Slash and Burn Page 10

  Then there was the air activity. Shortly after eight the flights had begun, fifteen or so, all told. Siri was certain he recognized a number of different craft. They were all heading west. It was remarkable, given the inexperience of its pilots, that the air force would choose to fly at night. The manager hadn’t been able to give an explanation for that particular mystery.

  Siri and Civilai sat on two creaking rattan lounge chairs by the hotel entrance staring out over the Plain of Jars. Except there was nothing to see. To either side of them were the room-bound flashes of lamps and the shadows of candles, but directly ahead was nothing. It was the blackest black they could remember. Civilai commented that it was like staring out at the edge of time. He was remarkably poetic on Scotch whisky. The low clouds had obliterated the moon and stars and, as people retired for the night, one by one the rooms vanished. Soon, there was a perfect quantum state where Siri and Civilai and Ugly were just a part of the universe, blended together in one big black porridge of nature and meta-nature. It was a moving moment spoiled only by one of the ever-attentive maids who brought them a candle in a glass globe. She placed it on the table between them and fumbled her way back inside. The light barely reached the fence posts with their swirling mist foundations. But the two old boys could see each other quite well. It was cold and they wore jackets, but their feet were bare. They watched their toes wiggle, listened to the coughs and yawns of people priming themselves for sleep, and to the slobbering sounds of Ugly cleaning his equipment. They sniffed in the smoky night air and the nectar of the neat whisky.

  “Daeng not joining us?” Civilai asked at last.

  “Today was a bit much for her arthritis,” Siri told him. “She thought we’d be sitting behind a table taking notes all day so she didn’t wear her boots. Ugly’s standing in for her.”

  “How are you holding up?”

  “A bit tired but I’ll survive.”

  They enjoyed the quiet some more.

  “They’re out there, you know,” Siri said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “The jars.”

  “Right. If we had tourism I’d put fluorescent lamps on each one so you could sit here and look at them; those lights that change colours, you know? Pinks and lime greens. Perhaps fireworks; those little sparkly ones.”

  “Tasteful.”

  “And none of that nonsense about burial urns. Guaranteed to kill off tourism at the first mention.”

  “You don’t believe they are?”

  “Siri, who in their right mind would allow their dead relatives to be folded up and squashed into a jar?”

  “Some of those jars are two meters across.”

  “Even so. Complete waste of labor when you have a wake to attend.”

  “So, what’s the Civilai theory?”

  “Well, it seems obvious. This region was famous for its dog racing. Traders came from all around to watch the heats. Gamble their life savings away on the nose of a mongrel.”

  Ugly looked up, probably coincidentally.

  “So, seeing all this potential from the new tourist trade,” Civilai continued, “the locals set up stalls. They made themselves jars, the bigger the better, and brewed rice whiskey.”

  “So they’re stills?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Le plain des alambics. The plain of stills. Hmm, I like it.”

  “Except rice whiskey ferments naturally so it doesn’t need heat. Once you’ve built your jar everything takes care of itself.”

  “You have heard of the famous French lady archaeologist who made an extensive study and concluded they could only be burial urns?”

  “Of course she did. She was a well-known prohibitionist. She wasn’t going to go home and tell everyone how she’d discovered an ancient civilization of debauchers and fornicators, was she? She had to make something up.”

  “Good point. Except she found human remains in the jars.”

  “Siri, those jars are enormous. The strongest whiskey is always at the bottom. The vendor just keeps topping it up with water. So your serious drinker isn’t going to be satisfied with scooping weak whiskey off the top, is he now? He puts his reed pipe all the way down and sucks up the sediment. But it’s heady stuff. Of course there’s going be collateral damage.”

  “Have you run all this by UNESCO?”

  “Oh, they know. Trust me, they know.”

  They paid another short homage to the silence but keeping quiet was always a challenge to a man like Civilai.

  “I didn’t notice Judge Pimples and Cousin Monolingual come back,” he said.

  “Me neither. They’re probably sampling the nightlife of Phonsavan.”

  “That should keep them occupied for a good fifteen minutes.”

  “You never can tell. Sin is all around.”

  “That’s one of the topics the major and I were talking about tonight. It looks like we arrived in Vientiane a few years too late. We missed the Gomorrah period.”

  “I thought the point was to engage a retired US army major in a debate about the breakdown of American culture. To explain to him your theories of why they lost in Vietnam and go into great detail about how most of the millions of dollars they pumped into Laos went straight into the pockets of the fat royalists.”

  “I did all that.”

  “And?”

  “He agreed.”

  “With everything?”

  “Pretty well.”

  “What a spoilsport.”

  “Exactly. So we had nothing left to talk about other than booze and sex.”

  “Was that the moment that you called over Auntie Bpoo and dismissed Peach?”

