Song for an Approaching Storm

by Peter Froeberg Idling

  She drinks her drink, picks at the dishes. The alcohol is already making her thoughts light, translucent. She wonders vaguely what was so special about the amulet. And what colour the ship was painted afterwards.

  Voisanne touches the back of her hand. She feels the touch of cool damp fingers on her skin before she follows her friend’s eyes to the entrance.

  Immediate recognition, the blood rushes from her head.

  It’s Sar.

  The familiar silhouette, in his usual black suit, his hair impeccably combed. Not striking, but still handsome. She sees his eyes searching and, before his gaze fixes on her and he pushes his way through the tables towards them with a cold hard face, she has time to think that far from being the hunter, there is actually something of the hunted about him.

  WEDNESDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER 1955

  The tennis courts are immediately below the balustrade and through the pink frame of the bougainvillea, she sees a couple of Europeans with rackets in their hands. A dozen or so sparkling white balls in irregular formation on either side of the net. She listens to the sound of soft thuds alternating with the crump of taut strings and the short exchanges between the players. In the background there is the laughter of children at the swimming pool on the other side of the building. The sky is greyish white and the air stifling. She feels hot and very listless. Her stomach is troubling her again. She wonders whether she is coming down with something?

  It feels uncomfortable to have people looking nosily in her direction, even though she knows that outwardly she looks every bit as radiant as she always does. Perhaps she ought to make an appointment with Dr Siebold? But then she would have to talk to Maman first. That’s easily done, of course, but she has no desire to be met with the usual absence of care and concern. (Maman tends to receive news of a temperature/headache/rash/sore throat with the same mixture of uninterestedness and irritation as when some item of domestic equipment or the plantation lorry needs repairing.)

  Now and again she reminds herself that her situation changed radically the evening before. But it hasn’t really sunk in. She thinks: what exactly is it that’s changed? Is it really a lasting change or is it still merely parenthetical?

  To be in the zone of the undecided has become a habit. A habit that clearly cannot be broken so easily. So she constantly finds herself falling back into the frame of mind she had been in before, with the same vague recognition that there was something to be decided, something to be settled.

  An older French couple is sitting at the next table. The woman is eating soup, the man carefully picking at an omelette. They haven’t said a word to each other since they sat down. At first she wondered whether they had just had a quarrel. But there is no tension between them and she becomes more and more convinced that they no longer have anything to say to one another. She thinks that she will never live in the kind of relationship in which all topics of conversation have run out. Her marriage will be an unbroken exchange of thoughts, a perpetual voyage of discovery into the world of her partner.

  She is not used to sitting waiting like this. But he will come. And until he does she is free to leave whenever she wants to. If only she felt really well, but it will probably pass, soon.

  She notices the way her eyes are skimming through the items on the menu. She is hungry, but every item makes her feel slightly nauseous.

  The waiter had a message for her when she arrived. Things had come up, he would be anything up to an hour late. But he hoped she would be patient.

  With nothing to do, the waiter is now standing by the balustrade looking out over the almost empty car park. It’s not like the beauty contest when every car importer in the country had been invited to show off the latest models. And all the guests had arrived by car. That, she thinks, was possibly the first traffic jam this kingdom had experienced. And she remembers that ridiculous part of the contest when each contestant was paired with a man dressed as an animal. “La Belle et la Bête”. She had been partnered by one of the car importers, a garrulous man of her own age dressed as a turtle. Trop bête quoi.

  She wonders whether they serve turtle soup? That would be a suitable choice, wouldn’t it? She beckons the waiter over and, with a smile, he regrets that they don’t. He asks whether she would like anything else and she orders at random a glass of wine and a Croque monsieur à l’ancienne as a sort of gesture of defiance to her delicate stomach. And regrets her choice the moment the waiter disappears down the stairs.

  The Turtle had invited her out for a drive in his dark-green Mercedes. That year’s model. He pointed it out to her. He had needed to, it being so low-slung that it was scarcely possible to pick it out among all the ordinary hulking black models. Its hood was down and its lines made it look as if it were in motion even when it was standing still. To her delight he had offered to let her drive it, with himself as instructor. And carried away by all the cocktails, by being right at the heart of the pageant, by all the beautiful things around her, she had answered with a euphoric yes.

