Kim Echlin

by The Disappeared (v5)

  Sopheap pushed her noodle stand to the edge of the gathering. Her baby slept in a sling on her back and she held her toddler’s hand. People in crowds were always hungry after speeches. She could make good money here. Sam Rainsy stood on a wooden chair and talked about the future. He wore a suit and a yellow tie and a man behind his chair started applause after each important phrase. The bodyguard stood at his right shoulder and his followers clustered in front of him waving light and dark blue flags.

  Oppose corruption, said Sam Rainsy. Stop bribes. Stop beatings. Create a better country for your children.

  Sopheap gave her little girl a piece of sugarcane to chew so she could listen to the leader. Peaceful. Then: pop. The center of the crowd fell flat to the ground but those who did not recognize the sound of the pin pulled from a grenade did not drop fast enough. Their bodies took the ragged metal disks. Shrapnel cut off feet, sliced through calves, cracked knees.

  Before the second grenade, a bodyguard knocked Sam Rainsy off his chair and covered him up and died from the explosion. Pop. People crumpled like marionettes with cut strings.

  Pop. Factory workers on the west side of the crowd got it.

  Pop. Sopheap and her baby and her toddler chewing sugarcane and the other street vendors with their noodles and cigarettes and buns at the back of the crowd were tossed up into the air beside their splintering carts. Sopheap’s baby was blown out of her hands and her toddler was flung backward and shrapnel sliced into Sopheap’s chest. Her noodle stand exploded into handfuls of toothpicks and everything fell in slow motion back to the earth.

  The injured lay with the dead, and after the first shocked silence, low moaning. Then tiny movements, an arm, a finger. Voices pled for help and soldiers with guns ordered the weeping onlookers not to touch anyone. The police roped off the area and pulled down the loudspeakers. The dying groaned, Please, please.

  A few ambulances came after a long, long time.

  The hospital floors were slippery with blood. Workers hosed down halls. People lay on worn mats. I listened to their whispers. We were only listening to a speech, they said. Their bodies were pitted with other people’s skin. Their faces cut. I did not find you. I found Sopheap. Dead. I did not find her baby or her little girl. On the second day in the early morning, I went again. Nothing. On the third day the floors were scrubbed clean and everyone who was at the Easter rally was either dead or silent. I wanted to rub ashes on my face. I saw a young man who looked like you on the street but he was wearing army clothes and carried an AK-47 under his arm. I did not know where to look. I went everywhere: police stations and political offices and the United Nations and embassies and consulates and army offices. Someone knew. Someone had to tell. I dreamed of blood and boars in forests.

  I have money. Where is he?

  I fell in love with you, and my whole self became yours— without my wanting or not wanting it. I loved being alone in the dark with you, walking on dark streets heading always to some kind of makeshift bed behind a door that closes. Always we met at the end of the day. Since the first time I made love with you I have never once come to the end of the day and not waited for you to be there. Waiting for me. Standing at my door. On the street. Inside my room. At the station. This feeling all through the days that we were together and the years that we have been apart. Each day I imagined you because if I did not, joy would vanish. You cannot disappear. Please do not disappear. No one can mend my sorrow. I love what I lost.

  I went to look for you at the city wats where they dumped bodies. I saw other bodies. Never yours. Will walked with me on the riverbank, down below the palace where other bodies showed up. We found a young man, in his twenties, jeans stolen, shot through the chest. There was bloating and Will said, Don’t look, you don’t need to see this.

  Why don’t I need to see, Will? I see dead bodies on the front pages of newspapers every day. Television is full of dead bodies. But I am not supposed to look at one man lying in front of me, left because the ones who love him are afraid to claim him, because they do not know where he is. Because the government leaves bodies like little notes written in red. Tell me, Will, why should I not look?

  Will said, All right. I just thought.

  We left the riverbank and went to report the body at the police station. The officer said, He must have suffered an accident.

  I said, I am looking for someone else who disappeared from the rally.

  He gazed at me and said, This is not possible.

  To live I was condemned to hope.

