Disco for the Departed (13 page)

The beam swung around and the watchman followed it into an ominous tunnel on the far side of the auditorium. Siri remained standing in the center of the huge, peopleless discotheque feeling more than a little silly, but somehow invigorated.

Mr. Geung had been in the tree for eighteen hours. He could tell the time quite well but his watch was hidden safely under a loose tile beneath his bed at Mahosot. So eighteen hours was a guess. It could have been three hours or a week. He still had food and some water, but he was missing sleep. He hadn't been able to work out how to catch a little shut-eye without falling to the ground. His shoulder ached but he'd changed the dressing as instructed and the wound looked free of infection. He was something of an authority on the look of wounds but only now realized how much they hurt. Climbing up the tree hadn't helped in that regard. He was quite proud that he'd been able to get as high as he had with one arm. He'd never been much of a tree climber, but then again he'd never had such an incentive.

The tiger hadn't chased him up the tree, not in the sense that the animal runs, is about to pounce, and its prey is forced to scurry up to a high branch in panic. That hadn't been the way it was. Geung had been sitting waiting for the sun to return to his shoulder strap when he first noticed the tiger at the edge of the clearing. The only time he'd ever seen anything like it had been at the last New Year show. It had been apparent then, from the reaction of the audience, that large cats with fangs were fearsome creatures. By the end of the show, he'd been as nervous as all the other onlookers. The sense of danger is contagious, and that is just as well, for, without it, he might very well have gone over to the animal to make friends. If the tiger had been of a mind, she could have attacked and devoured Mr. Geung during any one of his eleven attempts to get up the tree. It was, however, daylight, and her prey was still strong. She had him cornered and weakness would finally overcome him.

Dtui and Geung sat there in the tree exchanging jokes and laughing at their predicament. They kept each other awake. Once, when the tiger attempted to climb up after them, Dtui egged on her champion as he poked at the drooling mouth of the cat with a dry twig. It was fun having his friend there. Only fatigue and discomfort stopped it from being a most enjoyable adventure.

Dtui was in the sleeping ward. Again the image of Geung came into her head. If only there had been a telephone in the morgue she might have phoned to see if everything was fine. The bed vacated by Mrs. Nuts was now being used by little Panoy. She still hadn't regained consciousness but her pulse was as strong as a horse's. Dtui could recognize the signs of a fighter. She'd already made up her mind to do all she could to reunite the girl with her relatives and see her settled into some semblance of a normal life.

She stroked Panoy's hair from her forehead and turned from the bed. To her surprise, Comrade Lit was standing in the doorway. With the sun at his back, he looked positively godlike. The new epaulets on the shoulders of his uniform glinted like wings. For a second she almost forgot she didn't like him.

"Nurse Dtui." He nodded stiffly.

"Comrade Lit. Can I help you?"

"I'd be grateful if you could spare me a few moments."

"Shoot," she said.

"I was thinking perhaps outside."

"Comrade, these patients are so drugged you could drive a truck over them and they'd smile at you."

"Even so ..."

"Look, it's hot out there. This room's twenty degrees cooler ... and I'm on duty." He annoyed her. She wanted him to get whatever it was over with and get the blazes out.

"Very well," he said and walked into the room. Dtui stood with her arm crooked against her waist waiting for some lecture. But she noticed now that the head of security had apparently forgotten to put on his armor of arrogance. He seemed rather frail; almost, one could say, timid. He continued to hold himself upright but it wasn't without effort: he seemed more like a wall hanging than a signpost. Dtui found his silence disconcerting.

"The sooner you start, the sooner I can get back to work," she said. She was confused by the look of uncertainty on his face. He was gazing over her shoulder at some point on the wall beyond her.

"Yes," he said. "That's quite right. The plight of the downtrodden and oppressed takes precedence over the personal issues of us servants. The patients should quite rightly be our priority."

"Good," she said. "In that case I'll go and look after the downtrodden. If you'll excuse me." She walked past him and headed for the door. There was something unnatural about the situation.

