Colin Cotterill - Anarchy and the Old Dogs

“You know his spirit lives in a pa kha now?”

“They told me. That’s why I come over. Can I… talk to him?”

“Sing? Not with words.”

“How then?”

“You can talk to him with your heart.”

“I don’t know how to do that, Grandpa.”

“Of course you do. When you think about him, does your heart sometimes feel like it’s being pumped up?”

“All the time.”

“His spirit can feel that.”

“It can?”

“And when you think about him, and when you say his name to yourself, all those times, his spirit’s always listening. Sing knows.”

She smiled briefly and looked at the shimmering lights across the river. Then she turned to Siri with the serious expression of an adult and said, “Do you think it happened because of all the naughty stuff he did?”

“No. Nobody Sing’s age could ever be naughty enough to deserve what happened to him.”

“He was a terror, though. He started acting bad after his dad ran off.”

“In what way?”

“He used to sneak-you won’t tell anyone, will you?” Siri shook his head. “He went into temples and scraped the gold leaf off the Buddhas. That’s a sin, ain’t it?”

“Well… what’s your name, love?”

“Mim.”

“Well, Mim, there are those who’d say the temple shouldn’t have gold in the first place. But it’s true, you shouldn’t steal from anybody.”

“And he climbed like a monkey. He used to go up the town offices, the post office and the town hall and all them. He went on the weekends when they was all shut and he’d climb all over them till he found a shutter that wasn’t locked properly and he’d pinch stuff.” Her eyes welled with tears. “And… and I told him. I said, ‘Sing, if you don’t mend your ways…’ “She sobbed and Siri sidled over to her and put his arm around her shoulders. She continued to force out the words. “I said, ‘If you don’t mend your ways, you’ll get yourself killed.’ I said that, Grandpa. It was me that put the curse on him.”

She shook with tears and Siri pulled her to his chest.

“OK,” he said. “I understand. And you think because you said those things, it’s your fault he died.” He felt her head nod. “Well, that’s the silliest thing I’ve heard all year.

And I have to tell you I’ve heard some rubbish. Mim, nothing you said could make Sing die. It doesn’t work like that. I can tell when spirits are angry, and Sing’s spirit knows you had nothing to do with his going. You just said something sensible to make him stop being dishonest. That’s what friends do. He understands that. Do you believe me?”

Her nod wasn’t convincing. She looked up at Siri and he wiped the tears from her cheeks. “I knew, Grandpa,” she said. “I knew he was off to get into more trouble the day he disappeared. I tried to talk him out of it.”

“You saw him?”

“We always walked to school together. The days he bothered to go, anyway.”

“What happened?”

“He just said, ‘Stuff it, I’m not going.’ And he turned and walked the other way. I think he’d lost a book or something and he was afraid of the class monitor making fun of him.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Into town. We always went there at weekends and played around.”

“Was there some place he especially liked?”

“The city offices.”

“Hmm, right. But that day wasn’t a weekend. All the offices would have been open. There were people in them. And if he’d just walked around in his uniform, someone would have stopped him and shipped him back to school, the police especially. Was there some secret place you liked to go? Somewhere you couldn’t be seen?”

“Well…” She shook her head. “No.”

“Mim, it can’t be a secret anymore.”

“I know, but…”

“Mim.”

“Under the new bridge.”

“What new bridge?”

“The one to the airport. It’s not finished yet. They got all these big pipes and bricks and stuff under it. We got a camp there.”

“Do you mind if I go and see it tomorrow?”

“Don’t care. I’m not going there no more, not… not by myself.”

“I know. But don’t you forget what I told you. Sing’s spirit can tell when you’re sad or when you blame yourself. You don’t want to get his spirit depressed, do you?”

“No.”

“Because you’ve never seen anything worse than a depressed spirit. I remember seeing one once. It got drunk and rode its bicycle into a tree.”

She laughed and her face lightened. “Spirits can’t ride bicycles.”

“No? Then that must be why it ran into the tree.”

They walked back to the party hand in hand.

Dtui was frantic with worry. When the sun went down she’d started to work herself into a panic, not sure how long was a suitable time for a young wife to wait before missing her husband. There were head counts by the guards some evenings, spot checks on this or that sector. At seven she’d gone to Bunteuk’s room and asked whether he’d seen Phosy. The chief was seated on the floor with a circle of friends, gambling. He told her he hadn’t seen Phosy all day but that she shouldn’t worry, he was probably just caught up in a discussion somewhere and hadn’t noticed the time. He reminded her there really was nowhere to go.

But by eight thirty she could stay calm no longer. This wasn’t Dtui acting like a wife was expected to. This was Dtui anxious and fearful for her friend’s safety. She went to Bunteuk again and insisted they go to the camp authorities to file a report. Bunteuk assigned the duty to his deputy, Kumhuk, who was none too pleased to be dragged away from the card game. On the way to the Thai office, he told her not to expect much.

There was a form, of course, as there was for everything in Thailand. The policeman on duty filled it out reluctantly and laboriously: names, address, times, type of complaint, details, signatory, witness, time received. Once the form was placed in the in-tray, she’d asked impatiently what the officer planned to do about it. He told her to watch her temper and remember who and what she was. He said her husband would probably turn up drunk at midnight with cheap perfume around his fly like all the other worthless Lao shits.

Her natural response to that comment had earned Dtui a night in the violent residents’ cell, a crude cage at the rear of the police station, ten feet by ten, containing only a narrow wooden bench. Now, at six in the morning, pacing and huffing inside her metal cage like a wild boar, she waited for the day officer to arrive. She could see the night-duty clown chatting with two younger men before one walked back to the lockup. He was good-looking but no less condescending. She took a deep breath.

“Can I go now, sir?” she asked.

“Are you going to cause any more trouble?”

“Tr…? I came to report my husband missing. Is that causing trouble?”

“No. But punching an officer of the Royal Thai Police force could be interpreted as such.”

She smiled. “I certainly didn’t punch him.”

“He says you did. He’s got a tomato where his nose used to be as evidence.”

“Sir, the mud on my sandals caused me to slip on your concrete floor. I reached out to prevent myself from falling and your man’s nose just happened to be there. An understandable accident.”

The young man laughed and opened the cage door. The bird was about to fly when he grabbed her arm. “Sign!”

He held a letter saying she hadn’t been abused or molested while in custody. It was written in Thai and he didn’t expect her to understand it. She took his pen and signed “Minnie Mouse” in English. He didn’t bother to check.