Figurehead

by Patrick Allington

  The road worker swung again but missed. Kiry bounced on his buttocks and scrambled on all fours into a wardrobe. Sok dived in after him, making it a tight squeeze, and pulled the door closed.

  ‘Kill him,’ someone cried, and then the chant commenced, down the stairs and into the street. ‘Kill him, kill him, kill him.’

  They ripped the wardrobe doors from their hinges and dragged Kiry into the middle of the room. One man pulled a reading lamp from a power point and cut its electricity cord free. He threw it over the ceiling fan and fashioned a crude noose.

  Kiry’s bodyguards fought back. Ol pushed Kiry into the bathroom, where the photographer vacated a chair for him. Government soldiers, in riot gear and now armed with instructions that Nhem Kiry must not die, rushed the stairs. They forced those engaged in the lynching down the staircase and into the street, where the crowd lauded them and Hun Sen counselled, ‘There is a better way.’

  Blood flowed from the cut on Kiry’s head. ‘It looks worse than it is,’ he assured Sok. Bruises already rose from his elbow, his buttocks, his side. His shirt was ripped and bloody. His wristwatch was cracked. Ol, concussed and confused, berated Nirom for driving into a tree. The other bodyguards nursed minor wounds. One of the photographers reported a dislocated finger.

  The crowd fuelled a bonfire with the villa’s furniture, the paintings from the walls, the long table from the kitchen, the dried f lower arrangements, the shredded luggage. They burnt Kiry’s passport. They burnt his toiletries – Marie Weston’s No. 5 Replenishing Lotion bubbled and spat as its container melted. They burnt his ripped jacket and, within, Brendan H. Margaretti’s letter. They burnt his briefcase, including his speech: I cannot express how very happy I am to be here at the beginning of a new peaceful era for our country. I hope to be here for many years to come. I pledge to work with all parties who truly have the interests of the Cambodian people in their hearts.

  One by one, Kiry and his entourage climbed down the outside stairs and into an armoured personnel carrier. As Kiry descended, Ol stood staring up with his arms outstretched to catch him should he fall … and gallantly fainted.

  * * *

  Ted Whittlemore was not in Phnom Penh on the day Nhem Kiry flew in and flew out. He did not, as he wrote, throw a rock at a window; he did not storm any stairs. He was in neighbouring Vietnam, in Ho Chi Minh City, where he’d based himself for the last few years.

  Ted woke early that day, early enough that he could have – had he been capable of it – hitched a lift to Phnom Penh on a dawn flight and been at the Royal Hotel in time for the first sitting of breakfast. He could have walked the streets to gauge the mood of the city, something he always liked to do when he arrived in a place. He could have loitered outside Nhem Kiry’s villa and watched the crowd form. He could have taken his time selecting the very best rock to throw: not too light, not too heavy, something to make a decent impact but not kill anybody.

  Instead, he spent most of the day sprawled on an old settee on the balcony of his apartment. When he slept he moaned; when he was awake he grumbled and swore and clenched his fists. Occasionally, he struggled to his feet and shuffled into the apartment to fill up his water jug (‘Don’t get dehydrated,’ his doctor had told him) or to urinate sweet yellow nectar. The apartment was quite spacious, for one person at least, but it gave the illusion of being tiny because all four of its rooms were crammed with old furniture from the Núi Café, the bustling establishment above which Ted lived. That day, tables, chairs, sofas and ice chests seemed like mines laid out in his path.

  A few days earlier Ted had collapsed in the Núi Café. This came after weeks of unease that he had self-diagnosed as mental rather than physical, with symptoms so vague he tried to ignore them. But in the café Ted had suddenly fallen so ill that he slid off his chair and passed out on the floor in a pool of warm jasmine tea. He sprang back to life a moment later, appalled at this public show of mortality, but in the ensuing days the dizziness came – and passed – in waves, and he endured, in a pattern so random he felt sure it must mean something, a sharp stabbing pain to a bewildering variety of body parts.

