Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

Increasingly cantankerous though. I imagine she’d say that.”
    He ran his finger across the cool plastic table top tracing the squares.
    “I’m going to see her, of course.”
    The gecko clicked like a clock.
    “Tomorrow seems as good a day as any. Don’t you think?”
    Stare.
    “Hmm, well, you’ve certainly put a damper on this party, Dr Siri Paiboun.” He lifted his wrist to look at a watch he’d forgotten to put on. “And just look at the time. I have shirts to wash.” He scraped back his chair, abandoned his drink, blew his young brother a kiss and meandered unsteadily between the tables to the open shutters.
    “Don’t forget to put your lights on,” Siri shouted as his friend slipped behind a curtain of rain. He sighed. Was it the weather? Did the constant grey turn everything negative? Why was everybody having so much trouble getting along? Half the world not finding love at all, the other half not knowing how to hold on to it. Or had it always been like this?
    “Things have to be sorted out before it’s too late,” he told the gecko.
∗
    Siri read until one a.m. The second Soviet strip light, newly installed in the second-floor library, had illuminated his book with such enthusiasm that he could see the flecks of wood fibre in the paper. His mind could have stayed up all night but his body craved sleep. He apologised to Monsieur Sartre and went to bed. For once, Madame Daeng didn’t stir when he joined her and, as soon as the ghost of his missing left earlobe hit the pillow, he was thrown into that nightmare. The same boy, wearing Siri’s talisman around his neck. The same moment of indecision. Would he laugh and walk away or would he pull the trigger? The moment dragged through time, allowing the panic to take hold. Will he blow off the doctor’s head tonight, or not? The finger twitches, then relaxes. The boy smiles and walks on. A sigh. Head on night. And in the distance he hears the voice. The melodic voice of love and promise. A sound so enchanting Siri is drawn to it like a night moth to the bright fire trail of a jet engine. No good can come of it. He reaches into his own dream and grabs for his stupid music-following self. “Don’t do it,” he calls, and he finds himself just in time and throws his arms around himself and drags himself out of his nightmare.
    And his pillow was wet with sweat because he knew that if he were to ever find the singer, all hope for mankind would be lost.
    “Bad dream again?” Daeng asked.
    “Something bad is going to happen,” he told her.
    She brushed back his hair and said, “It’s only a dream.”
    But it wasn’t.

12
FOUR MONKS AT A FUNERAL
    S ometimes, torture can be just the threat of torture, the promise of misery. The imagination can scroll through a menu of horrors more awful than anything a half-witted interrogator might come up with. There are those so petrified by what their own minds have envisaged that they’re shouting their confessions even before the torturer comes for them. It’s only just occurred to me what a weapon my own mind can be against me. My own gun pointed at my own temple. I am light-headed and weak already, certainly not thinking clearly. I can see, but cannot feel the bruises nor taste the blood but I know my right wrist is broken .
    They took me to a room and removed my blindfold. The smiley man and the heavy monk were there. There was a pervading stench of bitter blood and disinfectant. They chained me to an armchair without a cushion, sat me on the bare springs that cut into the backs of my thighs. It’s comical to think about it but those damned springs could nip like angry crabs. The torturers ignored me. They left me sitting and went about their business. Their business was a young girl, no older than fifteen. What kind of subversive could she have been? When they’d finished with her she was as good as dead. I had my eyes closed for the whole ordeal but my ears told me everything .
    Then it was quiet and the heavy monk pulled up a school seat and sat on it. He looked ridiculous, like an elephant in a baby’s chair. He was wearing black pyjamas that fitted him now. The charade was over. He flipped down the wooden writing arm that rested on his fat thigh .
    “ This,” he said, “is your life. After you hear, you will indicate that you understand what it say and you will sign. You will sign today, or you will sign after the bones in your foot are broke one after one. Or you will sign the next day