The Delightful Life of a Suicide Pilot

by Colin Cotterill

  “Put down your weapons,” Siri shouted, “or I blow up your commander.”

  “No,” said Yuki-san. “Asians of your low class do not have the courage to take your own lives.”

  “Usually not,” said Siri. “But I have terminal horripilation. I only have two months left to live.”

  “Me too,” said Daeng. “It’s contagious.”

  Two of the guards had already handed over their weapons to the villagers. Thirty years earlier they might have fought to the death, but they’d mellowed and learned to recognize fate. They’d had that one fat mango in their lives and it hadn’t ever ripened.

  Another explosion. Closer.

  “So, let’s all go together, the heroic way,” said Siri. He raised the detonator and began to squeeze the button.

  “No,” said Yuki-san.

  He redirected the pistol to his own head.

  “Only I have the right,” he said.

  He squeezed the trigger, but Satsai behind him was ready. He leapt at the Japanese and wrestled him to the ground. Daeng was on them both. One of the guards had time to fire his handgun at himself and nobody attempted to stop him. He missed somehow. Lack of conviction. The last man aimed his machine gun at a group of children, but he had tears in his eyes, and he couldn’t bring himself to fire. The show was over. Nobody applauded. It was extraordinary how such a large cast could be so silent. Even the cicadas held their breaths. The villagers tied up the docile Japanese and led them away. Satsai rushed to Siri.

  “Don’t move,” he said. “Let me help you out of that.”

  “Don’t fret, young man,” said Siri, ripping off the vest. “It’s only sticky rice conveniently shaped like sticks of dynamite. We raided the fat lady’s house. She had a stash of it. We added the TNT in charcoal for effect. Best we could do on the spur of the moment. My wife’s idea. The detonator was my contribution. I ripped the starter switch off your Weedwacker. Sorry about that. The best you can do right now is get on the shortwave and call the police.”

  “They won’t come here tonight,” said Daeng. “Too late. No overtime pay.”

  “You’re right,” said Siri. “Best call the army.”

  “But the police are already here,” said Satsai.

  “Well, that announcement might have been a little premature,” said Daeng.

  “But . . . the explosions?”

  “We got our boat pilot to blow up your village diesel supply,” said Siri. “One can at a time, using a cloth fuse. Added a little fertilizer to spice things up a bit. We did offer him a huge tip so I hope you can spare us a few grams of gold.”

  They sat around the bonfire in the village square. The Japanese prisoners were tied and corralled. A timber post had been erected temporarily to replace its concrete and gold predecessor. This was in tribute to baku, the poster child of vivisection, the guardian of the village and enemy of the yokai. The too-old and the too-young and the too-confused-by-events had taken to their beds, grateful to be alive. Only the young-at-heart sat before the flames passing around the rural Lao version of twenty-year-old scotch. What a delight that rice whisky was. It made the Woophi brew taste like methylated spirits by comparison. Its genesis was a natural pool in the depths of the caves mixed with wild rice from the lower skirts of a distant mountain. But, as Civilai always said, nothing spoils a good drink more than going into detail about how it’s made. They just drank it and floated back and forth between the full moon and the ebony clouds that held it up. Daeng sat with Siri, holding hands.

  “How could you be sure Beer wouldn’t shoot you when you handed him back his gun?” Satsai asked.

  “Faith in human nature,” said Siri. “Plus the fact I’d taken out the bullets before I returned it.”

  “You can’t leave everything to fate,” said Daeng. “Now, what about the torn pages?”

  “What about them?” said Satsai.

  “It was you that ripped them out of the diary.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because the things Toshi saw in those last few days, the things he felt, they would have been too much for you to read over and over.”

  Satsai took a long suck of the straw and nodded.

  “You’d been there at the beginning,” said Siri. “You knew his insanity before you knew him. You’d coaxed him back, not cured but content in a way. He’d found a dimension for the demons where they couldn’t get at you. Even though he shared his diary with you, the yokai were disguised. You weren’t in any danger. But when the Japanese declared their coup de force in Indochina he knew he wouldn’t be able to subdue the devils. They were back in the souls of the men committing atrocities. He knew that evil would reign again. And that too had to materialize through the pages of the diary.”

