Anarchy and Old Dogs

by Colin Cotterill

  “Can we stop yet?”

  “Dtui had thrown us all with her translation of 2PM. She’d guessed it was a time reference so we all but stopped looking at it. The Frenchman pointed out that “PM” could just as well refer to prime minister. Prime minister number two. You were about to become the deputy prime minister in an illegitimate government.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m back to my original question. What were you thinking? And more important, why did you even begin to think about getting involved without consulting me? I’m your closest friend, goddamn it. I could have talked some sense into you. What was it, blackmail? Did they threaten your family?”

  Civilai closed his watery eyes and rested his head back on the chair.

  “No.”

  “Then what hold did they have over you?”

  “What is it we do when we’re together, Siri?”

  “I give up.”

  “How do we entertain ourselves during our long drunken bouts of clarity?”

  “I …”

  “I’ll tell you. Eighty percent of our topic of conversation is about the inadequacy of our government, the government we fought for thirty years to install.”

  “It’s not—”

  “The government that should have learned from the mistakes of all the fools who ran the country before it. Instead, we’ve just given a new twist to inefficiency, made it more creative. We are a socialist administration and socialism is the building, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the material base for communism. You had to memorize that, too, remember? Well, I don’t see myself under the dictatorship of any proletariat. The people are suffering no less than they always were.”

  “That isn’t true.”

  “It is, and you know it. I’d go home after each of our philosophical sessions, with the firm belief that what we’ve created is a joke. There were nights I’d lock myself in the bathroom and cry my eyes out because I was part of that joke. My name was up there on the party roster and I hadn’t done a thing to change the status quo.”

  “You tried.”

  Civilai opened his eyes. In the shadows they were deep hollows. “If I’d tried—I mean if I’d really tried,” he said, “things would have changed. I dabbled. I let out a few old-man rants, but who listened? I became powerless. I became symbolic in a way that inanimate objects or the dead are symbolic. What made our talks together so hard to take was the fact that everything we said was true. If they’d listened to us, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.”

  “That’s what old codgers in coffee shops all around the world believe,” Siri said. “There are seventy-three-year-olds somewhere in a bar in London, England, who believe they have the answers to the world’s problems.”

  Civilai shook his head. “But they aren’t senior politburo members on the Central Committee. They don’t have a real opportunity. I did. The disgruntled politicians and military men contacted me. They needed someone senior, someone respected, who represented change, modernity, freedom to the people. It was as if they’d heard me talking in my sleep. They knew I was a loose cannon, dissatisfied, and resentful. And I said, ‘Certainly, I doubt it could make things any worse.’ And that was it. Phetsarat as prime minister, me as deputy. I’d be able to influence decisions and accomplish something at last. Why not? I’d be far less impotent than I am now.”

  Siri sighed and sat back down. “And the reason you didn’t discuss all this with me was … ?”

  Civilai paused, apparently considering this question for the first time. “Because there was a slight doubt in my mind as to whether you’d go along with it,” he said at last.

  Siri leaned back onto the cushions and relaxed his weary body and mind and soul. He tried to imagine that scenario: Civilai telling him of his opportunity to be part of a coup. Yes, he would have talked his friend out of it. Why would there be any doubt in his own mind about that? Why was he unable to say so right away? Why did no words come to him? The sky began to rumble a warning. The room was so dark that if they’d looked at each other there would have been nothing to see. But neither looked. They each stared at the sky. It was Civilai’s hoarse voice that broke the deadlock.

  “What are you planning to do with me?”

  “Do?”

  “Yes, you’ve obviously considered my punishment.”

  “It hasn’t entered my head.”

  “That’s because you know I was right to do what I did. We’re of one mind.”

  Siri laughed. “Obviously not. If that were true you wouldn’t have been too afraid to share this insanity with me.” Suddenly, the words came to him with perfect clarity. “No rational person would replace a two-year-old administration with a gang of renegade officers with dollars in their pockets and expect things to improve. Don’t you see? All the same old criminals would be back on the bus to Laos. The Vietnamese advisers would be replaced by Thai advisers, and capitalism would be back chewing on us again. It would be a hundred times worse than it was before.

  “Yes, we’re grumpy old men. Yes, we complain. It’s in our blood. But it’s only because we’re impatient. After all those years of struggle we wanted to remake our world in seven days. We wanted to see everything blooming and flourishing right now because we’re secretly afraid we aren’t going to be around to see it otherwise. But by the Holy Buddha, you aren’t going to be able to make those changes overnight. Lord help us. I want to slap you, I really do.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Siri rose from his seat, walked over to the dark shape that contained his friend, and raised his hand. But he couldn’t. The rain began to thump against the glass of the windowpanes at his back and lightning threaded through the clouds. He returned his hand to his side and looked down at his broken friend. Civilai’s head bowed toward his lap. His shoulders shook as he sobbed. The lightning picked out a man as old as the earth. Siri knelt on the floor and put his hands on Civilai’s lumpy knees. He had thought of a punishment.

