The Delightful Life of a Suicide Pilot

by Colin Cotterill

  “About two weeks after he returned from that first mission,” said Satsai. “The children in this photo would have been dead if it weren’t for the medicine Hiro conjured up.”

  “Would you mind if I borrowed this picture for a day or two to show around in Thakhek?” asked Siri.

  Satsai looked shocked at the thought, but then seemed to reprimand himself mentally.

  “If you think it would help,” he said. “But I would like it back when you’re finished with it. It’s the only picture of him I have.”

  “And what of the second mission?” Daeng asked.

  Satsai stared out over the roofs of the village.

  “It was the day before the Japanese surrender,” he said. “Nobody was expecting it to happen so suddenly, or at least nobody in this region. The rumors were that things weren’t going so well for the Japanese, but you always got the feeling they’d fight to the death. You couldn’t picture them with their hands in the air. Garu, the boatman, was our telegraph. He’d come in with supplies or returnees and he’d sit on the dock and tell us the news from Thakhek. Around that time the gossip was all Japanese. A lot of senior officers had arrived under the leadership of General Shosen. There was obviously something brewing. There were several thousand troops stationed there and twenty or so Zeros parked beside the landing strip. They’d been refitted with additional fuel tanks and canisters of high explosives to make a bigger mess when they flew into American battleships. The generals had ordered a lot of booze and food so there was some type of celebration that night. Nobody in town knew what they were celebrating but it was ironic timing. The next day, probably all bloated and hung over, they’d go to the radio and hear the emperor’s speech and bang goes the lot of them.”

  “So Hiro left on August fourteenth?” said Siri.

  “That’s right.”

  “And again with no warning?” Siri asked.

  “Well, he was in his uniform again. I was having an afternoon siesta but I was awoken by the creak of footsteps on the bamboo slats. I was drowsy. Hiro lay down behind me and held me tight, like a mother protecting her child. I could feel his heartbeat thumping against my back. His uniform smelled of mothballs and the material was unsuitable for the tropics so we were both sweating. But the warmth surrounded me like a womb and I fell asleep again. When I woke up, he and our only motorboat were gone.”

  “And that was the last you heard of him,” said Daeng.

  “Yes,” said Satsai.

  Daeng and Siri could feel the same loss they knew still weighed heavily on the teacher’s heart.

  “Any idea where he went?” asked Siri.

  “No.”

  “And he left the diary with you?” asked Daeng.

  “Yes, he did. I can’t tell you how many times I read through it. I even studied Japanese so I could understand the early entries. I was shocked, Doctor. I have to tell you. It was no wonder he lost his mind after all the atrocities he witnessed in China. No man with a heart and a conscience could have come through those years unscathed.”

  “So you don’t think he endorsed the atrocities?”

  “Of course he didn’t. It was China that drove him insane. He hated everything about the invasion. But he understood it was necessary to document what happened there. The only way he could do that without having his records confiscated and destroyed was to describe it all favorably. He was convinced nobody would believe the events of Nanjing. He once wrote in our notebook conversations: The best way to disguise a sin is to redecorate it as a blessing. I didn’t know what he meant until I read his diary. Everything he wrote pointed to exact locations and gave detailed statistics all presented with hurrahs and hoorays. His superiors would see nothing but a patriot in his writings. It was a work of genius. And I thought it was lost.”

  “Wait, when was the last time you saw it?” Daeng asked.

  “I didn’t check it religiously,” said Satsai, “but I’m certain it hadn’t been removed from the wooden chest I kept it in under the floor. I had it wrapped in tinfoil to keep the mice out of it. I’m sure it was in my house the day of the raid.”

  “And the village was burned down,” said Daeng.

  “To the ground.”

  “Nothing survived?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Then somebody on that raid must have found the diary,” said Daeng.

  “This is why I married her,” said Siri.

  “What we don’t know is whether they picked it up incidentally along with other paperwork . . .” she continued.

  “. . . or whether it was the diary they were looking for,” said Siri.

  “Which means we might have to take another look at that diary with fresh eyes,” said Daeng.

  They were all walking together to the jetty. Daeng and Siri were drunk with information and they needed to sit down and organize their thoughts. Garu, the perennial boatman, was stretched out under a palm tree.

  “How do you know it was Americans who destroyed your village?” Daeng asked.

  “You mean apart from the helicopters?” said Satsai. “We all saw those.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you did. But you were fleeing to the caves. You didn’t really have time to listen to their accents.”

  “There was an eyewitness who survived without hiding in the caves,” said Satsai.

  “Can we talk to him before we go?” said Daeng.

  “Her,” said Satsai and turned around and pointed to the fat lady at the loom.

  “I was in a tree,” said the fat woman. “Of course I didn’t have these pigs back then weighing me down.” She hoisted one breast in each hand to demonstrate their weight.

  The visitors were sitting on her veranda eating homemade khao lam sticky rice in bamboo that was chewy and tasted like pure sugar.

  “In fact I was what you might call lithe,” she said. “But you know how it is. Find yourself an attractive husband and let yourself go. Not that time did him any favors either. Bald as a blister he turned out to be. If only I’d—”

  “So you were in a tree,” said Siri.

