Curse of the Pogo Stick (22 page)

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 soiree. 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.

WEDLOCKED

O
n the fifteenth of January, 1978, Siri and Madame Daeng were married. It was a two-part affair. In the morning, the bride and groom arrived at the registry office on That Luang and sat on one of three long benches. As motorcycles, marriages, and intentions to transfer cattle ownership or open a smallholding were all registered at the same place, it was necessarily a busy scene. Oil-smudged mechanics sat alongside men and women ripe with the scent of manure, who in turn sat beside couples in their Sunday best. Siri wore a navy blue Mao shirt and sandals. The shirt was freshly laundered but not ironed. Daeng had come straight from the shop but had had the decency to remove her apron before heading out. They had the required paperwork with them. It was several inches thick and in triplicate.

When their turn came they were shown not into a chapel or a private room but to the third desk from the end of a long busy row. Their officiant was in his thirties with the pallor of hepatitis on his skin and a drape of greasy hair that fell across one eye. He didn’t bother to look up as they sat on the non-matching chairs in front of him.

“Documents!” he said, tapping his forefinger on the desktop.

It was probably the liver spots on the hand proffering said documents that brought him out of his clerical trance. He looked from Siri’s face to Daeng’s, then back at Siri’s, and grimaced unkindly. He obviously didn’t take well to complications.

“Look,” he said. He spoke very carefully and at a volume he hoped the elderly people in front of him would be able to hear. “The system has changed.”

Daeng grasped Siri’s hand and suppressed a laugh.

The man pressed on. “These days we don’t need the parents” – he looked more closely – “or the grandparents of the betrothed to attend a ceremony. Everything’s done through documentation.” He held up a sheet of foolscap. “That means papers. If the couple is adequately matched and share a philosophy to further the cause of the Republic, then – ”

“We aren’t – ” Siri began.

“If you wish to take photographs with your relatives you can do so outside, granddad. There’s an attractive hermaphrodite oak in bloom in front of the building, grandma, that’ll look nice in your album. Now, why don’t you both – ”

“Son, slow down there,” Siri said in a strong, loud voice that caused other officials to look up.

The clerk sighed, “What?”

Daeng knew what she could expect from her beau in circumstances such as these but this was her day, too. She squeezed Siri’s hand and smiled at him before rising from her seat. She walked around the desk and sat on the smallest pile of paperwork at the front corner. The clerk scraped his chair away from her. She leaned into his very personal space and brushed some imaginary lint from his shoulder. Her large black eyes bore into the average brown button ones of her victim. They apparently left him paralyzed.

“Yours,” Daeng said very calmly, “is a job that does not involve a great deal of thought. You receive the pile of documents. You thumb through them to see if they’re all in order and copy the names of the couple onto your list. You read out one or two spurious legal lines from the handbook and pepper them with quotes from Mr Marx or Mr Lenin that have nothing to do with love or happiness. You tell us we must be good servants of the socialist state, get us to sign a certificate, and hand us the smudged back carbon copy to take home.”

She looked back at her smiling bridegroom, then stood and looked down at the clerk.

“Just do your job,” she said. “Don’t make it any more embarrassing than it already is.”

In six minutes it was all done. They didn’t fall into one another’s arms and kiss and express their joy because what they’d endured was nothing but a bureaucratic exercise to feed the state’s hunger for paperwork. Siri returned to the morgue, Daeng to her shop to meet the busy lunch crowd. There would be no evening shift that day as the shop was booked for a very special private function.

Siri and Civilai sat like one creature on the rattan sofa at the back of Madame Daeng’s café. Their wrists were encased in thick wads of ceremonial strings like suicide survivors. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders and their heads abutted: Siamese twins joined at the brain. They wore matching leis of jasmine and held mugs of actual Western whisky in their free hands. Scotch hits drinkers trained on rice alcohol hard.

“Good show, wasn’t it?” slurred Siri.

“The best, little brother.”

“What was your favourite part?”

“Oh, I liked the bit where you dropped the bowl of ornamental flowers on the abbot’s foot.”

“I made that part up myself.”

“Well done.”

“It wasn’t that heavy.”

“He swore as if it was.”

“Well, he should have been wearing shoes. His fault.”

