Holiday in Cambodia (4 page)

‘Are they closing the factory?’ Vanna asked no one. Mr Long emerged from his office and stood on the concrete landing outside. He was a lean man, perpetually bent, perpetually tired. But now he looked alert – a street cat ready to leap out of the path of a truck. He gazed for a moment through low lids at the thousand-strong crowd of women, then cleared his throat. It grew quieter and Sokha and Vanna could hear the conversations around them.

‘Right outside his house,’ said a woman next to Vanna, ‘in front of his wife and two children.’

‘I heard it was in an alley, and he was totally alone,’ said another.

Ants came up through the cracks in the concrete and crawled up Sokha’s legs, darting across her skin like needles, up her back, over her eyes.

‘A robbery?’ asked the woman as Sokha hit the cement.

‘They didn’t take anything. It was about a holiday. Something about a holiday.’

I hail a motodop.

He’s like, ‘Four dollars.’

And I say, ‘No, I live here, it’s two and a half.’

And he asks, ‘There
and
back?’

I’m supposed to smile so I do. I say, ‘Yes,
bong
, I do this all the time.’

And I walk away. He calls me back, of course. It’s a Thursday; who else is he going to take to the airport? And he says, ‘Three dollars.’

And I say, ‘No, two and a half, that’s fair.’

And he starts going on and on about petrol and his whole family till I’m just about to lose it and finally he says, ‘Okay, two and a half.’

It’s almost peak hour and everything looks like bushfire, like nicotine. The motodop starts up. His motorbike breathes a cloud and the sun disappears behind it. Everything’s noisy and yellow. It’s like being at a bar but without the mojitos. Just tyre to tyre with a thousand motorbikes. Makes me sick. The whole thing.

I spent the entire morning at the travel agency. It’s an airless box with faded old pictures on the walls of places you wouldn’t even want to fly to: Bali, Hawaii, Koh Samui … And some song wailing tonelessly in Khmer on the TV. People are supposed to have no money here but there’s always a TV.

I said to the travel agent, ‘Don’t even bother. I’ll just go there. I’ll go all the way out to the Lucky Air office at the airport because it’ll be quicker than this.’

I’m meeting Tully and everyone at Bar Long Time tonight and need time to get ready. The travel agent smiled at me like she meant it. You’re angry and they smile at you. I got up to leave and the plastic chair I’d been stuck to left welts on the backs of my legs. Up on the mezzanine an old man was stripping off behind a screen. Struggling to pull his white singlet over his gut. You spend your entire life trying to cover up here and then you go to the travel agent and have to watch an old man stumbling around above your head in nothing but a pair of undersized jocks.

It’s so frigging hot. I’m even happy it’s one of those old motos with the seats on the back, so at least I don’t have to press against the driver. They don’t sweat. Even my nose is sweating under my fakey Pradas. I could die right here from sweating. This Swedish girl died the other day because someone tried to steal her backpack while she was on a moto. Wasn’t wearing a helmet. After she came off they went back to get her bag and left her there, dead.

I said to Tully, ‘Look, I’m not promising to wear a helmet now but I’ll totally forgo the backpack and just use my tote bag if I have to.’

I told work I was too sick to come in. The land-rights report can wait. I wanted to get a Brazilian then book this ticket because Mum’s going on and on about how she’s alone and it won’t be Easter without me. But Rom wasn’t at the waxing salon, even though I expressly asked for her, and I got this other girl. She took the hair off alright but half the wax is still on there. It’s the most uncomfortable thing possible. We start passing people three and four to a motorbike and then I see a family of six: Dad driving, son between his legs, oldest daughter, Mum holding a baby, then behind her a tiny kid with her little kid legs dangling, her tiny bum hanging over the back. The only thing keeping her on is that she’s got a good grip on Mum’s shirt. They’re all smiling. I get my phone out. They stare at me like I’m crazy. I start taking a photo for Tully but the motodop is apologising over his shoulder (I ignore him), then he turns off the highway and I’m yelling, ‘No, go that way, the airport’s that way.’

