Colin Cotterill - Disco for the Departed

Siri finally broke away and pointed to his assistant. “Nurse Dtui,” he said.

“Hello, Dr. Santiago. Pleased to meet you,” she said in English.

Both Siri and Santiago looked at her with astonishment for a few seconds before the Cuban went across to hug her also. It was a culturally inappropriate gesture that seemed to fit into the spirit of the moment. He told her she spoke English well.

“I read and write,” she said. “I don’t really speak it.” It was true. She’d never used the language to converse. It was just a medium for study. In fact, she was a little surprised to find it coming from her mouth so happily.

He assured her that whether she read it or spoke it, it was still the same language. And, from that moment, despite the fact that she’d never heard herself using it before, English became their language of communication and Dtui its novice interpreter. She knew her pronunciation was awful, but Santiago had no problem with that because his own accent was equally horrible. He, too, had learned English from American textbooks. Siri was full of admiration for his talented assistant.

Throughout the morning, the two old doctors caught up with each other’s lives since last they’d met. Santiago was spending more time on administering Cuban aid, he told them, and had less and less time available for the job he was actually trained for. Farmers continued to get blown up in their fields, and there were fewer and fewer qualified medical staff members to care for them. There were under a hundred qualified doctors in the entire country so the PL medical staff was spread thinly to fill the roles of the Royalist physicians who’d fled to Thailand. Santiago had funding but nobody to hire.

Through Dtui, whose confidence increased as time passed, Siri finally got around to the mystery of his cement man. The Cuban thought about it for a moment and asked whether he was certain the incident had taken place early that year.

“January 21, to be exact,” Siri told him.

“Dr. Santiago says that if it had been a few months earlier, he’d have had two very good candidates for us,” Dtui said. “At least that’s what I think he means. But he reckons that by last October, they’d already gone back to Cuba.”

“They completed their tours?”

“Not exactly. He says it’s a little complicated. They came in 1971 to help with the setting up of some project at kilometer 8.”

“Xieng Muang,” Siri said. “That’s the hospital. It was an amazing project. They had to drill out the centers of two mountains. They built two complete hospital wards that were invisible from the air but were able to accommodate a thousand patients. It was an impressive piece of engineering. The Vietnamese military took care of the labor; the Cubans provided nurses and orderlies.”

“He thinks you may remember the two men he means. Their names were Isandro and Udon.”

“Odon,” Santiago corrected her.

“Sorry, Odon. He says they were here from the beginning.”

Siri nodded his head. He’d only been invited to Xieng Muang from time to time to help with surgery, and on those occasions he’d always brought his Lao team with him, but he did recall the sight of black orderlies running around the wards. He’d had no opportunity to talk to them.

“While the work was going on,” Dtui continued, “Dr. Santiago says they took care of the wounded in temporary caves here and there. Isandro and Odon were part of that project. They were the head nursing orderlies. When the Kilometer 8 Hospital was ready, they moved everyone into the mountains. After the two of them finished one four-year tour, they volunteered for a second. It seems that was quite unusual. Most of the Cubans were in a hurry to return home. But these two were good workers and they had made friends with the locals. They’d studied the Lao language, even acquired a taste for the local food.” Dtui added, for Dr. Siri’s benefit, “Of course, I might be making half of this up.”

“So why were they sent back early?” Siri asked, ignoring her disclaimer.

There followed a long spell while Dtui clarified points with the old Cuban.

“Apparently,” Dtui said, “there were complaints.”

“Who from?”

“A senior Vietnam Army officer said one of the men, Isandro, was making advances to his daughter. He made it very clear: if he found the man anywhere near her again, he’d shoot him.”

“And Dr. Santiago passed this message on to Isandro and Odon?”

“He says he did but they defied him. They said they weren’t afraid of him or the colonel. He couldn’t believe it. The situation just got worse and worse. The doctor couldn’t have Cuban workers getting shot by a Vietnamese for messing around with his daughter, so he had no choice. He ordered them home.”

“And is he absolutely sure they went?”

“Absolutely.”

“And no other dark-skinned Cubans went missing from any other Cuban projects?”

“He says this was the only one in the region.”

“Could you ask Dr. Santiago to describe Isandro for me?”

Again Dtui and the Cuban doctor went into a huddle.

“As far as I can make out,” Dtui said, “he was built like a tree-tall and broad shouldered like an American basketball player-and strong.”

Siri shrugged. This wasn’t at all the description of their cement man. Dtui asked about Odon.

“This is more like it,” she told Dr. Siri. “Odon was smaller. Santiago says he was ugly as a goat but had a permanent smile that endeared him to everyone. He says it’s unusual for the natives-and I guess that includes you and me-to get along with dark-skinned foreigners, but Odon and Isandro really made an effort and people responded. Then he said something I couldn’t really get-something like ‘more fool the natives’ but don’t quote me on that.”

Siri considered Odon a more likely candidate than his bigger friend, but as they’d both left Laos, it appeared he’d either have to look elsewhere for their mummy’s identity or prove that for some reason one of the orderlies had stayed behind.

Although there was an enormous refrigerator in one comer of the office, upon inspection it was found to contain nothing but jar upon jar of culture specimens. It was a fascinating collection, they all agreed, but the contents were not likely to be particularly filling. So Santiago invited his guests to join him for lunch at the new Lao Houng Hotel. He gladly abandoned his paperwork and seemed rejuvenated by this unexpected visit. As they were leaving the building, the Cuban stopped to speak to a nurse who looked too young to have completed the nursing certificate. Siri noticed the old man take her hand in his and give her a rather unprofessional peck on the cheek. Although the girl blushed, she didn’t pull away as one would expect of a Lao girl receiving an unwanted kiss. It appeared there was still a Latin fire burning in Santiago’s grate.

They ate bland Vietnamese food beneath huge posters of unknown Chinese film stars and joked about the new Oz of Vieng Xai. Then, as they drank warm, lightly scented beer for dessert, Santiago turned his attention to Dtui. He asked if she was a qualified nurse. When she said she was, he asked whether she thought her “Papa Siri” would be able to spare her for a day or two. It appeared that after the cease-fire they had moved the Kilometer 8 Hospital outside the mountain and into some old French buildings that stood in front of it. It was still a hospital but nobody working there had more than six month’s basic medical training. Dr. Santiago was expecting two new Cuban doctors to arrive before the weekend but, as things stood, he was desperate for somebody who could make decisions. The doctor went there whenever he was able, but he believed they really needed a big sister on the site.