Don't Eat Me

by Colin Cotterill

  “Look,” said Wee, “you know all this and I know, so why don’t you just put on the black hood and get it over with?”

  “Be patient, Comrade,” said Phosy. “We’re just getting to the interesting part. You were given a place on the trafficking team because, it says here, you suffered remorse over what your family—”

  “Uncle.”

  “. . . what your uncle had been involved in and you wanted to help clear out the trade. So you went south, all the way back to your hometown in Khammouan and you started to inform on the traffickers. But, according to this report, you were providing our team with false information. You were diverting our police away from the trafficking routes and implicating people who had nothing to do with the trade. Your uncle was never arrested because you tipped him off.”

  “What can I tell you?” said Wee. “Reports never lie.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “Look, brother, I’ve been in this system long enough to know how it works.”

  “What did you think of your captain?”

  “I’m sure he’s kind to his grandchildren.”

  “Nothing else?”

  Wee stared blankly into Phosy’s eyes. “No,” he said.

  Phosy looked at his fellow officers and smiled then turned back to Wee. “What would you say if I told you your captain, Viseth, was downstairs in a cell?” he asked.

  “Eh?”

  “Captain Viseth is awaiting a tribunal of his own.”

  “What?” said Wee, baffled. “Why?”

  “You know why. As soon as his team got down south he teamed up with your uncle and had his men run the traffic. They sent a nice little monthly stipend to Oudomxai here at police headquarters. I’ve disbanded the unit. All the others are up on charges. There was only one officer in the team who protested. Refused to be a part of it.”

  Wee’s confident act crumbled and he slumped in his chair. “So, I’m not . . . ?”

  “Going to be shot?” Phosy smiled. “Not by us. There may be some fashion unit that’ll take objection to your dress sense, but I doubt they’ll execute you.”

  “So, why am I here?”

  “When you found out what your captain was up to you could have run or you could have joined him. But you didn’t. You stuck around and tried to sort it all out by yourself. You put yourself in harm’s way. You could have been killed. You’re an honest man. That’s why the captain made up the report about you. I want you to run your own unit. We’ve put together a team for you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. The traffickers are still operating. You’ve been around your uncle long enough to know how it all fits together. Start with him. We’ll see how it goes.”

  “What would I be . . . I mean what can I do? We haven’t got any laws.”

  “Just shut him down and bring him in to us,” said Phosy. “We can classify his activities as anti-state; treason, something like that. And it’s across borders so we can get him on all kinds of . . . look, I don’t know. But we do have to make a big deal of it. We want all the other traffickers to see this example and know we’re serious. So, we’ll get him on something. Leave that to me.”

  Dr. Siri and Comrade Civilai sat in the room that had once hosted an illicit library on the second floor of Madam Daeng’s noodle shop. There were no books now. They’d been destroyed in a fire. Victims of arson. Or perhaps they were victims of Dr. Siri’s proximity to disaster. The old fellow attracted crises like ants to a greasy pork sausage. But, as they stared at the magnificent beast that stood in the center of the room they could both feel the moths of darkness fluttering out of their lives. Before them was a new beginning; the tadpole of a life they’d both dreamed of since their study days in Paris. Here was their passport to world domination.

  “Perhaps we should have asked them for a manual,” said the doctor.

  “When procuring stolen goods one does not push one’s luck,” said Civilai.

  The old boys were seated on a bench eating banana baguettes, just . . . ogling. They usually preferred to take their lunches down to the Mekhong and cast aspersions on the Thais opposite, but they had become fixated with their new toy. They had not yet dared twiddle with it. The dials and levers were daunting enough, but the potential it held was overwhelming.

  “We’ll work it out,” said Civilai. “How hard can it be?”

  “I’m told in California they have six-month courses in its operation,” said Siri.

  “And how could you possibly know that?”

  “The dealer told me.”

  “He wasn’t a dealer,” said Civilai. “He was a crook. A common thief. He would know no more about this wonder than I know about space exploration.”

  “It is magnificent, isn’t it?” said Siri.

  Before them stood a hardly used Panavision Panaflex Gold movie camera with a super speed thirty-five millimeter lens on a genuine steel tripod. It had literally fallen off a truck during the filming of a Hollywood movie called The Deer Hunter. They’d seen the movie, of course, dubbed in Vietnamese in a café in Hanoi. The natives didn’t come out of it too well, but Siri and Civilai had admired the film from a cinematic rather than a historical viewpoint. When the camera fell off the truck on a potholed road in the north of Thailand it had still been in its packing crate, so it wasn’t damaged. The driver continued on his way oblivious to his loss. The locals who had witnessed this miraculous gift from the gods carried the crate into the village, disguised it with liana fronds and palm leaves and began the process of selling it. They were offering it for the very reasonable sum of a million dollars.

  To their surprise, nobody in that impoverished province had a need for a cinema camera. The villagers toyed with putting an ad in the national newspapers but were afraid they’d be caught in their theft. The longer they went without a buyer, the lower the asking price dropped. It fell past half a million dollars, paused briefly at the two-hundred-thousand mark, then came to rest in the region of “make me an offer.” Still nobody bit. A year went by, then two and the crate had become a village landmark. They fired rockets from it at the rain-making festival and burned candles on it for the Loi Gratong celebration—almost losing the whole thing in a fire.

