The tailor, a thin middle-aged Vietnamese with his untucked shirt hanging loose, who for inexplicable reasons has ended up in this hovel even though he trained with the finest craftsman in Saigon, says something about it being impossible to get hold of the right fabric. Also that Her Highness’s creations are extremely complex and consequently take longer than estimated.
He changes in an instant from excuses to enthusiasm when he describes her designs (describing them to her, to the person who drew them). The way the lines run is so intelligent and elegant and inspiring that he lies awake at night thinking about them. It’s a privilege to be allowed to work with them.
There is something so innocent about his enthusiasm and honesty that she finds it impossible to know whether he is pulling the wool over her eyes or not.
But she can’t help feeling flattered and her annoyance is dispelled when he orders his journeymen (who are clustered in the bedroom door) to fetch tea and the fabrics and a chair. Then he spreads out the designs and the toiles on his cutting table. They bend over the table (she is taller than him) and he asks what she is thinking and she answers and he suggests pale pastel organza, dove-grey tulle, black velveteen. Their mutual respect and intuitive understanding of what the other is proposing brings to mind the dynamic interaction between two jazz musicians. And so she forgives him yet again for having broken his promise to have it ready by today, for it’s impossible not to forgive someone who understands things that no one else understands.
Perhaps it was the passing of time that solved it, though there is no way she can be sure of that, but every time she smells the odour of mould rising from the clothes she takes from her wardrobe, she is reminded that, in spite of all the compliments, in spite of all the gifts and admiring glances, there was a time when she felt she was concealing a mound of festering rubbish behind the beautiful exterior that people complimented her on. It was Sar’s infectious calm and easy confidence that caused the self-disgust and anxiety she felt, as well as the unnecessary and increasingly problematic lying, to relinquish their hold on her—or if not relinquish it altogether, at least loosen it.
There are still times when she feels that she is not equal to the perceptions people have of her, but instead of drowning in that feeling, instead of becoming incapable of doing anything and sinking lower and lower until days and weeks merge into a fog of apathy and disgust at what she was and what she was not, she is now above that swamp of hopelessness. Not even the confusing uncertainty she feels about her relationship with Sar can upset her in the way it would have done. Instead of crumbling she has taken a grip on herself or, as she sometimes expresses it to herself, she has pulled it all together. She is confident.
The way Sar was.
The way Sar is. But, she thinks, he has become so in a more and more circumscribed way. The poetic aspect of him is no longer as apparent as it was before he went to France. His words and the way he says them and puts them together are undoubtedly the same. As is his smile, his overwhelmingly warm and irresistible smile.
But it’s as if what lies within can no longer come to the surface, as if he is encased in his new convictions.
It is perhaps my turn to save him this time, Somaly thinks, to save him from himself as he saved me.
Even though she has no chips of her own on the table, her eyes are fixed on the little white ivory ball spinning clockwise in the roulette wheel. The ball’s journey comes to a halt and it settles into one of the pockets. The croupier calls the result and distributes the winnings and collects the losses. The faces around the table show no emotion, they remain closed in concentration and their hands place new chips quite mechanically.
She presses her wrists discreetly against the ice-filled glass she received a moment ago. Strangely enough the man who sent it over to her has disappeared. Initially she had turned down the cocktail the waiter brought, but she changed her mind once she realized that the sender was one of the destitutes who’d had to hire a pair of shoes from the Chinaman in the side street by the casino in order to be allowed in. Anyone as desperate as that would probably take it to be a good omen if she accepted a drink. And there was something disarming about his face; not that it was attractive per se, but it had a kind of immediacy she found sympathetic. He had not, however, gone so far as to ask her to bring him luck by touching his chips or anything like that. Just twisted his features into an elated or, more accurately, ecstatic smile when she nodded her thanks, after which he disappeared into the motley patchwork of jacketed backs crowded around the tables.
She asks Voisanne about Mei and Nana. They, too, have been swallowed up by the crowd and the smoky darkness of the room that is lit only by the pale light of the globe lamps. Neither the decorations on the walls nor the mouldings on the ceiling can be made out properly. And an odour of sweat and apprehension cuts through the overpowering smell of smoke.
She feels the alcohol spreading its familiar sense of well-being, making her hands slightly numb. From her position halfway up the flight of stairs, she is able to survey the stage below and follow the small dramas and side plots. The roulette table is surrounded mainly by more affluent fortune-seekers of Chinese descent, whereas the people who don’t even possess shoes of their own are throwing dice over near one of the long sides of the room. Behind her, lined up along the brass and mahogany bar or sitting in armchairs, there are the Europeans who are taking a rest from their forays out among the other gamblers. The calls of the croupiers cut through the low hum of voices, the rattle of roulette and dice and the shuffling of cards.
