by JH Fletcher
Tran laughed. ‘In Asia we learn to live dangerously.’
She didn’t need to be told that; she’d taken quite a risk in coming here, as EMI’s Maude Arkwright had been quick to point out when she’d heard Lucia’s plans. ‘Phnom Penh? To give a concert?’ As though she were planning to dance naked at the Folies Bergères.
Retired or not, Lucia was no more tolerant of criticism than she’d ever been. ‘The whole world should be celebrating!’ she’d replied.
‘Have you forgotten what happened to your American sales when you sang in Hanoi? They’ve just started to pick up again. Now we’ll be back to square one.’
Lucia wasn’t interested in Maude’s arguments.
‘Pol Pot and his gangsters murdered hundreds of thousands of their own people, simply because they could read and write. They were the Nazis all over again. They turned the whole country into a death camp. Hanging’s too good. The world should be glad to see the back of them.’
‘It’s not the way Washington sees it. Or London.’
‘Washington and London can take a jump.’
‘For someone who claims to be non-political, you get more involved in politics than anyone I know. The wrong kind of politics, what’s more!’
‘To celebrate the downfall of evil? That’s bad?’
‘It’ll be bad for sales, I promise you that,’ Maude had warned.
No doubt Maude would prove right but Lucia could live with that. Wealth gave a measure of independence or it meant nothing. It was a philosophy that would give Monty the horrors, no doubt, but she wasn’t about to ask his permission.
The aircraft changed direction to follow the Mekong River, its brown surface reflecting the sunlight as it wound in a succession of giant loops towards the Cambodian border.
Tran pointed at a small settlement on the bank. Patches of paddy fields shone as green as emerald beside wooden houses steeply roofed in attap. A water buffalo wallowed; peasants lifted eyes shaded by conical hats to stare at the plane as it swooped overhead. The sudden sighting of another and unknowable life was like the illumination of a camera flash: momentary clarity obliterated almost at once by the return of the trees. In the second before the village and its inhabitants were gulped down by the forest, a child waved. Lucia’s hand lifted in response before she realised that the child could not see her. She said: ‘Things don’t seem too bad down there.’
‘That village is in Vietnam. You’ll see the difference when we cross into Cambodia.’
Within a few minutes she had discovered how right he was. Brown ruins rose like rotted teeth out of a landscape where no rice or other crops grew. There were no people, no animals, only slowly waving forests of wild grass. These and the flicker of the plane’s shadow were all that remained of movement or life.
A second village. A fleeting impression of fire-charred timber. She said: ‘At least the grass shows the land is still fertile.’
Tran looked at her. ‘It has been well fertilised. You see how the grass grows thickest on the outskirts of the villages? That’s where the people are buried.’
Lucia was aghast. ‘There are kilometres of it —’
‘This whole land is a graveyard.’
‘Why did they do it?’
‘Evil needs no reason.’
She stared at him with frightened eyes, imagining the horrors that must be waiting for her on the ground. ‘It’s terrible. Unbelievable.’
‘It is hard to believe but things are much better than they were a year ago. You cannot imagine how bad things were then. When I flew into Phnom Penh there were children living in boxes, or in nothing at all. You couldn’t get close to them. If you tried they ran away.’
‘How did they survive?’
‘Thousands didn’t. We had driven out the murderers but their legacy remained. The thing I remember most was the sound.’
Lucia did not understand. ‘Sound?’
‘It went on day and night. A soft, lilting sound. It was the noise the starving children made as they came closer and closer to death. So many. And the stench … We could not have invited you to come here then.’
‘Did nobody help?’
‘Eventually, after several months, the Red Cross sent a hundred tons of supplies. For a population of five million. Apart from that, nothing.’
The note of the plane’s engines changed. The nose dipped. They checked their seat belts. Minutes later they landed at Phnom Penh’s Pochentong Airport.
2
Inside the airport building the stagnant heat, sharp with the fumes of cigarettes, was intense; someone was explaining in broken English that the airconditioning had broken down. A covey of journalists came running, thrusting microphones into her face, all shouting at once.
‘Madame Visconti, why are you here?’
‘Madame Visconti, has the United Nations sent you?’
‘Will you be building a new opera house?’
She looked around at them, holding her ground in the face of their hammering voices. She waited until they were quiet, then said: ‘You have to be patient with me these days. I’m an old woman, remember?’
Somewhere from the crush a voice answered: ‘You look pretty good to me.’
An Australian voice. Laughter and applause. She wagged her finger at them. ‘Perhaps I should sing to you. Maybe that’ll shut you up.’
Again they laughed, as she had intended, and she laughed with them; she’d always been good at this sort of thing. Then she sobered: abruptly, deliberately, effectively.
‘You ask why I’m here. It is not for a new opera house or for the United Nations. I am here to sing. Only that. Not to make speeches. Not to be political. Not to blame this country or that for the past but to say that we should all work for the future. If by singing here I can bring that message to the world, then my journey will have been worthwhile.’
She held them by the weight of her words. A moment to let them sink in, then she freed them, again deliberately, from the seriousness of her message.
