Disco for the Departed (2 page)

"Ma says there's a temple up near Xieng Khaw with a relic of the Lord Buddha." Siri gave a wry smile. "What?"

"Which particular relic is it this time, Nurse Dtui? A tooth? A severed toe? An eyeball?"

"You're an old cynic," she huffed. "I'm not telling you."

"Cynicism has nothing to do with it, dear. It all comes down to mathematics and physiology. Just count the temples around Asia that claim to have an actual bit of the Lord Buddha or his footprint. If all their boasts were true, his holiness would indeed have been a sight to behold. There he'd be, plodding around the countryside with feet the size of water-urn covers, a couple of thousand teeth crammed into his mouth, and toe- and fingernails shedding like the hair off a rabid dog. It doesn't bear thinking about. No wonder people followed him."

Dtui shifted to the far side of the table. "Where are you off to?" he asked.

"Nowhere. Just don't want to be sitting beside you when the lightning hits you."

Siri laughed. "You obviously haven't been paying attention at your political briefings, comrade. Unless you count the politburo, there are no gods. Even if a real one were able to sneak under the Party barbed wire, he'd be a grounded god. They've decommissioned fire and brimstone."

"No God? I bet your old Karl Marx didn't make this scenery."

"Heretic."

"It is lovely up here though, Doc."

"It certainly is, when you have time to enjoy it."

"When you aren't dodging bombs, you mean?"

"That's all I did for ten years. That and put together people who hadn't been so lucky."

"When do you think they'll tell us why we're here?"

They'd been given short notice to get to Wattay Airport with their equipment. Judge Haeng had told them nothing of the mission, just the name of the person who'd contact them the next day.

"Comrade Lit should be here by nine tomorrow."

"And who's he again?"

"Regional commander, Security Division."

"Right. Did you know him when you were based here?"

"I don't recall the name. But when all the senior comrades and the ranking army officers moved down to Vientiane, a lot of young bucks were promoted in a hurry up here. Cadres were flying up through the ranks at such young ages I heard the regional quartermaster was still in diapers when he arrived at his office. They had to confiscate his rattle before they could get any work out of him." Dtui chuckled. "I don't know. I might have seen this Lit fellow around," Siri went on.

"Does he know you've brought your cuddly and gorgeous assistant?"

"I'm sure he'll be delighted."

Again, the calm around them lulled the two into a peaceful silence. An amateur fisherman cast his mushroom-shaped net out into the inky black pond. The squirrels chirped like sparrows with sore throats. Dtui looked toward the staircase behind Siri.

"Doc."

"Yes?"

"At the top of the stairs ..."

"I don't know."

"How do you know what I'm going to ask?"

"You're going to ask why there's a partition up there with an armed guard sitting in front of it."

"Ooh, you're good. Did your spirits tell you what I was thinking?"

"No need. I read your mind myself. You're insatiably curious, so it was only a matter of time before you asked. I also heard you flirting with the guard."

"He wasn't very sociable."

"You mean he wouldn't tell you what's behind the partition?"

"Not a word. I hate mysteries."

"No doubt we'll work it out before we go."

But now, on his lumpy kapok mattress, drowsily watching the moths fly clockwise around the bulb he, too, was contemplating the mystery behind the plywood partition. Access to a small upper wing of the building was blocked. From the grounds he was able to estimate there were three or four rooms up there. He wondered what was so special about them. He clawed his fingers through his thick white hair and sighed. It was some time after 11:00 P.M. and he feared he'd be unable to find any sleep at all. There was too much on his mind. And if he didn't think himself awake all night,
they
would certainly keep him up. He reached for the ancient white amulet that hung around his neck on a tightly woven white plait of woman's hair. As his fingers made contact, a surge of energy ran in a current the length of his body. He could suddenly hear
them
even more clearly, chattering in the distance. His feelings and instincts had begun to take on tangible form. Spirits he once encountered only in his sleep had become bold. Some even appeared in daylight, often at the most inopportune moments. Even before the old Russian Mi-14 helicopter had landed that afternoon, he could feel the souls of the thousands killed during the war. They passed through him like sightseers at a historical palace, deciding whether he was a shaman they could trust.

All around Guesthouse Number One, their voices could be heard: mothers calling their children in from the open fields, old women crying for the old men they'd left behind, toddlers giggling--too innocent to realize they'd been dead for many years. How could Siri sleep with such an accompaniment? Then, as if things weren't already bad enough, at about midnight the awful disco music started up. It destroyed any hope of sleep. He wondered what type of people would start dancing in the middle of the night and how anyone could enjoy such an ugly Western din. Or perhaps this was one of the Party's torture techniques to punish the officials from Vientiane. He could think of few things more cruel.

