by Nic Low
I am so layyyy-zeee!
In a roadside clearing, four of my compatriots sat slumped beside a bamboo shack. They wore the red-eyed smirks of the drunk-for-weeks. Empty bottles covered the table in front of them.
The man who had spoken was handsome and skeletal. Against the deep tough brown of his skin, his singlet was shockingly white. He threw up his hands. Every day I say Enough! I’m going! But every day they get me. They say Laos-laos! I drink and the day is gone. So I say Tomorrow! Tomorrow, I’ll go. But every day’s the same. I am so layyyy-zeee!
The man sounded delighted. He pronounced the word like he was diving into a deep azure pool.
Friends, I called. Room for one more?
They looked up at my approach. A woman rose immediately. She seemed relieved.
Take my place, she said. It’s time for me to go.
She kissed them each in turn and said goodbye and went on up the road. I dropped my pack and took her seat.
Back in Paris I was a musician, said the man in the white singlet. I love music! But there was no rest. Life was work, work, work. A beautiful thing became a curse, and so I ran away. Here there is only one thing to do: nothing.
His hand went among the slum of bottles, toppling them in search of drink. He poured a thick clear spirit into dirty glasses, and set one before each of us.
Laos-laos, he said. Rice whisky, aged in a bucket. France makes the wine of the gods. Laos makes the liquor of ghosts. To laziness!
To laziness, a lithe pale woman said. To laziness and idleness and cant.
We threw it down, and I felt it crawl back up my spine.
I’m Louis, the man said. This is Céline. She’s a lawyer. She was a partner in Casteaux et fils, no less. But of course, she prefers ooooo-pium!
The woman turned to me. She had an exquisite, intelligent face cratered with orange-red sores: no doubt some obscure tropical disease, expensive to catch. I thought I would like to sleep with her.
The more I learned of the law? she said, and gave the barest amused shrug, as if the air itself was too heavy.
And this is Maxime, Louis said. He’s a chef. He drinks like a chef. But he hates to cook!
The man had a heavy beard, and the kind of morose gravity that makes talkative people act like fools. Filling his silence would be like shovelling sand into the sea. He laid a possessive paw across Céline’s shoulders, and tilted his head at me. Salut.
We drank a hole in the afternoon, and I saw that we would be friends. They were armchair nihilists, obsessed with escape and, once escaped, obsessed with looking back.
Why did you leave France? Louis said. Please, it’s our favourite game.
You want to know the truth? I said.
Tell us, Louis said. Why?
Because the world is ending.
Oh-ho, Louis cried. Now I know we will be friends! But why will it end?
Because the planet will throw us off, I said. The polar caps are going, the glaciers are going. Soon it’ll tip. Heatwaves and droughts and floods. Soon we’ll be living in hell.
Oh-ho, Louis repeated. You are one of them. You really believe that?
No, I said. It is unfashionable to believe anything at all. But I act as if it’s true.
How? Céline asked. How do you act?
I opt out. I refuse to participate.
Of course, Céline said. You save the world by flying around the world getting drunk.
Why shouldn’t he, Louis said. Drink has been saving the world for centuries. Luang! Come!
A face appeared in the window of the shack: a middle-aged man, his face crushed and fragrant with sleep.
Luang, Louis said, the world is ending again. Get us four laap. Another bottle of laos-laos. Make it quick.
The man came round to clear our table, dreamlike in the heat’s embrace.
What is your name? I murmured to him.
His name is Luang, Louis said. Those are his children.
Beside us in the road, three barefoot children played a fast-forward game of pétanque, lobbing silver balls into the ripening twilight.
One dollar, two dollar, three dollar, four, Louis said. He’s saving our money to send his children to university.He thinks it will make their lives better.
Luang smiled; he seemed embarrassed.
He is a good man, Louis said. But slow, like his country. Few things happen at very low speed. Nothing will change.
That’s why I love it here, Céline said. Every day is the same as the last.
How long have you been here? I asked her.
Céline’s eyes were milky grey, an empty mirror for the fading sky. A long time, she said.
I smiled. How long?
One hundred and twenty years.
My smile wavered. She lit a cigarette, and rested her chin in her hand. A thin drift of smoke curled between us.
This bar has been full of drunken Frenchmen, she said, since the year eighteen ninety-three. It has never been empty. These seats pass like batons in a relay. We sit and try to remember why we are here, but the truth is—we have come here to forget.
To forget what? I asked.
Again that shrug, shaking off the weight of the air.