She tries to put herself in the position of the poor people at the dice table and to imagine how they experience the evening she is sharing with them. Their modest bets, which are probably equivalent to many days’ toil on a cyclo, at the brickworks or with tangled fishing nets at night. Families waiting for them in rundown apartments or hovels on the outskirts of the city. It’s a viewpoint that Sar frequently urges her to see things from and she is glad to do so: she has always felt a particular warmth for people who own nothing. She is in complete agreement with him that they deserve something different. But she has never been given a good explanation of why that should simultaneously have an impact on her own welfare. However desirable it might be, where in the whole world does a society like that exist? She was amazed when Sar wrote from Paris that the people sweeping the streets were white people. Her amazement was then replaced by the insight—both depressing and uplifting—that not even a country as rich and grand as France was capable of caring for everyone.
But actually, as Somaly herself realizes, her feelings of empathy with the worst-off men here, with those who will never be saved from poverty by the dice, is a result of her own father’s protracted downward journey, which ended with him being one of them.
Voisanne interrupts her train of thought by asking (at last) about the previous evening. She knows that her girlfriends have been expecting her to say something, which is why she has refrained from doing so. Now she shrugs her shoulders and says it was nothing more and nothing less than un petit caprice. The expectant expression that shows around Voisanne’s eyes and mouth does not go away. But, my dear, her friend presses her, how petit? The Chinese fellow didn’t come back, you know, after accompanying you so demonstratively from the soirée.
He didn’t, did he? she answers with a level of carelessness that she realizes could be interpreted as being intentional. Which is why she adds the truth, that he had escorted her to the car and not a centimetre further.
Voisanne asks, but why and Somaly shrugs her shoulders and smiles rather stupidly (as she supposes).
Her friend duly smiles a smile of resignation, like someone who has hoped against her better judgement and, consequently, has no problem in accepting that her hope is dashed. She understands Voisanne. There is no doubting that her friend would like to see her depart from the straight and narrow, but her unambiguous denial puts a stop to the quiet but titillating speculations that have run from one end to the other of her friends’ teleph
one wires. She is in no doubt at all that they will continue to gossip in her absence, but there won’t be the same enthusiasm now that the facts are known.
Mei and Nana appear. For a moment they seem to her to be creatures from another world in their beautiful, expensive dresses, the energy inherent in their beauty manifesting itself in every movement, their self-assurance. Mei slim and dazzlingly pale. Nana rather more robust but beautiful from every side. Both of them looking superior to anyone else present.
Nana’s cigarette is hanging from the corner of her mouth which, Somaly thinks, makes an impression that is rather more than coquettishly decadent. But thanks to the drinks they have taken they have already dropped the cool attitude they are usually at pains to convey. Instead of being distant and unattainable they are now superior but emancipated.
There is no sign of the Monsieur de Cornet who was Nana’s escort and their excuse for coming to the casino. Nana had met him for the first time the evening before and doesn’t know him any better than that. He is more than twice Nana’s age, but it had been flattering to receive such an immediate and unconditional invitation to an evening at the casino from a man who was so obviously affluent and respected, as well as being of noble descent. He did not, however, show more than a fleeting, if polite, interest in them which, between themselves, they acidly ascribed to impotence or homosexuality. So it wasn’t any great disappointment to them when he quickly found more agreeable company. They were, in any case, drinking on his account.
Nana seems to her to be even more high-spirited than she usually is. Perhaps to compensate for her disappointment about Monsieur de Cornet? Or perhaps just relief at having escaped him?
Somaly herself feels more and more strongly that the evening needs to take a different turn. Coming to the casino was unexpected in a predictable kind of way, but now they feel locked into something that really is just a repetition of things they are all too familiar with. So she suggests a dance bar, not because she has any great desire to go to such an unsophisticated establishment but because they will create a bigger stir there than anywhere else.
The others are drunk enough to be enthusiastic and they are in the habit of going along with Somaly’s ideas anyway. (Thinking about it on her own during an ordinary afternoon, she finds their complaisance and lack of initiative irritating. But now, wrapped as she is in the sweet and warm now of alcohol, she thinks it is absolutely self-evident she should be the one to lead them.)
She shares a cyclo with Mei. The warm damp night air is wonderfully clean after the fog of smoke in the casino. All the odours suddenly separate, become individual and verge on the intrusive. They have taken their drinks with them and they carry on a shouted conversation with Nana and Voisanne in the other cyclo. The city around them is silent and closed, the avenue empty. She puts her head back and looks up through the branches of the trees at the glittering stars passing slowly overhead. Is it not strange, she thinks (her thoughts floating like feathers), that she is never happier than when on the move from one place to another?
They draw up in front of the entrance to a bar called the Diamond Elephant. The street stretches empty in both directions before disappearing into the darkness. Outside the bar stands a double row of bicycles, guarded by a lanky shadow leaning against a tree.
Through the tall iron palings of the fence they can see symmetrically laid out tables, their white marble tops reflecting the harsh blue-white light of the strip lighting.
The clientele consists mainly of men of their own age. All of them are neatly dressed, wearing coloured shirts with ties that seem to have been picked at random. Their lack of elegance, she thinks, never fails to be astounding. They are well turned out, well washed, hair slicked back with water, but no more than that.
Three musicians are standing on a low stage, each of them wearing a sea-green blazer of a different cut and in a different shade. Waiting in silence, smoking. Beyond them there are a couple of tables occupied by girls who used to be in the Royal Ballet. They are ready to dance with anyone prepared to pay.
