Dr Siri Paiboun: Love Songs from a Shallow Grave (2010)

by Colin Cotterill

  At last, Siri understood. “The hero shortlist.”

  “I can’t tell you what a boon it would be for the Justice Department if one of its own was selected,” said Haeng.

  “How could it have any effect on the credibility of a ministry?” Siri asked, bemused.

  “Do you need to ask?”

  Siri was distracted momentarily by an old lady who had come to sit at the judge’s desk. She had a face that defied guesswork as to her age and wore the traditional clothing of a country woman. Her mouth was a splatter of betel nut. He knew the old lady well even though he didn’t recall meeting her when she was still alive. She’d been with him from time to time, just sitting, just there, never speaking. A monk had once hinted she might have been Siri’s birth mother, but there was no way of confirming or denying it. He called her his ‘mother angel’ anyway, just in case. Of all the visitations he experienced from day to day, his mother angel was the one he most felt a need to communicate with. He had a lot of gaps in his early memories. But she sat and chewed and made no effort at all to answer his questions.

  Judge Haeng was babbling on about something in the background. Siri interrupted him.

  “If you were a bank I’d understand,” he said. “You could use me on advertising hoardings. “Dr Siri is proud to be a director of the such and such bank.” That type of thing. Or a farm implement manufacturer. “Dr Siri drives a Kwailek tractor. Why don’t you?” But you’re a ministry.”

  “And a fledgling ministry in a fledgling democracy, Siri. We need the farmers to trust us.”

  “Then stop making them join collectives.”

  Haeng ignored the comment.

  “We need the common people on our side,” he said. “The simple man is a moth drawn to the bright light of a halo around the head of a great leader. We need their support and they need a hero.”

  Siri saw himself in his green leotard, flying down from the ministry turrets to aid the commoners, fix that dam, shift that bale. He laughed and shrugged in the direction of his dead mother. He felt a ‘but’ coming.

  “We’re almost there,” Haeng said. “There’s just one small area that needs addressing.”

  “I’m not giving up on the Hmong,” Siri told him.

  “The…? Oh, no problem. We’re a multi-ethnic society, Siri. Compassion for our ethnic brothers and sisters can do you no harm at the polls. It won’t get you anywhere, but it won’t hurt.”

  “So, what’s my ‘small area’?”

  “Siri, there are rumours about you…and ghosts.”

  Siri’s mother was dribbling betel juice all over the judged reports. Siri smiled and she might have smiled back. It was hard to tell.

  “What type of rumours?” Siri asked.

  “Siri, I’m going to ask you bluntly and I expect a blunt answer. Are you a shaman?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  He hosted a shaman, but that was hardly the same thing. He had conducted a seance and travelled to the other world, and confronted demons, but that wasn’t the question. Haeng leaned back and sighed as if a javelin had been removed from his foot.

  “Excellent,” he said, “because I have heard second-hand reports that you are…apparently, that you dabble in spirit worship.”

  “Judge Haeng,” Siri said earnestly. “I can honestly say that the only spirit I worship is fermented from rice and left to stand for a month.”

  “That’s what I thought. Good. I can forward my report tomorrow with a clear conscience. Glad we cleared that up. Good luck.”

  Haeng lifted his Cola and Siri raised his and heard the clink as the two glasses met. He sipped the bubbleless, lukewarm sugar-oil without tasting it. He was surprised at how effortlessly he had skirted around the judged accusations. His normal self would have left doubts and messed with the judge’s mind. But Siri knew what was at stake here; hero status. And, if he were honest with himself he would have to admit, yes, he wanted to be a hero. He’d earned it. It wasn’t the glory and adulation he desired. It was simply that he’d been a fair, honest and hard-working man all his life. Assuming the DHC didn’t turn him into some Asian Errol Flynn, there were far worse role models out there for young Lao to follow. He was proud of the decisions he’d made and the direction he’d taken. Damn it. Yes. He would be a hero even if it killed him.

