Anarchy and the Old Dogs

All That Is Solid

The Bureau de Poste opened at eight. He was the first customer. A little girl was manning the counter while her mother loaded letters into the PO boxes. Siri ignored the woman and stood in front of the girl.

“Are you the manager?” he asked.

“No,” the girl said. “I’m five.”

The mother looked over and smiled. “She’s off from school today.”

Siri continued speaking with the girl. “I’d like to buy a stamp, please.” She was delighted.

“Yes, Grandpa. What color?”

“How much is a green one?”

“Two kip.”

“Oh, dear. I’ve only got half a kip.” He produced a one-kip note folded in half. Since the latest devaluation, the notes had become good-luck tokens for weddings and such, but you couldn’t buy a breath of air for one kip.

“Then you have to have a white one,” the girl said. She took the note and pretended to be looking for stamps in the drawer.

“And I certainly want one without gum on the back,” Siri added. The girl handed him a piece of paper she’d torn from a telegram. “Perfect. Thank you.”

The mother laughed and returned to her stool at the counter.

“I bet you have a whole houseful of grandchildren,” she said.

He didn’t let the hurt reach his face. “Not a one, I’m afraid.” He remembered Boua’s refrain, played over and over like a scratched record. “We have a nation to salvage, Siri. How selfish it would be for us to dedicate ourselves to our own children.”

He’d always wanted a family. She would have none of it. Perhaps that was his problem in life now. He had no children or grandchildren for whom to make his country a better place. He had nobody to pass his legacy on to.

“That’s sad,” the mother said. “What can I do for you? Apart from the white gumless stamp.”

Siri smiled and pulled the photograph from his shoulder bag.

After the post office, Siri stopped off briefly at Sing’s school to tell Mim about the picture her best friend had drawn for her, how Sing had been thinking about her even at the end. Then there was a visit to the town hall, a stop at the police station to sign the witness report, a detour to Pakse hospital for a morphine top-up, and a call to the city radio station. His last trishaw trip was out beyond the teachers college to a house that took almost an hour to locate. What he learned there emptied him of all hope. He recalled a quotation from the Communist Manifesto: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and men at last are forced to face with sober senses the real conditions of their lives and their relations with their fellow men.” Until today he hadn’t really understood it. His mood on the journey back into town was dour and foreboding. The sky was like a mauve pudding, threatening to dump its filling onto the nervous townsfolk.

Siri arrived back at the hotel at one. Dtui and Phosy were sitting in the lobby. He took a deep breath and did his best to keep his misery to himself.

“Hello, children,” he said, but his disguise apparently didn’t work.

“You look glum, Doc,” Dtui told him.

“It’s gravity. You get to an age where everything on your face sags. The only way you can look truly happy is to stand on your head. Want to see?”

“Not now,” Phosy said. “We’ve just had lunch.”

“Or at least something on a plate impersonating lunch,” Dtui added.

“Very well,” said Siri, knowing there was no time to introduce the couple to Daeng’s noodle stall. “You seen Uncle Civilai?”

“He’s still in his room, I imagine,” Dtui said. “He wasn’t hungry. I get the feeling last night’s session took its toll. He hasn’t been down all day.”

“I’ll go and bang on his door for half an hour.”

“I’m sure that’ll make him feel much better,” Dtui laughed. “Remind him we have to be at the airport at four thirty.”

“I will.”

Siri walked slowly up to the second floor and stopped in front of Civilai’s door to catch his breath. Pakse would be the death of him yet. He tried the handle. The door was unlocked. It creaked as he opened it and walked inside. Civilai was still sitting in the same chair, now facing the window. He was looking up at the bruised clouds that gave the room a shadowy evening feeling.

“Should I turn on the light?” Siri asked.

“The power’s off again,” Civilai said without turning. “We have a hydroelectric dam pumping out 150 megawatts of electricity and we still can’t keep the lights working. I imagine the man who pulls the lever is off at a seminar someplace.”

