By Matthew R. Loney
–Yeah? On my life, you like this bar! – Piat, wide-grinned, leans motorcycle on kickstand, twirls keys on his fingers – You come in! Come this bar. I show you girls. You see if you like, you no like you no buy.
Wet season. Rain clouds hover on the horizon until four o’clock and as the sun begins to dip, they scuttle over the city and wring themselves out in short bursts. Then the sun descends into the clear air beneath the layer of cloud, licks an orange tongue over their bottom surfaces and turns the shivering reflection of the lake into a pit, bright as magma while travelers stand on the wooden porches of the surrounding guesthouses, snapping photos in pleasant disbelief Phnom Penh has turned out to be so beautiful. Water hyacinths drift in clumps, hammocks creak their sway along the beams, Piat wanders from table to table selling bags of skunk weed and when someone asks about the corrupt government or how’s life in Cambodia for a boy of eighteen, says – It not good! On my life, it not good!
Killing Fields for the third time in the background, Shlomi looks over his shoulder at the TV, lays head on his arms on the table.
I say – Fuck, that did me in too. What’s it like in Israel anyway? Ever shoot a man with your gun? – stub out the joint in the ashtray.
–Never killed a man.
Israelis. I’ve wanted to get to know one of them, but they’ve always been ones to dance off to the side of things, cigarettes in tanned faces, shooting pool with the newly-arrived Swedish girls. Carry themselves proud like the French, shirtless still with army dog-tags, whiffs of arrogance, stick-together, whole guesthouses in Bangkok just for Israelis. But this one broke off the pack, stood next to my table, looked down into my milkshake and said – What is that? Coconut?
–Banana.
–It doesn’t look yellow to me – thin sheen of Israeli smugness.
–Never killed a man – lifts head from his arms – But sometimes you make them uncomfortable just to keep them on their edge. It’s all just a bunch of kids in uniforms anyway, you know, it’s a war and you don’t show weakness to your enemy. So what people have to wait five six hours at checkpoints, so they have to line up for gasoline, it lets them know we’re not kidding around. That’s our job. We fuck up their lives a bit. They wait because they have to, and we make them wait because we have to, it’s all the same really...
–For no reason?
–Of course there’s a reason! It’s just not their own. Do you know how much money it takes just to keep this thing going? Year after year, all the soldiers in their uniforms? You know they invented bullets that change directions in your body? It goes in one place, shatters your bones, fucks up your organs then leaves through your leg or something. What do you think this shit costs?
Smoke fills the space above the table.
–Do you know what a bullet costs?
Khoi looks from the bar across the room to the TV with indifferent noontime eyes – I’ve got a right to go wherever I like in this sad little country…
“I’ve got a right to go wherever I like in this sad little country! That’s their law. That’s our law.” Sam Waterston’s voice shouts from the speakers under chopper blades.
–…up the Cooper-Church Amendment’s ass…
“Well, up the Cooper-Church Amendment’s ass!”
Khoi laughs – Yes. I know this movie. One hundred thousand times I see this movie. Every time new people come to this guesthouse, they want to see Killing Fields. Maybe one million times I see this movie!
Shlomi says – These your cigarettes?
–Everytime. Everytime. Killing Fields. You have iPod?
Khoi and I sit on the wooden deck built out over the lake. Water hyacinths gather against the wooden posts and in the dark their surface looks solid enough to stand on.
–We always clean out the coconuts with bamboo. Sticks, you know? When we were young, we ride the back of the water buffalo and they walk through the rice. Really! They don’t care! You just sit on the back and they eat the grass. And when its raining we go into rice fields and look for snakes, you know, because snake don’t like water and so more easy to catch. When we have nothing to do, my brothers and sisters, we play and we walk outside and make games. Some my friends don’t have mother or father and their uncle or someone do something bad and they hit them so they leave. Yeah. Now Cambodia have many problems, but before, Cambodia have big problems.
Piat tosses words with man swinging in the hammock beside the entrance. Two girls sit on blue plastic stools along the wall playing with their nails. No resemblance to the girls in the pictures hanging behind them. A curtain of red beads pinned back from the doorway.
–He ask if you have weapon.
–No weapon.