  He looked at his mother who was sitting on the desk ripping up reports. She nodded. Yes there were character flaws; he was disrespectful, and given to grumpiness, he talked to dead people and he drank too much, but, as everyone knew, time had a way of smudging over a hero’s personality faults.

  ∗

  The electricity is back on and the eternal day has returned to my classroom. My tough Lao belly has been invaded by foreign devils – bacteria whose names should not be spoken aloud. I am suffering from cramps and chronic diarrhoea. As I have no control over my bowels I have removed all my clothes and piled them at one extreme of the length of my chains. Soiled clothing is a breeding ground for more diseases than I care to tell you. At the other extreme of my shackles is my toilet. I use half the water they give me to keep myself clean as best I can. It’s as sanitary as I am able to manage given the conditions. I’m a doctor. I balance the risks.

  The monk is asleep, chained not a leg’s length away. There’s a smile on his face. His subconscious is apparently unaware of the terror that surrounds him. I don’t know when they carried him in. He arrived like a demon in the night and took hold of my hand, frightened the living daylights out of me.

  “You are the one who speak French?” he asked in a poor version of the language.

  “Oui,” I said.

  “Have they tortured you yet?”

  “They’re saving me for the dinner show.”

  The monk managed a laugh that quickly dilapidated into a dry cough.

  “It will not be long, brother,” he said. “It will not be long.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement. What are you in for?”

  The conversation elated me after so long without warmth, only inhuman contact, only the smiley man and you ghosts. No offence.

  “They found me,” the monk said. “I am a monk. I was the last in the temple. I was responsible to protect the palm leaf scrolls. We have thousand, priceless, cannot be replace. I was in the vault under the hall of prayer. It was impossible to find it if you don’t know where was it. I have the dry food, the running water that I can boil it. I could stay there for ever. I go out at night if I want the fresh food, fruit, the animal. But everyone was starve. Not much the food. Then they come, these rains. These miserable rains. And the flood make me to find a dry place for the scrolls.”

  “And they caught you.”

  “All monks are dead, brother. All. All die because they don’t worship Brother Number One.”

  The monk was still holding my hand as he spoke. His soft voice was calming.

  “Why didn’t they kill you?” I asked.

  “They will. They kill everyone here. They will kill you. Nobody come out of this place, S21, alive. But they think we know something. If we speak they kill us fast. Don’t speak, they kill us slow.”

  “And do you know something?”

  There was a silence that seemed to stretch out into the darkness.

  “No,” he said.

  “Where did you learn your French?”

  “Marseille. I was on the scholarship. Four year, but poor French even so, no?”

  “You’re an unusual monk.”

  The monk laughed and as he did so the lights came on. They blinded me. I threw my hands in front of my eyes to cut out the dazzle. I remember I opened my fingers slowly until I could focus in the glare. The monk slowly appeared to me. Dark veins stood out on his shaven head. He was solid, almost without a neck, the type of man you could tell had heavy bones even without weighing him. He wasn’t dressed in saffron but wore black pyjamas like the guards, like the military, like everybody in the damned country. They were too small on him. The shirt pulled tight across his chest.
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  “Where are your robes, comrade?” I asked.

  “They stripped me and burned them. Burned them in the same fire as the books, same fire as all the palm leaf manuscript.”

  There was no expression on the monk’s face but I knew what he felt. I have…had my own cache of valuable old books and the thought of watching them burn fills me with sadness. The monk reached for the shackles at his ankle. He pulled at them angrily like a wild chained dog.

  “I tried that,” I told him. “No hope unless you’ve got an oxyacetylene torch there under your shirt.”

  “I would like to have met you under better circumstances,” said the big monk. “What’s your name, brother?”

  “Siri.”

  “I’m Yin Keo.”

  We talked for an hour and the guards had come. They brought gruel for the monk and fetid water for me.

  “This is all they give you?” Yin Keo asked when the guards left.

  “I’m watching my weight.”

  “No, then take this,” the big monk held out his bowl.

