Disco for the Departed

by Colin Cotterill

  Siri looked around the stark shadowy dining room but saw no signs of life. The seminar attendees were off blowing themselves up, and it appeared the staff wasn’t expecting other guests. The evening before, there had been nothing available in the kitchen. Now the empty stomachs of Dtui and her boss were grumbling back and forth across the breakfast table. It was probably these sounds that caught the ear of a large lady wearing an apron over camouflage fatigues who had appeared in the doorway.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Waiting for food,” Dtui told her.

  The woman’s sandals flapped against the loosely tiled floor as she approached the unexpected guests. “Why aren’t you out with the others?”

  “We aren’t on that tour,” Siri told her. “We’re on the three-day, two-night, padlocked-historical-temple package.”

  She stared at him, her expression as empty as the National Bank.

  “Sorry,” he conceded. “We’re here at the invitation of the Security Division. We’ll be staying for a few days.”

  “Hm. Nobody told me.” She folded her arms as if challenging them to suggest otherwise.

  “Sorry! That’s my fault.”

  The voice came from behind the woman, and they had to lean back in their chairs to see its owner. He was a tall, lean young man in glasses. He wore the green uniform of a Lao People’s Revolutionary Party policeman, but there were no badges or epaulets attached to it. He smiled as he rounded the obstruction. “Dr. Siri?”

  Siri held out his hand. “Comrade Lit?”

  “Sorry to have kept you waiting.” The two men shook hands. Siri and Dtui noticed Lit’s withered right index finger. It seemed to curl up like an unwatered plant.

  “Not at all. We weren’t expecting you till nine.”

  The large woman interrupted their greetings. “This isn’t good enough, Comrade. You know I need a P8.8 at least three days before I can accept new guests. The night staff should never have taken them in without it.”

  “You’re quite right, Comrade Sompet. I have the requisite form right here. This was something of an emergency. I apologize.” He handed her the form, and she marched out of the room, still grumbling under her breath.

  Comrade Lit remained standing. “Well,” he said, looking across the table at Dtui. “This,” Siri said, “is my assistant, Nurse Chundee Vongheuan.”

  She smiled. “You can call me Dtui, Comrade.”

  “We were just about to start eating the flower arrangements,” Siri said. “Would you care to join us?”

  Lit laughed. “Not very nutritious, I’m afraid. They’re all plastic. Let me take you both somewhere else for breakfast.”

  As they drove through Vieng Xai in his Chinese jeep, Lit pointed out the towering cliffs, locally known as karsts, that housed famous caves. “That’s where General Khamtay lived and where the military strategies were all put together,” he said. “Over yonder is the home of the prime minister.”

  The tour was for Dtui’s benefit. Siri had visited all the caves during his long years in the northeast and knew exactly what elaborate chambers and tunnels these turrets of limestone contained. But to Dtui there was nothing to distinguish one tower from the next. American planes flying low back and forth through this valley for years had been confronted with the same problem. Even the crags that were bombed late in the war had held up to the random seeding of five-hundred-kilogram shells. It seemed incredible to Dtui that two million tons of bombs could be dropped in the communist-held territories without inflicting so much as a bruise on any of the leaders.

  Vieng Xai was an odd place for the capital of the new regime. The streets were laid out in a wide grid, enclosed by the crags beneath which the old soldiers had spent ten years of their lives. This was the view they had seen every day from their caves and to them it represented freedom. Four years earlier it had been a vast, empty expanse of rice fields. For fear of daylight raids, the locals hid until the sun went down and came out to tend the fields at night. But with the cease-fire, the comrades emerged from their mountains and began to build their dream. They’d imagined constructing a grand city as a fitting monument to their years of struggle.

  But Laos was more than Huaphan province. It was a country of some three and a half million people. There were no available current figures, and as many as five hundred thousand might have fled to Thailand, but the bulk of the population remained in and around the capital. Once the Pathet Lao had marched triumphantly into Vientiane to claim the country for communism, Vieng Xai suddenly seemed remote and inaccessible. To run a country, you had to be where the people were. They weren’t in Huaphan, and they didn’t appear to be in Vieng Xai. Two more guest-houses and a market were under construction here but the bamboo scaffold was green with moss. There was a feeling that this was a project on hold, a dream that had been half forgotten at sunrise.

  Beside the market site stood a single shop that sold feu rice noodles in bowls deep enough to bathe a small baby. Siri and Dtui ate heartily with their left hands and fought off flies the size of coat buttons with their right. Lit had already eaten so he watched his guests conducting their breakfasts as he told them why they were there.

  “We probably wouldn’t have found it at all,” he began. “Every now and then, rocks at the top of the karsts come loose. Some that were hit by rockets take their time before falling. We think that’s what happened in this case. A big hunk of rock came crashing down onto the concrete path we’d laid from the cave to the new house. You’ll notice, Doctor, most of the senior comrades have built houses in front of their old caves.”

  “Hm. Not wanting to leave the womb. It’s common in primates,” Siri said. “And whose cave are we talking about here?”

  “The president’s. He’s due back here in a little over a week so the Party really needs to work out what happened before he arrives.”

