Hunters in the Dark (11 page)

He lit a bitter Alain Delon and got a one-dollar rum and Coke. Things disappeared in any case for different reasons. One day, not long ago, he had given to his class of thirteen-year-olds a copy of the famous daguerreotype of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris taken in the year 1839. He asked them to write an essay on the theme “Why is the street in this photograph empty?” It was the kind of thing they relished. But none of them got the right answer. The street was not empty because in those days there were very few vehicles and very few people and very few pigeons. Paris in 1839 was not empty. One could clearly see the awnings of busy shops and cafés. It was just that the exposure time had been about ten minutes, and thus nothing moving within that window of time had left a trace for the ages. There was just the ghostly silhouette of an unknown man having his boots polished by another man, at the corner of the cobbled Boulevard du Temple. It took more than ten minutes to shine a pair of boots in those days and he told them that he often wondered who that man was—the Frenchman with the thin, manly leg raised upon a shoe polisher's stool.

Sophal arrived early for her lesson, while Robert was still at Vong collecting his clothes. She went into the busy lunchtime restaurant and sat at a table and ordered a coffee and then asked the boys to go up and alert Mr. Beauchamp. “He's out,” they said at once, and she nodded quietly and resigned herself to a salad. She was early, it was true, but it was still a little odd. She looked out at the brilliant pool and the dark-skinned boys with nets skimming its surface. Her mind soon emptied and grew out of its irritation. She had spent the morning being interviewed at a clinic and she felt she had done well, but in the end it was of no interest. There was a futility about trying for such things. In the back of her mind she had a growing sense that her efforts were going to yield nothing down the line. Even in the last few weeks the future—the feeling of the future—had become foreshortened. It had narrowed and dimmed, just a little but enough to make her anxious. A suffocation had come upon her. What if she had no future at all?

She had been in Paris for a year and now Phnom Penh felt alien and small. Just as once there had seemed no way out if it, now there seemed no way into it. Even her command of Khmer had weakened a little—it was strange how that happened, as if the brain could handle two languages at a time, but never three. All her friends had what they called “language partners,” those fairly well-to-do foreigners who liked to spend a few hours a week with a pretty girl pretending to hone their English skills. It was usually their fathers who went out and found them—it was more seemly that way. She thought of herself as too old for these kinds of childish games, but sometimes there was nothing for it, one had to play by the local rules. Why care too much?

She impaled the cherry tomatoes lazily on her fork and wondered about Simon Beauchamp. He was good-looking all right. Young and nicely aloof and undesperate. He had been quite a surprise when he appeared the other night since, she idly supposed, she had been expecting a goofy desperado in shorts and flip-flops. When he walked in in his nice linens and his clean-shaven cheeks she had been pleasantly surprised. So what was he doing in Phnom Penh? she had wondered even as she was turning away from the piano and getting a good look at him. He was not an English teacher, for one thing. Nor was his name Simon: she felt it in her bones.

His eyes were spacious and pretty and you could open their doors and enter on light feet. A man of wide-open portals, but what was he expecting? A man didn't float around a foreign city for no reason whatsoever, not at the age of twenty-eight. A Khmer boy would never do that unless he was working at a large company in Germany or the United States. Yet there was no aura of leisure about Mr. Beauchamp. He was far from being a pathless wanderer. He bustled and bristled and his eyes were quiet and malicious.

He was a bit Heathcliff, wasn't he?

She smiled and wondered if she should have a drink. Her hands were itching to do it, to rise and click the fingers and say “Drink!”

But she waited. There might be someone there she knew, but there wasn't. She continued thinking about Simon. She was a little tired of men, in reality, because one could only go through the process a given number of times and suddenly one came to the realization that the repetitions were not only dull but toxic. And her parents were so desperate for her to get married and worse. She was almost twenty-six and, to their eyes, the danger zone was approaching.

For her part, she felt no such thing. All she felt was fatalistic curiosity and a desire to return to the outside world. Maybe even London, given how affluent his family seemed to be. It was a sin to think like that—and stupid, too—but it crossed her mind anyway as she finished her salad and ordered a gin and tonic out of boredom. It came with a sprig of mint and a pile of ice.

Her father would be shocked but she drank them quite a lot these days. They went down well in the hour before lunch, the black hour before consciousness arose. She had given up rising early like her parents. Now, with nothing to do but study and wait, she could get up when she wanted and go to bed when she wanted. It was contemptible but she wasn't yet twenty-six and she had her excuses. Everyone knew the future would be different.

