Pool and its Role in Asian Communism

by Colin Cotterill

  Saifon had found a new love since they'd arrived in Asia. It was called 'sleeping' and when she weren't doing it, she was planning it. So once they'd booked their rooms at the Mittrapap Guest House, she couldn't be bothered to even go out for something to eat. She was too tired to look around and Waldo was too excited not to.

  He walked around town some and give the locals something to point at. They'd seen plenty of Americans over the past few years but I guess you never get tired of laughing at an American: specially a big fat one. He didn't mind none. It was all done in good nature.

  Just like that piper guy, Waldo reached the market with a tail of little kids dragging along behind him. He was freaked by all the unusual sights and smells. He needed someone to explain him through it all cause he didn't know what the hell he was seeing or sniffing. There was fruit like some alien experiment that went wrong, and bits of animals hanging down on wires, and big gunny sacks full of what might have been grass. And I don't mean the lawn variety. The market people shouted and flashed them famous Thai smiles and offered him tastes of stuff there weren't no way he would of put in his mouth back in Indiana.

  He hung out there till the kids went home and the market started to wind down. Then, with one bag of little spring rolls, and another bag of milk that weren't exactly milk, he went down to the river and sat himself on the bank.

  He'd heard about the Mekhong, followed it on Aretha's atlas from China, through Laos and Thailand, Cambodia and finally Vietnam and the South China Sea. But on the map, it sure weren't as grand as he was seeing it now. There was one full moon low in the sky and one more squeezed out across the water all the way from Laos on the far bank.

  If he had a camera - well it probably wouldn't have come out, being night and all. Even if it was one of them Japanese cameras that do all the work for you. Because there weren't a camera in the world could do justice to what he was seeing. And if a camera can't describe it, I sure as hell can't.

  "Aretha," he said out loud. "You seeing this, honey? I sure hope you are cause I'd hate for this to be just for me. Man, it's beautiful.

  He munched on his spring rolls until this sorry excuse for a dog come and made him feel guilty. So, even though he hadn't eaten nothing substantial since the train, he give his dinner away. But the view filled him up. He slurped the sweet white stuff up through a straw and him and the dog just sat there appreciating the scenery for an hour. He got back to his room after midnight.

  The Mittrapap guesthouse must of been hosting an interstate cockroach convention. Good old American roaches had the decency to be wary of people. But these little Thai suckers was curious. They crawled all over you, sightseeing, like you was the Himalayas or something. Saifon and Waldo spent the night wrapped in sheets, hotter'n hell. Didn't sleep a damned wink.

  42

  They was both zombies when they walked out of the guesthouse in the morning. It wasn't with what you'd call confidence that they got on the ferry to cross the river to Laos. Waldo didn't believe for a second the airplane from the States wouldn't fly, but he was convinced this lump of old tin wouldn't float. It was jam packed with vehicles and crates and almost the entire population of Southeast Asia. It was sitting so low on the water he got a sideways view of fish swimming past.

  There was no sign of Wilbur and they kind of missed him. He'd said if you looked like you knew what you was doing on the Lao side, no one would stop you and ask to see your papers. As they didn't have none, that would of been a good thing. But talking about it and doing it, wasn't the same.

  The ferry crashed into Laos like it wasn't expecting it to be there. Waldo sprawled on top of a herd of pigs. They was real pissed about it. Him and Saifon had split up. She blended in with the market traders and the day trippers.

  He held himself up to his full height and marched past two ragged guys at the immigration post. He nodded at them and they nodded back. They didn't even ask to look at his passport. They was probably postmen or something.

  When he found Saifon at the busy day market, she'd already gotten directions to the address Mrs. Porn had give her. It was an auberge, and that's French for a small hotel that's seen better days.

  They thought they was gonna have to do a lot of explaining but it seems they was expected. The owner was all over their bags and showing 'em to their rooms and feeding 'em up before they got a chance to say nothing. They sure was honored guests. No doubt about that.