The bar is foul-smelling and humid inside, coated in red light from several bulbs dangling from the low ceiling. All the walls are black and there’s a small platform at one end for a stage. Three girls inside – one in the corner, one behind the bar, one just disappeared into a back room with her arm around a Cambodian man. Girl’s face at the bar, familiar as all Southeast Asia. Red lips, low nose with flat bridge and flared nostrils, but this one, a grey patina on her skin reveals exposure to atmospheres, particles of history burrowed into the irises, line the face, accumulate like shit beneath lacquered fingernails.
–Hi handsome, what you look for tonight? You stay with me? What you like? – Thick as honey dripping voice. Then girl from the corner with bigger nose, a few rolls, bad haircut. The uglier one who takes the sadder jobs.
Piat orders whiskey and flips through the book of CDs.
–She speak English. Say her what you want.
What I want. What is that thing anyway, like a mosquito bite you X through with your fingernail, a trail of bleeding inflammations the bedbugs left from dirty mattresses in Bangkok. Want. The shade of wet marijuana, a fishing net anchored by hyacinth roots. That’s their law. That’s our law. Ass. Firm brown nipples rubbed against sheer. Then in the doorway, an argument in sign language – two deaf lesbians.
The storm clouds hover in the west over the lake, two boys fish in a canoe using nets, Shlomi staring at them through binoculars, says – Every day, for hours and hours. What do they do when the rain comes?
–Cover their heads and paddle to shore. I think our definitions of danger are different. Just don’t eat any fish from the market.
Piat parks motorcycle outside, strolling into the guesthouse with deliberate footsteps, fingers twirling keys. Wild eyes, high, sunken cheekbones, gestures he throws beyond his body limits into the surrounding air – On my life, man! You still here? I come from market, you know, I meet my honey, eat noodles. You want buy skunk?
A recovering glue-sniffer, street-kid found profession, must be. His face doesn’t twitch but contorts into the wildest and most opened expressions. Laughs are enormous. Strings of saliva bridge the corners of upper-lower lips. Sells skunk to stoner backpackers, gives him a few thousand riel to buy noodles for his honey at the market. Will take you on his motorbike to Choeung Ek and wait around as you tour the fields, collecting photos in high-def megapixels: skulls towered in pyramids, bones, torn fabric still jutting from dirt. Just like in the movie. Ten thousand riel for the day, S-21 prison included – Before, Cambodia no good, you know? – Isn’t that what I want to hear?
Blackboard beside the bar: Tonight Killing Fields 7pm. Ceiling fans whirl, scattering threads of smoke unravelled from hands in sagging hammocks. A few travellers eating eggs watch CNN, discuss the war, where you from, been to Angkor? Just came from. On the deck, morning sun but in the distance, already a bank of grey clouds.
To Piat – Where you been? Stay out all night?
Laughing, wild eyes with morning hair – No, man, I get this! Fresh today, you know. Good weed grow in Battambang, can only buy here in Phnom Penh. No buy in Siem Reap, Sihanoukville. If you want, buy now. Later, I no have, you know. I smoke too much!
–I dunno.
–Why not! Come on, man, you buy skunk!
A little weed for the coming weather isn’t such a bad idea. This guy’s price is high but he’s been so damn charming I feel I owe him the business.
–I’ll buy skunk and you take me to S-21 prison today for free.
His mouth stretches open in a huge gulp of laughter, eyes disappear, face, and those constant tendons of drool – Free? Come on, man! You crazy! Now gasoline very high price! Now Cambodia no good! Skunk already good price, you know, friend price. On my life! How much you pay?
Bag of skunk, Tuol Sleng prison, tonight a trip to his favourite girlie bar – only couple thousand riel, but if he’s happy with it, I know I’ve gotten fucked, probably got me on the weed. Here always this pushpull – don’t rip or get ripped off. Cheap Charlie with anxious worry grin, slipping bills from sweaty money belt, peripheral vision on the lookout for a con. Sucker white guy with bottomless pockets of dollars.
Piat pitches his skunk deal to an Australian in a hammock. Israeli walks out onto the wooden deck then over to my table, looking down at my milkshake, says – What is that, coconut?
Girl with the broad flat nose shouts over to Piat and their thick Khmer tumbles over the bar. He hands her a CD to put into the portable stereo in the corner on the floor by the stage. She bends over, a hole in her stockings – upper thigh near the crease of her ass. Cambodian rap through shitty speakers. The two deaf girls sit on stools in silence. Woman from behind the bar with the two girls from outside sidling up to us.
Piat says – See look, my honeys! – Laughter wide- mouthed.