"But ..."

She turned to him. "But?"

It was at this point he began his speech. It had obviously been written beforehand and memorized. But there was no doubt in Dtui's mind that Comrade Lit had spent many hours composing, decomposing, rewriting, and practicing this recitation. Even with occasional lapses into engineering analogy, it was unquestionably the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to her.

At school, she'd had what might possibly be termed
boyfriends.
At least there had been a culture of pairing up and going out. But the boys that she'd paired with had been well down the pecking order. They'd been more interested in her breasts than her soul. Thinking back on those disastrous dates, it had occurred to her once that her boys had all been the shades of fruit--the pale pink of lychee, the tan of sapodilla, the orange of sweet mango--and, like fruit, they'd all gone off in the hot season. As she listened to Lit make his presentation, like a fifth grader reciting the national creed, she plummeted instantly and hopelessly in love with his words. Once he'd finished, she could recall very few of them because she'd been too stunned to record any in her memory. But she knew there had been mention of his first impression of her on the day they'd unearthed the mummy. He'd confessed to thinking about her constantly and made some comparison between her eyes and stars. It might have been a line from a well-known song but she could forgive him for plagiarism. The fact that he'd even noticed she had eyes was enough for her. He had summarized his financial status and prospects, and, almost in the same breath, came straight out with his atomic bomb blast. He'd said he would be delighted if Nurse Dtui would be kind enough to be his wife---just like that, straight to the temple, without even a hint that he might like to sample the goods beforehand.

Something like that can have a profound effect on a woman, particularly one to whom such a proposition has never been made. A man--fully sighted and with a complete set of limbs--liked her sufficiently to commit his life to her. It was enough to momentarily erase all her negative thoughts of him. It was enough to make her knees wobble so violently she had to sit on the edge of a bed. She couldn't bring herself to speak. He, for his part, had come to the end of his script, so the two of them remained, mute, in the dark room, with only the clicking of one old man's unconscious tongue against his palate as an accompaniment.

At last, Dtui found her voice. "I--"

"You'll probably need time to think about all this," he interrupted. "So, I'll leave it with you. If it helps, the regional Social Relations Committee has already given us the go-ahead for our engagement. It's all signed and stamped. Right, then. I'll see you later." He didn't actually salute before leaving, but it was a very military nod that he gave her before marching triumphantly out into the sunshine.

Few things in life could stop Nurse Dtui from speaking. It was her forte. She had smart responses for every situation--a witty comment to brighten even the most difficult of times. But for a full five minutes, she sat in the ward of the unconscious, and could think of nothing at all to say. She was as delirious as all the patients around her. She might have remained in that state for a good deal longer if Panoy hadn't chosen that moment to come out of her coma. Dtui jumped up when she heard a sound. She turned to see Panoy sitting upright with her eyes staring directly at Dtui. Slowly, the little girl's voice uttered a stream of Hmong language Dtui couldn't understand. What was clear, however, was that her voice was not that of a child.

Once all the guests had vacated Guesthouse Number One and their belongings had been successfully pilfered, there was no longer a role for the guesthouse truck. The staff didn't see any harm--as long as he put his own gasoline in the tank--if Siri borrowed it for the day. He'd heard there was a Vietnamese unit stationed up near Sop Hao, at the border. That same unit had been in Laos before the well-publicized but temporary Vietnamese troop pullout. It was the same unit to which Colonel Ha Hung had been attached. Siri decided it wouldn't do any harm to visit the place.

He was enjoying the drive. Whereas the rest of the country was dying of thirst, the northeast still had enough rain to replenish the water in the hillside paddies. The late-morning sun reflected from them like broken pieces of a mirror stacked in jagged pyramids. Little girls, straight from their bath at the local pond, too young to feel shame, walked naked along the dusty roadside, wearing their sarongs as hats. A truck overtook his, carrying small pigs in light cane cages on their way to the abattoir. Their beady eyes streamed with tears.

