Love Songs From a Shallow Grave (27 page)

He walked in through the shopfront. They sold baskets there, finely woven bags and purses, stacks of place mats and coasters. All too delicate to be pilfered by an army. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed or destroyed. The till tray remained open, bank notes were pinned inside it under wire clips. Siri walked up the staircase at the back of the shop noisily, he thought, in his leather sandals. He followed the sounds into a kind of study with cabinets and bookshelves against one wall and bank upon bank of chests of drawers. And, on his knees rifling through them was a child of thirteen or fourteen. He had already amassed a small pile of booty on the floor beside him, mostly ballpoint pens and coloured pencils. He was so engrossed in his search that he hadn’t heard Siri enter.

The doctor smiled. He was about to turn and leave the child to his treasure hunt when he noticed the muscles on the boy’s neck tense. It was as if he sensed a presence. He turned his head and saw the old man standing there. He seemed to tremble. His eyes widened and he fumbled around him for something on the floor. He found what he was looking for on a shelf in front of him. His pistol was fat and clumsy in his hand, but holding it seemed to give him confidence. He was no longer afraid. His face hardened and it was then that Siri recognised him. He’d looked into those eyes every night for more than a week. This was the young assassin from his nightmare. The boy was real. So was the gun. He climbed to his feet with the weapon in front of him and snarled and spat out words Siri didn’t understand. The gun was the child’s courage, his image, his personality. Siri knew it had killed before. The boy swaggered up to the old man and levelled his personality at Siri’s forehead.

It was a performance that had never failed. Siri was certain men, women and other children had quaked with fear at this same show of strength. Siri knew the boy would have no qualms about pulling the trigger He smelt death on him like the scent of gunpowder on a shooter’s hand. Siri knew that if he spoke just one word of Lao it would be his epitaph. So he kept quiet. He smiled and raised his right hand and he slapped the little boy hard across the cheek. The blow snapped the boy’s head to one side and the gun suddenly looked more like a plaything in his hand. He stared at Siri in amazement and the doctor glared calmly back into those young eyes. What thoughts, what memories passed through the child’s head in those few seconds? Confidence was suddenly replaced with indecision which rapidly became humiliation, and the boy began to cry. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he huffed back the sobs. At that moment, the little soldier was three years old again, and helpless, and just a child.

Siri turned away from the shaking gun barrel, shook his head, and walked back down to the street. He paused by the front shutter to catch his breath. He didn’t know why he wasn’t dead. Perhaps, being elderly and white-haired, it was conceivable he was one of the mysterious brothers of the Red Khmer. The boy might have seen the old man in a motorcade or heard him talk at a training seminar. Everyone over sixty looked the same. But, more likely, it was because the doctor had shown no fear, and it was fear that satisfied the blood lust of the little killer. Without it, the kill meant nothing. There was no power-fed adrenalin. Nothing to disguise the fact that every day was a trauma for the child.

A block away, Siri’s legs began to wobble and he caught hold of a tree trunk, hanging on to it for dear life until the shakes worked their way out of his body.

“Not the way you’d planned to go, Siri,” he said. “Not in the script. A Douglas Fairbanks ending for you, old boy. A fitting hero’s exit. Not popped by a little lad with a grownup’s gun. No, sir.”

He often talked to himself when he was overwhelmed with fear. He saw it as a more dignified reaction than wetting himself. And, invariably, it helped. With his legs back under control he walked one more short block, looking over his shoulder the whole way. He was at the intersection of a wide street. It was one he knew well. One he recalled often when searching for happy thoughts. This was Boulevard Noradon, named after the fickle regent, the mood-swing prince who rented out his soul to any passing devil. Siri was no fan of royalty but if only half the stories he’d heard today were true, he wouldn’t be at all surprised to find Sihanouk’s head on a pole on his own street. He couldn’t imagine Brother Number One chumming up with the little regent.

