It was a flat non-emotive rendition that Dtui guessed the man had given every night that week and for many months before. As she and Phosy were climbing out of the truck, the second guard went around to the driver’s window and handed him a small brown envelope.
“Thanks, Dim,” he said. “How’s the wife?”
“Still a pain in the arse.”
Dtui could hear the laughter behind them as she and her “husband” were marched at the end of a gun into a small unlit shed.
“Well, damn it, stop them then.”
“Can’t! The telegram got here after they’d left already.”
“They’re insane.”
Siri smiled and nodded his agreement. “But didn’t we do things like that when we were young and our balls still swung proudly before us? You have to admire them.”
“Do you admire a moth’s courage at flying into a candle flame? God, Siri. I thought you liked them.”
“I do. And I’d be sorry to lose them. But they’ve set out so there’s no point in grieving. We can’t alter events, so we should take advantage of them. This way, we’ll have our own spies in the camp.”
“If they aren’t shot getting there. And if by some miracle they make it, how are you proposing to communicate with them?”
“They’ll find a way.”
“You still see this as one big adventure, don’t you?”
“The alternative being to get frustrated and angry and worry myself into a not-so-early grave?”
“The alternative being to take the situation seriously.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference is quite fundamental. I’m in a position to affect the situation, so I take it seriously. You know you can’t change anything so you treat it like a joke. I can’t afford to do that.”
The vacuum that followed wasn’t even a Lao silence. Sound had been erased from the room. Siri could feel the pulse throbbing in his wrists. He could feel the weight of his heart. So many thoughts and emotions rushed through his mind he couldn’t begin to reckon with them.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Civilai said. “I didn’t…”
“Yes, you did.”
They sat staring at each other, both smiling, neither happy. Siri stood and squeezed his friend’s shoulder on his way to the door. Fifteen minutes later he returned, carrying a tray. On it was a bottle of whisky, a bucket of ice, two small bottles of soda, a jug of water, and a packet of prawn crackers. He put the tray on the coffee table and sat back in his seat.
“You think I’m that easy?” Civilai said, his smile now sincere.
“It’s never failed before. You’ve hardly touched a drop since we got here. It’s obviously what you’re lacking.”
Civilai took up the role of barman. “I’m sorry about what I said, Comrade. It’s just that I’m desperate. I’m not really me these days,” he said, making ice music inside the glasses.
“All the more reason to get pie-eyed.”
And pie-eyed they got. They’d had a frustrating time in the south, but both men understood there was little to be achieved by returning to Vientiane. The whisky went some way toward easing the tension that had been growing between them. It reminded them of what they’d been through together, but it didn’t help bring Siri back into his friend’s circle of trust.
Siri walked into the room carrying a tray. On it was a bottle of whisky, a bucket of ice, two small bottles of soda, a jug of water, and a packet of prawn crackers. He put the tray on the coffee table and sat back in his seat.
“I’m suffering dйjа vu,” Civilai confessed.
“That first time was just an illusion,” Siri said. “This is the real thing.”
“You do recall I’m supposed to be convalescing? I’m suffering from chronic hemorrhoids, you know.”
“Then I won’t let you sit on my lap. Pour!”
Civilai prepared the first two drinks of the second act and the old soldiers sipped them as if they were tasting whisky for the first time.
“A good year,” Siri said.
“Nineteen seventy-seven, I’m tempted to say.”
“Know what I think, old brother?”
“Nobody ever knows what you think.”
“I think we should go take a look at the Champasak palace.”
“What, now?”
“No, I mean in daylight.”
“Whatever for? It’s derelict.”
“It isn’t derelict. Derelict is when something used to be functional but it gets old and falls apart.”
“Like us.”
“Exactly. The palace can’t be referred to as derelict because it’s not even finished yet.”
“And never shall be.”
“You can’t be sure. Someday the country might be overrun by capitalists and they’ll transform it into a five-star hotel.”
“The fat prince would turn over in his grave.”
“I don’t think he’s dead.”
“Then he’ll turn over in his king-sized bed and crush three or four serving wenches.”
Siri put his finger to his lips.
“Shh. You do realize it’s against the law to mention the fat prince in Pakse?”
“So it should be, the scumbag. You knew him, didn’t you?”
“‘Know’? What is ‘know’? I met him a few times. Our youth camp wasn’t too far from his estate in Champa. He’d stop by from time to time and shake hands with the boys and squeeze the rumps of the girls. He’d do his Prince Charming routine.”
“Didn’t he know what you lot were up to at the camp?”
“All he knew was the official itinerary: the skills training and the sports. He didn’t have a clue we were getting the kids ready to oust his beloved French. He was le Grand Empereur down here in those days. He wouldn’t have dreamed of an uprising among his underlings. When the Lao Issara won our independence he was shocked, but he made all the right noises. He said he was proud again of being Lao. Then, at the first opportunity, he was back in bed with the Froggies and driving all the patriots out of his kingdom. Next thing you know, the French decide he’s the most suitable choice for prime minister and there he is running their colony for them. I think it was around then he designed for himself that big ugly birthday cake he called a palace.”