  When Siri returned to the lobby, Dtui and Phosy were no longer there. It was just as well because he doubted he’d have been able to fake a sense of humor for them. The front desk and some of the tables held storm lamps whose flames were barely visible in the dark room. He went toward the exit with the intention of walking out into the torrential rain. It was a habit he’d picked up in the tropical storms of Vietnam. They pummeled a man like tin on an anvil, and unless the lightning killed you, they were therapeutic to the point of elation. But before he could reach the newly shuttered door, a voice called him back.

  “Dr. Siri.”

  It was Daeng. She sat in the dark reception area dressed in a nice pink blouse and a neatly ironed phasin. Her hair was loose. It hung thick and gray over her shoulders. The shadows had blurred the wrinkles and filled the cheeks and for a second or two Siri saw the young enthusiastic girl cook who’d followed him around begging for errands, hungry for knowledge. She walked over to him, looked at his face, and lifted her eyebrows. She had to raise her voice to be heard above the sound of the rain.

  “Goodness,” she shouted. “I was planning to tell you something important, but it looks like you already know.”

  “What gives you that impression?”

  “Well, a, Your face looks like it’s been held over a sacrificial bowl and drained of blood, and b, you were about to go out into a storm that could drown a man. It all adds up to you fighting the devil. I’d say you were just upstairs with Comrade Civilai.”

  “What color underwear do I have on?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You seem to know everything else.”

  “Don’t bite me, Siri. It wasn’t me, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m sorry. Was it Civilai you came to tell me about?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think I’m ready to discuss how I feel.”

  She took his hand. “I know. Never mind. I’ve brought something much better than bad tidings. Come.”

  She led him to one of the
lit tables at the rear where her cloth bag sat on a chair. The flame of the lamp danced inside its glass bowl as the storm winds forced their way through the gaps around the shutters. The receptionist was busy mopping back a flood of water that had gushed in with them. It was the type of storm you imagined could lift the hotel and carry it halfway around the earth. The old comrades in arms knelt on the vinyl chairs and let the water flow beneath them. Daeng reached into her bag and produced an album. She lifted it carefully as if it were precious or fragile. She laid it on the bare wooden table and opened it at the title page. This had already been a taxing day for Siri’s heart, but what he saw in the dim lamplight almost stopped it beating completely.

  Champasak Camp—1940

  “Where on earth … ?” he asked.

  “You don’t recall the photographer, Siri? A Marseille-trained boy. The French administration sent him south to document everything from the southern camps. They wanted evidence they were doing something for the souls of the local youth.”

  “I do remember. Skinny boy from Xiang Khouang.”

  “That’s him.”

  “But we didn’t ever see those pictures. He was with us for—what?—six months? Then he took all the undeveloped film back with him to Vientiane.”

  “He promised he’d send me prints.”

  “He had an eye for you, as I recall.”

  “Didn’t they all? All but one, I mean.” Siri felt her glancing at him but didn’t look up from the title page that described the camp and its purpose. “And, to my surprise,” she continued, “he kept his word. It wasn’t the fastest-kept word in history but about fifteen years ago I had a visitor.”

  “The skinny boy.”

  “Had become a skinny middle-aged man. He’d moved to France, married, et cetera, et cetera. But when he decided to come back to Laos he made this set of prints for me. He found me, and here they are.”

  “I hope you thanked him properly.”

  “Least I could do, considering what he’d brought me. It was the loveliest gift a girl could get.”

  She flipped open to the first set of pictures and Siri’s mind turned eleven spinning somersaults into the page. He was back in 1940. There he was standing with his class, B5, all eighteen-year-olds in their group photo, everyone taller than Dr. Siri, everyone as happy as lizards in an ant storm. There he was in front of a blackboard, his raven black hair invisible against the black paint, his trim-waisted shirt a little too tight, highlighting his muscles. There he was at a campfire, lit by the light of the flames, deep in discussion, eyes burning with passion.

  “Heavens,” he said. “I was adorable.”

  “No argument there,” Daeng agreed.

  He turned another page. There he was, there they were: Siri and Boua sitting at a foldable table discussing the curriculum. Him smiling; her serious, young, beautiful—alive. His pulse raced just looking at her.

  “You were quite a couple.”

  Siri couldn’t bring himself to turn the page. “We used to have pictures,” he said. “Some from France, some from Hanoi, posed, studio pictures mostly. But they were either lost or destroyed by the elements. This is the first picture I’ve seen of her for … I don’t know, twenty years.”

  “You loved her. We could all tell.”

  “Still do.”

  Daeng looked into his green eyes and smiled. “There are more of the two of you in there.”

  Siri went through the photographs one by one, naming the youths, remembering exactly what activities they’d done on that particular day. But while he was studying them, he noticed something as clearly as if it had been written in headlines above each picture: enthusiasm. The kids looked at their teachers as if they could see halos. They were eating up everything. And these weren’t the posed photos the PL set up for propaganda. This was the real thing. These boys and girls were pumped up with national pride. Looking at them made him understand why he’d hesitated to condemn Civilai.

  “They look like they’re happy to be there,” he said.

  “We all were. Two important teachers trained in France, and a qualified doctor and nurse no less. You could have both been off somewhere making a lot of money, but instead you gave up two years to work with poor kids. What did they pay you? Two francs a month?”