  -o-

  But that little French building was a creaker all right. When Waldo was upstairs walking around you could hear the rafters and boards groan clear to Vientiane. The owners obviously didn't have the money to fix the busted staircase, or re-hang the non-fitting doors, or do something about the window slats that didn’t open or close.

  Truth was, they hadn't seen more than a dozen paying customers there for the past year. The yanks had places of their own. The French was long gone. The Laos sure didn't have the money to stay in an auberge. But for some reason, they didn’t seem to be trying too hard to attract custom. They just sat around.

  When you go visit someone that ain't got much, and they give you half of what they ain't got much off, it makes you feel real special. But it can make you feel uncomfortable too. The larder out back of the kitchen wasn't no better stocked than a bus shelter. If you wanted food you had to tell the owner the day before and he'd go looking for it. As Waldo and Saifon was honored guests, they wasn't allowed to pay for nothing. The rooms was free and the food was, "taken care of".

  The old couple that ran the place, Mr. Mrs. Wongdeuan, fought like billyo when the guests tried to force money on 'em. They would of starved to death sooner than accept a single kip, and a kip couldn't of bought you the leg of a snail in them days.

  So it was, to try to keep the housekeeping bill down to a minimum, Saifon had to invent lunch and dinner engagements. Her and Waldo would waltz off like they had an appointment and sneak over to the ferry port where they'd eat at the bamboo stands that catered for the day-trippers. They put up with the flies and the smells to be kind. They thought they was being smart too, but in a little town like Savannakhet everyone knew what strangers was doing. There weren't a lot else to do there. The Wongdeuans assumed Waldo and Saifon didn’t like the way they cooked.

  -o-

  Now, I gotta say, that little old auberge was a bit of a mystery. As far as Waldo could see, him and Saifon was the only two guests staying there. But on more than a few occasions he'd seen travelers arrive at the door and get turned away. There was always a whole lot of folks there in the daytime, whispering and looking jumpy. But at night it was quiet as a goldfish bowl.

  Now it turned out that Mrs. Porn and the quiet guy had something or other to do with the Pathet Lao, the PL for short. This here auberge was one of their, what you call, candlestine bases. 'Cept there weren't much candlestine about it. Most people knew what was going on there. They could'a gotten bombed any time. But Saifon and Waldo didn't know nothing about that till later.

  -o-

  Waldo's enforced diet was important in a way I ain't mentioned yet. I guess it saw the start of a change in him. With the lack of food and all the sweating he was doing, Waldo noticed that his weight was falling off him like snow off a tree. It weren't a pretty sight but he'd took to standing in front of the big cracked mirror in the bathroom and looking at himself naked. It wasn't immediately obvious to no-one else, but Waldo could tell there was a lot less of him than what he'd brought over from the States the month before.

  "What you doing in there, Waldo?"

  "Doing?

  "Yeah."

  "Well, I'm looking at myself naked in the mirror."

  "Oooh. That's disgusting. Why did I ask? I gotta teach you to lie, man. Listen. Wongdeuan got me a car with a driver. I'm going off to look for the old witch."

  "Great. Hang on. I'll get dressed."

  "Waldo, you ain't coming."

  "Sure I am. I ain't letting my daughter go off alone into the jungle."

  "No. I mean you c
an't come. The driver said we're heading off through territory where you're the enemy. And as I ain't yet thought of a disguise that'll stop you looking like you look, I sure ain't about to get myself shot just so's I can have me some company."

  "Well "

  "Nothing we can do about it, Waldo. So you just keep looking at whatever it is you're looking at, and I'll see you when I get back."

  "Well …"

  43

  What you remember from when you're eight, ain't all that useful when you get to be twenty four. Saifon recalled trees and hills and huts, but that don't get you no place. 'Excuse me, I'm looking for this, like, big tree.' She knew her aunt's name, but being as there was under two hundred telephones in the whole country, there weren't no directory to look through. Besides, her aunt didn't have no running water, electricity, or walls, so she sure as hell didn’t have no phone. So this search was gonna take some time.