  “Right,” Siri said. “So the rock struck the concrete path … ?”

  “And there it was, sticking out of the broken section.”

  “What was?”

  “The arm.”

  “And is there a body attached to it?” Dtui asked. She wiped her mouth with a napkin and abandoned the last of the broth to the flies.

  “We don’t know.”

  “Why not?” asked Siri.

  “Well, the arm’s sticking out of the concrete so if there’s a body in there, we’d have to break up the rest of the path to get to it.”

  “And you can’t do that because … ?”

  “Because there are very strict regulations about making alterations to government-initiated structures. We had to submit the request forms to Vientiane to ask for permission. They said we had to wait for you.”

  “I see. I hope you’ve covered the arm. The flies up here have quite an appetite.”

  “We tied a plastic bag over it. I’ll take you up there when you’re ready. We can stop off and pick up a couple of laborers and tools on the way.”

  “Then, let us not keep our cement person waiting. Finished, Nurse Dtui?”

  “Ready when you are, Dr. Siri.”

  You didn’t have to travel very far out of Vientiane before the road turned to pebbles and potholes. Traveling in a truck was like falling down an endless flight of uneven steps in a coffin. They’d passed the turnoff at kilometer 6 where the old U.S. compound had been recycled into a resort for communist politicians. They’d just reached the intersection that led to the National Pedagogical Institute at Dong Dok when Mr. Geung came around. He was thumped out of his stupor when the front wheel dropped into a deep rut. Although his mind was still back at the morgue, he found his body lying on a blanket on the wooden boards of an old truck. Above him were the open sky, a vicious June sun, and two rows of knees. He lay in an aisle of black boots that stank of polish. The toe caps penned him in so tightly he could do nothing but lie still stiffly and wonder where he was and whose were these legs that ended at the knees? He lifted one arm and waved, which produced an immediate response.


  “Sergeant, the Mongoloid’s awake.”

  There was a loud cheer and laughter, and a gruff voice yelled above the sound of the motor, “Get him up.” Bodies leaned over him, and hands reached down to pull him into a sitting position. From there he found himself staring at two rows of smiling soldiers. He smiled back. The sergeant was at the end of one row.

  “Your name’s Geung, right?”

  Mr. Geung had had little contact with the military but he’d been to parades and played soldiers when he was young, so he knew what he should do. He saluted. There was another loud cheer and half the men saluted back. Two of them shifted sideways to make a space on the bench for him, then pulled him up. He could see unfamiliar fields bouncing past the truck, buffalo with no mud to wallow in, many different shades of brown everywhere.

  “Damn, boy, I thought you were dead,” the sergeant shouted to him. “Never seen a man dropped by an empty gun before.”

  “You f … frightened me.”

  “Just messing with you, son. Just a little joke.”

  “I fainted.”

  “You sure did.”

  “Wh … wh … where are we going?”

  “Nam Bak.”

  The name meant nothing to Geung. “Why?”

  “Top-secret mission.” The sergeant put his finger to his lips to show there was a need to keep quiet about it. Geung felt very important to be going on a top-secret mission, but he’d made a promise. He got clumsily to his feet and walked to the tailgate, using the chests and knees of the seated soldiers for support. The sergeant caught hold of him before he vanished off the end of the truck. “Now what do you think you’re up to?” the old soldier asked.

  “I … I … I … I have to g … guard the morgue.”

  “No you don’t, son.”

  “Yes. Yes I d … do. I promised Comrade Dr. Siri a … a … and Comrade Nurse Dtui.”

  “You don’t work at the morgue anymore.”

  This was a serious revelation to Geung. “No?”

  “No.”

  “Where d … d … do I work?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  “B … b … but I … I pr … pro …” The words began to collide again and Geung’s head spun.

  “Geung, younger brother, I don’t want any trouble from you. You understand?”

  “I … I …”

  “Just go back to your seat and enjoy the journey. You’ll like—” But before the sergeant could say another word, Geung passed out again, this time across the laps of the Third Division of the Lao People’s Liberation Army Infantry on its way to the north to hunt out insurgents.

  Concrete Man

  The jeep pulled up in front of the president’s compound, and Siri looked up the slope at the pretty pinkand-green villa that nestled in among the towering cliffs. Carved out of the rock opposite was a one-and-a-half-car garage, and where the steps began to wind upward, an ornamental heart-shaped pool had been lovingly fashioned from a bomb crater. It was all so creepily quaint.

  “You know, Doc?” Dtui said as they started up the concrete steps. “All this time I had visions of you lot living up here like cavemen, wrapped in bearskins. I didn’t dream it would be so—civilized.”

  “Surely you didn’t expect the president of the republic to have had to hunt for his breakfast with a bow and arrow?” “It wouldn’t surprise me, given how hard it is to find breakfast up here.”

  Lit led them to a walkway that wound up to the cave entrance. Up the incline a little way, a boulder the size of a bloated buffalo lay on a bed of flattened itchy fruit blossoms and poinsettias. It must have given the concrete one heck of a thump when it landed, then bounced into the garden. The force of its impact had tilted up a long, straight section of the three-foot-wide path, causing it to snap at various points. Now it lay in sections, like carriages after a train crash.