That is a good question, she said.
It was burning season when I arrived. Fires gleamed among the jungle. Smoke filled the valleys. I crossed the iron bridge at Nong Khiaw. The old river below was restless, and the new road above freighted with a secret traffic pushing south. Planes droned overhead. There were rumours that the borders would close. Ahead on the road I heard a rough sardonic voice cry out in French.
I am so layyyy-zeee!
There was a bamboo shack in a clearing cut from the jungle. Two men and a woman sat slumped under a Coca-Cola awning.
Of course we should flee! the man was saying. He lolled in his chair, wild with false mirth. But why? I tell you this because you are too drunk to remember: we put them up to it, so we should answer for it. We paid them, armed them, put fire in their blood. They pulled the trigger, but the deeds are ours—
He broke off to watch my approach. His sideburns were unkempt, his fedora pushed back rakishly on his head.
Mademoiselle, he called. You are French, no?
Yes.
Do you hate your country?
I shrugged. Of course.
Good! Luang! Another chair.
Have mine, the Frenchwoman said. What the hell—there may still be time.
She kissed the two men, picked up a small valise and went quickly up the road. I laid my bag in the dirt and took her seat.
I am Louis, the man said. You are?
Céline, I said.
This is Maxime, Louis said. He is a soldier. He drinks like a soldier but he hates to fight.
The man sat closed behind a heavy beard. He was perhaps Moroccan, and he had a damaged silence about him, like artillery stilled at dusk. He looked at me and said nothing.
It is lucky you hate your country, Louis said, because you can never go back. The evacuation planes have flown. They are closing the borders. I for one think we must celebrate.
His hand went among the arsenal of bottles. He seized each one and, finding it empty, hurled it into the trees. He found one that was full and poured three cups.
Laos-laos, Louis said. Rice whisky. If you have any nerve left at all, this will dissolve it. To despair!
To despair!
I threw it down, and my nerves lit up like jungle canopy under napalm.
You know the Pathet Laos have quit their caves? Louis said. They are moving on the capital.
Do you think they will succeed? I asked.
The Vietcong did, Maxime said. And the Khmer Rouge. Why not the Pathet Laos?
Why not? Louis cried. Because everyone is so layyyy-zeee! It will take them a thousand years to reach the capital. We will drink ourselves to death first!
He swung to me, and I felt his gaze linger over the sores on my face.
Céline, he said, why did you not return to France while you had the chance?
Return to France? I said. I have just escaped.
Bravo! Louis said. He refilled my glass. Tell me why you escaped.
Because it is the end of the world.
Of course it is, he said. The question is still why?
I gave the barest shrug. Imperialism? Bourgeois conservatism? Sexism?
Oh-ho, Louis said. You are one of them. What of liberalism and feminism and socialism? Are these not the ends of the world?
I wish they were, I said. But sixty-eight has taken a job and a mortgage.
Oh-ho, he repeated. You are disappointed in your revolution, and so you run away.
There is a real revolution here, I said. I raised my glass into the low burning sun. If communism is the end of the world, let us witness it.
We shall drink to that. Luang! Come!
A face rose in the window of the shack: a moon at the sickle turn, sharp with fear.
Luang, the world is ending again, Louis cried. He snapped his fingers. Another bottle of laos-laos. Quickly.
The man moved among us with a bottle of the thick clear spirit.
Thank you, I murmured to him. What is your name?
His name is Luang, Louis said. Those are his children.
Beside us in the road three barefoot children played at being soldiers. They pointed their sticks; they fell and jerked in the dust.
Luang is Pathet Laos, Louis said. I know that, and he knows that I know.
Luang smiled, yet he seemed afraid.
He is a good man, Louis said. He sides with the communists because he believes life will be better for his children. But nothing changes. This country has no history.
Out on the road the children scattered. A young soldier in ill-fitting fatigues passed on a motorbike. He turned at the bridge and came back. He looked us over with curiosity and disgust, and spoke in Laotian. A change came over Louis. He replied sharply to the soldier and they both began to laugh.
There is a company of Pathet Laos guerrillas coming west, Louis said. They are looking for a man they claim is helping the royalists. I told him I am the man they seek but, like all Frenchmen, I am too lazy to flee. He thinks I am very funny.
Louis poured a shot of laos-laos for the soldier and they drank together. The soldier remounted his motorbike and continued across the bridge. We sat in silence. Louis poured still more drinks, and I saw his hands were shaking.