  But word of the village with a movie camera finally reached Nong Kai and the ear of No Nose Looi. Looi, among other things, was a travel agent and entrepreneur. Before fleeing his native Laos he’d been a fan of Madam Daeng’s noodles and an admirer of Dr. Siri. He knew of the doctor’s fascination with cinema and wondered whether he might be interested in making a film of his own. Madam Daeng had passed on the news rather casually to her husband whilst on the verge of sleep. Siri sat up like a spring lock.

  “They’ve got a what?” he asked.

  “A cinema camera,” she said. “And twenty reels of film.”

  Siri hadn’t slept a wink that night. He was too full of wonder. What a dream it would be to make a film of his own. He spooled through the unwritten screenplays in his mind, and at 3 a.m. he left his sleeping wife, climbed on his bicycle and with Ugly trotting beside him, he rode out to kilometer six and Civilai’s house. He and the battery on his bicycle lamp were almost dead by the time he arrived. The old politburo man had taken some rousing, but once he was on his feet and responsive, it took absolutely no work at all to involve him in the venture.

  A year earlier there had been an incident that resulted in the old boys coming into possession of some drug money. Quite a sum in fact. Siri had invested much of his in charitable acts while Civilai had smuggled in some delicious but rather expensive wines, a new lounge suite and a car—not new but classic. Yet still they had not completely used up their ill-gotten gains. In fact they had enough not only to buy the camera, but also, with a little budget tweaking, to produce a modest film of their own. As the thieves who had stolen the camera had received no other offers they reluctantly accepted two
hundred dollars in cash and agreed to take it to the river on an agreed date and time. As the crate weighed more than the equipment, they removed the camera and wrapped it in an old parachute canopy. Getting it to the Lao side would be Siri’s problem.

  And there it was. Fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of camera. Enough to keep a family of twelve fed for a decade. And twenty reels of film. Four hours of footage if they could get every take right the first time.

  “How do we develop the film?” Civilai asked.

  Siri laughed.

  “Old Brother,” he said, “on the eve of the race does the marathon runner worry about what drinks will be available at the winner’s reception party? No. He takes one step at a time. First we need to put together a screenplay that is worthy of this beautiful camera.”

  “Couldn’t that take a long time?” Civilai asked.

  “Not necessarily. I already have one.”

  “What? You never told me that. Where is it?”

  “Right here,” said Siri, tapping the side of his temple with his index finger.

  “There’s room in there with all the ghosts?”

  Admittedly there was a lot going on in Siri’s head. To shorten a very long story, and through no fault of his own, Siri was possessed by a number of spirits. There was a dog in there for one, and Siri’s dead mother who never spoke, and a number of soldiers he’d saved in battle but who had gone on to lose their lives regardless. There was Yeh Ming, a thousand-year-old Hmong shaman and, to Siri’s chagrin, there was his spirit guide: a transvestite fortune-teller by the name of Auntie Bpoo. She was a cantankerous and thoroughly annoying presence but there was no getting rid of her. Siri was plagued by visitors from the other side and still he hadn’t learned how to manage them.

  “It’s a different department,” he said. “Screenplays come under “files—hyphen—genius.”

  “Can’t say I’ve ever associated you with order and organization,” said Civilai. “What’s it about?”

  “Imagine this, if you will,” said Siri drawing a rectangle in the air in front of him. “A Lao version of War and Peace. Not quite as long as the Bondarchuk production, which I believe topped the scale at four hundred and fifty minutes. More so the Audrey Hepburn version but without all that upper-class family relationship nonsense. We’ll keep the heroic nationalism and the struggle against the French imperialists.”

  “Sounds a tad . . . ambitious.”

  “Not at all,” said Siri. “You’d have to see it written down to appreciate it.”

  “And who do you have in mind to play the lead roles in this extravaganza?”

  “We have a great tradition of storytelling in Laos,” said Siri. “We just have to find the players and minstrels that wander the land and convert them to the big screen. We Lao are masters of pretense.”

  “You do know we don’t have an infinite budget?” said Civilai.

  “Ah, there you are as pessimistic as ever. Why do you think I’ve chosen War and Peace as our inaugural launch?”

  “Because you have delusions of grandeur?”

  “Because China has all but declared war on us and, as a result, the Soviets have become our best friends on the planet. They fund our military, equip our hospitals . . .”

  “. . . send us to the Olympics.”

  “What a junket that was. And how hard do you think it would be to secure funding from a vibrant Soviet art and culture community—especially as we’ll be adapting one of their most beloved books.”

  “They’d throw money at us.”

  “An embarrassment of rubles.”

  “Siri, you’re a devious man. How long will it take to transfer your head screenplay to paper?”

  “What day is it?”

  “Friday.”

  “Unless I’m distracted by the spirit world I could have a first draft down by Tuesday.”

  “Champion,” said Civilai.

  They finished their baguettes and washed them down with coconut water, smiling at their Panavision.

  “I wish we had a manual,” said Siri.

