Disco for the Departed (4 page)

"Damn, boy, I thought you were dead," the sergeant shouted to him. "Never seen a man dropped by an empty gun before."

"You f ... frightened me."

"Just messing with you, son. Just a little joke."

"I fainted."

"You sure did."

"Wh ... wh ... where are we going?"

"Nam Bak."

The name meant nothing to Geung. "Why?"

"Top-secret mission." The sergeant put his finger to his lips to show there was a need to keep quiet about it. Geung felt very important to be going on a top-secret mission, but he'd made a promise. He got clumsily to his feet and walked to the tailgate, using the chests and knees of the seated soldiers for support. The sergeant caught hold of him before he vanished off the end of the truck. "Now what do you think you're up to?" the old soldier asked.

"I ... I ... I ... I have to g ... guard the morgue."

"No you don't, son."

"Yes. Yes I d ... do. I promised Comrade Dr. Siri a ... a ... and Comrade Nurse Dtui."

"You don't work at the morgue anymore."

This was a serious revelation to Geung. "No?"

"No."

"Where d ... d ... do I work?"

"You'll find out."

"B ... b ... but I ... I pr ... pro ..." The words began to collide again and Geung's head spun.

"Geung, younger brother, I don't want any trouble from you. You understand?"

"I ... I ..."

"Just go back to your seat and enjoy the journey. You'll like--" But before the sergeant could say another word, Geung passed out again, this time across the laps of the Third Division of the Lao People's Liberation Army Infantry on its way to the north to hunt out insurgents.

The jeep pulled up in front of the president's compound, and Siri looked up the slope at the pretty pink-and-green villa that nestled in among the towering cliffs. Carved out of the rock opposite was a one-and-a-half-car garage, and where the steps began to wind upward, an ornamental heart-shaped pool had been lovingly fashioned from a bomb crater. It was all so creepily quaint.

"You know, Doc?" Dtui said as they started up the concrete steps. "All this time I had visions of you lot living up here like cavemen, wrapped in bearskins. I didn't dream it would be so--civilized."

"Surely you didn't expect the president of the republic to have had to hunt for his breakfast with a bow and arrow?"

"It wouldn't surprise me, given how hard it is to find breakfast up here."

Lit led them to a walkway that wound up to the cave entrance. Up the incline a little way, a boulder the size of a bloated buffalo lay on a bed of flattened itchy fruit blossoms and poinsettias. It must have given the concrete one heck of a thump when it landed, then bounced into the garden. The force of its impact had tilted up a long, straight section of the three-foot-wide path, causing it to snap at various points. Now it lay in sections, like carriages after a train crash.

Ahead, a small canvas tent had been erected over the path between two of the sections. Lit lifted the canvas from its frame to reveal a mummified arm protruding from one side of a wide gap in the concrete. It was covered in a transparent plastic bag tied to the wrist. Its palm was up and its fingers bent into claws. From its position, Siri estimated that the body, assuming it was still attached to one, would be lying on its back inside the unbroken slab of concrete.

"Well, I suppose we should get cracking," Siri said to the two workmen who'd followed them up. Both had stonemason's chisels and metal mallets.

"How would you like it, Doctor?" one asked.

The section that lay before them was over six feet long and two and a half feet deep. Siri pondered for a moment. "I think we should attack it from the sides. Here, I'll give you some marks to guide you." He used a block of white limestone to score a line on either side of the broken section of pathway.

"Uhm, Dr. Siri," Lit asked, "wouldn't it be easier to go in from the end where the hand's sticking out, or from the top?"

"Easier, yes, Comrade Lit. But not as beneficial."

"I don't think I understand."

"Nurse Dtui will explain it to you."

Dtui was shocked out of her daydream. "Will I?"

"Certainly." This was Siri's way. He often threw her in to see if she'd float. He wouldn't come to her rescue until he was absolutely certain she couldn't bob to the surface on her own.

"Okay." She looked at the peculiar scene and quickly ran through the possibilities in her mind. "Right!" she said. "If there's a body, it'll be faceup. Judging from the state of the arm, it's mummified; ergo, it would have shrunk."

Siri smiled and she knew she was on the right track. She continued with more confidence.

"As he probably didn't get inside the concrete after it was set, we have to assume he was deliberately buried in wet cement--or fell in. That means the cement hardened around him. As the body shrank, a mold would have been left of the original person. That mold could tell us as much as the body itself. So we don't want to damage the concrete too much. Dah dah," she sang. "I don't hear clapping."

Lit and one of the workmen did indeed applaud. The security chief looked at her with undisguised admiration. "Very well done," he said. "Yes, excellent."

Siri, still smiling, was looking more closely at the hand. He removed the plastic bag and took a closer look at the clawed fingers. The skin was the color of dark chocolate, not so unusual in mummified bodies. He knew a body at this stage of mummification wouldn't reveal many secrets. But the palm of this hand seemed several tones lighter than the back of the hand.

The workmen began to chisel along the dotted line he had drawn as carefully as an archaeologist at an ancient dig.

"Gentlemen," Siri urged, "it's concrete. At the rate you're going, you won't get through it until the year 2006. Smash the hell out of it, for goodness' sake."

And smash they did. They worked from either side while Lit, Dtui, and Siri sat at the foot of the karst. A feeble sun had finally burned a hole through the northeastern mist but hadn't yet warmed the land. Dtui and Lit filled the following hour with their friendly chatter while Siri dozed. The young couple seemed to have a great deal in common. Both had spent the later years of their lives caring for a sick parent. Dtui told Lit that her mother, Monoluk, had cirrhosis, and that they were presently living at Siri's house. She explained that the doctor didn't like to live alone and he'd managed to gather a peculiar collection of waifs and strays to share his large Party bungalow. Lit's father, on the other hand, had lost both his legs and a length of intestine to a bomb that exploded beneath his feet. A few months ago he'd succumbed to his injuries.

