The Delightful Life of a Suicide Pilot

by Colin Cotterill

“See what I mean?” said Daeng. “A thoroughly annoying man.”

  “Then there’s no point in having a mystery in the first place, is there?” said Siri. “Let’s all just skip to the last day of our lives and see what happened. A book is like an orgasm.”

  “Siri, I don’t—” Phosy began.

  “You want to get as much mileage out of it as you can before it’s all over,” Siri continued.

  “There goes another of our family secrets,” said Daeng.

  “Just words to the wise to a young couple starting off on the trail to marital bliss,” said Siri.

  “Do you mind if we change the subject?” Phosy asked. “I’m sending Captain Sihot off to Vang Vieng this afternoon.”

  “Ah, you’ve grasped the concept of delegation at last,” said Daeng, pouring everyone another cup of tea.

  “I’ve always known the concept but until now I’ve been the best man for the job.”

  “See how modest your daddy is?” said Dtui to her daughter.

  “Can’t see,” said Malee.

  “Right, sorry. I forgot.”

  “In fact, I should be there doing this myself,” Phosy continued. “If we get this wrong we’ll be answerable to the Vietnamese.”

  “But if we get it right they’ll be beholden to us,” said Siri.

  “And you’re quite sure?” Phosy asked.

  “As sure as I can be until we get an eye witness,” said Siri.

  “Transport out of the region would have been impossible without being noticed,” said Phosy, “so it had to have been a local girl.”

  “Do you think she’ll be willing to talk?” asked Dtui.

  “Sihot has to find her first,” said Phosy. “He’s from around there so I’m hoping the locals will talk to him. If he finds the girl and shows her what we believe happened, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t speak up. She’s not a suspect.”

  “But she might be a local girl who agreed to go for a hike—if you know what I mean,” said Daeng.

  “Sihot’s got a way with people,” said Phosy. “I’m trusting he can leave there with the girl’s reputation intact.”

  “Assuming it was intact before he gets there,” said Siri.

  Chapter Three

  Creative Writing

  2/30/1941

  A word about my posting. They have sent us to Thakhek in Laos. It’s a small, pretty but unremarkable town on the Mekong, a hand-grenade toss across the river from Thailand. But it is strategically situated exactly halfway down the country. The Thais have signed memoranda of cooperation with half the planet as a sort of insurance they’ll still have allies no matter how badly things turn out. But with the bulk of the French forces busy in Europe, this would be a good time for the fickle Thais to nuzzle up to us and claim back some real estate stolen by Laos and their French minders. Japan agreed on the condition that we could trample all over Thailand at will. To show us how much they love their northern neighbor, Thailand has declared war on England.

  We are a small unit of eight Japanese with orders to tolerate but not interfere with the French administrators in Thakhek. They, in turn, have been ordered to ignore us. We are not a particularly frightening band of warriors but we represent an immense army. They tell us that eventually Thakhek will be the center of Japanese operations in the region. We are here to lay the groundwork. We are instructed to nod at the locals in a friendly manner, to not rape the women, and to pay for goods at the market at the rates the vendors charge us. It isn’t what I expected to be doing when I became a pilot but I like it here.

  “He’s a pilot,” said Daeng. “How come he’s working on a ground crew and not dropping bombs?”

  “I’m sure we’ll get around to that,” said Siri.

  It was bedtime, which generally came an hour before sleep. They’d spoon on the thin mattress and look at the stars through the window and sum up their days and philosophize. It was the happiest time for both of them.

  “Do you think he’s one of them?” said Daeng.

  “Them?”

  “A kamikaze.”

  “If he is, he’s not very good at his job. This is a long diary.”

  “Are you really sure you don’t want to . . . you know . . . flip to the last page, or the first page or whatever it is?”

  “Yes.”

  “It might be urgent.”

  “If it was urgent he’d send me a telegram. No, Toshi wants me to read his diary at my own pace. Come to my own conclusions.”

  “It’s not exactly action-packed, is it? Twenty pages into the Lao section and nobody’s dead yet. We know more about the wildflowers than we do about the war. And they’ve sent him to Thakhek, of all places. Not much action to be had there.”