  Chief Inspector Phosy had a wife and a daughter. It was his second attempt at building a home. His first family had taken advantage of one of his many absences to boat across the river and find passage to somewhere far away. He’d entered this second marriage to Dtui, a chubby nurse, with the confidence of a man who had failed miserably. Initially it had been a pragmatic arrangement. He’d slept with her and she’d fallen pregnant with their daughter, Malee. He’d agreed to marry her because, well, she was a friend and it was the decent thing to do. He hadn’t expected to fall in love with the red-faced girl from the rural north, nor to adore their daughter. But both miracles had occurred. He’d only recently begun to tell his wife of his feelings although he had yet to find suitable language in which to wrap his thoughts. When he told her he loved her, even though the sentence left his mouth with the utmost sincerity, it always seemed to arrive like a “Have you eaten yet?” or an “It looks like it’s going to be hot today.”

  “Have you eaten yet?” asked Dtui.

  “Not actual food,” said Phosy. It was eight in the evening and the earliest he’d arrived home all week. He found Nurse Dtui playing poker on the floor with Malee. Still they were staying in the police dormitory, twelve cell-like rooms and a shared bathroom. As the chief inspector, Phosy had the right to choose a dwelling more appropriate for his rank. His predecessor had moved into a two-story concrete house out by the Soviet hospital. He had a maid and a gardener and a security man who checked the credentials of visitors and opened and closed the remote-control gate. Eight of the twelve rooms had air-conditioning. Not a bad home for a man on fifteen dollars a month.

  To Dtui’s regret, Phosy had rejected the mansion and had decided to await the completion of a block of police apartments on the way to the airport. He was a man who led by example. Most of the lower ranks thought he was insane. He unbuttoned his stiff shirt and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “You don’t think it’s a bit soon to be teaching her to gamble?” he asked.

  Their daughter stood to hug him without letting go of her cards then returned to the game.

  “It’s lucky we aren’t playing for money,” said Dtui. “She’s cleaning me out.”

  With the closing of the morgue at Mahosot Hospital, Dtui had been transferred to the old Lido Hotel, currently a nursing college. She was teaching basic everything to country girls for whom “basic” was “advanced.”

  “Lose any students today?” Phosy asked.

  The previous day a girl had fainted at the sight of a liter of blood in a bottle. She was three months away from graduation. Dtui had suggested to the college director that the lass was probably better suited to growing turnips. As ever, the director shuffled the false teeth around inside his mouth with his tongue and reminded her there was a drastic shortage of nurses in the country.

  “I had a girl suture her finger to a patient’s leg wound this morning,” said Dtui.

  “I hope they’ll be very happy together,” said Phosy.

  Malee put down a seven, an ace and a three. “Three crocodiles,” she said.

  “Two elephants,” said Dtui, putting down a pair of queens.

  Malee laughed and picked up all the cards.

  “You do know you’re only two years old?” said Phosy.

  “Yes,” said Malee, shuffling the deck.

  “When did she learn ‘crocodiles’?” Phosy asked.

  “She just soaks it all up,” said Dtui. “There’s no stopping her. She tied a shoelace today.”

  “I couldn’t tie shoe laces till I was twenty-seven,” said her husband.

  “That’s ’cause you were running barefoot through the jungle till then.”

  “Bed,” said Malee.

  “Okay,” said Dtui.

  Their daughter kissed them bo
th, crawled onto the bed roll and was asleep almost immediately. She gave a little burp to signal the fact she’d shut down for the night. They sat watching her sleep.

  “She was just waiting for you to come home,” said Dtui. “The nights are getting later.”

  “The new job’s getting heavier,” said her husband. “With all the paperwork and formalities, I hardly have time for police duties. Yesterday morning they sent me off on a wild goose chase to the airport to welcome the Cambodian police chief. Even gave me a bunch of flowers to give him. Of course, he wasn’t on the flight.”

  “So, where are my flowers?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t have time for breakfast.”

  “You ate my flowers? Where’s the romance in our relationship?”

  “Are you free tomorrow afternoon?”

  “A date?”

  “Sort of. I’d like you to do an autopsy for me.”

  “Passion comes in so many disguises.”

  “I tried to talk Dr. Siri out of retirement, but he wasn’t interested,” said Phosy. “He said there was no need to recruit him because I’m living with the best forensic detective in the country.”

  “An unqualified one,” said Dtui. “I’m just a glorified lab assistant.”

  “We all know you’re more than that. If it wasn’t for me and motherhood you’d be on your second year of forensic pathology in the Soviet Union.”

  “I wasn’t that interested.”

  “You spent a year learning Russian medical terms.”

  “Hobby.”

  “Okay,” said Phosy. “Then I’ll get Dr. Mot to do it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  They sat cross-legged on the plastic carpet. There was the buzz of conversations from the neighboring rooms. Dtui corrected homework. Phosy took files from his briefcase and browsed until he felt his wife’s eyes on him.

  “You’d really get Dr. Mot to agree to do this autopsy?” she asked.

  “No choice,” said Phosy.

  “He did three weeks of pathology in East Germany,” said Dtui. “He didn’t even spot a hand grenade sewn into some poor bugger’s insides.”