Song for an Approaching Storm

by Peter Froeberg Idling

  First comes the obligatory prelude of crackles and clicks produced by a couple of flecks of dust as the record revolves. Then without warning the Glenn Miller Orchestra starts. As the opening fanfare leads into the seductive swing of the theme, she immediately feels the physical urge to dance along with it. Je suis vraiment in the mood, she thinks. The memory of Sary’s body against hers, the mild euphoria induced by champagne, the shadows of the other couples gliding around them in the half light of the crystal chandeliers.

  She sits down again with the pack of cards and lays spades, spades, diamonds, spades. Then she lays clubs, clubs, spades, diamonds, intentionally going against the rhythm of the music.

  Her mother is sitting at her desk, spectacles on, doing the accounts. The air is still moisture-laden from the evening rain.

  She lays spades, clubs, spades, diamonds and wonders whether the members of the orchestra ever think of their music being played at the very same moment in a quite different part of the world, on a clear starry night which is morning to them, or maybe afternoon. Or, it occurs to her, that their breath in their instruments will continue to sound long after they are dead.

  Clubs.

  One day it will be a dead orchestra led by a dead Glenn Miller that will strike up those first notes so clearly and self-confidently.

  Spades.

  The record on the gramophone turntable suddenly feels like a crime against the order of nature—an order determined by a mighty, merciless and incomprehensible creator whom it is best not to anger.

  Clubs.

  The dead should take their voices with them, let them disperse along with the smoke from their pyres.

  Diamonds.

  Not leave them as ghosts among those of us still alive.

  She takes a breath and is about to share the thought with her mother, but closes her mouth again when she sees the concentration on the face over the books. Gathers up the cards from the unsuccessful game of patience and shuffles them more thoroughly than necessary.

  She remembers the old belief that when a photograph is taken the soul of the subject is burnt into the negative for ever. She thinks that if that is true it means that there isn’t a single film star either in heaven or in hell. Their souls are doomed to spend eternity consigned to a celluloid purgatory, constantly on call to replay their movements and dialogue. In which case even the lowliest extra will remain trapped on a few frames of film.

  She used to feel sad when she looked at the props in a film. The fact that the furniture is in store, the set dismantled, the wonderful food long ago consumed, thrown out, disappeared.

  But she hasn’t found a way of including the actors in this awful transience.

  She takes a card from the pack at random. Three of clubs.

  What if one of them managed to flee from captivity and haunt the people who owned copies of the film? Then plead with them to destroy the reels of film so he could achieve peace at last?

  Her gaze wanders and she sees the stubborn ghosts pass before her eyes.

  Would the actor, who had fled to find freedom for himself and his comrades in distress, suddenly be absent from the scenes in which he had featured? Would the others move around as before even though he was gone?

  She places the three of clubs in the patience and draws a seven of clubs.

  That, more or less, is the way her family moved at first around the empty space left by father. But their film quickly took a different direction. A new script—one with no hopeless fathers.

  She looks at the pack of cards she is holding. Did it once belong to him? Are these the cards that he fingered, are these the ones that were used by all the companions who came and went around the table? The cards that shaped victory and defeat? No, they look too new for that, though it does seem unlikely that Maman would have bought a pack of cards for the house. Perhaps they are her brother’s? Or someone else left them behind?

  She draws the queen of clubs, shuffles the cards again. She notices that her mother’s foot is silently beating time to the music. As if her body has already moved on to tomorrow evening.

  FRIDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER 1955

  Kunthea tells her he has rung again. The message is the usual friendly one.

  She goes into her room, shuts the door behind her. Walks across the twilit room, opens the shutters and fills the room with light. Puts a cigarette in her cigarette holder and then leans back in the armchair. The fan, forgotten since the morning, is still humming—another black mark in Kunthea’s book.

  She thinks: this impatience he has got himself locked into, she doesn’t understand it. Or, she corrects herself, she does understand: he is used to me being the one doing the waiting, always, good little dog.

