memoir. By the King himself.
The Colonel shakes his head. ‘For such a thing to come to the nation now. It is a gift from heaven.’
The lamps baste the interior of the tent; it is roasting and airless. Back outside Map sits down and says to William, ‘Hey motoboy, go get me a beer.’
Teacher Andrade says gently to William, ‘Perhaps the officers would like one as well, William.’
It gives William something to do. He sompiahs and makes himself look lively.
Even inside the tent, getting the beers, he listens to the debate.
The Army, it seems, want the Book to stay in Siem Reap. William thinks: the generals all own hotels, they want a museum here for the tourists.
The archaeologists say the Book needs to be repaired. It should go to the National Museum in Phnom Penh.
‘Is it safe anywhere?’ the French archaeologist asks.
Map takes his beer from William without even looking at him. He smiles and says, ‘The Army want to take care of the Book to earn merit to make up for all the people they killed.’
It is too much for Sinn Rith. He turns his head with a snap. ‘Like all the people you murdered?’
Map still smiles. ‘Everybody knows not even Buddha himself can keep a Khmer Rouge out of hell.’
The next day, the Army resolves all debate. They send a helicopter to airlift the Book out of the field.
Luc is sixteen, loves sport, and is planning to study medicine.
He plays football and tennis even in the heat. His shoulders swell, his hips shrink. He is very handsome – long-nosed, thin-lipped but with a deeply sweet face. He plays outside so often that his brown hair is sun-streaked.
His cyclopousse driver has fallen in love with him. Arn is from somewhere in the country, near Kompong Thom. Luc finds him heartbreaking, for Arn lives in his pedal taxi with all his possessions folded under the seat. His bank is a back trouser pocket secured with a safety pin. There is a pouch for his comb and his toothbrush. He washes in public fountains, wearing his kramar around his waist, sleek, muscular and happy.
Arn is twenty-two, which to Luc is old, in another state across the border into adulthood. Doing anything which earns you a living, and which gives you independence in the city, seems exciting and glamorous. And Arn looks happy. He smiles when he talks about his sister’s troubles with a recalcitrant fiancé. He talks of his father and mother and cousins and how rich they are, relatively.
Arn’s face seems to melt slightly whenever he sees Luc. The smile goes softer, the eyes narrow and gleam, and dart back and forth between Luc’s face and the ground.
‘Monsieur. I see you and birds sing,’ he says.
‘Monsieur, I see you and I see the sky, with all the stars.’
Taken aback by Arn’s grandness of expression, Luc stumbles up onto the front seat. He is flummoxed by his own response, which is a heat around the heart. He always feels tension around Arn, sometimes unpleasant and anxious. Luc is dismayed if chance means he must take another driver’s vehicle. It is nonsense, but he feels that he has betrayed Arn. He worries if Arn’s feelings will be hurt and calculates when and how he can apologize.
And Luc is aware.
Aware that he looks back as often as he can at Arn’s thighs and calves. Aware that his own people – plump, pink, grey and precise – do not attract him. The female dancers of the Cambodian Royal Ballet are pretty and firm of flesh, but Luc is aware that they earn only his attention and admiration. He does not masturbate thinking about them.
When he masturbates, he thinks of the girdle of lean muscle that joins the stomach muscles to the slim hips of Cambodian men. His heart goes up into his mouth when he passes them washing, glossy as seals, in the public fountains. At times the full meaning of this sinks in and he becomes utterly miserable, staring at the walls of his mother’s villa, or watching the lights of the passing traffic on the ceiling, listening to faraway flowering music from the nightclubs of Phnom Penh.
Today, after the lycée, Luc descends to the courtyard with its mango tree. He wears his white tennis shirt, white shorts, and as he expected, Arn waits outside the gate.
‘Le Club, comme d’habitude, Arn,’ he says. It’s tennis day.
‘Oh, Monsieur,’ says Arn. For once he is not smiling. For once he stares moon-faced and unhappy. He sighs, glances down and pulls in his lips until they are as thin as Luc’s.
‘Arn. My friend?’ Calling Arn his friend always produces collywobbles. For it is perilously close to the truth.
‘Today is New Year. I wanted to do something with you.’
Luc knows what his mother would say: the boy only wants money; they need money; if you want to give him money, do so. But don’t get too involved. You can’t really help him, you know. Unless you turn him into one of us.
His mother has read Luc correctly as being soft-hearted. His mother is an old hand. All her Cambodian friends are rich. They have handsome sons who also go to the lycée. But they don’t break Luc’s heart by keeping their one pair of trousers folded under the seat of a pedal-driven taxi. Some of them harden Luc’s heart by boasting of their houses and cars. He does not think that these middle-class Cambodians might be trying to establish equal grounds for friendship.
Luc, perhaps, wants to pity his friends. In any case, whatever it is that has hold of his heart is far too strong. It grips like a crocodile, no argument possible, only acceptance.
‘D’accord. It will be nice to spend New Year with you.’ Luc’s tongue stumbles slightly over the words. ‘I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend it with.’
‘Pardon?’
Luc has to explain the complicated French. By the time Arn understands both of them feel awkward and hurt. Arn’s smile is not like the sun, but like the moon – wan, faded. ‘I thought we go to lake. Sit on pier. I have bought a lunch.’
The thought of Arn buying him anything causes Luc an anguish of heart. Arn can’t afford to buy anything. He has to rent the machine, he hardly eats. ‘Arn, you shouldn’t have done that, please, let me pay you for the lunch.’
What can Arn do? He accepts Luc’s money, but he looks unhappy, for this has ruined the gesture. Luc knows that he wanted to pay, wanted to pay him back. For what? He wants to make something manifest, but the act is disproportionate. What has Luc done for him? Except be friendly and open and … and well yes something more, but how could he see that?
Luc feels bad, and Arn feels bad that Luc feels bad, but above all just wants …
… wants them to be, not equals, that would be stupid; nobody is anybody else’s equal in Cambodia. Luc knows that Arn just wants them to be who they are