  “I can’t.”

  “Serious. Look at me. I have some layers of muscle to burn before I am hungry.”

  I took the bowl and handed Yin Keo the water.

  “I won’t say no, then. I’m a little short of nutrients. I’ll pay this back in a future life, assuming we both make it through Nirvana.”

  ∗

  But now the monk sleeps and I wish I’d stuck with the water. I chip another corner off the charred blackboard and chew on it. I wonder how it got burnt. I imagine the pupils sneaking into their school in the dead of night and setting fire to it. I imagine how my teeth look. I imagine them to be as black as a cave in an impoverished limestone monument. See how poetic I’m becoming? Give me another month of this and I shall be a posthumous poet laureate. Then they’ll honour me. Nothing like death for elevating a man to fame.

  8

  PERFUME? LIPSTICK STAINS?

  They sat in Madame Daeng’s noodle shop like ragtag generals in a sweet-smelling war room. Not many of the shops in Vientiane had electricity, even though the hydroelectric dam just sixty kilometres away was pumping out six megawatts of the stuff every day. Most stores and restaurants closed before nightfall so they hadn’t bothered to petition their local cadres. But Daeng’s noodle establishment was on the same grid as the Banque Pour le Commerce Exterior Lao as well as the Women’s Association, so burning brightly above the generals was one very new strip light, not at all dissimilar to the two in Siri’s cutting room at the morgue.

  Around the table were Siri and Daeng, Sergeant Sihot, Civilai, and Phosy who sat opposite Dtui and the baby. In many ways this group was a small army. They’d fought battles, defeated guileful enemies and suffered wounds. It was Tuesday evening and each of the generals had been too busy in one way or another to get together before this. Spread across the table was a large sheet of sugar paper upon which the names of the three victims had been written like locations on a map. They were labelled with their nicknames and the order in which they’d been dispatched; Dew 1, Kiang 2, Jim, 3. The generals had all sent a discrete and silent prayer to Buddha for not sending them a number four or five over the past two days. The State frowned on soliciting favours from heaven but it seemed to have worked.

  Supper over, it was Sihot with his famous frittering notepad who was the first to speak. He had three loose pages laid side by side in front of him on the table.

  “Victim number three,” he said, flipping up the third sheet. “Sunisa Simmarit, nickname, Jim. Twenty-four. Single. Was trained as a medic in Laos by the Americans. End of seventy-five she was sent to East Germany with the intention of being there six years to be trained as a doctor. Apparently didn’t pass her second-year exams and was sent home. Still a medic.”

  “But a German-speaking medic with two years of medical training,” said Civilai.

  “More like one, comrade,” Sihot corrected him. “First year was mostly language training. Came back in March this year. Was assigned to Settha Hospital, basic nursing duties plus translating for the East German personnel. Three half-days out at K6 looking after the minor ailments of the domestic staff.”

  “And how did she get that posting?” Siri asked.

  Sihot flipped over two of his note sheets like a shell-game hustler looking for the pea. He found the answer under the third sheet.

  “Here,” he said. “Jim was a Vietnamese speaker. Father Lao. Mother Vietnamese. The old medic broke her leg and they needed someone to fill in for her. With all the Vietnamese out at K6 these days she was the obvious choice.”

  “So she was a second woman who could communicate with the bodyguards,” Phosy reminded them.

  “Specifically Major Dung,” said Siri who had selected his favourite suspect. “Single woman. Not bad looking. Lao. Just his type.”

  “And a fencer, to boot,” said Phosy.

  Somebody let forth a long whistle.

  “You don’t say?” said Siri.

  “And a very good one by all accounts,” Sihot went on. “So good, in fact, she won a couple of local competitions in Germany. There was talk of her going on to bigger tournaments.”

  “All right,” said Daeng. She stood up and refilled everyone’s after-supper teacups. “We’re getting close. We have two fencers and three women in Europe. We have almost enough connections. There’s only one that doesn’t fit. Any more news about Kiang?”

