The Jump
Preah Monivong Hospital, Prison Ward, Phnom Penh, CambodiaSeptember 2008
The American arrived a few days ago.
His name is Thomas Rolfe, an entrepreneur doing business in India. He’d been hoping to expand into Cambodia, but then he was asked to pay some bribes. His response was to tell the collector on duty to go fuck himself. He didn’t know that in Cambodia, bribery’s a serious matter. If you don’t pay, it can mean only one of two things: either you have someone powerful protecting you, or you haven’t yet figured out where you are.
The cops accused him of molesting two young girls. Then they gave him a severe beating, so severe that he’s now three beds away from Kasper. Considering the marks on his face when he arrived, Kasper guessed that Rolfe wasn’t prudent. He must have taken many body blows as well, because he could barely stand up, and every time they moved him he made sounds like a mistreated animal. But his mind was clear. Clear enough, at least, to take in his surroundings.
He noticed that there was another Westerner in the hospital. He made some signs in Kasper’s direction that first day, and asked him if he spoke English. When the answer was yes, his blue eyes lit up. “Where are you from?” he stammered.
“I’m an Italian, but part American,” Kasper said with a smile. “Rest. There’ll be time.”
Now Kasper and Thomas are inhaling some fresher air together in the little courtyard outside the big room. On one side of the courtyard are armed guards; on the other, the gate that leads to the two-meter-high pyramid of refuse in what must once have been a garden. And beyond the ex-garden, separated by a little wall a meter high, Boulevard Pasteur.
The traffic around the capital’s central market is like a basso continuo punctuated by high-pitched sirens, unmuffled motorbikes, screeching brakes. Every now and then detonations that sound like gunshots can be heard.
Thomas lights a cigarette. He’s recovering. The American embassy has let him know that they’re going to have him released. A couple of days, a week at most, and then he’ll be able to leave this terrible place.
“Tell me how I can help you once I get out of here,” the American asks Kasper.
“You can’t,” says Kasper, smiling. “The U.S. is the reason I’m in here. As far as they’re concerned, I’m supposed to die in here.”
“Not all Americans are the same.”
“Maybe I got mixed up with the wrong Americans.”
Kasper has told Thomas his story without giving any details. He hasn’t told him exactly what he was working on, just that what he was doing was justified. But Thomas Rolfe isn’t stupid. He looks Kasper in the eye and says, “Listen, my handsome Italian pilot, I don’t know what skies you’ve been flying in, but I know you can’t stay here. They don’t just blow you away here. Here they kill you slowly.”
Kasper nods. And wonders: Can I trust him? Trust this American who dropped in here out of nowhere? He could be one of them.
“That stuff you’re hooked up to,” says Rolfe. “That IV they drip into you every day—”
“Vitamins.”
“Vitamins my ass. I asked a friend of mine, a doctor at the embassy. That’s Ritalin.”
“Ritalin,” Kasper repeats.
“Do you know what that is?”
“It sounds familiar, but I can’t . . .”
Rolfe lowers his voice and looks away. “It’s a drug like an amphetamine. It weakens you. It breaks you down. And in the long run, it turns your brain to mush. I’m not clear about how much time that takes, but when they’re putting the stuff directly into your veins, the way they do with you . . . well, I don’t think you can hold out very long.”
—
The nurse has hooked up the IV and left the ward. Kasper’s lying on his cot. Rolfe comes over and pretends to chat with him while shielding him from view. Kasper disconnects the tubing from the needle in his arm, thrusts the IV line under the krama spread over the metal frame of his cot, and lets the liquid drain onto the floor.
Let the rats and cockroaches have his Ritalin.
Kasper wants to determine whether the stuff that’s been dripping into his veins is really what the American said it was. Before many hours pass, he gets his answer. The wave of fatigue that comes over him is weaker than usual, but at the same time he’s afflicted by panicky spasms he quickly identifies: drug withdrawal symptoms.
He spent years tracking down cocaine and heroin dealers, he’s seen more tons of dope than he can count, and now he’s a poor addict. Hooked on Ritalin and who knows what else.
Later he and Thomas go out into the courtyard with all the others. The American scrutinizes his companion, trying to gauge the storm raging inside him at the moment. Kasper’s swallowing hard, sweating, fidgeting. He knows that if the nurse approached him with some Ritalin right now, he’d probably hug him and hold out both arms, veins up.
A zombie among dozens of other zombies.
But not Thomas Rolfe.
The framed and thrashed American will soon be getting out. Fellow Americans will come and collect him. Like in a John Wayne film: the cavalry, the flag, the bugle calls, and all the rest. He’s probably the only nonaddict in the place. The only one capable of seeing things in their true light.
Kasper decides to trust him. After all, what has he got to lose? He says, “I’m planning an escape.”
Thomas stares at him with tight lips.
“You heard me right,” Kasper murmurs. “I’ve got a plan.”
He begins with Brady Fielding, whom Rolfe had met the day before.
Brady had been informed of Kasper’s plight by Jan van Veen, and when he heard what the Dutchman had to tell him, at first he couldn’t believe his ears. Then he got busy, requesting and obtaining permission to visit his friend.
“What . . . what the hell have they done to you?” Brady whispered.
“They’re killing me,” Kasper said.
“Shit, I can see that.”
“Can you help me?”
“Whatever you want me to do, I’m there for you.”
“You have to take me away from here,” Kasper said. Then he explained how.
And now he explains the plan to Thomas.
During the daily hour in the courtyard, while someone distracts the guards, Kasper will climb over the gate and launch himself onto the pyramid of garbage. He’ll roll down from there, run to the opposite wall, jump over it, and drop onto Boulevard Pasteur.
Brady will be easy to spot. Helmet, leather jacket, his best bike. They’ll make for the Cardamom Mountains, on the