  From his point of view, losing something is a more powerful emotion than the satisfaction of having something: is that how she should read him?

  She thinks about what has happened, what hasn’t happened and what ought to have happened. The fact that once upon a time she burnt herself on his beauty—the beauty of him seeing her in a way that no one else saw her. The fact that his gaze made her beautiful in the way she believes she was intended to be beautiful.

  But what is that worth now? Now that their silences, once so full of everything, are full of nothing?

  It’s as if something has come uncoupled, as if everything has been left behind. Forgotten. And she didn’t realize until it was too late.

  She thinks: I was the one who carried us when he was away. It can’t be up to me to carry us when he is here. I’m the one who’s drowning in disappointment.

  She continues: I don’t have to answer him. I don’t have to do anything. I’m the one who will decide. I’ll make my decision when I’m sure of what I want.

  But it is not lack of conviction that is Somaly’s problem. Her problem is that she wants different things at the same time. And the feeling that no decision is ever reached is an exhausting one. When she woke up she knew she was going to leave Sar that day. But just a couple of hours later she was considering going through with the marriage, even though it would probably mean she would lose her inheritance and be removed from the family tree.

  So she thinks: it must be allowed to take however long it takes—why should he find that so difficult to accept? To respect? A hurried answer would be worthless, wouldn’t it? Just words thrown away. Like notes plinked on the piano.

  Below the unfinished sketch of a dress on her drawing table she scribbles you cannot force a flower to bloom.

  She puts down her pen and picks up the latest number of Réalités Cambodgiennes. As expected, it contains photographs of the Kep-sur-Mer soirée. Her blurred smile, among other blurred smiles, can be glimpsed over to the left in one of them. Sary is standing over among the white suits on the right of the picture, his head turned in her direction. His face almost completely broken up by the half-tone dots.

  The picture is too small and there are too many people for it to be possible to be sure of anything. He could have been turning his head for any number of reasons.

  And right in the middle is the beaming prince. Perhaps he is the one that Sary is looking at?

  The Somaly now studying the photograph wonders if the Somaly in the photograph knew she was going to spend the night with him. Had she decided, or had she left it as a possible possibility? It is difficult to know at what stage a decision like that is made. A haze of alcohol, cigarettes and, not least, the fire of the blood coursing through her body lies between the smiling woman in the picture and the woman now looking at her.

  And: what about the man standing over on the right—does he know?

  She realizes (and for one moment the earth seems to tremble beneath her feet) that Sar might also look at the society pages in the paper. Someone might say something that would lead him to take an interest in them, mightn’t they? She thinks that he often knows more about her and her acquaintances than seems likely. Just something I heard, he says. More often than not he doesn’t let it show that he knows. Or, she thinks now,
perhaps that’s just a pose to give the impression of being omniscient?

  Her sense of insecurity has been heightened by a car driving along the street the last few evenings. She assumes it’s the same car because, judging from the sound of the engine, it slows down as it approaches and then speeds up once it has passed the house. She has resisted the temptation to look and see what kind of car it is because her silhouette would be visible in the window. In which case anyone in the car would be able to see more than she could. And how many nights had it driven past before she noticed it?

  She is finding it hard to shake off the feeling of being watched by someone out there in the dark of the night. In broad daylight, as it is now, with the sun burning off all the shadows in the garden, it is easy to dismiss it as imagination. But, at night, the solitary lamp over the veranda can do no more than make the shadows recede a few steps.

  Is it Sar in the car? Or one of his friends? Or is it Sary’s men? Perhaps it’s driving past purely by chance? Or someone who has discovered a short cut through this district?

  Maybe. But chance does not explain all the times Sar has happened to be in the restaurants and cinemas or places she has visited in recent months. And even on those occasions when he has not happened to be there, it has felt as if he had been there or could suddenly turn up at any moment.

  Somaly thinks that these intentional unintentional meetings are reminiscent of a bad farce. The more breathing space she needs the less he is prepared to give her. And the strange thing is this—no one has ever understood her as he does, so why doesn’t he understand this, this fundamental issue?