Then wide nosed girl – Wha’ you like, handsome? You wan’ see menu? You wan’ see how we do for you? We play, we do fun. If you no like girl, maybe you wan’ boy? Up to you.
–No boys.
–You wan’ see girl eat pussy?
Two men walk through the doorway, small bony framed Cambodians with dark moustaches, plastic sandals. Booze. Greasy undershirt one walks directly for wide nose girl – torrent of Khmer – grabs her arm and pulls her towards the backroom. Wide nose screams with long fingernails, yanks away from him, runs and puts arm around my shoulder.
–Tonight you stay with me! Him no good! Say you stay with me!
Him coming back with bloodshot eyes, dark oily skin from the heat and unwash. Stink of long camel teeth. Spit. Totters over to me, so close I see the dust clinging to the fibres of his moustache. Sour armpit, cough, phlegm wad chewed then spat. He ask if you have weapon. No weapon. I’m not in the saving business.
Shlomi says – That’s west of the Lake. I hear you aren’t supposed to go there. No thanks, I’ll stay here – licking the Rizla closed.
–Where’d you hear that?
–That’s what the guidebooks say. You should pay attention to what they write in there, they’re trying to warn you so you don’t get yourself stabbed. It’s my vacation and I don’t want to get rolled up in a lot of fuck. It’s not like Israel, or Canada, wherever. Things get serious here. You can’t walk around at night and believe people’s manners will keep you safe.
–Piat is taking me.
–Yeah? And what do you think he’ll do for you if you end up in shit? You think he’ll put his ass on the line to keep some tourist from getting killed? Nice guy, sure, but not about to lose his skin over you. You smoke this weed before?
–No. You think I shouldn’t go?
–Who knows. Go if you want, but don’t forget where you are. This stuff is great, smells strong as shit.
Twenty-two, fresh from mandatory army service, tanned with near black Israeli scruff, shaved head, shirtless, red jogging shorts. Lights the joint, says – Not bad – and passes it to me – You go to Angkor?
–Yeah. Brilliant, but clouded with touts. Not a moment to just let it soak in then some kid selling postcards. Everyone scrambling on top of the temples for sunset, rich ones on elephants, beggars lined up, their amputations displayed. Something you’ve got to see, but a bit of a circus, really.
–Why you think that?
–Because Siem Reap is like a giant theme park! Five-star hotels, limousines...
–No, why must I see it?
–See Angkor?
–Yes, why must I see this thing everyone tells me I must see? Why must I take a photo of something everyone else has exactly the same photo of?
Pause.
Pause because he’s right. Because he’s twenty-two. Because it all suddenly hits me that memory ends up piled like postcards anyway, because it’s just another form of capture, because I’ve got a right to go wherever I like in this sad little country – Because it’s Angkor! – I say – And you don’t come to Cambodia and not see Angkor…
Shlomi says – Fuck it.
–What do you mean, fuck it?
–Fuck having to go to Angkor. Do I really miss out on anything besides what everyone else has seen?
Cheap Charlie, he’s right.
My god, I’ve been conned. Sucker.
Killing Fields for the third time in the background, Shlomi looks over his shoulder then lays head on his arms on the table.
–Fuck, that did me in too – I say –What did you do in Israel anyway?
Then a knock grabbing at the edges of my sleep, alarm reads six thirty, the voices of the women in the kitchen already for hours, murmuring through the walls. Knock knock. I open the door and small girl, dirty bare feet standing in the doorway, fifteen maybe.
–Hey, you let me in? Me good you want feel sex ten minutes cheap price I give you good – Then small hand shooting up the leg of my boxer shorts.
–What? Jesus Christ. No.
Empty hallway, first light of dawn already seeping like grey dishwater. Came directly from the street or wanting a few more bucks after the last traveller, either upstairs, next door.
Soft pleading – Only ten minutes. Come on, why not?
Then close the door in her face. Stray dog, biscuit dropped and sagging tail, but not worth the potential damage. Door to door, so early and barefoot, wonder where she came from, who she finds next, what her options are and if I have just exhausted them.
Khoi sighs and says – Now Cambodia have many problems, but before, Cambodia have big problems.
He walks to the edge of the wooden deck and looks out over the lake at the lights, distant points in the direction of the train station, Tuol Kork district across the hyacinth continents, drifting pangaea that gathers, disperses according to tide and surface winds. Boeng Kak, stagnant bladder of Phnom Penh.
–The Khmer Rouge?
