested that it had been punctured. The body bag had slowed the process of decomposition sufficiently to leave a number of clues that might otherwise have been erased by vermin. Although there were no organs left within the carcass, score marks on the inside of the rib cage suggested that some amateur surgery had been conducted. Those two items combined pointed to the possibility that Hong Lan’s heart had also been removed.

  The tendons and ligaments had so far resisted decomposition, and, the uterus was still partly intact.

  “My goodness, take a look at this,” Siri said to Dtui.

  “What is that?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Well, they look like fibroids, but she was only—what?— eighteen?”

  “Unusual, isn’t it? I wonder whether this is the reason for her hospitalization.”

  “I thought fibroids were benign.”

  “Not always. And don’t forget, there may have been cysts as well. But even if that was the case, there wouldn’t be any trace by now.”

  “Is there some way we can find out?”

  Siri cleared an area behind the cervix to get a better look at the spinal column. “Oh, my.”

  “What?”

  “Can you see?”

  “What is that? What’s happened to her spine?”

  “It’s been eaten, Dtui. The cancer spread from her uterus and infected her bone marrow. It started to destroy her spine. She must have been in terrible pain at the end.”

  “Could it have killed her?”

  “If it didn’t, there’s no doubt it soon would have.”

  “So what does this all mean?”

  Siri pulled down his masks, needing air more than he needed to be protected from the smell. He gasped in a few deep breaths and swallowed back the nausea in his throat.

  “It means she was in great distress for the last few months of her life. We can only hope her jailers were giving her painkillers.” The memory of the dried opium in the president’s cave came to his mind.

  “Surely they couldn’t have been so heartless …”

  “You know? I think …” He was too slow to choke back the second arrival of bile and Dtui watched with amusement as he turned away from the table and vomited. She’d outlasted the great surgeon.

  ***

  Half an hour later they were presenting Lit with their findings. They’d walked away from the room and were sitting in the shadow of the hospital cliff but the smell was still in their noses. They admitted they couldn’t prove the cancer had killed Hong Lan. In order to get to her diaphragm, an attacker would first have to puncture the abdomen. That could have caused enough bleeding to kill the girl, but there was no evidence to prove or disprove whether this had happened. And, as with Isandro, they could find no other obvious cause of death. Comrade Lit was happy to write in the final paragraph of his report that there had been “evidence of foul play in both instances.” He closed with “The hearts of both bodies had been removed, and given that there was only one other suspect present, it has to be assumed that Odon was responsible for these two deaths.”

  As Lit’s major criminal responsibility—the body found in the cement path—had been accounted for, he was more than pleased to leave the other two cases pending. He was sure his superiors wouldn’t expect him to interview a dead suspect. He knew the army would have to decide for itself how to punish Giap and the other members of the lynch party. Given the ugliness of the crime they were avenging, he guessed it would take the form of a rebuke and a demotion rather than a firing squad. But it was no longer his concern. He was off the hook.

  Before he left to file the report, he announced to Dtui that he would be back later to complete the “unification arrangements.” This she took to mean the wedding, and she wasn’t at all surprised that he was able to make an engagement sound like a merger. She walked with Siri along the skirt of the mountain and breathed in the scents of the tiny wild bladderwort that grew in abundance there. They’d become accustomed now to keeping to well-worn tracks. She doubted she’d have the courage to stroll over unmarked fields or through virgin forest ever again.

  Both she and her boss were troubled, and neither had spoken si
nce they’d parted company from Lit. The man had been so elated. It was as if one more barrier had been lifted between him and his next promotion. Siri noticed her glum look.

  “Are you thinking about what to say to Comrade Lit?”

  “No. Not really. That can take care of itself.”

  “Then what is it?”

  She stopped walking and put her hands on her hips. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this case.”

  “Me, too.”

  “All right. You go first. What’s worrying you?”

  “Probably all the things that are worrying you. Let’s go over it.” They went to a shaded boulder and sat side by side. “I know it looks like we’ve reached the end of the story, but I keep thinking we’ve missed an essential part of the plot.”