  Ahead, a small canvas tent had been erected over the path between two of the sections. Lit lifted the canvas from its frame to reveal a mummified arm protruding from one side of a wide gap in the concrete. It was covered in a transparent plastic bag tied to the wrist. Its palm was up and its fingers bent into claws. From its position, Siri estimated that the body, assuming it was still attached to one, would be lying on its back inside the unbroken slab of concrete.

  “Well, I suppose we should get cracking,” Siri said to the two workmen who’d followed them up. Both had stonemason’s chisels and metal mallets.

  “How would you like it, Doctor?” one asked.

  The section that lay before them was over six feet long and two and a half feet deep. Siri pondered for a moment. “I think we should attack it from the sides. Here, I’ll give you some marks to guide you.” He used a block of white limestone to score a line on either side of the broken section of pathway.

  “Uhm, Dr. Siri,” Lit asked, “wouldn’t it be easier to go in from the end where the hand’s sticking out, or from the top?”

  “Easier, yes, Comrade Lit. But not as beneficial.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “Nurse Dtui will explain it to you.”

  Dtui was shocked out of her daydream. “Will I?”

  “Certainly.” This was Siri’s way. He often threw her in to see if she’d float. He wouldn’t come to her rescue until he was absolutely certain she couldn’t bob to the surface on her own.

  “OK.” She looked at the peculiar scene and quickly ran through the possibilities in her mind. “Right!” she said. “If there’s a body, it’ll be faceup. Judging from the state of the arm, it’s mummified; ergo, it would have shrunk.”

  Siri smiled and she knew she was on the right track. She continued with more confidence.

  “As he probably didn’t get inside the concrete after it was set, we have to assume he was deliberately buried in wet cement—or fell in. That means the cement hardened around him. As the body shrank, a mold would have been left of the original person. That mold could tell us as much as the body itself. So we don’t want to damage the concrete too much. Dah dah,” she sang. “I don’t hear clapping.”

  Lit and one of the workmen did indeed applaud. The security chief looked at her with undisguised admiration. “Very well done,” he said. “Yes, excellent.”

  Siri, still smiling, was looking more closely at the hand. He removed the plastic bag and took a closer look at the clawed fingers. The skin was the color of dark chocolate, not so unusual in mummified bodies. He knew a body at this stage of mummification wouldn’t reveal many secrets. But the palm of his hand seemed several tones lighter than the back of the hand.

  The workmen began to chisel along the dotted line he had drawn as carefully as an archaeologist at an ancient dig.

  “Gentlemen,” Siri urged, “it’s concrete. At the rate you’re going, you won’t get through it until the year 2006. Smash the hell out of it, for goodness’ sake.”

  And smash they did. They worked from either side while Lit, Dtui, and Siri sat at the foot of the karst. A feeble sun had finally burned a hole through the northeastern mist but hadn’t yet warmed the land. Dtui and Lit filled the following hour with their friendly chatter while Siri dozed. The young couple seemed to have a great deal in common. Both had spent the later years of their lives caring for a sick parent. Dtui told Lit that her mother, Monoluk, had cirrhosis, and that they were presently living at Siri’s house. She explained that the doctor didn’t like to live alone and he’d managed to gather a peculiar collection of waifs and strays to share his large Party bungalow. Lit’s father, on the other hand, had lost both his legs and a length of intestine to a bomb that exploded beneath his feet. A few months ago he’d succumbed to his injuries.

  Both Lit and Dtui had taken every opportunity to study. Lit had attained his position, despite his relative youth, by working his way through the public service texts. Dtui had memorized numerous medical books in self-taught English. Then, when American aid vanished, she’d gone through the same subjects in self-taught Russian. Her dream was to join the
twenty-five hundred Lao presently studying in the Eastern Bloc and to send home whatever she could save to her mother.

  Their conversation was terminated by the sound of a loud crack. Siri looked up from his slumber. The workmen had succeeded in prizing the top layer of the slab loose with crowbars. The concrete lid broke in two as they lifted it off the base.

  A mummy, as if in frozen horror, lay shriveled within a shell of concrete that it had once filled. One arm was by its side; the other held high above its head. Its knees were bent slightly and it seemed to be dressed only in a pair of nylon football shorts that were now several sizes too large for it. Their brilliant red contrasted sharply with the almost black-chocolate surface of the corpse.

  But what shocked the onlookers most—even Siri who had seen death in many forms—was the expression of agony on its face, in which a huge gaping hole had taken the place of its mouth. They had no doubt this had been a torturous death—and no accident.

  “What … what happened to its face?” Lit asked in horror.

  Siri took hold of the concrete lid of the accidental tomb and heaved it back to study its interior. The mold was completed there, providing an almost perfect concave mask of the head. Where the mouth had attempted its muffled cry for the last time, a tube of cement curled downward. Embedded at its base were the missing teeth.

  “I think this explains the hole,” Siri said, not looking up. The others came over to peer within. “It would appear the final breaths of our friend here were of liquid cement. When it hardened and the body began to shrink, the teeth remained in their original position. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found more cement in the lungs.”