Private Demons

by Robert Masello

  No one else was in sight.

  When they had passed, Lucien cut across a schoolyard, clambered over a sagging bamboo fence, and dropped to the ground. He knew where he was; he was in the outdoor café at the rear of the Hotel de la Poste. His home was across the street. He inched his way to the front of the hotel, where there was a covered walkway resting on flaking white columns. Usually there were little round tables, and spindly chairs, set up out here; today, there were none.

  He looked across the street.

  The door to his house stood open. The blue shutters on the windows were pulled back. On the upstairs verandah, the flowerpots were in bloom.

  He scanned the street for soldiers, then made a dash for it. The house itself was a cross between traditional Khmer and French Colonial; the living quarters were raised one story above the street, but the walls were painted a provincial white. He bounded up the outside stairs, three at a time, and in through the open doorway.

  His mother’s bird—a green and yellow parrot—screeched.

  Everything looked all right.

  “Mother?” he said, in a low but urgent voice. “Lisette?”

  There was no answer.

  He poked his head into his mother’s bedroom; her perfume bottles and makeup things were still arrayed on the dresser. Her single bed was neatly made.

  He looked into the room he shared with Lisette; it was divided down the middle by a French screen, another gift from their absent father. On Lisette’s side, her schoolbooks were carefully stacked. On his side, there was a sheet of drawing paper tacked to the plaster wall above his bed. He stepped closer.

  It was a drawing of a Buddha, very fat, with a big smile on his face. Underneath it, Lisette had written, with her distinctive slant, “Welcome home, Lucien.” On his pillow, there was an oddly shaped package, wrapped in tissue paper. He tore it open. It was a bottle of Coca-Cola, his favorite drink. Lisette knew he must have missed it at the monastery.

  He laid the bottle back down on the pillow, as gently as if it had been fine crystal, and returned to the front room. The parrot screeched again, and hopped back and forth on its perch.

  There was another scrap of paper, stuck to the pointed finial on the top of its cage. Lucien removed it, and read, this time hastily scrawled in his mother’s handwriting, “The central market.”

  Is that where they’d been taken?

  And when?

  He let the paper fall to the floor, then grabbed the collar of his robe, and pulled the whole thing over his head. In the hall closet that all three of them had to share, he found some of his old clothes—a T-shirt, canvas shoes, a pair of real Levi jeans that had been the envy of all his friends. He hated to lose even this much time, but the monk’s robes were too conspicuous, too dangerous, too hard to run in. The minute he’d finished dressing, he started for the door, but something stopped him, and even in his haste, made him grab the parrot’s cage and take it outside with him. Even as he hurried down the stairs, he was popping the latch and pulling the cage open.

  “Get out of here!” he said to the bird. “Get out!”

  But the parrot was too paralyzed to move, gripping its perch and fluttering its wings.

  Lucien reached inside, the parrot pecking at his hand, clutched the bird and threw it, in a flurry of feathers, to one side. The Buddha, he thought, might have wished him to be more gentle.

  The central market was less than a kilometer from his home, and he knew the best way to get there. He cut behind the tailor shop at the far end of the block, then ran down a deserted side street, using a row of eucalyptus trees for cover. Since he had no idea what the Khmer Rouge might be doing at the market, or how they’d be guarding it, he decided to approach by the back end, where the fishermen and farmers unloaded their wares. There’d be more places to hide, and the high wrought-iron fence that surrounded the rest of the market was left open there, to allow for the delivery of goods.

  With its great high dome, and four long arcades radiating out from it, the central market was one of the focal points of the city; here, you could buy anything from aged eggs, packed in wet wood-ash until they had achieved the consistency of cheese, to fresh fish, poultry, tortoises, rabbits, monkeys. Vendors with a license and a stall sold their goods inside; all the others lined the surrounding streets and open spaces. But today, there were no vendors or shoppers anywhere; many of the stalls were stocked with produce, and some of the pushcarts still smelled of cooked food, but there were no customers, no salesmen, no hawkers. Even the fortune-tellers, with their palm-leaf cards and astrological charts, were gone.

  But there were several military vehicles parked out front—a couple of jeeps, and three or four open-bed trucks . . . the kind that Lucien had sometimes seen troops carried in.

  Was this where the Khmer Rouge had set up their headquarters?

  One of the soldiers, he now saw, was asleep in the driver’s seat of the front truck. The rounded cap with the short brim that many of the Khmer Rouge wore was pulled down over his eyes.

  Lucien gave the vehicles a wide berth. He rounded the market, past the meat and grain arcades, and came in, as he had planned, through the rear gates. Somewhere he could hear voices, and a low commotion. As he crept closer to the central rotunda, staying close to the walls and dodging from the protection of one abandoned stall to another, the noise grew louder. He knew where there was a back stairway that led to a circular walk just above the main rotunda; he and his friends had once gotten into trouble by tossing fish heads over the iron railing. Now, he crossed the hall, slipped behind a counter piled high with fruit, and found the darkened stairwell. He climbed with one hand on the banister, to make sure he didn’t slip on the grit and garbage that littered the steps. At the top, he put just his head forward, to check out the hallway, then crawled, on all fours, to the low railing that overlooked the rotunda.

