Disco for the Departed

Laoness

Mr. Geung had followed the coastline of the Num Ngum reservoir for twelve miles. He’d spent the night in an abandoned fishing hut on the bank. The first thing he noticed when he woke was his own smell. He could hardly remember why he was coated in this dark brown gunk that had hardened to a shell, and the clear water was right there in front of his door. He walked, fully dressed, apart from his boots, into the reservoir. It was a wonderful feeling. Not till he was in up to his neck did he undress. His shoulder stung a little but the cool water soothed his aching muscles, soaked his flaky skin, and washed away his only protection against insects.

What makes the dengue mosquito so deadly is its dishonest use of time. Once the sun dips below the horizon, people know that it’s mosquito frenzy time. They wear long sleeves, put on repellent, and light their coils. At night they sleep under nets. It’s a type of unspoken contract between man and his bloodsucking foe. But the dengue mosquito is a contract breaker. She strikes in broad daylight when you’re sweating in the fields, when you’re swinging on your hammock in the shade, even when you’re sitting stark naked beside Num Ngum reservoir, waiting for your clothes to dry.

The incubation period for the disease is five to seven days. A little after that, you’ll know whether the strain is one that will make you violently ill but not kill you, or whether you’ve contracted the bleeding fever, which will usually finish you off painfully but quickly. Even in the absence of the rains, tens of thousands of lives had been claimed by the wicked daytime blood thieves in a single year. This year’s epidemic originated in the north of Vientiane province, probably in the area around the dam.

Geung slapped at his arm a fraction of a second too late. He picked his attacker from his skin. She was a tiny thing, black-and-white-striped and bloody. He wondered how such a small thing could bleed so much.

People had been incredibly kind to the odd man who passed through village after village on his long march down the western shore of the reservoir. Before the days of political deception and fragmentation, this had always been the Lao way. If a stranger came to your house, you would offer him what you had to help him on his way. Even families with barely enough food for their own children would break off some of their sticky rice and prepare a separate bowl of spicy vegetable sauce for a visitor. There had always been trust and respect.

In the large cities, that feeling was all but gone. But in the small villages, the elders still held out hope that Laoness wouldn’t be destroyed by politics. They fed Geung, gave him balm for his skin, dressed his blisters, and offered him a bed for the night. They had to shout loudly now to be heard because all sounds had become an underwater buzz to him. Although they all tried, no one could dissuade him from his foolish desire to complete his walk to the capital. They yelled, “Good luck” and watched him limp his way south. Everyone doubted he’d live long enough to complete the trip.

Mr. Geung was getting a bad, bad feeling, too. He’d walked more than he ever had in his life. Already he could feel his strength draining away. He couldn’t count how many daybreaks he’d woken to or how many flat footsteps he’d trodden. Strange things had begun to happen in his head. He felt sure he was becoming a moth. The only thing in his mind was the electric lightbulb of Vientiane. It dazzled him, casting his actual surroundings into a fog, and filled his head so completely he often didn’t know where he was or who he was talking to. Every woman he met, he called Dtui. Every man he addressed as Comrade Doctor.

Siri and Dtui sat silently on the concrete path not far from the broken slabs. The “evidence” continued to sleep off the trauma she had undergone beneath the watchful eyes of the guesthouse maid. There was no sun and the sky promised a depressing period of rain-not a good old central plains monsoon, but a slow, drizzly rain that could soak into a man’s mind and dampen his mood. A line of red ants had found Siri on their proposed parade route. Before heading back in the direction from which they’d come, each ant stepped forward to take a look at the doctor like visitors at a mausoleum.

“Perhaps we’re looking in the wrong places,” Dtui said at last. Siri had taken her to see the Cuban hideout and the eerie altar room. They’d found no new clues at either.

“Or not looking in enough right places. I feel perhaps we aren’t talking to the right people.”

“You’re right. Let’s start talking,” Dtui agreed.

“Any suggestion as to where we might start?”

“Right here under our backsides.” Siri raised an eyebrow. “Look at all this concrete. How long do you suppose it took to build this path?”

