Dounia, he said.
Oh, that's her name with the foreigners. What's her Khmer name?
She shook her head and refused to answer.
Well, then I won't give her my real name, either. Tell her my name is Sihanouk.
At this everyone choked with laughter.
I'll see you tomorrow, he said to the former interpreter.
To the former interpreter this was an even funnier joke than the last. — You see, he chortled, tomorrow I will be—absent!
You must go for Dounia at the Lido tomorrow at seven-o'-clock, the waiter interposed. She will bring you here.
She'll bring me to my wife?
Your wife—ha, ha, ha, ha! Yes, yes—to your wife!
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)
That night he slept less than well, poundinghearted as he was by the probable insaturation of his wife (no matter that she was dead). Actually he had terrible dreams. In the morning he was exhausted. He could not add up his stacks of riels when he paid for anything. He forgot his hat in a restaurant and the waiter had to run after him for a block calling out. He thought about the coming and final night and hoped without believing.
In the hotel lobby, men in immaculate white shirts and black loafers rested Rolexed arms on the knees of their creased trousers. The billboards showed telephones and overflowing steins of beer.
There were still the narrow alleys paved with black mud where men repaired motorcycles, ladies carried pots of steaming soup, and barefoot kids rode plastic cars, but now the alleys pulsed with generators and the formerly empty shopcaves were selling pigeons and refrigerators. At the hairdresser's where two yean before the woman had laughingly cut his hair and made gestures of marriage, this same woman now looked at him and said: No.
The hotel maid was very busy. He gave her a hundred dollars. The lobby swarmed with UNTAC men from Malaysia. They were taking more than forty rooms, the maid said. He went outside and watched small fishes drying on a wooden trencher on the sidewalk.
A block or two from the hotel a Japanese girl in a kimono was weeping before a stern man in a golden robe; this occurred on a color television in a black-on-white room of shut gratings and dirty chessboard tiles in which people barefoot and in sandals sat in rows of lawn chairs, some couples close together, a girl in a striped shirt in the back row with her chin in her hand, smiling in amazement. He sat in the row of skinny men who smoked cigarettes and drank Cokes. Every time someone opened a can it sounded like a pistol-shot.
The maid's family had invited him to lunch. They wanted to see the photograph. He showed them, and they burst out laughing, and the brother-in-law said: But she is old!
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)
As he came into his room the other maid said: Sir, I am very poor. Buy me gold rings, buy me gold bracelets!
Oh, he said. Boys do that for their girlfriends. Are you telling me you want to be my girlfriend?
Yes, she said.
Well, come in then, he said, crooking a finger. All he would have done was give her five hundred riels and shake her hand, because he was married to Vanna. But she didn't know that; she shook her head and ran away.
On his bed was his laundry, which still another maid had left with this note:
Dear frined
See you a soon.
Love and all good wises of you.
your frined,
Love
Well, he thought, someone loves me anyway. — This encouraged him, so he went out and showed four motorcycle drivers Vanna's photo, but they said: No good! Maybe more than thirty years old!
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)
He went to another hairdresser's shop, and even though a man did most of the work, even though the people weren't friendly and the water they used to shampoo his hair smelled like stale meat, still the woman scratched and scraped the lather into his head with her fingernails most pleasantly; for a few moments he felt as he had when Vanna shaved him.
He passed one of those tapering glass cabinets of cigarette vendeuses with red stacks of riels in the topmost shelf, and reminded himself: Two hundred and fifty dollars. I can easily do that for her.
It began to rain, so he returned to the room and slept for an hour. At six-o'-clock he went down without hope or enthusiasm. He flip-flopped his rubber-sandalled way through the hot ankle-deep street-ponds, looking for a place to eat. He wasn't hungry and hadn't been for days. He saw a sign that said CAFE and went inside but it was only a bar with a brand-new bank of slot machines. Crossing the street, he encountered a restaurant whose long tables were covered by stained white cloths. New money proudly illuminated glass cabinets of beer and soda. Outside the double glass doors, motorcycles rolled in magical silence across the silvery black wetness, and neon string wriggled. For a moment those activities seemed almost meaningful and he remembered some place of lights and hot exciting rain where he had been alive; at the same moment he experienced a passionate flush of hope and belief and then that died.
Two young waitresses stood behind him, watching. At last he pulled out Vanna's photograph. There she was in the hotel that didn't exist anymore, sitting in that teakwood chair in her starchy gauzy disco dress of rainbow colors. He loved her sadly but without shame.
Madame? said one.
He nodded.
Madame you? said the other incredulously.
Sure. Why not?
They looked at the picture, then at him, then burst out giggling.
The restaurant was replete with music and empty chairs. The songs were sung by a Cambodian woman with a shrill yet very beautiful voice whose turned vowels reminded him of a harpsichord's metallic loneliness. The chairs were all pulled back a little as if skinny ghosts were sitting in them. He felt a longing for death which passed as quickly as the earlier gush of joy. Outside, a white UNTAC pickup went by, possibly to a nightclub. A very dark truck passed in the opposite direction, heaped with hideous earth like the cargo of another mass grave.
