by Knox, Tom
This was startling. It had not occurred to Jake that Pang spoke English. All this time he had presumed the man’s silence was due to his not understanding their conversation. Jake hadn’t even offered the boatman a proper word of hello.
“Please, Pang. I didn’t realize you spoke English … you know. I’m so sorry.”
“Not problem. I understand, much danger. Do not worry.” The old man nodded, distractedly. He was steering them carefully around floating logs and sudden rocks.
The river had become notably narrower, the current faster, the shorelines steeper, almost cliffs. Impenetrable jungle adorned the clifftops on either side. A younger Mekong.
“I take tourist up here, many years, for Madame Agnès. In the hotel. I know her family long time.” The boatman hesitated. “One time I know her family, too, they friend with Agnès.”
“Who did you know?”
“Her grandmother. Madame Sovirom. She live in Luang after the war.”
Jake paused, and pondered. Surely not. The grandmother was killed by the Khmer Rouge. But surely it had to be. The Hmong knew her, or knew of her; why not someone in Luang?
Pang revved the engine, steering for the opposite shore. Chemda was still fast asleep, her delicate head resting on a folded sarong, her bare dark legs smeared with mud.
The boatman’s Manchester United shirt was stained with salt and river and oil; the grime of honest hard work. He said, “I not like tell Chemda. Sad story. Maybe she not know?”
“What story?”
“I tell you. But secret. Everyone pretend they know nothing. Madame Agnès, everyone. The famous lady from Phnom Penh, royal lady. She lived at the Gauguin after the war, for a few year. She sit every day by the river, in the garden, and every man with a boat know who she was. She just sit looking at the river, every day for three year, maybe four. Some men call her bad name, Khmer name—vierunii—”
“It means?”
“Lao-lao. Whiskey. But also it mean … stupid woman, made bad by drink. Like she drunk.” He cocked his head and slacked his mouth, doing a caricature of someone palsied, or retarded. “She like this. Spitting.”
“She just sat there? Was she ill?”
Pang shrugged, his frown deep and troubled.
“Not ill. Own fault. She say, ‘Give me.’”
“What?”
“They cut her up, but they say she want this.” Pang sighed. “I do not know, maybe I say nothing.”
“But I want to know.”
A pause. They were just a few meters from the shore. Jake spotted a modest mud bank, and a rough track leading up the steep river cliff into the bush. He realized this must be Thailand, this shoreline: beyond the cliff was Thailand and roads and proper airports and 7 Elevens and safety—they were close to safety—but before he alighted he wanted more information, as much as possible.
“Pang, are you saying that Chemda’s grandmother volunteered to be experimented on?”
“Vol … an …?”
“Volunteer. It means, it means … Are you saying she asked them to do it to her? To cut her head open?”
“Yes. Yes! Doi! That is it. She ask them to do this, to cut her open, to make her brave like lion, like brave animal, but it go wrong and then she like … dead woman. Sitting there. For many year. Staring at the river. Sad story, so sad.” Pang nudged the boat onto the mud, darkly frowning, almost despairing. “I always ask. Always. Why? Why anyone want that? Why anyone ask to be cut open? To be cut into many pieces?”
12
Only when Officer Rouvier had driven away, swinging out of the hospital parking lot, did Julia begin her walk back to her apartment. It was a walk through the biting cold of the rain, but she didn’t mind.
She was glad for the cold and she was glad for the drizzle. It matched her sober and melancholy mood. And her slow footsteps were a soft and suitable backbeat to her thoughts, her deep deep thoughts. Of irritation at her own overreaction to Rouvier, and of fear and sadness at the murder of Ghislaine—that grotesquely brutal savaging. Raped by knives, or claws, or teeth.
Raped by animals.
Wearied by her own pensiveness, Julia stopped on one street corner; she was standing under the softly illuminated awning of an old bank. Crédit Agricole.
She couldn’t resist anymore. The past had been hammering at the present for so long: it was a jangling phone that wouldn’t stop ringing. A shrieking car alarm, waking up the neighborhood. She had to confront this painful memory, or it would drive her mad.