“A couple of men? One or two weeks.”

“And the Cubans were right here in the cave behind them all that time? Don’t you wonder if they might have seen something?”

“Excellent. Yes, indeed. That’s the kind of… concrete thinking that will get you to the Eastern Bloc.”

“Doc…”

“I’m sorry.”

The guesthouse truck arrived in Xam Neua an hour later. Tracing the contractors had been comparatively simple. One main team did most of the cement work on government projects. They were presently working on the new police station down by the bridge. The foreman of the team was an old soldier whom Siri knew from several campaigns. The cement layer’s name was Bui, and he had the type of face and build that doesn’t undergo any drastic changes between sixteen and sixty. In Laos, the odds of bumping into people one knew were far from astronomical. In fact, it happened all the time. Dtui was impressed that, excluding high-ranking bureaucrats, everyone was truly delighted to be reunited with their old friend Dr. Siri.

They sat together on the newly dried concrete floor of a room that would soon house a police lieutenant. Bui wished he had whisky to welcome the doctor, but they had to settle for warmish water that smelled vaguely of paint thinner. Once they’d caught up with one another’s news, Siri told the old man why he was in the northeast and asked whether Bui might have any information that could help them. He never expected the response that he got. Dtui’s instincts had, as they say, hit the water buffalo right in the balls.

As they sipped their water, a light drizzle floated down from the clouds, and Bui told them the story of what had happened one day in January.

“It was a Tuesday if I remember rightly,” he began. “The reason I know that is because the president’s footpath was the last one we did and some inspector was due in on the Wednesday flight to check that we’d got it all done. There were only two flights a week then. Well, we were only just on schedule. We found ourselves working late into Tuesday evening to get it done. So it turned out we were walking back down to our huts in the dark.

“There were three of us and we were all tuckered out, looking forward to a good meal and our beds. We’d just got to the football field. As usual, there was a mist, one of those that makes you shudder just walking through it. That was when we saw them.”

“The Cubans?” Siri asked.

“And the girl.”

“Hong Lan? The Vietnamese?”

“Can’t be sure it was her, but we’d all heard the stories about black magic and the kidnapping and all. The bigger of the two, he had the girl in his arms, you know? The way you carry an old person. She looked drugged.”

“Or dead?” Dtui asked.

“Could have been. Her arms were dangling down, and her head was hanging. They walked out of the mist about thirty yards ahead of us. Me and the boys froze. It was like something out of one of them Hong Kong ghost films. The big guy was in front with the girl, walking slow. About five paces back was the little one, and he had this knife, more like a sword, really. Whatever it was, it looked like it could do a lot of damage.”

“Did they see you?”

“If they did, they didn’t let on. But, to tell the truth, it was as if they couldn’t see much of anything-like they were in a trance.”

“Where were they heading?” Siri asked. “Straight for the military complex.”

“The concert hall cave?”

“In that direction. So we waited till they were gone, long gone, before we said anything. Even then we whispered. Sound carries on the mist. We got into a huddle and decided what we ought to do. We knew the Vietnamese had been looking for the girl, but the mother had left already-gone back to Hanoi, I heard. So one of the boys rode his bicycle over to the army post-the one that used to be up at the Xam Neua intersection. You remember it?”

“It was still there? I thought all the Vietminh pulled out at the end of ‘75.”

The old soldier laughed but didn’t bother to explain away that particular piece of PL trickery.

“And what happened?” Dtui asked.

“Well, that was it.”

“What was it?”

“We didn’t hear anything else about it.”

“Didn’t you ask?”

“We went back to Xam Neua the next day and were busy with the inspector. He wanted this and that changed. You know what they’re like. Afterward, nobody seemed to know anything. We sort of forgot all about it.”

“Hell! If it had been me, I would have exploded with curiosity,” Dtui told him.

“It’s true,” Siri agreed. “I’ve seen Nurse Dtui explode with curiosity, and I have to tell you, Bui, it isn’t a sight you’d want to witness twice.”