  I leaned in close to his ear, said, I have money. He was at the grenade attack at the palace. What happened to him?

  There was no sign of you at all from the churning sea of blood.

  54

  Everyone had interests. To keep the lid on violence. To keep power. To get power. No point to stir up the past, they said. What if leaders want to take revenge? If leaders do not get a correct result from this voting, we will return to Pol Pot times. They said this. People in the opposition began to hide or flee. All nineteen of the opposition newspapers closed. This strange new food called democracy did not taste as the people imagined. How to make democracy from centuries of kings, occupation, war, genocide? Why is this new fresh rice filled with pebbles?

  I was on the other side of history. Do not let an angry man wash dishes; do not let a hungry man guard rice.

  My only worth was my desire. To find you.

  Men called me foolish, stubborn, worthless, naive, foreign, selfish, stupid, a woman. I wanted what I wanted; I claimed my own lucidity.

  I have money. What happened to him?

  I have remained silent in the chasm between knowledge and silence, between the law and love. It was so easy for the state to silence me, to say, You have no right. Thirty years and I still want to scream in disbelief. No right?

  I have money. Where is he?

  I slept with the lights on. I slept for an hour and woke and was sleepless again. I lived in the exhaustion of grief.

  Rotting fruit at a shrine under a tree. The glint of sunlight on the river. A child holding a baby on her hip in a doorway. I walked and did not know where I had been or how long I had been gone.

  I have money. Where is he?

  55

  On Bonn Pchum Ben, a day to honor the ancestors, people dress in clean clothes and go to the temples to bring food to the dead. The souls of the dead return each year for food and my little daughter had never tasted food at all. I bought the best bay ben, rice balls filled with coconut and beans and sesame seeds, so that her first taste of food would be delicious, and I went to the temple where she was cremated and slipped off my shoes at the door. I burned a stick of sandalwood incense for her and made my food offering to the monks and then I knelt and said prayers for my daughter in the darkened, sweet smelling gloom, under the gaze of an orange-robed Buddha. Hundreds of candles flickered in the darkness. I did not believe and yet I knelt with all the others and watched the smoke of the incense twist toward the roof. I did not want to leave. I had nowhere to go. I wanted comfort. The end of the rains. I did not believe and yet I was there. I closed my eyes and stayed and prayed in English, the words of my childhood, because that god too was a compassionate god, and I prayed for my mother and I prayed to see you again. And when I opened my eyes and lifted my head I noticed a young monk watching me curiously and I thought, What am I going to do?

  In bed that night I woke from another restless sleep, my clitoris erect, my labia filled and swollen. It felt like rain. In the desolate darkness my animal nature begged and I thought, So part of me is still alive but I cannot be alive if you are dead. I lay alone and let my body have its way. And then I fell asleep so deeply that when I woke the sun was halfway toward noon and my body was refreshed. I stretched in the thick heat knowing that my grief was changing shape and I did not feel relief or joy but the emptiness of one who lives on.

  Will met me at the FCC most nights for something to eat and he said, You better stop asking around. They told me
to warn you. Don’t draw attention to yourself. I am leaving. I am just waiting for my ticket. Come with me. Things cook up out of mild beginnings.

  I ran my fingers through my hair and a clump came out in my hands.

  Everyone was trying to bury a bit of rice, to hide a little money. Everyone was buying and selling. The streets grew silent and empty and no one knew if the country was collapsing, if everyone would starve again. People hurried to work with their heads down and hastened through the markets. Soon the river would change direction and in great turbulence turn around and flow north. And the long grasses and reeds on the riverbanks hid bodies and there seemed to be no fresh water capable of turning the violence around.

  A young soldier slipped into the shadow of a side street beside me and whispered in my ear, I know where he is. Do you have money?

  I said, Half now, half after you tell. I unfolded an American twenty inside my pocket, pulled it out and put it on his palm. He eyed the bill and slipped it into his pocket. He said, They took him to Ang Tasom.

  Is he alive?

  This is all I know. They took him to Ang Tasom.

  Are you telling the truth?

