She was in the ground-floor garage. She heard something like a rat scuttle. In her bag, the telephone rang. Who were these people to importune her, even if they were dead? She wrenched the mobile phone out of her bag and pushed the green button and put the phone to her ear. She waited. There was a sound like wind.
A child spoke to her, his voice clogged as if he was crying. “They tied my thumbs together.”
Sith demanded. “How did you get my number?”
“I’m all alone!”
“Then ring somebody else. Someone in your family.”
“All my family are dead. I don’t know where I am. My name is—”
Sith clicked the phone off. She opened the trunk of the car and tossed the phone inside it. Being telephoned by ghosts was so … unmodern. How could Cambodia become a number-one country if its cell-phone network was haunted?
She stormed up into the salon. On top of a table, the $1500, no-mess dog stared at her from out of his packaging. Sith clumped up the stairs onto the roof terrace to sleep as far away as she could from everything in the house.
She woke up in the dark, to hear thumping from downstairs.
The sound was metallic and hollow, as if someone were locked in the car. Sith turned on her iPod. Something was making the sound of the music skip. She fought the tangle of wires, and wrenched out another player, a Xen, but it too skipped, burping the sound of speaking voices into the middle of the music.
Had she heard a ripping sound? She pulled out the earphones, and heard something climbing the stairs.
A sound of light, uneven lolloping. She thought of crippled children. Frost settled over her like a heavy blanket, and she could not move.
The robot dog came whirring up onto the terrace. It paused at the top of the stairs, its camera nose pointing at her to see, its useless eyes glowing cherry red.
The robot dog said in a warm, friendly voice, “My name is Phalla. I tried to buy my sister medicine and they killed me for it.”
Sith tried to say “Go away,” but her throat wouldn’t open.
The dog tilted its head. “No one even knows I’m dead. What will you do for all the people who are not mourned?”
Laughter blurted out of her, and Sith saw it rise up as cold vapor into the air.
“We have no one to invite us to the feast,” said the dog.
Sith giggled in terror. “Nothing. I can do nothing!” she said, shaking her head.
“You laugh?” The dog gathered itself and jumped up into the hammock with her. It turned and lifted up its clear plastic tail and laid a genuine turd alongside Sith. Short brown hair was wound up in it, a scalp actually, and a single flat white human tooth smiled out of it.
Sith squawked and overturned both herself and the dog out of the hammock and onto the floor. The dog pushed its nose up against hers and began to sing an old-fashioned children’s song about birds.
Something heavy huffed its way up the stairwell toward her. Sith shivered with cold on the floor and could not move. The dog went on singing in a high, sweet voice. A large shadow loomed out over the top of the staircase, and Sith gargled, swallowing laughter, trying to speak.
“There was thumping in the car and no one in it,” said the driver.
Sith sagged toward the floor with relief. “The ghosts,” she said. “They’re back.” She thrust herself to her feet. “We’re getting out now. Ring the Hilton. Find out if they have rooms.”
She kicked the toy dog down the stairs ahead of her. “We’re moving now!”
Together they all loaded the car, shaking. Once again, the house was left to ghosts. As they drove, the mobile phone rang over and over inside the trunk.
The new Hilton (which does not exist) rose up by the river across from the Department for Cults and Religious Affairs. Tall and marbled and pristine, it had crystal chandeliers and fountains, and wood and brass handles in the elevators.
In the middle of the night only the Bridal Suite was still available, but it had an extra parental chamber where the driver and his wife could sleep. High on the twenty-first floor, the night sparkled with lights and everything was hushed, as far away from Cambodia as it was possible to get.
Things were quiet after that, for a while.
Every day she and Dara went to movies, or went to a restaurant. They went shopping. She slipped him money and he bought himself a beautiful suit. He said, over a hamburger at Lucky7, “I’ve told my mother that I’ve met a girl.”
Sith smiled and thought: and I bet you told her that I’m rich.