  The only thing she had to go on was something her aunt always said to her, "You carry on like this and I'll send you straight back to Ban". 'Ban' was a Thai word that meant 'town'. On the Thai side, every other village was Ban this or Ban that. But it weren't so common in Savannakheth. There was only three that she could find.

  The PL driver had instructions from his boss to visit all of 'em. He'd also give her a letter saying she was representing the PL. If they got stopped by the Royal Lao Army, the RLA, she was supposed to eat it. It was writ on paper as thick as cowhide so she had a bottle of beer with her in the back seat to wash it down.

  With this letter, she was sure to have the ear of village headmen. The locals could see that the commies was whipping yank backsides in Nam. It didn't take much sense to see that socialist forces in Laos would be running the show some day. Now was a good time to suck up. Without the letter she wouldn't get zilch. Her Lao was getting better, but she didn’t talk, or move, or act like a Lao woman. They could all spot her as an outsider.

  The first village, Ban Khong, was a sorry gathering of shacks that didn't have no feeling of homeliness about 'em. The stilts that was holding 'em up was all different lengths and breadths. You got the feeling they'd all been knocked down and put up again so many times the owners couldn't be of a mind to do a decent job no more.

  A few sleepy old men crawled out from under their shacks and was almost on their knees, praying before Saifon got out the car. Now wai-ing like they do in Thailand ain't so popular in Laos so it was obvious these poor old guys was so brow-beaten they'd do anything just to get a bit of peace. A quick look of surprise did rustle through 'em for a second when they saw her, but they just went on praying and greeting and groveling, whoever she was.

  They wanted real bad to be able to help, but they didn’t know nothing. Saifon felt kinda sorry for 'em and asked if there was anything she could do to help them. It was obviously a question they never heard before. They looked sideways at one another from behind their praying hands. And even though they didn't have a dollar between 'em, and they hadn't et nothing but rice and stale vegetables for over a year, they couldn't think of nothing they wanted.

  Saifon took a couple of twenty-dollar bills out of her purse, handed it to one of the guys and got back in the car. It was the same as if the fairy godmother'd come down in South Bend and handed a million bucks to a bunch of homeless guys. They was too stunned to say thank you.

  The second Ban, Ban Se, was on a stream, and even though it could of been wishful thinking, she got vibrations from the place. The headman was a woman cause all the men was off firing bullets over the enemy's heads to earn a few cents a month from the RLA.

  The year before, they'd fired over RLA heads when they fought for the PL. Laos was like that in them days. You'd be about to run your bayonet through some enemy soldier and realize he was your uncle.

  The woman was tough and suspicious. She read the letter Saifon give her and said, "What do you want here?" The letter was upside down so she figured the woman didn’t read no better than she did. She told her the story. She only had scraps of memories. Her ma's nickname. How her family got caught in crossfire and she was the only one survived. The aunt. She didn't say nothing about getting sold.

  The headwoman spat betel nut on the dust at Saifon's feet. When she smiled it was like Muhammad Ali had smashed her in the teeth. Everything in there was rotten and stained red. She looked down at the outsider's clothes. They wasn't nothing fancy but they was clean and neat and western looking.

  "I see you done good for yourself."

  "I stayed alive, if that's what you mean."

  "What I meant was money. You marry a Frenchman?"

  "No. I live in America."

  "America, eh?" She looked across at the driver and lowered her voice. "You got dollars?"

  "I got dollars if you've got information."

  "How much is information worth these days?"

  "If it's good enough to find my aunt, twenty dollars."

  The woman didn't know how to contain her excitement. The average yearly income, if you didn't count the criminals in Vientiane, was around fifty bucks. But she decided to push her luck anyway.

  "I couldn't tell you for less than …forty." She unwrapped another betel nut from its leaf and popped it into her bloody mouth. Saifon sized her up.

  "You know. If I had the choice between getting twenty bucks for doing nothing, and getting nothing for doing nothing, I know what I would of chose." She turned back to the car. The woman knew the girl was bluffing, but she needed the money too bad to play with her.