There were still a couple of hours of daylight when Siri and Dtui reached Vieng Xai. They stopped at the guesthouse only long enough to check on Panoy and pick up two flashlights and a kit of assorted tools. Three messages from Lit awaited them. Each asked that they get in touch. Siri and Dtui ignored them and headed off to the caves.

Dtui was amazed to see the concert hall hidden within the karst. It seemed even larger now to Siri without its midnight crowds.

“Something’s been drawing me here since we arrived in Huaphan,” Siri confessed. “I should have paid more attention.”

“It’s enormous,” Dtui said. “Where do we start looking?”

“Up top are the chambers and the general’s quarters. Down below we have this space, then there are various alcoves, and there’s a long tunnel that leads to the other end of the mountain, where we should find the dining and kitchen area. I suppose we should just poke around till something sparks our instincts.”

“Doc?” Dtui looked around at the high, arching walls, her flashlight making ominous shadows behind the irregular overhangs. “We are… you know… alone here, aren’t we?”

“We should be,” he told her honestly. “Until about midnight.”

“What happens then?”

“The disco starts.”

He walked toward the stage, leaving her wondering whether that was a Dr. Siri joke or whether she should perhaps keep an eye on her watch. Together they scoured the walls for any icons or symbols similar to those they’d seen at the altar. They saw none and the question remained: why would Isandro and Odon bring Hong Lan here as a sacrifice when they had a bloodstained shrine set up inside the president’s cave?

They went through the auditorium inch by inch without result, then began working through the alcoves. Here the military had plotted its strategies, learned the arts of bomb making and guerrilla warfare, and played ping-pong by candlelight. There was one small room where male nurses, trained by Dr. Siri, had administered medicines, and one more that had served as an armory. But none of them yielded any secrets.

“So, I suppose we should go through to the kitchen,” Siri decided as they neared the narrow tunnel drilled fifty yards through solid rock. They stepped over an underground stream that had been steered into a concrete conduit. Once it had been used as a collection point for drinking water. Siri led the way into the tunnel, then abruptly stopped. Dtui stumbled into him.

“Hey,” she said.

“Dtui, back up.”

She did so. “What is it?”

Two things had caused Siri to stop. The first was a feeling as if someone else’s legs were inside his own, walking in the opposite direction. The second was a recollection-the vision he’d seen in the guesthouse bathroom-of Isandro lying serenely under water. He turned back to look at the trough through which the water flowed. It was no more than two yards long, designed to gather the naturally flowing water together at one side of the walkway, then release it on the other side. Once free to find its own level, the stream spread out rapidly before disappearing beneath the rock face.

“Shine your light down here, Dtui.” The ground sloped gently downward for three or four yards. The earth was a mixture of clay, sand, and fine gravel. It was one of the few sections of floor, presumably because of the running water, that hadn’t been banked in concrete. Without taking off his old leather sandals, Siri squatted in two inches of water.

“You see something?” Dtui asked.

“I’m not sure. Would you mind going back a few yards and shining your lamp from a different angle?” She did what he asked. “A little higher, perhaps. Splendid. Can you see anything?”

She tried to. She squinted and jiggled the light, and willed herself to see something, but apart from the uneven ruts, there was nothing unusual. Unless, the ruts… She raised the light even higher, then walked slowly back toward Siri. At last she’d seen what he’d seen. It could merely have been the different quality of the soil, or the packing of it, or the slight ridge, but there were two distinct shapes. They were oval, side by side, too neat and regimented to have been caused naturally.

“Dr. Siri. I see them. You don’t think…?”

“Only one way to find out.” He went to the concreted area and swung his old army pack from his shoulders. It contained the tools they’d brought with them from Vientiane. As they hadn’t known what to expect, they had an interesting collection. He gave a short-handled garden spade to Dtui and took a cement trowel himself.

First they confirmed that the area around the ovals was more tightly packed than that within them. This increased their belief that something might have been buried there. They dug at the center of the first oval, a more sensible and less tiring method than attempting to empty the entire space. At a depth of about two hands, they began to dig with more care. If a body had been buried there, it wasn’t likely to be very deep.

