I Am Radar

by Reif Larsen

  The walls of the hut were made of dried leaves wrapped tightly into bundles using a kind of vine. Finding a small gap in the wall, Eugenia hiked up her dress and leaned in close. Her vision adjusted to the darkness of the interior. Shapes emerged—forming, unforming, forming again. She blinked and returned her eye to the peephole. There was Leila, lying on a blanket, the hourglass of her buttocks white against the hut’s soft gloom. A candle flickered. Eugenia shifted her position to gain a better view. She gave a little gasp. Leila was wearing a mask. Eugenia recognized it as the mask from the drawing room, the black Sophanakha demoness, grotesquely missing both ear and nose. The dark head was much too large for her slender white frame; occasionally her head swayed with the weight of the wood. In front of her, he moved, shirtless and also masked, dancing, a monkey warrior, his simian face frozen in a horrible grin. The man glided around the room and then came to her and grasped the end of a long pipe. Delicately, he twisted the bowl flush into the candle’s flame, working at the white glob of opium with a pin before swinging the mouthpiece to her, like a flute. The pipe disappeared into the mouth of the mask. She pulled, released, her shoulders shrinking with the exhalation, and again that elemental smell rose up and took hold of Eugenia’s consciousness—strong and sweet, seemingly everywhere and nowhere at once. The silence in her head roared.

  Eugenia watched for some time, long enough for the masks to come off, long enough to know how far this had come. She felt oddly calm, filled with a sense of the familiar, as if she were watching a ritual she had witnessed many times before. She left only after Leila was asleep and he had risen and was moving toward the door. She ran then, not caring if they saw or heard, tripping once, the leaves in her hair, her boot unlaced, her elbow bleeding into the silk of her dress. She jumped in the boat and pushed off, and she did not paddle, but let the river take her back home as she breathed and stared at the grey silence of the sky.

  That evening, a storm moved in. The three of them ate dinner on the porch as the rain hammered at the corrugated tin roof. Leila seemed unusually nervous. She apologized, claiming she was not feeling well, and requested to be excused early, but Eugenia put a hand on her arm and signed that she had something to say. Leila’s eyes smoldered in the candlelight. She looked back and forth between husband and mother.

  “It occurred to me today,” Eugenia signed, “that we should start our own school.”

  “A school?” Jean-Baptiste signed. “Here?”

  Leila’s eyes widened with surprise. An uncontrolled shiver passed over her.

  “Yes. Right here. Leila’s no doubt developing considerable expertise at the lycée, but why not utilize her talents closer to home? Where she could have more control over the lessons and would not have to travel so far every day?”

  A silence filled the room. Outside, the rain drummed at the roof.

  “Well,” said Jean-Baptiste, looking at his wife.

  “We certainly have the space,” Eugenia reminded them.

  “I think it’s a brilliant idea,” said Jean-Baptiste. “I love it. What do you think, Leila? Could you manage?”

  Leila looked down at her hands. Her cheeks were flushed.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “They need me up there. I couldn’t just abandon—”

  Eugenia rapped the table, catching them both off guard. “I’m sure they’ll make do,” she signed. “Just think of the possibilities!”

  “She’s right, you know. This could be a great opportunity. No offense against your lycée, but the French colonial education system’s a failure.”

  “On what grounds can you say that?” said Leila.

  “The great mistake of the French is to re-create France in Indochina,” said Jean-Baptiste. “We must instead teach them éléments of science and rationalism, yet modify the course in such a way that the Khmer might understand. We’ll use their terms. We’ll use their beliefs. We’ll make the course of study relevant. This is how you reach and change the native mind.”

  “We already have a little revolutionary on our hands, don’t we?” Eugenia signed. “Maybe there’ll be room for my son at this school. That is, if she agrees to it.”

  A gust of wind rose and extinguished one of the candles, a thin thread of smoke curling and dissolving into itself.