“The phone downstairs hardly works even when there is electricity,” Siri said. He sat in the other rattan chair and watched the same heavy clouds rapidly turn to charcoal. “That would have been annoying for you, considering all that contact you had to make with Vientiane.”

Civilai cast him a brief angry glance. “I’ve been waiting for this. Don’t play Inspector Maigret with me, Siri. Not with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? Tell me your next comment wasn’t going to be something like, ‘At least you kept in shape running back and forth to the post office to call your people.’’’

“It was going to be a little funnier, but, yes, something like that.”

“And then I say, ‘Right, I should have taken a room above the post office,’ and you jump to your feet and say, ‘Aha, got you.’ Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been everywhere that has long-distance phones, haven’t you? The radio station, the army?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“You already know.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“The only place that’s seen you is the Bureau de Poste and that was yesterday. You apparently made quite a few calls. The woman hadn’t seen you at all before that.”

“Which means?”

“It means a lot of things. It means you’ve been lying ever since we got here. You weren’t in touch with anybody at all. Yesterday you warned all your coup pals to get out of town. It means you’ve betrayed your country, betrayed me- betrayed us.”

“Betray is a relative term. In your case you could look at it as protection. Does that make it feel any better, little brother? What you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you. How’s that?”

Siri laughed. “Protection? How nice of you. You give yourself a vacation on the strength of my forging you a health certificate. You pretend you’re coordinating some huge undercover counterrevolution and all the time you’re-what? — hiding. You’re biding your time and making sure l didn’t stir up any trouble for your coup mongers. Who exactly do you believe you were protecting me from?”

“From your eternal worst enemy.”

Siri got to his feet and stood between Civilai and his cloud gazing.

“No, this is no time to be condescending. We both know you weren’t here for my benefit. Damn it, you even got to me. You made me feel ashamed that I was interfering with your ‘official’ work. All the time I’ve been interpreting your moods as the result of things I’d done wrong. Hell, I even apologized. But I had nothing at all to do with your being a pain in the arse. It was all your doing. What on earth were you thinking?”

He waited for a response but Civilai still hadn’t looked him directly in the eye. Siri raised his voice. “That wasn’t intended as a rhetorical question. I really do need to know what the hell you were thinking.” Civilai remained silent.

“Damn it. After all the years we’ve known each other, you think you can do something like this?”

At last, Civilai’s eyes connected with Siri’s. But they were wet, vacuous eyes like those of a fish staring from a bowl.

“Marvelous,” he said. “So you really do have all the pieces. I had a feeling you’d work it out sooner or later.”

“Yes, I have all the bloody pieces. I wouldn’t have even considered this discussion unless I was absolutely certain you’d lost your old fool mind. I sat at Daeng’s going over things. There were too many questions that didn’t seem to fold neady into how this crisis was resolved. I wondered how you could possibly have been in touch with Vientiane if the hotel phone didn’t operate long distance. I wondered why you didn’t consider contacting the Vietnamese. You’d said something about not wanting them to have more control over us than they already did. But of all the players in this, they were the ones with a vested interest in keeping the Thais out. It was a last resort but I calculated we’d reached that stage already.”

“So it was you who alerted them?”

“Too true, it was me.”

“You couldn’t stop your meddling, could you? Despite everything I said.”

“My meddling might just have saved a lot more unnecessary bloodshed.”

“My hero.”

“Then I went over the note again. There was still one part that didn’t make sense to me. Daeng suggested I go to see an old Frenchman who lives here. He spent much of his life as a linguist. He interpreted for the colonists, then married a Lao lass, and settled down. He gave me a brief lesson in transcription.”

“Spare me.”

“Not on your life. I have a lot of ammunition and nobody else to shoot. Suffer it! We Lao don’t get many opportunities to see our names in Roman script. The Frenchman told me that most Civilais who work for foreigners or study overseas would spell their name with an S. He believes only those who wanted to make a statement about being civilized or a servant of civilization would spell it as you do.”

