Colin Cotterill - Anarchy and the Old Dogs

Like most outsiders, he was not to be trusted. He asked Siri one evening, “If anyone knew, do you think they’d tell a stranger in the street?”

No, they both knew it was a waste of time. Civilai busied himself with setting up his network of trustees. He was spending more time by himself. The dentist lead was getting fainter by the day but Civilai seemed to be more occupied. Siri would come back from a day of fruitless detecting to find him surrounded with handwritten notes. He’d always say, “We might be getting somewhere,” without giving away many details, and for a while, Siri believed there might be hope of an organized resistance. But one day he returned to find his friend particularly flustered and frustrated. The question Civilai asked was confirmation to Siri that they were lost.

“What about your-you know-other friends?”

Civilai had thus far avoided asking the “s” question. The fact that he was pursuing it now suggested to Siri that earthly channels had failed. His confidence crumbled like river salt.

“I seem to have become spiritually impotent,” Siri confessed.

“Oh, I say.”

“I know. I feel like a sinking ship, being deserted. I haven’t had any contact with the supernatural for over a week. I’ve even stopped dreaming.”

“Damn! Isn’t it always the way? When you really need a ghost there’s never one around.”

And, at exactly that second, like a convenient stage direction in a bad play, there came a loud knock at the door that made the two old fellows jump out of their skins. Civilai scrambled around for his dark glasses, and Siri, laughing, went to the door. The knocking became more intense.

“You’ll give yourself splinters,” he called. “I’m coming.”

With Civilai adequately disguised, Siri opened the door to find a small bony woman of around thirty standing in the doorway. She had on a well-worn green blouse and an oft-scrubbed green phasin skirt. Her head was bowed to hide her face, which left him with a view of thinning hair and a broad, uneven part. Her weather-beaten hands clasped a cloth bag in front of her.

“Are you the doctor from Vientiane?” she asked, without looking up.

“Yes. Can I help?”

“The fat policeman said I should come. He said you knew stuff about dead bodies.”

Siri stepped out to join her in the hallway and pulled the door to. Still she didn’t look up.

“Well, it was very nice of Officer Tao to recommend my services,” he said. “But actually I’m in the south on official business. I’m not sure I can…”

She looked up into his face. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen and tight with grief.

“It’s just… my son.”

“What about him?”

“They pulled him out of the Mekhong down at Sri Pun Don last night. He was in his school shirt with the badge. I sewed his name on it.” She paused to catch her breath. “That’s how they found me and let me know. I’d been looking for him for a week. It’s just me since his dad ran off but all the neighbors was looking. We went down to get the body. Brought it back today. We all know something’s not right.”

“In what way?”

“Our place is on the river, Doctor. We’re fishing folk.

Sing; that’s my boy, Sing could swim before he could walk. There wasn’t no way he could of drowned.”

“Accidents happen, Comrade. Even to experienced swimmers.”

“That’s what the police said. That’s why they refused to do anything about it. But things ain’t right, Doctor. I could take it, perhaps, if I thought he just drowned. I could live with it. But I know something else happened to him.”

“You think he was interfered with?”

“No, sir, not like that. We’re all river people. We’ve all seen drowned bodies before, plenty of them. But my Sing… just doesn’t look right. There’s something odd about the way he come out of the water.”

“And you want me to have a look.”

“We… we can’t pay you much.”

“Couple of fresh fish, perhaps?”

She smiled, tight-lipped. “That would be no problem at all, sir.”

Siri sloshed barefoot through the muddy streets, his old leather sandals in his hands. Twice he’d skidded and landed on his backside, laughing like a fool. The rain fell in a mist so fine and warm it was like walking into a long sneeze. It wasn’t a tropical storm by any stretch of the imagination and it wouldn’t help the farmers to any great extent, but it certainly felt good to be rained on again. Everything seemed to be going splendidly.

The misty downpour had begun as he sat drinking Lao cocktails (half rice whisky and the other half rice whisky) with Daeng at her humble wooden lean-to. They saw the rain as an omen, a sign that things were going to get better for their country. They’d sat on the front porch that night and talked about the missing years when Siri had fled to Vietnam with Boua. The last time he and Daeng had seen each other was in the sports stadium in Savanaketh on October 12, 1945. It was a date that neither of them was likely to forget, probably the happiest day the Lao had ever known.

The Japanese occupation forces had demonstrated that an Asian nation could match the once invincible West. This created a belief in the Lao that they could and should be running their own affairs. The French oppressor, preoccupied with events in Europe, had let its control of the colonies slip, and on that day in Savanaketh stadium, the governor had stood on the halfway line in the center of the football field and shouted into a wobbly microphone. On that day, Laos had been proclaimed an independent nation with its own national assembly. The cheers could be heard in Paris. There was an impromptu parade and an orchestra of khen pipes, gongs, and drums. Householders put up decorations and waved the new Lao flag. The celebrations went on far into the following day.

In fact, the celebrations had lasted almost as long as the independence. Following their rout by the Japanese, the French troops had regrouped, were rearmed by the Americans, and set about reclaiming their colony. The Free Lao movement, the Lao Issara, had suffered horrific reprisals for its audacity. There were massacres and witch hunts and Siri and Boua became fugitives. They escaped from Champasak and fought with a number of scattered Free Lao resistance groups before finding their way to Vietnam and a completely different type of insurgency.

Daeng had stayed in the south of Laos, and continued to sell her noodles by day. At night she coordinated covert Lao Issara operations to disrupt the French occupation. She was the agent they code-named Fleur-de-Lis, and, to the day the invaders scurried back to France with their tails between their legs, her identity had never been discovered. Siri considered her more of a national hero than a lot of the speech givers and hand shakers in Vientiane, and he told her so.

How drunk they became, these two old revolutionaries talking about their victories and defeats, recalling the names of their old allies. And, at the point when they could barely feel their faces, just as Siri was about to begin the long stagger back to his hotel, Daeng had surprised him once more with her resourcefulness.

“Oh, by the way,” she said. Siri had climbed to his feet using the front beam of the porch. Daeng had used Siri to pull herself up. She liked the way rice whisky dealt with arthritis. “I forgot the most important thing.”

“What could be more important than reviving the Free Lao?” Siri asked.

“I think I might have found your vagina.”

They were both at a giggly stage and it took a while for them to calm their respective convulsions.

“Of course, if you aren’t going to take it seriously…”