By now there was a small group of people gathered around the front door. They collected the girls and asked what they should do. Siri told them the building wasn’t safe and said they should stay back. If anyone had a ladder, they could run it up the front of the house and bring down the couple upstairs through the window. But other than that, they should stay out.
Once he was alone, he turned the flashlight back on. He hadn’t wanted to shine it into the room while the children were there to see, just in case. Before going inside, he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled up his undershirt to cover his mouth and nose.
The room was devastated. Large chunks of masonry had fallen. Although much of the ceiling was still in place, it had dropped toward one end of the room, and might cave in at any second. The dust was blinding.
At the point where the back wall had once stood, the ceiling was no more than a meter from the ground, and he had to get on his hands and knees to reach the place where the family had slept. The flashlight reflected from the dust like headlights on a fog bank. He could feel his lungs getting heavy.
“Dr. Siri?”
His heart leaped, and he swung the flashlight beam to his left from where the voice had come. “Mrs. Som?” He crawled across the debris until he could make out the shape of the girls’ mother kneeling, facing the bedrolls where the children had slept below the open window. Despite the dust, she seemed very neat. She was dressed in her best phasin and her hair was pulled tightly back from her face into a bun. She turned her head to him and smiled. He smiled back to show his relief.
“You’ve been lucky. Come. We have to get out of here before this ceiling comes down completely.” She didn’t move.
“Dr. Siri. I’m worried about my girls.”
“No. They’re fine. Come now.” He reached out a hand for her.
“I’m afraid they’ll be lonely.”
His hand dropped. He knew right away what she meant. He understood, and his stomach turned.
“Oh, no, Mrs.-”
“I was often cross with them. I shouted at them a lot. Perhaps they won’t understand that was a mother’s way to show how she feels. Can you be sure to tell them I love them?”
He lowered his head. “I’m so sorry.”
The large crowd gathered at the front of the house gasped and muttered when Siri appeared at the front door. He’d carried Mrs. Som’s crushed body as far as Vong’s room and left it there. He didn’t want the girls to see it or to raise their hopes she might be alive. He wheezed a few orders here and there to the neighbors, made sure the couple upstairs had been brought down, then collapsed inelegantly in the vegetable patch.
A Hospital without Doctors
He awoke in one of the few private rooms available at the hospital. His eyes were so sore, it was like looking through greasy windows. The walls and ceiling were Wattay blue. There was one unshaded strip light on the ceiling. A Thai plowing calendar was the only decoration. It was a room devoid of therapy.
“Welcome back.” Dtui was beside the bed, fussing around with several trays of roots and powders. The hospital budget could no longer stretch to foreign-made pharmaceuticals, and they had fallen back on natural remedies. In most cases, the patients could be thankful.
“What am I doing here?”
“Sleeping, mostly. You breathed in about a kilo of dust last night while you were being a hero. You passed out. They had to give you oxygen.”
“Last night? Right. It’s getting so I don’t know what’s real and what’s a dream these days. I was hoping that was one of the imaginary disasters.”
“No. Your house really blew up. It fell down completely after you got here.”
“How are the little girls?”
“Sorry. Don’t know. I just came to work this morning and they told me you were here. I didn’t get a lot of information from your bodyguard.”
“I have a bodyguard?” He coughed up phlegm into a cloth Dtui had waiting.
“Two at the moment. I believe they’re from the Security Section. One’s got a nice smile. He wants to talk to you when you come around. Have you come around?”
“I’m a bit weak, but we should get this over with.”
“I’ll tell him. I’ll bring you some breakfast when he’s done with you. I’ll have to get it from outside. There was a fire in the kitchen last night. The food’s so bad, it was probably started by the patients.” She went over to the door.
“Oh, Dtui. Has Phosy been by the office yet?”
“The policeman? Not while I was there. Why?”
“He’s coming to pick up the original of the report and the autopsy photos. You’ll have to show him where they are.”
“I’ll tell Geung. He’ll have to wait for the pictures, though: they aren’t back from the photograph shop yet.”
“And tell him,” he started another coughing fit. “Tell him I’m in here.”
“Yes, my leader.”
The young man from the Security Section was very polite and very thorough. He’d already been briefed on the information Siri had given Civilai, but he wanted it all again, in Siri’s own words.
Talking gave Siri problems, and he had to take gulps of oxygen from time to time. It was during one of these resuscitation sessions that Civilai arrived.
“Hey. Take it easy with that stuff. It costs money. You can’t just pluck it out of the air, you know.” The security lad saluted and fell back.
“Hello, older brother. I see you didn’t get blown up, too, last night.”
“Slept like a baby. May I ask why you weren’t safely in your own bed when it was blasted to Jupiter?”
“I was down by the river.”
“Aha. With some little kitty, I suppose.”
“A dog.”
“Well, never mind. At your age, you have to take what you can get.”
“How are the little girls from downstairs?”
“Stunned. I think only the older one really understands. She’s a smarty. We found a family to look after them till the father gets back. We’re trying to get word to him. He’s going to have his work cut out for him, looking after those three.”
