The messenger leant close and whispered in Kiry’s ear. Kiry frowned slightly, then nodded. He stood up and walked to a spot by himself, where he crouched in the dirt and continued eating.
* * *
Nhem Kiry reached the centre of Phnom Penh a day and a half after the first Khmer Rouge troops. Fifty metres from where he stood, past an abandoned car and upturned cyclos, sat the convoy of jeeps that had borne him and his personal battalion into the city. A radio operator sat in one jeep, twiddling the dials of a box that occasionally stopped farting to relay a message. Four soldiers stood by, three boys and a girl, battle-hardened and clear-headed, guns trained north and south. The other soldiers, their weapons protruding like tentacles, surrounded Kiry and his awed chief aide, Akor Sok. This strange organism proceeded north along Monivong Boulevard.
Kiry paused in front of the twin-towered dirty white cathedral. Catholic architecture did not interest him – he had lived in Paris for three years without visiting Notre Dame – but he needed a reason, however flimsy, to pause. Not for the first time that day, Kiry’s body felt too light: his fingertips tingled, his kneecaps wobbled and the tip of his tongue kept catching in the gap between his front teeth. He thought he might vomit or faint or float away.
He steadied himself by briefly touching Sok’s elbow. Sok mistook the contact to be a command and obediently commenced a disdainful assessment of the four-metre statue of Jesus that stood above the cathedral’s entrance.
‘What’s he doing there, imposing himself on our city? Look, he’s all dirty. No one has washed him in years. What is that, dove shit? Look, the plaster’s peeling off him. They don’t care about him. Pathetic.’
Kiry drank from his water canister and tipped the last of it over his head. The flow ran dry at the base of his neck, where his top vertebrae bulged. Sok blinked, surprised by this uncharacteristic show of waste. He sensed that Kiry might be ailing and began to fuss.
‘Are you unwell, comrade?’ He handed Kiry a fresh canister of water. ‘Are you dehydrated?’
‘No.’
‘Have you got stomach cramps again?’
‘No.’
‘Have you got a temperature? Please, no, is it malaria?’
‘Stop it. I’m suffering from exhilaration.’
‘I understand,’ Sok said, flabbergasted.
Seeking respite from the sun, mostly seeking a quiet place to sit alone and gather his thoughts, Kiry pierced the circle of soldiers and moved towards the cathedral. He made stuttering progress up the widely spaced stairs. When he glanced at Jesus, who looked down his nose at him, he tripped. He broke his fall first with the palms of his hands and then with his ribcage. He lay half in sun, half in shadow, marvelling at the first thought that entered his head: finally, a legitimate war wound.
‘Quick, comrade, get up,’ Sok whispered. ‘They’ll think you’re praying.’
Kiry laughed at that unlikely proposition. ‘Praise be to God,’ he said. ‘I’m going inside.’
‘We will stop here for now,’ Sok called out.
Several soldiers stayed with Kiry. Others sat on the road, nursing the blisters on their feet. A couple lobbed stones at Jesus. One young man entered a bakery. He emerged pushing a woman, who half-turned to protest. He raised his rifle. She ran. As he lowered the gun he let off a shot. The bullet thudded into the woman’s thigh. She collapsed, howling. The soldier blinked – his stunned face suggested the rifle had come to life of its own accord – and turned away.
Kiry stepped inside the cathedral. The air was heavy with the smells that encapsulated the building’s history: the lake of lemon oil rubbed into the walnut pews; waxy effluent from thousands of candles; the mustiness of damp, black-spotted hymn books, which still sprouted like mushrooms on every pew; small pyramids of refuse left by refugees who were now filling the roads out of Phnom Penh.
‘It stinks,’ Sok said.
‘It’s the memory of the French.’
‘That’s what I said: it stinks.’
Discomforted by the silence, Sok quickly spoke again.
‘So, we’ve done it, comrade. We’ve won.’
‘So it seems.’
‘You doubt it? Is there something more to come?’
‘No. We are here.’
They sat for a time until Kiry grew tired of Sok’s fidgeting.
‘Did I tell you that I met Chou En-lai last month in Beijing?’ he asked
‘No, comrade, you never mentioned it,’ Sok lied.
