Slash and Burn

by Colin Cotterill

  “Someone from the regional education office brought it,” she recalled. “Said it had been confiscated from some royalist. Why?”

  “I’d wager this is what’s been causing the hysteria,” he told her.

  “But … but it’s just a musical instrument,” she protested.

  Siri smiled at the Mao-shirted woman. She was a cadre from the northeast with a black and white upbringing and no tolerance for dimensions beyond the usual three. And so it was that in both Siri’s report and that of the head teacher, the problem had been attributed to tainted sweets sold by a rogue vendor outside the school gates. Yet, once the tambourine had been removed there was no repeat of the insanity.

  The instrument now sat on Siri’s desk at the morgue and he flicked the little bells from time to time just for the hell of it. Nurse Dtui and Mr. Geung would look up from their unimportant tasks and sigh. Siri would apologize then ring it again. His only other annoying habit had been pulled out from under him. Dtui had removed the clock from over their office door because the doctor had begun to count down the minutes to his retirement in reverse order.

  “Only seventy thousand five hundred and forty-five minutes to go,” he’d sing. Dtui knew that the effects of this after a day or two would have driven them all into the same moronic stupor as the pupils at Thong Hong. So she’d come in early one day and had the hospital handyman take down the clock. She’d told Siri it was off being serviced. As she never lied, he didn’t question her.

  At her desk, Nurse Dtui had her Thai fanzine open in front of her. To anyone walking unexpectedly into the office it would appear she was merely fantasizing her size fourteen frame into a size seven swimsuit as worn by the Bangkok television starlets on photo shoots. But hidden between the pages of her magazine were her Med. 1 Gynaecology notes in Russian. Despite a sudden unexpected pregnancy and the arrival of Malee, now five months old, Dtui had yet to give up her hopes of studying in the Soviet bloc. Unsolicited initiative was considered by the hospital administration to be a suspicious characteristic, a sign that you were not satisfied with your role in the new republic. So she studied surreptitiously. Even though she had no intention of abandoning her baby or her husband and running off to Moscow, she continued to prepare herself for that far-off day when she might take over the morgue. When times were hard, it always helped to have a dream. And times in Vientiane were certainly hard.

  But not for some, it seemed. In the corner of the office, behind a desk and a chair he rarely used, Mr. Geung stood rocking gently back and forth in a blissful Down’s syndrome trance. His condition had one of two effects on onlookers. Some were appalled that a moron should be allowed to work at a hospital. Others, like his many fans around Mahosot, were envious of the apparent lack of complication in his life. Devoted to his work. Loyal to a fault. Friendly and honest. Mr. Geung seemed perfectly happy with a no-frills, budget lifestyle. But they all wondered what was going on in his head. How could a middle-aged man with such a terrible affliction seem so at peace? And recently his serenity had risen to a cloud way beyond that elusive number nine. Only Siri and Dtui knew the reason for the elevation. Although Mr. Geung himself was not letting on, his morgue mates could tell. It was romance. Birds did it. Bees did it. And, clearly, Mr. Geung did it too.

  Others might have interpreted the marks on their friend’s neck as an allergic reaction to the washing powder in his shirt collar. But Siri and Dtui worked in the morgue. They knew teeth marks when they saw them. They didn’t exactly condone the practice. “One step away from vampirism,” Siri had called it. But neither begrudged Mr. Geung his first taste of romance, albeit in bitten form. Tukda’s arrival at the staff canteen had at first enraged Geung.

  “She’s Down … Down’s syndrome,” he’d said, with the same condescending tone he’d heard all his life. “Sh … she shouldn’t be working here.”

  But there was no mistaking the fact that Comrade Tukda was a pretty young lady and sweet natured. None of Mr. Geung’s protestations persuaded his coworkers that he didn’t find her attractive. And Geung and Tukda, through those mysterious corridors and hidden passageways of the syndrome, found each other. What they did and where and how and if, nobody knew. Only the washing powder allergy on Geung’s neck, and the sappy grins when they mentioned her name, gave anything away. He answered no questions on the subject. Denied all accusations. It was his … their secret. But there was no doubting the fact that Mr. Geung was a very happy man.