She had been nineteen. When it had happened. In Sarnia.
It was a teenage rite of passage in Marysville. To cross the border into Canada, where you could drink underage—by American standards. And her friends’ usual stop was Sarnia, a small, ugly Canadian border town of warehouses and derelict railroads and bleakness and freight trains and the Charity Casino. And liquor stores selling cut-price bourbon and Labatt Blue Light.
She and her friends must have done that trip a dozen times, yet that one night it went wrong. Maybe they drank too much, smoked too much skunk. Maybe someone had done some pills, E, she didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. But suddenly the evening was out of control and someone with a VW kombi offered to drive her home, but they didn’t go home; minutes later, an hour later, she was in the back of the kombi with a guy she liked, Callum, and he was kissing her, and she was half undressed, and kissing him, and laughing, and drinking more and more, and barely aware there were other guys in the van. Watching. Predatory. Watching.
By the time she began to realize, it was too late. She was naked and the other boys were laughing, because they thought she was enjoying it—was she enjoying it?—then she had done it: she had sex with one, maybe two of them, and the others were watching and laughing, and she shuddered to remember the way they touched her, grabbed her, like animals, slavering; and as she sobered the terror began, and she screamed and screamed and someone took pity and slapped down the others and bundled her from the van. The friend had called her father, who had arrived in Sarnia at two a. m. to find his daughter half dressed and weeping and refusing to talk, standing in the lobby of the Charity Casino like a whore. Like she was a whore. Wondering if she was actually a whore. Worse than a whore.
She’d loved her father that night. His delicacy and tact, the way he didn’t ask too many questions; the way he just hugged her and protected her and rescued her. And then he played his favorite jazz on the car radio, to fill the father-daughter silence, as they drove home through the comforting dreary suburbs, silent in the frost.
Three months later she had the abortion. She’d kept that to herself as well. Another shameful secret. Half a year later she got into McGill and she left it all for good.
The cold Lozère rain eased a little. Julia stepped from under the awning of the Crédit Agricole and recommenced her walk home.
Why was this memory seeking her attention now? Her childhood, however bland and ordinary and boring, had been largely happy. She loved her parents; her parents loved her. She’d enjoyed a decent education. There was just that one incident that clouded it all, just one. And she had gotten over it, in principle. So she thought.
Maybe it was the animality of the attack on Ghislaine that reminded her. She thought of the boys in the van; they had been her friends, then they became a pack, just like that. A wolf pack. How easily man was reduced to animal.
Or maybe it was the blood on Ghislaine’s body. Like the imagined blood of her abortion. The crimson of her guilt.
The echoes were many.
Her apartment was near now. Puddles on the gray pavement reflected the Mende streetlights; they also reflected her pensive, downcast face. Julia let her mind wander away, away from the past. To the conversation with Rouvier.
Yes.
The sudden revelation was like the reflection of a moon unexpectedly emerging from behind the clouds: large and startling.
Yes.
In Verlaine, that’s what Rouvier had said. In Verlaine.
And th
at’s what Ghislaine had said, in his own way. You’ll find it in Prunier. The same way Rouvier had said in Verlaine.
You’ll find it in Prunier!
Could this be the answer? To the puzzle? Was this why she was stymied?
She had presumed when Ghislaine had said “in Prunier” he meant “in Prunier, the village in north Lozère”; and last week she had visited the place and found nothing.
But maybe when Ghislaine had spoken that day on the Cham he meant his phrase in the same way an academic might say “in Shakespeare” or “in Darwin.” Ghislaine’s meaning must have been: You’ll find it in the works of Prunier, the scholar.
Quickly, she collected her chastened wits. Prunier or Prunières was a not entirely uncommon surname. It belonged to no scholar she knew, but this was evidently an obscure corner of French science. Maybe a local man? Or someone very dead, from very long ago.
Two minutes’ walk to her apartment, and two hours in front of her laptop screen, laboriously translating the most obscure and recherché French websites, finally gave her the answer: Pierre-Barthélémy Prunières.
She was right.
