Don't Eat Me

by Colin Cotterill

  Civilai looked disturbed. “It’s just . . .” he said.

  “What?”

  “The Ministry of Culture.”

  “What about it?”

  “If we’re in the open air shooting a movie, somebody’s going to spot us and report it. You can’t disguise a full-size film camera.”

  “So what are you telling me?” said Siri.

  “We need permission to make the movie.”

  “We need permission to sell a pig. There are ways around it. I know people in these ministries.”

  “Yes, and they don’t like you.”

  “That’s not true. Not all of them.”

  “Siri, you’ve antagonized every head of department in every ministry and government office. Everyone above a clerk grade-two level.”

  Siri sulked for a while. “I have a lot of friends in grade one,” he said.

  “That’s true, you do,” said Civilai. “And sellers in the market, and street cleaners, and vagabonds. But none of them will give you a license to make a movie.”

  “You’re ex-politburo,” said Siri. “You must still have some influence.”

  “All the people I used to know at the Ministry of Culture are dead.”

  “Culture’s a dangerous business,” said Siri.

  “Actually, they died of old age and boredom. That whole generation of autocrats is fading out. Now everything’s decided by committee.”

  “Then that’s perfect,” said Siri. “We’ll just put in our request and as soon as it gets bogged there in the slush of committee formalities we’ll start shooting. By the time they get around to it we’ll be in post-production. Don’t worry, older brother. I know how these things work. Bureaucracy has its good points.”

  That afternoon, Madam Daeng typed up a very vague request to make a film and Siri went off on his bicycle to deliver the document with Ugly trotting alongside him. He parked in front of the flaky-walled single-story building that currently housed the Ministry of Sport, Information and Culture. Ugly watched the bicycle. Upon entering the building, Siri deliberately turned onto the Sports wing, found nobody in the clerical office and buried his request under a very tall stack of documents. He’d done his duty. One day in the future they would find his request, and they’d know he’d followed the rules. The error would be entirely that of the ministry.

  So, it surprised all of them when Siri came downstairs the next morning to find a slightly built man in a Boy Scout uniform standing in front of the noodle shop.

  “What’s he doing there?” Siri asked Daeng.

  “He’s waiting for you,” said Daeng.

  “Is he a time traveler?”

  Daeng thought about the question. “No, I give up,” she said. “Why would he be a time traveler?”

  “The Boy Scout movement was disbanded in ’75,” said Siri. “‘Bourgeois, decadent elitist cronyism,’ they called it. Where’s he from?”

  “Culture.”

  “What?”

  “You did bury the request deep?”

  “As dirt.”

  “Then it’s probably just a coincidence,” said Daeng. “Good luck.”

  She went off to deliver her tray of noodles leaving her husband in limbo. The Boy Scout man turned to look at him and gave a salute that looked like something from the Hitler Youth Movement. Siri shrugged and went to meet him.

  “You wanted to see me?” said Siri.

  “Comrade Phooi from the Ministry of Culture,” said the man, holding out a hand for Siri to shake.

  Siri could not resist asking about the uniform. “I thought we’d banished the Scouts,” he said.

  “Scouts?” said Phooi. “Yes, most certainly we have. This is the new uniform of the Socialist Youth Movement.”

  “Looks like a scout uniform to me,” said Siri. “Have a lot left over from the old regime, do you?”

  “Perhaps a similar color,” said the man. “But you’ll notice the scarf is red and the only badge is the portrait of our esteemed prime minister.”

  “My mistake,” said Siri. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m here about your request to make a film,” he said.

  Siri’s teeth shuddered. “I didn’t expect you to get back to me so soon,” he said. “I thought there’d be a discussion and meetings.”

  “Usually there are,” said Phooi, “but they’re usually of a more academic nature. We don’t have a lot of actual projects to discuss. In fact, your proposal is the first we’ve seen for quite some time.”

  “Marvelous,” said Siri, feeling everything but. “So, do we have permission?”

  “Ah, Comrade Siri. Would that it were so simple. Now don’t get me wrong. We’re excited, really we are. The thought of producing a feature length film about Lao history and its latter-day awakening to the dawn of socialism would be a dream come true. What a dream, Comrade.”

  “Then you think we can do it,” said Siri. He could feel the quicksand of bureaucracy dragging him down to reality.

  “Oh, I hope so, Comrade Siri. I really do. All we need is to approve the screenplay.”

  “You need to what?” said Siri.

  “Don’t worry, Comrade Siri,” said Phooi. “It’s purely routine. We’ll have a small group of experts browse through the—”

  “Experts in what?” Siri asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Siri knew there were no experts in his country. Anyone with a claim to being an expert in any field had long since left for the camps on the Thai side and was already running a grocery shop in Cabramatta. Any scholars from the old regime who chose to stay would be keeping a low profile.

  “I’m just curious as to the qualifications of the experts who would be assessing the appropriateness of my work,” said Siri.

  Siri had raised his voice and Daeng could tell he was about to undergo another bureaucratic meltdown. She whispered something to Mr. Geung and went to the aid of her husband.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit with us and enjoy some noodles?” she asked Phooi.