  And this was how the members of the morgue team filled their days. Siri counting minutes. Dtui conjugating. Geung rocking. Then, all of a sudden, on one hot July morning, a note arrived. That such a flimsy slip of paper could have the effect it did would have been hard to imagine.

  The morning crowd was silently engaged in the serious act of consuming Madame Daeng’s noodles. It was like watching a herd of buffalo—albeit seated—working their way through a garden of lush grass. Extra stools had been imported, dotted willy-nilly around the tables but still there wasn’t enough seating. Daeng and Siri encouraged diners to leave as soon as possible so others might enjoy their breakfasts, but Madame Daeng’s noodles were not to be rushed. They were the cordon bleu of soup noodles. If Michelin had been allowed into the country they would have been hard pressed to find enough stars with which to decorate her nameless noodle establishment. Yet, in spite of her popularity, Daeng never once considered raising her prices or reducing the size of the servings. She was a pro.

  Siri stood beside her, gazing proudly at the lake of hunched shoulders and bobbing heads.

  “Looks like I won’t have to worry about us starving to death when I retire,” he said.

  Daeng looked up from the boiler, gently tossed a wire basket of pasta, then lowered it back into the bubbling water. She was a fine-looking woman with a mop of gray hair that always made her seem as if she’d been racing a fast-moving motorcycle, which often she had.

  “And there I was wondering how we’d ever make do without your thirty-thousand kip a month contribution,” she smiled. “What is that on the international exchange market these days? One dollar fifty?”

  “Two eighty. But let’s not forget all the other perks.”

  “A dozen mosquito coils. Four kilos of weevil-infested rice. The occasional gardening implement. Socks. Six rolls of self-dissolving toilet paper. I don’t know how we’ll survive.”

  “And the petrol allowance.”

  “Two litres a month. You’ll have to start riding my bicycle.”

  “I’ll have nowhere to go. I’ll just be hanging around under your feet like this—day in day out. You always said you wished we could spend more time together.”

  “I don’t think I meant all of it. Couple of hours in the evening would be nice.”

  “I shall be yours twenty-four hours a day to do with as you wish. Your love slave around the clock.”

  Daeng laughed and scooped noodles into a bowl of broth. As there were no more stools, the customer collected the dish and sat with it on the bottom step of the staircase.

  “Siri, you could no more stay put for twenty-four hours than I could. You’ll be poking your nose in here, gallivanting there. And to tell you the truth, if I wanted a love slave I’d find myself a much much younger man. A body builder. I get plenty of offers, you know.”

  “Ha! He’d have to go through me first to get to you. You hear that, you lot?” he shouted. “Anyone here tempted to run off with my wife will have to fight me first.”

  “No problem,” said Pop, a wizened old bean stick whose weight more than doubled after one of Daeng’s spicy number 2s. He was probably the only customer in the shop older than Siri and he looked it. “Look at the state of you,” he said to Siri. “Barely a fortnight out of your sick bed, broken hand, scars and bruises all over. Huh. I reckon I could take you with one hand, especially if Daeng was the prize. One blow with this teaspoon and you’d be on your back.”

  “Is that right, Comrade?” Siri replied. “Then let’s see about that.”


  He grabbed a chopstick from the jar with his functioning hand and went at Pop with a fencing parry. Pop got to his feet and held out his teaspoon. A utensil duel ensued, egged on by the clatter of chopsticks against tin water mugs from all around them.

  A teenager in a white shirt stepped in off the dusty sidewalk and sidled nervously across to the noodle seller, bemused by the mêlée.

  “Comrade,” he said, “I have an urgent note for Dr. Siri Paiboun. They said I’d find him here.”

  “That’s him,” she said. “Over there. The little boy with the white hair and messy eyebrows brandishing a chopstick. They’re fighting over me, you know?”

  The boy wasn’t together at all.