  This was where all the sounds had come from. Sitting, squashed together on the cement floor, were maybe a hundred or more people. Men and women, in all kinds of clothes—some dressed for work, some for home, a few in bathrobes . . . as the Chinese merchant had been. If there was one thing that they had in common, one thing that Lucien finally noticed sort of pulled them all together, it was that they looked, despite all the varieties in dress, more prosperous than the average run of Cambodians. These people were well-groomed, a lot of them wore glasses, a few were wearing Western-style suit jackets; two, sitting together with their arms gathered around their knees, were wearing doctor’s whites. Just behind them, sitting with her back straight and her glossy black hair gathered into a tight knot, was his mother, Samchit. She had one arm linked through that of another woman—a teenage girl, really—that Lucien thought he recognized as one of the apprentice dancers in the Cambodian ballet.

  But there was no sign of Lisette. If she were here, she would be with his mother.

  Had she escaped altogether?

  Under the overhang of the walkway, Lucien could see two, maybe three, of the Khmer Rouge idly standing guard. Directly beneath him, where he couldn’t see them at all, he heard consultations going on. The static of a walkie-talkie, slow footsteps, muffled laughter. Once he saw a cigarette butt flicked out into the crowd. No one moved.

  His mother was staring straight ahead, at the back of the doctors in white; like all the others, she was silent. How, Lucien wondered, could he call her attention to himself without alerting the guards? His face was only inches above the floor, and pressed between two of the iron bars.

  And what—what?—could he do to rescue her?

  Someone was coughing just below him. From the main hall, also out of his sight, Lucien could hear several soldiers coming toward the rotunda, their boots crunching on the cement, their weapons clanking. There was another brief round of talks; Lucien strained to hear the words, but couldn’t. Finally, one of them shouted, “Up! On your feet!” And the guards that Lucien could see casually raised their rifles.

  The prisoners rose stiffly to their feet. They must
have been sitting there for hours.

  Samchit stood up effortlessly, straight as a rod, her arm still linked with the girl’s.

  There was some more talking among the soldiers. More coughing. The walkie-talkie blurted out instructions. The guards under the walkway were told to come forward; for one blessed moment, Lucien thought the crowd was going to be released.

  All of the Khmer Rouge were now concealed just below him.

  He stared as hard as he could directly into his mother’s eyes, begging her, willing her to look up and see him there.

  The walkie-talkie burbled something else, then was abruptly clicked off.

  His mother, without turning her head in the slightest, raised her eyes toward the walkway. She was looking directly at the bars where Lucien was hiding.

  There was a racket of hardware from the soldiers. The one with the cough had a hacking fit.

  Could she see him there? Her expression betrayed nothing.

  From just below him, Lucien suddenly noticed something protrude. He glanced down. It took him a moment to understand that the wavering sticks, gray and black and green, were the muzzles of the guns.

  He frantically lifted his eyes again, to search out his mother.

  The world exploded. The rotunda blazed with light; the air clanged with a stuttering thunder. His head hit the floor.

  The market dome echoed and boomed.

  Orange and yellow light beat off the walls and ceiling.

  His cheek pressed harder against the rough cement.

  Smoke drifted upward, in a lazy gray haze.

  The shooting went on and on and on.

  He lay with his eyes open, his brain numb.

  If he’d been hit himself, he wouldn’t have known it.

  The cement rumbled with the shots.

  The walls shimmered.

  He was deafened.

  The shooting went on.

  He felt as if he had evaporated . . . as if he were only spirit, hovering unscathed in an erupting volcano.

  He felt like nothing.

  The shooting slowed. Then started up again.

  Then slowed.

  Then stopped.

  The rotunda still hummed.

  There were a few single shots. Lucien could barely hear them.

  His eyes blinked, from the smoke.

  He felt nothing . . . wanted to feel nothing.

  Ever again.

  Least of all the boot that suddenly pressed down, like a hot iron, on the back of his neck.

  . . .

  Hallie put her head on his shoulder and looked up at the night sky. Low, scudding clouds from the west largely obscured the moon and stars.

  “A baht for your thoughts,” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “Business,” he lied. “My appointments in London.”

  “Looks like it might rain tonight.”

  “Possible.”

  At times like this, Hallie thought, he might as well have been on an astral plane; she felt he was a million miles away.

  And she didn’t believe that line about London. Business made him more alert and lively, not less.

  She looked out where he was looking, over the distant lights of the city, the deep blue shadows of the deserted harbor. She actually started to feel a little chilly, the first time that that had happened to her in Bangkok.

  From the opposite dock something glinted, just for an instant, in the pale light of the harbor poles.

  She folded her arms and gave them a brisk rubdown. She was about to suggest they head on back when the flash came again.

  “Looks like we’re not alone.” She pointed over at the pier, where a couple of figures appeared, on either side of a yellow forklift. That was what she’d seen glinting in the overhead light.