  “She’s only seventeen, Siri. There’s probably a law against two old men talking dirty in front of a minor. Auntie Bpoo was certainly a safer choice, and knowledgeable. Honestly, little brother. I had no idea. Potter used to fly into Vientiane from Saigon to witness perversions unknown in the western world. Freak shows that—were there a section for it—would have made their way into the Guinness Book of Records. Honestly, I doubt I could smoke twenty cigarettes at the same time … in my mouth.”

  “All this time together and I had no idea you were interested in sex.”

  “It’s contagious, Siri. Major Potter is obsessed. He went into great detail. I even caught Bpoo blushing once or twice.”

  “I don’t recall seeing either of you walk away in disgust.”

  “It was an education, Siri. Seventy-four and I’m still learning. I can’t wait to go home and tell Madame Noy.”

  Siri laughed.

  “I’m sure she’ll be delighted. What does Potter’s wife say about all this?”

  “Currently between wives. He’s had three at last count.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “And he puts away the drink, my word he does. He had his own personal bottle. He has a few swigs of whiskey then a cup of coffee to keep himself coherent. Never seen anything like it. I thought you and I could knock it back, little brother, but he makes us look like amateurs.”

  “Practice, Civilai. That’s all it takes.”

  Siri refilled their glasses.

  “So, apart from the hotspots of Vientiane, you didn’t learn anything from him?” Siri asked.

  “I almost got a secret or two out of him. He hinted he’d found out some dirt about this mission. Said it wasn’t all as clear cut as it seemed. Said we Lao should keep our eyes open for a traitor. By then Johnny was doing most of the talking. But the manager came in and told us we had ten minutes before the generator went off and that shut the major up. I plan to have another go at him tomorrow. There’s nothing I like better than a dollop of scandal. I’ve found there are very few people on the planet who don’t have skeletons in their closet.”

  “I certainly do.”

  “Goes with the job, I supp—”

  The distant sound of chopper blades churned through the silence of the night. It seemed to bounce off the darkness all around, disorienting them. They didn�
��t know where to look.

  “Sounds like Judge Haeng and the boys coming home after a night of raging at the post office,” Civilai said.

  “It’s a dangerous night to be flying,” Siri decided. “Surely they could have parked the helicopter behind the bar and taken a donkey home. They could even have walked it in half an hour.”

  The sound became deafening and the chopper loomed over the roof behind them, kicking off concrete slates and sending a shower of rubble onto the two drinkers. They covered their glasses with their hands. The pilot had obviously not seen the building until the last second. The craft’s spotlight was angled down at the ground and as it rocked it splashed white light clumsily all around like water from a bucket. At one stage, Siri and Civilai were highlighted cabaret performers. They waved. The chopper angled in to the dirt yard, kicking up dust and landing on one wheel. For a second they thought it might crash onto its side but instead it flipped onto the other wheel, rocked, then settled. The engine growled, the rotors began to slow, and the dust churned in the air in the bright light until the beam was extinguished. The only light now was from the lamp on the rattan table which had miraculously stayed lit.

  “Do you suppose it’s friendly?” Civilai shouted.

  One, then two, then three flashlight beams came to life inside the chopper. Heads appeared as the hatch slid open and the metal steps were unfolded to the dirt. Two figures stepped down, lit occasionally as they moved in front of the beams. Siri recognized the shapes of Sergeant Johnson and Second Secretary Gordon bowed against the downdraft. They reached their hands toward the hatch and an arm appeared. They both took hold of it and guided a man in white down the steps. All of the flashlights were now directed upon this character, the star of the spectacle. He was a physically irrelevant man in his late fifties with long but thinning blond hair combed over a round pate. He wore white shoes to complement the crisp white double-breasted suit, buttoned to hold back a rampant red tie. The trousers were flared. When he reached the ground, his long wispy hair rose and danced in the draft like deepsea anemones. With Johnson and Gordon propping him up on either side he was rushed toward the hotel entrance. Seeing Siri and Civilai seated there on the veranda, the new guest shrugged off his escorts, approached the two old men and said something with feeling. He then grabbed for their hands which he shook enthusiastically, turning slightly toward a short Chinese-looking woman. In the dim light all they could see of her was crimson lips inside a black pageboy frame. She had no eyes or nose that they could make out but she did possess a splendid-looking camera. There was a flash and before the dots had cleared from their eyes, the stranger had vanished inside the building. In his wake they saw Judge Haeng, Vinai, and Rhyme from Time. It was a colorful but very brief carnival which left Siri and Civilai breathless.

  The helicopter engine huffed a last breath. Then all was calm again save the ticking of a tired old Mi8 and the slowing whirr of its blades.

  “Who was that white-suited stranger?” Civilai asked.

  “L’Empereur est arrivé,” Siri told him.

  They walked over to the helicopter where the two young pilots were doing what had to be done to put the beast to bed. They held small penlights between their teeth as they fiddled with the engine.

  “What happened here?” Siri asked.

  The youngest one answered. To Siri he looked barely old enough to ride a two-wheeled bicycle.