“Then why on earth would you want to go and see it?”
“To remind myself why we’re here risking our lives for the republic. To see how his kind spent our money. To give myself a little shot of anti-capitalist adrenaline. I don’t want to go back to those days, old brother. Here, you’re looking ponderous again. We can’t have that. Have another drink.”
He re-iced Civilai’s glass and splashed the cubes with whisky.
“And now,” Siri continued, “there he is, living the life of Louis XV in a luxury bachelor pad in Paris, spending all the money he made from looting our treasures. He’s even having my coffee-and-cognac breakfasts overlooking the Seine.”
“He’ll never be happy there. He’ll die bitter.”
“Are you serious? He’s got everything.”
“That’s not true, Siri. He doesn’t have everything. In France he’ll never get respect. His money won’t make him a god on earth. He’ll be the odd Asian chap living in the corner apartment. You know how it is there, how they looked down on us.”
“They just felt sorry for us because we weren’t born white. I can sympathize with that.”
“Siri, they despised us. I went through the archives of the early French settlers here. They talked about ‘the disease of Laoness.’ They said that even French nationals who stayed here too long tended to become lethargic and lazy like the natives. They had grand plans to repopulate Laos with Vietnamese so they could get some work done. We weren’t a people at all; we were a substandard slave colony. They disliked us because we didn’t have the gumption to do their work for them and make them rich. They talked of educating a few of the more affluent classes to act as foremen and minor project managers. I laughed when I read that, bu
t then I realized they were referring to me. They were doing me the favor of educating me, so I could go back and control the lazy proletariat for them.”
Civilai was getting worked up. His voice carried along the timbered corridor and into the street. Samlor cyclists parked down at the hotel entrance were roused from their backseat slumber.
“In their reports they called us passive,” he continued, “not given to uprising. Well, we showed them. We saw through their little scheme. Every part of the show-the token Lao managers, the scholarships, the mission schools, the plantations-was orchestrated to make us as poor as possible and them wealthy. God, I hated them for that.”
He slammed his drink down on the flimsy plywood coffee table and his glass cracked neatly into two parts: a napkin ring and a small petri dish. The whisky splashed in all directions. Blood oozed from his finger.
“Shit.” He looked at the mess and started to laugh. “Is there a doctor in the hotel?”
“Whisky’s an antiseptic,” Siri said. “It’ll fix itself.”
“Not if I bleed to death.”
Civilai clenched his fist and walked, laughing, to the bathroom. He emerged wrapping toilet tissue around a wound from which angry blood flowed eloquently. “They called us the lotus-eaters,” he went on, even before reclaiming his seat. “Did you know that? The lotus bloody eaters. When did you last eat lotus?”
“Hmm, let me think,” said Siri, observing the distorted Nordic stag through his glass. “It’s been a while. However, I did have several dandelions for breakfast this morning.”
“Just how condescending could they be?” Civilai had arrived at a stage where Siri was irrelevant. “Lotus-eaters! How would they feel if we called them snail-eaters?”
“I’ve called them worse than-”
“And there were the damned Royalists fighting with them against our people. How on earth could they?”
Civilai was sitting on the edge of the bed now. He had a wad of paper tissue the size of Singapore around his finger. He held the empty cardboard roll proudly in his uninjured hand. Siri was impressed by his friend’s emergency first aid.
“Well, you have to admit,” Siri said, “the Royal Lao Army weren’t the most fearsome of foes.”
Civilai smiled. “The president used to say the RLA rarely put fear in the heart of the enemy, but they frightened the living daylights out of their own commanders.”
The two old communists laughed at this lore as they had hundreds of times before. Siri had one of his own.
“I seem to remember,” he said, “that their few pilots used to drop their bombs in the rivers, miles from the targets, so they wouldn’t have to go near the anti-aircraft guns. There was always a bumper harvest of prefried fish for the locals.”
The mood lightened and laughter became more prevalent as they recalled their favorite RIA stories. Civilai drank his whisky from an old teacup until there was no more whisky to be had. There was no third act. This drunken political flashback had drained them both of memories and sense. Siri meandered to the door.
“I am for bed.”
“Don’t forget to say your prayers.”
“Prayers? In a country with no religion and no money, it’s hard to know what to pray for anymore.”
There had been a fine, of course. Officially, any Thai government employee coming across illegal Lao immigrants on Thai soil was obliged to ship them off to one of the camps. But where was the profit in that? A healthy brokerage business had mushroomed along the border. It helped that the Thai junta of the month refused to recognize the people fleeing Laos as refugees. It called them “temporary visitors” and, as such, they were expected to meet the legal immigration requirements. Those without visas (all of them) were subject to fines. If they could pay up, they were escorted to the camps. If they were too poor to pay, their names would be forwarded to a camp and posted on a board. Family and friends would then be expected to scratch around for enough money to cover the police fine. Those with neither money nor friends were of no use to anybody. They were invariably encouraged to escape police custody and find their own ways to the nearest camp.