“I’ve decided to live in the Hilton,” she told him.
Maybe we could live in the Hilton. A pretty smile could hint at that.
The rainy season ended. The last of the monsoons rose up dark gray with a froth of white cloud on top, looking exactly like a giant wave about to break.
Dry cooler air arrived.
After work was over Dara convinced her to go for a walk along the river in front of the Royal Palace. He went to the men’s room to change into a new luxury suit and Sith thought: he’s beginning to imagine life with all that money.
As they walked along the river, exposed to all those people, Sith shook inside. There were teenage boys everywhere. Some of them were in rags, which was reassuring, but some of them were very well dressed indeed, the sons of Impunity who could do anything. Sith swerved suddenly to avoid even seeing them. But Dara in his new beige suit looked like one of them, and the generals’ sons nodded to him with quizzical eyebrows, perhaps wondering who he was.
In front of the palace, a pavilion reached out over the water. Next to it a traditional orchestra bashed and wailed out something old fashioned. Hundreds of people crowded around a tiny wat. Dara shook Sith’s wrist and they stood up to see.
People held up bundles of lotus flowers and incense in prayer. They threw the bundles into the wat. Monks immediately shoveled the joss sticks and flowers out of the back.
Behind the wat, children wearing T-shirts and shorts black with filth rootled through the dead flowers, the smoldering incense, and old coconut shells.
Sith asked, “Why do they do that?”
“You are so innocent!” chuckled Dara and shook his head. The evening was blue and gold. Sith had time to think that she did not want to go back to a hotel and that the only place she really felt happy was next to Dara. All around that thought was something dark and tangled.
Dara suggested with affection that they should get married.
It was as if Sith had her answer ready. “No, absolutely not,” she said at once. “How can you ask that? There is not even anyone for you to ask! Have you spoken to your family about me? Has your family made any checks about my background?”
Which was what she really wanted to know.
Dara shook his head. “I have explained that you are an orphan, but they are not concerned with that. We are modest people. They will be happy if I am happy.”
“Of course they won’t be! Of course they will need to do checks.”
Sith scowled. She saw her way to sudden advantage. “At least they must consult fortune-tellers. They are not fools. I can help them. Ask them the names of the fortune-tellers they trust.”
Dara smiled shyly. “We have no money.”
“I will give them money and you can tell them that you pay.”
Dara’s eyes searched her face. “I don’t want that.”
“How will we know if it is a good marriage? And your poor mother, how can you ask her to make a decision like this without information? So. You ask your family for the names of good professionals they trust, and I will pay them, and I will go to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s own personal fortune-teller, and we can compare results.”
Thus she established again both her propriety and her status.
In an old romance, the parents would not approve of the match and the fortune-teller would say that the marriage was ill-omened. Sith left nothing to romance.
She offered the family’s fortune-tellers whatever they wanted—
a car, a farm—and in return demanded a written copy of their judgment. All of them agreed that the portents for the marriage were especially auspicious.
Then she secured an appointment with the Prime Minister’s fortuneteller.
Hun Sen’s Kru Taey was a lady in a black business suit. She had long fingernails like talons, but they were perfectly manicured and frosted white.
She was the kind of fortune-teller who is possessed by someone else’s spirit. She sat at a desk and looked at Sith as unblinking as a fish, both her hands steepled together. After the most basic of hellos, she said, “Dollars only. Twenty-five thousand. I need to buy my son an apartment.”
“That’s a very high fee,” said Sith.
“It’s not a fee. It is a consideration for giving you the answer you want. My fee is another twenty-five thousand dollars.”
They negotiated. Sith liked the Kru Taey’s manner. It confirmed everything Sith believed about life.
The fee was reduced somewhat but not the consideration.
“Payment upfront now,” the Kru Taey said. She wouldn’t take a check. Like only the very best restaurants she accepted foreign credit cards. Sith’s Swiss card worked immediately. It had unlimited credit in case she had to leave the country in a hurry.
