Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

that surrounds him. I don’t know when they carried him in. He arrived like a demon in the night and took hold of my hand, frightened the living daylights out of me .
    “ You are the one who speak French?” he asked in a poor version of the language .
    “ Oui,” I said .
    “ Have they tortured you yet? ”
    “ They’re saving me for the dinner show .”
    The monk managed a laugh that quickly dilapidated into a dry cough .
    “ It will not be long, brother,” he said. “It will not be long .”
    “ Thanks for the encouragement. What are you in for? ”
    The conversation elated me after so long without warmth, only inhuman contact, only the smiley man and you ghosts. No offence .
    “ They found me,” the monk said. “I am a monk. I was the last in the temple. I was responsible to protect the palm leaf scrolls. We have thousand, priceless, cannot be replace. I was in the vault under the hall of prayer. It was impossible to find it if you don’t know where was it. I have the dry food, the running water that I can boil it. I could stay there for ever. I go out at night if I want the fresh food, fruit, the animal. But everyone was starve. Not much the food. Then they come, these rains. These miserable rains. And the flood make me to find a dry place for the scrolls .”
    “ And they caught you .”
    “ All monks are dead, brother. All. All die because they don’t worship Brother Number One .”
    The monk was still holding my hand as he spoke. His soft voice was calming .
    “ Why didn’t they kill you?” I asked .
    “ They will. They kill everyone here. They will kill you. Nobody come out of this place, S21, alive. But they think we know something. If we speak they kill us fast. Don’t speak, they kill us slow .”
    “ And do you know something? ”
    There was a silence that seemed to stretch out into the darkness.
    “ No,” he said .
    “ Where did you learn your French? ”
    “ Marseille. I was on the scholarship. Four year, but poor French even so, no? ”
    “ You’re an unusual monk .”
    The monk laughed and as he did so the lights came on. They blinded me. I threw my hands in front of my eyes to cut out the dazzle. I remember I opened my fingers slowly until I could focus in the glare. The monk slowly appeared to me. Dark veins stood out on his shaven head. He was solid, almost without a neck, the type of man you could tell had heavy bones even without weighing him. He wasn’t dressed in saffron but wore black pyjamas like the guards, like the military, like everybody in the damned country. They were too small on him. The shirt pulled tight across his chest .
    “ Where are your robes, comrade?” I asked .
    “ They stripped me and burned them. Burned them in the same fire as the books, same fire as all the palm leaf manuscript .”
    There was no expression on the monk’s face but I knew what he felt. I have…had my own cache of valuable old books and the thought of watching them burn fills me with sadness. The monk reached for the shackles at his ankle. He pulled at them angrily like a wild chained dog .
    “ I tried that,” I told him. “No hope unless you’ve got an oxyacetylene torch there under your shirt .”
    “ I would like to have met you under better circumstances,” said the big monk. “What’s your name, brother? ”
    “ Siri .”
    “ I’m Yin Keo .”
    We talked for an hour and the guards had come. They brought gruel for the monk and fetid water for me .
    “ This is all they give you?” Yin Keo asked when the guards left .
    “ I’m watching my weight .”
    “ No, then take this,” the big monk held out his bowl .
    “ I can’t .”
    “ Serious. Look at me. I have some layers of muscle to burn before I am hungry .”
    I took the bowl and handed Yin Keo the water .
    “ I won’t say no, then. I’m a little short of nutrients. I’ll pay this back in a future life, assuming we both make it through Nirvana .”
∗
    But now the monk sleeps and I wish I’d stuck with the water. I chip another corner off the charred blackboard and chew on it. I wonder how it got burnt. I imagine the pupils sneaking into their school in the dead of night and setting fire to it. I imagine how my teeth look. I imagine them to be as black as a cave in an impoverished limestone monument. See how poetic I’m becoming? Give me another month of this and I shall be a posthumous poet laureate. Then they’ll honour me. Nothing like death for elevating a man to fame .

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