Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

substance in Siri’s shoulder bag was his Camus compendium, a sort of greatest hits volume. He’d debated not bringing it but he was certain there’d be long periods of waiting or listening to speeches when Monsieur Camus could entertain him.
    Madame Daeng had enjoyed no more than four hours with her husband between jail and the airport. But she’d found the time to ask whether somebody along the trail might take objection to the writings of a man who had converted from communism and proceeded to argue heatedly about its futility. Before attempting to steal an hour or two of sleep, Siri had assured her that nobody would dream of looking in his bag. He was a representative of Laos: a makeshift ambassador, and, as such, he would have makeshift diplomatic immunity.
    Their parting words, which both of them would later come to rue, had been;
    Siri: “See you in a few days.”
    Daeng: “Don’t forget your noodles for the flight.”
    No pledges nor confessions of emotion. No hopes. No fears. Just noodles and an imprecise calculation of time.
    The only thing of substance in Civilai’s shoulder bag was a wad of five hundred dollars rolled into a secret compartment in the thick handle strap. He always travelled with it ‘for emergencies’ and it was no secret to Siri. To date they hadn’t had cause to use it.
    They were scheduled to spend the night in Peking before their onward journey. The hosts really outdid themselves. A permanently smiling Lao-speaking cadre, who appeared to have no idea who Civilai and Siri were, had been assigned to look after them for the evening. They were stuffed with food and drink and given little time to burn it all off between courses. In the car back to their ostentatious hotel – the Sublime – the cadre had asked whether they might enjoy fourteen-year-old girls before they slept. Neither Siri nor Civilai could envisage what they might do with a fourteen-year-old girl other than a quick game of badminton. It was late and they were tired so they had returned to their adjoining suites alone.
    Civilai knocked on the common door at exactly the same time as Siri.
    “I feel like a hastily put together tractor on an assembly line,” Civilai said. He went to sit on Siri’s trampoline-sized bed. “Is it my imagination or has the world speeded up considerably?”
    “I’m still dizzy,” Siri confessed. “It’s as if we’ve just been given the next month’s intake of food and drink and we’ll have to live off it till June.”
    “I certainly could,” Civilai agreed. “We were five plates in before I realized we hadn’t yet seen the main course.”
    “Do you think there’s a point to it?”
    “Absolutely. Stick with the Chinese and you can have all the food, drink and virginity you can handle. They think we’ll go back and push for a bilateral trade agreement. Maybe hand them a province or two in thanks.”
    “But we aren’t anybody. We couldn’t push for a hand cart.”
    “They don’t know that. They assume that if our country has selected us they’ll listen to us when we go home. They’re canny, the Chinese. They know when it comes down to it, it really has little to do with policy or diplomacy. When a politburo member makes a casting vote, at the back of his mind is the night he spent with identical triplets in a tub of honey. We’re men and it’s a proven scientific fact that eighty per cent of the decisions in our lives are made with our stomachs and our sexual organs.”
    Siri thought back.
    “I don’t – ”
    “Of course, I’m not including you and me, Siri. We’re men of integrity. Our lives have been complicated by the burden of conscience. But we are freaks. Ninety-six-point-three per cent of males are born without.”
    “That’s what I admire about you politicians. Figures at your fingertips. Debates won at the drop of a made-up number.”
    He found his hand caressing the silk coverlet.
    “I really had been expecting something more austere,” he confessed. “You know? A wooden cot in a concrete room. That strikes me as more fitting for Chinese revolutionaries.”
    “That really wouldn’t have achieved anything, would it?”
    “Do you suppose we’re being…?” Siri mimed headphones and a microphone.
    “Probably. And…(Civilai mimed the use of a hand-cranked movie camera) no doubt.”
    “So, then romance is out of the question?”
    “Wait, I’ll turn out the lights. Our love cannot be denied.”
    Both men laughed at the thought of the