It turned out he was an antiquarian who flourished in the mid-nineteenth century. Pierre-Barthélémy Prunières did much research in Lozère; and he came from Marvejols. Long forgotten, he was once, the website said, known for his research in osteo-archaeology: skulls and skeletons he unearthed in the caves and dolmens of his native region, like the Baumes-Chaudes in the Tarn. And near Saint-Pierre-des-Tripiers—in “la grotte de l’homme mort.”
La grotte de l’homme mort?
The cave of the dead man.
She wrote down the phrase on a pad, circled it, stared at it. The name was poetic, but it meant nothing in itself. She circled the name again, then returned to her computer. And ten more minutes on the laptop brought her a much more sincere frisson, a real buzz, a frightening revelation.
The word pulsed on the screen: trépanation.
Trepanned.
Her thoughts whirred. It seemed this man Prunières had unearthed precisely the same kind of remains as Julia. A hundred and fifty years before.
Trepanned skulls. Horribly wounded; deliberately drilled.
Julia pushed back her chair and walked to her rain-scribbled window. The gray slate roofs of Mende were framed by the dark hills beyond: the Causse Méjean, and the Cham des Bondons. And the wild and empty Margeride.
The word resonated in her mind.
Trépanation.
13
“Hell of a story,” said Tyrone. “Hell of a story.”
“I guess.”
“I’m serious.” Tyrone lifted his beer bottle. “Dude, you’re on your way. Nail this one, and you could make your name.”
They were drinking on the top floor of the FCC, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, in Phnom Penh. The top floor extended to a terrace that stared out over the Tonle Sap river, sluggishly reflecting a fat and queasy moon. Beneath them the clattering lamplit riverside boulevard was full of motos and cyclos and taxis; and jingling snail sellers and wandering tourists and unemployed tuk-tuk drivers arguing over rancid glasses of palm wine.
Jake had been back in the chaos of the city just three hours. It was only twenty-four hours since they had crossed the border into Thailand. From there they had walked for two hours into a village, then got a cyclo to a taxi, caught a taxi to Chiang Rai. Then jumped on a plane to Phnom Penh.
He stared around: the FCC was its normal, comfortable, languid, semicolonial self, with its yellow shutters and overhead fans and wicker chairs. Journalists were talking with UN workers, photographers were boozing with bohemian locals.
But it had changed; or Jake had changed. By rights he knew he should be exhausted, but he wasn’t. Why? Maybe he was pumped with adrenaline, and maybe he was still energized by the fear, and the unforgettable horror. The dead baby swinging from the rafters, with the little milky eyes. It was impossible to forget that.
He was being tapped. Tyrone was rapping him on the knee with the butt of his bottle.
“Dreamboy. You OK?”
He snapped out of his reverie.
“I think so. It’s just—you know. It was pretty unnerving. And the mystery goes on. It’s freaking me out.”
“Uh huh.”
“You’ve been through all this, Ty. Bosnia. Darfur. Chechnya. You’ve been in danger. It resonates for a while, right?”
“It does. Dude, you have to let yourself down. Or you could drink it away. Or do some number four.”
“I’m done with drugs, I want answers.”
“Shame. It worked for me, till it fucked me up. China white heroin, like Himalayan snow. Ahh.” Tyrone slugged the last of his Angkor: “Où sont les neiges d’antan?”
Jake had heard this spiel before, Ty romancing the powders; he diverted their dialogue onto more useful territory. He urgently wanted explanations.
“So, please, what do you think of it all. The jars, everything?”
“Obviously the Lao government was very keen to get this research—Chemda’s project—aborted.”
“Agreed.”
“The Commie Lao, the Pathet Lao, they are still in power up there. And if they did anything dodgy in Laos back in the seventies, they’ll wanna keep it under wraps, even now.”
“Again, agreed.”
Tyrone sat back, his empty beer bottle in hand.