  "Thirty."

  "Twenty-five."

  "Deal." Numbers ping pong was a national sport in Laos. The woman held out her claw and Saifon filled it with two tens and a five. You wouldn't credit how quick you can change a woman's mood just by giving her money. "I would of helped you anyway, honey. I don't recall the particular incident of your family getting wiped out. I married into this hellhole. Families get wiped out all the time in these parts.

  But your aunt's name ain't that usual. (Souksaijai, Miss 'Happiness in the Heart', ironic weren't it.) I ain't seen her in a couple of years, but I guess the woman you're talking about lived out in the hills, about ten kilometers from here. She's about the right age, and she used to take in kids."

  Saifon warned her that they'd be back if they found she was lying, although the woman's life was so miserable she doubted there was much she could threaten her with. That twenty-five dollars would probably make a difference to a lot of people. The woman seemed offended at such a possibility anyway but give the driver directions.

  Saifon bounced around in the back seat and watched the jungle rise and fall on each side of the car. The driver had untold skill when it come to finding potholes. It was the longest ten kilometers she could remember. She still didn't feel it, that native instinct. She didn't feel like she was part of the country. She'd gotten too foreign. All her dreams of finding her roots was bounced out of her on the road from Ban Se. She wanted a hot shower and a hamburger and a couple of hours of mindless TV.

  When the driver hit ten kilometers on his clock, he pulled over and asked some old guy dressed in a dirty cloth. He pointed to a patch of brown-green on the side of a hill, but something had already pinged in Saifon's memory. It hadn't changed none. This was where she'd toiled and suffered for the bitch for all them years. Her heart plopped down into her stomach like a turd into a toilet.

  The driver stopped where one colour green ended and another one started. There wasn't no fences. She got out the car and looked over at a beaten up old bamboo shack on stilts. It had walls now, sort of, even though they was just straw sheets. Her legs weren't in no hurry to go to it.

  Finally she got 'em moving and she walked up the little path. First thing she noticed was a beat up old motorcycle. And you'll never guess what thought come into her head when she saw it. She truly wondered if the money to buy the bike had come from her own sale. She wondered if the money had burned a hole in the old witch's pocket, and she'd bought the first lump of old shit fucking motorcyc
le she could find. Witch. She'd been robbed.

  "Hello." There was a rustle from up in the hut, but no one answered. "Aunt Souksaijai, you up there?" Nothing again. She edged up the creaking steps till her head come level with the floor of the hut. And it was the weirdest thing, really. Inside was herself, looking at old magazines.

  Of course, it wasn't really herself. That would of been just too weird even for a book like this. But there was a little girl in there, dressed and looking like Saifon must of when she was eight. She was dirty and there was a bad smell up there.

  "Hello, little sister. I'm looking for Aunt Souksaijai. Does she still live here?" The girl didn't answer. She just kept thumbing through them old magazines the way her aunt always used to.

  That was entertainment at auntie's. It was TV. It was cinema, play, education and the outside world. The pictures in her aunt's second-hand magazines was the only fun she had as a girl. Lord knows where she got 'em from. But if the woman ever caught Saifon looking at 'em, she beat the innards out of her. They was hers. So the only time she could sneak a look was when Souksaijai was off spooning with some guy, drunk.

  She really knew how happy this young girl must be, looking at pictures and words she didn’t understand.

  "Sorry to disturb you. Do you know where Souksaijai is?"

  The girl nodded. "Is she around here? I gotta see her." She nodded again. There was something missing in her eyes. It was like they was just for seeing. Just for looking at the magazine pictures and nothing else.

  "Do you think you could take me to her?"

  The girl folded the magazines real neat and placed 'em exactly where she knew they ought'a be. She climbed out down the steps and walked barefoot along the rough grass between the rice paddies. Her aunt never had enough rice to sell, just to eat. That and some seasonal vegetables was breakfast, lunch and supper. When the drought come, or the rains was too severe, Saifon had to do without one or the other. There always seemed to be enough for her aunt though.