The Kru Taey said, “I will tell the boy’s family that the marriage will be particularly fortunate.”
Sith realized that she had not yet said anything about a boy, his family, or a marriage.
The Kru Taey smiled. “I know you are not interested in your real fortune. But to be kind, I will tell you unpaid that this marriage really is particularly well favored. All the other fortune-tellers would have said the same thing without being bribed.”
The Kru Taey’s eyes glinted in the most unpleasant way. “So you needn’t have bought them farms or paid me an extra twenty-five thousand dollars.”
She looked down at her perfect fingernails. “You will be very happy indeed. But not before your entire life is overturned.”
The back of Sith’s arms prickled as if from cold. She should have been angry, but she could feel herself smiling. Why?
And why waste politeness on the old witch? Sith turned to go without saying good-bye.
“Oh, and about your other problem,” said the woman.
Sith turned back and waited.
“Enemies,” said the Kru Taey, “can turn out to be friends.”
Sith sighed. “What are you talking about?”
The Kru Taey’s smile was a wide as a tiger-trap. “The million people your father killed.”
Sith went hard. “Not a million,” she said. “Somewhere between two hundred and fifty or five hundred thousand.”
“Enough,” smiled the Kru Taey. “My father was one of them.” She smiled for a moment longer. “I will be sure to tell the Prime Minister that you visited me.”
Sith snorted as if in scorn. “I will tell him myself.”
But she ran back to her car.
That night, Sith looked down on all the lights like diamonds. She settled onto the giant mattress and turned on her iPod.
Someone started to yell at her. She pulled out the earpieces and jumped to the window. It wouldn’t open. She shook it and wrenched its frame until it reluctantly slid an inch and she threw the iPod out of the twenty-first-floor window.
She woke up late the next morning, to hear the sound of the TV. She opened up the double doors into the salon and saw Jorani, pressed against the wall.
“The TV … ,” Jorani said, her eyes wide with terror.
The driver waited by his packed bags. He stood up, looking as mournful as a bloodhound.
On the widescreen TV there was what looked like a pop-music karaoke video. Except that the music was very old fashioned. Why would a pop video show a starving man eating raw maize in a field? He glanced over his shoulder in terror as he ate. The glowing singalong words were the song that the dog had sung at the top of the stairs. The starving man looked up at Sith and corn mash rolled out of his mouth.
“It’s all like that,” said the driver. “I unplugged the set, but it kept playing on every channel.” He sompiahed but looked miserable. “My wife wants to leave.”
Sith felt shame. It was miserable and dirty, being infested with ghosts. Of course they would want to go.
“It’s okay. I can take taxis,” she said.
The driver nodded, and went into the next room and whispered to his wife. With little scurrying sounds, they gathered up their things. They sompiahed, and apologized.
The door clicked almost silently behind them.
It will always be like this, thought Sith. Wherever I go. It would be like this with Dara.
The hotel telephone started to ring. Sith left it ringing. She covered the TV with a blanket, but the terrible, tinny old music kept wheedling and rattling its way out at her, and she sat on the edge of her bed, staring into space.
I’ll have to leave Cambodia.
At the market, Dara looked even more cheerful than usual. The fortune-tellers had pronounced the marriage as very favorable. His mother had invited Sith home for the Pchum Ben festival.
“We can take the bus tomorrow,” he said.
“Does it smell? All those people in one place?”
“It smells of air freshener. Then we take a taxi, and then you will have to walk up the track.” Dara suddenly doubled up in laughter. “Oh, it will be good for you.”
“Will there be dirt?”
“Everywhere! Oh, your dirty Nikes will earn you much merit!”
But at least, thought Sith, there will be no TV or phones.
Two days later, Sith was walking down a dirt track, ducking tree branches. Dust billowed all over her shoes. Dara walked behind her, chuckling, which meant she thought he was scared, too.