  He ignored her and addressed Siri. “As you know,” he said, “all of the output of our ministry, whether fictional or non-fictional is directed by the minds of Comrade Marx and Comrade Lenin. They taught us the truths and our film should reflect those truths.”

  “Our film?” said Siri.

  “Perhaps a glass of ice tea?” said Daeng.

  “Of course,” said Phooi. “There are no individuals. A work of art is a creation not of one person but of the society that molds that person. So perhaps you’d be kind enough to give me a copy of the screenplay?”

  Daeng looked into the face of her overly flushed husband. Were he a tea kettle he would have been a few seconds from popping his rivets. It was exactly the moment when a man needed a wife.

  “I would not . . .” Siri began.

  “The doctor would not expect for one second to make a film without the guidance of brothers Marx and Lenin,” she said and took her husband’s hand. From a distance it might have seemed to be an intimate gesture but Madame Daeng had a grip that could grind gravel to dust. Siri let out a small yelp.

  “So,” she continued, “I’ve taken the liberty of having my worker put a copy of my husband’s script under the seat of your motor scooter.”

  She nodded in the direction of the scooter where Mr. Geung was in the process of lowering the seat. He gave a thumbs up sign. Siri’s eyes were watering.

  “I do hope you’ll like it,” said Daeng.

  “I am excited beyond words,” said Phooi, and he jogged back to his scooter.

  Chapter Four

  Curfew

  “Don’t tell me,” said Siri. “Let me guess. It has something to do with air-conditioning.”

  “I have no idea to what you are referring,” said Auntie Bpoo.

  She
was wrapped warmly in a beautiful white polar bear skin. The head and claws were still attached so there was no doubt about the origin of the fur. The head hung behind like a hood. Siri was wearing a Moscow Olympic T-shirt and his undershorts. He’d worn them to bed not expecting to be thrust into an arctic blizzard. He had to shout to be heard.

  “We both know these dreams are symbolic,” Siri yelled.

  “Have I not explained to you the difference between dreams and disappearances?” said Bpoo.

  “You have,” said Siri. “It’s just that I usually enter this state when I’m asleep and leave it when I wake up. There are those who might see that as a dream, better still a nightmare.”

  There was one real difference between Siri’s dreams and his disappearances. During the latter he could only be in one place or the other. When he was with Auntie Bpoo he could not be with Madam Daeng. His wife awoke often to find his side of the bed warm but empty. All she could do was await his return with stories from “over there.” Every now and then he’d leave her in broad daylight. She’d turn to him at the market and there’d be nothing but a shopping basket on the ground. She’d be beside him at a cultural event and have to fight to keep others from taking his seat. Woe betide he should return to the lap of an unsuspecting music lover. And there she was, 3 a.m. and alone. It wasn’t even legal grounds for divorce. But she had no intention of leaving her husband. He was the only man she’d ever loved; warts and all.

  They’d talked about it of course. They wondered whether they were merely senile. Whether Siri imagined he had a spirit life and Daeng, due to poor eyesight, could not see her husband who was clearly there beside her. Only Siri was witness to the tail that Madam Daeng had grown in return for a cure for her rheumatism. Did that mean it didn’t exist? Were they both mad? And, after a while, they concluded that they didn’t care. Their ridiculous life was a constant joy. Every elderly person deserved a period of insanity to combat the boredom of decay.

  Siri had known Auntie Bpoo when she was alive and he hadn’t liked her any better then. He hadn’t selected her as a spirit guide. She was an uncalled-for interloper. Siri had only recently learned of his ancestral connections to the spirit world, and it had been only a matter of months since he’d learned how to communicate directly with his supernatural lodgers. He had no choice but to speak to them through Bpoo, the least convincing transvestite ever to cross over to the other side. And she made even less of an effort to take care of herself in the afterlife. On this occasion she sported three-centimeter-long false eyelashes and a ten-day-old beard.

  “Are you going to tell me what all this damned snow is about?” Siri asked. “You’ve been dragging me through snow drifts and skating me across frozen lakes ever since I got back from Moscow. Everything’s white here. I need variety in my symbolism. If I’m supposed to learn anything during this particular stage of my training, I’ll need a little more color.”

  “What about a poem instead?” said Bpoo.

  “No. No, not that. Not another poem. They’re meaningless. You’re a terrible poet.”

  But the scream of the blizzard drowned out his words.

  Daeng heard an icy tinkling sound and a chill sped through her veins, and there beside her was her husband with icicles on his bushy white eyebrows.

  “I think I-I-I urgently need warming up,” he said.

  She wrapped herself around him as best she could and felt for signs of frostbite in his extremities.

  “You aren’t cold at all,” she said.

  “Not physically,” he confessed.

  “Did she have you back in the snow?” Daeng asked.

  She knew that a successful marriage was one in which couples shared all their supposed supernatural experiences.