  He held his open hand out between us again. His eyes were thin black knives and I could not tell if their glint shone with malice or fear.

  I said, That is not much. But I handed him the bill he believed he was owed and he disappeared back into the shadows.

  Ang Tasom

  56

  Before dawn I went to find Mau at Psar Tuol Tom Pong. The drivers sitting on their motos and tuk tuks outside the market said, He’s not here yet.

  I asked them, How long to drive to Ang Tasom?

  A young man with a good moto said, The road to Ang Tasom has many holes, very slow, dancing road. My friend can take you in a car.

  How long does it take in a car?

  A half day, borng srei. Not long. Faster in a car. I will give you a good price.

  When Mau arrived I said, I want you to help me find him. I want you to take me to Ang Tasom.

  Mau said, This is not good, borng srei. Even if you find him, what can you do?

  I said, If I do not find him, how can I live?

  Two drivers who were listening stepped forward and Mau stood up. He said, Okay, I will take you. My wife has family there. I cannot promise but I will try. I need money for gas.

  He left me at Will’s, then went to tell Ary. I ran upstairs to Will’s room.

  I heard Will get out of bed and when he opened the door he was still slipping one arm through the sleeve of a dirty yellow T-shirt. He said, Anne, people say anything for a dollar. Even if it is true, they want him disappeared.

  He was barefoot and his hair was tangled and there were smudges under his eyes.

  You look terrible.

  Thank you. I just got to bed.

  I can see. I am leaving now. Come with me. Come, you can sleep on the way.

  What makes you think they’ll let you find him?

  I have already started to find him. They have no right to hide him.

  No one has rights here. You are not going to find him. It’s not gonna happen.

  It already is happening.

  Anne, two tourists got pulled off a train and shot in Kep this week. People are going missing. The embassies won’t help. The banks are closed. I’m not screwing with this government.

  Fine. I am not begging. Even if you offered to come, I wouldn’t let you.

  Will looked out and saw Mau down below. He was beating dust from the yellow fringe, had extra gas in two Fanta bottles under the seat. Will turned to me, said, Why Mau? Why not a four-wheel-drive with some air-con? Why not a car with windows that open and close?

  I said, A moto never gets stuck. I trust Mau. He knows people there.

  Will shrugged, said, Wait a minute.

  He packed a small rucksack, threw in some bottles of water, found his shoes, tied a krama around his neck. He said, There are things people regret not doing. I don’t think this would have been one of them.

  When Mau saw Will get in the remorque he smiled and pulled down his Chicago Cubs cap, slipped his bike into gear and cut into the slow motion traffic, past an oxcart piled with wood, past a white Toyota van. The swaying fringe behind Will’s head looked like an old-fashioned lampshade.

  A prayer bird flew up from a temple. Over the riverbanks were vultures, and circling above the eddying river a falcon. I said to Will, We should make it in less than a day. Maybe by tonight I will know what happened.

  Will said, There are many wonders in the world. But none so wonderful as a human being.

  Along the quay two street sweepers already worked in the cool of morning, kritsh, kritsh, bent creatures making a few riel a day, their straw brooms herding eternal dust. One stopped to make an offering under a tree. What did she pray for? Who would I pray to? I believe in no god but I burn incense and give food to the dead, to the monks, repeat old prayers. It is not necessary to complete the work, but neither are we free to desist from it. I watched some red-collared doves pecking on the pavement and heard a cuckoo-shrike in a tree down the quay.

  The Phnom Penh we were leaving was subdued. Former leaders were disappearing across the border, the government demanded uncontested victory, everyone was trying to protect interests, secrets, the world looked away so that things could appear to be free, all solutions delicate, political, violent.

  As we rolled through the streets we watched early morning people hasten along. In craving. In need. All over Phnom Penh people were waking and rubbing their eyes, making ready to survive another day. Through a window I watched a woman wipe and swaddle her baby. The older children had to do for themselves.

  On the river, rusty pocket freighters, fishermen poling along the shores, a police boat already roaring by.

  I watched the waking city and prayed for you to be alive.