Both Lit and Dtui had taken every opportunity to study. Lit had attained his position, despite his relative youth, by working his way through the public service texts. Dtui had memorized numerous medical books in self-taught English. Then, when American aid vanished, she'd gone through the same subjects in self-taught Russian. Her dream was to join the twenty-five hundred Lao presently studying in the Eastern Bloc and to send home whatever she could save to her mother.

Their conversation was terminated by the sound of a loud crack. Siri looked up from his slumber. The workmen had succeeded in prizing the top layer of the slab loose with crowbars. The concrete lid broke in two as they lifted it off the base.

A mummy, as if in frozen horror, lay shriveled within a shell of concrete that it had once filled. One arm was by its side; the other held high above its head. Its knees were bent slightly and it seemed to be dressed only in a pair of nylon football shorts that were now several sizes too large for it. Their brilliant red contrasted sharply with the almost black-chocolate surface of the corpse.

But what shocked the onlookers most--even Siri who had seen death in many forms--was the expression of agony on its face, in which a huge gaping hole had taken the place of its mouth. They had no doubt this had been a torturous death--and no accident.

"What ... what happened to its face?" Lit asked in horror.

Siri took hold of the concrete lid of the accidental tomb and heaved it back to study its interior. The mold was completed there, providing an almost perfect concave mask of the head. Where the mouth had attempted its muffled cry for the last time, a tube of cement curled downward. Embedded at its base were the missing teeth.

"I think this explains the hole," Siri said, not looking up. The others came over to peer within. "It would appear the final breaths of our friend here were of liquid cement. When it hardened and the body began to shrink, the teeth remained in their original position. I wouldn't be surprised if we found more cement in the lungs."

"My God," Lit said. "You mean he was alive when he went into the concrete?"

"It looks that way," Dtui confirmed.

"What a terrible way to die. Who could have done such a thing?"

"I'd have to suppose, judging from the size of the original body, that it was somebody of enormous strength," Siri replied.

"Or several people," Dtui added.

"Yes, indeed. Good point. Comrade Lit, do you think the president would object if we used the meeting room in his house as a makeshift morgue?"

"I have the key," Lit told him. "But he'll be here next week for the concert."

"If we haven't worked this out by then, we never will, son. It doesn't take me that long to concede defeat."

Judge Haeng came back from another half day of fussy domestic disputes in his courtroom. A city whose criminals and potential criminals had all been incarcerated, in which crime had been abolished, was a dull place for a magistrate. He walked past the desks of the Justice Department clerks, who sat sweating into their clunky typewriters. They nodded with little enthusiasm as their young boss went by. In the year since he'd taken up his position fresh from Moscow, he hadn't spoken to any of them civilly. Usually he addressed them through Mrs. Manivone, the senior clerk. When he approached her desk, she stood politely and smiled her meaningless smile. She wore a neatly ironed khaki blouse and a black
pasin
ankle-length straight skirt. Usually, she was equally unruffled.

"Good health, Judge Haeng."

"Has he gone?"

"Who?"

"The freak at the morgue."

She sighed. "If you mean Mr. Geung, they collected him last night. He should be there on Wednesday."

"Good. Excellent." He set off for his office.

"It's just ..."

He turned back. "What?"

"Well, I'm not sure I understand, Judge. Everybody's very fond of Mr. Geung."

"Fond? Fond? Are we running a government department or a home for social outcasts? I'm very fond of my grandmother"--Mrs. Manivone didn't believe that--"but I wouldn't give her a responsible job in the national morgue. What image would foreign visitors take home if they came and saw a moron working for the state?"

She had a number of possible responses to that but, under her breath, all she managed was, "One of compassion?

"What was that?"

"I don't think Dr. Siri's going to be very pleased about it when he returns."

The judge sauntered back to her. "Oh, you don't?"

"No."

He leaned on her desk and raised his voice so the others could hear. "And remind me--does Dr. Siri work for the Justice Department?"

"Yes, Judge Haeng."

"And am I the head of the Justice Department, missy?"

Manivone once again reminded herself she had three children to feed. "Yes, Judge Haeng."

"So, does he do what I tell him, or do I do what he tells me?"

"Well, neither, in fact, as I've seen, comrade." It was a rash comment, albeit true. She knew there was a Party slogan on its way.

"Now, don't get fresh, Comrade Manivone. Every bee in the socialist hive is as important as the next. But if the worker doesn't show respect to the queen, the honey does not flow as sweetly. Remember that."

"Yes, Judge Haeng."

He looked around at the clerks, whose heads snapped back to their work. He smiled and walked smugly to his office. It would have been a spectacular exit had the door handle not stuck again. He swore at it and finally fought his way into the room before slamming the door.

"God save the queen," mumbled one clerk to the muffled laughter of his colleagues.

As the truck drove farther and farther from Vientiane, Mr. Geung's anxiety level increased. Some of the soldiers feared that something might burst inside him. To them he seemed like an animal caught in a trap, one who might bite off his own foot in order to escape. Even the sergeant felt a pang of guilt as he watched Geung shuddering on the bench. But he had his directive: delivery to a work team in the north. The order had come from the Justice Department so he was in no position to argue. Once the sun had gone down, their prisoner stopped responding to the soldiers' questions, and no attempt to cheer him up was productive. They couldn't comprehend the magnitude of Geung's feeling of guilt for letting his friends down, or how terribly lonely and sad he was.

The unit was to spend the night at the Eighth Battalion camp just outside Van Khi. The truck pulled into the fenced compound and Geung looked up to see the gate close behind him. There was no escape.