  “I don’t get it,” said Siri. “She runs the inside of my head like a military training academy. I pass one test and she gives me another. This whole snow scenario has been going on for a month. She just sits there looking at me. Waiting for me to have an epiphany. I try to bait her with insults but she doesn’t budge.”

  “No clues?”

  “Usually not, but today I got a poem.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Yes. She wrote it in the snow in urine.”

  “You poor man.”

  “All those hours I’ve spent trying to decipher her poetry. I thought there might be subliminal messages but keep coming back to the conclusion she’s just a lousy poet. Her latest has that same je ne sais quoi about it. He retold it in his most dramatic voice.

  They roamed the earth

  Birth, death, dignified

  And if they died

  There was a fitter beast survived

  Then comes us

  No fuss. We shot and trapped and knifed.

  Bereft

  Except for those behind bars.

  “Sounds serious,” said Daeng. “Did she give you a hint as to who ‘they’ might be?”

  “I don’t give them much hope whoever they are,” said Siri. “I asked her, ‘Can’t we just forget the snow and move on to the next test? Put me down for an F for this class, and I’ll make it up in the next.’ She said before I walk on I have to learn how to see.”

  “It must be beautiful though, all that snow,” said Daeng.

  “You’ll see it one day, Daeng. We’ll go skiing in Switzerland on the proceeds from my first movie.”

  “That would be nice,” said Daeng.

  “You know what?” said Siri. “I think the feeling is returning to the nerves in my extremities.”

  “It would appear so,” said Daeng.

  “I’m sorry to drag you out of your beds so early,” said Chief Inspector Phosy, “but I need your collective memories of the night we found the skeleton at the Anusawari Arch.”

  He was speaking to fourteen young men the military referred to as failed cadets. They’d applied for military service but been rejected on various grounds: poor eyesight, non-symmetrical limbs, weight issues, and so on. But they’d been given a second chance to prove their worth. If they could excel as curfew patrollers they would be reconsidered for an army posting.

  For thirty years anyone with functioning legs had been accepted into whichever army unit they applied to. The royalists had put US-funded weapons into their hands and prodded them northeast to fight the Communists. The Pathet Lao had put Chinese and Soviet weapons into their hands and prodded them south to fight the corrupt drug lords in royalist uniforms. But peace had led to a trimming down of personnel to fit the budget and now young men and women had to apply and be trained.

  Phosy stared at the sorry-looking but enthusiastic group in front of him. Each unit comprised two boys on a motorcycle with the pillion rider holding a gun that was not necessarily loaded.

  “Comrades,” he said, “you know why you’re here. A terrible thing happened that morning so I want you to think back to everything you can recall, no matter how irrelevant you think it might be. Just spill it out.”

  A young man with half a mustache put up his hand. Phosy nodded.

  “I had to stop our motorcycle in front of the Lane Xang Hotel at about one p.m.,” he said. “My ma had made us stew and it had frogs in it. I hate frogs. I threw up half a dozen of the little bastards in the flower beds.”

  “And that’s as good an irrelevant start as any,” said Phosy.

  And it seemed to set the trend for the next hour. Young people had been caught on the river bank pursuing some nooky-like activities. One unit calmed down an old couple fighting with meat cleavers in front of their shop house. They all reported some crazy Indian running naked across their paths, but it was such a common event they’d learned to ignore it. When it came to vehicles there had been a couple of army jeeps and one old camouflaged military truck with a slipping cam shaft belt early in the morning sometime after 3 a.m. There was one embassy car with a coat of arms on th
e front but the boys didn’t recognize the country code on the diplomatic plates. That had been around 2 a.m. But by far the most common road users after curfew were those in black Zils—the official vehicles of the government. There had been seven curfew units out on the night and morning of the skeleton and all of them had seen at least two Zils apiece. There had clearly been some late official function that night.

  “I always assume they’re out on some matter of national importance,” said one young patrolman. He was describing his encounter with a Zil very early in the morning. “We leave them alone. But that morning it was all I could do to get out of the way of this one limo. We weren’t even safe on the pavement. It drove right off the road and almost hit a wall. The window at the back rolled down a crack and someone yelled for us to get out of the way. I have no idea what he was playing at. Maybe the steering went.”

  “Any idea what time that was?” Phosy asked.

  “We started our patrol at two a.m. so that must have been about two-fifty a.m.” said the boy.

  Two other units had seen a Zil driving slowly through the southern suburbs and the sleepy downtown area, zigging and zagging as if the driver were drunk. As nobody dared take down the number there could have been more than one erratic limo driver that morning but Phosy doubted it. And even if it had been an official limousine that delivered their Jane Doe, nobody, not even the boys on the curfew patrol, would report such a thing. Privilege set its own rules. Phosy knew he had to talk to the Zil drivers directly in an informal setting and he knew the very place.

  Nurse Dtui had agreed to meet Mr. Geung at a café behind the morning market. He didn’t drink coffee. He said it made him hyperactive and stupid. But in his own way he appreciated the tradition of clandestine meetings in coffee houses and Dtui was eager to hear her friend’s important news. She’d been running through the possibilities in her mind ever since the aborted disclosure in the morgue.