Never, never had she heard such words. In all her seventeen years she'd never heard a man truly express himself. This was Laos. Men held in their feelings. You could be around them all their lives and not know they had one emotion between them. So this was overwhelming. It was as if his large hand had reached inside her rib cage and squeezed her heart. She couldn't breathe. She threw open the door of the truck and walked unsteadily away.
Phan watched her go, reached across, and closed her door. The woman who pumped the diesel was leaning on the counter in the tiny bamboo service hut. She smiled. He smiled back and shrugged. She held up her thumb.
This was too, too easy.
It was only four thirty of the same, incredibly long, Monday. Siri was sitting on a wooden bench at the new Ministry of Justice. He'd heard of their dilemma. Prior to the ministerization, Judge Haeng had been an appropriate department head in the eyes of the administration. He was a judge, albeit a fast-track, Soviet-trained judge, and he was from a wealthy family. So, as a department head, he fitted the bill. But as a minister, even though it was fundamentally the same job, he was found lacking. Being a minister had certain inherent expectations. How, for example, could anybody barely turned forty be a minister? A minister had to look experienced, with the lines of wisdom etched onto his countenance. Haeng had acne. What diplomat would want to shake hands with a spotty minister?
So a room on the top floor of the Ministry of Justice was being refurbished for the arrival of the new minister. Siri watched agile old men climbing the bamboo scaffold like spiders on a web. They chipped away the clay hornets' nests and replaced broken louvres. Nobody yet knew who the new minister would be, so, temporarily, Judge Haeng remained in charge. It had been a very painful slap in the face for him and his mood reflected it. This was certainly a bad time to be asking him for favours.
"He'll see you now, Doctor," said Manivone. She was the receptionist, the head of the typing pool, and the real brains behind the Ministry of Justice. Siri was sure that without her, Judge Haeng would be driving a motorcycle taxi.
"What hat should I wear?" Siri asked.
"My first choice would be something hard and shock proof," she said, walking beside him along the open-air corridor. "But as it's almost going-home time, I'd go with cap in hand. The Vietnamese adviser's in there so the judge has to keep hold of his temper and act humble. If you come across as pathetic he might take pity on you."
"I don't do pathetic very well."
"I know. But don't rile him. You know what he's like when you rile him. Play it by ear." Siri knocked and turned the doorknob, "…or earlobe," she added and laughed behind her hand.
Siri was smiling when he entered the room. Haeng continued to do whatever it was he was doing at his desk and ignored the intrusion. Comrade Phat, a Vietnamese with few teeth but no shortage of charisma, looked up from his corner table and greeted Siri in Vietnamese. Siri replied in kind and Phat laughed. This was probably a bad start if Siri wanted to win over the judge. Judge Haeng's Vietnamese wasn't good enough to catch the joke. He would naturally assume the worst.
Siri sat on the rickety chair in front of Haeng's desk and awaited his audience. The judge seemed to be composing a memorandum. He wrote like a child with his tongue poking slightly through his lips. Siri had always seen him as a boy although Haeng was clearly middle-aged. He didn't have any respect for the young fellow.
"Siri?" said Haeng, as if he'd just noticed him. "What is it?"
Obviously the judge was in a bad mood; Siri was in need of a clever tactic or two to win him over. He tried the most obvious first.
"I just came by because I was astounded when I heard. After all you've done for the Justice Department, your impeccable record. How could you have been passed over?"
Siri had lied to Manivone. Pathetic wasn't at all beyond him. But Daeng was right. The only way to get Housing off his back was to have Haeng on his side. Few men would have seen Siri's blatant pandering as anything other than what it was. But Haeng obviously wanted to hear it.
"Why, thank you, Siri," he said. "It's always heartening to hear a hurrah from the soldiers in the ranks."
"And you are an inspiration to the men, Judge." Siri was temporarily interrupted by the clearing of a Vietnamese throat. "I often find myself repeating your Party mottoes." He didn't bother to add, "At drinking sessions for a good laugh."
"Well, I'm touched, Doctor."
"Oh, yes. And one of my favourites, and I hope I've got this right, goes, "If a mother cries in Pakse we feel sorrow in Xam Neua. If a daughter is born in Bokeo, we burp her in Khamuan. It is the duty of a good socialist to consider every Lao a member of his family." That still brings a tear to my eye, that one."
"I think you have the essence of it, Siri. Well done."
"That motto changed my philosophy, Judge."
"It did?"
"After you uttered those words I went out and invited my new family into my home: the poor, the blind, the previously immoral, the widowed, and the dishonest."
"Siri, you aren't referring to your present house, are you?"
"Why, yes."
"I've been there, remember?"
"Wasn't it marvellous to see your dream turn into reality? I tell everybody, even the Department of Housing, that my living arrangements were inspired by Judge Haeng."
"You do?"
"Certainly."
"Well, I suggest you un-tell them."
"What?"
"You are a senior Party member and the national coroner. You have to command respect. Yet your house is a zoo, Siri. I thought your marriage might settle you down, force you to kick that band of scavengers out onto the street and make you live like a respectable senior citizen. It's a government residence, not a guesthouse."
"Oh, I get it. A Party motto is perfectly sound advice until it's put into practice. Say it after me by all means, but don't actually do it. We don't really want everyone in Khamuan wiping the snotty little Bokeo tyke's arse."
"Siri, you always resort to vulgarity when you lose an argument."
"How would you know? You're never around when I lose an argument."
Judge Haeng stood and shuffled papers on his desk. He was in a black huff.
"Dr Siri, these are working hours. I have neither the time nor the inclination to discuss your personal life. If you have technical or medical information for me I am happy to listen. Otherwise, please don't disturb me. And now I have a meeting."
Siri was fuming inside, which caused the smile on his face to pucker his cheeks.
"Oh, I completely forgot," he said calmly. "I do have some medical and scientific information to pass on to you."
"Well, let's have it. I'm in a hurry."
Siri coughed and recited, "A fart is fifty-nine per cent nitrogen, twenty-one per cent hydrogen…"
Haeng pushed back his chair, grabbed his papers, and strode to the door.
"…and nineteen per cent carbon…"
The door slammed.
"…dioxide."
Siri pursed his lips and stared at the brown marks on the backs of his hands. He fancied he saw familiar country outlines from the atlas there.
"What's the other one per cent?" asked Phat.
"Depends what you had for dinner," Siri told him.
There was a beat before both men burst into laughter.
"Dr Siri," said Phat, drying his eyes on a torn-off rectangle of tissue paper. "How have you survived in the system this long?"
"Actually, Comrade, they did away with me several years back. I've returned to haunt them."
"So it would seem, Siri. So it would seem. Trouble with Housing?"
"They aren't happy with the class of people I have living with me."