  “You tore those pages out because you didn’t want to remember the man you loved haunted as he was when you first met him,” said Daeng. “His demons would become yours.”

  “I tried to burn them,” said Satsai.

  “But it wasn’t possible,” said Siri.

  “It seemed like I was being unfaithful to his . . . his process of dealing with life. I felt like I was changing the end of a story that wasn’t mine to edit.”

  “Do you still have those pages?” Siri asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I see them?”

  “I’ll give them to you, Doctor. Happily, I’ll be rid of them. But you should decide carefully whether you want to read them. They’re very disturbing.”

  “Where do you imagine Toshi to be now?” asked Daeng. “What do you wish for him?”

  “Today?”

  She nodded.

  “Oh, Daeng,” he said with a smile. “I imagine him to be here at this fire, drinking fine local brew and . . . and talking, telling stories about our insane days as if they were someone else’s. I imagine him happy and fulfilled and cured.”

  “Then let us drink to Toshi’s imagined life,” said Daeng. “The delightful life of a grounded pilot.”

  Siri left the revelers around the fire and went to the compound where the enemy slept, defeated once more. The old men smiled as their dreams crumbled into dust. Only Beer sat awake, glaring up at the moon, contemplating another bad decision. The doctor sat beside him and handed him a glass of rice whisky.

  “Thank you,” said Beer. He sipped politely before handing the drink back to Siri.

  “I had plans for you,” said Siri.

  “Really?”

  “You were a bit too old to adopt but I could see you making a name for yourself in Vientiane.”

  “Why me?”

  “I asked around about you, Beer. You’re kind. You help people. You don’t—usually—accept any work that’s illegal or harmful. You’re smart. In fact, as far as I could see, the only really stupid decision you’ve ever made was siding with Yuki-san.”

  “Well, that’s the truth,” said Beer, accepting another sip of whisky.

  “What went wrong?” Siri asked.

  Beer smiled and looked back at the moon.

  “You know those angels and devils that sit on your shoulder and push you this way and that?” he said.

  “I’ve had a few.”

  “Well, I had just the one. He looked exactly like me and he was always beside me with his arm over my shoulder. Every time I was just about to do something foolish he’d give me a squeeze and raise his eyebrows. He was always making those important decisions for me. Censoring me. Pushing me in the direction of righteousness.”

  “So where was he when Yuki-san came along?” Siri asked.

  “That’s just it, Doctor,” said Beer. “Suddenly he wasn’t there anymore. I was lost. The Japanese offered me a fortune to accompany you and Madam Daeng, to report back everything you said, to translate the recordings, to bring you to the village where I was afraid in my heart you’d be killed. I h
onestly believed the villagers weren’t in any danger. He assured me they’d all be released. I knew it was wrong. I was waiting for my shoulder angel to make me see sense but the emptiness overwhelmed me. I panicked.”

  “Do you remember when Yuki-san first approached you?” Siri asked.

  “It was only a few weeks ago,” said Beer. “He’d heard I accepted odd jobs. He came to see me and made his offer. The other me would have said no.”

  “And the other you’s still not around?”

  “I’m more lost than ever.”

  Siri took the glass and looked into the milky liquid.

  “I’ve met him,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The other you.”

  “No, I think he’s just mine. I have an exclusive.”

  “Son, you once told Madam Daeng that in your dream you live in a big house with servants.”

  “It’s a dream that recurs to torment me.”

  “But it’s not a dream, is it? I believe that at one stage you did live in such a house.”

  Beer looked into the doctor’s brilliant green eyes, which sparkled in the firelight.

  “How could you . . . ?”