‘I know you’ll let me go now. I’m hot, tired. I need a bath. I am rehearsing tomorrow, performing the next day. I must make sure I get enough rest or my singing will be a catastrophe, and this country’s seen enough catastrophe without my making things worse.’
It was risky to joke about something that was beyond laughter or even tears but she judged it was what they wanted from her, and was right. They laughed, once again applauding her, and she knew that, whatever else might happen during the course of her visit, she had once again got the media on her side.
Tran said: ‘There is a car waiting. If you would like to go to the hotel…?’
3
It wasn’t the George V but it was comfortable enough. In the street beyond the window things were very different from what she’d expected. There was a constant tinkle of bells as pony traps carried people to and fro. Somewhere a jazz band was playing, a cheerful thread of sound alongside the raucous sunlight. Trees flowered; a bus passed in a stink of blue smoke; the traders at a nearby market sent up a ceaseless clamour. Tran watched her taking in all the activity. This was no graveyard; perhaps he thought she was wondering what all the fuss had been about. Almost apologetically, he repeated: ‘It was very different a year ago.’
She watched a group of Vietnamese soldiers on a street corner. They were looking about them, doing nothing, but there was no mistaking how their olive-green uniforms and Ho Chi Minh sandals created a pool of silence about them. Cambodian civilians scurried past with averted eyes. She said: ‘Someone in Paris told me you’ll never leave now you’ve conquered the place.’
‘That is wrong. The Khmer Rouge were destabilising the whole region. We had to get rid of them, since no-one else would. But we’ve no interest in staying longer than we must. We have enough problems at home.’
Lucia said: ‘And I have problems here. You told me the others would be at the hotel. Where are they?’
Tran picked up the phone, held it to his ear for a moment and then replaced
it on its stand.
‘The line is dead. I shall ask at the desk.’
Within a minute he was back.
‘Rooms seventy-three and four.’
Lucia walked down the corridor. It was clean, at least you could say that for it, but plain, the carpet threadbare, and the whole building stank of cigarette smoke. At once she reproved herself. If she’d been looking for luxury she should have stayed in Paris. Given the country’s so-recent past, it was a miracle that so much had been resurrected from the ruins in so short a time. She reached the door she’d been seeking. She knocked. The hotel waited silently about her, yet somewhere a window must have been left open because again she caught the joyous thread of sound from the jazz band she had heard earlier. The sound reminded her of something from Baudelaire that she had read only a few weeks earlier. A soul floating in light, an ecstasy compounded of joy and insight, hovering far above and removed from the natural world …
There was no sound from the room. She tried next door, with the same result. She went down to the reception desk, where a young woman told her that the two other guests had gone for a walk. Cross with disappointment, she went back upstairs to her room and had a bath. When she had finished she stood at the window, looking down at the street.
Down there the black-clad figures had come running, banging on doors, yelling orders, terror flowing like a river into the hearts and lungs of men as the population of the entire city was herded like cattle into the streets. She stood transfixed while the ranks of people, jostling, helpless and resigned, passed on either side of her, all of them exiled in a realm beyond despair or even death, driven by yells and rifle butts, jammed so tightly together upon the sole remaining bridge across the Mekong River that it took them five hours to cross it. The silt-laden water reflected the sun’s fire, the flowers in the trees were like flickering flames, and in her hotel room Lucia felt herself walking forward, step by slow step, her dust-covered feet and body one with the herded multitudes of the dead.
The grass-covered graves of the murdered millions, the newspaper images of water-filled craters from the B52 bombings, the fragments of flesh hanging from trees after a landmine explosion, all merged into this: the crowded street, the tinkle of pony bells, the harsh cries of the market traders.
She dressed herself in blouse and slacks and once again walked down the corridor to the rooms she had visited before. This time she had better luck. The door opened.
‘Lucia!’
Alfredo Dante hugged her. He’d put on a lot of weight over the years. They had sung together many times since they had first performed in Parma at the beginning of their careers, yet until now she had never noticed how much he had aged. She had, too, of course, but throughout their careers they had both remained eternally young because they had always, played characters who once had been their own age, then five years younger, then ten, finally young enough to be their own children. Always the aging of the flesh had been denied by the continuing youthfulness of the voice and the artifice of their acting skills, because Alfredo, too, had been actor as well as singer. Now she observed the fleshy face, the lines sagging at the corners of eyes and mouth, and knew that he, too, was at the end of his career. It made her realise how privileged they were to have this opportunity to celebrate, once again, the joy and indestructibility of life.
She thought about the programme they had planned to sing together. They had appeared in recitals before and had always sung the scene between Tosca and Scarpia that had marked their first important triumph. The pre-concert arrangements had provided for their doing so again but she wondered whether it might be possible to include something else as well: a celebration of life reclaimed.
‘When was the last time you sang Wolfram?’ They had both appeared at Wagner Festivals at Bayreuth, although never together, and Tannhäuser had been in both their repertoires.
‘Three years ago.’
‘You think we could manage it now?’
‘Do you have the music?’