And he’s saying, ‘Sorry, sorry.’

He’s probably one of those hicks who come up from Kampong Cham or wherever for Khmer New Year, their heads full of vampires and voodoo, and decide to be motodops for the day. They don’t know shit about the Penh. He stops at a shed selling petrol from glass Coke bottles and asks me to get off while he fills up.

I say, ‘Maybe you could have told me this before I got on. I’m in a hurry, you know.’

And he says, ‘Sorry, sorry, lady.’

You’d think they’d use something other than Coke bottles. What if some kid, the little kid on the motorbike, what if she drank one by mistake?

‘Hi,’ I say to the woman at the Lucky Air counter in the airport, ‘I wanted to change a flight but your website isn’t working and I can’t get through on the phone and the travel agent can’t seem to help me.’

‘Yes,’ smiles the woman, ‘the website isn’t working.’

No shit, I think.

‘Can I change my ticket here, please?’

I should ask her to waive the change fee too. Just pay the difference in the fare because of all the hassle, having to pay the motodop to come all the way out here and everything. The airport’s busy, people crouching everywhere. Families mostly. You’d think they’d give them some seats. If I ran Cambodia, the first thing I’d do would be to put in some seats to stop all this crouching. That and public toilets. Seriously. Everyone freaks out if I wear a boobylicious top but I’ve seen more strangers’ cocks in the last six months than in my entire lifetime. Tully texted me the other day because there was a guy pissing right across the road from the café where she was eating breakfast and it totally put her off her muffin.

The Lucky Air woman asks me to check the details. I haven’t been charged a fee and the fare difference is only forty US dollars and I think, Sweet. Our weekly pay is 250 bucks and Tully says that’s double what most Cambodians get in a month, but I say we still have to live our lives. So the woman books the ticket and I go to the ATM and get out a hundred so I have some cash for Bar Long Time tonight.

When I get back to the counter her smile is gone and she starts apologising, ‘Sorry, sorry.’

There’s sweat dribbling down the backs of my knees and I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about. Then she says, ‘I’m sorry, madam, but I made a mistake. There is a change fee and also the fare is more and now you have to pay 130 dollars.’

‘One hundred and thirty dollars?’ I yell. You’re not supposed to yell in Cambodia. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, madam,’ she says again. She’s lucky there’s glass between us, I swear. ‘I made a mistake; it is 130 dollars.’

‘What. Do. You. Mean?’

‘I forgot the change fee, and … I … read the wrong currency. I’m sorry, madam.’

I fold my arms.

‘I wouldn’t have changed the ticket if it was that much,’ I say. ‘Just give me my original ticket back.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, madam,’ she says, ‘but it is changed already. Please pay 130 dollars.’

‘You made the mistake,’ I yell. ‘Lucky Air can pay it.’

She glances behind her. The door to an office is open. I can feel the air-con pumping out of that room and see a man in a suit hunched over a pile of manila folders. The woman stretches out one arm and shuts the door.

‘Please, madam …’ she tries again.

I look at her pale pink shirt, probably nylon. I’d be dripping in that. Her jewellery is all new but cheap, really cheap – I see that shit all the time at the markets. One hundred and thirty dollars. I think about how much that is to her and start to cry right there at the counter. I hope the woman thinks it’s sweat but she sees right through it because Cambodians just don’t cry in shops. I can’t stop looking at her shirt and her tacky, shit-cheap earrings. I grab my bag and walk back to the ATM and slam my card in and withdraw another fifty. The balance flashes up on the screen and there’s practically nothing left, after rent and food and bills, for going anywhere or doing anything for the next week at least. The wax glues my undies to my crotch and tugs at the leftover hair and I suppose I cry some more. I wouldn’t give my dad the pleasure of Skyping him and asking for money to go out tonight. I go back to the woman and shove 150 towards her.

‘Here,’ I say, ‘130 dollars.’

I’m still polite. God, you have to be.