  By the following day, however, she had recognized her mistake and avoided answering his suggestions as to when would be a suitable day for their excursion. His telephone calls and postcards ceased after a while, as they always do. Sooner or later everyone’s patience runs out.

  But her discomfort at the thought of bumping into him at one event or another stayed with her.

  Which is why that morning’s invitation to inaugurate the new winter collection of prêt-à-porter at Petit Paris surprises her. She is sure that the Turtle boasted that he was on the board of the department store. So should this invitation be seen as a renewed approach on his part, or has the whole business of her ignoring his suggestions already been forgotten?

  So be it. Modelling at a department store is hardly a grand offer but it is nevertheless a first confirmation of what she herself is convinced of. Still half asleep and feeling distinctly sick she said she would get back to them. ( Just getting out of bed felt like an insuperable task.) Now, a couple of hours later, she thinks she will accept the offer. Any career is bound to involve less showy jobs. Especially in the early stages. The crowning of Miss Cambodia may have been exactly that kind of routine and less attractive task for Miss World, Miss Riviera and Miss Elegance, when they were actually dreaming of rather more sumptuous galas in Hollywood. Every stage in life ought to have its heartfelt desires that contrast with the occasional pettiness of everyday existence. Isn’t that so?

  She hears the jangling bell of the telephone on the ground floor. She takes the mirror out of her handbag, raises her sunglasses and looks into her own eyes. Unchanged, brown. No visible sign of yesterday evening. Everything is where it should be, everything is as it should be.

  She holds the gaze in the mirror, recalling the incomprehensibly contradictory emotions she felt when Sar suddenly appeared in the foyer of the restaurant. A bubble of childish joy at seeing him again at the same time as being paralysed by ice-cold terror. She had wanted to flee, and she had wanted to embrace him. It had been impossible to separate the two impulses. And then she had been unable to understand what he was saying, finding herself transfixed instead by suddenly recognizing the buttons of his suit, the composition of his face, the sight of his pale, slim, beautiful hands that she is so fond of holding. And how strongly she had sympathized with him because of the rage, or was it hatred, or perhaps sorrow, that was in his eyes where love used to be. Confused by the way everything seemed to be happening simultaneously, she had been overwhelmed by the presence of something uncontrollable she had never seen in him before, something that had lain hidden behind his usual friendly dignity. After that everything had gone into slow motion as, in reality, can only happen on film: her friends were rising to their feet and telling him to leave, while he continued to repeat whatever it was he was saying to her. And the intensity, she thinks, did not lie in his words or in the rough way they took hold of his jacket and bundled him out when they thought he was going too slowly, it lay in the way she just sat still and
said nothing in spite of all the things she could have said and done. It could all have been prevented, she could have run after him, but she did nothing. The intensity and overpowering nature of her passivity proved insuperable, and she finds it quite impossible now to give a reason why.

  The waiter returns with her order. The sight of the toasted bread, melted cheese and glass of red wine makes her feel sick. She needs something light. Something light as air.

  For want of a better idea she asks for a glass of champagne and, she adds, a bottle of Vichy water. When the waiter brings that order she realizes that it, too, was a mistake.

  She lights a cigarette instead, asks the French couple for the time.

  Perhaps she should go to Petit Paris instead and tell them what she has decided? The money from last Monday is still in her handbag and there will doubtless be something she wants once she sees it. And in view of what she is going to tell them, she may be offered a reduction or shown some special item they have been keeping back.

  She beckons the waiter over again and says that her delayed companion will take care of the bill when he arrives. And tell him that she can be reached at the department store, or the Café de la Poste, or on the telephone in the evening. He gives a professional nod and says, but of course, Mademoiselle.

  She asks the doorman at the entrance to get her a cyclo. He, in turn, yells at a boy of school age to get hold of what she has asked for.

  She stands in the shade looking at the trees and the green grass of the garden. The scent of damp foliage, the chattering of birds and a passing moped. The sweating tennis players are sitting on the other side of the court and, with an attentive smile, a different waiter is taking their order.

