Colin Cotterill - Disco for the Departed

“When you aren’t dodging bombs, you mean?”

“That’s all I did for ten years. That and put together people who hadn’t been so lucky.”

“When do you think they’ll tell us why we’re here?”

They’d been given short notice to get to Wattay Airport with their equipment. Judge Haeng had told them nothing of the mission, just the name of the person who’d contact them the next day.

“Comrade Lit should be here by nine tomorrow.”

“And who’s he again?”

“Regional commander, Security Division.”

“Right. Did you know him when you were based here?”

“I don’t recall the name. But when all the senior comrades and the ranking army officers moved down to Vientiane, a lot of young bucks were promoted in a hurry up here. Cadres were flying up through the ranks at such young ages I heard the regional quartermaster was still in diapers when he arrived at his office. They had to confiscate his rattle before they could get any work out of him.” Dtui chuckled. “I don’t know. I might have seen this Lit fellow around,” Siri went on.

“Does he know you’ve brought your cuddly and gorgeous assistant?”

“I’m sure he’ll be delighted.”

Again, the calm around them lulled the two into a peaceful silence. An amateur fisherman cast his mushroom-shaped net out into the inky black pond. The squirrels chirped like sparrows with sore throats. Dtui looked toward the staircase behind Siri.

“Doc.”

“Yes?”

“At the top of the stairs…”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you know what I’m going to ask?”

“You’re going to ask why there’s a partition up there with an armed guard sitting in front of it.”

“Ooh, you’re good. Did your spirits tell you what I was thinking?”

“No need. I read your mind myself. You’re insatiably curious, so it was only a matter of time before you asked. I also heard you flirting with the guard.”

“He wasn’t very sociable.”

“You mean he wouldn’t tell you what’s behind the partition?”

“Not a word. I hate mysteries.”

“No doubt we’ll work it out before we go.”

But now, on his lumpy kapok mattress, drowsily watching the moths fly clockwise around the bulb he, too, was contemplating the mystery behind the plywood partition. Access to a small upper wing of the building was blocked. From the grounds he was able to estimate there were three or four rooms up there. He wondered what was so special about them. He clawed his fingers through his thick white hair and sighed. It was some time after 11:00 P.M. and he feared he’d be unable to find any sleep at all. There was too much on his mind. And if he didn’t think himself awake all night, they would certainly keep him up. He reached for the ancient white amulet that hung around his neck on a tightly woven white plait of woman’s hair. As his fingers made contact, a surge of energy ran in a current the length of his body. He could suddenly hear them even more clearly, chattering in the distance. His feelings and instincts had begun to take on tangible form. Spirits he once encountered only in his sleep had become bold. Some even appeared in daylight, often at the most inopportune moments. Even before the old Russian Mi-14 helicopter had landed that afternoon, he could feel the souls of the thousands killed during the war. They passed through him like sightseers at a historical palace, deciding whether he was a shaman they could trust.

All around Guesthouse Number One, their voices could be heard: mothers calling their children in from the open fields, old women crying for the old men they’d left behind, toddlers giggling-too innocent to realize they’d been dead for many years. How could Siri sleep with such an accompaniment? Then, as if things weren’t already bad enough, at about midnight the awful disco music started up. It destroyed any hope of sleep. He wondered what type of people would start dancing in the middle of the night and how anyone could enjoy such an ugly Western din. Or perhaps this was one of the Party’s torture techniques to punish the officials from Vientiane. He could think of few things more cruel.

Geung Watajak had been born in October 1952 in a village on the outskirts of Vientiane called Thangon consisting of a temple and a tiny collection of wooden huts that blew down in the wet-season monsoons. Its only reason for appearing on maps at all was its ferry, which labored back and forth across the Nam Ngum River, sending people to and from the great reservoir. Few travelers stopped in Thangon for any other reason, but a village had grown up there nevertheless. Despite its proximity to the capital and the constant stream of passing gentry, it was very much a hick town.

Beliefs were simple there. According to the locals, there were only two categories of mental infirmity: slow as a tree growing and fruity as a bad batch of plum cider. Thangon had itself one of each. Auntie Soun had briefly been the shaman for the region before she completely forgot how to release the evil spirits back to the forest. They became bottled up inside her like soda gas until one day she flipped her lid. She became renowned for wild solo rantings and spontaneous acts of flashing.

Geung, on the other hand, had been a very quiet baby, one of seven children. He displayed the physical characteristics of Down Syndrome so just one look at his face and everyone knew there was no point in sending the boy to school. It’s true he was a slow learner but that might have been because nobody ever tried to teach him anything. Only his mother called him by his name. His father, brothers, and sisters all called him Moron. It wasn’t said in a nasty way, and Geung reached eighteen years of age still thinking it was his mother who’d got it wrong.

As the Watajaks were a farming family, their routines were repetitive and uncomplicated and that suited the happy boy. Hard work built up his slowly developing muscles, and being around his family all day gave him a feeling of loyalty and belonging. But that security came to a sudden end on the day his father took him and two of his siblings to Vientiane to find them work. They were big enough and cost too much to feed. It was time for them to give a little something back to the lazy man who had gone to all the trouble of siring them. Their mother had no say in the matter.

The sister got work in a bamboo-and-corrugated-tin nightclub out on Hanoi Road by the market. The sad fact was she’d earn most of her salary with her feet in the air, but a fourteen-year-old farm girl with no schooling had to think herself lucky to have any kind of paying work. Geung’s younger brother got a job at the bus terminal touting for passengers, collecting tickets, and hanging out of the door of the speeding bus announcing where it was headed at the top of his voice.

But his father knew that finding work for Geung was going to be the biggest challenge of all. Who in their right mind would want to take on a moron? But not only was the old man a layabout, he also possessed the nerve of the devil. He took his eighteen-year-old son to Mahosot Hospital, where he offered the boy’s services free of charge in exchange for food scraps and a floor to sleep on. Hospitals, after all, were supposed to look after sick people. He reminded the hospital employment section of this fact, and the clerk on duty made the fatal mistake of displaying a moment’s hesitation before saying no. So when she left the office at the end of the day, she saw young Geung sitting alone on the wooden bench out front. He had a newspaper-wrapped parcel on his lap.

“Where’s your dad?”

“Home,” he answered in a matter-of-fact way.

“Well, you can’t stay here. You know that, don’t you?”