Phosy and Dtui spent just one night in the police lockup at Bok. They were able to pay for their release with a small gold bracelet Dtui carried with her. It looked a lot more valuable than it actually was. They were dispatched the following day to Ban Suan Lao, a sprawling refugee camp in the northern outskirts of Ubon. It was Dtui’s first trip out of her own country and, despite the gravity of their mission, she looked out through the wooden slats of the open-air truck like a child on vacation. They passed directly through the center of the city and, even though Thailand was just a more affluent version of Laos, she marveled at the exotic shop signs and the variety of goods on display. She looked at the busy traffic, the foreign cars, the nice clothes worn by the girls who walked along the paved footpaths. Food was for sale everywhere, the scents briefly catching a ride on the truck: frying chicken, freshly baked cakes, sliced fruit on handcarts, strawberry syrup on shaved ice. There was a different feel and pace about Thailand that she instantly fell in love with.
Phosy sat across from her and could see the wonder reflected in her eyes. She didn’t seem to feel the danger of what they were doing. To her it was like some holiday trip. It was as if only he knew how much could go wrong, how many perils they faced. More and more he regretted her presence here, doubting his own ability to protect her. She was a distraction and he resented her for coming.
The truck arrived at an open gate manned by two unarmed military guards. It wasn’t what Phosy and Dtui had expected. Their imaginations were full of Nazi prisoner-of-war camps from the movies. They’d expected high mesh fences topped with barbed wire, machine-gun turrets, and spotlights. Instead, people strolled in and out through the open gate, pushing carts and wheeling bicycles. The perimeter fence was made of bamboo: one huff and puff and it would have tumbled.
One guard signed the driver’s clipboard chit and told the new arrivals to go and register at a large open hut a short walk along the driveway. There were twelve of them in this consignment: three couples with children, Dtui and Phosy without. They’d exchanged nods on the truck and asked a few fundamental questions, but none of them were prepared to share intimate details with strangers. Suddenly everyone was suspicious. They walked in silence now along the paved road, anxious and apprehensive. They’d been separated from their world, from the devil they knew. Even Dtui and Phosy felt it, that sensation of reaching a point of no return, that the next document they signed would be a contract for their souls.
The First Sneaky Malevolent Spirit Attack
As many counterrevolutionaries would have you know, when in the midst of diverting a national crisis, there’s always a case for taking a little time off for tourism. So it was that Siri and Civilai, heads heavy from a serious whisky night, found themselves in possession of a sturdy black Willys jeep for the day. It belonged to the old postmaster. Daeng had somehow talked him into parting with it. Siri had somehow talked Civilai into joining him and assigned him the role of driver.
“I’m not at all sure we should be doing this,” Civilai said, “given that-”
“Oh, shut up,” Siri shouted above the growl of the engine. “What else would we be doing? Sitting around waiting for information to drop into our laps? We’ve got good people on our side doing all the legwork. What difference is one day going to make? Let’s just think of ourselves as the command center. You’re the commander in chief and I’m the commander’s travel agent, responsible for his psychological well-being.”
“Of course, I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
Before reaching the end of the first street, they dropped into a pothole deep enough to bury a buffalo. Siri reached for his stomach. “Damn it.”
Civilai stamped on the brake. “You going to be sick?”
“Worse than that.” Siri reached for the hem of his shirt and caught the white amulet as it dropped to his lap. The platted hair that formed its strin
g had always looked frayed, and finally it had snapped.
“This isn’t going to cast us into eternal damnation, is it?” Civilai asked.
“Probably not,” Siri answered without any great conviction. “I’ll have to get it fixed, though.”
“Right. We’ll just stop off at the nearest haunted-hair-replaiting center.” Civilai crunched the gear, lurched a few times, and finally found a happy speed somewhere between walking and running with a stone in your shoe. Siri looked at the unmoving speedometer.
“At this rate the hair will have grown back naturally by the time we get anywhere.”
“More haste, less speed. Remember the hare.”
“I seem to recall the tortoise died of old age before he reached the finish line.”
In a city with so few cars, the green army jeep that tailed theirs was never likely to blend into traffic. The only way Civilai could fail to notice it was by being in a Willys with no rearview mirrors, which indeed he was.
They found the only hairdressing salon open before eight. The waxen-faced girl who ran it assured Siri she could reweave the plait but she’d have to make it shorter by some three inches. The hair string was wound and knotted tightly through the loop of the amulet, and Siri’s instructions from the amulet maker had been that the hair and the pendant should never part company. Their blessings were intertwined. He had no choice therefore but to leave both at the shop. The girl told him it would be ready that evening and hesitantly suggested a price of two hundred kip. Siri gave her his most charming smile and told her if she did a good job, it would be worth even more.
Ten minutes later, the jeep pulled up into a bush in front of the Champasak palace. What little brake fluid there was had been used up at the hairdresser’s and Civilai had adopted the tactic of finding something soft to crash into. They sat in their seats and gazed up at the gargantuan monstrosity that loomed over them: Prince Boun Oum’s Disney castle. It was five stories of would-be splendor: a central block with two ornately tiered wings. It was unpainted, unfurnished, and unlovely.
“It looks like something you could make with playing cards,” Civilai suggested.
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