Curse of the Pogo Stick

Indignationhood

Hmong New Year passed virtually unnoticed in Vientiane and, as December held no other significant dates for celebration, January arrived unannounced. The weather, for once, gave nobody cause for complaint. The sky was blue and cloudless and the city was fanned day and night by cooling breezes. Locals had taken to wearing mufflers round their necks and socks inside their flip-flops. Walkers everywhere crunched through unswept leaves. The pool at the Lan Xang Hotel was off-limits because the water was cold and the lifeguard refused to jump in if anyone got into trouble. Although the Lao wouldn’t have their own new year for another three months, the West was calling this 1978 and hailing it as the dawning of the age of computers. Half a million were already in use around the world and predictions were that this number might double by the end of the century. Like the news of Charlie Chaplin’s death and the decision by Sweden to ban aerosol cans, the revelation passed Vientiane by without even staring in the window.

For reasons best known to himself, Judge Haeng had taken to using a cane following the trauma of his ordeal in the northeast. There was nothing at all wrong with his leg but Siri assumed that once the cast was off his arm he had no cause to tell strangers of his bravery otherwise.

“There must have been thirty of them,” he’d declare, gazing out into the misty beyond of his memory. “Tough, mountain warriors, trained to kill. They picked off Siri straightaway but I was able to evade them for four days, living wild in the jungle. Surviving off the land. Hampered by life-threatening injuries, I relied on training from my days in the underground to get through it all. A good socialist must be ambidextrous: able to chop down a mighty teak tree with his left hand and darn a shirt with his right. You have to understand the jungle, to love and respect it like a wife.

“After a while I felt concerned about Dr. Siri. He isn’t a young man and we must have compassion for our senior citizens. I went in search of him. I feared not for my own life but ultimately I succumbed to my injuries and to the dreaded malaria. See this bruising on my hands? Further evidence of the ravages of the disease.”

Siri had smiled when the story made it back to him. Only Haeng could have caught malaria at that altitude. It wasn’t till the Hmong were forced down to lower elevations that the mosquito joined the list of their enemies. Siri waited for the day when he’d be summoned to the Department of justice to find Haeng with a nose so long he couldn’t get out of his office. Siri, meanwhile, had one or two cases a week to keep himself and his team moderately busy.

Nothing more was heard of the Lizard and her cohorts but a nasty thought had crossed Siri’s mind. These were the days when people could vanish without a physical trace and, over time, be deleted completely from memory. But one matter still lingered and made the old doctor shake his head from time to time. Why, he wondered, would a woman about to be executed make a gift of a valuable ring to the very people who had condemned her to death? Was it merely a final act of bravado from an arrogant woman or had there been one spell left in her cauldron? According to the Security Division, the firing squad had done its duty on the morn, but would they admit to losing the Lizard a second time? The manageress still presided over her clients at the Russian Club and nothing untoward had happened to suggest anything had gone wrong. Siri had nothing but a creeping tingle at the back of his neck to keep him company.

Fortunately, he had something else to occupy his mind. Following his return from Xiang Khouang, Siri had taken up a cause. He had canvassed both the Lao and Vietnamese military in an effort to make them accountable for their handling of Hmong refugees. He wanted a commitment that they would have safe passage when fleeing to Thailand. It was Civilai’s opinion that if Siri hadn’t been friendly with certain influential members of the military he too would have vanished without a trace for such foolishness. Siri countered that he was just reminding them of their own policy.

“According to your politburo, the Hmong are Lao citizens,” he told Civilai. “The official line is, ‘All Lao citizens are equal before the law irrespective of ethnic origin.’ They have the same rights as we do.” “And we have rights?”

“By comparison.”

“Keep on pushing the army, you stubborn old fart, and we’ll see how strong your rights are.”

So Siri, being Siri, kept on pushing. He ran into the same rehashed diatribe about national security and the US-led insurgency but not one sensible argument as to why unarmed women and children and old people posed a threat to the nation. If they were dangerous then surely the army ought to be glad they were leaving. It soon became clear that the issue was not a centrally agreed upon policy but rather left up to the whim of the regional army commander in each of the provinces. He heard that some units coming across caravans of Hmong escorted them back home and sent the seniors for reeducation, where they learned that this was a multicultural society and even the most impoverished and ignorant had an opportunity for advancement. But the officers he spoke to also conceded there might be the odd patrol leader with a well-founded grudge who would execute first and consider the moral implications later over a drink.