“Far too deep, brother. The school administrators saddled me with it before they shipped me off to Paris. I couldn’t do a thing about it.”

“Whatever you say. But either way the Frenchman was confident that in certain circumstances-for example, if an American-educated Lao transcribed a Lao name into English-your initials might very well be SS.”

“Can we stop yet?”

“Dtui had thrown us all with her translation of 2PM. She’d guessed it was a time reference so we all but stopped looking at it. The Frenchman pointed out that “PM” could just as well refer to prime minister. Prime minister number two. You were about to become the deputy prime minister in an illegitimate government.”

“And?”

“And I’m back to my original question. What were you thinking? And more important, why did you even begin to think about getting involved without consulting me? I’m your closest friend, goddamn it. I could have talked some sense into you. What was it, blackmail? Did they threaten your family?”

Civilai closed his watery eyes and rested his head back on the chair.

“No.”

“Then what hold did they have over you?”

“What is it we do when we’re together, Siri?”

“I give up.”

“How do we entertain ourselves during our long drunken bouts of clarity?”

“I…”

“I’ll tell you. Eighty percent of our topic of conversation is about the inadequacy of our government, the government we fought for thirty years to install.”

“It’s not-”

“The government that should have learned from the mistakes of all the fools who ran the country before it. Instead, we’ve just given a new twist to inefficiency, made it more creative. We are a socialist administration and socialism is the building, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, of the material base for communism. You had to memorize that, too, remember? Well, I don’t see myself under the dictatorship of any proletariat. The people are suffering no less than they always were.”

“That isn’t true.”

“It is, and you know it. I’d go home after each of our philosophical sessions, with the firm belief that what we’ve created is a joke. There were nights I’d lock myself in the bathroom and cry my eyes out because I was part of that joke. My name was up there on the party roster and I hadn’t done a thing to change the status quo.”

“You tried.”

Civilai opened his eyes. In the shadows they were deep hollows. “If I’d tried-I mean if I’d really tried,” he said, “things would have changed. I dabbled. I let out a few old-man rants, but who listened? I became powerless. I became symbolic in a way that inanimate objects or the dead are symbolic. What made our talks together so hard to take was the fact that everything we said was true. If they’d listened to us, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.”

“That’s what old codgers in coffee shops all around the world believe,” Siri said. “There are seventy-three-year-olds somewhere in a bar in London, England, who believe they have the answers to the world’s problems.”

Civilai shook his head. “But they aren’t senior politburo members on the Central Committee. They don’t have a real opportunity. I did. The disgruntled politicians and military men contacted me. They needed someone senior, someone respected, who represented change, modernity, freedom to the people. It was as if they’d heard me talking in my sleep. They knew I was a loose cannon, dissatisfied, and resentful. And I said, ‘Certainly, I doubt it could make things any worse.’ And that was it. Phetsarat as prime minister, me as deputy. I’d be able to influence decisions and accomplish something at last. Why not? I’d be far less impotent than I am now.”

Siri sighed and sat back down. “And the reason you didn’t discuss all this with me was…?”

Civilai paused, apparently considering this question for the first time. “Because there was a slight doubt in my mind as to whether you’d go along with it,” he said at last.

Siri leaned back onto the cushions and relaxed his weary body and mind and soul. He tried to imagine that scenario: Civilai telling him of his opportunity to be part of a coup. Yes, he would have talked his friend out of it. Why would there be any doubt in his own mind about that? Why was he unable to say so right away? Why did no words come to him? The sky began to rumble a warning. The room was so dark that if they’d looked at each other there would have been nothing to see. But neither looked. They each stared at the sky. It was Civilai’s hoarse voice that broke the deadlock

“What are you planning to do with me?”

“Do?”

“Yes, you’ve obviously considered my punishment.”

“It hasn’t entered my head.”

“That’s because you know I was right to do what I did. We’re of one mind.”