  Ted was disgusted by his body’s sudden and pathetic weakness. He was dismayed that he was missing Nhem Kiry’s homecoming. It might have been a mere footnote in history, but it was big news in Ted’s world. Late in the afternoon he made the mistake of tuning into the BBC World Service and heard that he had missed a riot. He lost all sense. I’ll get the next plane to Phnom Penh and view the scene, he told himself, and then I’ll fly to Bangkok and I’ll demand that Nhem Kiry show me his wounds.

  Ted packed a bag and got halfway down the stairs when dizziness overwhelmed him. He grasped the railing as the world circled faster and faster. Finally a passer-by – one of the boys who repaired Hondas and sold dope from a hole in the wall a few blocks over – noticed him swooning and helped him back to bed.

  Late in the afternoon Ted’s friend Hieu, who ran the café, brought him a bowl of beef noodle soup. Ted found eating hard work but afterwards he felt much better – well enough, in fact, to pour himself a glass of armagnac (he knew it was fake, but they’d done such a good job, with whatever chemicals and colours they’d thrown into the alcohol, that he didn’t mind). He settled in at the typewriter and began work on his weekly column.

  Yesterday I woke up expecting to be repulsed but instead I witnessed a scene . . .

  Ted stopped writing and pondered this blatant lie. As if in punishment, a wave of light-headedness forced him to close his eyes. Nausea rose up from his gut then fell back. His tongue felt huge in his mouth. He had an image of bile spilling all through his body, flooding his organs. The thought of it made him retch into the empty soup bowl. He began shivering so hard that he wondered, as he fought to control himself, if this was epilepsy.

  After a moment he opened his eyes and stared at the words on the near-blank page: Yesterday I woke up expecting to be repulsed but instead I witnessed a scene . . . Although his hands were shaking so hard they were blurred, he tapped out the rest of the sentence. . .that so filled my heart with hope that I felt I might pass out.

  Finally, the shivering passed. Ted wandered his apartment, splashed water on his face, wiped deodorant under his arms for the fourth or fifth time that day and brushed his teeth. He pulled the piece of paper from the typewriter and grabbed a pen. With one hand gripping the railing, he made his way very slowly down the steps.

  The Núi Café was busy and full of noise. Ted’s favourite table was occupied by four men playing cards. He limped past them and Hieu ushered him to a seat near the kitchen.

  ‘Tea, Ted?’

  ‘Coffee.’

  ‘Coffee bad. Doctor said coffee bad.’

  ‘Coffee,’ Ted said.

  Snot began to pour from Ted’s nose. He wiped it clean, ignoring the smattering of blood that appeared on his handkerchief. Hieu wanted to chat, wanted to know how he was feeling, but Ted waved him away and settled back to compose his eyewitness account of the attack on Nhem Kiry. He wrote it in a single burst. The coffee was still hot when he read it back to himself.

  He was pleased. Very pleased. For a moment, he felt healthy. This shocked him, for suddenly he grasped how awful he had been feeling. And at that moment, right there and then, he decided that the column about Nhem Kiry would be his very last. No matter how horrific an idea it was, his doctor was right: he had to retreat or die.

  He asked Hieu for a glass of red wine. ‘Make it a bottle.’ When Hieu refused – ‘Doctor’s orders!’ – Ted burst into tears. All conversation in the Núi Café ceased – even the card game went into hiatus – as Ted howled then whimpered then fell asleep.

  I should have been there, that time in ’91. Of all the bloody shit-holes I’ve dragged myself to in my life for the sake of a story, for the sake of being an eyewitness, I missed Nhem Kiry getting the shit beaten out of him. But I had to respond somehow because they – the useless bloody spineless UN – were treating Kiry like royalty. I don’t mind telling an
out-and-out lie if there’s no other way, so I wrote the column. Said I was there. Really, when you think about it, what difference does it make? Everybody tells stories their own way. Everybody sees what they want to see. What they need to see. I hear people say, ‘I know my history.’ But what is history? Some nameless faceless disembodied voice thrusting his own partisan beliefs at the world. History isn’t rain. History is a water cannon, loaded, aimed and fired.