‘He was propped up in his hospital bed. He tried to smile when I arrived but it only made him lose his breath. Do you know what he said to me?’
‘No, comrade.’
‘He told me to pursue a gentle revolution, a gradual revolution. Can you believe it?’
‘No, comrade.’
‘I was polite but I told him the truth. I promised him that our revolution would be pure as rain.’
‘How did he respond?’
‘He didn’t say anything. He sighed and one of the machines he was connected to lit up. He was so unwell; delirious, probably. I suppose I could have been gentler with him. But the truth is always best.’
‘I agree, comrade.’
Kiry peered through the gloom. ‘Oh, look, a miracle: that baptismal font has arms and legs.’
Sok followed Kiry’s gaze to where an old woman, despite abject thinness, failed to conceal herself.
‘Quickly, men, over here. Grab her.’ Sok’s eyes widened with excitement as the soldiers obeyed his commands. ‘The rest of you check the building. You, look there; you, check back there; you, through there.’
Kiry winced as Sok’s bellowing bounced from wall to wall. He craved silence – an hour, even a few minutes – to close his eyes and clear his mind. Instead, soldiers stormed the centre aisle in pursuit of an old woman incapable of flight. Above the beat of their footsteps on the floorboards Sok continued yelling. Kiry bowed his head and played deaf and dumb.
One of the soldiers approached the old woman, who cowered and continued to delude herself that she was invisible. She breathed heavily now, her chest poking out through the gaps between her ribs. Finally, submissively, she commenced a coughing fit. The soldier slung his rifle over his shoulder, lifted the baptismal font and threw it against the altar. Brackish water sprayed the woman. She attached herself to Sok’s legs, panting, clasping her hands together.
‘You must leave the city,’ Sok said. ‘You must go to your home district. Stand up and walk.’
The woman hauled herself upright by grabbing a tuft of Sok’s black shirt. ‘Look at me. I am lame,’ she said, swivelling in a tight circle anchored by her right leg. She finished where she had started and, unable to maintain her balance another moment, collapsed at Sok’s feet.
‘You are not special,’ Sok said. ‘Everybody must go.’
‘I cannot. Please, I cannot. The other soldiers I met earlier, by the river, they told me I could stay if I kept out of the way.’
‘The Americans are going to bomb the city. You can come back soon if you want to but now you must leave.’
Then the old woman saw Kiry.
‘Oh, oh, oh,’ she stuttered and lost control of her breathing.
Several soldiers converged on the old woman as she scrambled towards Kiry. Her sarong unravelled and threatened to stay attached to a wide splinter that reared out of the floor, providing Kiry with an unexpurgated view of the opalised ulcer that ran from her calf to her thigh.
‘Honourable Uncle, is it really you? They said you were dead but I never believed them. I am so happy that you are here at last. Have you brought Prince Sihanouk with you? Please tell these people that I cannot walk. Please let me stay here. Please tell them. I know you understand me.’
‘You must leave, Auntie. There is no other way.’
‘But I am not strong enough to walk. What will I eat? I have no bowl, no rice.’
The woman reached out to touch Kiry. Sok kicked her in the ribs. She whimpered as a soldier grabbed her by her
good ankle and dragged her down the steps and onto the road. She did not scream or complain further. She squatted then stood and with a lopsided, comical gait hobbled away.
Then one of the soldiers, looking for food, discovered a priest hiding in a closet.
‘Careful, boy,’ the priest said in Khmer to the soldier, who waved a gun in his face. ‘I’m French.’
As the soldiers crowded around the priest, Kiry turned his back and commenced studying a stained-glass window of Jesus ascending to heaven. He had met this priest a few times. He was, Kiry remembered, a compassionate man who held presumptuous but surprisingly perceptive opinions on the question of progress for the Cambodian peasant. He had also, or so Bun Sody had insisted, fallen madly in love with his housekeeper, a plump girl whom he had first employed when she was fourteen. ‘She cooks him onion soup,’ Sody had claimed, ‘and every morning she washes him head to toe with a sponge. She offers more but he refuses.’
