Haeng was standing over Siri’s body with bloody fingers.
“As this is a special occasion,” Siri went on, “I suggest that it would be a courtesy to our American guests if we followed their culture and ate while we listened to your probably insightful and humorous early morning discourse.”
He still had little idea about American culture or whether they ate during speeches in the United States-Henry James certainly didn’t-but he was hungry. Judging from the ensuing round of applause once the translation had reached the visitors’ table, they were hungry too. And so, Judge Haeng’s speech and its purportedly English translation were all but drowned out by the clattering of American knives and forks and the hum of conversation. Nobody failed to notice the fact that Haeng glared at Siri the entire time. Siri seemed not to care. He was taking the opportunity to study the colorful assembly of Americans opposite.
The retired major, Potter, wore a large flowery Hawaiian shirt, green shorts with an impressive collection of pockets, huge boots, and a Dodgers baseball cap. Siri could think of no better word to describe his complexion than “ripe.” He was flushed and bloated like a man dropped into boiling water and left there to simmer, the result of blood vessels expanding. His nose was a crimson golf ball. He was, Siri decided, a man lost to alcoholism. This voracious appetite extended to food. Peach, seated beside him, looked on in amazement as he forked a mountain of potatoes into himself.
“Honey,” he said.
Peach looked around for the bar girl he might have been soliciting. She saw nobody.
“Are you talking to me, Major?”
“You’re the interpreter, right?”
“I am.”
“Then shouldn’t you be telling us what these two guys are saying?”
“Well”-she looked over her shoulder-“one of these guys is Judge Haeng and he’s giving a long talk about the tolerant nature of the Pathet Lao to former imperialist oppressors. And the other guy is translating it into English.”
“What?” The major put down his fork for the first time and cocked an ear in the direction of cousin Vinai. “That’s English?”
“Apparently.”
“I can’t understand a goddamned word. Can’t they get the interpreter to do it?”
“Comrade Vinai is the head interpreter, Major.”
“What about the big woman?”
“What big woman would that be, sir?”
“The one they put on our chopper yesterday. She spoke pretty good.”
“On our helicopter?”
“Yeah, you didn’t see her? She was the only Laotian on board.”
“I was stuck at the back behind a wall of cans, but, no, can’t say I noticed her.”
“Well, she was damned good.”
Once the Judge Haeng/Cousin Vinai double act was over and the plates emptied, everyone sat with their coffee waiting for the main event. Peach tapped the major’s arm.
“You’re up, Major,” she said.
Potter wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and inflated to a standing position. He said something loud and full of expression and then paused. There was an embarrassing silence. All eyes were on Cousin Vinai who was burrowing down into a bowl of rice soup. He waved his spoon at Peach.
“You take it, little sister,” he said. “This is the first chance I’ve had to eat.”
So, once again, Peach assumed the mantle of interpreter. She explained that Major Potter had planned a small activity as an icebreaker for the two sides to get to know each other. It was an adaptation of the game charades, of which none of the Lao apart from Siri and Civilai had heard. Siri gritted his teeth. For charades to be fun-if it ever truly was-you had to be three sheets to the wind, not hungover and stone-cold sober at breakfast. But there was no fighting it. Sergeant Johnson, perhaps the blackest live man Siri had seen in Laos, handed out cards apologetically. He was a marine based at the US Consulate in Vientiane. He had a booming sugary voice. He leaned into his walk like a meatless Nebraska Man in a hurry to catch up with evolution. But his gait put his smile out in front of him and it was a marvelous smile. It fitted on that handsome face with its gleaming eyes that took in everything around them.
The names of all those in attendance had been written in both Lao and English and the cards had strings attached so they could be hung around the neck.
“Oh, heaven help us,” said Civilai. “Didn’t the Chinese do something like this during the cultural revolution? What humiliation.”
“Get into the spirit, brother,” Siri said.
“If only I could.”
But to make matters worse, the Americans all stood and pushed their tables and chairs back to the wall. The Lao assumed they were supposed to do the same so the moment arrived when both teams were standing facing each other with no barriers between them. The symbolism was poignant. Whether this was his idea or a directive from Washington nobody would know, but Major Potter stepped forward and said, “
The Lao looked on in amazement. Had the major actually announced in Thai that he had a fighting penis? It was a bold statement if true. But they racked their brains for another possible meaning. It was Dtui who found it.
“Ah,
The Lao echoed the utterance in relief and the ice began to break quite accidentally and all by itself. You couldn’t go downhill from there. The point of the game was to give your name in English and Lao and then mime what you did for a living for the other team to guess. The major launched into a gala performance of marching and shooting and saluting and the Lao kept silent. Everyone knew he was a retired major but they wanted to draw out the embarrassment. Oddly, the more he mimed the happier he appeared to be and the more the US contingent laughed. They were an amusing bunch with apparently no shame at all. It was Judge Haeng who finally called out enthusiastically, “He’s a soldier.”
This was translated and the Americans and Mr. Geung applauded and whooped.
“He’s a soldier,” laughed Mr. Geung.
This delighted the Lao who were now officially into the spirit of the moment. Even General Suvan came to for the event. His mime of a soldier was remarkably similar to that of the major, albeit slower, but he was delighted when somebody guessed correctly and he slumped back into a chair from the exertion. The game continued and was a success at many levels. Civilai had several lewd suggestions, none of them translated by Peach. All on the American side knew that Daeng was having a joke with them when she mimed that she was just a noodle seller and Mr. Geung could not resist adding sound effects as he sawed through the rib cage of an imaginary corpse. Peach was the last to go. Her hand gestures of two people talking led to Mr. Geung’s guess that she was a duck farmer and that heralded the biggest laugh of the morning.
By the time they were due to file out of the dining room, despite the odds and the temperature, there was no ice left to break. The two groups merged and mingled and attempted their few words of the others’ language. They shook hands and smiled and laughed at nothing in particular. If only the war had been conducted under similar rules.
Only one man, it seemed, was not humming the melody of peace and love. To date, Judge Haeng had not engaged Siri in conversation. In fact they hadn’t spoken since before the doctor made changes to the team list. But here, with everyone in a milling mood, he made a beeline to the old coroner and grasped his left hand like a claw crane engaging a sack of rice. He smiled, but not for Siri’s benefit.
“I haven’t had a chance to thank you for adulterating the personnel list that I’d spent a month finalizing,” he snarled behind his teeth. “I don’t know how you did it, Siri, how you forced the minister’s hand on this, but I promise you I will not forget it. Never. I’m the wrong man to get on the wrong side of and you are firmly on that side, Siri Paiboun. You have tossed able men and women from this work detail, respectable cadres with status and influence and you have replaced them with morons and housewives and senile sociopaths.” (Siri took the latter to mean Civilai rather than himself.) “And you embarrass me further by including my name in your circus ring. It’s all