  She regrets the cigarette. It has made her mouth unbearably dry and the water in the carafe has long since reached room temperature, the chunks of ice melted. She rings for Kunthea to fetch her a glass of milk, fresh from the fridge and flavoured with grenadine. The girl then proceeds to make a great show of sorting the clean washing into the linen cupboard. As if cocooned in a world of her own.

  She returns to her earlier thoughts, thinks about desire and the way it seems to consume all other emotions. Or at least to annul their significance. But it can also cloak them or muddle them so that it becomes impossible to decide what is what. What is the difference between the (addictive) glint in the eye of the man who says he loves her and the ugly rage that burns in the eyes of the same man when he accuses her of flirting with other men?

  Are they expressions of the same passion?

  To desire someone, she thinks, to want someone, doesn’t that imply transgressing something in oneself, breaking one’s own rules? It might even imply a crime against one’s own morality, might it not? And when the eyes of that sort of criminal target me with his lust, they hold a promise that is both irresistibly attractive and simultaneously frightening. At times like that even a handsome man can reveal an ugly aspect and, conversely, an ugly man can suddenly seem appealing.

  She asks herself: when I step out onto the floor and straight into the light of all men’s eyes, is there hate in them too? Are those bright smiles simultaneously teeth bared in rage?

  She steps out onto the floor and straight into the dazzling glances. Her mother’s cool soft arm is tucked under hers. Faces turn towards them, break into smiles.

  Somaly feels (to her annoyance) her hand sliding up to her bosom. It’s a reflex from early youth when she would try to cover herself from male eyes that were beginning to notice the changes in her body. She has long since learnt to control the movement, almost to the point of forgetting it. And so she lets her hand move on upwards, as if the intention had always been to check that her coiffure was faultless at the back.

  She steps out onto the floor with a frisson of hope and a queasy sense of apprehension.

  They are surrounded by shimmering silk dresses and suits as white as sugar icing. She sees ministers and officers, she sees diplomats and businessmen. She sees fellow-countrymen and foreigners and people who are neither the one thing nor the other.

  The prince is not there, not yet anyway, but along with the minor royalty she can also see faces that are at home at court. She sees some of her friends and she says that everything looks truly splendid, doesn’t it, and her mother answers that it does.

  She thinks that it doesn’t look to be the sort of occasion Sar will be at—fortunately. Before the election he would certainly have been invited. Or if he’d had the sense to change to the winning side. But not now. Not given the people who are here.

  So she can forget her apprehension.

  Mother is gathered up by Monsieur Hanin to join his conversation with a man of his own age, a Colonel Heng. She goes along too. Colonel Heng’s broad white chest is covered with the colourful ribbons of orders and medals, the ends of his sleeves trimmed with gold galloons.

  Over one of the colonel’s epaulettes she suddenly sees Sary. He is standing together with his favourite colleague, Mau Say, both of them leaning on the rail of the balcony and framed by the doorway. The night forms their backdrop, they have cigarettes in their hands and their backs to the room.

  So hope is fulfilled then.

  Seeing him sends a white spark through her thoughts, just as it did at dinner in the hotel dining room the week before. She relives the choking feeling she’d had in her throat as he walked towards her. The urgency of the heartbeats through her body. The way her voice failed her as she uttered the first syllables of greeting. The sudden blush that came to her cheeks when she had to repeat them. The way the blush then became self-generating (she blushed because she thought she was blushing). The wanton physical reaction that added raging embarrassment to the whirlwind of emotions that overpowered her.

  Now, as then, she feels slightly sick and childishly excited. Her thoughts become incoherent.

  She pulls herself together, determined not to let her confusion show. It had been impossible to tell whether he had noticed it last time. Had he?

  On the one hand, he has eyes that seem able to see right through people and to expose all their weaknesses.

  On the other hand, the chaotic election campaign made him more and more distrait during the few meetings they had.

  But then, thirdly, does it matter anyway?

