Disco for the Departed (17 page)

Siri had so many questions about this amazing story he didn't know where to begin.

"Why didn't you return with the mother?" he asked.

"She didn't ask me to. She blamed me for not watching her daughter that day. She vanished with all their belongings and my wages, what little there was owing to me. I didn't have any money at all. The regional command sympathized and they kindly found me a husband."

"Very nice of them," Siri said. "And you didn't hear anything else of Hong Lan?"

"Oh, there were stories. This is the world capital for rumors. I'm sure you know that, uncle."

"Were there any credible ones?"

"Not really. There was one that they'd murdered her and buried the body. Another was that the blacks had smuggled her to Cuba to use as a sex slave."

"And what do you think happened?"

She gave him a look as if it had been a very long time since anyone had sought out her opinion on anything. "I really have no idea, uncle. I'd like to think, spell or no spell, that she enjoyed this love she thought she'd found, and that she's still living in blissful ignorance somewhere."

"How was Hong Lan's relationship with her mother?" Siri asked, again catching the woman by surprise.

"I suppose there's no harm in telling you. I doubt I'll ever see the old witch again. You know? If they were close, they wouldn't have needed me. It was as if she'd done her national duty, produced the child the colonel expected, then left it to grow by itself. The mother was politically active. She ran seminars and organized this and that. But I never once saw her hold her daughter. I wasn't the first nanny. The girl had had half a dozen before I came along."

"Yet she turned out okay?"

"She turned out lovely. See what happens when you have a montagnard looking after your children?"

"I'll keep it in mind when I have my next." They both laughed, and the husband poked his ugly head in through the window to see what was happening.

H'Loi ignored him. "I often wonder whether she would have been so susceptible to the magic if she'd had a little more love from her family."

"The day of the kidnap, whose decision was it for you to go and pick fruit?"

H'Loi laughed again. "Do you really expect me to remember such a thing? I'm just a simple housewife, remember?"

"Madam," Siri said in all sincerity, "I have met many simple housewives in my life, and, believe me, you are not one of them. You are a very astute, intelligent woman." She looked at him with her mouth open, astounded. Never in her life had she received such a compliment. The fact that it had come from a man of letters, a physician no less, made it all the more incredible. All the more profound. A solitary tear gathered momentum in the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek.

"I suppose it had to be Hong Lan," she said, wiping it hurriedly away.

"What did?"

"Who suggested I pick fruit. She was the only one who ate the stuff. I'd never seen anyone get through so much fruit without spending the day in the toilet. Her mother lived on a diet of rice and pork rind for years. That was probably the root of her nastiness."

"Do you believe Hong Lan might still be alive?"

"Doctor ... honestly, I don't feel her presence anymore."

Siri got lost three times on his walk down from the hills, but as any way down would lead him to the only road, he was never in a state of panic. He arrived at the guesthouse just as the day ended. He found himself mesmerized by the setting sun. He saw it as a huge bullet puncturing the horizon in slow motion. The horizon bled, red seeping from the entry wound, and oozing across the landscape. It occurred to him that forensic pathology might be damaging his appreciation of nature.

Before he reached the front steps of the building, he saw Dtui and Panoy under a
don soak,
the sad tree. He walked over to them.

"Hello," he said. "Having a picnic?"

"They won't let us in," Dtui told him.

"In what?"

"In Guesthouse Number One."

"Why on earth not?"

"They say this little girl here"--Panoy looked up and smiled and tried to reach for Siri's eyebrows--"is illegal. They say they can't allow guests who are not on the official Party register."

"But she stayed here last night."

Dtui put on the strict tone of the guesthouse manageress. "'That was an absolute infringement of regulations for which somebody will be punished.' If they'd known we'd smuggled her in, they'd probably have shot us on the spot."

"I take it you've already argued the point?"

She smiled. "Isn't my face still blue?"

"Then let us once more attempt to champion our opposition to silly rules."

The manageress, still in her apron and army fatigues, stood at the top of the steps with her arms folded. It appeared she'd anticipated this second foray. Siri took a moment to size up the enemy. She'd never formally introduced herself, though Siri had noticed her lurking in the background of every meeting, meal, and melee. She was fortyish and formidable, but Siri had battled worse.