Geung Watajak had been born in October 1952 in a village on the outskirts of Vientiane called Thangon consisting of a temple and a tiny collection of wooden huts that blew down in the wet-season monsoons. Its only reason for appearing on maps at all was its ferry, which labored back and forth across the Nam Ngum River, sending people to and from the great reservoir. Few travelers stopped in Thangon for any other reason, but a village had grown up there nevertheless. Despite its proximity to the capital and the constant stream of passing gentry, it was very much a hick town.

Beliefs were simple there. According to the locals, there were only two categories of mental infirmity: slow as a tree growing and fruity as a bad batch of plum cider. Thangon had itself one of each. Auntie Soun had briefly been the shaman for the region before she completely forgot how to release the evil spirits back to the forest. They became bottled up inside her like soda gas until one day she flipped her lid. She became renowned for wild solo rantings and spontaneous acts of flashing.

Geung, on the other hand, had been a very quiet baby, one of seven children. He displayed the physical characteristics of Down Syndrome so just one look at his face and everyone knew there was no point in sending the boy to school. It's true he was a slow learner but that might have been because nobody ever tried to teach him anything. Only his mother called him by his name. His father, brothers, and sisters all called him Moron. It wasn't said in a nasty way, and Geung reached eighteen years of age still thinking it was his mother who'd got it wrong.

As the Watajaks were a farming family, their routines were repetitive and uncomplicated and that suited the happy boy. Hard work built up his slowly developing muscles, and being around his family all day gave him a feeling of loyalty and belonging. But that security came to a sudden end on the day his father took him and two of his siblings to Vientiane to find them work. They were big enough and cost too much to feed. It was time for them to give a little something back to the lazy man who had gone to all the trouble of siring them. Their mother had no say in the matter.

The sister got work in a bamboo-and-corrugated-tin nightclub out on Hanoi Road by the market. The sad fact was she'd earn most of her salary with her feet in the air, but a fourteen-year-old farm girl with no schooling had to think herself lucky to have any kind of paying work. Geung's younger brother got a job at the bus terminal touting for passengers, collecting tickets, and hanging out of the door of the speeding bus announcing where it was headed at the top of his voice.

But his father knew that finding work for Geung was going to be the biggest challenge of all. Who in their right mind would want to take on a moron? But not only was the old man a layabout, he also possessed the nerve of the devil. He took his eighteen-year-old son to Mahosot Hospital, where he offered the boy's services free of charge in exchange for food scraps and a floor to sleep on. Hospitals, after all, were supposed to look after sick people. He reminded the hospital employment section of this fact, and the clerk on duty made the fatal mistake of displaying a moment's hesitation before saying no. So when she left the office at the end of the day, she saw young Geung sitting alone on the wooden bench out front. He had a newspaper-wrapped parcel on his lap.

"Where's your dad?"

"Home," he answered in a matter-of-fact way.

"Well, you can't stay here. You know that, don't you?"

He smiled, showing a line of teeth that looked as if they'd all been borrowed from different people's mouths. When she arrived for work the next morning, Mr. Geung was sitting in the same position, and the next day, and the next. Each day he smiled, displaying his unmatching teeth, and wished her good health, and his newspaper parcel got smaller and smaller till all his dried fish was eaten. So it was that Geung Watajak became an unpaid member of the staff at Vientiane's newest hospital.

As it turned out, there was a job that
normal
people were unable to do for any period of time. It was in the clearing room behind the hospital laundry. It had driven off four applicants in two months. It was the place where red-tagged bags arrived from the wards and operating theatres. The tag denoted soiled items. This generally meant blood and excrement but there were often other little surprises wrapped hurriedly in the sheets and blankets. Over the five years he worked there, Geung could likely have put together several complete human beings from all the spare parts.

His task was to rinse through the red-tag linens and surgeons' rubber aprons, and take out the bits and pieces before sending the laundry off to be boiled in industrial washers. He was given a small room to sleep in and coupons to use in the staff canteen. He never complained about his gruesome work or his lack of income. This was his destiny. Every now and then, his father would make a very brief appearance on a "salary collection run." Although Geung had no money to give him to take back to the farm, the old man would bring a little fruit and a baton of sticky rice in bamboo along with interesting news of people who only barely registered in Geung's memory. The young man never asked to return home.