  “You’ve been there.”

  “A few times, after the French came back.”

  “It used to be a gambling mecca,” said Siri. “Thais would row across the river, lose all their money, and row back, assuming they hadn’t lost their boat at the card tables. Bars. Brothels. Opium. Laos was the sin capital of Asia.”

  “Then we won the war and spoiled everything.”

  “It’ll all come back, you mark my words. When the old soldiers die off there’ll be a reawakening. There’s a lot of money to be made from debauchery.”

  “What a pessimistic husband you are.”

  “But don’t you think it’s intriguing?”

  “Debauchery?”

  “The diary. All those little teasers here and there: the treasure, studying Lao even before he knew he’d be transferred here.”

  “You’re easily intrigued.”

  “And he mentions his wife and the kids just that once.”

  “Perhaps he wrote letters to them.”

  “I hope he did,” said Siri. “I’d like to think he was a romantic like me.”

  They let the peace overwhelm them for a while. The cicadas serenaded the night birds and accompanied a distant growl of thunder.

  “Siri?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Should I be concerned that you haven’t vanished for a while?”

  “You want me to?”

  “Well, yes, considering it’s your other life. You’re heavily invested in the spirit dimension. You used to go over to the other side often to make sense of this world.”

  “I know.”

  “In fact, you haven’t chatted with Auntie Bpoo since . . . since Civilai died.”

  She felt his body tense. Siri had entered a love-hate relationship with the spirit world some five years before when he discovered he hosted a thousand-year-old Hmong shaman. This was not a popular hitchhiker as he’d forced Siri to acknowledge there was a dimension his scientific mind had refused to accept. Since then he’d fought with malevolent spirits, traveled to the Otherworld, traded insults with his transvestite spirit guide, and talked with the departed. And now his closest friend was on that other side.

  “I’ve been busy,” he said.

  “No, you haven’t. It’s as if . . . as if you don’t want to go there because you’ll have to talk to him. Bpoo’s your guide. She’d make it all possible for you. She’d have a dramatic location set up for you both. She’d have an Otherworld log beside the Otherworld Mekong, you and him sitting there drinking fake rum and sugarcane juice and eating supernatural baguettes. It’d be fun.”

  “It won’t. Can we not talk about it?”

  “No. We talk about everything. This is a thing.”

  The thunder rumbled as if it was stipulated in some celestial script.

  “I miss him,” said Siri.

  “Of course you do.”

  “He was my dearest comrade. But it’s as if he’s shed a few dimensions and exists in a new form. It’s not him. When I shake his hand or kiss his cheek I feel nothing. The spirit world is a circus of illusion. I can create
images and Bpoo can put them into a format that’s recognizable to me. I think I see my dead friend. I believe I can hear him speak. I’m conned into accepting a full-blown production and the more I wish it to be real, the more real it becomes.”

  “You can’t believe otherwise,” said Daeng. “Your trips to the Otherworld have influenced events here, so it isn’t just your imagination. You’ve been able to make changes in this world from your experiences.”

  “But I can’t bring anyone back,” said Siri. “And then what happens if I prefer my relationship with Civilai over there? I’d be gone for days at a time. No maître d’ noodles. No drinks by the river. Until now I’ve been able to control it. It’s the first time I haven’t been left to the whim of a dead transvestite spirit guide. I’m earthbound. I’ve learned how to shut the door. I’m afraid to open it again.”

  Daeng smiled and kissed his cheek.

  “I miss that warm empty place on the mattress and the stories when you come back, but I’d miss the real you a lot more.”