"Good evening, comrade," Siri smiled.

The woman responded with a line she'd obviously been rehearsing. "I'm sorry, Doctor. She can't come in. There are rules. I've already reported last night's infringement."

"She doesn't need a room," he tried.

"She isn't registered. She can't come in."

"This is a guesthouse."

"Not that kind of guesthouse, it isn't."

"You mean, the kind that admits guests?"

"Only guests that are on the list." She was an immovable object. "Rules are rules. Where would we be if we all went around bending them?"

"Quite right. And what is your stance with regard to evidence?" said the irresistible force known as Dr. Siri.

"I ... you what?"

"Evidence, comrade. I'm the national coroner. I've come north to collect evidence for the president."

"Evidence is things."

"It certainly can be things, as you rightly say. It could be photographs or even the spoken word. Or it could be a person who bears evidence."

"I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at."

"This little girl"--he dragged Dtui forward with Panoy in her arms--"is covered in fingerprints."

"She ...? There aren't fingerprints on people."

"Obviously you haven't been keeping abreast of world developments in forensics. Why do you think we didn't let her shower last evening? According to the law--and I'm also an attorney, so I know what I'm talking about--this little girl is not technically a person. She's a
corpus delicti.
In short, she's my evidence. Naturally, if there were some way to remove the fingerprints from her and take those to the Justice Department, I would do so. But I'm sure you realize how nasty that would be. She is the evidence that carries the prints. So you don't have to worry about her being registered, do you?"

"I ... I don't?"

"No. Because by the letter of the law, as she isn't a person, she can't be a guest." He winked at her and smiled. He doubted she was silly enough to believe such rubbish but he had given her a way around her rules.

"I ... I suppose."

"I'm sure Comrade Lit of the Security Division will confirm this when he gets here."

The woman's left eye looked first at Siri, then at the child. The right eye did so a split second later. Both eyes eventually settled on Dtui. "Why didn't you tell me this?"

Dtui shrugged. "I'm in medicine. Law's way above my head. I wouldn't have known where to start. I was sure, as legal adviser to the president, Comrade Siri here would be able to clear things up for you."

"Well, yes. I mean. If only I'd known."

Panoy slept soundly on the spare bed in Dtui's room. Siri and Dtui sat out front with their feet up on the balcony wall. Dtui had just finished explaining her dilemma. Siri grunted.

"I mean, it is a marvelous compliment," she said, looking up at the cliff that towered over them like a purgatorial mother-in-law. "I mean to say, it isn't as if he doesn't have choices. He's somebody. He'll probably keep climbing till he's--what?--prime minister or something. Women like men with power. But if he got that far, I doubt he'd want me gabbling on about his politics. It would be sure to annoy him. Perhaps I'd be able to tone it down a little. I could run the house and leave the country to him."

Siri took a sip of his tea and smiled.

"I mean," she went on, "he'd have to make changes, too. That's what a good marriage is--compromise. Right? I'm sure you and Boua had to make compromises. And look, you were together for a hundred and some years. It just takes a little work." She sipped her tea also.

They watched an egret, caught in the light from the balcony, swoop down from a ledge and perform an almost perfect loop-de-loop before continuing its gliding descent. It was worth a comment but Dtui was preoccupied. "I mean, how many offers like this is someone like me going to get? Perhaps I should think about that. If I pass this up, there I'll be, an old maid with varicose veins and a moustache, always ruing this lost opportunity."

A little girlish sigh escaped from Panoy, dreaming in the room. Dtui let it fade away then continued. "I suppose the question is which would I regret more, marrying him or not marrying him? My ma says a man is never going to be sweeter than he was on the day he proposed to you. She said that's the best you get. Once you're deposited in the wife bank, he never has to make that effort again. He really knocked me flat with his speech, but I wouldn't be surprised if he got a subcommittee to write it for him. I didn't see any emotion. He recited it like he was making a presentation to the grand assembly."

She swung her feet down from the wall and stood with her hands on the balcony railing as if she were about to address a large gathering. "And the damned permission form." She almost spat out the words. "What arrogance. What spinelessness. Would he have to get Party permission before every decision he made? Everyone at the regional office knew he was going to propose before I did. Is that how he'd run his personal life? 'Dtui, darling. I think it would be nice if we made love tonight. I'll just pop down to the Social Relations Committee suboffice and fill out an F27b.'" She blushed. "Ooh, sorry, Doc." He raised his eyebrows in forgiveness.