  So I lied, but like any good forger I made sure I slipped in a kernel of truth: ‘I felt I might pass out,’ I wrote. Ha. That – passing out – was about all I was bloody well good for.

  I’m not a violent man. I’m pretty sure I’ve never killed a human being. I’ve never fired a gun, except to find out how it feels and except for a few times when I found myself in a spot of bother on the frontline – but, honestly, whenever I tried to aim it was like I was drowning, limbs flailing about and bullets flying everywhere except where they needed to go.

  I’m not a violent man, but I would give anything to have had the chance to land a blow or two on Kiry’s scrawny little body that day in ’91. Just to sink my fist into his stomach a couple of times and to elbow him in the ribs. Break his nose, maybe. Kick him while he’s down. I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, but it would have been cathartic. Cleansing. Like that pink stuff they make me drink when I haven’t shitted for too many days in a row.

  It would have been a good way to end. I would have gone full circle. The first time I ever saw Nhem Kiry, in ’61, I watched Lon Nol’s police beat him up. I’d heard about this boyish left-winger who wrote brave and blunt newspaper columns and who talked openly about the evils of corruption. One of my spies tipped me off so, as if by chance, I was across the road when five men (one of whom looked a lot like my spy) dragged Kiry into the street, stripped him naked and pummelled him. As Kiry lay counting his ribs, his left eyelids fused, the men taunted him and laughed at his penis. They photographed him and distributed copies around Phnom Penh. I bought one for a few packets of cigarettes and a bottle of plonk, but when I sent it in with the story my editor said, ‘I don’t publish pornography, no matter how tasteless.’

  Back then – in ’61 – I felt pity for Kiry. But more: in the photograph of a naked, bleeding man I thought I caught a glimpse of hope and maybe even of greatness. I thought I saw a man who was a radical but who could still make friends with the entire world. And now?

  Part 1

  1967

  Late one afternoon Nhem Kiry, Member of Parliament, left his tiny office. He retrieved his pushbike and rode out into the heavy Phnom Penh heat, but not before he tucked his white cotton shirt into his trousers so it wouldn’t flap in the wind. There would be creases in the shirt later but no matter; he was finished at the office for the day.

  Kiry rode slowly along Monivong Boulevard, upright in the saddle, his face so impassive that if his legs hadn’t been pumping he might have been mistaken for a statue. He veered around a cyclo and said to himself, ‘I am a happy person. I am a happy person.’ He cracked a smile but his mouth locked into place as if he was letting out a silent scream.

  Kiry was on his way to see his friend Bun Sody, who was forever telling him that he was too stern. Kiry did not agree: if he was more often sombre than full of joy and light then that was because life was a serious business.

  Besides, Kiry thought that Sody took things too far. Kiry had seen him tell some caustic joke and then collapse on the floor, shaking uncontrollably, his limbs crashing into furniture; he once saw him giggle with such gusto that he vomited all over himself. Kiry did not think there was anything that funny about life in Cambodia.

  While Sody played the clown, Kiry ventured into the countryside to listen to the poorest of the peasants tell how the authorities systematically and legally stole their rice. He remembered all the details of these stories – not names but places and paddy yields – and he built up in his mind a panoramic vision of miserable inequity.

  Whenever he said goodbye to these peasants, Kiry flashed a smile so full of empathy and genuine warmth that they knew for certain that he really and truly was on their side. It would have shocked Sody, had he seen it; and then, Kiry suspected, reduced him to a hopeless mess of giggles.

  Kiry rode on. Even as sweat began to run down his armpits, a sensation he disliked intensely, he showed no outward discomfort. He rode a bicycle to remind all of Cambodia that he had refused a free Citroën and a chauffeur. His parliamentary colleagues had finally come to understand that he was incorruptible, but not before they’d offered him everything from warehouses full of cognac to women of all shapes and sizes and nationalities to teenage boys to suitcases full of US dollars to a cottage in the south of France. He’d rejected it all, yawned politely in their faces, and from that day on they’d tiptoed around him as if he were a landmine half out of the dirt. Kiry carried on as best he could, drawing strength from what Gandhi once said: ‘First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.’