The lady behind the bar wore a night-blue dress and a long golden necklace. She was older than Vanna, but no one laughed at her. She opened a plastic bag of cashews and poured it out onto two saucers for the waiter to take away. When he had gone, she slipped a single nut happily between her teeth.
The singer sang: Ah, la, la, la.
It would be seven soon. He felt very nervous.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)
The Lido was completely empty and dark. He went upstairs. Dounia was not there. The second floor was half as huge as a city block. Its windows looked out on the street. Mirrors, neon-strings, glowing beer signs, mirror-pillars, loud music and the whirling disco ball—these things just made him more alone, because no one was there. He swam the expanse of dark tables, avoiding the light which whirled meaninglessly on the dark and empty dance floor. It was almost terrifying. So empty and huge! After awhile he saw a man sitting alone in a corner. The man looked at him, got up, and left.
Nobody, nobody. Nothing but heat and darkness with a dead voice singing. He rose and redescended those red-carpeted stairs to wade again in the streetpools that little boys pissed in, and he stood in the rain waiting for Dounia among the motorcycle drivers and their neutral headlights. She did not come. It was half-past seven, and he was desperately afraid that his wife might come to the table of rendezvous at the floating restaurant, find him not there, and go with another man. He would not wait anymore.
A cyclo driver took him down that quietly puddled street, past the silhouette of a woman walking and the pale form of two strolling men. They made a left down a wide boulevard of fences, walls and monolithic buildings with black windows. He thought that maybe the Ministry of Foreign Affairs used to be here. Trees overhung a ragged black river in each gutter; over a driveway one incandescent bulb blinked crazily. Mosquitoes bit his feet. They passed a glowing sign that said NO PROBLEM; ahead, a faded banner in Khmer overryjng the street. Trees squiggled down like multivulvaed mushroom caps. The night was cool.
The cyclo driver h
ad lost his way. He pedaled him into new darkness lit in lightning-flashes by the occasional barfront. They paralleled a long wall with high dim ornaments, and he remembered that this was the Palace. At each corner a sentry stood in the dark with a rifle over his shoulder. They passed a park of many frogs and then joined a lighted road with two-storey villas glowing and billboards and almost shut gratings and people leaning from balconies as he remembered. Now in the night many changes had come undone, so he began to hope again that he'd find his wife and that she'd be as she'd been. The light and music did not bother him anymore. Behind a hill of garbage a beggar-woman was squatting. Darkness hissed and sparkled from between her thighs. Reddish cans of motor oil gleamed almost comfortingly in a window. Then they made the last turn, and he saw the long low spiral of lights at the river's edge. Dounia waited there.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)
She sat beside him among the other jades and sylphids, saying: friend; not smiling in her spiral-frosted dress and gleaming gold necklace and watch. The narrow eyebrows he remembered from Cambodia, these dense inverted U's. High heels clicked on the squeaking boards. White teeth cracked nuts. Earrings and hair darknesses and tight bras lived around him; wide belts shone with silver. Girls wearing butterfly barrettes sat at the white-clothed tables, waiting.
Then a woman came whom he was sure he'd never seen before. Young, beautiful, full-figured, she hopped on his lap with a cry of joy. Later he'd think that now he knew how the prince in a fairytale felt when his enchanted wife became someone else. He simply could not believe that it was she. She was talking to him with hisses and ahs and ais, laughing with sparkling eyes to find him come back to her, and he could not believe in her. She was getting humiliated now; she thought he didn't love her. She went and sat quietly on the other seat, not looking at him anymore. He gazed out at the bonnets and polka-dotted butterfly-shaped ribbons and the girls in quilcy dresses walking with their hands on their hips.
Vanna? he said to her.
She nodded.
The other woman took the photograph out of his hands, pointed to it, to her, nodded.
OK, he said, defeated. You can be her.
He got two motorcycles and took Dounia and this new, false Vanna to the hotel. He hired one of the clerks to come upstairs and interpret for him. He asked her some questions that only Vanna could know the answers to, and she knew all the answers. The clerk said: She want to tell you, sir, before, when you with her, she very sick, very skinny! Now in health again!
He believed.
He thanked the clerk and Dounia and paid them both off. Then he sat alone with his wife and he put his arm around her, but she sat unmoving and he wondered how much his unbelief had hurt her.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)
Vanna's nipples were long and thin as he remembered; they were the beautiful rusty bloody color that he remembered (Cambodian rubies tend to the brownish). Her urine was a robust color because she was menstruating. He could smell it on her breath and in her sweat. Her skin was neither warm nor cold. She lay so still, barely breathing, the sheet rising and falling over her breasts, her dark hair on the pillow. She had the same slender fingers he remembered.
She kept tweaking his nose, gently pinching him as he made love to her.