"I mean"--she appeared to be on the last lap now-- "what kind of creep wouldn't have the backbone to stand up to a room full of bureaucrats? And who does he think he is--negotiating me into a marriage without any flirting or wooing? Surely a girl deserves that? Perhaps he knew I wouldn't have any of it. I'd have knocked him back at the first glimmer of a come-on. The shock marriage card was the only one he had to play.

"But this is all academic, Doc." She looked over her shoulder to see if he was still there. "You know why? Because when I get married, it's not going to be to somebody who's suitable or well-off or looks good in a uniform. I'm going to marry someone who turns my insides to soy paste. I'm going to marry someone I hate to leave when I go to work in the morning: someone I miss all day. I'm going to marry someone I love and I'm not going to settle for anything less. I could no sooner love Comrade Lit than I could learn to like this horrible creepy building. No, you self-assured Party machine--go find yourself another 'suitable' woman to appoint to the wife position. I'm out."

She heaved a sigh of relief and sat heavily back onto her chair. Siri put his hand on hers.

"Thanks, Doc," she said. "I knew you'd sort it all out for me."

"Glad to have been of service," he told her.

Mr. Geung had followed the coastline of the Num Ngum reservoir for twelve miles. He'd spent the night in an abandoned fishing hut on the bank. The first thing he noticed when he woke was his own smell. He could hardly remember why he was coated in this dark brown gunk that had hardened to a shell, and the clear water was right there in front of his door. He walked, fully dressed, apart from his boots, into the reservoir. It was a wonderful feeling. Not till he was in up to his neck did he undress. His shoulder stung a little but the cool water soothed his aching muscles, soaked his flaky skin, and washed away his only protection against insects.

What makes the dengue mosquito so deadly is its dishonest use of time. Once the sun dips below the horizon, people know that it's mosquito frenzy time. They wear long sleeves, put on repellent, and light their coils. At night they sleep under nets. It's a type of unspoken contract between man and his bloodsucking foe. But the dengue mosquito is a contract breaker. She strikes in broad daylight when you're sweating in the fields, when you're swinging on your hammock in the shade, even when you're sitting stark naked beside Num Ngum reservoir, waiting for your clothes to dry.

The incubation period for the disease is five to seven days. A little after that, you'll know whether the strain is one that will make you violently ill but not kill you, or whether you've contracted the bleeding fever, which will usually finish you off painfully but quickly. Even in the absence of the rains, tens of thousands of lives had been claimed by the wicked daytime blood thieves in a single year. This year's epidemic originated in the north of Vientiane province, probably in the area around the dam.

Geung slapped at his arm a fraction of a second too late. He picked his attacker from his skin. She was a tiny thing, black-and-white-striped and bloody. He wondered how such a small thing could bleed so much.

People had been incredibly kind to the odd man who passed through village after village on his long march down the western shore of the reservoir. Before the days of political deception and fragmentation, this had always been the Lao way. If a stranger came to your house, you would offer him what you had to help him on his way. Even families with barely enough food for their own children would break off some of their sticky rice and prepare a separate bowl of spicy vegetable sauce for a visitor. There had always been trust and respect.

In the large cities, that feeling was all but gone. But in the small villages, the elders still held out hope that Laoness wouldn't be destroyed by politics. They fed Geung, gave him balm for his skin, dressed his blisters, and offered him a bed for the night. They had to shout loudly now to be heard because all sounds had become an underwater buzz to him. Although they all tried, no one could dissuade him from his foolish desire to complete his walk to the capital. They yelled, "Good luck" and watched him limp his way south. Everyone doubted he'd live long enough to complete the trip.

Mr. Geung was getting a bad, bad feeling, too. He'd walked more than he ever had in his life. Already he could feel his strength draining away. He couldn't count how many daybreaks he'd woken to or how many flat footsteps he'd trodden. Strange things had begun to happen in his head. He felt sure he was becoming a moth. The only thing in his mind was the electric lightbulb of Vientiane. It dazzled him, casting his actual surroundings into a fog, and filled his head so completely he often didn't know where he was or who he was talking to. Every woman he met, he called Dtui. Every man he addressed as Comrade Doctor.