  6/2/1941

  I should like to talk more about our vegetable patch but let me first introduce my dear colleagues here. There are eight of us, nine if you count the dog but I’ll tell his story later. There’s no need to memorize the names. As I proceed, I’ll talk about them in more detail. Our commander is Major General Dorari Momoyotsu (怒驘詈腗四). He’s a sweet man, small with a huge shiny skull. From behind, it looks like he’s wearing a pink motorcycle helmet. I am his second-in-command. Below me is Captain Jame Nomishige (邪目耳滋). He is our quartermaster. He isn’t fit for active duty because he lost an eye in one battle and a leg in another. I joke that it was very clumsy of him. But despite his age, he is a wonderful stores man. Next is Second Lieutenant Tetsukimo Souben (泆膽藻麵). He’s very tall for a Japanese and skinny as a bamboo pole. Then there is Warrant Officer Ukabane Orimimi ( 迂屍淤耳). He’s as strong as an ox and a little scary to look at. His face is all battered and misshapen. Corporal Yatsusuki Hokobei (奴犁夸謎), on the other hand, has a smooth, kind face but he’s built like, as they say, a concrete latrine. Private Oshiira Somai (啞苛蔬迷) I secretly call Quasimodo because he has a hunched back and bad skin. He sings quite beautifully. Last is Lance Corporal Hokofugu Hama (餘鮭芭麽), who has a penchant for alcohol although he doesn’t become violent when he’s drunk. I’ve noticed that drinking brings out a hidden feminine side that perhaps only I can see.

  What a colorful group we are. I confess I am dull compared to my comrades. Our mission is to prepare Thakhek for the coming-together of all the Japanese armed forces. We have been allocated forty acres of land abutting the town. With the help of local labor we will build our own little Nirvana with dormitories and roads and other facilities. Meanwhile we live in tents, which I find most invigorating.

  Nineteen eighty-one Laos was wallowing in a quagmire of bad luck and naivety, a state that had set back all its dreams of the previous three years. First floods then droughts killed the crops. Bad management and apathy killed off an overly ambitious cooperatives program. Siding with Vietnam killed off any hope of aid from China. And the mass exodus and prolonged incarceration of the royalist workforce killed off a skilled middle class. So what better course of action could there be, given the total failure of the government’s first three-year plan of action, than to make a new plan? The People’s Democratic Republic of Laos’s new five-year plan of action offered new hope and prosperity. The highlights were to revamp industry (currently amounting to small factories producing matches, plastic bags, beer, and rubber sandals), encouraging agriculture (in a country where 75 percent of the lowland was already being farmed), and to work on national highway number nine (which would need heavy equipment the country didn’t possess). In the meantime, imports exceeded exports by 80 percent and experts from other communist countries searched desperately for a proletariat to stimulate. Overseas, the United Lao National Liberation Front with its snug headquarters in California was funding insurgencies and promising to rescue those trapped in Laos—as if the country didn’t have enough problems.

  Vientiane, the capital, had taken on the appearance of a Miss Havisham: its shuttered shop fronts laced with spiderwebs, its potted plants the color of the dirt roads, its occasional paving stones segregated by gnarled weeds. The jungle was already claiming back the outer suburbs. And yet, through all its failings, the city dug deep for something to smile about. The populace believed that a country was more than the sum of its debts and the rust of its decomposing cars. A country was the character of its inhabitants, and after thirty years of war, the Lao believed they’d earned credit just for surviving it all. And two of the happiest Lao were Dr. Siri and his wife, Madam Daeng. They had fought for independence on the battlefields and had won the right to grumble about everything. They believed also that they had earned the right to travel wherever they wished whenever they wished. The government did not agree. In order to move from one province to another, a citizen had to have a laissez-passer. If the citizen could not justify the trip to the satisfaction of the official in charge of such matters, it was probably easier—as Dr. Siri often put it—to pass a mature coconut through your digestive system. Even would-be travelers with dying grandmothers, soon-to-be-married nieces, or invitations from respectable village heads would have to suffer the humiliation of sitting on a wooden bench for hours while the cadre shifted the application from one side of the desk to the other.

  And it was exactly this brick wall of bureaucracy that inspired Siri and Daeng to travel illegitimately as often as they could. They lied with great aplomb, they hitchhiked on aircraft, they claimed to be persons of influence but often they’d just drive through border barriers and wave. The only thing they’d draw the line at was graft. They would never pay beyond the actual price for a document or a service even if it meant watching an application slip to the bottom of a pile. That wasn’t the country they’d fought for. But all around them they were beginning to hear the rustle of brown envelopes passing under tables.