The rice fields on either side were neatly laid out and well tended. Big spoon blossoms and itchy fruit lined the hedgerows. He passed a single temple, its doors padlocked. Hill tribe people carried baskets of twigs high on their backs and suspended from straps around their foreheads. Ponies with bells warned nobody in particular of their coming. A young man in the middle of nowhere hoisted a guitar over his shoulder. Without exception, every buffalo he passed looked up from its munching and watched the doctor's progress. He felt happy to be surrounded by this unprecedented peace. He smiled to himself and his shoulders rocked to some unheard disco tune.

At one point he found himself driving along a newly laid road that suddenly stopped at a river. The bridge was five yards to the right. He had to leave the road to get to it. Once across, he had to drive along another dirt track to get back on the road. It was a fine bridge and the road was straight and level so this lack of coordination troubled him. He stopped to talk to the owner of the nearest shack, who explained that in Huaphan province, the Soviets were now responsible for bridge building. The Vietnamese had the road portfolio. Each resented the other. The Vietnamese weren't the fastest of road builders, whereas the Russians had their bridges in place at exactly the contracted-for time. On roads that were merely being upgraded, this wasn't a problem. But on new roads, the Vietnamese engineers sometimes arrived at a river with their road trailing behind them, only to find they'd missed the bridge by several yards. The Vietnamese refused to reroute the roads; the Russians had no intention of rebuilding the bridges. As Civilai often said, "The monk is in no position to return the alms if he doesn't find them to his taste."

By the time Siri had found the discreet, unsignposted unit of Vietnamese infantry it was already midafternoon. The Lao sentry at the turnoff swore on his grandmother's grave there was nothing but trees at the end of the dirt drive he protected. Siri had the unit number and the exact kilometer marker, both provided by Central Command in Xam Neua, so he ignored the man and his shouldered rifle and turned into the drive. It was unlikely a solitary old doctor would be shot for attempting to invade a compound of militia.

A mile farther on, he found the camp: a well-organized, tented expanse that clearly housed more than just the one unit. He was stopped by a real guard in uniform at a weighted red-and-white barrier. The soldier was sharp with the doctor and within a minute was yelling Siri's ID information into his walkie-talkie. As he waited, Siri took in the sight in front of him: foreign troops on his native soil. He felt resentful. The war was over, won. Why were these Vietnamese still here? He'd trained in Vietnam and done most of his doctoring there. Yes, Laos had a debt of gratitude to repay. Yes, it was true, she probably wouldn't have defeated the Royalists without Vietnamese help and the present administration wouldn't be sitting where it was. But enough!

A reply crackled over the wireless. The guard pointed out the officers' tent and raised the barrier to let him pass. He drove down a slope and then up the rise upon which the foreigners were billeted and noticed permanent buildings here and there in various stages of construction. As soon as he skidded to a stop on the loose gravel in front of the main tent, a captain strode out to meet him. Siri recognized him.

"Dr. Siri." The soldier smiled and shook his hand warmly.

As always, Siri's Vietnamese took a while to warm up. "Captain Vo Chi. They didn't tell me you were here. How have you been?"

"Alive and well, thanks to you, my good friend. I thought you'd have been put out to pasture a long time ago."

"I was there, comrade. I smelled the daisies. I could almost taste the grass. Then I felt the lariat around my neck and I was hauled back to the knacker's yard."

In the mess tent, they ate and reminisced over the year or so Siri had traveled with Vo Chi's division as its head field surgeon. But Siri wasn't there to indulge in nostalgia. He had a long drive back and a lot of information to gather before he started. Siri gave Vo the name of the man he was interested in. Vo confessed he'd only vaguely heard of the colonel but recalled there was an old sergeant major at the base who had been with the commander for much of the campaign. Vo sent an officer to find him and bring him to the mess tent.

Although Siri was unable to place the face of Sergeant Major Giap, the old warrior recognized the doctor as soon as he entered the tent. He even remembered his name. There had been many battles, many units, many transfers, and so many men. Siri could hardly be expected to recall all of them. He got straight to the point.