Siri and Dtui sat silently on the concrete path not far from the broken slabs. The "evidence" continued to sleep off the trauma she had undergone beneath the watchful eyes of the guesthouse maid. There was no sun and the sky promised a depressing period of rain--not a good old central plains monsoon, but a slow, drizzly rain that could soak into a man's mind and dampen his mood. A line of red ants had found Siri on their proposed parade route. Before heading back in the direction from which they'd come, each ant stepped forward to take a look at the doctor like visitors at a mausoleum.

"Perhaps we're looking in the wrong places," Dtui said at last. Siri had taken her to see the Cuban hideout and the eerie altar room. They'd found no new clues at either.

"Or not looking in enough right places. I feel perhaps we aren't talking to the right people."

"You're right. Let's start talking," Dtui agreed.

"Any suggestion as to where we might start?"

"Right here under our backsides." Siri raised an eyebrow. "Look at all this concrete. How long do you suppose it took to build this path?"

"A couple of men? One or two weeks."

"And the Cubans were right here in the cave behind them all that time? Don't you wonder if they might have seen something?"

"Excellent. Yes, indeed. That's the kind of ... concrete thinking that will get you to the Eastern Bloc."

"Doc ..."

"I'm sorry."

The guesthouse truck arrived in Xam Neua an hour later. Tracing the contractors had been comparatively simple. One main team did most of the cement work on government projects. They were presently working on the new police station down by the bridge. The foreman of the team was an old soldier whom Siri knew from several campaigns. The cement layer's name was Bui, and he had the type of face and build that doesn't undergo any drastic changes between sixteen and sixty. In Laos, the odds of bumping into people one knew were far from astronomical. In fact, it happened all the time. Dtui was impressed that, excluding high-ranking bureaucrats, everyone was truly delighted to be reunited with their old friend Dr. Siri.

They sat together on the newly dried concrete floor of a room that would soon house a police lieutenant. Bui wished he had whisky to welcome the doctor, but they had to settle for warmish water that smelled vaguely of paint thinner. Once they'd caught up with one another's news, Siri told the old man why he was in the northeast and asked whether Bui might have any information that could help them. He never expected the response that he got. Dtui's instincts had, as they say, hit the water buffalo right in the balls.

As they sipped their water, a light drizzle floated down from the clouds, and Bui told them the story of what had happened one day in January.

"It was a Tuesday if I remember rightly," he began. "The reason I know that is because the president's footpath was the last one we did and some inspector was due in on the Wednesday flight to check that we'd got it all done. There were only two flights a week then. Well, we were only just on schedule. We found ourselves working late into Tuesday evening to get it done. So it turned out we were walking back down to our huts in the dark.

"There were three of us and we were all tuckered out, looking forward to a good meal and our beds. We'd just got to the football field. As usual, there was a mist, one of those that makes you shudder just walking through it. That was when we saw them."

"The Cubans?" Siri asked.

"And the girl."

"Hong Lan? The Vietnamese?"

"Can't be sure it was her, but we'd all heard the stories about black magic and the kidnapping and all. The bigger of the two, he had the girl in his arms, you know? The way you carry an old person. She looked drugged."

"Or dead?" Dtui asked.

"Could have been. Her arms were dangling down, and her head was hanging. They walked out of the mist about thirty yards ahead of us. Me and the boys froze. It was like something out of one of them Hong Kong ghost films. The big guy was in front with the girl, walking slow. About five paces back was the little one, and he had this knife, more like a sword, really. Whatever it was, it looked like it could do a lot of damage."

"Did they see you?"

"If they did, they didn't let on. But, to tell the truth, it was as if they couldn't see much of anything--like they were in a trance."

"Where were they heading?" Siri asked. "Straight for the military complex."

"The concert hall cave?"

"In that direction. So we waited till they were gone, long gone, before we said anything. Even then we whispered. Sound carries on the mist. We got into a huddle and decided what we ought to do. We knew the Vietnamese had been looking for the girl, but the mother had left already--gone back to Hanoi, I heard. So one of the boys rode his bicycle over to the army post--the one that used to be up at the Xam Neua intersection. You remember it?"