  “It just occurred to me this evening. All the bits joined together. Your father was rich and he had great plans for you. I’d never really looked at your face. I suppose most people get no further than the scar. But now I can see the similarity. I believe that you had a brother, perhaps a twin. And the two of you were two sides of a coin, as close as could be, but opposite. Your father was a traditional Vietnamese—”

  “I don’t—”

  “He discovered something about you that shamed him. He learned that you preferred men to women. It was unacceptable. You were expected to further the family line. He banished you. Disowned you. Sent you to work as a laborer in a foreign country. And he made you ashamed of what you were. You saw no worth in yourself. But your brother, in spirit, never left you. He was your protector. He stayed with you until his death in Laos three weeks ago.”

  Both Siri and Beer were crying. The drink was at their feet, forgotten.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” said Beer.

  “In a way, he didn’t stop living. I couldn’t understand why his hair and nails continued to grow but now I realize it was because you were still alive in him, just as I believe he continues to live in you.”

  “How . . . how do you know all this?”

  “I have a curse on me that allows me to see the dead. I learn things about them,” said Siri. “I usually complain about coincidences. It drives my wife mad. But I understand now that we can create them. We have the ability to draw people and events together. I was visiting a dear friend who’d passed on and you and your brother were there. I saw you as children. You were as close as any two people could be. But your brother was due to leave this world and you were there to say goodbye just as I was there to bid farewell to my friend.”

  “I had that same dream,” said Beer. “I saw you there. It was at an airport.”

  “With pink airplanes.”

  “That’s right. All my airplanes were in pastels when I was little. I was a very orthodox gay even then.”

  “And when the flight took off you—”

  “My head split in two.”

  “That’s right. You’d been forced to see yourself without his guidance. That scarf was the last gift he gave you. Your last physical memory of him.”

  “I don’t suppose you met him when he was alive?”

  “No, but I learned a lot about him. He was a good man, popular, like you.”

  “Do you think he knew he was looking out for me all those years?”

  “No idea. But I am sure the belief kept you alive and safe. I’m sure he’ll be really pissed off if you screw up.”

  “I’ve already let him down.”

  “We’ll see. Perhaps you changed teams just in time. At the very worst you could be guilty of collusion in a deception. Nothing that would have you behind bars for any length of time. In fact, you saved a lot of lives today. That’s worth something. And it seems to me that you have a sizable fortune coming to you.”

  “Me? I doubt that,” said Beer. “I’ve been disowned by that family.”

  “That might not be a problem. There are tests you can take to prove you’re the legal offspring. Your father can’t deny you your birthright. In fact our socialist states would love nothing more than to redistribute wealth to the poor. I think you qualify as poor, don’t you? Wear those sandals at the hearing. And who knows? Perhaps your father would enjoy meeting his only living son.”

  Almost the end of the actual story

  Epilogue One

  The Torn Pages

  I am Dr. Siri Paiboun and I am attaching this prelude to the pages torn from Hiro Uenobu’s diary as a sort of warning. The diary itself is back in the hands of Teacher Satsai, who deserves to keep it as a memento of the diarist he loved unashamedly every bit as much as I love my own Madam Daeng. I have held on to these loose pages because I am not certain whether destroying them in a traditional way would be a wise move. I’m afraid that doing so might unleash the evil contained in the words of the diary. I have attended many exorcisms, but I do not profess to be an expert. Hiro was able to subdue a mob of evil spirits for a long period of time, but not even he could keep the lid on the pot forever. His account of those last few weeks is disturbing and may offend those of you with a nervous or easily appalled disposition. Even I consider a lot of the reportage to be sickening and I strongly recommend that you skip to Epilogue Two. Reading these pages will not add any insight to the tale as it has been told. That story is complete. These last few entries would provide detail that is nothing short of gratuitous. But, as I said, I’m afraid that suppressing or destroying them would provide a back door for the yokai to leave that two-dimensional plane and join us in our own dimension. Those of you who are susceptible to supernatural influences might inadvertently trigger such an exodus. If you doubt the strength of your skepticism at all, I beg you not to read these pages. And if damage is done, do not say you haven’t been warned.

