Colin Cotterill: Slash and Burn

“I’d wager this is what’s been causing the hysteria,” he told her.

“But … but it’s just a musical instrument,” she protested.

Siri smiled at the Mao-shirted woman. She was a cadre from the northeast with a black and white upbringing and no tolerance for dimensions beyond the usual three. And so it was that in both Siri’s report and that of the head teacher, the problem had been attributed to tainted sweets sold by a rogue vendor outside the school gates. Yet, once the tambourine had been removed there was no repeat of the insanity.

The instrument now sat on Siri’s desk at the morgue and he flicked the little bells from time to time just for the hell of it. Nurse Dtui and Mr. Geung would look up from their unimportant tasks and sigh. Siri would apologize then ring it again. His only other annoying habit had been pulled out from under him. Dtui had removed the clock from over their office door because the doctor had begun to count down the minutes to his retirement in reverse order.

“Only seventy thousand five hundred and forty-five minutes to go,” he’d sing. Dtui knew that the effects of this after a day or two would have driven them all into the same moronic stupor as the pupils at Thong Hong. So she’d come in early one day and had the hospital handyman take down the clock. She’d told Siri it was off being serviced. As she never lied, he didn’t question her.

At her desk, Nurse Dtui had her Thai fanzine open in front of her. To anyone walking unexpectedly into the office it would appear she was merely fantasizing her size fourteen frame into a size seven swimsuit as worn by the Bangkok television starlets on photo shoots. But hidden between the pages of her magazine were her Med. 1 Gynaecology notes in Russian. Despite a sudden unexpected pregnancy and the arrival of Malee, now five months old, Dtui had yet to give up her hopes of studying in the Soviet bloc. Unsolicited initiative was considered by the hospital administration to be a suspicious characteristic, a sign that you were not satisfied with your role in the new republic. So she studied surreptitiously. Even though she had no intention of abandoning her baby or her husband and running off to Moscow, she continued to prepare herself for that far-off day when she might take over the morgue. When times were hard, it always helped to have a dream. And times in Vientiane were certainly hard.

But not for some, it seemed. In the corner of the office, behind a desk and a chair he rarely used, Mr. Geung stood rocking gently back and forth in a blissful Down’s syndrome trance. His condition had one of two effects on onlookers. Some were appalled that a moron should be allowed to work at a hospital. Others, like his many fans around Mahosot, were envious of the apparent lack of complication in his life. Devoted to his work. Loyal to a fault. Friendly and honest. Mr. Geung seemed perfectly happy with a no-frills, budget lifestyle. But they all wondered what was going on in his head. How could a middle-aged man with such a terrible affliction seem so at peace? And recently his serenity had risen to a cloud way beyond that elusive number nine. Only Siri and Dtui knew the reason for the elevation. Although Mr. Geung himself was not letting on, his morgue mates could tell. It was romance. Birds did it. Bees did it. And, clearly, Mr. Geung did it too.

Others might have interpreted the marks on their friend’s neck as an allergic reaction to the washing powder in his shirt collar. But Siri and Dtui worked in the morgue. They knew teeth marks when they saw them. They didn’t exactly condone the practice. “One step away from vampirism,” Siri had called it. But neither begrudged Mr. Geung his first taste of romance, albeit in bitten form. Tukda’s arrival at the staff canteen had at first enraged Geung.

“She’s Down … Down’s syndrome,” he’d said, with the same condescending tone he’d heard all his life. “Sh … she shouldn’t be working here.”

But there was no mistaking the fact that Comrade Tukda was a pretty young lady and sweet natured. None of Mr. Geung’s protestations persuaded his coworkers that he didn’t find her attractive. And Geung and Tukda, through those mysterious corridors and hidden passageways of the syndrome, found each other. What they did and where and how and if, nobody knew. Only the washing powder allergy on Geung’s neck, and the sappy grins when they mentioned her name, gave anything away. He answered no questions on the subject. Denied all accusations. It was his … their secret. But there was no doubting the fact that Mr. Geung was a very happy man.

And this was how the members of the morgue team filled their days. Siri counting minutes. Dtui conjugating. Geung rocking. Then, all of a sudden, on one hot July morning, a note arrived. That such a flimsy slip of paper could have the effect it did would have been hard to imagine.

The morning crowd was silently engaged in the serious act of consuming Madame Daeng’s noodles. It was like watching a herd of buffalo-albeit seated-working their way through a garden of lush grass. Extra stools had been imported, dotted willy-nilly around the tables but still there wasn’t enough seating. Daeng and Siri encouraged diners to leave as soon as possible so others might enjoy their breakfasts, but Madame Daeng’s noodles were not to be rushed. They were the cordon bleu of soup noodles. If Michelin had been allowed into the country they would have been hard pressed to find enough stars with which to decorate her nameless noodle establishment. Yet, in spite of her popularity, Daeng never once considered raising her prices or reducing the size of the servings. She was a pro.

Siri stood beside her, gazing proudly at the lake of hunched shoulders and bobbing heads.

“Looks like I won’t have to worry about us starving to death when I retire,” he said.

Daeng looked up from the boiler, gently tossed a wire basket of pasta, then lowered it back into the bubbling water. She was a fine-looking woman with a mop of gray hair that always made her seem as if she’d been racing a fast-moving motorcycle, which often she had.

“And there I was wondering how we’d ever make do without your thirty-thousand kip a month contribution,” she smiled. “What is that on the international exchange market these days? One dollar fifty?”

“Two eighty. But let’s not forget all the other perks.”

“A dozen mosquito coils. Four kilos of weevil-infested rice. The occasional gardening implement. Socks. Six rolls of self-dissolving toilet paper. I don’t know how we’ll survive.”

“And the petrol allowance.”

“Two litres a month. You’ll have to start riding my bicycle.”

“I’ll have nowhere to go. I’ll just be hanging around under your feet like this-day in day out. You always said you wished we could spend more time together.”

“I don’t think I meant all of it. Couple of hours in the evening would be nice.”

“I shall be yours twenty-four hours a day to do with as you wish. Your love slave around the clock.”

Daeng laughed and scooped noodles into a bowl of broth. As there were no more stools, the customer collected the dish and sat with it on the bottom step of the staircase.

“Siri, you could no more stay put for twenty-four hours than I could. You’ll be poking your nose in here, gallivanting there. And to tell you the truth, if I wanted a love slave I’d find myself a much much younger man. A body builder. I get plenty of offers, you know.”

“Ha! He’d have to go through me first to get to you. You hear that, you lot?” he shouted. “Anyone here tempted to run off with my wife will have to fight me first.”

“No problem,” said Pop, a wizened old bean stick whose weight more than doubled after one of Daeng’s spicy number 2s. He was probably the only customer in the shop older than Siri and he looked it. “Look at the state of you,” he said to Siri. “Barely a fortnight out of your sick bed, broken hand, scars and bruises all over. Huh. I reckon I could take you with one hand, especially if Daeng was the prize. One blow with this teaspoon and you’d be on your back.”