‘I don’t want him to see me,’ Kiry told Sok. ‘Take him to the French embassy. Be polite. Don’t let anyone hurt him. Do it now.’
‘Yes, comrade.’
‘And while you’re there, find out who’s hiding inside the embassy. I want a full list. I want to know if Lon Nol really went with the Americans. I want to know if they’re sheltering Sirik Matak and Long Boret and—’
‘Will you be all right here without me, comrade?’
‘Just get me that list. And see if you can be of any use at the hospital. Then go and see that everything is under control elsewhere.’
‘Elsewhere, comrade?’
‘Anywhere. I don’t care. Just go.’
Sok approached the priest, who was arguing with one of the soldiers.
‘But I just came to collect a few things. My stoles are precious to me. One of them comes from Mexico. Peasant workers made it by hand, using the same cotton that—’
‘No.’
‘And my Bible. It’s in the vestry, just back there. My grandmother gave it to me the day I began school. I refuse to leave without it.’
Sok stood so close to the priest that they could smell each other’s mouths. ‘Okay, but you have one minute. That is all. Then we will go to the embassy.’
‘Oh, I can walk there myself.’
‘We will escort you. The street is very dangerous.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘We will take you.’
‘Yes. All right.’
‘You should have run away with the Americans.’
‘Yes.’
Finally it was quiet. Kiry sat on a pew, breathed deeply, held the rank air within his lungs, counted to ten and exhaled through pursed lips. None of the minor triumphs or quiet moments of self-satisfaction he had experienced in his life had prepared him for the elation that now threatened to immobilise him.
He remembered the excitement of his boat trip to France – he was twenty-two years old – and the sense of accomplishment he attained simply by arriving safely in Marseille. That was a pleasant memory, he supposed, although the truth was he had vomited the whole way and had irritated Bun Sody, who was his cabin companion, by implying he knew so much more about the world than he did.
From his time in Paris he remembered a deep conversation in a café with a young French woman about Lenin and Trotsky and the eternal revolution. His restrained delivery of his passionate argument so convinced her – he had long ago forgotten her name but she was tall and had long brown hair – that she followed him to his tiny apartment and stayed the night and most of the next day, an outcome he desired but would never have proposed. He was relieved when she left, having already come to believe that his moment of weakness had lost him thirty-six hours of reading time. When she knocked on his door a few days later, he pretended he was out. When he saw her in the street, he ducked into a doorway. When she wrote him a letter, he burned it, unopened.
He recalled being joyfully mute when a panel of French academics heaped praise on his thesis. The work was rudimentary and speculative, he now knew. Still, he was proud that he’d produced a piece of research which somehow satisfied a panel of examiners who were at war with each other.
He remembered his elevation to parliament. How proud his irretrievably frail mother had been. Now he knew – in truth, he’d always known – that Sihanouk had chosen him because of his apparent meekness. Still, he was proud of his reputation for incorruptibility and hard work. It had won him a second term in parliament, a useless time notable mainly because he had somehow achieved it against Sihanouk’s wishes. Still, the ordinary people had seen him in action and they considered him to be an honest patriot: what a useful tool that had been in the hard years that followed.
Kiry thought about his mother. She had died in 1973. One day, walking home from the market, she tripped and fell. She lay in the street moaning quietly until her neighbours came and carried her to the hospital. But the wards and the corridors were full of soldiers, so she went home. Overnight her leg blew up like a balloon, hard and black. One by one her organs rebelled, so that by the time she died a few days later the doctor could only guess at the cause. It was weeks before Kiry heard the news and months before he learnt the details.
Kiry thought about his brother Goy, older by one year. Goy had been a burly boy with manly shoulders, whereas Kiry was skinny and prone to falling over and skinning his knees. Inexplicably, Kiry always won their races to the well to collect water – even though he had the handicap of carrying the buckets. Kiry was twelve years old before he, too, learnt to lose on purpose. He wondered where Goy was now: probably limping to Kandal Province, assuming – fool that he was – that his well-connected brother would rescue him.
Inside an annex at the back of the cathedral, Kiry located a winding staircase. He began to climb and was pleased that his legs grew stronger and that he felt, at last, properly connected to the earth.