Khoi’s half smile – Why does every tourist like Khmer Rouge? Every day they want see Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng prison. Sometime I think Khmer Rouge is very good for Cambodia.
I laugh. Politely, sarcastically, empathetically? – And the tourists?
–They just tourists, you know. Have lots of money, they give someone good business. I work at this guesthouse and I don’t mind about tourists. This my job, you know, pay for school, get good money, then to America, Portugal, Uganda…
The hyacinth clumps pause in their break from the wooden posts, water lap then Khoi – My father die, you know? I stay with my mother, my grandmother, two sister, two brother. Khmer Rouge come and look our house and under the floor. They say we take too much rice then hide it. My father tell them no, but they keep looking for rice but they can’t find, you know, because we don’t have. Then they take my father.
–Where’d they take him?
Khoi shrugs – I was a boy. Past is past. Nobody think about Khmer Rouge anymore, just the future. People want good things, and good things come from China. You look at something and if it say ‘Made in China’ it much better than ‘Made in Cambodia.’ You look at iPod and it say ‘Made in China.’ Sure!
–But people died.
–Sure! That was life, people died! Now I work to save money for school. I smile at tourists and if they want cockfighting or shooting range, I take them. They want bus ticket to Siem Reap or Sihanoukville, I buy for them. But some reason they always ask about Khmer Rouge. I think – My God! We have Angkor Wat! Why not ask about that!
Year Zero. Emptied streets of the capital, laundry drying on lines strung between deserted apartments. Glorious restart of civilization, the city dwellers march along the highways out into countryside. Hospital beds poured out, newspapers take off down the sidewalks with no traffic to stop them. Forced evacuation, all of Phnom Penh, empty as a hollow bone.
–Girl knocked on my door this morning.
Shlomi picks up the binoculars, peers out across the lake at the two boys in the canoe.
–Ten minutes, she said. Had her hand up my shorts and Christ, I had to shove her out of my room. Six thirty in the morning. For some reason, I thought she was being chased, or last hope or taking shelter.
–A dream?
–No, very real.
–Everyday, for hours and hours. What do they do when the rain comes?
Piat’s motorcycle growls beneath us, pulls out into narrow alleyways leading from the guesthouse. I want to get lost in this city with its corners of orange carts, soldiered bank machines, hundred parked motorcycles lined up, patient as cattle. Bicycles, guns, cement buildings with corners held up by precarious scaffolds, workmen in bare feet carrying baskets of stone. We weave between trucks then sit in thick dust exhaust at stoplights, the back of Piat’s brown neck, afternoon heat blazing heavy on my own. From the upper-story apartments, curtains blow ghosts like confetti towards farmland.
We turn off the main road into a division of parallel streets, each towering with open-windowed apartments, flowerpots, smell of fruit peels left in the sun. Then snug behind shrubs, a low three-story school building, manicured lawn, neat line of palm trees. Tuol Sleng, S-21 prison, concentration camp, torture headquarters still with nets of barbed wire guarding the balconies of the open-air hallways.
–What do you want to go there for? – Shlomi, with leg dangling from hammock – Why are people so fascinated by killing? It’s the same with the Jews. Everywhere these memorials where people get killed, with their names and their pictures. It’s like suffering in multiple lifetimes, I don’t want to visit a place like that! There’s nothing to remember about killing. It’s not like the movies where the good guy shoots some bad guys and never gets hurt. When there’s war people die. It’s not so clean as you think.
–Okay, so stay here. But history happened and being reminded of that prevents it from happening again.
–Bullshit – he says – Is that what you think? With all our shrines to terrible things we think twice before killing again? Israelis, we should know better! We should let these people heal and stop…whatever…picking the scab.
Wide nose girl, her fingernails dig into my arm as we walk toward the back room, a narrow, dead-end hallway with peeling black doors. Now in different light, I see the roughened texture of her skin, clusters of acne, eyes with dark aureoles – That guy no good! Everyday he try come stay with me. Sometimes I do, but now I no wan’. Now you stay with me!
Filthy as a psych-ward mattress, this whole business of buying and selling. Hot fluid exchange, drip and stain, rodent virus that chew canals into our immunity linings and burst swarms like shit-flies into our containers. And not even that, not simply the sicknesses, even if this whole thing was cleaned of danger, still that roar of want – teeth grinding, hold-her-down-until-I-finish, chopper blades thrusting through the sound barrier over enemy territory, small hand up the leg of my boxer shorts, want feel sex ten minutes cheap price. Our law. Their law. The entire toll it must take and all I’m responsible for.