‘Do we need it? If you sing the song to the evening star, and I Elizabeth’s miracle song from Act II … We don’t need music for that, surely?’
‘Why do you want to do it?’
‘Because we aren’t here simply to sing about the downfall of tyranny. That’s why they invited us but there’s something much more important than that, isn’t there? Think about it! How does Wolfram’s song go? “I lift my eyes to that distant heavenly star …” Or Elizabeth’s aria: “I praise this miracle from the bottom of my heart …” That is the point. The celebration of life renewed.’
She went next door. Again she knocked. The door opened.
‘Lucia!’ Ruth Ballard put her arms around her. ‘Wonderful to see you! Come in.’
They had met only twice in their lives, yet were at once comfortable together. There seemed no end to the things to talk about, from Cambodia to art, books, clothes, hotels and travel, more art and back to Cambodia again.
Ruth held Lucia’s hands tight.
‘I’m so glad you talked them into inviting me!’
‘It was as I told you on the phone. I said I’d sing only if you were here, too. They were happy enough about it. Why not? A writer as famous as you was something for them to dream about. The only danger was you might not have agreed.’
‘You couldn’t have kept me away. But why was it so important to you that I should be here?’
‘We’re here to celebrate the rebirth of hope and the future, not the downfall of the Khmer Rouge. That book you wrote, Out of the Depths … I read it on the flight to Paris. When they invited me, I knew you had to be involved as well.’
‘Because of a book about World War II?’
‘You know it’s about a lot more than that: life, resurrection, love. That’s the point of this concert. To celebrate all those things.’
‘There was pain in it, too.’
‘Of course. Without pain, there’s nothing to celebrate. What will you be reading?’
‘We think alike. I’ll give them something from Out of the Depths. Then a poem I wrote after my husband’s death. “I have seen death’s fires die, consumed by life’s abundant resurrection …” It seemed appropriate. Then perhaps something from Mahler —’
The composer’s name triggered excitement.
‘Which work?’
‘Some of the words to his Second Symphony.’
It was as though Lucia had known Ruth’s answer before she gave it. Her thoughts coalesced. ‘Resurrection again! The Resurrection symphony! I’ve sung it lots of times. Do you have a copy of the words?’
Together they studied the German text, then Lucia said: ‘I’ve an even better idea.’
4
Later that evening they were all driven to the concert hall that in its day had been a centre of culture, an interrogation centre for Lon Nol’s secret police and a killing ground for the Khmer Rouge. Now it was once again a place of culture which, in two days’ time, would witness a combination of voices, western and eastern, proclaiming the vision of a future free from the torments of the past. Lucia stood on the stage, looking out at the shadowed auditorium, and felt the presence of the ghosts that thronged about her. This had been a citadel of death; it was appropriate that there should be ghosts in such a place, yet there was no sense of malignancy or fear, rather the peaceful coming together, in forgiveness and hope, of all those who had suffered here in the past.
She spoke aloud to the shadows, not caring who heard her.
‘That’s why we’re here. So that you and we may be at peace together.’
It was a worthwhile hope and, surrounded by the throng of benevolent spirits, one that did not seem beyond the possibility of achievement.
5
The next morning Lucia was having breakfast with Ruth in the hotel dining room when a waiter came to tell her that a woman was waiting in reception to see her. ‘Who is she and what does she want?’
The waiter was self-important. ‘I shall send her away, if you prefer
.’
‘No. I’ll come.’
She got up and walked out into the lobby. The woman was sitting near the door. She was oval-faced, probably in her early thirties. Her skin was the colour of amber in the shadows, her hair lying black and straight over her shoulders. She stood up as Lucia walked towards her. Lucia spoke to her in French, the language that at one time had been spoken by all educated Cambodians. ‘Can I help you?’
The woman replied in the same language: ‘My name is Somaly. I am the sister of Khieu Pen. I have been told you would like to know what happened to him.’
Lucia was delighted. ‘Of course. Come in. Would you like breakfast?’
It wasn’t possible; Somaly was on her way to the clinic where she worked, and had stopped at the hotel to arrange a time when she could come again.
‘Come at nine o’clock tonight. We’ll eat somewhere and have a good talk.’
She went back to the dining room. Between sips of coffee she explained to Ruth about her visitor.
‘Khieu Pen? I don’t know the name,’ Ruth said.
‘He wasn’t famous like Solti or Karajan but he was well regarded. When I met him, he was living in France. He came back to Cambodia during the American bombing. I’m not sure why; I don’t think he knew, himself.’
‘Coming home?’
‘He always said France was his home.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He disappeared during the Pol Pot years.’
The waiter came to tell them that the car was waiting to take them to the theatre. They went out and climbed in. Along the street the pony traps were passing to and fro in a silvery chime of bells. The morning sunlight lay golden on the roof of a pagoda and the air was heavy with the smell of cooking oil from the stalls along the pavements. They passed a shrine, its roof ridge ornamented with the fantastic silhouettes of dragons. A bell was ringing inside the building and Lucia remembered Khieu saying that in Phnom Penh you were never far from the sound of bells.