  “The senator was supposed to stay overnight in Vientiane, Comrade,” he said. “They were going to fly him up tomorrow. But the flight control people said, given the conditions, it might be better if he flew directly up here. The military met his flight at Wattai and transferred him up to the landing strip in Phonsavan. We picked him up there.”

  “What conditions?” Civilai asked.

  “The smoke, Comrade. There’s a blanket of smoke all across the Special Zone.”

  “Slash and burn?”

  “We lose two or three months a year of flying time to it up here. The smoke just hangs around the mountains. Combined with the mist it’s like flying through soup. You can’t even make out the landmarks and, to tell the truth, none of us are that good at instrument flying. Tonight you’ve got the smoke and the mist and no moon. All we had to do was hop over from town, a couple of minutes. Even so, we almost ran into the hotel. We didn’t want to take off at all but the judge insisted. It was hairy, I don’t mind telling you, Comrade. And they’ve only just started burning. In a day or two you won’t see a hand in front of your face. I doubt we’ll be flying anywhere else for a while.”

  Siri and Civilai returned to their seats.

  “Don’t you think that’s odd?” Siri asked.

  “What?”

  “It’s August.”

  “And?”

  “Who’s slashing and burning in August? The point of it is to wait for the dry season and burn off the top growth in time to plant. I know the wet season seems to have finished early this year but the vegetation’s still damp. All they’d get now is a lot of smoke.”

  “And you believe…?”

  “I just wonder whether it might not have anything to do with agriculture. We’re surrounded by territory still occupied by antigovernment guerrilla forces. They could be burning the land for any number of reasons.”

  “Perhaps they were getting nervous about the PL air force with its new fighters. I heard a lot of air activity this evening. I’d wager they’ve evacuated the airfield so they wouldn’t be stranded here. That’s probably worth setting light to a few mountains for.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I’m always right. If we had television I’d be the one who wins all the quiz shows. I’d have a new washing machine every week.”

  They drank for a while, considering.

  “Where do you suppose they’ll put him?” Civilai asked.

  “Who? L’Empereur? Wherever he goes it won’t take him long to realize he’s not at the Oriental any more. I hear the Thais have running water without streptococci.”

  “Beds without crabs and creaks and odd smells? Sounds like heaven.”

  “He’ll be miserable. He’ll stay awake all night, get his photo shoot done at dawn’s crack, and be out of here before the smoke gets so bad he’s trapped. We might not even get a chance to sit down with him over a few beers and have a laugh together about the domino theory.”

  “Shame.”

  11

  DROP ADDERS

  Senator Ulysses Vogal the Third was up with the unseen sun, although “up” suggests it was preceded by a “down” and the gentleman hadn’t dared lay his precious body on a mattress with such an obvious history. He’d spent the night in a chair wrapped in a blanket he’d brought with him watching the minutes crawl by on his luminous watch face. His personal assistant was a Chinese-American called Ethel Chin who could trace her Chinese-American ancestry back four generations, long enough to have lost the Chinese language entirely. She’d ordered room service for the senator but he’d taken one look at it and decided he’d make do with a cup of coffee and a cookie. He had work to do. By seven he was out in the forecourt of the Friendship overseeing the digging of a pit deep enough to bury the Sikorsky tailplane. They were inside the safety zone but the senator stood well back from the hole. They lowered the wreckage into it and sprinkled a thin layer of dirt on top. And there, Ethel Chin and Rhyme from Time took several pictures of the senator on his knees unearthing the wreckage. This was followed by several more pictures of the senator standing beside the excavated tailplane beaming like a fisherman. Then came a series with Senator Vogal listening earnestly to a group of communist natives: a tribe consisting of Daeng, Dtui, Geung, Phosy, and Commander Lit. They sat around the great white- bell-bottomed leader listening to his words of wisdom in return for an appearance in Time magazine. Rhyme promised to send them each a copy. Perhaps the editor wouldn’t notice that all of the listeners had their feet pointing directly at the American elder, or even that he’d know how disrespectful it was considered.
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  And Siri had been right. It wasn’t even breakfast time and the senator was out of his sweat-stained khakis and back in his white suit sitting on the uncomfortable bench of the Mi8 with his overnight bag between his legs. He was a man eager to be anywhere else. His smile was all used up and he had nothing left on his face but anxiety. Everyone else stood in the morning mist waiting for the chopper to lift off. But the craft was silent. The rotors immobile. Vogal yelled at Ethel Chin who in turn yelled at Peach. The interpreter nodded and walked to a spot below the cockpit window where she called to the pilot.

  “The senator couldn’t help noticing that you aren’t flying,” she said. “Any problem?”

  The young captain had been on the radio.

  “They won’t give us clearance to fly,” he said. “They say the smoke’s really heavy over the mountains today. It’s on both sides of us, north and south. They aren’t prepared to risk it. They say we should stay here till the air clears. Hope for a bit of wind. See what it’s like later.”