Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

does. And on those nights when the gun blasts, I find myself walking through what’s left of my nightmare with nothing above my frayed neck. But, even on those headless nights I can hear the eerily beautiful singing. It’s a dream. Who needs ears? All right. All right. Perhaps I sense the sounds. Would that work? The honey dew voice of a man. The words mean nothing to me but I can tell he’s singing to his lover. And each night I wake in a humid inside-the-house sweat and I tell my wife, “Something bad is going to happen.” And Madame Daeng brushes back my hair and says, “It’s only a dream .”
    But it isn’t .
    The key clicks in the lock of the unpainted door. Why lock the door? I’m not going anywhere chained by the ankle to eight metres of lead pipe, am I now? And sure as hell there wouldn’t be a queue to get in. Why lock the door? Why lock the door? And they don’t need to worry about you folks any more: you dead ones, you ghosties. You can come and go as you like, lock or no lock. And you came, didn’t you? But you stayed. And you sit, bored out of your minds. Dr Siri on the stage, forgetting his lines, forgetting his mind, edging on delirium, bordering on insanity. And I understand. Really I do. You aren’t just watching. You’re waiting, aren’t you? Waiting like Vultures for me to leave my body and join you on your quest to find a better place. Oh, that’s easy. Anywhere is a better place than this .
    The smiley man is in the doorway. A silent ‘boo’ and ‘hiss’ from the stalls. The boys unfasten me, force me to get dressed. Wrap a scarf around my eyes. Poke me with their bamboo canes. Whip my legs . It’s only acting, son. You can open your eyes. But then it comes to me, when I should be concentrating on the pain, when I should be fearing what torture I am being led to, it is now I solve the mystery of the three épées. And I know that a man will walk into a concrete yard somewhere, a yard stained with the blood of others, and be shot for something he didn’t do. Riddled with mistaken bullets. Perhaps it has already happened. How long have I been here? The future and the past all hang here in the glow of the overhead lamps, hypnotised by the light, not knowing where to fly .
    Only I can save him, this wrongly convicted man. The proof has been there all the time and I’ve ignored it. “Stop the torture. Somebody hand me a phone. Hey, boy, run this note across the street to Vientiane. Here’s fifty kip. Lassie, girl, go find judge Haeng. Tell him he’s got the wrong man. I’m sorry, I’m a little tied up or I’d go myself. Tied up, whipped, burnt, electrocuted…bits removed and mutilated .”
    I let out a manic laugh in the face of death .
    “ I see you’re in good spirits still,” the smiley man says as I’m dragged out like the garbage – stage right. “We’ll see what we can do about that .”
    ‘ Boo’ and ‘hiss,’ cries the silent audience .
∗
    There was no sound of footsteps, only the hushed click of the latch and the door opened.
    “You should be a spy,” Siri said.
    “Can’t sleep?” Daeng asked.
    Siri was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the home library, a desk lamp leaning over his shoulder like a curious, light-headed stork. Sunrise wasn’t that far off. A book, heavy as a temple lintel, pinned the old doctor to the ground.
    “Camus,” he said.
    “The soap people?”
    “Distant relative.”
    “Does he have a cure for insomnia?”
    “Who has insomnia? Just a peculiar dream. I wasn’t in a hurry to get back into it.”
    She sat on the cot.
    “Do you want to tell me about it?”
    “It involved children and guns.”
    “Then, perhaps you shouldn’t…”
    “I’ve had a thought.”
    “Good. Then all this was worthwhile.”
    “Your question about eastern European alumni and clubs and reunions.”
    “Civilai squashed me flat as a postage stamp on that one.”
    “He did, but he shouldn’t have. There is something. Imagine you’ve spent four years in Bulgaria and you’ve just come back to Laos. What is it you need?”
    “Food that isn’t dripping with fat?”
    “No! I mean, yes. But something else. You’ve spent four years learning and speaking a foreign language. You have knowledge. Skills that you learned in that language. Do you just switch that all off when you come home?”
    “You find someone who speaks the same language to keep your hand in.”
    “You could do, but I can’t imagine a day when we Lao would sit down