Siri laughed. “Obviously not. If that were true you wouldn’t have been too afraid to share this insanity with me.” Suddenly, the words came to him with perfect clarity. “No rational person would replace a two-year-old administration with a gang of renegade officers with dollars in their pockets and expect things to improve. Don’t you see? All the same old criminals would be back on the bus to Laos. The Vietnamese advisers would be replaced by Thai advisers, and capitalism would be back chewing on us again. It would be a hundred times worse than it was before.

“Yes, we’re grumpy old men. Yes, we complain. It’s in our blood. But it’s only because we’re impatient. After all those years of struggle we wanted to remake our world in seven days. We wanted to see everything blooming and flourishing right now because we’re secretly afraid we aren’t going to be around to see it otherwise. But by the Holy Buddha, you aren’t going to be able to make those changes overnight. Lord help us. I want to slap you, I really do.”

“Go ahead.”

Siri rose from his seat, walked over to the dark shape that contained his friend, and raised his hand. But he couldn’t. The rain began to thump against the glass of the window-panes at his back and lightning threaded through the clouds. He returned his hand to his side and looked down at his broken friend. Civilai’s head bowed toward his lap. His shoulders shook as he sobbed. The lightning picked out a man as old as the earth. Siri knelt on the floor and put his hands on Civilai’s lumpy knees. He had thought of a punishment.

When Siri returned to the lobby, Dtui and Phosy were no longer there. It was just as well because he doubted he’d have been able to fake a sense of humor for them. The front desk and some of the tables held storm lamps whose flames were barely visible in the dark room. He went toward the exit with the intention of walking out into the torrential rain. It was a habit he’d picked up in the tropical storms of Vietnam. They pummeled a man like tin on an anvil, and unless the lightning killed you, they were therapeutic to the point of elation. But before he could reach the newly shuttered door, a voice called him back.

“Dr. Siri.”

It was Daeng. She sat in the dark reception area dressed in a nice pink blouse and a neatly ironed phasin. Her hair was loose. It hung thick and gray over her shoulders. The shadows had blurred the wrinkles and filled the cheeks and for a second or two Siri saw the young enthusiastic girl cook who’d followed him around begging for errands, hungry for knowledge. She walked over to him, looked at his face, and lifted her eyebrows. She had to raise her voice to be heard above the sound of the rain.

“Goodness,” she shouted. “I was planning to tell you something important, but it looks like you already know.”

“What gives you that impression?”

“Well, a, Your face looks like it’s been held over a sacrificial bowl and drained of blood, and b, you were about to go out into a storm that could drown a man. It all adds up to you fighting the devil. I’d say you were just upstairs with Comrade Civilai.”

“What color underwear do I have on?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You seem to know everything else.”

“Don’t bite me, Siri. It wasn’t me, you know.”

“Yes, I know. I’m sorry. Was it Civilai you came to tell me about?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I’m ready to discuss how I feel.”

She took his hand. “I know. Never mind. I’ve brought something much better than bad tidings. Come.”

She led him to one of the lit tables at the rear where her cloth bag sat on a chair. The flame of the lamp danced inside its glass bowl as the storm winds forced their way through the gaps around the shutters. The receptionist was busy mopping back a flood of water that had gushed in with them. It was the type of storm you imagined could lift the hotel and carry it halfway around the earth. The old comrades in arms knelt on the vinyl chairs and let the water flow beneath them. Daeng reached into her bag and produced an album. She lifted it carefully as if it were precious or fragile. She laid it on the bare wooden table and opened it at the title page. This had already been a taxing day for Siri’s heart, but what he saw in the dim lamplight almost stopped it beating completely.

Champasak Camp-1940

“Where on earth…?” he asked.

“You don’t recall the photographer, Siri? A Marseille-trained boy. The French administration sent him south to document everything from the southern camps. They wanted evidence they were doing something for the souls of the local youth.”

“I do remember. Skinny boy from Xiang Khouang.”

“That’s him.”