The woman says, ‘No no, madam, it’s okay, you just pay 100 and I’ll pay the thirty, okay? Okay, madam?’ Her stupid little earrings wink at me.

‘No,’ I blubber. ‘No, you can’t afford it.’

She’s probably only twenty or something but who can tell here, until someone gets married and goes to fat?

‘It’s okay, madam, you pay 100 and I pay thirty because it is my mistake,’ she says, ‘and also because you’re upset, you’re very upset,’ she says, and I am. I pass her the hundred and the other fifty stays hot in my fingers and she smiles at me and then I’m out in the weird waiting calm of the airport, looking across the tarmac.

‘Same place,’ I say to the motodop.

I’m glad I have my Pradas. I sit on the big wide seat and we pull into the traffic and move steadily along the highway back to Phnom Penh. There’s dust everywhere but it’s a tiny bit cooler. I could almost go to sleep. We slow down at the lights beside one of those big dirt trucks. The lights change and as the truck starts to move forward there’s this crunch – a plastic takeaway container under a shoe, but bigger. The truck doesn’t stop. It keeps going and as it rolls away, something appears underneath it. The wheel of a motorbike lying sideways on the ground. Then a bare leg. Then the half-crushed body of the motorbike, another leg, a helmeted head. An arm sticks out and a cheap diamante bracelet around a woman’s wrist winks in the sunlight. She’s dead, I think. She’s dead. But then her leg moves, her arm. No one else moves. It’s like
we’re
dead. Finally a woman shifts underneath the motorbike and wipes at her shirt. The intersection moves again. The motodop ploughs into it, crossing lanes of traffic with his eyes fixed on the woman behind him.

‘Look where you’re going, bong!’
I yell, but I can’t take my eyes off her either.

‘I need some cigarettes,’ I say.

The motodop says, ‘Cigarettes?’ and pulls over. ‘I’ll get them cheaper for you.’

I give him the money. My cheeks are stiff with salt. He comes back and hands me a packet. He waits as I rip it open and take out two for him but he shakes his head.

He smiles, says, ‘No thanks, lady.’

I try to put one in my mouth but I drop it. I light it on the fifth try. He hands me my change and I guess he was right, it was about fifty cents cheaper that way.

It was the twilight of the dry season and there weren’t many guests. Those who were left were French and after breakfast they played cards under the eaves of La Villa until the tropical winds won over the sea breezes and drove them back to their rooms. Once there they lay down fully clothed, barely managing to push the shoes from their heels – because they were still tired from the heat, or drunk from the night before – and fell to sleep on beds that Bopha had just made up. Outside the town smelled of smoke, but it wasn’t from the war. The casino on the hill had burnt down and the quenched flames filled the air with an acrid stench.

Bopha carried a bundle of sheets, underclothes and sweat-stained dresses down the stairs. Every item smelled distinctly of each guest. Nearest her nose was a pillowcase baring the squashed-flower scent of Monique, one of the long-term residents. Bopha tried not to breath it in, but by the time she reached the tiled floor of the dining room she was half Monique, half Bopha and she stumbled a little, as she’d seen the Frenchwoman do, towards one of the round wooden tables, where she landed with the bundle. There was no one in the dining room. Her brother Vichet had cleared the tables from breakfast and swept the stage of dust. Bopha climbed onto it. The boards were scarred from the drum kit and the varnish around the microphone stand was worn thin where one of the owners, Tola, had sung for two years in French and high heels. All the chairs faced the stage – the tables arranged not for food, but for music. Bopha toed a chip of varnish. She touched the mic stand; you were supposed to hold it like a rose. Her fingernails were torn and dirty.

‘Have you asked him?’ Vichet said from the kitchen door. Bopha snatched her fingers away and put them on her hips.

‘No.’

‘Why don’t you ask him?’ He sauntered closer.

‘Because Tola’s in labour, glass-head.’

‘Like this?’

Vichet puffed out his cheeks.

‘You look constipated,’ she told him.