He heard more disturbing rumors that the new Soviet planes were being used to drop liquid chemicals on caravans of refugees although that wasn’t a policy anyone he spoke to cared to discuss. Whatever the truth, an alarming number of refugees fleeing their homes weren’t reaching the camps in Thailand and Siri didn’t like that fact. But, as Civilai said, he was getting closer to that ‘Has anyone seen Siri lately?’ moment. For a month he had attempted to beg a brief interview with Commander

Khoumki, the chief of staff of the armed forces. He’d known the lad in the field and had once removed a bullet from his intestines. Under fire in the jungle he’d considered their relationship to be a close one. But Khoumki had risen through the ranks and left all those nonprofit forest love affairs behind. Now he was inaccessible and would have remained so had Siri not crossed the line.

It was obvious that playing by the rules wasn’t getting him anywhere so he resorted to the unthinkable. He spent one afternoon in the cutting room painting a large sign. It read,

WE NEED ANSWERS ON THE PLIGHT OF OUR HMONG BROTHERS

There hadn’t been a protest since the PL dragged students onto the street to rally spontaneously against the fascist dictatorial military clique in Thailand. That had been a year earlier. Nobody was foolish enough to hassle a paranoid government at a time when civil rights was a luxury of the decadent West. But the lone Siri took one afternoon off work and carried his placard down to the front of the Khaosan Pathet Lao News Agency office. On his way he stopped at various government departments, the police station, and Madame Daeng’s shop to announce his intention. He was at the gate of the news agency no more than five minutes before a truckload of soldiers arrived and wrestled him aboard.

This was a dilemma for the authorities. Siri was a forty something year member of the Party and a borderline national hero. Everyone in the politburo knew him. He had friends in the military who respected him. Plus, as there were no laws, he couldn’t technically have broken one. They weren’t able to quietly spirit him away as he’d been very loud in stating his intentions. He’d gathered a nice crowd and there were photographs of the arrest. They could have arranged a small “accident,” of course, but instead they called him into the office and asked him what exactly he wanted.

An invitation was delivered to him the day after his release by a surprisingly tall guard in an unprecedentedly ironed uniform. It read:

Commander Khoumki requests the company of Dr. Siri Paiboun at his private residence for a soirйe on January 14. Formal evening attire. 6 pm.

RSVP.

Siri rolled his eyes when he showed it to Dtui.

“So now the head of the socialist armed forces is having a soirйe? A man who ran operations from a cave in Huaphan is telling people how to dress? There must have been a chapter in the manual I missed: ‘How to Fill the Velvet Slippers of the Royalists without Anyone’s Noticing.’ The arrogance of it.”

“So you aren’t going?”

“If there’s no other way for a knave to greet a king I suppose I have no choice. Dust off my purple tuxedo, miss. I shall go to the ball.”

The commander’s house was so new the smell of paint overpowered the incense. It looked at first glance like an early attempt at man-powered flight that had crashed and crumpled. It was obviously something Khoumki had seen in a magazine and ordered built. It stood in the center of an acre of land surrounded by an eight-foot wall topped with broken bottles set in cement. All around it were rice fields, and the damp from the paddy had already started to turn the base of the whitewashed walls yellow.

One of the six armed guards at the gate checked Siri’s invitation and ID card and searched his motorcycle for concealed insurgents. Eyeing his sandals and collarless shirt with distaste, they let him pass. He parked at the end of a row of shiny black limousines and made his way to the marble steps. Another guard in full dress uniform saluted him reluctantly and seemed to smirk as Siri passed through the large double doors. A servant briskly shepherded him through the house, giving him mere seconds to savor the framed pictures and the brass candle holders and the grand piano tucked away in rooms on either side of him. Before he knew it he was outside the back door feeling like a morsel of food that had been swallowed and evacuated in one movement.

