Colin Cotterill - Curse of the Pogo Stick

“So, are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?” she asked.

“What’s that, auntie?”

“Something’s crawled into your head since we left the hospital.”

“Oh, I don’t know…”

“Tell me.”

“It’s the body. There’s something wrong with it.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I’m just getting one of those feelings. It’s like when Dr. Siri tells me I’m looking but I’m not seeing. Or perhaps I’m seeing but I’m not getting it Oh, listen to me. I’m just trying to be clever like him. I wish he was here, you know?”

“Me too.”

They were there, trespassing in the private grounds of his snooze. They loitered-those malevolent spirits-like teenage thugs, never in focus but there nevertheless.

Wherever his afternoon siesta led Dr. Siri Paiboun-down forested paths, through bombed towns-they lurked and watched him pass. He was aware of them in every dream. The Phibob, the ghosts of the forest, had no more useful occupation than to hang about in his subconscious and remind him of the constant threat they posed.

Dr. Siri was the reluctant host of Yeh Ming, a thousand-year-old shaman. During that old witch doctor’s comparatively short stay on earth and his comparatively long sojourn in the afterlife, Yeh Ming had caused no end of grief to the dark spirits and now they sought revenge. “A load of old supernatural pig swill,” some might say, and two years earlier Siri would have been the loudest in the chorus. But now there was not a doubt-no question. Only the charmed stone amulet he wore around his neck hung between Dr. Siri and a nasty end.

Although he hadn’t yet mastered his unwanted life, he’d learned to live it. Despite all this occult thuggery, the old doctor purred in his sleep like a snowy-haired cat. His chin rested on his chest and a barely audible snore resonated through his nostrils. At seventy-three years of age, he’d learned how to sleep through all variety of meetings and conferences undetected. He hadn’t once fallen off his seat. Of course, he was built for balance-short and solid-and from the distance of the speakers’ platform he appeared to be just one more rapt member of the thousand-plus audience, deep in thought. In truth, only the extreme volume of the Vietnamese loudspeakers could have drowned out the collective buzz of hundreds of snoozing cadres. If the generator had failed that chilly afternoon, residents of Xiang Khouang would have gone running to their homes in fear of a plague of bumblebees.

Most of the regional delegates had been up through the night slurping sweet rice whisky through bamboo straws and reminiscing with long-lost allies. Siri, more than most, had endured the thanks of countless old soldiers he’d repaired in battlefront surgery. He’d accepted a glass from each of them and was ill prepared for seven more hours of keynote addresses and reports. It would have been impossible to withstand such torture without the odd nap or two.

It was around three when he regained consciousness in time to learn that “the quintessential socialist is patriotic, technically and managerially competent, morally upright and selflessly devoted to the greater social good,” but he’d forgotten to bring his notepad. He caught sight of his boss, Judge Haeng, nodding enthusiastically in the second row. Siri clicked the bones in his neck and instinctively reached up to scratch the lobe of his left ear. He’d lost it in an altercation a few months before but its spirit continued to tingle. Damned annoying it was. He shifted his weight from buttock to buttock to revitalize his circulation and looked absently around him. The regional representatives sat unfidgeting like maize on a breezeless day, silently counting down the minutes. Although Stalin had never actually bothered to write it down, Siri was aware that a good communist had to be a good Buddhist. Only meditation and a banishment of pain could get one through a day of Party political bull.

Siri looked with admiration along the furrows. Only one undisciplined cadre had succumbed indiscreetly to fatigue. He sat two rows in front, six seats across. Obviously the quarterly Party Planning and Progress Conference had been too much for him. He slumped like a wet rag in his chair, his head hanging uncomfortably backward, staring at the temporary tarpaulin roof. One would have to be extremely tired to adopt such a drastic pose-or dead as an absent earlobe. Siri opted for the latter. He calmly stood, pushed past knees to the end of his row and more knees to the seat of the dead comrade. The disturbance in an, until now, unruffled event caused the speaker on stage to lose his place in his speech and look out at the melee.

Siri, delighted to have an opportunity to make something happen on this otherwise wasted day, felt for a pulse in the old cadre’s neck and shouted with unhidden glee, “This conference has suffered its first fatality. There will undoubtedly be more.”

In Vientiane, the autopsy of the unknown soldier began four hours late due to the fact that socialism had somehow made time more flexible. There were often situations when 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM were interchangeable. Director Suk and Surgeon Mot got to the morgue at exactly the time everyone was supposed to be on their way home. The director had been diverted to supervise the placement of a flower bed-the hospital’s first-courtesy of the Vietnamese Elderly Widows Union. A regiment of dazzling yellow chrysanthemums stood guard in the center of the compound. This event had coincided with the arrival of the first batch of nurses trained in Bulgaria. Naturally, Suk had to appear in several photographs with the nurses and the flowers and sign endless documents related to both distractions. The doctor had found himself in an unscheduled political lunchtime seminar that dragged on through the afternoon when no consensus could be arrived at with regard to the collectivization of bean farming.

The only good news resulting from this delay was that by now the captain was completely de-iced. Then there was the fact that Dtui had been given four more hours to look at the body and the uniform it had arrived in. It had allowed her time to confirm in her own mind that something was very wrong. She wasn’t absolutely sure what that was, but she was confident enough in her instinct to know that the autopsy could not go ahead. She was standing by the corpse feeling below the soldier’s rib cage when Surgeon Mot marched in.

“Nurse!” he said. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?” He was skinny as a drip of rain down a window with hair like a poorly fitting Beatles wig. He had a large bloated nose and saggy eye bags. Dtui’s first impression was that Surgeon Mot had suffered in East Germany. To compensate for his suffering he’d adopted an inappropriate German arrogance. Dtui could see nothing Lao in him.

“Dr. Mot,” she began.

“Nurse, step back, please.”

“But, comrade…”

“Did you not hear me?”

At that moment, Director Suk walked into the cutting room and took up a position as far away from the corpse as possible. There was no secret at the hospital that the man had no stomach for medical matters. He was an administrator. He was followed close behind by a gentleman in uniform whom nobody bothered to introduce. Dtui guessed he was a military observer although the insignia on his uniform was faded from overwashing and he wore white socks that peeked over his boots.

With an unnecessary flourish, Mot pulled back the towel that lay across the lap of the corpse. Dtui grew more anxious. She appealed directly to Suk.

“Director! I strongly recommend you postpone this autopsy.”

“Oh, I see,” said Suk with the usual sarcastic smirk. “Dr. Siri goes away and his nurse takes over the administration of the morgue. Is that the way we run things here?”