Colin Cotterill - Anarchy and the Old Dogs

“I’m impressed. And all this time I thought there was nothing positive to be gained from reading mysteries.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Got any?”

“Washing soda? Not on me. But I bet our Mr. Geung has a supply in his broom closet.” Siri vanished into the store room and emerged a few seconds later with a large jar. “I’d say this is it.”

“And where is Mr. Geung today?”

Siri began diluting the washing soda with water. “Right. You don’t know about our recent adventures. We have a lot to catch up on. We almost lost Geung to dengue fever last month.”

“Damn. Is he all right?”

“He will be. I admit he’s dragging out his convalescence. Pretty nurses waiting on him hand and foot. If I were a cynic, I’d say he’s milking it for all the attention he can get. Meanwhile, I’m left doing all the unskilled labor myself, which is exactly when you realize there’s nothing unskilled about labor.”

He used a fine brush to dab the weak solution onto the note. “Well, what do you know?” The characters on the paper materialized slowly as if they were waking from a long sleep. None were immediately recognizable as words. It was more of a list than a message. Siri knew the individual letters from French but could understand nothing. It was apparent that the note he held was not written in a language he’d ever had cause to learn.

“So, what does it say?” Phosy asked.

“Haven’t got a clue.”

“Hmm. Remarkable mind.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m inclined to believe this is written in code, but I think we should check it with an English speaker just to be sure. What do you say we do a little investigating?”

At the lycie, Siri and Phosy found teacher Oum emerging despondently from a classroom. She was in her early thirties, short and usually jolly. But today she had an expression on her face as blank as a glazed bun. The thirteen-year-olds trailing behind her had that same iced-over look.

“Oum!” Siri said.

She looked at him for a second or two before coming round.

“Comrade Siri. Comrade Phosy. Thank heaven.”

“What’s wrong?” Phosy asked.

“A new history lesson. I’m comatose.”

New history was one of the subjects inflicted on schools by the Department of Education, along with Russian and Marxist-Leninist theory. It intimated that life on earth had begun in the caves of Huaphan, where the Pathet Lao had orchestrated its takeover. Whereas in old history, centuries of Lao royal heritage and world events had taken center stage, new history seemed to suggest that fifty years was an inordinately long time, and that the West was a small outer suburb of Vientiane-a place no self-respecting person would want to venture into on a dark night.

But you’re a chemistry teacher,” Siri reminded her.

“I was, Doctor. I was. And I shall be again on Thursday. But we’re all being encouraged to diversify.” She glanced at Phosy, whose politics she wasn’t completely sure about. One had to be careful in this day and age. “It’s a marvelous system. I teach physical education on Mondays. Can you believe it? The pupils saw me in shorts for the first time last week and half of them have been off sick since.”

“What do you know about new history?” Siri asked.

“Don’t need to know anything,” she said and held up a thick ring binder crammed to bursting with notes. “It’s all here. I just write today’s lesson on the blackboard and the kids copy it.”

“And today’s lesson was…?”

“The great victory at Sala Phou Khoun.”

“Is that so? I was there, you know. It wasn’t that great,” Siri told her. “If I’d realized, I could have come earlier and given your class a few insights.”

“Sorry,” she said, as she led them to a bench on the school grounds. “We aren’t allowed to stray from the curriculum. Each class has a spy-sorry, I mean a monitor- who reports back to the school political officer. The kids aren’t even allowed to ask questions. But that’s just as well, considering I don’t have any answers.”

She plonked herself down on the bench as if the lesson had doubled her weight. “Now, what can I do for Vientiane’s two most eligible bachelors? You know I don’t have any chemicals. They’re still stuck at customs. I hear the Department of Interior people have been sniffing them to see if they’re hallucinatory.”

Siri and Phosy sat on either side of her. Siri took out the blind man’s note.

“In fact, it’s your English we’re after,” he said.

Oum had been in the middle of her postgraduate study in Australia when the communists took over Laos. Her time in Sydney had been marked by two incredibly bad decisions. The first was to let herself be impregnated by a ginger-haired Aussie lad who skipped town shortly after. This error of judgment led to the birth of Nali, one of a very limited edition of redheaded Lao babies. The other bad decision was to cut short her studies and return to her homeland. The authorities had hounded her from the moment she arrived at Wattay Airport. Certainly she had to be a spy. With tens of thousands of people heading out of the country, why else would she want to go against the flow? And, to make matters worse, she spoke English-a decadent Western tool created to spread propaganda and lies. Teacher Oum was a marked woman.

“I’d be delighted,” she said and took the paper from Siri. She perused the list.

“What does it say?” Phosy asked.

“Haven’t got a clue. It’s not English,” she said. “But you knew that, didn’t you, Doctor? You aren’t here because of my language skills.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Siri, you know as well as I do that this list is written in code. It could just as well be French or any other language that uses the Roman script. You’re here to see whether I can crack it. You think I’m a spy, too.”

“I don’t think any such thing. I just know you have a very advanced scientific mind that could probably make short work of such a simple puzzle as this. Your being a spy is irrelevant.”

“Siri, I am not…”

“I’m sorry. Could you just take a look at it for us?”

Reluctantly, Oum copied the note out on the back of one of her history sheets. It looked unfathomable:

22

xesaaghu iaik bnki qhb

oo ykjbeniaz bkn 24li

jk kxf bnki ll

jas lhwuano

x26a/ywxo ykjbeniaz

x28a/iwoo ykjbeniaz

iwzx ykjbeniaz

x24oa/cjgl ykjbeniaz

x28o/cjol qjzayezaz

ywgg ykjbeniaz

ywlg ykjbeniaz

x30o/ykzg qjzayezaz

x32o/iwog ykjbeniaz

iwgg ykjbeniaz

z zwu lnklkoaz wqc52

nalhu zenayp

pda zareh'o rwcejw

“I’ll take a look at it tonight,” she said, still obviously miffed that Siri thought she was a spy. “But I can’t promise anything. I don’t have any formal training in this kind of thing.”

“Oum, dear,” Siri smiled, “if you can turn your mind to history and physical education, I’m sure this will present you no difficulty at all.”

Dong Bang was twenty miles from Vientiane. If the road had been better, Siri’s old Triumph motorcycle would have made the trip in twenty minutes. As it turned out, it took them almost twice that. Phosy’s knuckles were welded together in front of Siri’s chest when finally they arrived at the little wooden pavilion where the long-distance bus picked up and dropped off passengers. Like most other places in Laos this year, the little village wore sixteen shades of brown dust. Two small wooden houses with shops out front abutted the road but there were no people to be seen. A pair of dogs slept in the shade of the bus shelter, growling at each other in their dreams.