Inside the room, wide nose takes her shoes off. Holes in stocking toes too. Gold earrings bounce against her cheeks, skirt clasp straining under soft belly – I so happy tonigh’ you stay with me. Before guy, no good. What you wan’, handsome? – shirt taken off, bruise, two Asian breasts – Come here, I suck your dick.
–Don’t worry about it.
–What? You no like? You wan’ I call my friend, she come eat my pussy.
–No. Don’t do that.
–You watch me fuck myself?
–Jesus Christ, I don’t want anything.
–Wha’?
–I said don’t worry about it. Let’s just sit here and wait.
–You fucking stupid! Piece of shit Cheap Charlie! Why you come here, you no wan’ something?
Concrete exterior wall, metal bed frame, her brown body under fluorescent bulb. Underworld cavern I surface in. Not my territory, definitely not in the saving business. Shining armour bullshit.
–I just want to sit. That’s what I want.
Other room, the rhythmic creak of rusted bed frame shifting positions, smell of wet skunk weed, water hyacinth, diesel fumes. Ten minutes. Cambodian rap translated through ply-wood.
Come out into the red-lit room again. Piat is waiting at the bar, the two girls and other Cambodian men disappeared.
–How you like my honeys? On my life! Tonight I cum so quick!
–Take me back to the guesthouse.
–How was the prison? – Shlomi with sunglasses, tanned shoulders, chair pulled out onto the wooden deck, afternoon breeze off the lake.
–How you’d expect. Barbed wire still, blood stains on the floor. Nothing moved or changed. Horrible feeling of ghosts though…thousands and thousands.
Girl brings out a plate of fried rice, coconut milkshake.
–I don’t know why you wanted to go there. It’d be like taking a vacation to Auschwitz.
Khoi from the bar – Hey! Some guy lend me his iPod. You can show me how it works? My iPod is your iPod. My wife, your wife!
Sun disappears behind storm clouds and rain begins to fall on the wooden deck. Move table and chair inside, growl of thunder and the boys in the canoe paddling to shore. Storm pulls across the lake, suspendered on heavy clouds, shudder lightning loose from their insides. Vibrating thunder, the way electricity feels crackling over your head, remembering the bus ride back to Phnom Penh from Sihanoukville over the flooded roads and everyone on motorbikes draped in thin plastic raincoats sending sprays of muddy street water up in tails behind them. Monsoon season. Tropical laundry day.
–Bought some weed from Piat this morning. He’s surprised me, that guy. Just a kid, knows how to make a sale.
Sky all dark now, rain bulleting down onto the tin roof,
smell of fresh and cooler, hard enough to wash stains from prison floors, the way new bones are unearthed monsoon after monsoon.
–I’ll roll it.
–Well, do you want to come to the girlie bar tonight? It’s somewhere over in Tuol Kork district. More entertaining than the prison, I hope. Never been to a bar like that before, but supposed to have some shows you don’t forget. Bananas, ping-pong balls, razorblades, birds.
Khoi – Hey! Come see the iPod!
Shlomi says –That’s west of the Lake. I hear you aren’t supposed to go there. No thanks, I’ll stay here – licking the Rizla closed.
Then finally saying good-night to Khoi, passing the chalkboard beside the darkened bar: Tonight Killing Fields 7pm, then going into my room and feeling the entire weight of the city’s dirty history press down on me. Ghosts, dark grease marks on painted plywood walls. Two-dollar room with pink mosquito net, sticky with smoke resin. Bathroom – still wet tiles from shower this morning, smell from back in the Delta, swampland, cracked plastic soap dish, toilet roll soggy with condensation. Lying in bed beneath the growl of street traffic, always that dread of making things worse, having left a stain, indelible, washed up some bones still hung with their clothes. Year Zero. Jesus Christ. What do you want to go there for? This isn’t my territory, done wandering through the smouldering villages, climbing Angkor with all the thousands, smug and empathetic, wide nose women never heard of being saved. What if I had let her in this morning? Just given her a few hundred riel, made sure she wasn’t being chased. Tiny hand up the leg of my boxer shorts, piece of shit Cheap Charlie, my god, how does it all happen? Cost of one bullet, that blood on the prison floor, flared nostrils, Khoi riding the water buffalo, soldiers searching the house as the rain clouds drift in over the green rice fields…