"It was still there? I thought all the Vietminh pulled out at the end of '75."

The old soldier laughed but didn't bother to explain away that particular piece of PL trickery.

"And what happened?" Dtui asked.

"Well, that was it."

"What was it?"

"We didn't hear anything else about it."

"Didn't you ask?"

"We went back to Xam Neua the next day and were busy with the inspector. He wanted this and that changed. You know what they're like. Afterward, nobody seemed to know anything. We sort of forgot all about it."

"Hell! If it had been me, I would have exploded with curiosity," Dtui told him.

"It's true," Siri agreed. "I've seen Nurse Dtui explode with curiosity, and I have to tell you, Bui, it isn't a sight you'd want to witness twice."

There were still a couple of hours of daylight when Siri and Dtui reached Vieng Xai. They stopped at the guesthouse only long enough to check on Panoy and pick up two flashlights and a kit of assorted tools. Three messages from Lit awaited them. Each asked that they get in touch. Siri and Dtui ignored them and headed off to the caves.

Dtui was amazed to see the concert hall hidden within the karst. It seemed even larger now to Siri without its midnight crowds.

"Something's been drawing me here since we arrived in Huaphan," Siri confessed. "I should have paid more attention."

"It's enormous," Dtui said. "Where do we start looking?"

"Up top are the chambers and the general's quarters. Down below we have this space, then there are various alcoves, and there's a long tunnel that leads to the other end of the mountain, where we should find the dining and kitchen area. I suppose we should just poke around till something sparks our instincts."

"Doc?" Dtui looked around at the high, arching walls, her flashlight making ominous shadows behind the irregular overhangs. "We are ... you know ... alone here, aren't we?"

"We should be," he told her honestly. "Until about midnight."

"What happens then?"

"The disco starts."

He walked toward the stage, leaving her wondering whether that was a Dr. Siri joke or whether she should perhaps keep an eye on her watch. Together they scoured the walls for any icons or symbols similar to those they'd seen at the altar. They saw none and the question remained: why would Isandro and Odon bring Hong Lan here as a sacrifice when they had a bloodstained shrine set up inside the president's cave?

They went through the auditorium inch by inch without result, then began working through the alcoves. Here the military had plotted its strategies, learned the arts of bomb making and guerrilla warfare, and played ping-pong by candlelight. There was one small room where male nurses, trained by Dr. Siri, had administered medicines, and one more that had served as an armory. But none of them yielded any secrets.

"So, I suppose we should go through to the kitchen," Siri decided as they neared the narrow tunnel drilled fifty yards through solid rock. They stepped over an underground stream that had been steered into a concrete conduit. Once it had been used as a collection point for drinking water. Siri led the way into the tunnel, then abruptly stopped. Dtui stumbled into him.

"Hey," she said.

"Dtui, back up."

She did so. "What is it?"

Two things had caused Siri to stop. The first was a feeling as if someone else's legs were inside his own, walking in the opposite direction. The second was a recollection--the vision he'd seen in the guesthouse bathroom--of Isandro lying serenely under water. He turned back to look at the trough through which the water flowed. It was no more than two yards long, designed to gather the naturally flowing water together at one side of the walkway, then release it on the other side. Once free to find its own level, the stream spread out rapidly before disappearing beneath the rock face.

"Shine your light down here, Dtui." The ground sloped gently downward for three or four yards. The earth was a mixture of clay, sand, and fine gravel. It was one of the few sections of floor, presumably because of the running water, that hadn't been banked in concrete. Without taking off his old leather sandals, Siri squatted in two inches of water.

"You see something?" Dtui asked.

"I'm not sure. Would you mind going back a few yards and shining your lamp from a different angle?" She did what he asked. "A little higher, perhaps. Splendid. Can you see anything?"

She tried to. She squinted and jiggled the light, and willed herself to see something, but apart from the uneven ruts, there was nothing unusual. Unless, the ruts ... She raised the light even higher, then walked slowly back toward Siri. At last she'd seen what he'd seen. It could merely have been the different quality of the soil, or the packing of it, or the slight ridge, but there were two distinct shapes. They were oval, side by side, too neat and regimented to have been caused naturally.