Colin Cotterill - Disco for the Departed

“That may be the case. Those who aren’t able to adapt to new conditions naturally become their victims.”

Siri tried again. “I think we should-”

“Adapt? What? Do you expect them to grow thick body hair overnight?” She had plummeted down into the chasm and was beyond saving.

Lit straightened in his seat and spoke loudly. “We aren’t animals, Comrade Dtui. Of course we provide them with a blanket each and basic supplies. But we expect the early days at Seminar to be hard for the corrupt American lackeys who have lived fat lives bleeding the masses. Their own excesses have softened them. We’re giving them an opportunity to become valuable members of society.”

“Through hard labor and cruelty?”

“Dtui!” Siri raised his voice. He was becoming annoyed, not by the questions, which he considered valid, but because she’d failed to recognize the right time to keep her mouth shut.

Lit was on the attack now. “Your type never takes the trouble to understand.”

“My type? And what exactly is-”

“Shut up!” Siri smashed his tin cup down hard onto the table. Tea bounced out of it and splashed across the varnished wooden surface. “Both of you. I didn’t travel four hundred kilometers to argue ideology. We’re here to discuss a crime, and a horrible crime at that. Would you both mind showing a little professional discipline?”

It was the closest Dtui had ever seen her boss come to throwing a tantrum. She suspected he was bluffing but she knew she’d pushed too far. “Sorry, Doc. You’re right.”

Lit still glared at her but spoke to Siri. “You’re right, of course, Dr. Siri. What information do you have for me from today’s inspection?”

With a sigh of relief, Siri described the condition of the corpse and the peculiarities they had found. Dtui kept silent.

“In conclusion,” Siri said, “it appears that the gentleman was shot, then, still alive, was held under the wet cement until he, in effect, drowned. It was certainly the cement that killed him, although I imagine the gunshot wound would have weakened him considerably. It punctured a lung.”

“And you believe he was black,” Lit added, now nothing more or less than a sober investigator of crime.

“I wouldn’t bet my life on it but I strongly suspect so. That would have to make him Cuban.”

“Why?” Dtui asked, breaking her silence.

“The only dark-skinned foreigners you’re “likely to find up here are Cubans,” Siri said. “Mr. Castro has been very generous with aid and personnel. There used to be a joint Cuban-Vietnamese hospital project not far from here.”

“They’re still here,” Lit told him.

“Really? Is Dr. Santiago still in charge?”

“He’s managing the hospital aid money, I believe. I wouldn’t say he’s in charge of anything.”

“Ah, good. I know him well, or at least as well as two men can who don’t share a common language. It might be a good idea to pay a social call on the good doctor and see if they lost any Cubans around the time the path was laid.”

“Then, er, I can leave that line of inquiry up to you, Doctor?”

Siri thought it odd the security man would relinquish his role in the investigation to a mere coroner but didn’t bother to ask why. He enjoyed a bit of detective work. “Certainly.”

“Good,” Lit said. “Then I should get back to my office. I’ll check in with you the same time tomorrow. I’ve arranged for the kitchen here to provide you with food three times a day. The staff won’t have much else to do for another week.” He stood and nodded.

“Until the next batch of lackeys arrives,” Dtui told Siri. If Lit heard her, he ignored the comment and walked away. Once his jeep reached the dirt road, Siri glared at Dtui and shook his head.

“What?” she asked.

“You haven’t spent very much time around communists, have you?”

“You’re a communist.”

“There’s a vast difference between being a paid-up member of the Party and being a communist. Real communists take life quite seriously. If you don’t agree with their doctrine, then you’re the enemy.”

“Their doctrine? Dr. Siri, you’re one of them. It’s your doctrine, too.”

“And there were long periods when I truly believed. In fact, I still think a well-run socialist system could rescue the world from its lethargy and selfishness. But it’s something people should come to of their own accord, through common sense…”

“Not torture.”

“Correct. But it isn’t a situation you’re going to change by attempting to shout down people like Comrade Lit. Nobody shouts louder than a Red.”

“So how’s it going to change?”

“It’ll burn itself out.”

“But before then a lot of people are going to suffer.”

“And I don’t want one of them to be you. So keep that pretty mouth buttoned. And that’s an order. You aren’t going to make a dribble of a difference. You know what they say about loose tongues.”

“They fall out?”

Siri laughed. He never had been able to maintain an effective show of severity for any sustained period. Dtui sulked but she understood. She knew Siri’s views had been derived from years of trying to make changes from the inside and failing. His relationship with the woman he loved and was faithful to for almost forty years had brought him into the Communist Party and kept him there. But he’d been distant enough from it to see the Pathet Lao become the lapdogs of the Vietnamese, just as the Royalists had slobbered around the heels of the French and the Americans. He was resigned to the fact that his Lao brethren were destined always to be the fools of some bigger fools. He wasn’t a terrific example of a man who knew when to keep his mouth shut, but Dtui knew he didn’t offer advice lightly.

That night, exhausted though he was, Siri still rolled sleeplessly from side to side on the lumpy mattress. So many ghosts were calling to him from the fields. Impressionable young cadres were among them. He’d put many back together in field hospitals after their encounters with the Hmong resistance. They were telling him, “Look at us. What good did it do? All you did was fix us up so we could go and be killed in the next battle.” They were right. He didn’t want to listen to them. He wanted to sleep, but in sleep he’d have to face the malevolent spirits who lurked in the dark alleyways of his nightmares.

In the starless blackness of the chilly night, even with his eyes wide open, he could see none of the ill-matching furniture and not even the hand he held out before him. An invisible beetle was fluttering against the mosquito netting and he focused his attention on the buzzing of its wings. By imagining he could see it, by listening only to the buzz, he believed he could hypnotize himself asleep. And he was almost right. The voices had stopped, he was dipping in and out of consciousness, and at exactly the moment he was about to fall, the infernal discotheque started up again. Even though it seemed to come from afar, the tremor of the bass worked its way across the ground like an earthquake, reaching the second floor of the guesthouse. It vibrated through the bedposts, through Siri.

What had happened to his country’s youth, he wondered, that they had developed such awful taste in music?

This wailing of tortured Americans, could it be deemed music at all? He lost count of the number of grating tunes he had to endure before he finally found the sleep he craved.

In the sleep world it was quiet, a rare quiet for his dream. A crow sat high on a wire beside a sparrow. They were a long way above the ground. This was a wire that could only have existed in a dream, because a T-28 fighter passed beneath it, strafing the fields with its guns. Bombs plunged into the paddies and sank into the mud, none exploding. It was a silent dream without even the accompaniment of music. The crow preened the sparrow as if both were unaware of their positions in the caste of birds or their proximity to a battle. They were engrossed in one another. Nothing else seemed to matter. It was a peaceful scene: the birds preening, the T-28 strafing, the nonexploding bombs tumbling.