Geung's uncomplicated honesty endeared him to the nurses and other medical staff. He became so popular that one of the doctors, Pongruk, decided it was time to rescue him from the red-tag bag room. Since Geung had first come to Mahosot, the Americans had rented Laos and most of the people in it. The colonizers' money paid government salaries, bankrolled the military, and set up selected pockets of infrastructure in an attempt to hold off the advancing Reds. USAID funding had sent Dr. Pongruk to Bangkok and Washington to learn the trade of forensic medicine. Upon his return, he was to set up a new morgue on the hospital grounds.

Apart from Dr. Pongruk's wage, there was one more half salary available that the Lao authorities envisaged would pay for the services of a part-time nurse. When the doctor told them he'd found someone very competent to work full-time for the small salary, they were delighted-- until they found out whom the doctor had in mind. Like most other people, Dr. Pongruk had been appalled when he found out Geung had worked for all those years without pay. He understood that, due to his condition and lack of written qualifications, the hospital couldn't hire Geung officially in any capacity. But slavery had died out in Laos by the end of the Lan Xang kingdom and he wanted to pay Geung back somehow.

The interim American administration agreed that this would certainly be the right thing to do, so the doctor set about training Mr. Geung as his morgue assistant. He showed infinite patience and put in many extra night hours to get Geung to a point where he was proficient at morgue duties. And the young man took to the job with great enthusiasm. He could take off the cap of a skull without grazing the brain and snip through ribs as if they were chalk with his long-handled cutters. He carried bodies and their errant parts around the lab like a caring member of the deceased's family.

The doctor told his wife one night, "It's a bit like using
kee
see
sap to seal the planks of a boat. You have to be patient till the resin takes hold, but once it sets you couldn't prize it apart with a mallet and chisel." So when Dr. Pongruk and his wife floated across the Mekhong River one night to escape whatever the communists might have had in mind for academics, they left behind a morgue assistant with a knowledge of the procedures of autopsies second to no one in Laos. But there was no longer a coroner for him to work with. The morgue was shut. For six months, Geung was returned to the red-tag bag room. He didn't complain or see it as a demotion. It was his destiny.

Then one day, Dr. Siri had arrived, Nurse Dtui was pulled from the wards, and the morgue came alive again. They needed Geung's expertise, and very soon the three became a team. It couldn't, however, be called a team of forensic professionals. Siri had been a surgeon all his life but had never conducted an autopsy and didn't particularly want to. He sought the retirement he thought he deserved and was very reluctant to commence this new career. They'd spent that first year learning and guessing. Even now, with no lab, no modern equipment, and no textbooks outlining up-to-date techniques, the Mahosot morgue was often a scene of rampant experimentation. If it hadn't been for Siri's gift--his ability to communicate with the spirits of the dead--there would likely have been some very serious mistakes made.

Their shared experience had brought the three colleagues very close together. To Geung, Dtui was a sister, and Siri a grandfather. Although he couldn't explain his feeling, Geung loved them like no one else in his life. Even when he wasn't sure what was going on, he suffered along with them. He enjoyed their victories and cried at their sorrows. He was as sensitive to their emotions as a barometer in an airship. They trusted him, and his honesty prevented him from making promises he wouldn't be able to keep. That, in turn, increased the value of the ones he did make. Honoring promises took precedence over everything else in his simple mind. Before they'd left on this latest trip, comrade Dr. Siri had made him promise to look after the morgue until they came back.

His duties were simple when the doctor was away. The hospital could accept no more than two bodies at a time. Geung would be responsible for storing them, bunk-bed style, in the single freezer. There was unlikely to be a sudden intake of corpses requiring an autopsy. The dengue outbreak in the Vientiane basin was spreading fast but there were no mysteries as to how it did its deadly deed: fever, lethargy, bleeding, and death. The morgue only handled unexplained fatalities at the state hospitals and the odd murder referred by the police.

When they took on cases, Geung was indispensable. But he was not a mortician and could only perform his tasks in the presence of a doctor. All he was allowed to do while Siri and Dtui were away was dust, sweep, chase away cockroaches, and stand guard over the office. He took his role seriously; he'd even brought a blanket and pillow from his room and was ready to spend the night in the cutting room, an unlikely sentry.

He was the angel of peace. Anger and aggression had never been a part of his makeup, and he could feign neither. He was no scarier than a Chinese dumpling. So, when the two surly-looking men in uniform marched through the morgue entrance and called out his name, he greeted them with a smile that vanished when he saw their weapons.

"Wha ... wha ... what can I do for you, c ... comrades?" he asked.

They pointed their pistols at him and pulled their triggers. After a split second of astonishment, Mr. Geung fell to the floor like a ripe jackfruit from a tree.