  “How can you be so sure you can change a native mind?” Leila said, her face now in half shadow.

  “You can always change a mind,” Eugenia signed. “A mind is there to be changed.”

  “Please excuse me,” Leila said, laying down her napkin. “I’m not well.”

  After she left, Jean-Baptiste sipped cognac in the library while his mother worked on her embroidery. Outside, the storm had begun to fade.

  “I’m sure she’ll come round once she feels better,” he signed. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to make a real difference. We should have thought of this long ago.”

  “Good ideas take time,” Eugenia signed as she tautened the thread.

  “About that man who takes her to work . . .” she signed.

  “Tien?”

  “I’ve caught him thieving. The masks on the mantel. I think we should fire him.”

  “Thieving?” Jean-Baptiste got up to look. The masks were indeed gone. “Are you sure, Mother? Tien has been with us since birth. This place is his home.”

  “Maybe he’s become too comfortable.”

  “But where would we send him? This is the only life he knows. And he cares for Leila so.”

  “That is precisely the problem.”

  “Mother, you mustn’t always take your misery out on others,” he signed.

  The needle stopped in midair.

  “I’m sorry,” he said aloud.

  “I’m only reporting what I see. I’m not telling you how to run your own plantation.” The needle plunged again.

  “I appreciate your candor, Mother. It’s true. Sometimes we may lose our way. God knows I have.”

  He lit a cigar and studied the empty mantel, listening to the last of the rain and the quiet thrush of the needle and thread.

  • • •

  THE NEXT DAY, Jean-Baptiste called Tien into his cluttered office.

  “I have been informed of your theft,” he said.

  Tien bowed his head. Slowly, he fell to one knee and then the other. He brought his hands together in prayer but said nothing, simply remaining motionless in this position.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, stand up, Tien,” said Jean-Baptiste. “I’m not going to punish you. We all make mistakes. And I’m not going to ask why you did it. You know it’s wrong. But this place cannot run without you. If there’s something you need, please just ask me. I will give you anything within my power.”

  Tien looked at him, stunned. “You will not kill me?”

  “Kill you?” Jean-Baptiste laughed. “Are you mad? We aren’t barbarians. No, Tien, your conscience will provide all the punishment required.”

  Tien began to quietly weep into his hands.

  “Pull yourself together, man. It’s all right. Forgive and forget,” said Jean-Baptiste. “Listen, we’re starting a school. Here at the plantation. So Leila will no longer need your ferry services. You’ll have more time for your work here.”

  Tien bowed, wiping at his face with the back of his sleeve.

  “And Tien? Return the bloody masks. They have some sentimental value, I think, though I can’t recall what that is.”

  Tien left the office, bewildered and teary-eyed. He promised to work hard, to do good, and to never betray his master again. The next day, the masks were returned, smelling of a scent that would gradually fade with time.

  • • •

  AFTER SOME ENCOURAGEMENT, Leila eventually warmed to and even embraced the idea of a school on the plantation grounds. They made a clearing in the forest next to the rubber house and built a one-room schoolhouse—LA SEULE ÉCOLE,
read the wooden sign that hung over its entrance. Thirty-five little desks and a chalkboard arrived from Saigon by riverboat. The first day, there were already too many children for the desks; those who could not sit stood patiently in the back as Leila drew out the French alphabet and gestured at the letters’ bulbs and cursive tails. When she came to the S, Leila wiggled her index finger like a snake, hissing conspiratorially, and the children covered their mouths and laughed. She already had them. She spoke their language and the children loved her, and she loved them back.

  That first semester before the rainy season, word spread quickly of the smiling white woman with two different-colored eyes whose school was open to all. Soon, a hundred children were crowding into the small room, struggling to get a glimpse of the board. Eventually the desks were cast aside and the children sat in neat little rows on the floor. Jean-Baptiste’s grand visions of a Khmer rationalism were never quite realized, but nonetheless, in only a few short months, the students made great strides in their writing and arithmetic. Some began to read. Even Tien and the men would come to listen to her during their lunch break, a look of amusement covering up the awe at what they were witnessing.

