Siri frowned. "Brother, I've known the president for thirty years. He's never once invited me for dinner. What's your secret?"
"I'm an agreeable person, Siri," Civilai boasted. "And I know when to keep my mouth shut."?
I emerge from a shallow sleep surrounded by the same type of inky darkness in which Daeng and I had awoken a few weeks earlier. A few weeks that have stretched into an infinite number of years. That night still full of hope and love. That night long before I arrived in hell. But, unlike that night with my wife's hand in mine, this dark surrounding me holds no promise. It's murky and hangs in the air with menace, like a vampire's cape. I've endured the endless hours of brightly burning strip lights and not known whether it was day or night. I've begun to babble to myself. To count seconds and minutes. To recite The Prisoner of Zenda aloud in French, hoping it will all stave off the inevitable disorientation. It worked briefly. But now they're screwing with my confused mind by introducing a never-ending night. Cunning bastards. Or could it be a power failure? Have the captors' evil plans been thwarted by an unpaid electricity bill?
"Keep it to yourself, Siri."
They've already punished me for my flippancy. 'The Three Little Pigs' seems to have pushed them to their limits. They haven't beaten me or cut me with their thin bamboo canes. I have already endured those horrors alongside my unseen neighbours. It's as if I can feel as well as hear their punishment. But my minders are depriving me even of the sensation of pain. Instead they've removed gruel from the menu. And, as gruel was the only thing on that menu, I am now surviving on an occasional cup of water. And my sense of smell tells me what they've done to that water. But, didn't fakirs in India drink their own…?
"Sustain, Siri. Take whatever they give you for sustenance."
When the lights were still burning I was able to add the modest nutrition of cockroaches to my cocktail. Steve McQueen taught me that trick. Papillon.
"Your time will come soon enough, Siri," Steve tells me. "Your opportunity to die heroically. Take down six of the blackguards with you as you fight for your life."
Perforated postage stamps with my face peering out. Primary school textbooks telling of the day Siri took down twelve, no, fifteen armed guards as he fought for his freedom. Siri the hero. A band around his head. "Fifteen in one blow." The year 2010. "Yes, my grandfather knew Dr Siri Paiboun. He massacred entire armies with his bare hands. They finally finished him with a poisoned epee through the heart. It was the only way you could bring down a Siri."
I have been catching myself more frequently engaged in such prattle, but I can only blame that Siri fellow. No self-control. Showing weakness. I'm open to attack. My protection against the phibob is gone but they haven't yet come. They haven't begun to torment me into harming myself, or stopped my heart from beating as they do to the day labourers in their sleep. Busy, no doubt, troubling the souls of all those who are dying in this school building. This rotten school building.
"A school? Surely a school is a place for growing…for acquiring. Surely a school should be a step forward, not a step back. A place for giving life a kick-start, a push, a roll. Surely a school shouldn't be the last place you see in your life?"
"I was a teacher," the smiley man said in his neat but unexpressive French.
Surely not here. Surely not in this 'end of everything' high school.
"I learned more as a teacher than I ever did as a pupil," he said. "I learned that students need guidance and sometimes that guidance has to be cruel in order for it to be effective."
"I'm not your student," I told him. "I'm your superior."
Yes, I'm the grand emperor of knowing when to keep my independent mouth shut.
"If that's true," said the man. "Why are you in chains while I am free to walk out?"
"Because you're a despot," I told him, "and despots act out of panic. History shows us that a tyrant's reign is short because it's conducted in an atmosphere of fear. You'll always be looking over your shoulder. You'll always make mistakes. Despots invariably end up with a burning poker up their rear ends."
The smile on the face of the smiling man sagged momentarily. Then, from the cloth bag over his shoulder he produced another sheet of paper and another pencil. He held them out to me.
"My student," he said, "you would be surprised how few people in here get a second chance. But I believe that even the most naive student wouldn't fail to learn from a mistake. And so I am giving you a second chance. If you get it right this time it will make your passage to freedom very simple. I can even give you the answers to your examination questions and you can walk from the room with a degree and honours."
I had to laugh at that. I said, "Great master, tell me the answers. Show me the light."
The last of the unconvincing compassion drained from the man's eyes.
"You are a foreigner," he said. "And we don't want to involve you in our struggle. All you need to do is write what my superiors want to read and you are free to return to your country."
I took the pencil and paper and sat poised to write.
"I'm ready, oh masterful one," I said.
"All I expect is that you tell us your real name and describe in detail when the Vietnamese first recruited you as a spy. Tell us the name of your coordinator in Hanoi and what information he told you to gather. As simple as that. You write it. We file it. You go home."
I did my best to match the man's smile tooth for tooth. And, yes, I did, I considered writing his confession. I wondered what the odds were of being released if I made up a story and names and places. But, deep in my soul, I knew there was no point. They could either execute me as a confessed spy or just shoot me or torture me to death as the fancy took them. I've heard and seen too much of what they're doing here. I will never see the outside of this school.
"Any chance of a bit of lunch before I start?" I asked. "Writing fiction can really take it out of a person."
The man sighed and carried his heavy smile to the door. He stood there and watched me tear off strips of paper and put them into my mouth.
"It has no nutritional value, of course," I told him between mouthfuls. "And all that glue and chemicals won't do me a lot of good. But it should quiet the grumbling in my gut for an hour or two. If I close my eyes it's just like eating noodles."
The smiling man slammed the door behind him.
It's dark now and I feel an ache in my stomach. I wonder whether it's dark because I ate my homework and I'm being punished, or because the world has come to an end and there's nobody to turn on the power. And as I lie back contemplating being the last person on earth, starving to death in a classroom, something moves in the darkness and takes hold of my hand.?
"…and he was dead."
"He was dead?"
"Completely."
"He was dead?"
"Is your needle stuck?"
"What happened to the Hollywood ending?"
Siri and Daeng lay on their mattress. It was one a.m. Whatever bribes needed to be paid to whomever on the Thai side of the river had been paid and the street lamps burned yellow there. The glow shimmied across the Mekhong and crawled up the Lao bank. Despite the drizzly clouds that masked the starry sky, there were no longer any completely black nights. Even by the dim light that filtered through the rose-patterned cotton curtains Siri could see his wife clearly and she could see him. There would be no mistaken identity on that bed.
"It wasn't a Hollywood film, dear husband," she reminded him. "It was pure Chinese propaganda and Wei Loo was dead as a beefsteak by the end of it."