The Rent Collector

by Wright, Camron

  “Don’t kill the child,” I pleaded. “I will take him.”

  The soldier nearest the bedroom headed toward the cry first.

  Boom!—and the cries of my child ceased.

  The deafening sound of the gunfire in the bedroom served as the impetus for my body to begin heaving deep, convulsive breaths. The walls and ceiling began to constrict, bend, and sway. The soldiers yelled commands, but I couldn’t understand their words as their voices distorted into strange and meaningless clamor. Though I tried to remain standing, my legs buckled beneath me and I collapsed onto the hard tile floor.

  “End it now. Please, end my life now,” I sobbed to no one listening.

  If they understood my pleas, they didn’t obey. Their aim wasn’t to kill the peasants or farmers, but rather the educated. And as far as they were concerned, the only person left alive in my home that day was a clumsy, illiterate housekeeper. To them, I was just Sopeap Sin—and so that is who I became.

  Two days later, I was marched out of the city with hundreds of thousands of refugees. Only in farming could we serve the good of the new society. I was relocated to the district of Khum Speu where I was assigned to a group growing rice. The Khmer Rouge would lead Cambodia back to a better time, a time before Western culture had corrupted society, a time when farming flourished and the worker ruled—and they would do it by force.

  I had read essays describing the horrors of genocide committed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I had lectured on Jewish literature detailing the atrocities carried out by Hitler. I had read the words in my head but never comprehended their depth in my heart—until I lived them. Only later would I realize that there are no words harsh enough, no paragraphs wide enough, no books deep enough to convey the weight of true human sorrow.

  Every day I expected to die. “Traitors of the society” were identified, trucked away, and massacred. After all, in the new Cambodia, in the perfect Khmer Rouge society, there would be no need for the educated—no doctors, no lawyers, no mechanics, no engineers, no drivers, no merchants, no students, and certainly no teachers. I watched children starving, old people being beaten to death with sticks, entire families being branded as traitors and murdered because a distant relative had once visited America.

  It was utter insanity.

  By the time the Vietnamese army overthrew the regime four years later, well over a million innocent people had been brutally exterminated. Those of us still alive had been bruised in more sinister ways.

  I eventually made my way back to the city—but life was different. Just as my home in Phnom Penh had been destroyed, I was also damaged beyond recognition. I mostly lived on the streets, sometimes hoping to heal, but mostly drinking to forget.

  Then, in 1995, I found my way to the river Stung Meanchey and I let it swallow me. It felt tolerable, perhaps even comfortable, as a place for old, discarded, and spoiled things to finish out their existence—even if that thing was me. Still I remained Sopeap Sin, it being less painful to never look back. I swore silence and waited for my story to fade away with the stories of others, a heartbreak too full of shame to ever share. But then another illiterate, backward girl from the province reminded me that even tragedies offer lessons worth repeating.

  Pay attention to my final lesson, Sang Ly.

  I could have saved the life of Sopeap Sin, my housekeeper, but I stayed silent. I have been paying the price ever since. Be careful in your choices. Consequences, good or bad, will always follow.

  I offer my final good-bye, Sang Ly.

  From your teacher,

  Sopeap Sin

  “No!” I scream as I finish reading Sopeap’s last words. “You are wrong! That is not the lesson. That is not the lesson!”

  I dry my cheeks on my shirt. My fingers tremble. Ki rushes from the back of the house to my side, though all he can do is wait for my explanation.

  “Her name is not Sopeap Sin,” I cry, shaking my head in disbelief. I speak the words a second time, as if repeating them will add more understanding to all who now listen. “Her name is Soriyan, not Sopeap Sin.”

  Teva Mao tilts her head as she tries to make sense of my ranting.

  “Sopeap Sin was her housekeeper,” I say.

  “Her housekeeper? What does that mean?” Ki asks.

  My resolve has never been greater. “It means we must find her before it’s too late. She’s the teacher and she doesn’t even understand her own lesson. We must find her! Will you help me?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Though I know that my teacher’s real name is Soriyan, I continue to call her Sopeap Sin. Not only does it seem fitting, but it’s too difficult to explain the situation to others who won’t understand.

  Mother volunteers to trek across the dump to visit Sopeap’s home again. She returns to announce that nobody answered and the neighbors confirmed that they had watched her leave. No surprise. I continue to read through the essays, though my eyes grow tired and, once the sun sets, I’m not certain I’ll be able to continue by lamplight. The stories are entertaining and enlightening, though not all are happy. Some make me laugh, others border on the tragic, all teach important lessons—perfect literature. A number of the lessons are evident; most are hidden deep beneath the layers—so typical of Sopeap.

  There is a story about the first year of her marriage and it makes me smile. Each morning she wrestles with her husband so as to not be the last one up, as they have an agreement that the last person out of the bed has to make it—and it teaches me about endearing love.