‘Yeah but does
she
?’ he said and Bopha laughed, embarrassed. ‘You should ask him while his wife’s ugly,’ Vichet continued. ‘He’ll be distracted.’

Bopha came down off the stage and gathered the bundle of washing.

‘You know he’ll just say no.’

‘Is the bar open?’ Monique called out from the door of her suite on the landing. Simone was behind her, dressed, as was Monique, entirely in gingham. Bopha watched the material float around them as they came down the stairs.

‘Of course, madame,’ Vichet called back. ‘Ask him,’ he hissed at Bopha and gave her a little push. She waddled out with the dirty washing as though she was the pregnant one.

‘I just love a country where the bar is always open,’ Monique said to Simone as they passed Vichet. ‘And I love a hunk of a waiter.’

‘You’ve gone native,’ Simone whispered. ‘Or you’re bored.’

‘Of course I’m bored.’ There had been no entertainment at La Villa the night before and it was becoming apparent there would be nothing for the evening to come, either. They sat at a linen-covered table on the terrace, waiting for Vichet to take their orders and skimming month-old French newspapers that headlined the war in Vietnam. The garden around them was green but the leaves that didn’t face the sea were stiff with dust. Out on the road an open truck sped past with Khmer soldiers jammed onto benches in the back. One of them pointed up at the hotel.

‘What do you think of this Concord aeroplane?’ asked Monique after a while, tapping the paper.

‘Same as last week: nothing. What do you think?’

‘Well, if it flies, we can get home quicker than the ship.’

‘
If
it flies, it won’t be from Phnom Penh …’ At the crunch of dried mud they both looked up. ‘Well, how is she?’ called Simone to the swaying vines that showed the doctor coming back through the garden from the house.

‘Baby’s born,’ Dr Munroe called back, wiping his eyes on a large handkerchief. ‘My shoes are ruined, though. This dust.’

‘Ask him if she can sing,’ hissed Monique. Simone frowned and dabbed at a flake of soot that had landed on the white tablecloth.

‘Feeling okay then, is she? And the little one?’

‘What? Oh yes, fine, fine. Lucky I was there, though. That midwife could have lost them both.’

‘She’ll get pretty sick of looking after it – hey!’ Monique yelped when Simone pinched her on the arm. ‘Well, she’s an artist. I don’t care if she is Cambodian, she acts and sounds
French and she needs to express herself.’ Dr Munroe caught a flash of Vichet rounding the corner of La Villa and hooted to get his attention but Vichet disappeared into the dining room. ‘Oh, I wish we could just go to the casino.’ Monique propped her chin in her palm.

‘Well, they will burn everything,’ advised Dr Munroe. ‘The Vietnamese, the Cambodians, all bent on destruction. I swear I could hear the bombs over the border last night.’

‘Wouldn’t that be the Americans?’ Simone retorted.

‘The Americans didn’t burn down your casino, dear.’ Dr Munroe lifted Simone’s hand, then dropped it to wave at Vichet. ‘Yoo-hoo!’ he hollered and the waiter made his way over the grass.

‘Who did burn it down?’ Simone asked, but Vichet was at the table.

‘An old-fashioned, use limes if you must,’ Dr Munroe ordered. ‘And for the ladies?’

‘Piña coladas but made with milk. Evaporated milk, not coconut. Does he understand?’

‘And clean my shoes and fetch my other ones, would you?’

Vichet took the orders and the doctor’s shoes into the kitchen.

‘It’s bad luck to sing in a kitchen, child,’ the midwife was telling Bopha over her soup.

‘What did the doctor say?’ Bopha asked Vichet before he’d had time to set the shoes on the floor.

‘That the midwife deserves a reward for staying up all night. Keep singing.’

‘If your poor mother was here, she’d tell you it’s bad luck,’ the midwife continued. Vichet slopped some wine into a cup and set it on the table by the soup. The midwife grinned into it toothily.

‘What did he
say
?’ Bopha asked him.

