Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

1

I celebrate the dawn of my seventy-fourth birthday handcuffed to a lead pipe. I'd had something more traditional in mind; a few drinks with my new wife, some gay mo lum music on the record player, shellfish plucked fresh from the Mekhong. But here I am in Hades and not a balloon in sight. My ex-room-mate, a grey-faced youth in his early twenties, is chained by the ankle to the far end of the same pipe. They dragged the boy in during the night and we struggled to communicate. We scratched for words to share. But, as soon as he understood that we were different animals in the same abattoir, tears of despair carved uneven grooves down his bloody cheeks. I could do nothing but sit back against the flaking plaster and watch the life drain from him. He didn't live to greet the new day. When the sun finally sneered through the wire mesh of the window, it cast a shadow like a fisherman's net across the body. The corpse lay trapped, expired from the effort of untangling itself from all this unnecessary misery. But his soul was free. I envied him that. I am Dr Siri Paiboun, the national and only coroner of the People's Democratic Republic of Laos, a medical man, a humanitarian, but I'm still unable to summon an appropriate emotion. I listened through the night to the sobs and screams of my unseen neighbours. I didn't understand the words they cried but I knew people were being killed all around me. I scented their essence and saw their fleeing spirits. I am well aware that I will soon be joining them. Yet the overriding thought in my mind is that I didn't have the foresight to say goodbye or thank you to the people I love. That sounds corny, I know, but what's wrong with corny? It has its place.

I wonder whether they might know instinctively. Really. I wonder whether they've been able to see through this crusty, annoyingly stubborn exterior to the warm and fluffy Siri that nestles barely visible inside me. If only I could squeeze the hand of Madame Daeng one final time, ruffle the newly permed hair of Mr. Geung, sniff the cheeks of Nurse Dtui and her milk-scented baby, and slap Inspector Phosy on the back. If only I could raise one last glass with my best friend, Civilai. But those opportunities will never come. The amulet that protected me from the malevolent spirits was ripped from my neck, stolen by one of the teenaged guards. I am exposed. Once the ghosts are aware their enemy is unprotected, they will circle me like hungry jungle dogs and close in for the kill.

All things considered, at this almost final analysis, I am stuffed.?

The woman read from the carbon copy in front of her. The sheet was of such proportions as to defy filing and of such poor quality that it was almost inevitable the words would be sucked back into the fibres like invisible ink returning whence it had emerged. The clerk had a pleasant voice, soothing like honey balm, and the two old men opposite stared at her luscious lips as she spoke.

"Of course, it isn't finalised," she smiled. "But it will certainly read something like this." She coughed. "The People's Democratic Republic of Laos would have it known that Dr Siri Paiboun, National Coroner, Hero of the revolution and lifetime member of the Communist Party, passed away on the second of May, 1978. Dr Siri had fought tirelessly and fearlessly for the revolution and was — "

"Fearlessly first," one of the men interrupted.

"I'm sorry?"

"It would be better to have 'fearlessly' before 'tirelessly', then nobody would be in doubt he'd not been tired out by the lack of fearing."

"Absolutely," the second man agreed.

"What? Hmm. I'm not sure I understand that," the girl confessed and made a note on the pad beside her. "I'll mention it to Comrade Sisavee. It is only the first draft but, to tell the truth, we called you in to check on the factual, rather than the syntactical elements of the eulogy. We have people to deal with all the technicalities in later versions. I'll read on if I'm — "

"And, 'was struck down dead' has a more heroic ring to it," the second old man said. "That's factual."

"Struck down?"

"Rather than 'passed away'," he added. "'Passed away' makes it sound like bodily wind, a collection of stomach gases on their way out. Do you know what I mean? We're talking about heroism here. Heroes don't just 'pass' like flatulence in a strong breeze."

"With or without scent," added the second man most seriously.

The clerk glared from one old gentleman to the next, then back to the first.

"Are you playing with me?" she asked, sternly.

"Certainly not, sweet young lady," said the skinnier of the two men. He was bald as a boule with a long camel-like throat sporting an Adam's apple so large it might well have been Adam's original. "This is a most serious affair."

"No playing matter," agreed the first.

Still uncertain of her ground, the young lady pressed on. "The nation will never forget the contribution Dr Siri made to the development of this great nation, nor can — "

"That's two nations," said the bald man.

"Oh, do let her finish," said the other. "Didn't she tell you they have a department that handles syntax? Probably an entire ministry."

"The Ministry of Getting Words Right?"

"Or it could be a branch of the Ministry of Making Things Up and Bamboozling People."