“How do you feel?”

“About breaking his toe?”

“About being married again.”

“Happy as a loon. I’m the type who needs a woman in his life, old brother. So are you. We’re hopeless on our own. The ten years since Boua died have been much longer than the thirty-five we were together. I’ve been an elephant with only two front legs. I need my rear end with her tail swishing away the flies.”

“I’m sure Daeng will appreciate the analogy.”

“It’s a compliment. I find elephant rear ends very attractive. I’m lucky to have her.”

“I agree. But don’t forget Xieng Noi.”

“Why do you only quote literature when you’re drunk?”

“It’s the only time I can remember it. Whisky stimulates the attic of my mind, where all the books are stored.”

“So, what about him?”

“Who?”

“Xieng Noi. I can’t begin to not forget him till I know how he’s connected to my marriage.”

“Xieng Noi spent the greater part of his early life in the monastery. Then, out of the blue, he was taken by a great desire to have a wife. The passion overwhelmed him until one day it occurred to him he didn’t have the wherewithal to hang on to the type of woman he desired. So he gave up his quest and went to work on the land instead.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“So…what’s it got to do with me?”

“Do you have the wherewithal to keep Madame Daeng?”

“I can’t think why not. I’m something of a catch, you know.”

“You won’t do her much good in a re-education camp.”

“Why should I…?”

“That one-man demonstration last week. People have been shot for less.”

“How sweet of you to worry about me after all these years.”

“A few more tricks like that and she’ll realize what shes let herself in for. She’ll get on her bike.”

“I’ll let the air out of her tyres.”

“There’s no hope. I’m sorry to tell you, senility has finally caught up with you.”

“And you, of all people, should know what that’s like.”

“I think those Hmong have bewitched you.”

Siri looked away and Civilai knew there would be no more discussion of the topic that night. Something was troubling his friend but this wasn’t the right place to talk of sad things. This was a time for celebration. They stared out at the vaudeville that surrounded them. It was like an Italian film they’d once seen: so many bodies and movement and colour, but no real plot. People from Siri’s house were there zooming in and out of focus, and the morgue folk, and Phosy. And there were certainly two little fat babies being handed around like hors d’oeuvres. And, yes, there were monks and a guitar player and a dog or two that had wandered in off the street.

Auntie Bpoo, the transvestite fortune-teller, was dressed in a gold lame ball gown and army boots. Crazy Rajid, the Indian, had kindly consented to wear clothes for the evening. And of course there was the beautiful Madame Daeng, splendid in her pink costume and her oh-so-subtle make–up. Every time she drifted into view Siri sighed and remembered what a lucky old soul he was.

“You do realize,” Civilai slurred, “this is all illegal. A religious ceremony and music and fun. Fun is certainly against the constitution.”

“You’re right. I shall turn myself in to Judge Haeng first thing in the morning.”

“And where is your saviour tonight? I was sure you’d invite him in thanks for rescuing you from the jungle.”

“I did, but he had an appointment with his publisher. Something about his memoirs: how he single-handedly turned back a thousand Hmong warriors and carried one frail old doctor on his back for a week.”

“I’d buy a copy.”

“Me too.”

“And talking about rescues – ”

“You’re good at that.”

“What?”

“Linking unrelated topics.”

“Thank you.”

“So…?”

“Eh?”

“Talking about rescues…”

“Oh, yes. Your American friends: the dead ones. I keep meaning to ask. Whatever happened to them?”

“Danny and Eric.” Siri recalled the Air America pilots fondly.

They clinked glasses.

“They should be home by now. I took them to the American consulate.”

“It’s still there?”

“It’s a little more subdued than it used to be but the officials seemed suspiciously glad to see me. I imagine I was the first bone hunter they’d seen who didn’t ask for money.”

“Did they give you anything?”

“A ballpoint pen.”

“Life just gets better.”

“Amen.”

Madame Daeng, temporarily freed from the shackles of arthritis by Dr Johnnie Walker, danced a sort of hula in front of her blushing husband.

“I think that woman’s making advances toward you,” Civilai said.

“Huh, I’m not that easy.”

“Yes, you are. And talking about loose women…”He squinted to make out the familiar shape of his wife through the throng.