Slash and Burn

on two creaking rattan lounge chairs by the hotel entrance staring out over the Plain of Jars. Except there was nothing to see. To either side of them were the room-bound flashes of lamps and the shadows of candles, but directly ahead was nothing. It was the blackest black they could remember. Civilai commented that it was like staring out at the edge of time. He was remarkably poetic on Scotch whisky. The low clouds had obliterated the moon and stars and, as people retired for the night, one by one the rooms vanished. Soon, there was a perfect quantum state where Siri and Civilai and Ugly were just a part of the universe, blended together in one big black porridge of nature and meta-nature. It was a moving moment spoiled only by one of the ever-attentive maids who brought them a candle in a glass globe. She placed it on the table between them and fumbled her way back inside. The light barely reached the fence posts with their swirling mist foundations. But the two old boys could see each other quite well. It was cold and they wore jackets, but their feet were bare. They watched their toes wiggle, listened to the coughs and yawns of people priming themselves for sleep, and to the slobbering sounds of Ugly cleaning his equipment. They sniffed in the smoky night air and the nectar of the neat whisky.
    “Daeng not joining us?” Civilai asked at last.
    “Today was a bit much for her arthritis,” Siri told him. “She thought we’d be sitting behind a table taking notes all day so she didn’t wear her boots. Ugly’s standing in for her.”
    “How are you holding up?”
    “A bit tired but I’ll survive.”
    They enjoyed the quiet some more.
    “They’re out there, you know,” Siri said.
    “Who’s that?”
    “The jars.”
    “Right. If we had tourism I’d put fluorescent lamps on each one so you could sit here and look at them; those lights that change colours, you know? Pinks and lime greens. Perhaps fireworks; those little sparkly ones.”
    “Tasteful.”
    “And none of that nonsense about burial urns. Guaranteed to kill off tourism at the first mention.”
    “You don’t believe they are?”
    “Siri, who in their right mind would allow their dead relatives to be folded up and squashed into a jar?”
    “Some of those jars are two meters across.”
    “Even so. Complete waste of labor when you have a wake to attend.”
    “So, what’s the Civilai theory?”
    “Well, it seems obvious. This region was famous for its dog racing. Traders came from all around to watch the heats. Gamble their life savings away on the nose of a mongrel.”
    Ugly looked up, probably coincidentally.
    “So, seeing all this potential from the new tourist trade,” Civilai continued, “the locals set up stalls. They made themselves jars, the bigger the better, and brewed rice whiskey.”
    “So they’re stills?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “ Le plain des alambics . The plain of stills. Hmm, I like it.”
    “Except rice whiskey ferments naturally so it doesn’t need heat. Once you’ve built your jar everything takes care of itself.”
    “You have heard of the famous French lady archaeologist who made an extensive study and concluded they could only be burial urns?”
    “Of course she did. She was a well-known prohibitionist. She wasn’t going to go home and tell everyone how she’d discovered an ancient civilization of debauchers and fornicators, was she? She had to make something up.”
    “Good point. Except she found human remains in the jars.”
    “Siri, those jars are enormous. The strongest whiskey is always at the bottom. The vendor just keeps topping it up with water. So your serious drinker isn’t going to be satisfied with scooping weak whiskey off the top, is he now? He puts his reed pipe all the way down and sucks up the sediment. But it’s heady stuff. Of course there’s going be collateral damage.”
    “Have you run all this by UNESCO?”
    “Oh, they know. Trust me, they know.”
    They paid another short homage to the silence but keeping quiet was always a challenge to a man like Civilai.
    “I didn’t notice Judge Pimples and Cousin Monolingual come back,” he said.
    “Me neither. They’re probably sampling the nightlife of Phonsavan.”
    “That should keep them occupied for a good fifteen minutes.”
    “You never can tell. Sin is all around.”
    “That’s one of the topics the major and I were talking about tonight. It looks like we arrived in Vientiane a few years too late. We missed the