Disco for the Departed (3 page)

Siri's early-morning thoughts were disturbed by the rousing refrain of Patriotic Work Song Number Seventeen, "We Shall Hoe for the Republic," written by the president himself.

"Oh my lord. Now what?"

Bones cracked as the doctor eased himself to a sitting position, half in and half out of the mosquito netting. If he'd slept, he certainly had no recollection of it. Now that he was seventy-three years of age, time had acquired a value, and he'd just given away six hours of the stuff without getting anything in return. He got to his feet and staggered, dull as a stack of pillows, over to the window.

Through the gap in the green nylon curtains he could see the singing policemen, with their farming implements over their shoulders, climbing onto the back of an army truck. Although their warders stood well back and held their weapons down at their sides, they appeared no less threatening. Each movement was directed by the shriek of a whistle. The inmates stood with their eyes front, and the truck headed off along the dirt track. The song vanished into the mist along with its choir. All around, the crags melted into the fog like some gray Chinese watercolor. The sun wouldn't break through for another two hours.

Siri showered under a cold spout in the communal bathroom. Stale water that smelt of carbolic and dirt squirted up from the loose tiles under his feet. He dressed and walked to breakfast, passing the solitary guard who nodded, half asleep, on a fold-up chair in front of the plywood partition.

"Good health," Siri said, but got no response.

The dining room contained twelve wonky tables without cloths, several framed black-and-white photos of the heroes of the revolution, and Dtui.

"Morning, Doc."

"Good morning. How long have you been down here?"

"About an hour. Couldn't sleep."

"Me neither." He sat opposite her in the silent room. "I feel we may be expected to sing for our breakfasts."

"This is a creepy place, isn't it?"

"You feel it as well?"

"Probably not the way you do. I don't get ghosties creeping into my bed in the middle of the night. But this building makes me feel strange. Plus, I've never ..." She scrunched up her nose.

"Never what?"

"Never, you know, slept by myself before."

"Dtui, I feel this is another pog."

"No. I'm dead serious. I've always been with Ma--or in the nurses' dorm. Can't say I feel very safe up here by myself."

"You're going to have to get used to it. I dread to imagine you in Moscow announcing that you're unable to sleep alone, although you'd certainly be a popular import. You won't have your ma or the nurses with you in the Eastern Bloc, you know."

"If I get there."

"I have no doubt."

Siri looked over his shoulder to see whether there was any chance of service. He was a little embarrassed at raising Dtui's hopes again. Of course there was doubt. She'd recently taken the exams for applicants to advanced schools in the communist countries in Europe. For several years she'd studied secretly, not wanting to give the hospital administrators the idea she was smarter than they thought she was. Initiative could be interpreted entirely the wrong way in times such as these. She'd taken politics, medicine, and Russian, and stood an excellent chance of beating out medical students who had suffered since their teachers floated away across the river. The only fear Siri had was that she'd be elbowed off the list by relatives of the faithful cadres.

She had to play the game. Siri taught her what to say to fool the interviewers. He was an expert. He'd been playing communist charades for most of his life. His faith in the system had long since evaporated as he'd watched a perfectly good doctrine destroyed by personalities. What should have been a tool was being used as a weapon and he felt little pride now in his forty-eight-year membership in the Party. Dtui needed these three free years in Moscow more than most. With all the student grant money and the possibility of part-time nursing work, it would be a rich harvest for an impoverished Lao. But most of the scholarships went to those with connections, and the only person Dtui knew with influence was Siri. Unfortunately for her, he had refused to be sucked down into the same corrupt bog that had claimed most of his comrades in recent years. He hadn't called in favors from members of the politburo or used his position with the Department of Health. He had, however, insisted his way onto the board that vetted the scholarship applications. He was certain, if things were decided on merit, Dtui would be on her way to the Soviet Union in the new year. His presence on the committee increased the odds of fair play. But nothing could be taken for granted in the People's Democratic Republic of Laos.

Siri looked around the stark shadowy dining room but saw no signs of life. The seminar attendees were off blowing themselves up, and it appeared the staff wasn't expecting other guests. The evening before, there had been nothing available in the kitchen. Now the empty stomachs of Dtui and her boss were grumbling back and forth across the breakfast table. It was probably these sounds that caught the ear of a large lady wearing an apron over camouflage fatigues who had appeared in the doorway.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Waiting for food," Dtui told her.

The woman's sandals flapped against the loosely tiled floor as she approached the unexpected guests. "Why aren't you out with the others?"

"We aren't on that tour," Siri told her. "We're on the three-day, two-night, padlocked-historical-temple package."

She stared at him, her expression as empty as the National Bank.

"Sorry," he conceded. "We're here at the invitation of the Security Division. We'll be staying for a few days."

"Hm. Nobody told me." She folded her arms as if challenging them to suggest otherwise.

"Sorry! That's my fault."

The voice came from behind the woman, and they had to lean back in their chairs to see its owner. He was a tall, lean young man in glasses. He wore the green uniform of a Lao People's Revolutionary Party policeman, but there were no badges or epaulets attached to it. He smiled as he rounded the obstruction. "Dr. Siri?"

Siri held out his hand. "Comrade Lit?"

"Sorry to have kept you waiting." The two men shook hands. Siri and Dtui noticed Lit's withered right index finger. It seemed to curl up like an unwatered plant.

"Not at all. We weren't expecting you till nine."

The large woman interrupted their greetings. "This isn't good enough, comrade. You know I need a P8.8 at least three days before I can accept new guests. The night staff should never have taken them in without it."