‘He said, “Get me some dead snails and rotten cheese,
tout de suite
!”’ yelled Vichet. Bopha folded her arms. ‘I don’t know, Bopha. Don’t flip out, she’s not going to sing tonight. She just gave birth to a giant baby. Have you seen the size of it?’

‘Head like a durian,’ the midwife agreed.

‘Who’s going to entertain?’ asked Bopha.

Vichet shrugged.

‘The band can just play. We’ll do an acoustic set. Hendrix with no words sort of a thing.’ He tensed his hands like tarantulas and played his crotch until the midwife choked on her wine. Bopha sniffed and stared out the window to the spirit house in the garden. With babies being born and the casino burning down, it would be full of ghosts. ‘You should just go right up and ask him,’ Vichet told her, reaching for the whiskey to make the doctor’s drink. ‘He’ll probably say yes.’

‘No,’ Hugo said to Bopha. ‘Now piss off.’

Inside the owner’s house, his wife Tola and the new baby had slumped into sleep and Hugo was taking the chance to chain-smoke outside by the east wall. From there, he could see Vichet serving drinks to Simone, Monique and Dr Munroe on the terrace and down the grassy slope to the road and the foreshore of the beach. Bopha lingered at his elbow. Her round, schoolgirlish face and bright eyes left a moment’s impression on Hugo, like the blue-grey shadow after a light is switched off, but when he looked away she was forgotten. She cleared her throat and began to sing very softly.

‘
They come into your arms, to butcher your sons, your wives
…’

It was a lullaby version of the French national anthem. Hugo spluttered, coughing up smoke.

‘I’ll get you a drink,’ she told him but he raised a menacing hand and she skipped away.

‘Is it on? Why isn’t it on?’ Bopha came panting into the kitchen. Vichet’s fingers rested on the switch of the silent transistor radio.

‘What did he say? You look confused.’

‘Turn it
on
.’

‘I will once you tell me.’

Bopha paused.

‘I may have made him laugh.’

‘Really?’

She shrugged. Vichet flicked on the radio. It was a rough, staticy pick-up of the BBC.
‘… number of North Vietnamese bases in Cambodia. US President Nixon …
’ Vichet crouched and tuned the dial with his long fingers, twisting the antenna until it pointed northeast, where Hanoi Hannah fired American anti-war songs at the GIs and the music exploded through the radio sets of eastern Cambodia.

‘You’ll have to go back and ask him again,’ he said with one ear to the speaker. ‘Those frogs outside won’t care, but the casino guests? They won’t stand for a band without a singer.’ The snow cleared to a patch of bright cymbal and Vichet started drumming the air. ‘… two, three.’

‘
Darling!
’ It was ‘Reach Out.’ The voices of The Four Tops seemed to climb inside their ears and wrap around their tongues. The midwife had fallen asleep on the bench beside the table. She woke and sat up, gaping at the young people for a moment before struggling to stand. They moved respectfully aside and watched her turn up the volume.

‘
Celebrate! Celebrate you and me!
’ the midwife sang over the tune.

‘I thought it was bad luck to sing in kitchens?’

‘Not for me. I’m old and my marriage has failed already.’

‘Grandmother, listen to this.’ Bopha re-tuned the dial to Radio Phnom Penh. A haunting note, smooth as moonlight, came through the speakers. The midwife frowned.

‘That’s a Khmer man,’ she said and leaned closer. ‘Singing French songs.’

‘It’s the golden voice: Sinn Sisamouth, singing American songs.’

The midwife frowned and chewed her cheeks.

‘Well, Grandmother, what do you think?’ asked Vichet. The midwife made a growl in her throat.

‘I told my husband we needed a transistor. We’re missing out on everything.’

Hugo narrowed his eyes against the cigarette smoke and watched Vichet and Bopha come through the garden with the bottle he’d ordered. The ice cubes crackled in the glass. Vichet set it on the ground and added two fingers of whiskey.

‘What’s happening with the casino?’ Hugo asked. Vichet handed him the drink.