  “However could I have lived without this?” Leila said to her husband as they prepared for bed one evening. “They feel like my own.”

  Jean-Baptiste smiled. He reached for her hand.

  “My dear,” he whispered.

  “Thank you for being so patient with me,” she said. “I know I’m your burden.”

  “You’re my gift. My wolf.”

  “I haven’t been true to you.”

  “We’re all trying. I know it isn’t easy. We’re all trying. It’s the best we can do.”

  She extinguished the lantern and then she came to him, her hand moving quickly inside his pajama bottoms. He inhaled, sharply. Her forwardness caught him off guard, for they had not been together in some time. She shivered out of her chemise and rose up, white in the moonlight. He whispered a word and fell backwards into the bed. A dead lizard had dropped onto the mosquito net, its silhouette like a dark star against a white sky. He closed his eyes and raked his hands against her back. Beneath the skin, he could feel the heaving roll of her bones. Bones he knew better than his own.

  • • •

  LEILA’S COLLAPSE CAME just as the second semester was beginning. She was standing at the blackboard, writing the word l’honnêteté, applying the accent aigu on the third and final e, when she shuddered and fell, striking her chin on the edge of her desk. She lay on the ground, lifeless, a thin trickle of blood running from her nose and down to the point of her lips. The children crowded around her. They whispered to themselves, some held hands, a few began to cry. Then, from out of nowhere, Tien appeared. He held Leila’s head in his arms, wiping away the blood with his scarf.

  “Khnhom sraleanh anak,” he said tenderly. “Sophanakha.” There was a growing pool of blood between her legs. He picked her up in his thin arms and carried her back to the house.

  “She shouldn’t work so hard,” Eugenia later signed to her son in the hallway outside their bedroom. “Some people aren’t designed for the stress of the tropics.”

  “Stop.” Jean-Baptiste signed.

  “She doesn’t belong here.”

  “Stop,” he said aloud, grabbing her hands. “She needs us. Please understand. I need you to understand.”

  Eugenia’s diagnosis proved premature. Leila could barely rise from bed. It was not simply a matter of stress or jungle fatigue. Nor did it appear to be malaria or any of the more common tropical maladies. Her skin became translucent, her lips dull and grey. She developed large, pus-filled blisters up and down the length of her arms and legs. Her back began to peel in large sheets, making it extremely painful for her to lie supine.

  The doctor was brought back in from Phnom Penh. The man spent some time examining her, taking notes, asking her questions. She was conscious but feverish. Her answers emerged as half sentences, words without tethers.

  After some more prodding, the doctor came downstairs, shaking his head.

  Jean-Baptiste offered him some brandy, an offer he refused, pondered, and then accepted. Eugenia watched as the two men sipped their drinks.

  “What did you find?” asked Jean-Baptiste.

  “She was pregnant,” the doctor said. “I couldn’t say for sure, but it was early in her term. Two months at most. The child’s gone. I’m sorry.”

  “Pregnant?” Jean-Baptiste said, bewildered, nearly dropping his glass. “But she never told me.”

  “I’m not sure she knew,” he said.

  “So this is why she’s sick?”

  The doctor shook his head. “There are a number of diagnoses I could give you. Smallpox, pemphigus, shingles. But none of these are quite right. Has she been exposed to anything unusual recently?”

  “Only the children,” Jean-Baptiste said. “Maybe she contracted something from them.”

  “But there have been no outbreaks in the population that you know of?”

  Jean-Baptiste stared at him. “She was pregnant?” He put his head in his hands. “Good God. We were going to have a child?”

  Eugenia touched the back of his neck. She made a small sign against his skin with her fingers. He was trembling.

