Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

showing?”
    “Siri, you can’t go.”
    “What’s showing?”
    If there were two greater film buffs in Laos they had yet to surface. Since their school years in Paris, mesmerised by the magic of Clair, Duvivier and Jean Renoir, Siri and Civilai had been addicted to the images on the silver screen. Wherever they happened to be they would seek out a cinematic projection. They could happily sit through anything, from the dullest training film  such as last week’s  The Maintenance of Dykes , to a Hollywood blockbuster with Vietnamese subtitles. The old boys had seen them all. And, most certainly, once the scent of cinema was in Siri’s nostrils, there was no way they could keep him out.
∗
    That annoying song had been playing in his head all the way back but Siri made it home just before the curfew. Across the road on the bank of the Mekhong river, Crazy Rajid, Vientiane’s own street Indian, sat beneath a large yellow beach umbrella. He returned Siri’s wave. Siri was surprised to find the shutters ajar at the front of their shop. A handwritten sign taped to the shop’s doorpost read, “All welcome in our time of sorrow.” Siri had known Madame Daeng since long before she became a freedom fighter against the French and a spy for the Pathet Lao. But she and Siri had been married only three months. Both widowed, they had recently found one another and a peculiar magic had entered their lives. Not a day went by without wonder. And this odd situation was certainly a wonder. He looked cautiously inside the shop and found a trail of lit temple candles leading across the floor and climbing the wooden staircase. He smiled, locked the shutters, and began to extinguish the candles one by one. Beyond the contented clucking and cooing of the chickens and the rescued hornbill in the backyard, there was no sound.
    He reached the top balcony and entered their bedroom. Madame Daeng sat all in white at the desk with her head bowed. Her short white hair was an unruly thatch of straw Their bed was illuminated with more candles and surrounded with champa blossoms. He laughed, walked across the room and put his hand on his wife’s shoulder but she pulled away.
    “Don’t touch me,” she said. “I’m in mourning.”
    “It’s all right. They said I don’t have to die right away. They can pencil me in later.”
    “I don’t believe you. You’re the spirit of my heroic dead husband come to taunt me. Be gone with you.”
    She waved a lighted incense stick in his direction.
    “You do realise there’s something disturbingly erotic about all this, don’t you?”
    “You’re an ill man, Dr Siri.”
    “And you’re a most peculiar wife, Madame Daeng. Do I have time for a bath before I’m laid to rest?”
    It was some time around two a.m. when Daeng awoke and sensed that her husband wasn’t sleeping. The night clouds had blanketed the stars and moon. Across the river that trolled grimly past the shop, Thailand was enjoying one of its customary power failures. There were no lights skimming across the black surface of the Mekhong. All around them was a darkness so deep it could never be captured in paint. She spoke to her memory of the doctor.
    “Not tired?” she asked.
    She heard the rustle of the pillow when he turned his head.
    “No.”
    “That nightmare again?”
    “No, I haven’t slept long enough to get into a nightmare with any enthusiasm. Daeng?”
    “Yes?”
    “Do you think I’m hero material?”
    “Of course I do.”
    “I mean, seriously.”
    “I mean seriously, too.”
    “They said I have faults.”
    “A hero without faults is like an omelette without little bits of eggshell in it.”
    He was silent for a few seconds before, “An omelette with eggshell isn’t – ”
    “I know,” she laughed. “Look. It’s the middle of the night. What do you expect? I’ll have a better example for you in the morning. But, yes. You’re not only hero material, you’re already a hero. It doesn’t matter what the idiots at Information say.”
    “You’re right.”
    “I know.”
    They listened to the darkness for a while.
    “Oh, and by the way,” Daeng said. “I forgot to mention, Inspector Phosy came by earlier He wants you to get in touch with him. Said it’s urgent.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me that when I was still dressed?”
    “I didn’t want you running off and deserting me in my hour of need. Plus, I don’t get the feeling it was that type of emergency.”
    “What do you…? Oh, you