‘It burnt down.’

‘You think I’m an idiot?’

‘No, but of course you mean … where are the weekend guests?’

‘Well, where are they?’ Hugo spread his fingers as though the guests might land on them.

‘Some of them have gone back to Phnom Penh and others are at the Kep Shangri-La.’

‘Why the fuck are they staying at a Chinese hotel?’ The whiskey slopped dangerously up the side of the glass.

‘They’re a party, a set,’ said Vichet. ‘They want to be together and there’s not enough room here.’

‘It’s because those lazy French whores take up all my space and order fucking milk piña coladas!’ Hugo screamed towards the hotel. Monique, Simone and Dr Monroe heard their host’s incomprehensible ranting and looked around for Vichet to get them another drink.

‘But …’

‘But
what
?’

‘There’s no entertainment at the Kep Shangri-La. So of course they’re coming here tonight for their meal.’ Hugo pursed his lips. Vichet continued. ‘The band will play, as usual, and Madame Tola –’

‘Will not be singing tonight or any other fucking night for the next six months she tells me now.’

‘Of course not. She has the baby. And no one will ever replace her style, her elegance, her –’

‘I am going to rip your fucking head off and feed it to the lions in the jungle.’

Vichet swallowed. ‘Perhaps, at this late notice, it would be useful to get someone local, someone who knows all the songs and, well, someone like my younger sister Bopha for example.’

‘And, well, someone like my younger sister Bopha for example,’ Hugo mimicked.

‘Perhaps you’ve heard her sing, sir?’

‘She never shuts up.’ Hugo snorted, narrowing his eyes. ‘Fifteen years of independence and you already think you run this country. If it wasn’t for us you’d be digging holes with the Viet Cong.’ Flecks of whiskey spattered out of Hugo’s mouth and onto Vichet’s shirt. Vichet nodded rapidly.

‘Indeed, as a French protectorate we were very grateful to –’

Hugo grabbed him by the shirt collar.

‘She sings tonight only. She sings in English or French. She sings what I tell her. She misses one note and she’s gone from here – she doesn’t clean one bed pan or wash one petticoat, she doesn’t have a job, understand?’ Vichet nodded. Hugo let him go. ‘You understand?’ He turned on Bopha.

‘I understand. Thank you.’

A cat started mewing from inside the house. The sound grew until Hugo realised it was his baby.

Vichet found Bopha in the bamboo hut at the end of the garden. Their dad would be back with a haul of fish on the dusk tide. Bopha had their dead mother’s wedding dress on and was studying a photo of their mother wearing it; in the picture, her face was a mixture of hope and worry. Bopha tried both expressions.

‘How do I look?’ she asked Vichet when he poked his head into the gloom and saw the sequins winking in the dark.

‘Constipated. You’re needed up at the house. She wants you,’ he told her.

‘Stupid. Wait for me.’ She went into the other room to put on the black skirt and white shirt Hugo liked them to wear. At the door she pulled on her heavy shoes and tied the laces. She and Vichet navigated around the slowly drying swamp at the bottom of the garden. A fighter jet screamed high overhead. Bopha looked up at the white tear it left in the sky. ‘What are the songs?’

‘“Hey Jude,” “If You’re Going to San Francisco,” “Boum-Badaboum,” “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “Bravo pour le clown” …’

‘It’s too difficult!’

‘Skip it.’

‘He’ll scale me.’

‘He’ll be so busy with the gambling in the cellar he won’t even hear half our set. Also “Wooly Bully”, “Rain and Tears”, “La vie en rose” – you finish on that.’

They parted at the steps leading up to the house and Bopha heard Vichet call, ‘And I think we can pull off “Reach Out”’ as she ducked into the corridor. Tola was in the bedroom, staring at the baby in her arms. It was large and red but made a peaceful sucking sound. A nanny had been hired from Kampot and Tola gingerly handed her the child and shooed her outside. She picked up a wooden hairbrush from the side table and ran it through her sharp black bob.