He gazed into that oval deeply beautiful face with the arched eyebrows and red red lips, and he knew it at last. He believed, he believed!
She was very anxious and resdess all night. Later he found out from the hotel maid that she'd been expecting him to take her away with him on the airplane in the morning. He would have if he could; but she'd never written to him; she'd told the maid she'd lost his address ... So he had no ticket. Maybe she didn't love him. How could he have known he'd find her?
In the morning she was standing in front of the mirror, slowly combing her hair by the light of the open door because there was no electricity. Her forehead was hot. She'd put his hand on it and made signs of fever.
He said again: I love you.
She gazed at him but did not reply. Probably she'd forgotten what that meant.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)
You are very lucky, the hotel maid said to him.
The hotel maid had watched the Khmer Rouge kill everyone in her family. Now she was poor and unmarried.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)
He told her not to come to the airport with him this time because the soldiers might cause trouble for her, and he said goodbye to her in the lobby where the maid had been interpreting; once more he told her that he loved her very much, nose-kissing her hand with that intake of hissing breath her countrymen favored. Everyone in the lobby cheered. She came outside with him. He said goodbye to her again, more quickly and casually because all the cyclo drivers, taxi drivers, doormen and motorcycle drivers were grinning and one man yelled: You go sleep her now hotel? so he did not want to bring any more shame to her who was too pure to be shamed as she had shown at the restaurant which before had been decrepit but which now was tiled and air conditioned; as before the waiter set a menu only in front of him, and he passed it to her. Then he remembered that this wife of his could not read. He said to the waiter: Ask her what she wants. — She take rice soup, said the waiter. — Now he remembered that she had always ordered rice soup before, too. Probably she was too shy to ask what they had, and so she chose the one dish that she could be sure of. — The rice soup had fish in it. Every now and then, with perfect naturalness, she tossed her beautiful head and spat fish bones onto the marble floor. The business suited ones regarded her sneeringly, and she was not shamed. So now most likely she would not be shamed if he'd taken her in his arms again, and it was even possible that by not taking her in his arms he was shaming her; and yet he remembered how in the wedding studio she'd posed beside him with such inwardness, maybe aloofness or reluctance even, never reaching for his hand; that was why he thought he was being good in merely waving, not looking back. He did not want to look back anyway; he was afraid of his own grief. Now a dozen beggar-children came running. He gave each of them five hundred riels; he'd already given her five hundred dollars. Their dirty hands closed enraptured, and other dirty hands came whirling around him like September's leaves in his own country of four seasons; and by the time he'd finished filling them, his vision had been choked by hands—not hers, not her incredibly brown slender fingers ... so he got into the taxi and then as he raised his palm-edge to his forehead to salute them he saw her standing among them, and he waved and she waved and the taxi began to pull away and he saw her trying to smile and she stood there among the beggars, wringing her hands.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1994)
One dry season he came back. Cambodia was a kingdom again that year; the slogan was NATION—RELIGION—ROI. Do you know the floating restaurant? he asked the taxi driver.
But now no, the driver explained. Government everybody go away. But now everybody stop the work, because government no have.
So where do those girls go now?
I don't know.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1994)
When he got back to the Hotel Papillon, the desk ladies said: All your friends have been dreaming about you! and they gave him a ten percent discount. He went upstairs and took a bath in yellow water that smelled like sewage. The walls were starting to get dirty again.
The cyclo drivers said they remembered him, which might or might not have been true. Kien, the short one, the dirty one with the slight stubble, the wide eyes, and the hat with horizontal stripes, said he remembered Vanna and could find her. The husband told him to please do it.
He went out to talk with the cigarette vendors and he ran into the friend of the English teacher who couldn't speak English. The friend didn't remember him. — You want to sleep with Vietnamese girl? said the friend.
He didn't. He'd had enough girls. — And you? he said.
The friend giggled. — No, he laughed. I don't like.
In the restaurant they brought him a menu with a living cockroach on
it.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1994)
The next morning the phone rang three times. Every time he lifted the receiver and said hello he was cut off. When he went downstairs they said to him: Your wife was here.
He felt a sickening dread in his heart.
Your wife, she come here every two weeks. Just waiting and waiting for you. Why you don't bring her home your country?
He looked at them and could not answer.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1994)
At eight-o'-clock the next morning the phone rang in his room and when he picked it up there was nothing but the noise of somebody dialing, and he hung up. He went downstairs, and the reception ladies said: Your wife was here . . . and his heart turned over in terror—not the tiniest gladness, only fear and lonely dread. The ladies said: She come back in ten minute. — He sat down to wait. After two hours she hadn't come, and all the fear had become grief that she'd somehow found him out and had run away from his wicked emptiness; he felt so ashamed and hated himself so much and he longed for her. An hour later she came; and this time the joy flowered and exploded like fireworks in his soul and she drew away from him in shyness but then reached out her hand and then her arms were around his neck and she was giggling with tenderness. He knew that she was the one. He believed in her and knew that she was for him.
The Atlas Page 9