Colin Cotterill - Anarchy and the Old Dogs

She untied the loose knot and pulled the cloth forward. She took the soap from its floating dish, reached inside her sarong, and scrubbed. Then she retied the knot and reached up inside from the hem and took great pains to soap even the most inaccessible nooks and crannies. She gave a little spin-drier shimmy, collected her soap dish, and waded to the bank with the cloth sticking to her lean body like a tattoo. Siri was invigorated. It was a sight to turn a boy into a man. It was so stimulating he could momentarily forget the river bacteria and algae that dedicated their short lives to seeking out warm fertile flesh to infest. He could certainly forgive her for polluting a waterway that provided drinking water to thousands of families downstream, and the thought of what might have entered the water upstream wasn’t even worth considering. All of that fell into the realm of meaningless trivia when compared to the pleasure to be had from watching a woman bathe in a river.

The sight reminded him why he’d come to this spot in the early hours of the morning. Even before the party had begun to wind down, it had become imperative to see Daeng and tell her the news. In his inebriated state he’d been unable to find her small house along the confusing backstreets so he’d gone to her noodle stand. Not surprisingly, at 3 a.m. it was all disassembled and tied onto her cart, which in turn was padlocked to a six-inch pipe. He’d climbed the bluff to consider his next move and there fatigue and pain had overcome him.

But now the ferry was operating and a lot of hungry people would be passing up and down the ramp. He knew his old friend would be at work, and nothing soothed a hangover like a bowl of noodles. If Daeng’s noodle stall had been equipped with rafters it would have been jammed to them. The little plastic stools were all occupied, some by two patrons each balancing on one cheek. Others sat eating on the concrete ramp with their feet dangling over the edge. A long queue of people stood in front of the cart watching Daeng work the noodle baskets-ever in control-always with time to smile and joke with her clients. Siri stood to one side and admired her skill.

After a few minutes she noticed him.

“Brother Siri, what are you doing over there?” All the diners looked up at the battered old man. “And what on earth have you been up to? No, don’t tell me. I hear you were walking the streets at three this morning looking for my bedroom.” An ironic cheer rose from the happy eaters. Siri blushed a deep crimson. She really did know everything, this woman.

By the time he’d hobbled to the cart he still hadn’t thought of a witty retort. He merely squeezed her arm affectionately and whispered in her ear that the coup had been thwarted. She obviously knew that, too.

“Yes, good news, isn’t it?” she said. She didn’t seem excited. This was the same “ho hum” that he’d felt himself the previous evening. Perhaps she’d already exhausted her ability to celebrate. Quite unashamedly, Daeng told the people in the queue that Siri was her one true love so would they mind if he cut in, just this once? Of course, nobody objected. Love conquers all. He ordered the special, which was the ordinary plus fifty percent more of everything. As she handed him the enormous steaming bowl she said, “You’re going back to Vientiane today.” It wasn’t a question.

“At five.”

“I need to talk to you before then. About two? I’ll be finished with the lunch crowd.”

“Should I come here?”

“No, I’ll come to the hotel. There’s something important you should know and I have something to show you.”

Siri took his breakfast and his spoon and his Vietnamese chopsticks to the embankment and sat like a child, kicking his legs over the edge and filling his face. It was a happy experience. He looked back over his shoulder and gave

Daeng an enthusiastic two-thumb salute. He couldn’t remember having a better breakfast in his life, and he certainly had no dementia when it came to food. It cleared his head, settled his stomach, and started the rusty old cogs rotating in his brain. A peculiar thought, more like an accidental hypothesis, had been following him for the past twenty-four hours. It was so preposterous he’d tried to shake it off but it kept coming back. He had no choice but to satisfy his curiosity.

The Bureau de Poste opened at eight. He was the first customer. A little girl was manning the counter while her mother loaded letters into the PO boxes. Siri ignored the woman and stood in front of the girl.

“Are you the manager?” he asked.

“No,” the girl said. “I’m five.”

The mother looked over and smiled. “She’s off from school today.”

Siri continued speaking with the girl. “I’d like to buy a stamp, please.” She was delighted.

“Yes, Grandpa. What color?”

“How much is a green one?”

“Two kip.”

“Oh, dear. I’ve only got half a kip.” He produced a one- kip note folded in half. Since the latest devaluation, the notes had become good-luck tokens for weddings and such, but you couldn’t buy a breath of air for one kip.

“Then you have to have a white one,” the girl said. She took the note and pretended to be looking for stamps in the drawer.

“And I certainly want one without gum on the back,” Siri added. The girl handed him a piece of paper she’d torn from a telegram. “Perfect. Thank you.”

The mother laughed and returned to her stool at the counter.

“I bet you have a whole houseful of grandchildren,” she said.

He didn’t let the hurt reach his face. “Not a one, I’m afraid.” He remembered Boua’s refrain, played over and over like a scratched record. “We have a nation to salvage, Siri. How selfish it would be for us to dedicate ourselves to our own children.”

He’d always wanted a family. She would have none of it. Perhaps that was his problem in life now. He had no children or grandchildren for whom to make his country a better place. He had nobody to pass his legacy on to.

“That’s sad,” the mother said. “What can I do for you? Apart from the white gumless stamp.”

Siri smiled and pulled the photograph from his shoulder bag.

After the post office, Siri stopped off briefly at Sing’s school to tell Mim about the picture her best friend had drawn for her, how Sing had been thinking about her even at the end. Then there was a visit to the town hall, a stop at the police station to sign the witness report, a detour to Pakse hospital for a morphine top-up, and a call to the city radio station. His last trishaw trip was out beyond the teachers college to a house that took almost an hour to locate. What he learned there emptied him of all hope. He recalled a quotation from the Communist Manifesto: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and men at last are forced to face with sober senses the real conditions of their lives and their relations with their fellow men.” Until today he hadn’t really understood it. His mood on the journey back into town was dour and foreboding. The sky was like a mauve pudding, threatening to dump its filling onto the nervous townsfolk.

Siri arrived back at the hotel at one. Dtui and Phosy were sitting in the lobby. He took a deep breath and did his best to keep his misery to himself.

“Hello, children,” he said, but his disguise apparently didn’t work.

“You look glum, Doc,” Dtui told him.

“It’s gravity. You get to an age where everything on your face sags. The only way you can look truly happy is to stand on your head. Want to see?”

“Not now,” Phosy said. “We’ve just had lunch.”

“Or at least something on a plate impersonating lunch,” Dtui added.