  “That’s exactly it. I’m having a lot of those women’s intuition twinges. The mother worries me. You know? They still hadn’t found her daughter but she waltzed back to Vietnam as if it didn’t matter. Then, when they did find the body, she couldn’t even be bothered to come back for the funeral. Her only daughter. That doesn’t sound like a very warm mother-daughter relationship to me.”

  “Perhaps she was unbalanced by the death of her husband.”

  “So you’d hold on even tighter to the relationship that remained. No. Something happened between them. I’m sure of it. Are you still hosting Odon?”

  It was a surprise question. Siri had forgotten all about the wayward spirit. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. I haven’t felt anything since we found the body. I haven’t shimmied once in the past twenty-four hours. It was never really a possession, more like a presence—an influence. And that’s another thing that didn’t ever sit right. If Odon and Isandro were as evil as everyone’s painting them, I wonder why I didn’t feel that? Why didn’t I ever sense their power? I don’t know. I wonder …”

  “What?”

  “I wonder if we’re not seeing what we’ve been told to see.”

  “What should we do?”

  “We could go back to Vientiane, tell everyone Inspector Maigret and his faithful lieutenant have solved yet another dastardly crime, and know deep down that we haven’t… .”

  “I like the second alternative.”

  “I thought you might.”

  Dr. Sounsak, the young physician who had purportedly aborted the monkey’s fetus from the Vietnamese maid, was one of the few Lao involved in the shady dealings of the Cubans. Although Dr. Sounsak had since been transferred to a hospital in Savanaketh province, Miss Bong, the lady he’d been dating at the time, was still living in the village at Kilometer 8. This gossip had been provided enthusiastically by the kitchen staff at the guesthouse.

  Siri and Dtui had put together a hypothesis—an alternative scenario for the mysterious events in Huaphan the previous year. Working along this shadow plotline, they were going back over events, reexamining issues. Miss Bong was a sturdy, sunburned woman with a back already crooked from a lifetime of stooping in paddy fields. They found her planting young rice shoots, apparently too busy to stop her work to talk. This was obviously a subject she wasn’t particularly happy to discuss.

  Dtui wasn’t too happy either. “Is this field safe to walk around in?” she asked.

  “No safer than any other, auntie,” Miss Bong told her. Dtui was prematurely exploded by the reply. Her pieces flew in a million directions. “Auntie?” The woman was a good ten years older than she. Had she aged that much over the past week? But once she’d collected her parts into a semblance of decorum, she noticed neither Siri nor the woman had spotted her detonation. It was a wound she’d have to bear alone.

  “Couldn’t you stop for a moment and talk to us?” Siri was saying. “I’m getting a stiff neck.”

  “We have to get these in before the big rains come,” Miss Bong said. “Can’t be wasting my time with idle chat.” It was clear she hoped her rudeness would make the city folk leave her alone.

  “All right.” Siri sat on the bank of the field. “Then tell us about Comrade Sounsak.”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “You were going out with him when—”

  “We were engaged,” she interrupted.

  “Sorry. You were engaged to Comrade Sounsak at the time he had a strange and rather disheartening experience at the hospital.”

  “Yeah? What was that then?”

  “Something involving the fetus of a monkey?”

  She looked at Siri the way you would a lizard attempting to open a can of corned beef. “Eh?”

  “He didn’t tell you about it?”

  “We didn’t talk a lot about monkeys.”

  “About a pregnant Vietnamese woman who produced a stillborn ape? He didn’t mention that to you?”

  The woman looked at Dtui. “Is your granddad all right?”

  Dtui sighed, then spoke slowly to her because she obviously wasn’t very bright. “There was a Vietnamese housekeeper,” she said. “She used to cook for the engineers working on the hospital here.” The woman began to positively punch the poor little shoots into the mud. “Did you know her?”

  Siri saw that the woman’s body answered yes. “What can you tell us about her?”

  Comrade Sounsak’s erstwhile fiancée stopped her work and lifted her head to the intruders. “What can I tell you? What can I not tell you? I can tell you she was a whore, and a gobbler-upper of other women’s men, and a devil. Is that enough for you?”

  Siri cast a look at Dtui that suggested the next question would be better coming from her. She picked up on it.