  Whichever it may be, she has no intention of letting him suspect that she does not know what to make of her own reactions.

  She remembers an intimate conversation she had at the Café de la Poste with Mei, who appropriately enough is standing by the doorway out to the balcony. Mei has beautiful pale skin, a precociously mature face and a past in the Royal Ballet. And many suitors. But in their conversation in the café Mei had come up with a description of herself which, with a kind of triumphant resignation, she would use to cut off all attempts to make further progress: Mei (she said of herself) was a hopeless beginner when it came to love. But, Somaly thinks, it is not lack of experience that causes her friend’s constant failure. Instead of being bold and using all the advantages nature has given her, Mei consistently withdraws into her own private insecurity. Mei quite simply fails to recognize that her suitors are attracted by their understanding of what she represents, not by her as an individual. That she is, in fact, superior to any of the men who approach her. Because she comes from a good family, because she is young, because she is beautiful, because she is a woman.

  The beauty contest has only served to confirm this to Somaly. She no longer feels the need to assess her own worth by interpreting the opinions of admirers and then multiplying them by the number of men involved. She is, after all, now the owner of a tiara and a certificate in a gold frame, both of which attest to the fact that she is the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. Since then any suitor who attempts to make her feel insecure by hinting that there are other and better women is doomed to failure. (That, in turn, has made her suitors less subtle and more direct.) She knows—and this was what she said to Mei—that it is no longer her they are paying court to, no longer “the beautiful Somaly, daughter of Princess Rasmi”, but Miss Cambodia. That is to say, the woman that e
very other man also desires. And, she thinks, in the final analysis, that last point is the decisive one.

  Then, as if far off, she sees Sary’s wife Em making her escape from the unimportant groups of conversing guests. Sees the dumpy but tastefully dressed woman go over and join Sary and Mau Say on the balcony. Sees them turn towards Em with open approving faces.

  With an effort she drags her eyes away from the three figures in the doorway and fixes instead on the colonel’s face with its open pores. The colonel is not slow to meet her eye.

  Once the orchestra has finished the national anthem and struck up Papa loves mambo, she answers the colonel’s smile and invitation to dance.

  In spite of his bulk the colonel is one of those men who is light and lithe on his feet. As though there is a younger and slimmer man somewhere inside. And it is this slim young fellow who is reaching out to her, when the colonel proceeds to press her hard against his belly and chest.

  He dances a predictable foxtrot. And he jokes about the gaudily painted temple coulisses that illustrate the theme of the soirée. For no apparent reason he mentions that he had not always thought of making his career as an officer. Rather the opposite, he continues, I am an artist. She responds, on cue, with a smile containing just the right degree of scepticism, and the colonel, pleased, explains that once upon a time he used to take singing lessons. Tenor, he says with unaffected pride. She wonders whether she should take this to be a moment of honesty? Or is it an attempt to impress her? Or is he just teasing her?

  He is dancing so close that she can see the small beads of sweat in his sparse pencil moustache.

  She sees that over by the balcony doors Sary has seen her and she therefore gives all her attention to the colonel.

  And then the orchestra plays La vie en rose. The colonel doesn’t even ask, just implies with a little squeeze of her hand and waist that they should continue.

  Her partner tells her of his visits to Saigon and she forces herself to concentrate in order to take her mind off Sary and Em, but above all so that she will at least look unconcerned. He tells her the sort of thing that she thinks that he thinks she would like to hear. So he describes the Catinat-Ciné with its twelve-hour programme of films every day, the white linen tablecloths in La Pagode tea room, the shops with Chinese silk at any price you are prepared to pay. He then moves on to describe Saigon Cathedral as the rust-coloured heart of the subversive infiltration of our beloved little kingdom by the French and the Vietnamese. And by building that abomination of a sister cathedral in their own capital they have allowed their arrogance to betray their real intentions: the fact that its twin towers are taller than the spire of Wat Phnom is, according to the colonel and there are many who agree with him, final proof of what is afoot—recolonization.