“Do you know what happened yet?”
“A mortar. Hand-held type. Damned big one. May have even been two. We assume they were thrown through the window. They’re still searching the rubble. The only incriminating thing they’ve found so far is the remains of a transistor radio. Don’t suppose you know anything about that?”
Siri coughed. “The bastard must have thrown it in with the mortar shells.”
“That’s what we suspected. I’m afraid there wasn’t much left of your stuff.”
“No problem. There was nothing there of any value. I’ve spent too many years owning only what I could carry. I may miss the books, I suppose. I assume nobody saw anything?”
“Not a thing. How you feeling?”
“Lucky.”
“Too true. Somebody up there’s watching over you. No question about that.”
Civilai went off to a committee meeting and left the Security lad to finish his interview. It was very relaxed and friendly, interspersed with Siri coughing his guts up from time to time. Dtui kept the boy amused while they waited for the doctor to finish coughing.
The lad was in his early twenties, tall, with ears like ping pong paddles. But Siri had to admit, he did have a good smile.
“I think that’s about all for now, Comrade Doctor. I’ll get this all typed, and I’ll be back late this afternoon with my boss. And Nurse Dtui, my dear [she blushed], you’d better keep your jokes to yourself when he’s here. He doesn’t appreciate jokes. He had his sense of humor shot off when he was fighting the French.” She saluted. “And, Doctor, we’d like to know as soon as your Vietnamese coroner gets in touch again. We really need some solid evidence.”
“They’ll have to invent a telephone you can carry around with you if they want me to talk to him while I’m in this state. It would take me a week to get to the office.”
“H’
mm. I’ll see what we can do about that. ’Bye, sir, and thanks. ’Bye, miss.”
“Miss? What makes you think a pretty thing like me is a miss? What makes you think I’m not married to the Lao national football team’s center forward?”
He smiled. “Married women don’t blush.”
He left the room. Siri gave Dtui a knowing look that she pretended not to see.
Siri was napping again when his second visitor arrived. He opened his eyes slowly and focused on the saffron smudge at the end of his bed. Gradually he recognized the monk from two evenings before.
“Yeh Ming, are you awake?” When the blur had just about cleared from Siri’s eyes, he noticed the bodyguard standing behind the monk with his pistol drawn. Siri sat up.
“It’s okay. I know him.” The guard nodded and left. “Why do you call me that? Who are you?” The monk smiled but didn’t answer. “Why are you here?”
“Your bomb made a mess of our temple grounds. I had to clear it all up. Cleaning up is my burden.”
“Well, I’m sorry.”
“These things are sent to test us. Life on earth’s just the entrance examination.”
“I’m sure you’ll pass.”
“Thank you. While I was sweeping, I found something that belongs to you. You’re going to need it.”
From a yellow shoulder bag, he pulled out the white talisman. He walked to the bed and hung it over the knob that topped the headboard.
“How did you know it was mine?”
“I’m afraid the pouch was burned.” While still holding the amulet, the monk closed his eyes and chanted a short mantra. He used the same language Siri had heard in Khamuan, at the exorcism. The doctor put his palms together and bowed his head.
Dtui walked in on this scene and immediately felt embarrassed at her intrusion. She, too, put her palms together and closed her eyes. When the monk was finished, he let go of the talisman and turned to leave. Dtui took a respectful step back. At the door, he looked at her. He stared with a quizzical expression that made her feel uncomfortable.
“Your mother will have a better year next year.” He opened the door and walked out. Dtui glared at Siri.
“Why did you tell him about my mother?”
“Dtui…I didn’t.”
At two P.M., three young men from the telephone company arrived with the short end of a cable and an old phone. So far he’d seen soldiers, monks, politicians, and technicians, but not a sign of a doctor. The hospital was understaffed, so they probably hoped he could take care of himself.
By the time the phone technicians had left, Siri had an extension line from the clerk’s office in administration. He lay staring at it. After ten very quiet minutes, it rang like a fire engine. He was alone in the room.
“Dtui…Dtui?” She didn’t come, so he had no choice but to pick it up himself. He put his ear to it and listened…and listened.
“Dr. Siri?”
“Yes?”
“There’s a call for you.”
“Where?”
“Right here. Hang on.”
There was a rude electrical burp before Civilai’s voice came through the receiver.
“Siri? You there?”
“Ai?”
“How’s your new phone?”
“Frightening. How did you know?”
“I know everything. How you feeling?”
“Like I don’t have enough air in my lungs. I keep coughing up pieces of my house.”
“Good, that should keep you out of trouble for a few days. Listen, I’ve given all the numbers you need to the clerk. I want to know right away when your Vietnamese friend calls back. There are some angry words being exchanged back and forth across the border. I don’t have to tell you how important this has all become.”
“Important enough to blow a fellow up.”
“See? I knew I didn’t have to tell you.”
A short while later, the bodyguard came in with a large envelope. He put it on the top sheet and turned to walk away.
