Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

strong breeze.”
    “With or without scent,” added the second man most seriously.
    The clerk glared from one old gentleman to the next, then back to the first.
    “Are you playing with me?” she asked, sternly.
    “Certainly not, sweet young lady,” said the skinnier of the two men. He was bald as a boule with a long camel-like throat sporting an Adam’s apple so large it might well have been Adam’s original. “This is a most serious affair.”
    “No playing matter,” agreed the first.
    Still uncertain of her ground, the young lady pressed on. “The nation will never forget the contribution Dr Siri made to the development of this great nation, nor can – ”
    “That’s two nations,” said the bald man.
    “Oh, do let her finish,” said the other. “Didn’t she tell you they have a department that handles syntax? Probably an entire ministry.”
    “The Ministry of Getting Words Right?”
    “Or it could be a branch of the Ministry of Making Things Up and Bamboozling People.”
    The clerk was miffed. She slapped the paper onto the wooden table top and drummed her fingers on it noisily. She seemed to be wrestling down a darker inner person. Her voluptuous mouth had become mysteriously unattractive.
    “I don’t think either of you appreciate what a great honour this is,” she said at last. Her eyes watered. “Anybody else would be proud. Dr Siri, I’m particularly disappointed that you would take all this so lightly. Given your record, it’s a wonder your name is on the list at all.”
    Siri raised the thickets of coarse white hair he called eyebrows and scratched at his missing left earlobe.
    “To be fair, you’re not giving me much time,” he said. “How can I take life seriously when I’m forced to squeeze all those remaining pleasures into a mere twelve days? And look at this. You’re passing me away on my birthday, of all occasions. The happiest day of the year.”
    “That’s odd, Doctor,” she said through clenched teeth. “I thought I had explained myself very clearly.”
    “Tell him again,” said ex-politburo member Civilai. “He’s elderly.”
    “As I said,” she began, slowly, “the actual date of your death will be filled in later.”
    “In the event of it?” Siri said.
    “Exactly.”
    “So you aren’t actually expecting me to…”
    “No!”
    The transparent north-eastern skin of her neck revealed an atlas of purple roads heading north in the direction of her cheeks. The men admired her composure as she took a deep breath and continued.
    “You will pass away naturally, or otherwise, as your destiny dictates. At that stage we will delete your date of birth and substitute it with your date of death. When that happens we will issue the announcement. Is that clear now?”
    “And I will become a hero,” Siri smiled.
    “It probably won’t be instantaneous…in your case.”
∗
    The Department of Hero Creation, the DHC, was housed in a small annexe of the propaganda section of the Ministry of Information. Based loosely on a Vietnamese initiative already in place, the DHC was responsible for identifying role models, exaggerating their revolutionary qualities, and creating a fairy story around their lives. A week earlier, Dr Siri and Comrade Civilai had received their invitations to attend this preliminary meeting. They’d heard of the DHC, of course, and seen evidence of its devious work. Everyone over seventy who’d done the Party the great service of staying alive was under consideration. If selected, school textbooks would mention their bravery. Histories would be written detailing their supernatural ability to surmount the insurmountable and carry the red flag to victory. Siri and Civilai could hardly pass up a chance to scuttle such a nefarious scheme.
    “What is my case?” Siri asked.
    “What?”
    “You said, ‘in your case’, suggesting I have some flaw.”
    “Don’t hold back,” Civilai urged the clerk.
    “It’s really not my place to – ”
    “Go ahead,” Civilai prodded. “We won’t tell anyone.”
    She seemed pleased to do so.
    “We are aware of the Doctor’s…problems with authority,” the clerk said. She was now ignoring Siri and talking directly to Civilai. “But history has a short memory. It has a way of smudging over personality faults, no matter how serious they might be.”
    “Voltaire said that history is just the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes,” Siri said.
    “And why should I care what a wealthy