“But we didn’t ever see those pictures. He was with us for-what? — six months? Then he took all the undeveloped film back with him to Vientiane.”

“He promised he’d send me prints.”

“He had an eye for you, as I recall.”

“Didn’t they all? All but one, I mean.” Siri felt her glancing at him but didn’t look up from the title page that described the camp and its purpose. “And, to my surprise,” she continued, “he kept his word. It wasn’t the fastest-kept word in history but about fifteen years ago I had a visitor.”

“The skinny boy.”

“Had become a skinny middle-aged man. He’d moved to France, married, et cetera, et cetera. But when he decided to come back to Laos he made this set of prints for me. He found me, and here they are.”

“I hope you thanked him properly.”

“Least I could do, considering what he’d brought me. It was the loveliest gift a girl could get.”

She flipped open to the first set of pictures and Siri’s mind turned eleven spinning somersaults into the page. He was back in 1940. There he was standing with his class, B5, all eighteen-year-olds in their group photo, everyone taller than Dr. Siri, everyone as happy as lizards in an ant storm. There he was in front of a blackboard, his raven black hair invisible against the black paint, his trim-waisted shirt a little too tight, highlighting his muscles. There he was at a campfire, lit by the light of the flames, deep in discussion, eyes burning with passion.

“Heavens,” he said. “I was adorable.”

“No argument there,” Daeng agreed.

He turned another page. There he was, there they were: Siri and Boua sitting at a foldable table discussing the curriculum. Him smiling; her serious, young, beautiful-alive. His pulse raced just looking at her.

“You were quite a couple.”

Siri couldn’t bring himself to turn the page. “We used to have pictures,” he said. “Some from France, some from Hanoi, posed, studio pictures mostly. But they were either lost or destroyed by the elements. This is the first picture I’ve seen of her for… I don’t know, twenty years.”

“You loved her. We could all tell.”

“Still do.”

Daeng looked into his green eyes and smiled. “There are more of the two of you in there.”

Siri went through the photographs one by one, naming the youths, remembering exactly what activities they’d done on that particular day. But while he was studying them, he noticed something as clearly as if it had been written in headlines above each picture: enthusiasm. The kids looked at their teachers as if they could see halos. They were eating up everything. And these weren’t the posed photos the PL set up for propaganda. This was the real thing. These boys and girls were pumped up with national pride. Looking at them made him understand why he’d hesitated to condemn Civilai.

“They look like they’re happy to be there,” he said.

“We all were. Two important teachers trained in France, and a qualified doctor and nurse no less. You could have both been off somewhere making a lot of money, but instead you gave up two years to work with poor kids. What did they pay you? Two francs a month?”

“I believe there was a fifty-centime Christmas bonus.” They laughed.

“Of course they were happy to be there,” Daeng said. “They idolized you both. You were heroes to us. We all loved you.”

And that was something else Siri had noticed in the black-and-white pictures. The attractive cook attending classes, helping at meetings. No, not attractive-beautiful. At the time he’d hardly noticed her. It certainly hadn’t occurred to him how lovely she was. An old Lao poet had once written that love was a sharpened spear that gouged out a man’s eyes. That had obviously been the case with Boua. He’d never noticed other women, didn’t once consider being with anyone else. He’d never observed Daeng’s adoring stares, her constant presence. He saw them now.

“You weren’t ugly yourself,” he said.

“At last, a compliment. Well worth the wait.”

They laughed again and Siri closed the album and rested his hands on the back cover.

“That was marvelous, truly marvelous,” he said. “You wouldn’t know how much I needed that. Or, yes, perhaps you would. Thank you so much for letting me see it.”

“Oh, I didn’t bring it just to show you,” she said. “It’s a gift.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I could never expect you to part with such a precious thing.”

“Siri, I think over the past couple of weeks, you’ve lost yourself. I want you to have this so if it ever happens again you just have to look at the faces of your students.”

He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek and this time she didn’t pull back.