  There is a story about a roommate with whom she lives in college while attending a university in Boston. The girl makes an elaborate quilt with her sisters for their ninety-five-year-old grandmother, but when they present the quilt, the old woman is so surprised, she has a heart attack and dies—and it teaches me about irony.

  There is a story about two desperate parents who trade a child they can’t afford to feed for a bicycle, so that the father can ride to work. However, both the bicycle and the child end up at the dump. She calls the child Lucky—and I can’t help but wonder.

  There is a lesson on poetry with an untitled work from Sopeap that teaches me about anguish and how simple verse provides a glimpse into our souls.

  *****

  I scream in the dark at my weakness, with disdain not heard.

  I seethe at my failure in the daylight, hidden by an impenetrable wall never seen.

  I shed tears of shame in quiet moments that race to my lips, and only I taste.

  I breathe in the smoke of despair, sickened by my selfish, filthy smell.

  I plead heavenward, begging for solace, send a miracle to heal my fallen heart.

  No heavenly hand carries my pain.

  No light disperses my sorrow.

  No voice offers answers.

  Only a peasant girl interrupts and asks that I teach her how to read.

  The ancestors have a very funny sense of humor.

  *****

  Though the stories are tragic, moving, and enlightening, none appears to tell me the whereabouts of my teacher. Then my cousin Narin drops by just as the sun sets. She has heard at the shelters that friends have gathered to help us get settled and she wants to see how she can help. When I see her, my tired mind makes the connection.

  “Of course!” I say aloud, remembering her friend Makara, whose sister works at the hospital treating Sopeap. “If Sopeap is sick, surely that’s where she would be.”

  If we leave now, there will still be time. Ki nods his blessing, then counts out enough money to pay for a moto. I leave with Narin, hoping that we’ll find Sopeap alive and ornery, complaining about the nurses.

  It is not the hospital where I took Nisay, but the place is just as crowded and hurried. The waiting room is filled with different faces, but the worry, pain, and frustration are the same. The woman at the desk pages Makara’s sister, and within a few minutes, she rushes through the door. Though she appears happy to see Narin, it’s also clear that she can’
t talk long. After polite introductions, I get right to my question. “Have you seen Sopeap Sin, the woman you were treating from the dump?”

  “Sopeap? I haven’t seen her for several weeks.”

  “Wasn’t she coming here for her treatments?”

  “She was, yes, but she quit—it was quite a while ago.”

  “Quit?” I am confused. “Why would she quit?”

  “She said the drugs made her too weak, caused her to be ornery, clouded her thinking. She said they interrupted things that she needed to do. We can’t force someone to go through treatment.”

  “No, I understand,” I say, as my brain tries to assemble pieces that don’t fit. “One last question,” I plead, though its answer is for me and not in hopes of finding Sopeap. “Had she continued, would the treatments have made a difference?”

  The woman pauses to think, then offers her best medical opinion. “In Cambodia—no. Had she decided to go to Thailand, then perhaps yes.”

  “Thailand?” I ask.

  “Yes, didn’t she tell you? There is a foreign hospital there offering study treatments that are experimental but promising. She turned them down—for the very same reasons.”

  *****

  The eastern sky is just beginning to glow across the horizon, waiting for a sun that is building enough courage to peek out and start another day at Stung Meanchey. Halfway to Sopeap’s home, I jerk to a stop. “Wait, I forgot my bag,” I say, “to carry back the books.”

  “What books?”

  “In her note—didn’t I tell you? She left some books for me.”

  Ki shrugs a no. “If there are too many to carry, we can come back later.”

  As we arrive, Ki assures me that she is definitely not inside.

  “How do you know?”

  “Look at her lock. It’s been secured from the outside.”

  I tap on the door anyway and listen. There is no response.

  Technically, Sopeap doesn’t live in Stung Meanchey, at least not in the homes that dot its perimeter. Hers is located on a skinny western street that skirts out of Stung Meanchey at a diagonal. I don’t recall how I learned which home was hers, since she’s never actually invited me over. From the outside, however, it appears to be two rooms, solid walls, and a pitched roof. The openings are shuttered tight. What I most envy, however, is her front door that locks. Still, in a world where everything means something, I’m also reminded that, like her home, Sopeap allowed very few people inside.

  I bang harder, loud enough that a neighbor comes out from next door, looking irritated. “She’s not home,” he says, stating the obvious.

  “Do you know where she went or if she’ll be back?” I ask.

  “No.” And with a turn of his head, he disappears.

  I hurry around to the side and kneel to reach behind her water jar. My fingers clutch a rusty metal ring that holds a single key. I turn to see the neighbor peek out from behind a window opening and then turn away. I pay him no mind but hurry to the front and shove the key into the lock. It clicks open.

  “Are you ready?” I ask Ki. He deflects my question with a shrug.

  I push open the front door and let the light that is now bathing the dump wash inside and illuminate the room.

  “Sopeap?” I call out, knowing I will hear no answer.