He stood on the porch and took in the scene. It was an ostentatious soirйe on a vast lawn. The grass was so new the squares of turf sat like grids on a game board. The players, either in uniform or national dress or shirt and tie were positioned midtournament, all tactically vying for a crack at the commander. They held glasses with shrouds of tissue. Siri wondered whether that might have something to do with not wanting to leave fingerprints. The great man himself stood in an overly decorated dress uniform with his chest pushed pigeonlike toward the house. He had a throng about him.

As soon as Siri stepped down onto the spongy lawn, a soldier with a tray accosted him and forced a whisky soda on him. He sipped it. It was more of a soda whisky or rather a soda that had passed within a whisker of an open whisky bottle. He put it back on the tray and felt sufficiently insulted by it to break all the game rules. He ignored the copses of guests and went diagonally across the board in a beeline to the commander. The host was in the process of being checkmated by a woman who looked like a well-endowed gift. She was wrapped so tightly in her expensive phasin and sabai sash that all her blood had been squeezed to her face.

“Commander Khoumki,” Siri said, stepping up to him with his hand extended. The woman stood back in horror. The head of the armed forces certainly deserved a polite nop in greeting, hands together, head bowed low, not this. She looked around as if hoping some bouncer might come to remove this shoddy old man. The commander in turn stood with one hand on his drink and the other firmly by his side. But Siri was unmoved. He would have stood there all evening with his hand extended until he got it shaken. Khoumki could obviously envisage this so he casually obliged.

“Dr. Santi,” he said, freeing his hand as quickly as possible. “Long time no see.”

“Siri!”

“Yes? How have you been?” Khoumki turned to his guests. “I haven’t seen the doctor since the campaign of ‘66 in Xien Khaw. I hear he’s a coroner now. Ah, there’s the treasurer at last.” He excused himself from his group. “You’ll have to excuse me. Nice to see you again, Santi.”

The commander hurried six squares south, four east, and engaged a bespectacled man with healthy black hair that was just a little too dark to be true. Siri looked at the ruddy-faced woman beside him and could tell she was about to launch into a dialogue neither really wanted. Siri didn’t do small talk. He crouched down to adjust a sandal just as she began to speak. The sound of children distracted him. There was a play area at the far end of the garden with swings and a jungle gym. The children of those unfortunate enough to have them were screaming and being precocious. Like their sophisticated mothers and fathers, they were dressed in their finest clothes and were showing off in a most obnoxious way.

“A coroner?” he heard the woman say above him. “Fascinating. My sister, Dara, recently passed away…”

“That wasn’t my fault,” Siri said. “Excuse me.”

He caught up with Khoumki and the treasurer and made a threesome. He’d actually met the treasurer when the man was still teaching mathematics in a cave in Vieng Xai. Siri nodded at him and turned to the well-fed face of the commander.

“I believe it was on that campaign in ‘66 that I pulled a bullet out of your gut and saved your life,” Siri said, smiling. “If that hasn’t earned me a two-minute conversation I can’t imagine what would.”

The commander appeared angry at first, annoyed at this blip on his soirйe. But then he laughed, put his arm on Siri’s shoulder, and said, loud enough for all around him to hear, “I doubt I ever needed anyone to save my life, Doctor. You see, I had faith, faith in the revolution, faith in the system. That’s what got me through every battle, nothing else.”

Siri remembered young Captain Khoumki very well. He’d never seen a soldier with so many Buddha amulets under his shirt. He recalled the night when Khoumki’s fever broke and the tearful captain told his surgeon if he needed anything, anything at all, his life was Siri’s. Siri had saved the man’s future but obviously not his memory.

“But you can have your two minutes, Doctor,” Khoumki consented. He was a big man and Siri decided punching him on the nose would only lead to reciprocal injuries. And, as he’d come so far and waited so long, he decided to make his pitch regardless. The treasurer drifted away once the word “Hmong” left Siri’s lips. And the more he spoke, the more Siri realized he was wasting his time. There’s a look, an expression, a man adopts when it’s obvious the anti-new-idea shutter is up. He nods too often and says, “Aha” even when his eyes are scanning the faces of the guests around him. Once you see that expression you know the man’s mind is shut tight as a Tiger Balm jar.

Yet Siri diverted his eyes only once during his allotted two minutes and what he saw made him lose his train of thought completely. He stopped midsentence, abandoned the confused commander, and walked to the edge of the lawn. What he saw removed all hope from his heart. He knew his cause was lost.