Of course, to learn French it would have helped to have gone to school. There was one down in the town. But it was exclusively for the children of the gods and the sons of the wealthy Vietnamese. So, we Lao of little ability struggled as best we could, picked up words here and there and kept our fingers crossed that we didn’t get ill. There was a small regional hospital but that too was reserved for the service of the French and Vietnamese. Growing up in my small Lao Teung village, this was my normal.
‘Siri. I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon,’ said Seksan. ‘Madame Daeng not with you?’
‘Her head’s giving her some trouble. In fact she can’t find it.’
Seksan laughed. He had an infectious giggle.
‘I’m afraid we hit the bottles a little too hard last night,’ he said, opening the embassy gate to let his friend in. ‘In fact, I’m surprised to see you up so early. What can I do for you?’
‘I was wondering whether I could take a quick peek at the embassy’s top secret files.’
Seksan laughed again but noticed that Siri wasn’t smiling.
‘You’re serious.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re asking me whether I’d allow an ex-member of the Lao Issara, a sworn enemy of the French colonists, who proceeded to wage war against my adopted country for twenty years, to thumb through the embassy’s secret files?’
‘Yes.’
‘You do realize there are several legal and diplomatic arguments as to why I probably shouldn’t allow it?’
‘Well,’ said Siri. ‘If they’d made you ambassador I’d listen to those arguments. But they gave you a broom and a toilet brush and told you to keep the place clean. Right now this is just a sprawling compound of quaint little buildings with no diplomatic status at all. I’m betting the staff didn’t bother to take anything with them because they’re expecting us to beg them to come back any time soon. I mean, if they left the wine …’
Seksan smiled at him.
‘There’s a store building full of files,’ he said.
‘There you go.’
‘I have orders to set light to it if the compound is taken over.’
‘If they’re prepared to burn them, they can’t be worth that much, can they now? Give me an hour.’
‘I might come and have a look for myself.’
In its heyday, the two-tier C’est La Vie had plied between Vientiane and Luang Prabang during the high-river months, taking joyful French families and off-duty squaddies on an exotic Mekhong River cruise, a highlight of their time in Indochina. Until the river started to attract snipers, the C’est La Vie, now renamed King Burom, did the same trip with Americans, who, you may recall, were technically not in Laos at all. They would hire the good old King and escort their ‘girlfriends’ and crates of bourbon on romantic overnight cruises. Take photographs of one another’s backsides and throw up over the side. Good for the fish, they said. But now the old girl had lost that international romance. There were so many layers of paint on her she’d become amorphous. Under the Party moniker of Voyage of Harmony, she chugged up and down the river picking up chickens in rattan cages and trussed pigs and burlap sacks of dried manure. And every now and then she’d take a passenger, the few whose laissez-passers were in order. And then there’d be someone for the old river pilot to converse with on the eighteen-hour journey from the new capital to the old.
Rather than sit cross-legged on the splintery deck, Siri, Daeng and Mr Geung had brought their own folding chairs. They’d even been thoughtful enough to bring along a fourth for Comrade Civilai. He was on his way to Luang Prabang on one of his many post-retirement functions. He’d refused the helicopter ride, arguing that his haemorrhoids acted up at altitude. Instead he would leave a day early and enjoy a leisurely cruise with his best friends. He liked to grumble about the assignments they gave him here and there yet, to be honest, that feeling of being needed was a drug. But, of late, this cooperative bunkum was getting him down. He’d sit for hours in meetings with sensible farmers trying to convince them that socialism would make them all equally wealthy. And he’d wait for that old-timer to put up his hand and ask, ‘And will the system share the poverty just as fairly?’ Civilai wanted to shout ‘Yes.’ The floods and the droughts would distribute misery evenly to all the co-op members. And the politburo would sit back and scratch its head and come up with a new system for next year.
Civilai’s enthusiasm for the doctrine he believed in had won hearts in those early years. He was a communicator. He was a faithful party member. And then he got old and one day over breakfast — it was eggs lightly fried in soy sauce with a sprinkling of grated onion, he remembered quite clearly — he’d looked up from his plate and said to his wife, ‘It isn’t working.’
Peasants didn’t want to wait a year or two for group rewards. They wanted profits now, or at least enough to feed the family tomorrow. They’d do whatever it took to succeed. There wasn’t one system that would keep everybody happy. You needed a mix. But as soon as he started to advocate eclecticism his future in the politburo began its downward slide. It reached a hell that he was lucky to have escaped from with his head on his neck. So now, here he was heading off into rural villages that had survived quite nicely for hundreds of years without once hearing of this Karl Marx fellow, and reading to the elders from the manual. He didn’t ask for questions at the end of his talks. They gave him a drink, asked after his family and waved him off. Nothing ventured. Nothing gained.
‘You don’t sound that enthusiastic,’ said Siri. They were passing the elephant hills of Ban Chang. Civilai sat between Siri and Daeng on his deckchair slurping coconut water directly from the shell.
‘It’s doomed,’ he said. ‘We’re all doomed. The end of the world is nigh.’
‘Well,’ said Daeng. ‘I must say they couldn’t have chosen a better diplomat to enthuse the masses.’
‘Doomed,’ said Civilai.
Siri and Civilai had a lot in common. They had both studied in France and returned to fight the revolution against the oppressors. They had both joined the Pathet Lao and lived in harsh conditions in the fields of battle. And now they shared another badge of courage. Both were missing their left earlobe. Siri’s had been bitten off in a fistfight. Civilai had recently made the mistake of putting his ear in the path of a speeding bullet. The doctor believed it was a deliberate act on the part of the politician, who envied Siri’s deformity of valour. But the old men were once again a matching set.