  “Right. That’s where the connection gets disconnected,” said Sihot. “Kiang was something of a non-sporting type. She didn’t take any physical education classes in Bulgaria at all. No self-defence. Nothing.”

  “That surprises me,” said Civilai, “considering the number of life-threatening situations librarians find themselves in. (Daeng crinkled her brow but he pretended not to see.) I mean, overdue book, customer reaches for a machete in her handbag, quick karate chop to the solar plexus, thwack, down goes the rule-breaker, money retrieved. One more victory for Library Woman. Potential rendezvous with Socialist Man. I think I need a drink.”

  “We get the point, old brother,” said Siri. “She does run against the rhythm. Three fencers and the case would be solved. Midnight duels. To the victor, the spoils.”

  Everyone looked at the two old men as if they were speaking a foreign language. They occasionally forgot where they were and brought one too many European delicacy to the noodle table.

  “Odd, though,” Dtui said, back at the noodles of the matter. “Two fit girls, both fencers, and one dorky but good-looking librarian.” Malee munched obliviously on her mother’s nipple and had nothing to add.

  “And even more curious, that the only victim wearing sports clothes, heading off to exercise on a Saturday night, was the librarian,” Siri pointed out.

  “Is there anything to tie them together socially?” Daeng asked. “Any possibility they met up somewhere? Some orientation before they headed off to Eastern Europe?”

  Sihot reshuffled his pages.

  “Unlikely,” he said. “They all left at different times.”

  Daeng persevered, “Some Eastern European reunion club when they got back? Communist college alumni association? Debriefing seminar?”

  “Daeng, my old friend,” Civilai chuckled. “Do you honestly believe we’re that organised? We can barely keep track of who’s off where. It’s every ministry for himself. When their people come back they want them out in the field as quickly as possible, frustrated and frustrating because there are no words to describe all the bewildering concepts they’ve learned in all those exotic languages that they really didn’t quite understand themselves. It’s chaos. Life back here is far too complicated to sit down and draw up a programme for an ‘I survived the Soviet Bloc Club’. And don’t forget you need signatures and stamps from seven thousand middle-ranking bureaucrats just to get permission for a meeting with your own relatives to discuss who gets to use the bathroom first in the morning.”

  Daeng laughed.

  “So, we’ll forget
the possibility they met up socially?” she asked.

  “We should technically have a permit to be sitting here,” he replied. “Did I mention I needed a drink?”

  Siri slipped his arm around his friend’s shoulder.

  “You can all see why he was such a hit up at the parliament building, can’t you?” he said. “A born diplomat. I’m surprised they found such a sweet man expendable.”

  “All right,” said Phosy. “We have more important things to discuss, if you don’t mind.” He ran his finger over the victim map and allowed it to spiral to a central point. He picked up the crayon and wrote a ‘Z’ at the centroid of the triangle. “What if the perpetrator is a sword coach? He takes students, advanced and beginner. He offers classes, seduces his students and then impales them through the heart. Victim one is at intermediate level. Victim two is a beginner. Perhaps she was stimulated by watching competitions in Bulgaria but was too embarrassed to take classes there. But victim three is a champion and he gets into the type of fight he hadn’t expected. She matches him. He thinks he’s killed her but he doesn’t know about her weird heart and she’s still kicking. The shock gets to him, or maybe he’s injured, so he stops his killing spree.”

  There was a moment of quiet as they all digested this possibility. At last, Siri spoke up.

  “Brilliant,” he said.

  “It makes sense to me,” Civilai agreed.

  Phosy allowed himself a modest smile.

  “And how would anyone go about finding themselves a fencing coach in Laos?” Dtui asked. “We don’t actually have notice boards or newspaper advertisements. This isn’t Thailand, you know.”

  “Word of mouth,” he said, staring blackly back at her.

  “Well, so far we haven’t found any connection between the three women,” Dtui continued. “Whose mouth did this magic word come from?”

  “You begin with a theory and you work back from there,” Phosy said, calmly.