Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

noticed one or two fair heads strolling around K6 yesterday. We should find out which European advisors have permission to be out there.”
    “Chief Phoumi has made interviewing at K6 very difficult,” Inspector Phosy conceded. “They don’t want us out there.”
    “Hmm.” Civilai scratched his chin stubble. “Now that I think I might be able to help with. I’m having dinner with the president this evening, just the two of us. And I’ll be taking a couple of bottles of very good wine from my secret cache. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we could wrangle the security chief’s full cooperation.”
    Siri frowned. “Brother, I’ve known the president for thirty years. He’s never once invited me for dinner. What’s your secret?”
    “I’m an agreeable person, Siri,” Civilai boasted. “And I know when to keep my mouth shut.”
∗
    I emerge from a shallow sleep surrounded by the same type of inky darkness in which Daeng and I had awoken a few weeks earlier. A few weeks that have stretched into an infinite number of years. That night still full of hope and love. That night long before I arrived in hell. But, unlike that night with my wife’s hand in mine, this dark surrounding me holds no promise. It’s murky and hangs in the air with menace, like a vampire’s cape. I’ve endured the endless hours of brightly burning strip lights and not known whether it was day or night. I’ve begun to babble to myself. To count seconds and minutes. To recite The Prisoner of Zenda aloud in French, hoping it will all stave off the inevitable disorientation. It worked briefly. But now they’re screwing with my confused mind by introducing a never-ending night. Cunning bastards. Or could it be a power failure? Have the captors’ evil plans been thwarted by an unpaid electricity bill?
    “ Keep it to yourself, Siri .”
    They’ve already punished me for my flippancy. ‘The Three Little Pigs’ seems to have pushed them to their limits. They haven’t beaten me or cut me with their thin bamboo canes. I have already endured those horrors alongside my unseen neighbours. It’s as if I can feel as well as hear their punishment. But my minders are depriving me even of the sensation of pain. Instead they’ve removed gruel from the menu. And, as gruel was the only thing on that menu, I am now surviving on an occasional cup of water. And my sense of smell tells me what they’ve done to that water. But, didn’t fakirs in India drink their own…?
    “ Sustain, Siri. Take whatever they give you for sustenance .”
    When the lights were still burning I was able to add the modest nutrition of cockroaches to my cocktail. Steve McQueen taught me that trick . Papillon.
    “ Your time will come soon enough, Siri,” Steve tells me. “Your opportunity to die heroically. Take down six of the blackguards with you as you fight for your life .”
    Perforated postage stamps with my face peering out. Primary school textbooks telling of the day Siri took down twelve, no, fifteen armed guards as he fought for his freedom. Siri the hero. A band around his head. “Fifteen in one blow.” The year 2010. “Yes, my grandfather knew Dr Siri Paiboun. He massacred entire armies with his bare hands. They finally finished him with a poisoned épée through the heart. It was the only way you could bring down a Siri .”
    I have been catching myself more frequently engaged in such prattle, but I can only blame that Siri fellow. No self-control. Showing weakness. I’m open to attack. My protection against the phibob is gone but they haven’t yet come. They haven’t begun to torment me into harming myself, or stopped my heart from beating as they do to the day labourers in their sleep. Busy, no doubt, troubling the souls of all those who are dying in this school building. This rotten school building .
    “ A school? Surely a school is a place for growing…for acquiring. Surely a school should be a step forward, not a step back. A place for giving life a kick-start, a push, a roll. Surely a school shouldn’t be the last place you see in your life? ”
    “ I was a teacher,” the smiley man said in his neat but unexpressive French .
    Surely not here. Surely not in this ‘end of everything’ high school .
    “ I learned more as a teacher than I ever did as a pupil,” he said. “I learned that students need guidance and sometimes that guidance has to be cruel in order for it to be effective .”
    “ I’m not your student,” I told