  The doctor walked through their house with his glass of spirits, rubbing his beard. He lifted up the arm of one of the marionettes and let it fall. He put a finger to the missing nose of the Sophanakha mask. He leafed through several of Jean-Baptiste’s science journals. At one point he stopped in front of a wall in the drawing room, where a framed X-ray of Leila’s radius hung in a golden frame.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “An arm,” said Jean-Baptiste.

  “Your wife’s arm?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  The doctor left without pronouncing anything definitive, only that he had read about several cases of patients becoming sick after being exposed to high doses of radiation from an X-ray machine. Their symptoms were similar to Leila’s.

  “I’m no expert,” the doctor said. “But there seems to be some destructive force hidden within the ray itself. An invisible killer.”

  After he was gone, Eugenia sat with her son, whose eyes had lost all life.

  “Your machine’s not what made her sick,” Eugenia signed. “I know it. She has a weak constitution.”

  Jean-Baptiste shook his head. “She’s stronger than you will ever know, Mother.”

  During the night, he went down to the cellar with a candle and directed its glow at the chassis of the defunct X-ray machine, now covered in a spectral scrim of spiderwebs and dust. There was a metallic scent of blood in the air. He ran his hands over the cool wires of the Tesla coil and then took a hammer and smashed the tubes one by one, the glass jumping and tearing at his wrists. He fell to the ground, weeping, wiping the blood from his hands across his eyes, nose, and mouth.

  Upstairs, he knelt by his wife’s bedside. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never meant for it to be like this.”

  “I’ve betrayed you,” she whispered. “I am the wolf.”

  • • •

  EUGENIA, WHETHER OUT of guilt or obligation, began tending to her daughter-in-law day and night, dabbing at the dark fluid that trickled from her nose, changing the dressings on the lesions, and reading to her from the lavish collection of novels that filled the house’s study. Her voice was at once too loud and too soft, the words helpless newborns, but Leila listened and smiled and held on tight to Eugenia’s hand.

  Jean-Baptiste stalked the grounds like a ghost. Every part of the place now pointed to his folly, to his childish insistence on tinkering with the unknown. Everywhere he went, he could not escape his own shadow. With the telegraph line long dead, he was forced to write to a friend in Paris, Dr. Luc Jeunet, who he remembered had been one of the doctors to treat the great Madame Curie when she
had become ill.

  I fear I may have inadvertently poisoned my wife with the X-rays from my machine. I know now I was playing with an invisible kind of fire. The images were so brief. How could they have such a profound effect on her tissue? From what I understood, it takes prolonged exposure, years, to become dangerous. Nothing so fleeting. Yet words cannot describe the terror and shame that I now harbor in my soul if my actions are indeed the cause of her rapid decline. Please let me know what treatment course we should pursue and whether anything can be done.

  I await your timely reply, JBdB

  Desperate for any help, he once again sought the services of the kru Khmer. The shaman was a round man who seemed to smell unusually bad, but there was an air of wisdom in his movements that was both disquieting and comforting at the same time. The man had lived a thousand lives and had forgotten nothing.

  He spent nearly ten minutes pressing at Leila’s skin, until she groaned. Eugenia, furious, sent him away.

  “Why do you let that fraud into our house?” she signed.

  Yet the shaman returned the next day, this time accompanied by Tien. He brought with him a small pouch of bark and roots that, despite Eugenia’s protestations, they concocted into a thick soup. The room became filled with a decaying, earthen odor. Leila tilted her head up to meet the bowl. She struggled to take only a few sips of the foul-tasting brew. Then the shaman removed a series of small glass cups from his bag. He lit a match inside each, heating the air within before bringing one of the cups to each of Leila’s lesions.

  “What is he doing?” Eugenia signed from the corner of the room. “How can you let him do this?”

  “The cups,” Jean-Baptiste pointed. “What are they for?”

  “She is too hot,” said Tien. “He is making her cool.”

  Eugenia blew out a sound of disapproval.