  As I glance around, my mouth drops open and my heart races. I reach out to confirm with my touch what my eyes try to register. Every wall in the room is stacked with books—hundreds of books.

  There is a single sleeping mat against one wall. On the other side of the room is a cooking stove, black and dull, yet the modern kind with a chimney that bends on top to vent to the outside. Beside it is a tattered cabinet with a door swung half open. Inside, I see rice, a plate with aging vegetables, a container of cooking oil, and assorted cooking utensils. Opposite, on the other side of the stove, sits a small desk with a chair pushed beneath.

  No matter where I stand in the room, I am close enough to reach books. I lean over to scan the closest titles. Though some are in English, most are translations into Khmer. I pull one at random from the stack and open its pages. It is Vorvong and Saurivong, a popular Cambodian legend. This version was written by Auguste Pavie.

  I move to the next. It’s written in English, but between each line, Sopeap has penned in Khmer words. I let the cover flip closed, but the title is so worn, I can’t read it.

  “What’s it about?” Ki asks.

  “I have no idea.”

  I pick up yet another. This one is printed in Khmer, with the name of the translator in type larger than the name of the author—an American named Steinbeck.

  I keep reading titles and find there are Cambodian stories, Russian stories, Chinese stories, African stories, and stories from countries that I’ve never heard of.

  “It doesn’t look as though you gave up on literature at all,” I declare.

  “If these are the books she’s giving to you,” Ki says, “you’ll not only need a bigger bag, we’re going to need a bigger house.”

  I shift my attention from the books to anything else in the room that may offer a clue as to where Sopeap has gone. I take a step closer to the small desk that holds an open ream of paper, a cup filled with pens and pencils, and a scribbled list with the names of twelve families—and it includes ours.

  “What does it say?” Ki asks.

  “It’s a list of those from whom she collected rent. Our name is at the bottom.”

  That’s when it dawns on Ki for the first time. “If she’s gone, who is going to collect our rent?”

  “Who, indeed?”

  We scour the place a bit longer before Ki gives up and asks, “Now what?”

  “Let’s start with the neighbors,” I say, “and then everyone on Sopeap’s list.” I realize the man I’ve already encountered next door won’t be much help, so I try the neighbor on the opposite side. After I call out, a middle-aged woman comes out to greet us.

  “Good morning,” she says, as if we were good friends.

  “Good morning,” I reply. “I am looking for Sopeap Sin, from next door. Have you seen her?”

  She shakes her head sadly. “She is sick. She has not felt well. I think she left to get help.”

  “When? When did she leave?”

  “A few days ago.”

  “Do you know where she was going?”

  “No . . . no, she didn’t talk much.” Then the woman’s eyes brighten, as though she has just solved the secret to the universe. “Lately she has been friendlier,” she adds.

  Though I appreciate her enthusiasm, I was hoping for something more. We try other nearby homes and fail on all fronts. With no visible clues as to where Sopeap may be or even if she is still alive, we decide to head back home so I can read through more of her essays. We are halfway there when Ki asks a curious question.

  “If she goes away and we never see her again—”

  “Ki, don’t say that!”

  “No, hear me out. If she goes away, won’t the landowners send a new person to collect the rent?”

  His question perturbs me, and I ask, “Do we have to worry about that now?”

  “You’re not understanding,” he adds. “One way to find Sopeap might be to track down the landowners.”

  I don’t mean to squeal, sounding like the pigs that neighbors raise at the dump, but I do. “You may be right. Where would we find them?” And then before he can respond, I answer my own question. “Teva will know. Hurry, let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Ministry of Land and Records is located on Norodom Boulevard, near the Singapore Embassy, exactly where Teva described. It’s a modern, three-story structure with a red tile roof and a contrasting whitewashed exterior. Trees partially mask the building from the street, but as we come near, I can see it’s quite inviting—except for one problem. There is a gate and a uniformed guard through which everyone who wishes to enter must pass.

  I tell Ki to announce our business, hoping it wi
ll sound more official.

  “Can I help you?” the guard asks.

  “We are here to research the ownership of several pieces of property,” Ki says with such authority that I want to run over and give him a hug—but I don’t. We must have passed the test because the guard waves us toward the building entrance.

  The interior marbled floors are clean and swept. As I look down at our dirty and worn clothes, the contrast ensures I am instantly self-conscious. A second sentinel waits, this time behind an information desk, to further screen would-be intruders.

  “May I help you?”

  “We are looking for the Department of Records,” Ki says, but as he pronounces the title, I realize he’s said it incorrectly. It should be the Department of Land and Records. Either way, the uniformed guard nods once. Unfortunately, it’s not a Please-let-me-be-of-assistance nod, but rather an I’m-about-to-shoo-you-peasants-out nod, and then I notice the sign behind him. It distinctly reads Land and Records and it directs visitors to the far stairs.

  “Never mind,” I say, pointing to the sign. “I can see that it’s up on the second floor.”