Meanwhile, as she was sipping her freezing gin and tonic, Robert was watching Vong folding his clothes and looking at the clock on the wall. He would be back just in time.

“Now that I think about it,” the tailor was saying with his back turned to him, “I remember your friend Mr. Simon. He came in six months ago to get some shirts. My assistant said he was the most dashing man in Phnom Penh. I don't know why I forgot him. He is an antiques dealer, isn't he?”

“I never ask him about his work,” Robert said.

“I think he said he was an antiques dealer. I might have his card somewhere. These ones will fit you better than the ones you are wearing. It's always a problem wearing another man's clothes.”

“It certainly is. Did Mr. Simon say where he was living these days?”

“Not a word. You'd know that better than me. I just remember his shoes—he was wearing a remarkable pair of shoes.”

“Oh?”

“I thought he must be a man of taste.”

Vong turned with the package neatly tied up and handed it to him. There was nothing more to say between them and Robert let the awkward conversation die where it was. He went out hurriedly and rode back to Colonial Mansions on a motodop.

When he came through the lobby he immediately saw Sophal sitting alone by the window and it was too late to go up and change into his new clothes. It was too bad but he had to make the best of it. He came up to her table and she was sucking on a straw inserted into a gigantic gin and tonic and her eyes had gone askew. But he was not late at all. He apologized anyway and held up the tailor's bag and sat down opposite her and asked her if that was indeed a gin and tonic.

“It's the real thing,” she said.

“Then I'll have one too.”

When it came he touched her glass with his and they agreed that their English lesson had gotten off to a flying start, by Buddha.

“I don't expect you to give me an English lesson,” she said. “I've been speaking it since I was five. I thought—I thought I'd show you around the city a bit since my father is paying you anyway. So who cares. He's not going to know.”

“You know, I used to be a teacher,” Robert said slowly. “It wouldn't be any sweat for me. I know how to do it.”

“Yes, but it's a bore anyway. I just thought—I don't know, I thought you might be interesting. In some way.”

“Interesting?”

“A foreigner is always interesting. Even if he isn't.”

“But I'm not interesting.”

“It's not for you to say though. Were you really a teacher?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Why?”

“You don't seem like a teacher.”

She ate the mint sprig and looked at him calmly.

He said, “It's not the first time someone has said that. I think I have
teacher
written all over me.”

“No, you don't. You look like something else. I don't know what. A cattle rustler.”

“Oh?” He laughed, but she didn't.

“Something like that,” she said. “Something slippery.”

“I'm not slippery,” he snorted. “I wish I were.”

“You're slippery enough. My father doesn't think so though.”

“Your father is a good judge of character.”

“He's anything but that. But I look out for him. Shall we go for lunch somewhere else? I have a feeling someone I know is going to walk in and I don't want them to.”

“You said you'd show me around.”

“Let's go to Street 136 and eat some
pho
. Then I'll take you somewhere else.”

“Let's.”

“It'll be stinking hot.”

“I don't mind.”

Robert was pleased to be out of Colonial Mansions. He made to pay for her salad and drink but she had already settled up. He left his bag at the reception and they went out into the cloying heat and took one of the tuk-tuks that were always loitering along 102. They sat side by side and rattled without words into the maze of streets which shone in a dour, metallic sunlight. Sophal now assumed a cool, tensile posture, as if she were in public and this required a different composure. She looked straight ahead with her neck poised and upright and her eyes did not stray to either side. High above the city, however, the familiar atomic cloud that seemed to appear there every day was moving with its silent fatalism toward the sky's apex, where the sun monopolized all the light. Its edges were frilled like the coat of some unimaginable sea creature. There the mass of cloud turned suddenly brilliant and hysterical. It's moving, he thought idly, watching from under the tuk-tuk's shade, moving like a predator toward our light.

They came to 136 and 13 and a place called the Café de Coral. It was a Viet place with cheap outdoor tables opposite a Smile supermarket. The little area had an alarming concentration of dentists, with molar-shaped signs dangling above the mayhem with happy faces painted on them. They sat outside just at the edge of the fans' refreshment and ordered iced water. When it came she loosened up and took off her straw-brimmed hat and laid it on the chair next to hers.

“Is this the kind of place you like?” she asked.

“I love this kind of place.”