As expected, every head in the place turns to look at them as they enter. A slovenly waiter shows them to a table close to the stage and, as she follows the waiter with consciously languid steps, Somaly loses all her sophistication for an instant and revels in being the centre of everyone’s attention. As if in a dream she is both present in herself at the same time as observing herself from outside. She and her friends, their gleaming foreign sheath dresses, their pale skin and perfectly applied make-up, have clearly descended from realms that the clientele in a place like this have only read about in Réalités Cambodgiennes.
They are served cheap beer in tall glasses filled with ice and she finds the vulgarity of it all wonderful.
The owners of the restaurant—they, too, are Chinese—are sitting at the next table entering figures in various columns. Their backs are turned to the customers. There is a small gong on the table with the accounts and when one of the Chinese strikes it with a pencil, the small orchestra gets ready. The musicians scan the tables with a bored and indifferent look and, encouraged by his companions, a plump young man approaches the guitarist. They come to an agreement and the young man steps up to the solitary microphone in the middle of the stage.
There is scattered applause from his friends and he smiles nervously but strangely self-confidently at her table. The guitarist plays a few introductory phrases (the subtlety of their emotional quality contrasting with the tristesse signalled by his shrunken figure). The young man is a good singer and she feels a wave of goodwill wash over her. The quality of his full brown baritone is such that she feels she is hearing Tino Rossi’s Au pays de l’amour in a new way, whereas usually the memory of Rossi’s original cuts mercilessly through every thin tenor who tries to imitate the master.
Au pays de l’amour / Venez, venez, venez / le ciel est bleu / on est heureux la vie est belle.
She thinks her taste has changed, that love songs have started to describe how things really are.
When he sings of the heart as a powder keg, he turns towards her table in a theatrical way to the accompaniment of whistles and roars of laughter from his friends.
His audacity brings a flush to her cheeks and a flash of indignation runs through her veins. If she had been sober she would have been able to regain the advantage by giving a dazzling smile. But the distance between one emotion and another is too small at present. Instead, she turns back to her girlfriends, turning her back on the stage. (But the gesture is far too demonstrative and is consequently one more small but frustrating defeat.)
The discoloured marble tabletop, the beer bottles, the glasses in which the ice has melted. The ugly light from the strip lighting. She tries without any success to fall in with her friends’ frivolous mood and to shrug off her low spirits.
Nana says, without lowering her (now intoxicated) voice, don’t you get the urge to seduce that sort of jumped-up twerp? Just because it would be so utterly unthinkable.
Nana has unintentionally touched on a topic Somaly has frequently thought about and even written about. She has considered, for instance, the extremely proper cashier at the bank, the garbage collector with the evil eyes, the self-righteous foreman on Maman’s plantation. And if anyone were to ask her whether she included Sary in that category she wouldn’t have been able to give an immediate answer. That he doesn’t belong in that category now is absolutely certain, but what about the first time she saw him? A married man, sixteen years older than her, with five children and notorious for his womanizing? She is glad that she is not alone in recognizing that attraction can arise when the odious coincides with the forbidden. But she overcomes the impulse to agree with Nana’s little confession. To admit to quite such a prejudicial desire would be to bare her soul and she is not in the mood for that sort of intimacy. Nor do the others let themselves be drawn, so Nana is left sitting with a fixed smile on her face in the heavy silence that follows.
Mon amour, mon amour / Ces deux mots sont
très courts / On les dit et redit tous les jours / J’ai deux mots dans mon coeur.
Some of the guests have hired dancing partners. They are not dancing à l’occidentale but in the traditional style, a few steps away from one another and with graceful hand movements. The women with the expressionless faces they learnt at the ballet, their partners drunk and leering, commenting shamelessly on the bodies in front of them.
It is tediously provincial.
She tries again to regain her earlier carefree mood, but now that she is in the grip of low spirits she is afflicted by the old feeling that she is wasting her life in the wrong part of the world. Week after week, soirée after soirée, all peopled by the same mediocrities and in the company of the same ridiculous little entourage of old school friends.
With people who are prepared to put up with it.
And what is she doing here?
She suddenly feels a wave of nausea, which turns into a shivering fit that makes the skin on her arms break out in gooseflesh. Fortunately, it passes. But she is left with the uncertainty of whether that was the end of it or just a presentiment.
Voisanne says, let’s get out of here, Nana can stay with her fatty if she wants to.
Yes, Nana says, in the same loud voice as before. To Florida!
The nightclub is owned by one of Maman’s cousins and his French wife, who refuses to speak her mother tongue these days. If the whole business hadn’t become so childish she would have considered going with them. But her alcoholic elation has turned sour now and the thought of more beer at a shady dance hall disgusts her.
If only she knew where Sary was she could go there.
An idea which, on reflection, she drops. This is not the time, and nor is she in a condition, to seek him out.
So what is left of the evening?
She stands up and has the dizzy sensation of the floor rising to meet her. But then everything stays still. And she walks towards the exit through a narrow tunnel of voices, music and dazzling strip lights.
Song for an Approaching Storm Page 27