She heard a strange rattling sound. “What’s that noise?”
“It’s a goat,” he said. “My mother bought it for me in April as a present.”
A goat. How could they be any more rural? Sith had never seen a goat. She never even imagined that she would.
Dara explained. “I sell them to the Muslims. It is Agricultural Diversification.”
There were trees everywhere, shadows crawling across the ground like snakes. Sith felt sick. One mosquito, she promised herself, just one and I will squeal and run away.
The house was tiny, on thin twisting stilts. She had pictured a big fine country house standing high over the ground on concrete pillars with a sunburst carving in the gable. The kitchen was a hut that sat directly on the ground, no stilts, and it was made of palm-leaf panels and there was no electricity. The strip light in the ceiling was attached to a car battery, and they kept a live fire on top of the concrete table to cook. Everything smelled of burnt fish.
Sith loved it.
Inside the hut, the smoke from the fires kept the mosquitoes away. Dara’s mother, Mrs. Non Kunthea, greeted her with a smile. That triggered a respectful sompiah from Sith, the prayerlike gesture leaping out of her unbidden. On the platform table was a plastic sack full of dried prawns.
Without thinking, Sith sat on the table and began to pull the salty prawns out of their shells.
Why am I doing this?
Because it’s what I did at home.
Sith suddenly remembered the enclosure in the forest, a circular fenced area. Daddy had slept in one house, and the women in another. Sith would talk to the cooks. For something to do, she would chop vegetables or shell prawns. Then Daddy would come to eat and he’d sit on the platform table and she, little Sith, would sit between his knees.
Dara’s older brother, Yuth, came back for lunch. He was pot-bellied and drove a taxi for a living, and he moved in hard jabs like an angry old man. He reached too far for the rice, and Sith could smell his armpits.
“You see how we live,” Yuth said to Sith. “This is what we get for having the wrong patron. Sihanouk thought we were anti-monarchist. To Hun Sen, we were the enemy. Remember the Work for Money program?”
&nbs
p; No.
“They didn’t give any of those jobs to us. We might as well have been the Khmer Rouge!”
The past, thought Sith, why don’t they just let it go? Why do they keep boasting about their old wars?
Mrs. Non Kunthea chuckled with affection. “My eldest son was born angry,” she said. “His slogan is ‘Ten years is not too late for revenge.’”
Yuth started up again. “They treat that old monster Pol Pot better than they treat us. But then, he was an important person. If you go to his stupa in Anlong Veng, you will see that people leave offerings! They ask him for lottery numbers!”
He crumpled his green, soft, old-fashioned hat back onto his head and said, “Nice to meet you, Sith. Dara, she’s too high class for the likes of you.” But he grinned as he said it. He left, swirling disruption in his wake.
The dishes were gathered. Again without thinking, Sith swept up the plastic tub and carried it to the blackened branches. They rested over puddles where the washing-up water drained.
“You shouldn’t work,” said Dara’s mother. “You are a guest.”
“I grew up in a refugee camp,” said Sith. After all, it was true.
Dara looked at her with a mix of love, pride, and gratitude for the good fortune of a rich wife who works.
And that was the best Sith could hope for. This family would be fine for her.
In the late afternoon, all four brothers came with their wives for the end of Pchum Ben, when the ghosts of the dead can wander the Earth. People scatter rice on the temple floors to feed their families. Some ghosts have small mouths so special rice is used.
Sith never took part in Pchum Ben. How could she go to the temple and scatter rice for Pol Pot?
The family settled in the kitchen chatting and joking, and it all passed in a blur for Sith. Everyone else had family they could honor. To Sith’s surprise one of the uncles suggested that people should write names of the deceased and burn them, to transfer merit. It was nothing to do with Pchum Ben, but a lovely idea, so all the family wrote down names.
Ryman-Paradise-interior-ebook Page 30