Figurehead (24 page)

‘Well, I like to think so. Although I would perhaps suggest that the expression “less privileged” – rather than “oppressed” – better reflects the progress and the positivity of human history.’

‘In my opinion, only privileged people are free to dismiss the word “oppression.”’

‘Please, I intend no offence. I meant only that I believe life is always improving, slowly but inexorably.’

‘May I tell you a story about being “less privileged”? One day in 1974, in Takeo Province in the south of my country, in our Liberated Zone, in an era during which we were supposedly good friends with our Vietnamese brothers, three of our young freedom fighters came across a Vietnamese patrol. Our poor Kampucheans offered to pool their meagre supplies and the Vietnamese said, “Yes, let us eat together but, first, let us share tea.” The Kampuchean boys ran about and collected wood for this purpose. “We are sorry but we have not found rocks big enough to rest the teapot on. What do you suggest we do?” they asked the Vietnamese captain. “The solution is so simple that I cannot believe you did not think of it yourselves: perhaps you are stupid? Well, no matter: before we make our tea we must finish the day’s work. Will you help us? I want you each to dig a hole, not too far apart, deep and narrow,” the Vietnamese captain said – I will not identify this captain, diplomatic niceties do not permit it, but suffice to say he is now a prominent figure in Hanoi.

‘The Kampuchean lads assumed that the holes were to bury ammunition. They eagerly commenced digging. They worked very hard and soon finished the holes. “Just stand in your holes so we can check the depth,” the Vietnamese captain said. As soon as they did so the Vietnamese soldiers began shovelling dirt into the holes. When the three Cambodians were buried all the way to their necks, the Vietnamese soldiers piled the wood in the space between them. While the naïve young patriots looked at each other and finally sensed trouble, the Vietnamese captain lit a match and dropped it between them. Soon the woodpile was ablaze and as the Cambodians burned alive the Vietnamese captain balanced a pot on their heads and said, “Do not spill my tea.” Soon the kettle boiled and then all was quiet.’

Gallasi unfolded his arms and scratched his chest. ‘But I have heard this story before. It is a fable, yes?’

‘A story based on true events.’

‘I must confess I find nothing constructive about it.’

‘I am illustrating a point.’

‘With the greatest respect, I do not think it helps your cause to tell it.’

‘Perhaps. But the Vietnamese remain in my country in vast numbers. Of course, you cannot agree with me out loud, but I think you know that Vietnam’s desire to conquer continues unabated. But when I express concerns – and I have specific, documented complaints – the world turns away from me and mutters “xenophobe.” So why not tell my fable, as you call it?’

They sat silently now as the city traffic thickened. Too late, Gallasi realised they were passing Kiry’s villa, where two months earlier the mob had beaten him. The driver slowed behind a pack of Hondas, giving Kiry a clear view of the bolted gates, the boarded-up windows and the graffitied walls.

‘My apologies,’ Gallasi said. ‘It was thoughtless of me to take this route.’

‘Yes, yes, apology accepted,’ Kiry said. He folded his arms and stared out the window. ‘The past is gone. Just to be in Phnom Penh again, I feel as if I am waking from a coma and that my skin is discovering sunlight all over again.’

They pulled into a quiet compound which sat in the shadow of the Royal Palace and was protected from the world by tall white walls and an entrance with a manual boom gate and a sentry box.

‘Is this it?’ Kiry said.

‘Yes, Your Excellency. I very much hope you will find it satisfactory.’

‘Oh dear. I’ll be able to hear Sihanouk snoring. And fornicating,’ Kiry said in Khmer to the driver, who laughed. Gallasi, who only knew two Cambodian phrases – ‘Do you sell red wine?’ and ‘Can I smell it first?’ – grinned and nodded.

Gallasi rushed around to open Kiry’s door. Kiry set off across the sparse garden towards the main building, a two-storey colonial mansion behind which several squat buildings lay. When Gallasi made to follow, Kiry turned and said, ‘This is all most agreeable. Thank you again.’

‘But I haven’t shown you inside yet.’

‘I would be most grateful if you would collect me in time for tonight’s reception at the Royal Palace.’

‘Very well.’

The garden was sparse. There was a green tinge on some areas of the ground, several mango trees and a pond that was home to a family of enormous catfish. A gardener, raking dirt, was watched by several security guards. A single lost duck, desperate for a swim but petrified of the catfish, wandered about aimlessly.

Kiry greeted the gardener, who bowed so low that he needed help getting up.