“So that’s your answer. The government put the frighteners on the two professors. Scared them, menaced their families. Yet these poor historians were also getting pressure from the Cambodian government, and the UN, and KR victims, to do the right thing.” Tyrone accepted another Angkor lager from the waiter, and continued. “No wonder they folded: pressure from all sides. Sounds like your ass-over-tit guy got so shit-scared he killed himself, no other way out, especially when he found out the jars had been rediscovered. But, like you say, he did it in a way that sent you a message, the draining-blood stuff, a Tuol Sleng torture. He was telling you that it was the Communists that were pressuring him. A final despairing signal.”
“Yes, my thoughts completely, that has to be it. But … Chemda isn’t quite so sure it’s suicide.”
“Well, I think you’re right. But what happened up there back in ’76, anyway? Madness. And the dead fucking baby hanging on the coat rack? What’s that about?! What kind of fucking hotel is this? Maybe they do that to all the guests, as a welcome gesture. Like a chocolate on the pillow—”
Tyrone was laughing at his own black humor. Jake was not laughing; he was wholly unnerved.
“But Ty, why didn’t they just deport us, why did they let us go into Ponsavan—”
Black mosquitoes buzzed between them. Tyrone flicked the air with an irritated hand and speculated: “Say they were planning to kick you out, but you went straight to the jars. Possible. And of course the Lao cops were well aware who Chemda was, by then. A Sovirom. Not a family to mess with easily. If it had just been you—they would probably have taken you down to the basement and got all Torquemada on your ass.”
Jake sat back. It was true. He had been saved, paradoxically, by Chemda. She had led him into danger and then saved him. And the thought of Chemda stirred his anxieties further. He had told her, on the plane, Pang’s backstory of her grandmother: she had reacted quite calmly, or just wearily. But with flickers of sadness and puzzlement.
And he knew that she was right now confronting her family, down the road, in their large villa, beyond the vast, ugly concrete pagodas of the Cambodiana Hotel: telling them everything. Did they already know? What would they say? Jake checked his watch again. He thought of calling her. But maybe he should wait for her to call him.
Tyrone had guessed his thoughts.
“Ahhh … Missing her already? Bless.” The American smiled. “Jake and Chemda, sitting in a tree.”
Jake attempted a dismissive and nonchalant laugh, and failed. He couldn’t fake it. He knew there was truth in Tyrone’s implication: he was deeply drawn to Chemda, alrea
dy. And their lives were now entangled by what they had been through.
Tyrone leaned forward, cynical yet smiling, like a conspiring cardinal.
“You want some advice?”
“No.”
“Just be careful. Be careful with this girl. That is one powerful fucking family. You get involved with Chemda, and you’re involved with the entire clan, Teks and Soviroms. Especially her grandfather.”
“Sovirom Sen. You’ve met him?”
Tyrone affirmed. “Just once or twice, embassy parties. Y’know. He is tough, very smart, and has that old-school charm. Same as the Khmer Rouge leaders.”
“Come again? The Khmer Rouge … charming?”
“It’s true.”
“Not a word I’d associate with mass murderers—”
Tyrone lifted a hand.
“Remember. I have interviewed some of these men. KR leaders. It’s actually a pretty unsettling experience. Because, like it or not, they do have this wit, this intellectual wit, and very good manners.” He tilted his beer bottle and drank, and elaborated. “Guess it’s the background, the old-world culture. Pol Pot was a dullard, a mediocrity, a functionary like Himmler with, I dunno, a weird gift for management—and killing. But lots of them went to the best schools here and the best universities in Paris. So they can quote Baudelaire and Rimbaud and Byron, they tell intellectual jokes and they know about Schubert. It’s most fucking unnerving, ’cause you’re sitting there, thinking, Jesus, this bastard helped run maybe the most evil government in history, his government used to crucify people and burn them at the same time. Yet he is making me smile, he is interesting.”
“And Grandfather Sen is like this?”
“A touch. Upper middle class, Chinese Cambodian. His wife was true royalty, I think….” Tyrone paused. “And then there’s his daughter, Madame Tek. Oh wow. Let’s not forget your potential mother in law.” Tyrone was chortling. “She may be three inches high, she could probably run under a weasel, but man. These little Khmer women, they wai and scrape and make your noodles, but you cross them, just once?” He did a scissoring gesture. “Snip.”