  “I believe there was a fifty-centime Christmas bonus.” They laughed.

  “Of course they were happy to be there,” Daeng said. “They idolized you both. You were heroes to us. We all loved you.”

  And that was something else Siri had noticed in the black-and-white pictures. The attractive cook attending classes, helping at meetings. No, not attractive—beautiful. At the time he’d hardly noticed her. It certainly hadn’t occurred to him how lovely she was. An old Lao poet had once written that love was a sharpened spear that gouged out a man’s eyes. That had obviously been the case with Boua. He’d never noticed other women, didn’t once consider being with anyone else. He’d never observed Daeng’s adoring stares, her constant presence. He saw them now.

  “You weren’t ugly yourself,” he said.

  “At last, a compliment. Well worth the wait.”

  They laughed again and Siri closed the album and rested his hands on the back cover.

  “That was marvelous, truly marvelous,” he said. “You wouldn’t know how much I needed that. Or, yes, perhaps you would. Thank you so much for letting me see it.”

  “Oh, I didn’t bring it just to show you,” she said. “It’s a gift.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “I could never expect you to part with such a precious thing.”

  “Siri, I think over the past couple of weeks, you’ve lost yourself. I want you to have this so if it ever happens again you just have to look at the faces of your students.”

  He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek and this time she didn’t pull back.

  Dtui Puts on Weight

  It was September. A good deal had happened in the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos but nothing had changed. Perhaps it was because news is only news if it comes to fruition. A THOUSAND PEOPLE NOT KILLED IN AN EARTHQUAKE is hardly a headline you’d expect to see in a national newspaper. The failed coup was news that didn’t materialize. The Party decided to keep it to themselves and not trouble the population with it. The people had enough problems of their own. Pasason Lao newspaper saw fit not to mention an ex-minister’s being arrested and sent to seminar, or one or two generals transferred to posts that didn’t exist. In the hands of the Lao Department of Information, something like the Second World War could have ended up as a slight fracas.

  The resignation of a senior member of the politburo due to ill health, on the other hand, warranted a full page. It mentioned Civilai Songsawat’s devotion to the Party and his long career of faithful service. In the accompanying photograph he looked full of enthusiasm and vim. It was thirty years old. As few people bothered to read the Pasason Lao, Civilai’s departure, like the August coup attempt, passed unnoticed like fireflies in the midday sun.

  At the Mahosot morgue, for the first two weeks, the same could be said. A lot had happened but nothing had changed. Mr. Geung, the morgue assistant who wore his Down syndrome like a fashion statement, was out of the hospital and back at work. He’d laughed at all Dtui’s stories of their exploits in Thailand and understood no more than half of them, but it didn’t matter.

  Dr. Siri had betrayed his country but only two people knew that—three if he included the fortune-teller. The shadow behind the wicked man was equally guilty. He’d failed to expose a traitor, settling instead for a compromise. Civilai would leave public office and grow vegetables on the land behind his small house in the old American compound. Being away from his beloved politburo would be punishment enough. Neither of them would talk of the events of the Ubon coup. Siri, after much soul-searching and river watching, decided that he could live with that level of treachery, and got on with his life. Dtui ate, Judge Haeng grumbled, Crazy Rajid walked naked in circle
s around Nam Poo Fountain. Everything had apparently reverted to the way it was before the blind dentist walked under a Chinese logging truck. But then a day arrived when everything turned upside down.

  Siri was in his office, trying in a report to explain an aneurysm of the splenic artery in a way that Judge Haeng might understand. He was referring to Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book for suitable similes when a most unexpected guest walked into the room. Dtui and Geung and Siri all looked up from their desks when Daeng appeared in the doorway.

  “Sorry,” she said. “There wasn’t a front doorbell so I thought I should just come in.” Siri walked over to her with a big smile on his face.

  “Well, well,” he said. “Apart from Dr. Kissinger, you’re the last person I expected to find standing in my morgue.”

  “You know how I am, Siri. I had this impulse, and once I get an idea in my head …”

  He introduced her to his staff and sat her on the guest chair in front of his desk.

  “Are you in town long?” he asked.

  “It’s the funniest thing,” she said. “I thought it would just be a flying visit, see some old friends, do the sights. And there I was at Chantabouli Temple and I spotted this sad little run-down noodle shop with a sign nailed to the front saying it was for sale. I found the owner and she almost begged me to take over the place. All but giving it away, she was.”

  “Oh, I say,” Siri blushed. He noticed Dtui grinning over the guest’s shoulder. “Does that mean … ?”

  “Well, if I can get through all the red tape and paperwork, I may be living here permanently.”

  Siri was outwardly flustered but inwardly turning cartwheels. “Excellent. I mean, at last they’ll have some decent noodles in this city. What exactly was the impulse that brought you down here in the first place?”

  “Just some historical matter I never did manage to resolve.”

  “Is it something I can help with?”

  She stood and stretched her old legs. “Oh, I think your input could be integral, Siri. But look at me chatting on. I have to rush. Don’t want to keep you from your … whatever it is you do here. Be good. Nice meeting you all. Bye.”