‘Please feel free, Uncle, to take that duck home for your family’s dinner,’ Kiry told the gardener, whose hands shook with what Kiry felt sure was gratitude.

Today while I was eating my prescription breakfast – raw muesli with
cashews and sun-dried prunes and something called lecithin, all of it
softened (that’s overstating it) with soy milk – I saw a photograph of
Nhem Kiry. He was standing on a carpet at Pochentong airport, shaking
hands and smiling with some bloke from the UN. Kiry had hold of the
other bloke’s elbow with his spare hand. Poor bastard probably never even
saw it coming: he’ll get grief for weeks about being so nice. I almost feel
sorry for him.

If the photo is anything to go by, Kiry is ageing gracefully. The shit. He
looks fit, wiry. He could have been a boxer if he wasn’t such a coward. He’s
still got that wavy hair and it doesn’t look like there’s any grey: that’s thanks
to a bottle, probably.

It’s so unfair. How come he’s still in the centre of the action? I should be
feted in Phnom Penh. He should be here at the arse end of the Earth trying
to avoid going to bingo and mulling over whether for lunch tomorrow to eat
the ham steak with pineapple rings or the lamb’s fry with bacon.

* * *

Ted shook hands with the woman from the publishing company. He didn’t understand modern women at the best of times but this one petrified him. She had shimmering black hair and matching eyelashes. She wore red-framed glasses, a black shirt set off by a red bra strap, a red skirt, black stockings and red shoes with thick black heels. She gripped a bulging black leather briefcase.

They stood in the foyer of the Concertina Rest Home – ‘Our shopfront to the world,’ as Ted once overheard the CEO describe it to a politician, an ex-trade unionist with gouged wrinkles, sculptured white hair, aftershave perspiration and hands that slapped men on the back and women on the arse. The pollie had come to open the revamped high-dependency wing. After he cut the ribbon and pledged his government would solve all problems geriatric (he stopped just short of promising to cure old age), he spent twenty minutes pretending to drink tea and calling everybody either ‘love’ or ‘mate.’ Ted circled but the politician avoided him with such finesse that Ted soon realised that he was doing it deliberately. He wasn’t offended. He knew that free-market lefties had to be careful who they fraternised with. And he was quite chuffed to discover that he still had a noxious reputation.

The publisher was not diverted by the Concertina Rest Home’s soothing apricot-coloured wallpaper or by the row of watercolour vistas on the far wall: wildflowers, vineyards and treeless green hills curved like buttocks. Neither was she lulled by the lavender-soaked air, which masked the smell of antiseptic and boiled broccoli. She focused exclusively on her task, which, so far as Ted could tell, was to ensure that he did not collapse and die in her presence.

She steered Ted to an ergonomic couch. ‘Do you need to sit down? Here, take my arm, ease yourself down here. Are you all right? ARE YOU COMFORTABLE?’

‘I’m not deaf.’

‘No, of course you’re not. I’ll sit over here, shall I?’

‘No, no,’ Ted said, lifting himself off the couch with difficulty. ‘I don’t want to conduct my business in full view of the front office. Geraldine – over there, answering the phones – already knows too much about too many people. Come this way. I thought we could sit in the sunroom.’

‘Well, I don’t know.’

‘Or we could go to my room.’

‘The sunroom sounds pleasant, very pleasant indeed. So long as it’s not too far away.’

‘Why don’t you take my arm?’

They set off along the corridor. After a few metres, Ted began to fake a limp. He didn’t want to disappoint her by seeming too healthy and, besides, it was a pleasure for him to have a lady on his arm, even one dressed like a Hiroshima wasp. But suddenly Ted’s other leg turned as heavy and fixed as concrete. By the time they reached the far end of the corridor he was panting. The publisher put her arm firmly around his waist and steered him to the handrail.

The sunroom was empty except for Marjorie Tabbener, who said to the publisher, ‘Hello, Lea.’

‘Hello, dear,’ the publisher said, accepting a sugar-speckled jube despite Ted’s chivalrous warning: ‘Don’t chew it.’

‘How’s the photography going, sweetheart?’

‘This isn’t Lea, Marjorie. Lea comes on Wednesdays.’

‘No. That can’t be right,’ Marjorie said. She squinted at the publisher, then abruptly dropped her head as if in prayer.

Ted eased onto a two-seater and patted the cushion beside him but the publisher chose to sit opposite on a straight-backed chair, allowing her a view of the rose garden.

‘Well, now,’ she said. ‘Your name is still quite well known in Australia—’

‘Quite well known? Only quite well known?’