  “How do we get there?” Daeng asked, shoveling noodles into bowls, yelling above the happy lunchtime throng.

  “Where are we going?” Siri asked.

  “Thakhek, of course.”

  “We are?”

  “Most certainly. You’ve been bored to tears since you resigned. You have nothing to read. Nobody to stimulate you. You hate working in the restaurant.”

  “I do not.”

  He shifted to his left a little in case there was a bolt of lightning on its way.

  “And with no Civilai, you have nobody to provide you with fictional appointments elsewhere. So you’re stuck. And I think it’s time for a vacation for both of us.”

  “What about the business?” said Siri, even though he knew only too well that Mr. Geung and Tukta were every bit as competent at noodling as his wife. He looked up from the spoons he’d been polishing for what felt like a great chunk of his life. “Then why don’t we go to the French Riviera?” he said.

  “Because we charge twenty cents for a bowl of noodles and I’ll have to work another fifty years to earn enough to get there. And you know you really want to go to Thakhek.”

  “It is a pleasant spot for a holiday, I admit,” he said.

  “And you’ll be able to walk around to all the sites Toshi mentions in his diary.”

  “All right. You’ve talked me into it.”

  “Which brings me back to my original question. How do we get there?”

  “We could always go through Thailand. We could play the deaf and dumb Thai couple again. That worked once. But I have to see Phosy tomorrow. Perhaps we can go officially as special constables.”

  “You’ll never talk him into doing anything illegal.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “But Siri.”

  “Yes, my love?”

  “Read faster.”

  7/23/1941

  This is
such a fascinating place with three distinct groups: Lao, French, and Japanese. The Lao continue to be bemused by all the attention they’re attracting. Our village headman is most kind. He provides us with workers and goes out of his way to bring us fruit and vegetables from Lao gardens. The French are like ghosts. They don’t talk to us and I feel they would not even if we shared a language. None of them speaks Lao and it seems all the clerks they hire are French-speaking Vietnamese. And then there’s us. We work hard and competently. We are kind to each other and to the locals.

  And I promised to mention the dog. His name is Taigou, which means “big bite.” I never considered myself to be an animal lover but I have become very close to two creatures since I arrived here. The first was a cat I called Hal. He was always somewhere close by watching me. He would not accept food from me but he was usually asleep at the foot of my bunk when I woke up in the morning. And then suddenly came Taigou. There’s something about him that reminds me of a small person in a fur coat. One day, Private Oshiira came running to me and said there was a dog behind the latrines whose head was stuck in a teakettle. He’d obviously been dunking for water and managed to get his head wedged inside. He was galloping around like some crazed beast, running into fences and trees. I was afraid he’d hurt himself. I wrestled him to the ground and held him while my men pried off the kettle. He bit me, of course, when his head was free. It was only to be expected. But after that, the little man in the fur coat felt remorse. It was as if he understood that I was only there to help him, and from that day on, he became my protector and I became his guardian. We have adopted him as a mascot but he sleeps in front of my tent every night and nobody else’s. I feel that I am getting closer to nature with every day that passes. Sadly, with Taigou’s arrival, Hal no longer stays with me, although I do see him lurking in the shadows from time to time. I suppose there is some deep animosity between these two species that I do not yet understand.

  Siri was on a bench in front of Phosy’s office at police headquarters. He hadn’t made an appointment and nobody knew where the chief inspector was. And anyone in Laos knew that making an appointment had very little effect on success in meeting the person you’ve come to see. But Siri had Toshi’s diary so he was in no hurry. The mold from the diary cover seemed to be spreading to the doctor’s skin. No amount of carbolic soap, no number of horsehair brushes would remove the stain. But he wouldn’t stop reading even if he caught the bubonic plague from the thing. The Japanese had started to be more creative in his writing. He still mentioned the flowers and trees and the bloody birds ad nauseam, but he’d started to tell fables. It was as if Toshi had suddenly become aware of an audience.