  Kiry turned left, as did two motorcyclists following an indiscreet thirty metres behind. Everywhere Kiry went these days, the secret police followed. Kiry knew that they reported to General Lon Nol but he suspected that Prince Sihanouk was in on it: for a man who went about with his eyes squeezed shut, Sihanouk seemed capable of seeing vast distances.

  Lon Nol had started rumours that Kiry was in communication with the communists in the jungle – which was true enough, for there was a certain man who delivered news and instructions in the dead of night. But now Lon Nol was publicly accusing him of orchestrating the peasant unrest out west. The very idea was ludicrous, Kiry thought. His constituents were in the south. Nobody in Kandal province was rioting or killing police, although Kiry would not have blamed them if they had been. All over the country, he believed, the peasants were waking from a deep sleep, rubbing their eyes, looking at the rich and powerful in Phnom Penh and thinking, Why do I work myself to death so they can live in palaces and sleep on mattresses stuffed full of money? Kiry had not incited any peasants to violence, although it is true that his man in the night had warned him what was going to happen out west. Still, he understood the rioters; he honoured them; and now his mouth turned dry whenever he thought of Lon Nol’s men beating or shooting them.

  Kiry pretended not to notice that the secret police were following him. Nothing could make them leave him alone and, anyway, feigning ignorance gave him a certain freedom. They claimed he was responsible for orchestrating the riots and yet they tagged him as simple and naïve and cowardly.

  Kiry turned left and then immediately left again down a narrow lane. He stopped by a pile of rubbish. Another man, dressed in exactly the same clothes as Kiry, mounted a replica of Kiry’s bicycle and pushed to a start. The two men did not make eye contact or speak. Then, as the other man began to peddle, Kiry hissed, ‘Tuck in your shirt.’

  Kiry crouched down behind the rubbish, sending a black rat scuttling away. Once the motorcyclists had trundled past, he remounted and sped in the opposite direction.

  Ten minutes later he entered a house. He removed his shoes and wiped his underarms and chest with his krama. He entered a windowless room just as Ted Whittlemore yanked the tops off two bottles of beer.

  ‘Here you go, mate,’ Ted said, handing a beer to Bun Sody, who grinned and lifted his shirt to mop his face.

  Kiry wondered if Sody was ill. He seemed as delighted as ever with life but his eyes, two huge expanses of white, were abnormally bright against his reddish face. And Kiry noticed that his belly jutted out and his neck listed to one side, although his shoulders and his thighs looked as powerful as ever. Maybe he was stressed. Maybe he’d had too many late nights, fraternising and spreading the word that change was coming.

  ‘Well, well,’ Ted said. ‘Mr Nhem Kiry. What an honour. A drink?’

  ‘Whittlemore: I thought I made it quite clear that I wanted nothing more to do with you,’ Kiry said.

  ‘Aw, come on mate, don’t be grumpy. I’m on your side,
you know.’

  ‘He shouldn’t be here,’ Kiry said to Sody. ‘Have you read that rubbish he’s been publishing in the US? He’s Sihanouk’s poodle, nothing more.’

  ‘I invited him,’ Sody said. ‘He says he has news.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Ted said. ‘Big news. Important news. But first have a drink with us. I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong exactly, but let me make it up to you. Pretty please?’

  ‘Either he leaves or I do.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry I wrote that your mates in the jungle are amateurs, but I have to call it how I see it. You people have got to be nicer to your friends. Like the North Vietnamese. And Sihanouk. And me. So: a beer?’

  ‘No.’ Kiry was scanning the room, as if he was trying to decide which of the two doors the secret police would shortly burst through.

  ‘Just one? Come on, all good commies drink beer. Just look at me.’

  ‘You can’t support us and support Sihanouk.’

  ‘Why ever not? Come on, have a beer, they’re perfectly cold, if that’s what you’re concerned about.’

  ‘I’m not concerned about anything.’

  ‘Well, from what I hear, that’s not wise, not wise at all, mate. But surely you’ll have something? Whisky? Tea? Is there any Chinese tea here?’ Ted yelled to no one in particular. ‘I know: armagnac. Your favourite, right?’