He stepped onto the deserted tree-lined boulevard. This was where he and his wife had walked hand in hand back in the forties. It was one of his golden scenes. Those moments had become fewer and farther between as Boua became fanatically entwined in the struggle for independence. He needed to hold on to that Phnom Penh for as long as he could. But there were no smiling faces now. No lovers on benches. No impossible beds of tulips and roses. This was a morning-after Boulevard Noradon. Most of the imported trees had withered through lack of care. There was litter everywhere and evidence of vandalism. One street lamp was bent like a boomerang. Across the street stood half the national bank. A large dented strong room, open and empty, peeked from between destroyed brickwork.

Siri began to walk along the central reservation in the direction of Phnom Temple. He passed a porcelain toilet and, twenty metres further on, waded through slippery puddles of French piastre coins. To his left the central market, the old Chinese quarter, was a graveyard of wrecked umbrellas and shredded awnings. It gave off none of the market scents, no rotten vegetables, no stale cereals, no putrid meat. This was a market lifeless for three years. It was about now that Siri began to hum. There was certainly nothing to hum about. The last dregs of joy at being alive in this world had been drained out of him in the cellar of the Lao embassy. But it was the type of annoying ditty you might pick up from the radio or Thai TV commercials. He couldn’t shake it off.

He still had that ‘last man after the atomic bomb’ feeling as he walked past the impressive Ecole Miche where he and Boua had attended night classes beneath ceiling fans vast as helicopter blades. He reached the European quarter. He had no idea how long he’d been walking but recently he’d been stepping to the tune in his head. He tried to find words for it but nothing came. It was lulling him into a bloated sense of security and self-confidence. Making him think that it was perfectly all right to be walking the streets of a hostile city all alone. He reached Le Cercle Sportif. To his right the Phnom Temple stood defiant at the top of its lion-guarded steps. Across the square was the national library. He knew he was only a block away from his hotel. All being well he could stroll past the guards and nobody would say anything.

Such was his aim. He had survived. He headed off across the untended grass and could see the roof of house number two in the distance. But when he reached the lawn of the national library he stopped cold. His sadness for a beautiful defiled city turned to a bitter acid in his gut. Strewn across the grass were the soggy remains of thousands of books. Tens of thousands. Some old tomes had been set alight and had melded together. Illustrated pages flapped in the breeze.

Precious and priceless volumes providing mulch for the next generation of plants. He crouched and paid reverence to the victims of ignorance and wondered whether anyone else in this city had been able to mourn the death of culture. It was then that he believed it all. If Big Brother could destroy literature and history, he could destroy lives.

He walked back through the overgrown grass of the lawn and raked his fingers through his hair. He had to get out of this place, this country. He was in the dead centre of a dead city. He had to convince somebody of what was happening here, but he had no proof. One more block and…The song was playing loudly in his brain now, confusing his thoughts. And finally the lyrics came to him. Not to his mind, exactly, but to his ears. He could hear the male tenor voice as clearly as from a radiogram. It was even more hauntingly beautiful than he remembered it from his dreams. It came to him not from the giant speakers in front of the Ministry of Information, nor from the prayer room of the empty temple, but from the ground beneath his feet.

This was the spot. This was, in some inscrutable way, the answer. He dropped to his knees, put his hands together to show respect and, without once considering the ramificartions, began to dig into the rain-softened earth.

CAN WE HAVE SEX TONIGHT?

P
hosy and Dtui had run out of tears. They were as dry and exhausted as old batteries. Phosy had squeezed his wife’s hand bloodless. They sat on the flat roof of the police dormitory on two director’s chairs their neighbour had once requisitioned for evidence and forgotten to give back. There was still rain in the air but it was an almost imperceptible mist. The low clouds denied them a view of the universe, and the night all around them was so black they might have been in the belly of a giant river dragon. But still they thanked the stars they couldn’t see that only Siri and Daeng had been witness to their foolishness.

Phosy had been astounded at Siri’s accusations at first. Why in blazes would he have an affair? Who’d want him? Where would he ever find the time? How would he muster the enthusiasm? And, what would the point have been? He already had a wife and he was doing a poor job of keeping
her
happy. At first he’d wondered whether Siri had been encroaching on the subject because the old fellow himself was on the hunt, or already had his snout in the chicken coop. But then, no. Who in their right mind would cheat on Madame Daeng, a woman very handy with a cut-throat razor? And then the note. Siri’s hurried note before he left. Tying up loose ends. Expressing doubts, and then the postscript. The last thought of Chairman Siri. “If you’re having an affair, stop it.”

