Colin Cotterill - Curse of the Pogo Stick

“Not trouble exactly,” Ming told her. “She started a club for undergraduate students. It was an anticommunist club. I can’t recall precisely what they called it. She spread the word that the Red plague would one day engulf our country and destroy all the good work the Royalists had done. Much as I love our great socialist state, there are those who would describe that as something of a prophecy a decade ago.”

“Did the group do any agitating?” Phosy asked.

“Not really. They just put up posters warning of the Red threat and held rallies.”

“Can you recall who else was in that club?” Phosy asked.

“Not offhand. I could put together a list for you as it comes to me, I suppose.”

“We’d be grateful. Did you have any contact with her after she graduated?”

“Nothing personal,” Ming confessed, “but this is a small country. I was kept in touch with her activities by others. As you know, everybody knows someone who knows someone here.”

“What did you hear?”

“They had a son, she and her soldier husband. She’d raised him as a patriot. As he was going through his teens the war against the communists was heating up. He too enlisted in the military and by fate or influence he found his way into his father’s regiment. Rumor has it that they were on a mission together in Huaphan in the northeast and that both father and son were slaughtered in a PL ambush.”

Dtui’s gaze flicked back from the window.

“Now that would be enough to make a woman nuts,” she said.

Ajan Ming seemed a little taken aback by her insensitivity.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Please go on.”

“That was the end of the story. We heard no more of her.”

“And you don’t recall the family name of the soldier?” Phosy asked.

“Not at all.” The coffee was barely cool enough to sip but he held the glass in a paper napkin and threw back the entire contents in one gulp. “That doesn’t help you, does it?”

“No.”

“I wish there were some way I could make a connection for-Ah, now there’s a possibility.”

“What is?” Dtui asked.

“They were Christian. The whole family. Catholic if my memory serves me right. Phonhong had converted when she married the officer. If the husband and son had a Christian funeral-”

“They’d be buried in the Catholic cemetery. Brilliant,” said Phosy.

“If only we knew their names.” Dtui shook her head.

“But we do,” said Ming, glowing with that righteous radiance intellectuals exhibit when they solve problems. “Their first names, at least. Both the husband and son had been named after the great king Fa Ngum. That shouldn’t be too hard to find on a headstone.”

“Excellent.” Dtui smiled. “I should spend some time out here. Maybe some of this brilliance would rub off on me.” She wrote down the name and one or two notes to herself on a napkin.

“Let’s go take a look,” Phosy suggested.

“What now?”

“No time like the present. It isn’t the biggest cemetery in the world.”

“Not the biggest at all,” Ming agreed. “I confess you two have me worked up into such a lather I’d even consider going with you to conduct the search. Unfortunately, I have to proctor an examination in the next hour.”

“Ajan Ming, you’ve done more than enough already,” Phosy told him. “We can handle it from here. Thank you.”

Dtui looked anxious. “Shouldn’t we get in touch with the others?”

“Come on, Dtui,” Phosy laughed. “To look around a cemetery? What trouble can we get into there?” He shook his head at Ming. “I’m afraid my wife’s getting a little paranoid in her old age.”

“Paranoia isn’t always a bad thing,” Ming responded. “But I am assured the residents of the Catholic cemetery are harmless.”

“Then at least let’s stop for lunch on the way,” Dtui pleaded. “I’m not sure I can go rooting through a cemetery on an empty stomach.”

According to official work application forms and Party records of affiliation with organizations, Phosy and Dtui were atheists. Not surprisingly, anyone who filled in a form in the People’s Democratic Republic checked “atheist” in the religion box. It was circumspect to do so: “opium of the people” and all that. But the Lord Buddha isn’t a deity who just goes away when you fill in a form. There were very few Lao who didn’t offer Him their thanks on the rare occasion when things went right. His was a good old-fashioned religion that didn’t cause wars or advocate hatred of the beliefs of others. And, at the end of the eightfold path, a Buddhist could expect his remains to be barbequed to the size of a pillbox and placed on the family altar.

So, for two latent Buddhists like Phosy and Dtui to be strolling around a Christian graveyard in the heat of the midday sun was a little overwhelming. Only a few feet below them lay the complete and nicely dressed remains of hundreds of God worshippers, any one of whom could break through the earth and wrap his or her bony fingers around the trespassers’ necks, just like in the movies.

“I’m not sure I can do this,” Dtui confessed.

“Take a deep breath.”

The Vientiane Catholic Cemetery was out on route 13 at kilometer 9. It was a walled field and most of the graves and stones were squashed to one end as if for warmth or companionship. The occupants were a peculiar mix of European, Chinese, and Lao. The planners had given the bodies very little space to stretch out and relax in the afterlife. Phosy had never learned Western script so Dtui led them from stone to stone translating as she went. Fortunately, the headstone they were looking for was in the first corner of the cemetery they searched. They’d headed for the newest-looking stones and the best-kept graves. The wide plot had one headstone for both father and son. It was inscribed in English: “Here lie two Warriors named Fa Ngum. May their Souls rest in Peace.”

“Well, that’s marvelous,” said Dtui in her loud huffy voice. “Now what are we supposed to do, interview them?”

She kept the thought to herself that this was exactly the situation in which you could use a Dr. Siri, communicator with the dead. She knew her husband wasn’t a great fan of superstitious mumbo jumbo. They gazed around. There appeared to be no office. One elderly gentleman with long unkempt hair stood glaring at a headstone. He held a small bouquet of lifeless flowers in front of his crotch. In the next row, a worker with a long-handled rake removed leaves from the walkway. He was a short man with sunburned skin and unkempt whiskers growing in thickets here and there across his chin. His smile was no more than a single drawn line on a cartoon face but it made him look like a man who enjoyed his work.

Phosy called over to him. “I was wondering…?”

“Good health,” the man said, his smile opening to show a full set of white teeth.

“Good health. I wanted to know if there might be an administration office somewhere where we could inquire about a grave here.”

“Used to be, sir. Shut down when the French left. There’s just me now.”

“For the whole place?”

“Yes, sir. They don’t cause me a lot of trouble.”

Phosy walked between the graves to join the worker. Dtui held back and looked discreetly at the mourner. The old man hadn’t put down his flowers. He was standing there either mouthing a prayer or inflicting a curse.

“Have you been here long?” Phosy asked the worker.

“Twenty-seven years, sir.”

“Really? So who pays your salary now that there are no French?”

“There’s a fund. The bereaved pay into it for the upkeep. No graves to dig these days, just trimming grass and cleaning up.”