Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill Read Free Book Online Page B

kind before but couldn't put a name to it. A few years earlier he would have thrown it out. But everything that happened these days seemed to have relevance to some other thing. There were no coincidences. "Take notice of what you see." He wrapped the berry in a sheet of tissue from the roll on the table and put it into his bag.

***
    Mr. Geung had heard of Luang Prabang and Dr. Siri's adventures there from the doctor himself. It was a place, like Paris, like Mrs. Kit's Broom and Brush Factory, like the moon. These were all only words to Geung. Visiting them was unthinkable and unnecessary. He had his own world and had no need to visit any other. So, when the convoy arrived in Luang Prabang province, he was neither impressed nor glad to be there. The journey had been a bone jarring ordeal for all of them, but especially for Geung.
    Hopelessness sat heavily upon him. As he was unable to cope with all the new information he was being exposed to, he sat where he'd been put, on the wooden bench, and stared, bemused, at the passing scenery, a mountainous vista like nothing he'd ever seen in his limited life.
    Whenever the truck stopped and the soldiers all climbed down to stretch their aching muscles, Geung followed them off into the forest to relieve himself. He'd become so docile and uncommunicative that the soldiers had begun to treat him more like a kit bag than a prisoner. He'd off-load himself from the truck and they'd stand him in a corner. They'd lead him to the mess tent or to the bunks. Wherever they put him, they knew that's where he'd be if they needed him. There was so little thought invested in him that by the time they reached the barracks at Xieng Ngeun, he'd been totally forgotten.
    The sergeant ran up the wooden steps and knocked on the frame of the open door to the officers' rec room. He walked straight in and found his superior officer reading the Huksat Lao newsletter.
    "Captain Ouan, sir?"
    "What is it?"
    "The retarded man."
    "What about him?"
    "He's gone."
    "Gone where?"
    "We ... we don't actually know, sir. When the trucks arrived here, he wasn't on any of them."
    The captain threw down his paper. "You were supposed to be keeping an eye on him."
    "Yes. I'm sorry. He was in the habit of climbing up onto any truck he felt like. We got used to him just being there somewhere."
    "Oh, you did, did you? When was the last time anyone saw him?"
    "Just before Xieng Ngeun. We stopped to shoot rabbits."
    The captain sighed. "Well, he isn't likely to go far, is he, Corporal? Take a jeep back and find him."
    "Yes, sir." He saluted but paused before leaving. "Actually, it's 'sergeant,' sir."
    "Not anymore it's not."

The Amateur Interpreter of English

    The old Pathet Lao driver was at Siri's disposal for as long as he was needed. The jeep pulled up in front of the new regional hospital in Xam Neua at 8:00 A.M. Four years earlier, this capital of Huaphan province had been a pile of rubble and splinters. Not a house had remained standing after a dozen years of blitz. The noncombatant Air America forward air controllers had guided in the bombers and choreographed the destruction, but it was mostly Lao and Hmong pilots with their fingers on the buttons. It was a symbolic gesture. The civilian inhabitants had fled long before the city was flattened.
    But now a new city was taking shape with pretentious boulevards as wide as the Champs-Elysees and grand plans for another communist show town. The hospital was a temporary field of whitewashed barracks while the staff all waited for a move to a more splendid home. The front office housed the administrators, and Siri and Dtui found Dr. Santiago buried behind a rockery of files and books. He was a skinny man around Siri's age with a hairstyle modeled on that of Albert Einstein. He wore porthole spectacles with glass as thick as the bottoms of gin bottles. A cigarette burned in an ashtray beside him and he seemed to hover there in its smoke. Obviously, he was used to people walking