  Lucien at first looked uninterested, then somewhat puzzled.

  “Don’t they have union rules around here?” Hallie said.

  Lucien didn’t answer her. Instead, he went around to the other side of the wheelhouse, went inside, and came out again with a pair of black binoculars. He trained them first on the figures—now there seemed to be five or six of them—doing whatever they were doing, before panning up to take in the name and the flag of the ship. The name even Hallie could make out, unaided; it was called the Atalanta..

  “Friends of yours?” she asked.

  Lucien rested the binoculars on the railing. “Not exactly. The ship belongs to a company called Gold Prow. What they’re doing I can’t tell.”

  “Looks like they’re loading something to me.”

  “Yes . . . but what? And why now? You don’t normally handle cargo at this hour.” He lifted the binoculars again, but the view was obstructed by light poles, a covered truck, a station wagon. He took Hallie by the elbow.

  “Let’s go down now,” he said. “And call as little attention to ourselves as possible.”

  He sent Hallie down the ladder first, while he kept a watch from above. Then he descended himself. He hurriedly escorted her to the end of the dock, where the old man in the baseball cap was smoking a pipe. Hallie wondered how, without any teeth, he managed to hold it in his mouth.

  They got into the boat, the captain untied the rope, and Lucien started issuing instructions to him in all three languages again. The English version Hallie understood fine; he was to pilot the boat as close to the other dock as possible, then cut the engines entirely, and drift in on the opposite side. He was to make no noise, and wait there until Lucien returned. Hallie would wait in the boat with him.

  “What do you mean, I wait in the boat?”

  “You wait in the boat,” Lucien said firmly. “I don’t really have time to explain. I need to know what they’re loading on that ship, and why. I’m sorry you’re being brought into this at all.”

  From the look on his face, she knew he would brook no dissent. So she sat back on the plastic seat cushion, arms folded again, and prepared herself for a wait.

  The captain did just as he was told, and even managed to keep the boat from bumping into the cement piling by reaching out one gnarled arm and holding it off.

  “I’ll be back as quickly as I can,” Lucien said. “If, by any chance, you hear any commotion, anything that sounds as if it might be dangerous, leave immediately and go back to the hotel. I’ll meet up with you there.”

  He repeated these orders to the captain.

  Hallie made a point of not saying she’d abide by them. But Lucien was too busy to notice.

  He climbed out of the boat and made straight for a pool of shadow. He was a few hundred yards away from where the loading was going on. As luck would have it, there were a few enormous container units laid out on the dock, with just enough room left behind them for him to creep along the very edge of the dock and get to within listening distance. He wished he wasn’t wearing a white shirt, but there was nothing he could do about that now. He slipped into the narrow space between two of the towering containers—both of them marked Mitsubishi—and from the shadows observed what was going on.

  The men looked like ordinary dockworkers, but there was none of their usual camaraderie; they were working silently, efficiently, using the forklift to unload large wooden crates from the back of the covered truck. Judging from the way their foreman occasionally went to the open window of the station wagon, the man overseeing the operation was still in the car; Lucien could dimly see his silhouette, and the glow of a lighted cigarette. There was a consultation going on now. The foreman, with a head almost as square as the crates, nodded, and then went over to one of the boxes resting on the dock only ten or fifteen feet from where Lucien was standing. On his belt, he was toting the stenciling equipment used to label otherwise unmarked containers. He knelt down, and started fixing the appropriate letter molds into the metal braces. Then he would hold the finished brace up to each crate, and spray the wood with indelible black paint. He would put four lines on each container: one for the company sending it, one for
the company to whom it was consigned, one for contents, and one for its destination. Lucien was very curious to see what the lines would say.

  There was a loud grinding of gears from the deck of the Atalanta, and glancing up, Lucien could see that the cargo crane had been activated; the steel tower swiveled on its base. The hoisting tackle swung out over the side of the ship. Something was still in its net, improperly loaded, because a moment later Lucien saw it spill out and fall toward the dock. The workers shouted to each other, and scurried out of the way; one of them split off in the other direction, running right past Lucien with his arms over his head. A bunch of wooden hampers hit the dock with explosive force, sending a spray of ginger and lotus roots into the air. Lucien caught one as it flew into the protected space between the two Mitsubishi containers. One of the hampers banged off the hood of the station wagon.

  In a few seconds, it was over, the empty net swinging slowly overhead, the dock littered with broken wood and pale roots. The workers laughed nervously, and started back toward the truck. The overseer, who’d been inside the station wagon, got out in a fury, threw his cigarette on the cement, and said, “What the hell is going on here?”

  He was speaking Thai, and he was Yang . . . Lucien’s nemesis in the maritime ministry.

  The foreman started to explain. “If we could turn on more lights, we’d have been able to see—”

  “No more lights! I told you, no more lights.” He spat on the cement. “You’re being paid plenty for this. Just do it, goddamn it! Just do it!” He paced up and down, wearing the same khaki uniform he’d worn at Sri Halim’s office; with long, skinny fingers, he played with his sparse mustache.