At the top of the tower he broke a couple of rotten wooden slats and leaned against the cold metal of a brass bell. As he admired the view his sandals crunched down on dried pigeon droppings. He was deaf – or indifferent – to the sounds the city made as it expelled its inhabitants: the din of two million shuffling people, the crying toddlers, the murmured survival plans that families debated and disputed, the occasional bursts of gunfire, the cries of the living as they saw corpses in gutters and floating like logs down the Sap River, the raucous backfires as victorious soldiers taught themselves to drive.
He could see a broken line of people leaving Calmette Hospital. Inside the hospital, Akor Sok herded the ill and the injured down a set of stairs and onto the street. ‘Come on, keep moving, keep moving,’ Sok ordered a woman with a bandage covering a useless eye, then a hobbling youth with shrapnel embedded in his thigh, then a man clutching his bloated bladder, then a woman holding a limp four-year-old girl, her operation aborted, her stomach wide open.
Kiry could see Wat Phnom, now abandoned. The smart monks had discarded their robes and transformed themselves into peasants, just as the sensible soldiers from Lon Nol’s army had shed their khaki skins. The beggars had left too, suddenly no more disadvantaged than anyone else, indistinguishable from the privileged citizens who wore their oldest clothes into the street and strapped their jewels and their dollars to their bodies.
From this vantage point, Kiry let out a single whoop of delight. He felt as if he was flying and he didn’t care whose shoulders he had leapt from. Anything was now possible. The view from the sky was so spectacular that nothing else mattered.
* * *
Make no mistake, Prince Norodom Sihanouk has heard every single ridiculous rumour about the new Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia. He’s heard about the mass killings of so-called ‘class enemies.’ He’s heard about chronic food and medicine shortages. He’s heard that his own role as head of state will be purely ceremonial and he’s even heard that his freedom and safety will be jeopardised if he returns to Cambodia.
As is so often the case, the truth is very different. Prince Sihanouk is curre
ntly in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, where he spoke with this reporter. Shortly, with great optimism, with a song in his heart, he and his wife, Monique, will return to their beloved Phnom Penh.
Prince Sihanouk acknowledges that the Khmer Rouge have largely emptied the cities but he points out that most people returned to their home provinces, that families were not separated and that no one was forced to leave Phnom Penh if they preferred to stay. ‘I am so proud that Cambodians are the first in the world to create a classless society,’ he says. ‘And the evacuation could not be avoided. Lon Nol had turned Phnom Penh into a Sodom and Gomorrah.’
This reporter has not yet visited the new Cambodia but understands, from Sihanouk and other sources, that the government has eliminated rich and poor, oppressor and oppressed, money and markets. Everybody in the countryside is working, either growing food and raising animals or creating and maintaining a reliable electrical supply or devising and constructing irrigation systems or making and repairing bicycles or weaving clothes or refining sugar or converting tanks into tractors. All this is simply the first step. The construction of a new, equal, and corruption-free urban society will soon follow.
Prince Sihanouk scoffs at suggestions that the Khmer Rouge have no use for him now that the war is won. ‘The National Front over which I preside is the absolute essence of monolithic unity. Nhem Kiry and all the other leaders are genuine nationalists. They are working tirelessly to preserve the sovereignty of our country.’ As far as Prince Sihanouk is concerned, Cambodia has regained the key principles that as head of state he always fought so courageously for: economic independence and political neutrality. ‘And don’t forget,’ he says, ‘that I am the only non-communist head of state ever to be chosen by communists in human history. I am an adopted Khmer Rouge.’
—Edward Whittlemore, ‘As I See It,’ syndicated column
Prince Norodom Sihanouk and Princess Monique stepped from their specially chartered plane into the harsh light of Pochentong airport. Rubbish whipped around in the wind and came to rest against the planes, trucks and jeeps that were scattered randomly about the tarmac. Sihanouk had always wanted to own a bomb that left property undamaged. He dreamed of clearing Manhattan and repopulating it with his family and friends; of emptying Paris and turning it into his getaway palace. But now, standing and looking about a place apparently cleansed of all life, he was profoundly unnerved.
Figurehead Page 6