The clerk was miffed. She slapped the paper onto the wooden table top and drummed her fingers on it noisily. She seemed to be wrestling down a darker inner person. Her voluptuous mouth had become mysteriously unattractive.

"I don't think either of you appreciate what a great honour this is," she said at last. Her eyes watered. "Anybody else would be proud. Dr Siri, I'm particularly disappointed that you would take all this so lightly. Given your record, it's a wonder your name is on the list at all."

Siri raised the thickets of coarse white hair he called eyebrows and scratched at his missing left earlobe.

"To be fair, you're not giving me much time," he said. "How can I take life seriously when I'm forced to squeeze all those remaining pleasures into a mere twelve days? And look at this. You're passing me away on my birthday, of all occasions. The happiest day of the year."

"That's odd, Doctor," she said through clenched teeth. "I thought I had explained myself very clearly."

"Tell him again," said ex-politburo member Civilai. "He's elderly."

"As I said," she began, slowly, "the actual date of your death will be filled in later."

"In the event of it?" Siri said.

"Exactly."

"So you aren't actually expecting me to…"

"No!"

The transparent north-eastern skin of her neck revealed an atlas of purple roads heading north in the direction of her cheeks. The men admired her composure as she took a deep breath and continued.

"You will pass away naturally, or otherwise, as your destiny dictates. At that stage we will delete your date of birth and substitute it with your date of death. When that happens we will issue the announcement. Is that clear now?"

"And I will become a hero," Siri smiled.

"It probably won't be instantaneous…in your case."?

The Department of Hero Creation, the DHC, was housed in a small annexe of the propaganda section of the Ministry of Information. Based loosely on a Vietnamese initiative already in place, the DHC was responsible for identifying role models, exaggerating their revolutionary qualities, and creating a fairy story around their lives. A week earlier, Dr Siri and Comrade Civilai had received their invitations to attend this preliminary meeting. They'd heard of the DHC, of course, and seen evidence of its devious work. Everyone over seventy who'd done the Party the great service of staying alive was under consideration. If selected, school textbooks would mention their bravery. Histories would be written detailing their supernatural ability to surmount the insurmountable and carry the red flag to victory. Siri and Civilai could hardly pass up a chance to scuttle such a nefarious scheme.

"What is my case?" Siri asked.

"What?"

"You said, 'in your case', suggesting I have some flaw."

"Don't hold back," Civilai urged the clerk.

"It's really not my place to — "

"Go ahead," Civilai prodded. "We won't tell anyone."

She seemed pleased to do so.

"We are aware of the Doctor's…problems with authority," the clerk said. She was now ignoring Siri and talking directly to Civilai. "But history has a short memory. It has a way of smudging over personality faults, no matter how serious they might be."

"Voltaire said that history is just the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes," Siri said.

"And why should I care what a wealthy seventeenth-century snob aristocrat has to say about anything?" she snapped. "Don't you have thoughts of your own, Doctor?"

Siri smiled at Civilai who raised his eyebrows in return. The old friends were constantly on the lookout for fire, intelligence and passion within the system and, when found, it brought out their untapped paternal instincts. Wrong century, but most cadres wouldn't have known Voltaire from a bag of beans. Their early evening visit to the Ministry of Information had not been a waste of time after all.

Following a politburo decree, the words Minister and Ministry had been liberated from the dungeon of anti-socialist political rhetoric and new ministries mushroomed. There was infighting within each ministry as departments and sections vied for its own ministerial status. Everyone wanted to be a minister. The secretarial pool at the new Ministry of Justice had put in an application to become the Ministry of Typing, and the head clerk, Manivone, put her name down to become the Minister of Changing Ink Ribbons. Dr Siri had helped her with the paperwork and it had taken several bottles of rice whisky to get it right. Of course, they hadn't submitted the form. The system didn't have a sense of humour.

There was nothing inherently funny about the People's Democratic Republic of Laos in the nineteen seventies. The socialists had taken over the country three years earlier but the fun of having a whole country to play with had soon drained away. Euphoria had been replaced by paranoia and anyone who didn't take the republic seriously was considered a threat. Dissidents were still being sent to 'seminars' in the north-east to join the ranks of officials from the old regime who were learning to grit their teeth and say 'Yes, Comrade'. But Siri and Civilai, forty-year veterans of the struggle, were tolerated. They posed no threat to the status quo and their rants against the system could be dismissed — with sarcastic laughter — as senile gibberish. But there was nothing senile or gibberitic about these two old comrades. Their minds sparkled like a March night sky. Given a chance, they could out-strategise any man or woman on the central committee. To find a young crocodile with a good mind amongst that flock of flamingos was a rare delight to them.