  Will touched my leg and pointed with his eyes to a young woman walking up a side street, hand resting lightly on the arm of a child. I could not see her face, only her thin, erect back. Will said, There’s Sineth. As we drove by I turned to see the woman with the beautiful lips from Seeing Hands, her face without eyes or nose, the flattened patched skin graft scarred tight to her forehead and her lips. She walked gracefully, and Will said, She’s going to work. I was supposed to go say goodbye to her today.

  Long ago, when they emptied Phnom Penh, closed the borders, people remembered things, the last time they slept in a bed, the last time they saw a loved one. There was that last telegram out of Phnom Penh before all lines to the outside world were cut: I ALONE IN POST OFFICE. LOSING CONTACT WITH OTHERS. I AM TREMBLING. HOW QUIET THE STREETS. NOWHERE TO HIDE. MAY BE LAST CABLE TODAY AND FOREVER.

  Calm when the end is near. Calm, from the word for heat.

  57

  Kathen festival. Outside the city, everywhere people made offerings for merit. Tables in front of the temples, tinny loudspeakers blaring, hands and baskets outstretched for alms. Monks stayed in monasteries through the rainy season and wore their old robes until the people brought them new ones on the last day of Kathen. Dirt and cleansing. Death and rebirth. Wet season and dry. After we crossed the agitated river, temple music mixed into the dust of the road.

  What I have left is sand running through the narrow opening of an hourglass, grains falling, and falling again, and falling again, like a stick beating someone to death, and never stopping and never disappearing.

  At the first pagoda gate, Mau got off his moto and looked down the path toward the temple. A monk appeared and Mau offered him some worn riel from his thin pocket. I asked the ajah to bless our remorque and our journey. I tied a krama over my nose and mouth against the dust as country women do.

  Fifteen kilometers out of Phnom Penh, the first market. Ropes of meat hung from bamboo poles under the thatch roofs of the sausage stalls. Steam rose from pots of boiling water and orange coolers hid bottles of colored sugar water and Coke. Small tables and kitchen chairs were tucked under the shade for
hungry travelers.

  Twenty-four kilometers farther, the flats and dikes. Mau worked hard to keep us out of the ruts and mud. Soon now, nothing but paddies of green rice shoots stretching to the horizon, bits of scrubby bush and sugar palms, blue shadows of mountains in the west. No one but farmers and their oxen. Will rolled a joint and offered it to me. I stared at the paddies and felt the hot air on my toes. We bumped past skinny, barefoot kids not in school, past people cooking food to sell, wiping the leaves of money plants near their stalls. My mind slowed and spread against the wide fields.

  Why do some people live a comfortable life and others live one that is horror-filled? What part of ourselves do we shave off so we can keep on eating while others starve? If women, children, and old people were being murdered a hundred miles from here, would we not run to help? Why do we stop this decision of the heart when the distance is three thousand miles instead of a hundred? I stared as far as the Elephant Mountains. I liked the road, moving, being nowhere.

  Will leaned back, eyes half closed.

  I said, How do you measure time?

  He said without opening his eyes, By how long it takes to get stoned.

  At home I used to measure time by when I first heard the song of the white-throated sparrow in spring. How long does it take a body to go cold?

  Will frowned, Can you not just relax for even one moment?

  I laughed.

  I was a warrior, stoned, sleepless, heading for battle. Looking to recover lost comrades. Being a warrior is easier than waiting. Going to war is easier than talking.

  Will said without opening his eyes, Only a couple of hours, less usually.

  We bounced like seeds in a rattle.

  I rolled a cigarette with one hand to amuse Will, lit it and handed it forward to Mau, who nodded without taking his eyes off the road, the scar on his cheek folding in two as he smoked. What did it mean to him to drive foreigners on errands he himself would never do? A dead dog rotted in a ditch. Ignorance, craving, wrong views. I have all of these. I cannot free myself from desire. I want to know. Will stared at me and I thought, I am not pretty anymore. I have gone yellow from childdeath and grief and I have become a boneless shadow. I said to Will, What do you see? He said, That this moment is good enough.