Colin Cotterill - Slash and Burn

“What if the boy’s dead?” Daeng asked.

“Same difference. ‘After a prolonged search, Senator Vogal sadly carries the remains of his best friend’s war hero son across the bitumen to board the TWA flight home.’ Votes a-plenty there from the female electorate. He’ll do great in farming communities.”

“You’re impressively cynical for such a young thing,” Daeng smiled.

“Madame Daeng, you try growing up white in Southeast Asia during an American war. The lines between them and us and right and wrong get real fuzzy. It was people like Vogal who decided there should be intervention over here to stop the communist takeover of the world. It was a policy experiment to prop up the fading popularity of the president. Another snow job to con the gullible general voters of North America.”

There was a long silence in the misty room.

“Very well,” said Siri. “As we haven’t even begun to look for the pilot, we’re still quite a way from finding him. It’s possible we won’t have to disturb the senator from his cocktails. Let’s take it from the introduction breakfast and see how we progress from there. Little Peach, do you foresee any disasters over our communal rice porridge?”

“Do you really want to know?” she asked.

“Major Harold Potter would like to welcome all the Lao delegates and says that he greatly respects the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos for everything the socialist administration has achieved in the past three years.”

Judge Haeng’s cousin Vinai, the director of the Office of Interpretation Services, was standing at the end of the dining room at a beautifully carved but wonky dais. The audience sat at two long parallel tables. The Friendship Hotel restaurant had once been the entire building. It was constructed of sturdy hand-sawn lumber and its pillars were sunk deep. But the tin roof had been replaced with concrete tiling and, apart from the doors and window frames, very little wood had been used to complete the new lodge. Perhaps this was why only the dining room felt comfortable. It was as if the laid-back ghosts of the Corsicans watched over their inn from the solid rafters. Even the inevitable breakfast speeches seemed mellow.

Siri turned to Daeng.

“The major said all that in four words?”

“You’d have to assume English is a lot more succinct than Lao,” Daeng decided.

Siri had studied French at a Lao lycee then become fluent during his years in Paris, but he’d had no cause to dally with the English language. Cousin Vinai’s English rendition of the American major’s comment had sounded authentic but he had no idea how accurate a trans lation it was. It was the conflicting word count and the bewildered faces of Peach and Nurse Dtui that alerted him to the possibility that something might be amiss. Cousin Vinai had been allotted the role of senior interpreter for the mission, yet since their arrival in Phonsavan he’d avoided all contact with the aliens. The judge suggested this was because of Vinai’s laryngitis and that he wanted to preserve his voice for the first day of activities. That day had arrived and he had supposedly translated General Suvan’s opening address word for word from his own script.

To Vinai’s left at the VIP table, which was resplendent with plastic hibiscus, sat General Suvan in full dress uniform. In fact, Lao full dress uniform was not as impressive as it sounded. He might have been mistaken for a postman in any other country. Although the same age as Siri, the balding old man made the doctor look like a teenager. His movements were languid and his reactions showed a lack of reflex. In front of him on the table was the three-page speech he’d just delivered. It was dog-eared and crumpled so he’d either slept on it or it was a well-used address. Vinai had his own copy. During the speech, the fried eggs and crispy bacon and steaming pots of instant coffee arrived and, as there was still a pervading atmosphere of nervous cultural tension between the two groups, nobody tucked in. So the guests watched their food slowly cool in front of them. Another half an hour would render the meal inedible which probably explained the brevity of the American major’s own greeting. But, to their horror, Judge Haeng seated to the general’s left reached into his own briefcase and pulled out a wad of paper twice as thick as that of the general. Cousin Vinai produced a translation of equal thickness. The judge slid back his chair but Siri got to his feet before him.

“With respect, Judge,” he said, wondering whether that counted as an oxymoron. If looks could kill, Judge Haeng was standing over Siri’s body with bloody fingers.

“As this is a special occasion,” Siri went on, “I suggest that it would be a courtesy to our American guests if we followed their culture and ate while we listened to your probably insightful and humorous early morning discourse.”

He still had little idea about American culture or whether they ate during speeches in the United States-Henry James certainly didn’t-but he was hungry. Judging from the ensuing round of applause once the translation had reached the visitors’ table, they were hungry too. And so, Judge Haeng’s speech and its purportedly English translation were all but drowned out by the clattering of American knives and forks and the hum of conversation. Nobody failed to notice the fact that Haeng glared at Siri the entire time. Siri seemed not to care. He was taking the opportunity to study the colorful assembly of Americans opposite.

The retired major, Potter, wore a large flowery Hawaiian shirt, green shorts with an impressive collection of pockets, huge boots, and a Dodgers baseball cap. Siri could think of no better word to describe his complexion than “ripe.” He was flushed and bloated like a man dropped into boiling water and left there to simmer, the result of blood vessels expanding. His nose was a crimson golf ball. He was, Siri decided, a man lost to alcoholism. This voracious appetite extended to food. Peach, seated beside him, looked on in amazement as he forked a mountain of potatoes into himself.

“Honey,” he said.

Peach looked around for the bar girl he might have been soliciting. She saw nobody.

“Are you talking to me, Major?”

“You’re the interpreter, right?”

“I am.”

“Then shouldn’t you be telling us what these two guys are saying?”

“Well”-she looked over her shoulder-“one of these guys is Judge Haeng and he’s giving a long talk about the tolerant nature of the Pathet Lao to former imperialist oppressors. And the other guy is translating it into English.”

“What?” The major put down his fork for the first time and cocked an ear in the direction of cousin Vinai. “That’s English?”

“Apparently.”

“I can’t understand a goddamned word. Can’t they get the interpreter to do it?”

“Comrade Vinai is the head interpreter, Major.”

“What about the big woman?”

“What big woman would that be, sir?”

“The one they put on our chopper yesterday. She spoke pretty good.”

“On our helicopter?”

“Yeah, you didn’t see her? She was the only Laotian on board.”

“I was stuck at the back behind a wall of cans, but, no, can’t say I noticed her.”

“Well, she was damned good.”

Once the Judge Haeng/Cousin Vinai double act was over and the plates emptied, everyone sat with their coffee waiting for the main event. Peach tapped the major’s arm.

“You’re up, Major,” she said.

Potter wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and inflated to a standing position. He said something loud and full of expression and then paused. There was an embarrassing silence. All eyes were on Cousin Vinai who was burrowing down into a bowl of rice soup. He waved his spoon at Peach.