  “What did the bitch do to you, sweetie?” she asked.

  Miss Bong turned her back on Siri and directed her venomous eyes at Dtui. “She preyed on them—men who were in happy, loving relationships. She flashed her well-used Vietnamese titties at them and swished her squashy hips and lured our men away.”

  “The whore,” Dtui agreed. “And your man … ?”

  “Was swept away like the rest of ’em. And when she fell pregnant, what fool was it dumb enough to front up and take responsibility for being the father? She was the inkwell on the paymaster’s desk. Every man in the village had dipped his pen there at the end of the month, but my stupid Sounsak was the only one to own up.”

  “And?”

  “And she had it. He even birthed it himself.”

  “And it survived?” Siri asked.

  “I wish it hadn’t.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Ran off that same night. Acting like they were in love or something. Never saw him again.” Her eyes were starting to dampen.

  “That’s terrible,” Siri nodded, although his expression was more one of fascination. “Did you ever hear anything about the woman and the two black Cubans?”

  “Oh, yes. She had a special grievance against those two.”

  “She didn’t like blacks?”

  “She would have done, given a chance. They were the only two with enough sense to leave the devil alone. She tried all her tricks, but she couldn’t get those two boys into her bed. We heard her boasting that it wouldn’t be long before she got that big one between her legs. Then, when her sex wiggles didn’t work on him, she tried the little one, but he wasn’t having none of her either. So she went around telling everyone they was—you know—together.”

  “That’s the kind of thing she was saying?” Siri asked.

  “She was the sort that couldn’t believe a man could resist her if he was a real man.”

  As they drove back to the guesthouse, Dtui looked at her boss. He had a glazed look on his face that she’d seen a few times before. “So, do we now have a complete understanding of what happened?” she asked.

  “We’re getting there, dear nurse.”

  “She could have been lying.”

  “Possible.”

  “Or her fiancé didn’t tell her what really happened up there. He could have been trying to protect her.”

  “That’s possible, too. But there’s one more possibility that I want t
o ride with.”

  “Good, I’ll eventually work it all out, too, once I get over the trauma of suddenly becoming middle-aged. What’s next?”

  “Sleep. We should turn in for the night. I have several phone calls to make to Vientiane, then I’m hoping for a dream or two. I’m sure your fiancé has given up waiting for us tonight. In the morning, we’ll go for a little drive. If everything works out the way I hope, things should make themselves crystal clear before the end of the day. I think we could even stick around for the concert the following evening without feeling too guilty about leaving our Mr. Geung alone in the morgue all this time. I bet the poor chap’s bored out of his mind.”

  “Hello?”

  “Hello?”

  “Civilai?”

  “Yes. Who’s that?”

  “The empress dowager of China.”

  “Siri? Is that you? Awful line. God, you sound like you’re standing in a tub of lard.”

  “Yes. It’s my new hobby. Have you missed me?”

  “Have you gone somewhere?”

  “I’m in Huaphan.”

  “Really? I’m off there myself, for the concert.”

  “I hope they aren’t letting you sing.”

  “No, I’ll just be doing my exotic dance. You know, the one with the feathers?”

  “I’ll make sure not to eat anything greasy before it starts. Look, I need a favor.”

  “You surprise me.”

  “Do you have anyone there who can speak Spanish?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “What time is it in Cuba?”

  The crow and the sparrow lay in the paddy mud, barely breathing. Their eyes were glazed. Two men knelt over them: the teacher and the acolyte. Behind them stood an elderly couple, darker than the night around them. The woman put her hand on the young man’s shoulder and told him to go ahead. The teacher nodded and the dark-skinned novice took the birds gently in his hands and held them together as if in a prayer. He pressed his palms together, softly at first, then, as the birds became one, he clasped his fingers shut and squeezed till a slither of smoke escaped from his grasp and wafted upward. He opened his palms, and the birds, and the old couple, and the teacher were gone. But the novice remained. He smiled at the observer of this dream, and slowly, without the aid of language, set about explaining to Siri what he had just witnessed. Before the morning sun rose, the old doctor understood everything.