Siri chuckled. “Aren’t you planning to tell me where this came from?”
“Can’t, Comrade. Someone left it at the reception desk. A nurse brought it up. It’s all right. I checked it for explosives.”
It was from his friend at the air base, a list of reports of unauthorized flights over the Greater Vientiane District for October and November. He was astounded at how many of them there were. Laos boasted seven planes of its own, but if only half the reports could be believed, the country was a veritable aviary of unlawful air traffic.
The period he was most interested in was the end of October, and the date that caught his attention was the twenty-seventh. The Department of Aviation had received two reports of the sound of a helicopter in the vicinity of Nam Ngum Reservoir. Given the type of customers availing themselves of its services, the correctional facility on the islands there was very sensitive to such sounds.
It was overcast at eleven P.M., and there had been no actual sighting. By the time the anti-aircraft unit at the dam had dusted off its weaponry, the sound had stopped. Radar at Wattay picked up a blip, but before they could send out anything to investigate, it had disappeared from the screen.
“I bet that was you, Black Boar,” Siri whispered as he re-read the reports. He underlined the date.
The amulet suspended from the bedpost clinked. Siri looked up at the window to see whether there was a breeze, but the curtains hung flat. The fan wasn’t switched on. But the talisman continued to flip back and forth, rattling noisily against the hollow metal bedpost. He leaned over and put his hand on it to keep it still, but as soon as he made contact with the cool stone, an image filled his mind and a feeling of dread flowed through his body.
Talking to Dead People
“I hope you don’t mind this intrusion.” The lad from the Security Section stood in the doorway behind his superior, an older, serious-looking man. He hadn’t bothered to knock. He walked over to the guest chairs, sat on one, and crossed his legs. “I’m Major Ngakum Vong. I’m in charge of…are you all right? You look white as boiled rice.”
Siri reached for the oxygen and took several deep breaths. The major obviously wasn’t the type of man who liked to be kept waiting.
“Look, I’ll come back when you’re in a fit state to answer questions.” He stood and watched as Siri removed the mask and coughed.
“No, Major. I’m all right.”
“You certainly don’t look it.”
The talisman twitched like a living thing in Siri’s hand. Once the major had regained his seat, he noticed the white plaited hair curling out from the doctor’s fist. “What the hell’s that?”
“This? Just a lucky charm someone gave me.”
“Really? I thought you were a doctor. I hope you don’t believe in such rot.”
At almost the same time, the stool at the end of the bed decided three legs weren’t enough to stand on. It toppled sideways and cluttered onto the concrete floor. The sound echoed around the room. The lad bent to pick it up, and Dtui came running in to see what had happened. The major turned to her.
“You. You can wait outside.”
“Me?” She gave him her ironic eye.
“Major Ngakum, this is my morgue assistant,” Siri told him. “She was a witness to the autopsies. She could be useful for filling in the gaps in my memory.”
“All right. Stand over there, girl.” She ran to the wall and stood to attention beside the lad. He pursed his lips to keep from smiling. “Perhaps if the circus is over, we can get down to business. This is a very serious matter, and I want it resolved before it becomes an international incident. Doctor, I’ve read your version of events. I must say you strike me as something of a storyteller.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, everything I’ve read here is conjecture, far-fetched. There’s not a thing we could take to the Vietnamese as evidence that we didn’t torture their people.”
“Criminals have been convicted on less. There’s
enough circumstantial evidence there to at least-”
“One. We aren’t convicting criminals. We’re protecting the good name of our country. Two. Your circumstantial evidence is based on the word of an amateur coroner with…how many years experience?”
“Ten months.”
“Ten months. And on the strength of this…fiction, you want me to launch a major operation to search for an alleged band of mercenaries. And where that information came from, I have no idea. You want me to interrupt bilateral talks on the say-so of a pathologist who hasn’t even done so much as the equivalent of an apprenticeship. Honestly, Doctor.”
“I see what you mean,” Siri said.
Dtui grunted. She’d been expecting a fight.
Siri continued: “I must admit, if I looked at it all objectively, there really isn’t much there.”
“Exactly. So you’re telling me you don’t have anything else for me to go on.”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“H’mm. Don’t think we don’t appreciate everything you’ve tried to do. Goodness knows, we’d do anything to avoid aggression with Vietnam. It’s just that your efforts have been, at the very least, naive.”
“I understand.”
Dtui could no longer restrain her anger. “You understand?”
“Dtui, the major’s right.”
Ngakum stood and turned to her. “So, girl. Do you have anything to add to this?”
Siri shook his head in the background.
“I suppose not,” she admitted.
“Then I suggest you stick to nursing, and stop trying to do my job.” He walked to the door and waited for his corporal to open it. “Take my advice, both of you. In this new society, ambition will only get you in trouble.” And he was gone. The lad ran after him.
Siri could find no breath. He fumbled for the mask. Dtui hurried over and turned the spindle on the oxygen tank. While Siri was fighting to force air into his lungs, Dtui took his pulse and calmed him with her voice.
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