Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

garbage exactly but certainly not at the front of the queue.”
    “But it was while you were reading the diary that it came to you?”
    “As clear as day. The whole tone of her writing felt wrong. I mean, she was a dull, average-looking, short woman on the heavy side. And she’s writing about a jock, a good-looking jock who’s after her. Basically, a nice guy. I mean, she should be so lucky.”
    “There are those who might accuse you of sexism with such a view, Phosy.”
    “Stuff them. Human nature is human nature and I didn’t see anything about Jim that would make a man leave his senses. She wasn’t exactly the fascinating type. She didn’t seem to have an enchanting personality. And he was a fencing champion. If he’d been that way inclined he wouldn’t have gone after a girl from his home town. I’m sure he could have had all the hanky-panky he could find time for. And there was something eerie about her diary.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, I only got the translation, but it was like reading fiction, Siri. According to what she wrote she’d just been raped and she was using all this flowery language and smelling his sweat on her skin. I’ve never met an abused woman who’d rush off to write about it in her diary without taking a shower and a few days to recover. And she’s calling him the devil taking her soul and, I don’t know, it was just too much. And I started to wonder who was stalking who.”
    “Bravo.”
    “She’d known him since K6. She was a kid following around this good-looking smart older boy. Budding crush material. She knew what he liked to do. Where he went to school. Knew about his dad teaching him fencing. And he goes to study and she goes off to work at the clinic up north. And she’s good. Smart as shit. Everyone knows she’ll make a hell of a doctor. But the Americans flee the scene and Jim has the option to move to America. They offer her a scholarship. But she stays on at the clinic. Why would she want to do that? Love for the nation? Or love for something else?
    “Our people are desperate for doctors. They find this girl running a clinic. They turn a blind eye to the fact she was working with the Americans and offer to send her off to study medicine. The Russians offer her a good deal, the Cubans, the North Koreans. But it’s not till they offer her a place in Berlin that she accepts. And why? Guess who’d gone to East Germany six months earlier? The love of her life. But he’s got himself married since she went away, and has a child. Yet still she believes she’s destined to live her life with Neung. She sees it in the stars or somewhere. Already we start to recognise the obsession.
    “I still have no idea where or how she taught herself fencing. I wonder whether she might have badgered Neung’s father into teaching her after his son went off to study in the north. That would be ironic, wouldn’t it? I haven’t had a chance to ask him. But it’s through Neung’s fencing club that she ‘accidentally’ bumps into him again. He’s kind. He tutors her. They spend time together. Her crush develops into a growth, a cancer. She wants him more than she’s ever wanted anything. But she’s a Lao woman. The advance has to come from him. And it doesn’t come. She keeps a diary and through that diary her fantasy becomes real. Neung is pursuing her. She is the victim of his love. But time’s running out. His course is coming to an end and she still hasn’t turned her fairy story into reality. That’s when the writing in the diary becomes darker Neung becomes this unknown evil character, Z. She’s becoming more and more deranged. The whole rape scene sounds like a trashy Thai novel.”
    “How do…?”
    “Not that I’ve ever read one. The point is she has to justify to herself why she’s quitting her course. She couldn’t imagine being in Germany without her fantasy lover so she deliberately fails her exams and gets thrown out. She blames it on some mysterious stalker. People feel sorry for her. So she…Siri, would you stop staring at me like that.”
    “I’m sorry, Phosy. This is the detective I’ve been searching for all my life.”
    “Sarcasm is the lowest form – ”
    “Believe me, Phosy. I’ve had the last of my sarcasm beaten out of me. I’m a recovered sarcaholic.”
    “Good, whatever, anyway, they’re both back in Laos. Home territory. Jim besotted beyond reason. Beyond sanity. Neung still clueless. Jim follows Neung to the