  “Go ahead. Give it to him,” she told him. He reluctantly walked up behind Siri and tapped him on the shoulder. Siri turned and Pop, not one to miss an opportunity, whacked Siri on his lobeless left ear with his spoon. Siri cried in mock pain and sank to his knees. The percussion of sticks on mugs heralded Pop their champion. In the throes of an ignominious teaspoon death, Siri seized the note from the lad’s outstretched hand and died on the noodle shop floor. It was just another day at Daeng’s noodle shop.

  2

  MEANWHILE, IN METRO MANILA

  Nino Sebastian had done very nicely for himself out of his stint with Air America. He’d lived frugally, made a little extra here and there by selling things that weren’t exactly his to sell, and unlike the Romeos at the Udon base, he didn’t pump his salary into the bars and massage parlours. When it was all over he’d come back to Manila, built a house and a service station, and married a girl who’d never have looked at him twice without the forty thousand dollars in his pocket. His mother and father pumped gas, his sister looked after the canteen, and he and his brother Oscar ran the garage. It was all sweet. Life. Love. Grease. There wasn’t the excitement but that wasn’t a bad thing. Excitement just meant there was a chance you’d get your testicles blown off. He could do without that kind of excitement. Here he had boxing and jai alai to get his pulse racing.

  There was a match tonight. Jets vs. Redemption. He had money on the reds. He’d take the truck over there. Pick up his cousin Poco on the way. It was a sticky night. He’d already taken a shower and put on his lucky turquoise shirt but he was sweating so bad he was thinking of taking another. He looked out the kitchen window and was pissed off to see the light on in the garage. Oscar was away in Samal so he guessed some customer had come in hoping for a rush job, had the nerve to turn on the light. Some people had more balls than manners. But no matter how much the guy offered, he wasn’t going to get service on pelota night.

  When Nino walked in the back door of the service area, a darkskinned man was standing looking under the hood at the 1961 Cadillac engine Nino and Oscar had been sweating over for a month.

  “Sorry, guy,” Nino said. “Nobody working tonight.”

  “That’s OK,” said the man. “I was just passing through, wondering if you might have a job opening.”

  Nino looked the stranger up and down. He wasn’t dressed like the type of man who enjoyed getting grime under his fingernails. He was too … finicky looking. He had a comb stuck in his hair at the back like he’d been grooming that morning and forgotten it was there. Some of the kids today thought that was a statement. Nino thought it was stupid. And, of all things, in spite of the heat, the guy was wearing a jacket and showed no sign of sweating.

  “We do all our own repairs here, pal. Me and my brother. We only take on work the two of us can handle. Sorry.”

  The stranger shrugged.

  “No problem. Thought I’d ask anyway.” He took one more look at the engine. “Excuse me saying so, but you do realize you’ve screwed up the carburetor assembly?”

  “What are you talking about?” Nino had never screwed up anything to do with an engine.

  “Here,” said the guy. “You’ve put the throttle lever in upside down.”

  Nino hurried over to the car and looked under the hood.

  “Are you crazy?” he said. “That is a perf—”

  He barely felt the pin prick of the needle in his neck and, in a breath, it was all over for Nino Sebastian.

  3

  PEACH

  The rainy season, which usually fell between April and August in the north of Laos, had begun in March this year and run out of juice by June. Although the Mekhong was still bloated with floodwaters from China, and storms were lashing the south, rain hadn’t hit Vientiane for a month. Lao meteorologists, recently trained in East Germany, were saying that industrialization in the West—but most likely in North America—was altering the environment. They were calling for a symposium of Communist states to discuss the role of capitalism on climate change. There was very little the Americans couldn’t be blamed for in the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos and, to be fair, most of the accusations were warranted.

