Colin Cotterill - Anarchy and the Old Dogs

“Oh, marvelous. You can’t dream up how to save the country but you can make a few fishermen feel a little better about their clumsy son.”

Siri looked at Civilai in surprise. “That wasn’t very nice.”

“I know.” He sighed and looked to the heavens. “I’m just feeling… all these detours are making me a bit irritable. Oh, Siri.” That was the moment Siri understood. Several heavy realities fell on him one after the other like thick leather-covered tomes from a shelf. He could tell from his friend’s expression that he was more lost than Siri could ever have imagined. The world he’d built was, like the palace, being taken apart by looters, and there was nothing he could do about it. Siri knew this diversion was doing him more harm than good.

He went to sit beside Civilai. “Brother, I’m sorry,” he said.

“Now what have you done?” Civilai didn’t look up. His watery eyes stared at his hands. Siri had never seen him looking so old.

“Sirs!” Keuk was standing beneath a hairy mistletoe tree, his arm extended toward the river, his eyes as round as Indian roti.

The gray-green sheen of some large creature had become visible just above the surface of the river at the far bank and was moving now directly to where the old men sat. The dolphin’s head emerged not far from their feet. Its mouth was curved into a smile. It looked up and blew a spout of water from its long pointed snout that hit Civilai square in the chest. The politburo man looked with amazement, first at the animal, then at Siri, and burst into laughter. Siri joined in. The pa kha, sensing a receptive audience, belly flopped back and forth in front of them. Siri put his arm around his friend’s shoulder and enjoyed the show.

“I’ve never seen nothing like that,” Keuk said, stepping out from the shade of his tree. “That’s something. That’s really something.”

“You know what?” Siri said. “I think she wants us to join her.” He walked to the water, kicked off his sandals, and rolled up the legs of his trousers. The clay bank dropped suddenly downward and he sat on its edge with his feet dangling in the passing Mekhong.

“You won’t forget you can’t swim, will you, Siri?” Civilai shouted.

The pa kha came immediately to the bank and rubbed herself against Siri’s knees. Then she floated on her back in front of him, looking expectantly.

“I’ve never in all my days…,” said Keuk.

Siri threw caution to the current and leaned over to stroke the dolphin’s belly. It was like running a hand over a large wet pickle, but not altogether unpleasant. The dolphin tossed back her head, meowed, and rolled onto her front.

“I think she likes me,” Siri said with a big smile on his face. Hooking one arm over the animal’s back, he slid slowly into the water.

“Siri?” Civilai shouted and walked hurriedly down to the bank, where his friend lay embracing a large waterborne mammal. “You do understand what you’re doing, don’t you?”

Siri looked up at Civilai and his smile turned to astonishment as the dolphin set off into the river with him on her back.

“Siri!” Civilai was more anxious now. “Remember the Sirens. Get back here. Your life is in the hands of a fish.”

Siri gave an uneasy smile in response. He was almost at the deepest point of the river. “It’s all right, old brother. I’ve never felt safer in my life. This is-”

And at that moment the dolphin dived, taking Siri down into the water with her. So swift was their descent that within a second or two, the surface of the Mekhong had erased all evidence that the national coroner and his mount had ever existed.

The rain beat so heavily on the tin roof of their single-room home that Phosy and Dtui had given up trying to speak. Odd scents tangled together in the pitch-blackness and made Dtui’s head swim: the musty chemical smell of the creosoted plank walls, the bitterness of the banana-leaf matting that covered the raised-earth floor, the wholesome rain, and the sweet smoke of the mosquito coil. She lay, fully dressed, atop the inch-thick foam mattress. The hammering rain made her shudder but her side of the one double blanket remained beneath her. Although she was temporarily blinded and deafened by Mother Nature, she knew that Phosy lay covered in that same blanket just six inches from her side. Like most men, he wore only a gingham sleeping cloth knotted at his waist.

They couldn’t have slept separately. There were no locks on the doors and windows, and the cracks between the wooden slats were wide enough to poke a finger through. They were a married couple. They had to fit in, play their parts. She’d done well enough, convincing the other women she was just one more faithful wife following her older husband to a new life. She’d even made Phosy believe she was strong and courageous. Made him think she didn’t need his protection, she could do just fine without him. But on their first night alone in a camp on foreign soil, all her doubts found their way to her stomach. She wasn’t trembling from the cold.

There were many reasons she’d been unable to escape into sleep that night. She was hopelessly awake and alert.

The timpani on the roof contributed, the strangeness of the camp, the potential dangers. But even if these factors could be wished away by a well-placed prayer, she knew she’d still hear the morning cockerel with her eyelids wide open. She felt a tenseness she’d never be able to explain to anyone, a tenseness that only a twenty-five-year-old woman who had never spent the night in bed beside a man can feel.

The same range of clouds that was currently drenching the camp in Ubon was undecided as to how seriously it should rain on Khong across the border in Laos. It had dropped one serious deluge, then dribbled embarrassingly for several hours. The black jeep had benefited from the wash. Its daytime coat of red earth lay in ruddy puddles around its tires. It stood sleek and proud beneath Khong’s only streetlight, but its confident look was all bluff. The old American war wagon had carried its last general, fled its last conflict. A lack of oil, an overheated piston, a small imploding crunch, and suddenly one of man’s most brilliant inventions, the internal combustion engine, was no more than four hundred pounds of solid scrap metal.

If “lucky” was a fitting word to describe their plight, they had been lucky. It could have happened in a more isolated spot far from help. But Civilai had just dropped the enlightened fisherman at his shack and the jeep was passing through the center of Khong on its return journey to Pakse when everything seized up. Fortunately, the town had a guesthouse, and, as luck would have it, that guesthouse was a short wrench toss from the dead jeep.

Siri hadn’t suffered at all from his brief dip beneath the surface of the Mekhong. He’d had the good sense to hold his breath and not let go of his hostess. He had a feeling she’d soon have him back breathing oxygen. But during his five-second dousing, Siri had been afforded a vision-or, more accurately, a sensation. Just for a moment, he’d been young Sing-cold, shuddering, and alone. It was nighttime and above his head hung a huge circle of light as if a UFO were hovering over him. That was all. This told Siri that the boy’s soul had continued down the river and come to rest in the pa kha. To the fisherman, Keuk, this was tremendous news. Now he could be civil to his family and return to the drudgery of catching fish. But it didn’t get Siri any closer to solving the riddle of the boy’s death.

They lay side by side now, Siri and Civilai, under a huge tent of mosquito netting in the guesthouse bedroom. It wasn’t the most lavish of accommodations. There was a coffee shop and small reception area downstairs and one bedroom above. Luckily, it had been unoccupied. Civilai’s mood had sunk to new depths since the demise of the jeep. It was the final straw. He had gone to bed at seven, refusing food, drink, and conversation. Siri had walked around in the mud for an hour, enjoyed a slow delicious fish supper, and finally retired at nine thirty. He knew his friend was only pretending to sleep when he climbed onto the creaking bed, but something told him he was better off joining the charade.