  “That one there, in fact,” she said, pointing to a handsome willow that overhung the river. Not one of its limbs would have supported her weight now. “I scurried up there as soon as the shooting and the screaming started. Two of ’em came this way to secure the jetty and make sure no one got in or out through the tunnel.”

  “You heard them say that?” asked Daeng.

  “No,” said the woman. “I’m just assuming that was why they were standing on the jetty with their guns pointed at the tunnel. Truth is they didn’t say a word. Just chewed gum.”

  “But you were close enough to see their faces?” said Siri.

  “Didn’t get a great look,” she said. “They were all wearing those fancy reflecting sunglasses and had their hats pulled down over their faces. But I knew what American uniforms looked like. Saw enough of them in the comics.”

  “So there was nothing that made you suspicious?” asked Siri.

  “You mean apart from Americans flying a hundred-odd kilometers to shoot us and burn our village down? That was pretty suspicious.”

  “I mean something more . . . subtle,” said Siri. “Something that seemed out of place to you.”

  “No . . . well, perhaps there was something.”

  “What?”

  “Their uniforms were brand-spanking new. Could see the folds. But both of them had their trousers held up with rope. You’d think if a government could afford four million dollars a week to kill communists, the least they could do is spring for nice leather belts, wouldn’t you?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Belts Tighten

  Siri and Daeng had the foresight to bring flashlights on this journey through the caves. They could enjoy the cathedral-like chambers and the twinkly crystal candelabras. They could forget that bats
carry the top twenty lethal airborne diseases and that they’d probably die from inhaling bat feces so they could see the Tunnel of Love for what it was: a fairy tale. It was the ideal opening setting for Siri’s movie. If his coproducer Civilai had been there they’d have already plotted out the storyboard and worked out the camera angles. But Civilai was off in Nirvana auditioning angels and Siri had to learn to put his movie career on hold. But what a setting.

  Back in daylight, he sat close to Daeng on the longboat and they exchanged a smile as the light patter of river spray hit their cheeks. He was sure his wife had worked everything out, as had he.

  “The diary was not only therapy,” he yelled above the engine noise. “Hiro had set out to chronicle the awful things he’d seen. He was a sensitive man and he was surrounded by countrymen he couldn’t relate to—couldn’t understand. He had to find a way to reset his expectations. He needed to find good Japanese, but they didn’t exist in his world. So he had no choice but to create them in his diary. And for five years he lived in that diary world. He saw only goodness there. And gently he came back to earth.”

  “But he took that first gamble,” said Daeng. “He left his safety zone and went all the way back to the Chinese border, where he’d lost his mind. What was he doing there? After shielding himself from evil for so long, why would he take a chance of a relapse?”

  “The treasure,” said Siri. “The kids in the village were dying. They needed money for medicine. Hiro had access to something—some money source he’d squirreled away while he was in control: something that stuck there in his mind and was reactivated by the disaster in his village. The war proper still hadn’t come to the region, so he went back there in peacetime. He recovered his treasure, brought it back to the village, and used it to solve their problem.”

  “But Satsai said he didn’t know what Hiro had done to achieve it,” said Daeng.

  “It had to be money,” said Siri. “Back then, you could only ever solve problems with money.”

  “What I really want to know is where Hiro went on that last day; the day of the surrender,” said Daeng. “He couldn’t have known it was going to happen. But something he’d heard was important enough for him to leave the village and never go back.”

  She looked up at the sweeping hillsides and a landscape that hadn’t changed for hundreds of years.

  “Do you think Hiro loved Satsai?” she said.

  “It had to be something the teacher asked himself every day,” said Siri.

  “I’d like to believe that love finds its own level,” said Daeng. “That whatever mental condition Hiro was suffering from didn’t affect his natural instincts. I’d like to think that the love Hiro felt for Satsai transcended all the short-circuiting and was as natural as hunger and fear. I’d like to believe that Hiro loved Satsai without any hindrance.”

  Siri looked into eyes that never disappointed him.

  “You know, I have an urge to take you back to my room right this minute,” he said.

  “If only we weren’t on a gradually sinking boat,” she said.

  He took her hand and squeezed it gently and they both smiled.

  “And you do realize we now have ourselves an antagonist,” said Siri.

  “Your Japanese visitor, Yuki-san.”

  “He claimed to be a friend of Hiro in Thakhek, which we now know was a lie.”

  “So how does he fit into this story?” asked Daeng.

  “Well, that’s just it. If he says he knew Hiro on active duty in Thakhek and the name of his commanding officer, what does that tell you?”

  “Damn, he’s read the diary.”

  “You see?” said Siri. “I told you this was all going to turn out to be fun.”

  Beer was waiting for them at the dock as if he had some innate boat-owner radar. They paid the boatman generously and asked him to make himself available in case they had any more work for him. They had questions but they could wait. They went to the bad noodle shop that had been miraculously transformed into a happening nightclub and bar through the magic of flashing Christmas lights. There was music, Thai pop on a cassette player, but Siri asked for it to be turned down. The other customers didn’t object because there were none.