“I come here all the time by myself. Do you know
bau
buns?” He shook his head. “Then we'll try
bau
buns. You'll like them.”

It was the hour for
bau
steamed buns and purple kelp roll and turquoise herbal pudding downed with salt lemon water. She added twist rolls and mini cage buns and then iced Vietnamese coffee with the filters resting on the glasses. The sun went out as they sipped coffee and she talked about her year in Paris, because he had asked her to. At the junction the traffic began to thin and a few raindrops hit the dust and speckled it. She ate her buns with her fingers and when she looked up her eyes were obscure and resilient, giving away nothing.

“I even had a boyfriend there, a French stockbroker. The stockbrokers love Khmer girls. He told me that. He used to take me on holiday to Morocco and Rome and all that. I never told my parents.”

“You're telling me.”

“I told my friends so why not you? You're not going to report me. It's a private matter anyway—we don't tell our parents everything these days. We keep it to ourselves. Claude still writes to me.”

“What does he say?”

“He says he loves me and can we go on holiday to Marrakesh again.”

“And you don't go.”

“Of course I don't go.
C'est fini.
He's not going to come and live here. If he's not going to come and live here it's out of the question.”

“You could go back and live in Paris.”

“No, like I said—when something's finished, it's finished. For me it's finished. I want to live near my parents. I want to live in my own country.”

“Unlike me, then.”

She smiled. “It's a different circumstance. Are you close to your parents?”

“Not at all.”

“So there you are. Girlfriend?”

“C'est fini.”

“You've made a new start.”

“Yes, you could say that. I guess I have…”

“My father says one has to do that from time to time. Do you smoke?”

He took out a packet of the inevitable Alain Delons and she laughed.

“You're smoking those?”

“I got into the habit.”

“You'll be dead within a month.”

“I doubt it. They agree with me.”

“You're a strange one, Mr. Beauchamp. My father says you're getting over a broken heart.”

“It's not the case. I wish it was.”

“I don't think it's the case either. I think you're just kicking your heels.”

“All right,” he drawled, “you got me there. I
am
kicking my heels. It's not a crime.”

“I didn't say it was a crime. It's better to do it somewhere hot and cheap. Do you like the girls here?”

“I haven't got to them yet.”

She pulled out her own cigarettes, a Thai brand called Wonder.

“These aren't much better,” she said. “But they taste good with Vietnamese coffee.”

He took one and they shared the smoke.

“If this was an American movie,” she said, “we'd be censored. We'd be erased.” She mixed four spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee and gave him a smile which had maybe been enhanced on that same street.

He said, “Yeah, whatever. I find I'm smoking more now.”

“My father says it'll make me older by ten years by the time I'm twenty-eight. I'll give it up then.”

“You should give it up now.”

“I certainly won't.”

The afternoon began to wear down. Egg sellers on their bikes moved down 136 with their loudspeakers; the molar signs began to glow. One could feel the rain coming, the tingle on the tongue.

Sophal looked through him, but it was not coldly. She was merely curious about him. She had met men like him before in Europe, the subtly vibrating ones that have an uneasy distraction about them. The ones who are polite and impeccable and who never tread on your toes. They usually came from a little money and had been to good schools, but they were not happy or festive—it was not enough for them. They were brooding, internal men living in their world of ease and frost and corduroy and she found them attractive and chilling at the same time. The bright light here exposed them in some way. They became happier and more ghostlike at the same time. Some of them married local women and settled down and managed bad restaurants; others drifted about. One didn't know what to say about them. It wasn't pity exactly, it was more like a maternal anxiety. One wanted to save them, to put them right. She wondered if she had a sad propensity to be attracted to the exotic. Because for better or worse the Khmer boys didn't do it for her, for some reason. She always said to her mother that she was “spoiled.” The stint in Paris had ruined her for life and it was the world of the barang that now seemed richer in possibilities. She might once have felt guilty about it. But there is no guilt in the ruthless pursuit of happiness, there is just the pursuit. It's like moving toward the light. One crawls on all fours, if need be. One crawls on one's belly and whimpers, it doesn't matter. And in the end weren't the white men the same the other way around? What were they looking for? They didn't even know. Her father had a fine phrase for it which he had found in his history books: hunters in the dark. It came from medieval Japan and referred to the restless courtiers of the Imperial Court who were always hunting for their own advantage. But also, as her father liked to add, for happiness. The phrase was his favorite way of summing up younger people of the present age. His own ravaged generation was another matter.