"You're quite right, of course." Siri bowed his head to the clerk. "Forgive me. I'm prone, like many men my age, to presuppose that young people have no minds. I assume they'd all be impressed with my bourgeois philosophy. You are obviously a cut above the rest."

"And you aren't going to win me over with your flattery, either," she replied.

"Nor with pink mimosa, nor sugared dates, no doubt," Siri added. He thought he noticed a germ of a smile on her lips. "You really have to see the funny side of all this, you know?"

"And why is that?" she asked.

"You really want me to tell you?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm tempted to suggest you fabricate people's experiences here. I noticed, for example, that your DHC has Comrade Bounmee Laoly charging into battle armed with only a machete at the age of sixty."

"A lot of people are still very active at sixty."

"I know that, but I also happen to know from personal experience he was already blind as a bat when he turned fifty. He couldn't find a machete, let alone brandish one."

She blushed, "I — "

"All we ask," Civilai took over, "is, should this great honour of herohood befall us — hopefully not posthumously — that we earn it from merit, not with the aid of major reconstructive surgery from Information."

"We'd like people to remember and respect us for what we are," Siri said.

"Warts and all," Civilai added.?

Siri and Civilai sloshed and slithered hand-in-hand through the rain to the ministry car park. A cream Citroen with a missing tail light and a sturdy Triumph motorcycle were the only two vehicles. They were parked in muddy water like boats. Drowning grass poked here and there through the brown gravy.

"Smart lady," Siri said.

"She certainly put us in our places."

"Nice lips."

"Exceptional."

"They did remain clenched when you mentioned your warts, though."

"They did."

Civilai opened the unlocked door of his old car and sat behind the steering wheel. Siri climbed into the passenger seat. They sat for a moment staring at the unpainted side wall of the building. As the concrete absorbed the endless rains, Siri fancied he saw the outline of New Zealand stained there, or it could have been a twisted balloon poodle. Following a disastrous year of drought, the farmers had smiled to see the early arrival of the 1978 rains. It was as if the gods had awoken late and, realising their negligence, had hastily attempted to make up for the previous year. The rain fell heavily and ceaselessly — three times the national average for April. The Lao New Year water festival celebrations — a time to call down the first rains of the year — were rained out. The earthen embankments of the new rice paddies were washed flat, the bougainvilleas had been rinsed colourless. The earth seemed to cry, "All right. Enough." But still it rained. It was nature's little joke. Like the Eskimos with their four million words for snow, the Lao vocabulary was expanding with new language to describe rain.

Today the water hung in the air like torn strips of grey paper.

"What is that?" Civilai asked.

"What's what?"

"That noise you're making."

"It's not a noise. It's a song. I have no idea where I heard it. I can't get it out of my head."

"Well try. It's annoying."

Siri swallowed his song.

"What do you think they've got on me?" he asked. "I mean, the DHC."

"Huh," Civilai laughed. "I knew it. You do want to be a national hero."

"I do not. I'm just…curious."

"About your warts?"

"Yes."

"Oh, where do I start? How about your abrasive personality?"

"Personalities change. And history has a way of smudging my character, don't forget."

"So I heard. All right…" Civilai beeped his horn for no apparent reason. "There's the spirit thing."

"How could they possibly know about that?"

"They probably don't know the specifics. Not that you actually chat with ghosties. I doubt they know that. But they must have heard the rumours. This is a small country. People like Judge Haeng must have accumulated a good deal of circumstantial evidence of your supernatural connections."

"But no proof. By its very nature he can't have accumulated evidence."

"No."

"Then they don't have anything."

"All right. Well, they probably don't like your Hmong campaign, either."

"It's hardly a campaign."

"You walked up and down in front of the Pasason News office with a placard saying 'WE NEED ANSWERS ON THE PLIGHT OF OUR HMONG BROTHERS'. People have been shot for less. You seem to have it in your mind that the government has a policy to intimidate minorities."

"It does."

"Well then. With that attitude I can see the central committee making little pencil crosses beside your name, can't you?"

"Things have to be sorted out before it's too late."

"You're right. If I were the Minister of Pinning Things Onto Chests I'd make you a Knight of the Great Order of Valour right away. Sadly, I'm just a retired has-been."

They sat silently for another moment, watching the moss grow.

"Thirsty?" Civilai asked.

Siri twisted around on his seat. The leather squeaked under his bottom.

"Perhaps just the one."?

