“Daeng not joining us?” Civilai asked at last.
“Today was a bit much for her arthritis,” Siri told him. “She thought we’d be sitting behind a table taking notes all day so she didn’t wear her boots. Ugly’s standing in for her.”
“How are
“A bit tired but I’ll survive.”
They enjoyed the quiet some more.
“They’re out there, you know,” Siri said.
“Who’s that?”
“The jars.”
“Right. If we had tourism I’d put fluorescent lamps on each one so you could sit here and look at them; those lights that change colours, you know? Pinks and lime greens. Perhaps fireworks; those little sparkly ones.”
“Tasteful.”
“And none of that nonsense about burial urns. Guaranteed to kill off tourism at the first mention.”
“You don’t believe they are?”
“Siri, who in their right mind would allow their dead relatives to be folded up and squashed into a jar?”
“Some of those jars are two meters across.”
“Even so. Complete waste of labor when you have a wake to attend.”
“So, what’s the Civilai theory?”
“Well, it seems obvious. This region was famous for its dog racing. Traders came from all around to watch the heats. Gamble their life savings away on the nose of a mongrel.”
Ugly looked up, probably coincidentally.
“So, seeing all this potential from the new tourist trade,” Civilai continued, “the locals set up stalls. They made themselves jars, the bigger the better, and brewed rice whiskey.”
“So they’re stills?”
“Absolutely.”
“
“Except rice whiskey ferments naturally so it doesn’t need heat. Once you’ve built your jar everything takes care of itself.”
“You have heard of the famous French lady archaeologist who made an extensive study and concluded they could only be burial urns?”
“Of course she did. She was a well-known prohibitionist. She wasn’t going to go home and tell everyone how she’d discovered an ancient civilization of debauchers and fornicators, was she? She had to make something up.”
“Good point. Except she found human remains in the jars.”
“Siri, those jars are enormous. The strongest whiskey is always at the bottom. The vendor just keeps topping it up with water. So your serious drinker isn’t going to be satisfied with scooping weak whiskey off the top, is he now? He puts his reed pipe all the way down and sucks up the sediment. But it’s heady stuff. Of course there’s going be collateral damage.”
“Have you run all this by UNESCO?”
“Oh, they know. Trust me, they know.”
They paid another short homage to the silence but keeping quiet was always a challenge to a man like Civilai.
“I didn’t notice Judge Pimples and Cousin Monolingual come back,” he said.
“Me neither. They’re probably sampling the nightlife of Phonsavan.”
“That should keep them occupied for a good fifteen minutes.”
“You never can tell. Sin is all around.”
“That’s one of the topics the major and I were talking about tonight. It looks like we arrived in Vientiane a few years too late. We missed the Gomorrah period.”
“I thought the point was to engage a retired US army major in a debate about the breakdown of American culture. To explain to him your theories of why they lost in Vietnam and go into great detail about how most of the millions of dollars they pumped into Laos went straight into the pockets of the fat royalists.”
“I did all that.”
“And?”
“He agreed.”
“With everything?”
“Pretty well.”
“What a spoilsport.”
“Exactly. So we had nothing left to talk about other than booze and sex.”
“Was that the moment that you called over Auntie Bpoo and dismissed Peach?”
“She’s only seventeen, Siri. There’s probably a law against two old men talking dirty in front of a minor. Auntie Bpoo was certainly a safer choice, and knowledgeable. Honestly, little brother. I had no idea. Potter used to fly into Vientiane from Saigon to witness perversions unknown in the western world. Freak shows that-were there a section for it-would have made their way into the
“All this time together and I had no idea you were interested in sex.”
“It’s contagious, Siri. Major Potter is obsessed. He went into great detail. I even caught Bpoo blushing once or twice.”
“I don’t recall seeing either of you walk away in disgust.”
“It was an education, Siri. Seventy-four and I’m still learning. I can’t wait to go home and tell Madame Noy.”
Siri laughed.
“I’m sure she’ll be delighted. What does Potter’s wife say about all this?”
“Currently between wives. He’s had three at last count.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“And he puts away the drink, my word he does. He had his own personal bottle. He has a few swigs of whiskey then a cup of coffee to keep himself coherent. Never seen anything like it. I thought you and I could knock it back, little brother, but he makes us look like amateurs.”
“Practice, Civilai. That’s all it takes.”
Siri refilled their glasses.
“So, apart from the hotspots of Vientiane, you didn’t learn anything from him?” Siri asked.
“I almost got a secret or two out of him. He hinted he’d found out some dirt about this mission. Said it wasn’t all as clear cut as it seemed. Said we Lao should keep our eyes open for a traitor. By then Johnny was doing most of the talking. But the manager came in and told us we had ten minutes before the generator went off and that shut the major up. I plan to have another go at him tomorrow. There’s nothing I like better than a dollop of scandal. I’ve found there are very few people on the planet who don’t have skeletons in their closet.”
“I certainly do.”
“Goes with the job, I supp-”
The distant sound of chopper blades churned through the silence of the night. It seemed to bounce off the darkness all around, disorienting them. They didn’t know where to look.
“Sounds like Judge Haeng and the boys coming home after a night of raging at the post office,” Civilai said.
“It’s a dangerous night to be flying,” Siri decided. “Surely they could have parked the helicopter behind the bar and taken a donkey home. They could even have walked it in half an hour.”
The sound became deafening and the chopper loomed over the roof behind them, kicking off concrete slates and sending a shower of rubble onto the two drinkers. They covered their glasses with their hands. The pilot had obviously not seen the building until the last second. The craft’s spotlight was angled down at the ground and as it rocked it splashed white light clumsily all around like water from a bucket. At one stage, Siri and Civilai were highlighted cabaret performers. They waved. The chopper angled in to the dirt yard, kicking up dust and landing on one wheel. For a second they thought it might crash onto its side but instead it flipped onto the other wheel,