Down they went-three, four, five hands-and still they encountered nothing. Clear water filled their hole and caused small avalanches to frustrate their work. Before they realized it, both of them were sopping wet and getting colder as the night mist enfolded the looming cliff.

Suddenly, Dtui stopped digging and sat back. “Dr. Siri…”

“I know,” he said.

They were seven hands deep and had hit tightly packed mud. What they’d expected to be a grave was, in fact, empty. Dtui felt an odd sensation. She was aware that something had happened to her sense of decency over the previous year. Before this, she would never have dreamed of digging into wet earth, hoping-yes, she had actually been hoping- to find a body. She knew Siri had been hoping also. What kind of person had she become? She was a ghoul.

“I suppose we shouldn’t be disappointed,” Siri said, mirroring her own feeling.

“Hardly worth trying the other one,” she added.

“Not much point.”

“It’s getting late. We really should take a look through the other chambers before…”

“The disco?”

“Right.”

But they both looked at the second oval the way children, already full, might stare longingly at one more sweet goat’s-milk roti, wondering if they could perhaps make a space for it. Without a word, they were soon on their damp knees, scraping away at the top layer of gravel. At three hands, Dtui’s fork was met by something solid.

“Doc?”

Immediately the water filled the hole they were digging, and something floated up to the surface. It was a wooden shirt button. Without a word, they pulled back to broaden their excavation site. For another hour they worked carefully to exhume the body that lay beneath the stream. They scraped away the gravelly sand and piled it behind them so it wouldn’t collapse back into the grave. When at last the body was completely exposed, lying in a bath of crystal-clear water, Siri and Dtui stood on either side, shivering in the dank cave. Their flashlight batteries had almost expired, and faint beams of light shimmered onto the weird scene before them.

“Dtui,” Siri said at last. “I doubt you or I will see anything like this again as long as we live.”

People still spoke to Geung but he no longer heard them. They looked at him kindly but he hadn’t the ability to return their smiles. He concentrated, and with the last of his strength, put one foot in front of the other, one foot-in front-of the other. Left, and then right. Left, and then right. His aching head dipped low, watching his boots. Responsibility. The morgue. Left-right-food from somewhere-water from somewhere. Insects biting. Left- left, no, that wasn’t it.

One town, then another, then one more. How many more towns could there be? How many miles of road? Was the sun at his back? He no longer had his bag straps. Where did they go? Was the sun somewhere, dropping into his sack? In the morning… strap… what was the song? Then, the road… just stopped. One minute it was there-then it wasn’t. Instead, a wide, slow-moving river. A group of people, their mouths moving at each other, moving at him, laughing. A ferry comes, a flat slab of metal, so heavy, so unlike a boat, you could never imagine it staying on top of the water. Under it, yes. But not floating. Something… was… familiar.

The group, like one big crab with many heads, steps onto the slab of metal. So familiar. Amazingly they float, the crab, the car, the dozen motorbikes. A boy comes. He prods Mr. Geung in the chest and holds out his hand. He prods again. Geung looks into the boy’s eyes and sees himself reflected there.

The slab of metal runs into the far bank as if it isn’t expecting it to be there. The crab lurches forward but keeps its feet. Geung is thrown to the deck. Hands collect him, shuffle him forward. The road reemerges. People come to stand in front of him, around him. So many mouths moving, so many teeth. They steer him like a bicycle piled high with sugarcane. They steer him off the road, and the sun is off his shoulder, onto his nose, in his eyes. A face eclipses it, blocks the sun, switches off the electric light over Vientiane. It is a face without features that leans into his, a ping-pong bat all in black. Mr. Geung blinks. Why is this bat holding his shoulders, brushing the hair from his forehead?

They turn, he and the bat, in an odd tango. And by some miracle, the bat acquires a familiar face-the face of Mr. Watajak, the man who’d gone to all that trouble to sire seven children, only one of whom was a moron.