Colin Cotterill - Anarchy and the Old Dogs

He shook his head. She raised her eyebrows and nodded. This was it. The walls had been breached.

At nine thirty, Phosy was walking alone through the camp, asking for directions to Area Sixteen. It was a decent walk across the sprawling base, and the rain had been falling constantly for an hour. It was a bad day for volleyball. What the nearest family assured him was Court Four turned out to be a rectangle of mud. No net, no lines, no players. He wasn’t sure why he’d expected to find an actual volleyball practice going on. It just seemed like a fitting way to round out the subterfuge. He sat on a plank nailed to two stumps that probably served as the bleacher, his back to a bamboo fence. Twenty minutes later he was still there. The rain had soaked through his clothes and was working its way through his skin. A camp dog had joined him. Live dogs were always a good sign in a refugee camp, proof that there was enough to eat without getting desperate.

The dog looked up at the sound before Phosy heard it. Ten yards away, three lengths of bamboo fence tilted forward and a dark face peered through the gap at the bottom. The man looked at Phosy.

“You the carpenter?”

“That’s me.”

“Come on.”

Phosy ran to the gap, got on his hands and knees, and crawled under the pivoted slats. The dog came out with him. On the outside of the fence three men stood looking down at him. One was Bunteuk, the area chief.

“Good morning,” Phosy said, straightening up.

“Good morning, Comrade,” Bunteuk replied.

Phosy laughed off the address. “No need for that here, brother.” He held out his hand but Bunteuk didn’t return the handshake.

“I imagine that would depend on how stupid you think we are, comrade spy. You’ve been recognized.”

With his hand still held hopefully in front of him, Phosy was hit from behind. Through his life he’d been slugged with various blunt and not-so-blunt instruments, and, as he sank to his knees and inkblots filled in his vision, he was pretty sure he’d been felled this time by a block of wood- about four by four-definitely teak.

Siri had arrived at the village in time to attend the official wedding ceremony of a neighbor’s son. The soldier, Kumpai, had promised to come and pick him up at the hospital but he hadn’t shown so Siri found his own way there in a trishaw. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, an utterly inconvenient hour for everyone involved, except for the government cadre who’d been assigned to officiate. As the regulations stipulated the need for chairs, the fishermen had been obliged to borrow two dozen from the Full Moon dance hall and ship them downriver on a garbage scow.

The official was young and puffy and had no more interest in the union of Gaew and Mon than he had in the average yearly rainfall of Finland. He opened the Party manual and read out seven ways the confused betrothed would be able to benefit society and the nation as a whole by becoming a married couple. He reminded them that Marx had described a socialist marriage as the uniting of two people, making them one, but with the output of three. Siri didn’t recall that particular equation from his early readings of Marx, nor did he understand the mathematics of it, but for once he kept his mouth shut. The sweating official concluded: “The Democratic Republic of Laos is proud to announce your union certified.”

They signed a document, he countersigned it, and handed them the carbon copy as evidence. He put the top copy in his briefcase, shook hands with the moderately happy couple, and left. The whole thing took sixteen minutes. Returning the chairs would take two hours.

Siri managed to waylay the young man before he could head off on his little motorcycle. He held out a note he’d conceived and written during the ceremony but the official didn’t take it.

“Son,” Siri said, “I believe you have a Vietnamese adviser at the town hall.”

“What would that be to you?” the young man asked.

“I need you to give this note to him.”

“Do I look like a postman?”

“No, you look like a very junior clerk who performs whatever tasks he’s told to. Don’t get clever with me. Governor Katay is a personal friend.”

The cadre was suddenly more tentative about his attack.

“If you’re his friend, why don’t you give it to him yourself?”

“What do they feed you young fellows to make you all so suspicious of everyone? Listen, the governor and I had dinner together last evening. The Vietnamese adviser wanted some information and, as I speak Vietnamese, the governor asked me to write it down. See? It’s written in Vietnamese. That’s all. Put it to your ear. Nothing ticking in there. I’m sure the governor will be very grateful.”

The boy took the sealed envelope with its unfamiliar writing on the front. Siri always seemed to have plenty of envelopes of various sizes and shapes in his shoulder bag these days. “Well…”

“Tell him it’s from senior Party member Dr. Siri.”

“You’re a doctor?” He looked around at the surroundings.

“I’m on a house call. Run along now. I’ll phone the governor this evening and check whether your Vietnamese adviser got this, so don’t let me down.”

“No, sir.”

Siri sat with Sing’s mother and told her about the river dolphin as well as giving her an abridged version of his own spiritual connections. The woman put both her hands on his and thanked him. There is no greater gift to a bereaved mother than to know her child’s soul is at peace. She told him he’d already done too much for them and wondered how she could ever repay him. There weren’t enough fish in the Mekhong. Siri told her he wouldn’t give up on his investigation and didn’t expect anything in return.

“In that case,” the mother said. “I hope you’ll be kind enough to help us celebrate the neighbor’s wedding ceremony tonight.”

Siri was amazed. “You have another neighbor getting married?”

“Oh, no, Doctor. Same ones. But you don’t call what we just sat through a ceremony, do you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“We don’t. That was just to keep the government happy. They like their little speeches and form fillings. Of course, we all know it doesn’t mean the kids are really married. Signing a bit of paper doesn’t bond you with another person. No, sir. The real thing’s tonight. And we’d be honored if you could make it.”

“In that case,” Siri decided, “I’d be most happy to accept.”

Siri’s evening briefing was full of hope. Civilai presently had a core of three national department heads who had proven trustworthy enough to bring in to the ongoing counterrevolution. They were influential men who had agreed to launch discreet inquiries into recent unauthorized troop activities and unscheduled high-level meetings.

The initials PP, set out in the dentist’s letter, appeared to be those of the ringleader. But with so few combinations of initial letters equivalent to so many Lao names, there was a seemingly endless list of potential suspects. They ran from ex-Royal Lao politicians and imprisoned dissidents through to Hmong fighters and ex- and current military leaders. There were one or two favorites, but the woman Civilai had working through the list estimated it could be another week before all the potential coup leaders were identified and she could begin eliminating the dead, dying, and departed for foreign shores. It was a huge job.

Siri sat back in a rattan chair, sipping a lime juice and listening to his friend. Civilai was confident and in control now. This was the role for which he was best qualified: the coordinator.

“You’re good at all this, Comrade,” Siri said.