‘Still quite well known, at least amongst the older generation.’ She handed Ted a paltry advance cheque. ‘It’d be ten times as big if you’d been a cricketer.’

The publisher paused to extricate the jube from her back teeth with her tongue. Ted watched her neck muscles contract as she forced the whole thing down her throat. She coughed once, then said, ‘I’d like you to call it
The Confessions of Edward Whittlemore
.’

‘You make it sound like I’ve got some explaining to do.’

‘I certainly hope so. I want you to spill the beans on yourself. What did you get up to on all those trips to Russia? And did you really write propaganda for the North Koreans?’

‘That wasn’t me. That was Wally Ball. And Wally wasn’t into propaganda. He told the truth.’

‘Ah, yes, Ball, what’s the goss on him? Was he really KGB? That’s the sort of thing I’d like you to go into. Was Ho Chi Minh gay? What was Mao like? As a leader, certainly, but also as a man? Did Kissinger really have a crush on Pat Nixon? And I’d like a full chapter on Pol Pot.’

‘But I never met Pol Pot. I never even laid eyes on him.’

‘Are you sure?’ She shuffled her notes, peered at a page. ‘It says here that the two of you were quite close for a time.’

‘Absolutely not. Of course I met some of the Khmer Rouge in the early days. The very early days, before they turned bad. Bun Sody was my friend.’

‘Bung who?’

‘Bun Sody. He was murdered for being such a fine fellow. And it’s a matter of public record that I knew Nhem Kiry.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘I never really warmed to him, though. He was too pious for my taste.’

‘Can you write about Pol Pot by writing about these others?’

‘Of course,’ Ted said, holding tight to the cheque. ‘And I did know Kissinger. And Ho Chi Minh. And Mao. And Brezhnev. And Castro.’

‘All right, then.’

Marjorie shifted in her seat and let out a long slow fart. Only when she opened her eyes did she remember that Ted and the publisher were in the room. ‘Oh my,’ she said, hauling herself out of the chair. With surprising purpose, she turned on her flat-soled shoes and bolted.

‘I also intend to offer my views on the United Nations peace plan for Cambodia: why it’s a sham, why it’s bound to fail,’ Ted said.

‘Oh no, you—’

‘
No?
’

‘You don’t want to write something that might be proved wrong two weeks after it’s released. Or worse, something that’s out of date. Remember, you’re not writing journalism anymore: you can’t change your facts day in day out.’

‘But I’ve got important thi—’

‘Really, I do think it would be best if you concentrated on the past. Focus on the juicy stuff. Is it true you had an affair with Martha Gellhorn?’

‘Me and Marty? I’ll never tell.’

‘That’s a pity. But you used to be quite the ladies’ man, right?’

‘Used to be?
Used to be?
’

Ted tried to wink but the whole side of his face contorted. The publisher eased her knees together and lifted her shoulders slightly.

‘Of course, and I realise this might be painful for you, I want you to include a chapter on your journalistic philosophy.’

‘I’d rather not.’

‘People like that sort of thing these days. And in your case, of course, it’s essential: you’ll never get away with it if you don’t justify your personal politics.’

‘My ... justify, what do you mean,
justify
? What do you mean,
get
away with it
?’

‘You’ll have to explain your attraction to communism. You’ll have to offer some sort of defence. That’s the whole point of the book, obviously.’

‘I’ll tell you what I told Lewis Dellmann when he wanted me to write a philosophical appraisal of the American War in Vietnam: I don’t do philosophy. I chase stories.’

‘Oh, I had no idea you knew Dirty Dellmann. That’s a stroke of luck. And there’s your hook: you can reflect on the terrible trouble he had abandoning Stalinism, despite everything, and compare it with your own slow awakening to the truth.’

‘My slow awakening?’

‘To the truth, yes.’

‘But what if I’m still asleep?’

She stared at Ted, aghast, and then she smiled for the first time since she’d put the jube in her mouth.

‘Oh, Edward, are you? Are you still asleep? But that’s simply wonderful.’

I’m famous, infamous really, for my reporting on the American War in
Vietnam (as anyone who knows their history calls it) and on the Cambodian
conflict. But before Indochina came Korea. My first war exposed me
to the simplicities of the world and to the reality that, for men and for
nations, a bare-faced lack of integrity can be a great asset. The whole event
seemed like a badly organised agricultural fair – confused exhibitors, animals
roaming free, far too many loud speakers – but I suppose that’s only
because I had no idea what was really happening. When I wasn’t crippled
by fear, I spent my days faithfully recording whatever moments the authorities
allowed me to see.