  3/10/1945

  I suppose it’s only natural that living together in a small group is likely to cause some friction. I have left the dormitory and moved back to my tent to collect my thoughts. Corporal Yatsusuki has continued to grow. We get complaints from the French from time to time saying that he is blocking the road and they can’t budge him. Still the weirdness goes on around me. The major general has taken to crossing the river most nights. He returns disheveled with the scent of cheap women on his uniform. And he always carries a sack. It’s empty when he leaves but full to bursting on the way back. One morning he’d had a little too much to drink and forgot his sack on the boat. I took a peek. It was full of objects old and new, some valuable, some still wrapped in plastic. I have a feeling he steals those things, but I cannot prove it.

  Captain Jame is almost always naked now, day and night, and he’s not a pretty sight. How am I to concentrate on our shogi games with him sitting opposite me like that? Taigou the dog came to the tent last night and he had a deep wound on his side. And, oddly, he had another broken tea kettle on his head. He bit my hand when I freed him and he ran away. One day I saw Second Lieutenant Tetsukimo Souben jump out of a tall tree. I thought perhaps he was trying to kill himself but his descent was so slow it was like watching a kite come to ground. Warrant Officer Ukabane Orimimi’s breath is worse than ever. You can still smell it an hour after he’s left the room. Sometimes I can smell his stink in my tent, although I don’t see that anything’s missing. I went into the latrine one day and found Private Oshiira licking the officers’ toilet bowl. I was disgusted. He sleeps there now and never comes to the mess tent. His skin is grey, and he has infections all over him. Lance Corporal Hokofugu Hama is back on the alcohol with a vengeance. He drinks beyond the bounds of his salary.
With a week still to go before payday he’s in the town knocking on doors, begging for booze. But nobody ever seems to get angry at him. And I may be mistaken but he appears to be turning into a woman. Nothing makes any sense to me.

  8/14/45

  The Arrival of General Shosen Umiji

  It was the night when hell unlocked all its doors. The black rain has been falling for a week. The mountain mud flows down into the rivers and kills the fish. The overflow is destroying the crops. Everywhere there are puddles like old engine oil that smell of mildew and rotting flesh. There was a full moon somewhere behind the granite clouds last night and it seemed to send out a signal for every hidden demon to attend the march and show itself. It was all brought about by the arrival of General Shosen Umiji. He had been the commander of the forces in Nanjing and it was he who instigated the campaign of cruelty and hatred and was so successful in our victories over the Chinese. He had risen to that lofty position following his victory in a duel. Shosen Umiji—then a colonel—had been challenged by a cavalry commander to see who could behead twenty Chinese the fastest. Shosen Umiji was from my hometown. He had been a kendo champion in school. I’m sure everyone at home cheered when the result was announced in the local newspaper. He won by a good five seconds. It is a record that still stands. Since then, Shosen Umiji has remained a darling of the Imperial overlords and has risen to the rank of general.

  There he was standing on a makeshift stage in front of the old French colonial house. Thousands of men had come to greet him. He wore no hat but the rain didn’t seem to stick to him as it did to the rest of us. Six months ago Japan declared that the occupation of Indochina was now officially a coup de force. We could stop pretending to be polite to our insufferable French hosts. We had taken the whole of the region in a day and had resorted to the same barbarism we’d enjoyed in Manchuria. Thakhek was now the center of operations, a chance to regroup, refresh, retrain. We had to find some answer to the unimaginable threat that we were losing our grip over the countries we’d occupied. The troops who stood there in front of the general were a defeated lot. Their uniforms were tattered and they all sported souvenir wounds of the campaign. And as I stood in front of the stage with the other regional commanders and our own Major General Dorari, I could see the faces of every one of the men and it appeared to me they were deformed in some way. It was as if they’d been made of clay and were melting: eyes into cheeks, noses into chins. My colleagues stood in the front row at attention, perfectly still, perfectly silent, looking up at the general with something close to love in their eyes. There had been no meeting of officers to announce this assembly. Every man had arrived there spontaneously. The general had insisted that I stand in front with my back to him alongside our major general and some four lieutenant colonels I’d never seen before.