To celebrate their impending hero status, Siri and Civilai partook of one or two glasses of rice whisky at a cigarette and alcohol stand behind the evening market. The proprietor was nicknamed Two Thumbs. A dull sobriquet, one might argue, no more spectacular than a fellow called One Bellybutton or Ten Toes. But Two Thumbs' uniqueness lay in the fact that both of his thumbs were on the one hand. Nobody could explain it. It was as if one of his thumbs got lonely in the womb and swam across the narrow channel of amniotic fluid to keep company with its twin. It was the talking point that attracted smokers and drinkers to his stall. There was nothing else remarkable about him. In fact, he was almost completely devoid of personality, as dull as laundry scum.

The drizzle continued to fall and the old grey umbrellas that offered respite from the hot sun did little to keep out the determined night rain. The straw mats upon which they would normally sit cross-legged had assumed the consistency of freshly watered post office sponges. So the old men each sat on small plastic bathroom stools with a third stool between them as a table. A fourth and final stool offered a perch for their bags and shoes. Two Thumbs sat on a regular chair with his cigarette display case parked upon two building blocks to his left, and his drink selection — actually rice whisky and slightly cheaper rice whisky — neatly displayed in the body of an old TV cabinet to his right. He sat watching over his three-umbrella establishment like a eunuch keeper of the crown jewels, silent and threatening.

"Tell me again why we come here," Civilai asked.

"The ambiance," Siri told him.

"Right."

"And, for this: Hey! Two Thumbs!" Siri called. He and Civilai hoisted a thumb each. Two Thumbs gave them a two-piece thumbs-up with his left hand. It was his party trick. They never tired of it.

"Great!" they shouted, and threw back their drinks. They were on their second bottle and it was a wicked brew only two degrees short of toxic. They splashed their feet like children and wondered what diseases might be lurking there in the dirty ground water.

"I blame the Chinese," Civilai decided.

"For the rain?"

"For everything. They're responsible for all our ills."

"I thought that was the French."

"Huh, don't talk to me about the French. I hate the French."

"That's most ungrateful of you. They did educate us."

"Educate? They certainly didn't educate me. I educated myself, little brother. Like you. We just used their schools and their books…"

"And their language."

"And their language, granted. But we used them. We educated ourselves in spite of the French. But the Chinese. They're sneaky bastards. I mean, really sneaky. The French…you have to admire the French."

"I thought we hated them."

"Hate? Yes. But you can admire people you hate. I admire their tactics. They steamroll in, shoot everyone, take over and treat us all like dirt. You see? You know where you stand with oppressors like that. But the Chinese? All through the war they were building roads. A damn war going on all around them and they have seven thousand military engineers and sixteen thousand labourers up there in the north building roads."

"That's good, isn't it?"

"Good? Good? It's devious, is what it is. You think they were up there building roads so we could move troops?"

"Yes?"

"No, sir. They were building roads 'cause they knew one day they'd own us. They were putting in their own infrastructure, damn it."

"Are you sure you'll be able to drive home?"

"No problem. The roads are all canals right now. I just wind up the windows and float home. Where was I?"

"Discussing how to make a good pie dough."

"Right. Right. So, 'the monstrous plot'. That's what the Vietnamese call it. The monstrous plot. They've got that right. Those Chinks have got their eyes on us. They're carnivores. As soon as the timing's right we'll all be speaking Chinese and eating the sexual organs of endangered animals. You mark my words. And what's all this Voltaire crap?"

"I suspect you've changed the subject."

"What do you think you're playing at, quoting Voltaire at a hero interview?"

"I've chanced upon one or two insightful books. I thought a quotation might help in my self-destruction."

"Oh, I see. One minute you want to be a hero. Then you don't. A hero has to be decisive, Siri. Into that phone box, on with the tights and the cape. Go for it, I say. Whether or not we deserve it is irrelevant. We either vanish into superfluity or we go down in history. Take your choice."

"Voltaire said the superfluous is a very necessary thing."

"You're plucking my nostril hair, aren't you?"

They raised their thumbs to the proprietor who responded obediently.

"She did have spectacular lips though, didn't she?" Civilai recalled.

"They took me back, I tell you."

They waved at the people two mats away who were celebrating a birthday. The group had a glazed bun with a candle in it. These were frugal times.

"I probably shouldn't tell you this…" Civilai began.

"Then don't."

"They've fixed the projector."

"At K6?"

"They got someone in from the Soviet Embassy. Now, there's another sneaky oppressor, the Russian overlords. Damn these subtle invaders. Good electricians though. Said it was a fuse problem. Fixed it in a minute. And…"

"What?"

"There's a showing tomorrow afternoon."

"You weren't going to tell me."