  “Do you suppose this place would even be here without us?” Siri asked.

  They ordered beer and quail eggs, which should have given them enough nutrients to serve in lieu of a meal. Beer, at Daeng’s insistence, ordered dinner for himself. He’d teased them with promises of fascinating news from across the river. He opened his shoulder bag and took out Hiro’s diary and a notebook of his own. Siri took the diary. He ran his fingers over the leather with renewed respect. He’d read it the first time as a journal documenting life in a small town during wartime. Now he could read it again as an act of therapy, an insight into the troubled mind of a broken man pulling himself back together with words. It added so many layers to Siri’s love of reading.

  “Kyoko-san didn’t need it anymore,” said Beer. “She said she’d found all the yokai hidden in the names of his men. There were ten of them including the dog. She gave me this list.”

  He put it on the table in front of him.

  “There are three sheets of Japanese letters in lists with the yokai names circled. But to make it easier she’s explained it phonetically here and written the characteristics of the demons.”

  “She’s a genius,” said Daeng.

  “The only one they couldn’t find was Hiro himself,” said Beer. “There were no demons to be found in the permutations of his name’s kanji. She and her sensei have contacted a Japanese lecturer at Thammasat University in Bangkok who’s a bit of an expert in those things.”

  “Any luck with the war records?” Siri asked.

  “They found your Hiro Uenobu,” said Beer, who had no problem tucking into a full meal and talking at the same time.

  “Excellent,” said Siri.

  Beer turned a few pages in his notebook and read, “Born Shiga Prefecture 1906. His father had been a decorated soldier, so Hiro qualified for a scholarship at the military preparatory school and a direct line to the air academy in Saitama. He was in the top seventh percentile in all the courses he took and proved to be a brilliant flier. But the record states, ‘Due to an injury sustained during training, the result of which his eyesight began to deteriorate, he is no longer considered suitable for the air corps.’ They gave him the compassionate rank of major and attached him to the salvage battalion. He was never to fly again.”

  “Poor Hiro,” said Daeng.

  “They looked up the incidences of pilots being bumped up the ranks like that. It appears the training regime for young fliers was particularly brutal. Errors were often punished by beatings. There were common reports of cadets being struck about the head with wooden paddles. The training officers believed that suffering made for better pilots. As Hiro’s eyesight was twenty-twenty when he entered the academy, it’s probably fair to guess he got his disability as a result of overenthusiasm by a trainer. Hence the high compensatory rank.”

  “Really?” said Daeng. “They beat up their own pilots?”

  “Spare the rod,” said Siri to himself. Civilai wasn’t around to complete the proverb.

  “Miss Cindy’s official records closely followed the dates and places Hiro wrote about in his diary,” said Beer. “From Manchuria he was transferred to the Vietnamese-Chinese border in late 1940 and continued with his salvage operations there. That was when the Japanese diary entries stopped. But, according to the regional commander, there was an incident at Lang Son. The Japanese surrounded the garrison there and called on the French to surrender. As a rather odd gesture of defiance, the commanders ordered the troops to disconnect the breeze blocks from their 155-millimeter cannons and throw them in the Ky Cung River. This presumably to deny the Japanese the use of French weapons against their own men. Of course there were witnesses to thi
s act and word got back to the Japanese. They dispatched their salvage team, headed by one Major Uenobu, to retrieve whatever had been dumped into the river.

  “Now, it happened that some fifty years earlier, the French, at that time running away from the Chinese, had also dumped whatever they begrudged the advancing army into the same river at the same spot. Hiro and his team dived down into the murky water and retrieved the breeze blocks in a few hours. But embedded in the mud they found trunks and cases from that earlier debacle. According to the record it took the best part of a week to retrieve it all.”

  Beer read out the official invoice for that operation:

  Description Unit

  Breeze blocks from current campaign 57

  Large wooden chests 18

  Small wooden cases 12

  Personal suitcases and briefcases 66

  Small arms/machine guns (unusable) 132

  “The small wooden cases contained red wine,” said Beer.

  “Well, you wouldn’t want Chinese Hor on your tail with cabernet sauvignon in their blood,” said Siri.

  “The list of contents looked quite unremarkable,” said Beer. “Apart from the wine and weaponry it was mostly personal items. There was one chest of piastre notes that had since been devalued and were worthless. There was ammunition and sabers and one box of cutlery.”

  “Nothing that could be described as treasure,” said Siri.

  “Nor of value,” said Beer. “The weapons and parts were obsolete. The banknotes were sodden and worthless, and the wine was corked. But all of it found its way to a warehouse in one of the deserted garrisons.”

  “Was there a signature on the invoice?” Siri asked.

  “Of course,” said Beer. “The head of the salvage team: Major Uenobu himself.”

  “So it’s possible he found something of value in the chests and, as he said, buried it in paperwork where it was forgotten,” said Daeng.

  “Until his first mission back to Vietnam, when he retrieved the hidden treasure and used it to buy medicine for the school,” said Siri. “Was there anything else?”