  What she would like most is to go home and sleep away this weariness that ordinary sleep seems incapable of remedying.

  The boy returns with a well-maintained cyclo, its frame painted red and with a white leather saddle. The driver is an older man in short trousers. He has an unusually stern face. At first he seems almost frightening, but when he asks politely where she wants to go his voice is very deep and has a gentle dark tone.

  She settles in her seat, senses the driver’s muscles overcoming the inertia of the vehicle and slowly getting it moving. They turn onto Avenue Daun Penh and the soft crunch of sand is replaced by the quiet hum of rubber tyres on asphalt.

  epilogue (retake)

  The car’s headlamps cast a beam of soft yellow light. Fleetingly they pick out the white flash of collar and cuffs and capture the tight arc of an empty cigarette packet curving towards the gutter.

  In the silence left by the car his footsteps echo from peeling walls and closed shutters, from hoardings with faded posters for toothpaste, tobacco, tyres.

  Behind him a restaurant, its name pulsing in three languages, three colours.

  In the lamplight at the corner a parked cluster of cyclos. Brakes on and drivers sleeping, curled in the passenger seats.

  He moves on.

  A departure that cannot be other than a departure. To turn, to go back—that is not his nature.

  And her. She seems to be listening to the words being said, her eyes on the speaker. Lost in thought she takes a fried cricket from the plate, bites into it, careful of the smooth pink surface of her lipstick. A leg breaks from the insect’s body and drops unnoticed.

  She looks over her shoulder for a moment. Her neck, her high red collar. Her skin seems to glisten when she turns her head. Their respective movements, and her painted eyelashes which blink once and then twice before smiling at the others round the table. Spiralling wreaths of cigarette smoke. The insect’s leg in her lap.

  postlude

  Sar later called himself Pol Pot and led the 1975 Khmer Rouge revolution in which 1.7 million people lost their lives. He died in 1998, still fleeing justice.

  Sary fell out of favour in 1958 and joined the opposition to Prince Sihanouk. He was assassinated in exile in 1962.

  Somaly had a daughter by Sary in 1956 and was then (along with another pregnant lover) installed in his home as his concubine. She later emigrated to the United States, where she still lives.

  Author’s Thanks

  A novel is rarely the work of one individual and the present one is no exception. I should particularly like to thank (for conversations, reading support, words and deeds):

  Pernilla Ahlsén, David Chandler, Nina Eidem, Richard Herold, Ulf Krook, Ida Linde, Zabbar Neang, Milton Osborne, Nhek Sarin, Steve Sem-Sandberg, Philip Short, Alexander Skantze, Kim Son, Sara Stridsberg, Jenny Teng and Emma Warg.

  I have also, both intentionally and unintentionally, gathered inspiration (and the odd word here and there) from other works of literature. I am grateful to the authors.

  Also Available from Pushkin Press

  PUSHKIN PRESS

  Pushkin Press was founded in 1997, and publishes novels, essays, memoirs, children’s books—everything from timeless classics to the urgent and contemporary.

  Our books represent exciting, high-quality writing from around the world: we publish some of the twentieth century’s most widely acclaimed, brilliant authors such as Stefan Zweig, Marcel Aymé, Antal Szerb, Paul Morand and Yasushi Inoue, as well as compelling and award-winning contemporary writers, including Andrés Neuman, Edith Pearlman and Ryu Murakami.

  Pushkin Press publishes the world’s best stories, to be read and read again.

  Copyright

  Pushkin Press

  71–75 Shelton Street,

  London WC2H 9JQ

  Original text © Peter Fröberg Idling and Natur & Kultur, Stockholm 2012

  English translation © Peter Graves 2014

  Song for an Approaching Storm first published in Swedish as Sång till den storm som ska komma in 2012

  This translation first published by Pushkin Press in 2014

  This ebook edition published in 2014

  The cost of this translation was defrayed by a subsidy from the Swedish Arts Council, gratefully acknowledged.

  ISBN 978 1 782271 02 4

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press.

  www.pushkinpress.com