Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

roots level.
    But the leaders very quickly realised that, like communism, collectivism worked much better on paper than on dirt. The five cooperative principles as per order N°98d had been sound enough: 1. Volunteerism. 2. Mutual benefit. 3. Democratic management. 4. Planned production. 5. Distribution of produce and profit according to labour performed with the right attitude. Thirty to forty families would be gathered together in one collective and all their resources pooled. Each man and woman would receive work points based on an eight-hour day. Technically, the families would be able to join and leave at will.
    But villages in Laos had traditionally been self-sufficient.
    They hadn’t given anything to the government and the government hadn’t given them anything back. So questions were asked such as, “Why should we start sharing now?”
    Siri explained the problem to Dtui like this: “Farmer A. has two buffalos and a hectare of land. Farmer B. has one buffalo and half a hectare. A smiling cadre arrives at the village one day and congratulates them on their acceptance into the greater cooperative network. He informs them that, as from today, they have one-and-a-half buffalos each and three-quarters of a hectare of rice field to tend. Farmer B. runs off to tell his wife of their good fortune while farmer A sits on a rock wondering where he went wrong.”
    In fact, if the system had operated truly on a voluntary basis, everyone would have volunteered themselves out. As a result, they were strongly urged – often by the toothless smile of an AK47 – to give it a go for three years. Of the five principles of cooperative farming it was soon clear that only those who had nothing to begin with would progress with any joy past the first. Yet the leaders not only believed the system would be successful, they also held that the agronomic revolution would miraculously transform Laos from an agricultural economy to a technologically advanced socialist state. Naturally, in order to get there, they had to do a little work on the raw material: the Lao themselves.
    The second initiative, a big public relations push for 1978, planned to coincide with the billboard invasion, was the creation of Socialist Man. A sort of poor relative of Super-, Bat-, and Spiderman, Socialist Man was the ideological Frankenstein of the Party. He was the embodiment of everything perfect in a good socialist. He was steadfast, had a spirit of solidarity, was a good father and respected the laws. One evening, Siri, Daeng and Civilai had even gone so far as to design him a costume; a green leotard to represent the young rice shoots, rubber boots to keep his feet dry, naturally, a red cape adorned with a hammer and sickle, and a scabbard for his hoe. Daeng had been insistent there should be a New Socialist Woman to keep him company. If any of them had had even the remotest skills as artists they would have produced an entire comic book, perhaps even submitted it to a publisher in New York and – ignoring the irony completely – become wealthy capitalists.
    So, given the lack of other stimulating news, it was evident why the deaths of three apparently unrelated women – all skewered with a weapon 99.9 (recurring) per cent of the population had never heard of – was the talk of the markets and the Lao Patriotic Women’s Association tea rooms.
    When Siri and the two detectives had arrived back at K6 on that painfully long and wet Monday, Security Chief Phoumi was at the gate to meet them and he was looking far more ruffled than he had been during the investigation of the first murder. He sat in the back of the jeep and directed Sihot to the auditorium. Siri knew it well. It was the same hall in which he had watched ten minutes of The Train From the Xiang Wu Irrigation Plant not two days earlier. During the American days it had been an open-air gymnasium, basically a roof on posts with a stage for dramas. Not given to openness or drama, the Pathet Lao had bricked it up, attached air-conditioners, and had been using it as a meeting hall.
    The jeep splashed to a halt at the foot of the steps and they hurried up to the auditorium doors and pushed through a gaggle of onlookers and into the hall. The chairs had been stacked neatly to one side and there was a pile of tumbling mats and gym equipment at the rear of the room, presumably left over from the high-school days. Whereas the previous two murder scenes had been comparatively neat, almost serene,