Actually, I am not joking, he said. I am the man they seek. But how can I leave? I am too layyyy-zeee! Perhaps I will go tomorrow.
Tomorrow, Maxime said. I have been waiting for that a long time.
How long? I asked.
Eighty years, he said, and there was perhaps a hint of amusement about his face.
It was monsoon season when I arrived. The sky roared. Water filled the valleys. It lay in gleaming pools along the road and in the roadside ditches where I walked. I travelled at night and slept by day among the wide green pandanus. I swam the river at Muang Ngoi below the wooden bridge, stroking out into a flat grey dark. My fatigues clung like small wet hands. I scrambled up the bank and regained the cart track. I heard laughter ahead. A voice crying out in French.
But I am so layyyy-zeee!
There was a bar beside the track, and two bodies pressed together at an outside table. Their limbs surfaced like pale islands in the pre-dawn dark. Bottles gleamed upon the ground. I heard the river’s restless murmur and the whispered laughter on their breath.
Come here, said a woman’s voice. Oh, you must. Darling.
A spill of curls. The svelte curve of her legs around a man’s naked back.
I cannot.
You must.
I cannot. I am too layyyy-zeee!
You are too drunk!
I am sorry. I have tried, but it is impossible—to be too drunk.
They broke apart to the musical clatter of bottles.
Hello? the man called. Who’s there?
The woman laughed. Surely it is my father. Come to fetch me home and cut off your balls.
Welcome! the man called. Drink with us, Monsieur Casteaux. It will steady your hand for the cut.
The man lit a lantern, and wild shadows swung about the trees. By the light he was handsome and skeletal, without a shirt, his trousers agape. She was just as thin, her cheekbones sharp. She pulled down her skirt but did not care to hide her breasts.
I stepped forward and their laughter dimmed. I was dripping wet, unshaven and exhausted. The man said something in a language I did not know.
Room for another? I asked in French.
You are French? the man said.
Of course.
But you look—you look like you need a drink.
I must go, the woman said.
Stay, the man said. We are not finished.
I am not finished, the woman said, her face lit by mirth and drink. And you cannot finish me. I will see you later. I must get some sleep.
She hunted the shadows for her blouse. She buttoned it crookedly, then swayed off towards the bridge. I watched her depart from the lantern’s fragile sphere. The man read my expression as concern.
Do not worry, he said. Mademoiselle Casteaux is unkillable. She will dance upon our graves. I’m Rochefort. Call me Louis. Drink this.
He handed me a tumbler of something poisonous. At the first sip my empty stomach screamed. I kept my face unmoved.
The natives make it, he said. It has the peculiar quality of making time stop. You are…French Foreign Legion, are you not?
This time I could not keep the surprise from my face. I had torn the insignia from my uniform but to no end. I was too exhausted to lie, or to run. I could only hope that such a man would not report me.
I was, I said.
You were? But you cannot leave the Legion.
I believe you can.
I
could see him thinking, very slowly. You have deserted? All the way from—Indochine? On foot?
I said nothing. He seemed delighted.
But you are perfectly mad! We must drink to this. And you must tell me why!
I threw back my head and drained my glass, and the horizon swung away beneath me. I felt my nerves fill with the cold, billowing fire of mustard gas.
Why desert? I said. Because the world is to end.
Oh-ho! he cried. Now I know we shall be friends. How will it end?
You have heard the news from Europe?
No. We are blessed to receive no news whatsoever.
They say Herr Hitler will march on Paris. They say it will be much worse than last time.
Oh, that, he said. Surely that is not serious.
I am afraid it is. I fought in the first war and survived. I will not survive a second.
Bravo. And they are conscripting again?
As we speak.
Louis began to laugh, long and hard, until he was close to retching. His sunken face seemed fashioned wholly out of sweat.
Forgive me, he said at last. It is too perfect. I have been in Laos a long time. I avoided the first war and now it seems I have managed to avoid a second. Come, let us get you breakfast. Luang!
No one answered. There was a rough shack behind us, swallowed by the jungle palms. Louis rose and opened the door and entered the darkness. He emerged half dragging a man, and I glimpsed a face chaotic with surprise and sleep. Louis pushed him down against the wall.
Wake up, for god’s sake, Louis said. The world is ending again. Get us two laap and a pipe of poppy. And give me your shirt.
The man looked up at him uncertainly. Louis spoke sharply in Laotian. The man unbuttoned.
Here, Louis said to me. Put this on. And give him yours. It will be our little joke.