He’d told Dtui about the note. He hadn’t been able to show it to her because he’d destroyed the postscript. But he laughed it off as one of Siri’s overprotective moments. A ridiculous thing.

“Are you telling me you aren’t having an affair?” Dtui had asked.

“Why on earth would I want to?” he’d replied.

“That wasn’t the question.”

“No, Dtui. Of course I’m not having an affair. Don’t be ridiculous.”

And that introduction had led into a long painful confessional of the doubts of the pair of them. They’d asked policewoman Wan to look after Malee and they’d fled to the roof where nobody could hear. And all the anxiety, the frustration and stupidity were released into the night like steam from an old rice cooker. Phosy, for the first time since they’d been together, perhaps for the first time ever, had shared his feelings. It was a significant step for a man who kept everything bottled up inside. He told her about his family and his first wife and his fears that one day he’d come home to find their room empty. When the words were all out they both sighed. Phosy noticed that he was holding Dtui’s hand in his and it felt squashed and numb, but she hadn’t attempted to wrestle it free. The fine rain had mixed with their tears and left them fresh-faced. Everything would be all right. Malee wouldn’t be growing up in a single-parent household.

“All you need is love,” said Dtui, in English.

“What?” said Phosy, who didn’t speak the language.

“Beatles.”

He had no idea what she was talking about.

“As a medical person, I’m predicting we’ll catch pneumonia if we sit up here in the rain for much longer,” Dtui told him.

“That’s all right. We can share a bed in emergency. Joint drips.”

“That’s so sweet. I think I’m going to like this new romantic Phosy.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. If this conversation gets out to anyone else, you and the orphan are on the street. Get it?”

Dtui put her arm around his neck.

“I think we owe Siri and Daeng a meal, don’t you?”

“We would have sorted this out eventually.”

“Probably. In two or three years?”

“You’re right. When the good doctor gets back from his trip we’ll take them somewhere nice. I’ll start saving.”

“Good. Phosy?”

“What?”

“Can we have sex tonight?”

“Dtui!” The policeman blushed the colour of a rat-excrement chilli.

“What? We’re married, you know.”

“A lady doesn’t…”

“Sorry.”

They looked out into the vast darkness all around them.

“Phosy?”

“What?”

“Can we?”

“Absolutely.”

∗

It was some two, perhaps three hours later that Phosy, wearing only a loincloth and a grin, brought his papers into the police common room. He tugged on the bobble chain that clicked on the light bulb. He had a report to write about the three-épée case. The commissioner of police had been very pleased with the thoroughness of the investigation and was optimistic as to how the police would look in the eyes of the public once the trial was over. He had mentioned over tea that afternoon that, as far as he was concerned, the case was closed. All he needed was the final report. The trial, he conceded, was just a bit of trumpet blowing from Justice. Phosy didn’t have to be involved in all that. He didn’t even need to put in an appearance.

Phosy had been confused. He’d asked how they could have a trial without the arresting officer present. How would they present the evidence he’d collected? The commissioner had smiled and leaned close to him, even though there were only the two of them in the office.

“They’ll read out your report,” he said.

So, pressure was on to have the report finished to read in evidence the next day. He opened the case of the portable typewriter and clicked his fingers. He had to get his spelling right. He’d have Dtui read through it in the morning to be sure the grammar was…Or perhaps not. She’d ask questions and the report would never be delivered. She’d ask questions like, “What kind of trial doesn’t allow the defendant’s representative to cross-examine the investigating officer?” She was like that. Logical. He looked at the folder with all his hours of interviews and communiques from Europe. He stared at the pile like a writer with a block. Apart from Dr Siri, everyone had decided Neung was guilty. It didn’t matter what the accused said or did during the trial. He was a dead man.