"You're quite right, Comrade Sompet. I have the requisite form right here. This was something of an emergency. I apologize." He handed her the form, and she marched out of the room, still grumbling under her breath.

Comrade Lit remained standing. "Well," he said, looking across the table at Dtui.

"This," Siri said, "is my assistant, Nurse Chundee Vongheuan."

She smiled. "You can call me Dtui, comrade."

"We were just about to start eating the flower arrangements," Siri said. "Would you care to join us?"

Lit laughed. "Not very nutritious, I'm afraid. They're all plastic. Let me take you both somewhere else for breakfast."

As they drove through Vieng Xai in his Chinese jeep, Lit pointed out the towering cliffs, locally known as karsts, that housed famous caves. "That's where General Khamtay lived and where the military strategies were all put together," he said. "Over yonder is the home of the prime minister."

The tour was for Dtui's benefit. Siri had visited all the caves during his long years in the northeast and knew exactly what elaborate chambers and tunnels these turrets of limestone contained. But to Dtui there was nothing to distinguish one tower from the next. American planes flying low back and forth through this valley for years had been confronted with the same problem. Even the crags that were bombed late in the war had held up to the random seeding of five-hundred-kilogram shells. It seemed incredible to Dtui that two million tons of bombs could be dropped in the communist-held territories without inflicting so much as a bruise on any of the leaders.

Vieng Xai was an odd place for the capital of the new regime. The streets were laid out in a wide grid, enclosed by the crags beneath which the old soldiers had spent ten years of their lives. This was the view they had seen every day from their caves and to them it represented freedom. Four years earlier it had been a vast, empty expanse of rice fields. For fear of daylight raids, the locals hid until the sun went down and came out to tend the fields at night. But with the cease-fire, the comrades emerged from their mountains and began to build their dream. They'd imagined constructing a grand city as a fitting monument to their years of struggle.

But Laos was more than Huaphan province. It was a country of some three and a half million people. There were no available current figures, and as many as five hundred thousand might have fled to Thailand, but the bulk of the population remained in and around the capital. Once the Pathet Lao had marched triumphantly into Vientiane to claim the country for communism, Vieng Xai suddenly seemed remote and inaccessible. To run a country, you had to be where the people were. They weren't in Huaphan, and they didn't appear to be in Vieng Xai. Two more guesthouses and a market were under construction here but the bamboo scaffold was green with moss. There was a feeling that this was a project on hold, a dream that had been half forgotten at sunrise.

Beside the market site stood a single shop that sold
feu
rice noodles in bowls deep enough to bathe a small baby. Siri and Dtui ate heartily with their left hands and fought off flies the size of coat buttons with their right. Lit had already eaten so he watched his guests conducting their breakfasts as he told them why they were there.

"We probably wouldn't have found it at all," he began. "Every now and then, rocks at the top of the karsts come loose. Some that were hit by rockets take their time before falling. We think that's what happened in this case. A big hunk of rock came crashing down onto the concrete path we'd laid from the cave to the new house. You'll notice, Doctor, most of the senior comrades have built houses in front of their old caves."

"Hm. Not wanting to leave the womb. It's common in primates," Siri said. "And whose cave are we talking about here?"

"The president's. He's due back here in a little over a week so the Party really needs to work out what happened before he arrives."

"Right," Siri said. "So the rock struck the concrete path ...?"

"And there it was, sticking out of the broken section."

"What was?"

"The arm."

"And is there a body attached to it?" Dtui asked. She wiped her mouth with a napkin and abandoned the last of the broth to the flies.

"We don't know."

"Why not?" asked Siri.

"Well, the arm's sticking out of the concrete so if there's a body in there, we'd have to break up the rest of the path to get to it."

"And you can't do that because ...?"

"Because there are very strict regulations about making alterations to government-initiated structures. We had to submit the request forms to Vientiane to ask for permission. They said we had to wait for you."

"I see. I hope you've covered the arm. The flies up here have quite an appetite."

"We tied a plastic bag over it. I'll take you up there when you're ready. We can stop off and pick up a couple of laborers and tools on the way."

"Then, let us not keep our cement person waiting. Finished, Nurse Dtui?"

"Ready when you are, Dr. Siri."

You didn't have to travel very far out of Vientiane before the road turned to pebbles and potholes. Traveling in a truck was like falling down an endless flight of uneven steps in a coffin. They'd passed the turnoff at kilometer 6 where the old U.S. compound had been recycled into a resort for communist politicians. They'd just reached the intersection that led to the National Pedagogical Institute at Dong Dok when Mr. Geung came around. He was thumped out of his stupor when the front wheel dropped into a deep rut. Although his mind was still back at the morgue, he found his body lying on a blanket on the wooden boards of an old truck. Above him were the open sky, a vicious June sun, and two rows of knees. He lay in an aisle of black boots that stank of polish. The toe caps penned him in so tightly he could do nothing but lie still stiffly and wonder where he was and whose were these legs that ended at the knees? He lifted one arm and waved, which produced an immediate response.

"Sergeant, the Mongoloid's awake."

There was a loud cheer and laughter, and a gruff voice yelled above the sound of the motor, "Get him up." Bodies leaned over him, and hands reached down to pull him into a sitting position. From there he found himself staring at two rows of smiling soldiers. He smiled back. The sergeant was at the end of one row.

"Your name's Geung, right?"

Mr. Geung had had little contact with the military but he'd been to parades and played soldiers when he was young, so he knew what he should do. He saluted. There was another loud cheer and half the men saluted back. Two of them shifted sideways to make a space on the bench for him, then pulled him up. He could see unfamiliar fields bouncing past the truck, buffalo with no mud to wallow in, many different shades of brown everywhere.