"It's invitation only. All the big nobs will be there. Half the politburo. I only got a ticket 'cause the foreign minister is in Cuba."

"What's showing?"

"Siri, you can't go."

"What's showing?"

If there were two greater film buffs in Laos they had yet to surface. Since their school years in Paris, mesmerised by the magic of Clair, Duvivier and Jean Renoir, Siri and Civilai had been addicted to the images on the silver screen. Wherever they happened to be they would seek out a cinematic projection. They could happily sit through anything, from the dullest training film such as last week's The Maintenance of Dykes, to a Hollywood blockbuster with Vietnamese subtitles. The old boys had seen them all. And, most certainly, once the scent of cinema was in Siri's nostrils, there was no way they could keep him out.?

That annoying song had been playing in his head all the way back but Siri made it home just before the curfew. Across the road on the bank of the Mekhong river, Crazy Rajid, Vientiane's own street Indian, sat beneath a large yellow beach umbrella. He returned Siri's wave. Siri was surprised to find the shutters ajar at the front of their shop. A handwritten sign taped to the shop's doorpost read, "All welcome in our time of sorrow." Siri had known Madame Daeng since long before she became a freedom fighter against the French and a spy for the Pathet Lao. But she and Siri had been married only three months. Both widowed, they had recently found one another and a peculiar magic had entered their lives. Not a day went by without wonder. And this odd situation was certainly a wonder. He looked cautiously inside the shop and found a trail of lit temple candles leading across the floor and climbing the wooden staircase. He smiled, locked the shutters, and began to extinguish the candles one by one. Beyond the contented clucking and cooing of the chickens and the rescued hornbill in the backyard, there was no sound.

He reached the top balcony and entered their bedroom. Madame Daeng sat all in white at the desk with her head bowed. Her short white hair was an unruly thatch of straw Their bed was illuminated with more candles and surrounded with champa blossoms. He laughed, walked across the room and put his hand on his wife's shoulder but she pulled away.

"Don't touch me," she said. "I'm in mourning."

"It's all right. They said I don't have to die right away. They can pencil me in later."

"I don't believe you. You're the spirit of my heroic dead husband come to taunt me. Be gone with you."

She waved a lighted incense stick in his direction.

"You do realise there's something disturbingly erotic about all this, don't you?"

"You're an ill man, Dr Siri."

"And you're a most peculiar wife, Madame Daeng. Do I have time for a bath before I'm laid to rest?"

It was some time around two a.m. when Daeng awoke and sensed that her husband wasn't sleeping. The night clouds had blanketed the stars and moon. Across the river that trolled grimly past the shop, Thailand was enjoying one of its customary power failures. There were no lights skimming across the black surface of the Mekhong. All around them was a darkness so deep it could never be captured in paint. She spoke to her memory of the doctor.

"Not tired?" she asked.

She heard the rustle of the pillow when he turned his head.

"No."

"That nightmare again?"

"No, I haven't slept long enough to get into a nightmare with any enthusiasm. Daeng?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think I'm hero material?"

"Of course I do."

"I mean, seriously."

"I mean seriously, too."

"They said I have faults."

"A hero without faults is like an omelette without little bits of eggshell in it."

He was silent for a few seconds before, "An omelette with eggshell isn't — "

"I know," she laughed. "Look. It's the middle of the night. What do you expect? I'll have a better example for you in the morning. But, yes. You're not only hero material, you're already a hero. It doesn't matter what the idiots at Information say."

"You're right."

"I know."

They listened to the darkness for a while.

"Oh, and by the way," Daeng said. "I forgot to mention, Inspector Phosy came by earlier He wants you to get in touch with him. Said it's urgent."

"Why didn't you tell me that when I was still dressed?"

"I didn't want you running off and deserting me in my hour of need. Plus, I don't get the feeling it was that type of emergency."

"What do you…? Oh, you mean the other type."

"I swear he's turning into a Vietnamese. If it was police business he'd be here banging on the door. But I doubted it was. Everything in his personal life is suddenly urgent."

"Why on earth does he need to consult me on domestic issues? You were here. Why couldn't he ask you for advice?"

"He's a man, Siri. You lot still aren't ready to admit in front of a woman that you're clueless."

"How did I ever make it through seventy-three-point-nine years without you?"

"I think I got here just in time."

"I've a good mind to invite you to the cinema tomorrow."

"We haven't got a cinema."

"K6. They've fixed the projector There's a film showing in the afternoon. A romance, according to Civilai."

"And we have tickets?"

"Not exactly."

"I rather saw that as a yes or no question."

"Then, yes."