  Vientiane was a city of red-dirt side streets and paved main roads laid by the same Americans who were now screwing up the weather. The continuous early rains of 1978 had flushed the dirt out of the lanes and onto the main roads. Gardens and rice paddies and empty dirt plots had spread to all points of the compass. The entire city had been reclaimed by dirt. The gutters were clogged. The potholes were concealed. The footpaths, where they existed, were no higher than the roadways. This massive mud pie was baked beneath a scorching July sun and inevitably the dust arrived. A cat passing in front of your house could kick up more dust than a herd of wildebeests galloping across the Kalahari. There was too much to sweep away. Hot though it was, people shuttered their windows and closed their doors. Those with hoses and who were connected to the main supply were out front every sunrise washing down the street. But by midday the red mist was back. The official dust season was several months away so there was a real threat that Vientiane might just vanish completely; unrecognizable as a city in satellite images.

  Siri had his spare sarong wrapped round his face to keep the dust out of his mouth. He wore his old dark-lens goggles and a Castro hat and looked like a very suspicious character when he pulled up in front of the Ministry of Justice. He’d had a choice, of course. The note from his nemesis, Judge Haeng, had simply told him to be at the judicial office by one. He could have torn it up. He was retiring. What could they do to him? But Siri had a mischievous streak and he enjoyed nothing more than rubbing his boss the wrong way. He wouldn’t have many more opportunities. The guard at the gate saluted. The boy had no weapon and his uniform was three non-matching shades of green. Siri, still disguised as a terrorist, climbed from his bike and walked up to the booth.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked the boy.

  “No, Comrade,” came the reply accompanied by another salute.

  “So, for all you know I could be here to assassinate the judge and the minister. I might have dynamite strapped inside my jacket.”

  The boy looked doubtful.

  “It … it’s possible, I suppose.”

  “And I still get a salute?”

  “It’s what they told me to do, uncle.”

  “Just that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Heaven help us,” Siri grumbled, walking away from the guard and up to the steps of the ministry. “What a system,” he said aloud to nobody. “All cock-a-doodle and no do. The place is falling down around us and all we get are salutes.”

  He kicked the dust from his sandals at the top of the steps and walked through to the reception area. The place was deserted. There were eight typewriters without typists and one large administrator’s desk without Manivon, the ministry secretary. Siri was certain that if an enterprising burglar were to have stumbled into the ministry that day, he could elicit the aid of the guard out front to carry the machines to a waiting samlor bicycle taxi. The place was going to the dogs. He’d be well off away from it.

  His mood no better, he strutted along the open air corridor and pushed open the door to Judge Haeng’s office without knocking. The door slammed into something large and soft, the
n gave way. Siri stepped inside the small room which was lit only by one window with a bank of cracked louvres. Amongst his illicit books, Siri had a thick pictorial travelogue of the world’s wonders and he noticed how the sunlight squeezing through that little window cast Stonehenge-like shadows in a room filled to bursting with enormous Westerners. Some were seated, some standing, some wore uniforms, others merely sweated in clothes inappropriate for a July room with one ceiling fan. There were men, all oily white, and two women. One of the latter reminded Siri of a bewigged Sumo wrestler in a sundress.

  This thought notwithstanding, he didn’t want to forget his manners. He walked from person to person shaking hands and saying, sabai dee—good health. All returned his handshake—not a dry palm in the house. Some repeated the greeting. Others made remarks in what he recognized as English, which was one of the many languages he didn’t speak. As he circled the room he felt like a tourist amongst the giants of Easter Island. At the far side of the room he encountered Judge Haeng sitting at his desk holding on to a tired smile. His greasy hair hung over one puffy, acned cheek. This was a condition Siri knew to be exacerbated by heat and stress. He guessed the little judge was feeling both.

  “Siri? Is that you?” he asked.

  At first it seemed like a bizarre question, as if the man had become sightless overnight. But then Siri remembered he was still disguised. The room became a little lighter when he removed his tinted goggles, and cooler when he took off his hat and scarf. The guests in the room also seemed somewhat more at ease with him unwrapped.

  “What’s all this then?” Siri asked the judge.

  “Americans.”

  “They’re back? Did they forget something?”

  “It’s a delegation, Siri.”

  “What do they want?”

  “I … I’m not … I….”

  “You don’t know.”

  “Of course I do. I’m just….”