Luc.
These are the feelings that people sing about in cheap songs. They are real, those cheap feelings. They turn out not to be pretty lies after all. They are demanding realities.
Luc’s eyes feel hot. They swell as if about to burst. Dear God, I’m going to cry. I don’t like this; I should go and play tennis with that wizened old coach who I don’t even like. Arn is whispering. ‘Maybe you go to tennis.’
‘No! It is a lovely idea. To celebrate New Year. Let’s go to the Boeung Kak Lake.’
Sometimes genius comes to Luc, as if a powerful, spiny but beautiful flower thrusts itself out of the heart of his life. Luc says, ‘Let me pedal you.’
‘Luc!’
‘No! I need the exercise. Really. I will pedal.’
Arn is smiling again and laughing. Luc stretches back and squeezes the brake. Laughing aloud Arn rises out of his seat and the cyclo wobbles from side to side, tipping slightly. Luc bounds out of the seat and pulls Arn who is weak with hilarity, forward to the wide, padded bench. ‘No, no, no!’ laughs Arn.
‘You are an old grandfather,’ Luc says in Khmer. ‘I respect you. You should rest, I will pedal.’
Arn shakes his head at his overturning young French friend. He takes hold of Luc’s pink hairless biceps and holds them. He swings up onto the seat and looks over the back.
Luc pedals. Shadows of trees flicker across his face. Women saunter past, trays on their heads. And for some reason Luc starts to sing an old Françoise Hardy song, about looking on while boys and girls love. He bellows as he pedals, grinning at Arn, whose face is turned towards his as steadily as the moon.
His song mingles with one by Sin Sisimuth coming from some passing Dansette. The voice of Sin is warm, the music trills like birds. The sound mingles with the savours of roadside cooking, the gasps of bananas deep-frying on mounds of earth baked into stoves, wafts of satay on skewers dripping over charcoal, and the sticky smell of all that fruit. The song harmonizes with the singing clatter of people speaking and the horse-like clopping of the feet of Luc’s own people, strolling in shorts and white shirts, more unbuttoned than they could ever be at home.
The song flowers alongside the modern apartments painted cream, with bougainvillaea purple along the tops of the walls, and the palm trees and the sprinklers and the uniformed children and Librairies crowded with books in Khmer and French and pootling little Citroën 2CVs peeping horns as sharp and bouncy as Cambodian smiles.
I love it! I love it, thinks Luc as he cycles. I never want to leave; this will be my home. Goodbye medical school, goodbye hospital. I will become a cyclopousse driver and live under the stars.
Arn laughs and covers his face. ‘Oh! I cannot afford your fare.’
Something comes over Luc and he leans back. ‘My fare costs everything, but I do not charge money.’
My fare is you.
‘Oh, Monsieur!’ and Arn permits himself a florid khutuy gesture that would not be conceivable in Kompong Thom. ‘I fear my purse is not big enough.’
Luc doesn’t get what he means but something hot and heavy impels him. ‘Ah, but it’s not always the amount, it’s the quality that is important. Is it fine stuff?’
‘Oh, oh.’ Arn is leaning forward and shaking his shoulder. ‘It is the finest stuff. For you. Oh, everyone is looking.’
Luc only now registers Arn’s embarrassment. ‘They know we are just having fun,’ he says gently.
There is a look on Arn’s face that Luc has never seen shining out of anyone else’s. It is a kind of surrender. Very quickly, as they buzz past buses and women in stalls and lunchtime workers on their way back to the bank or telegraph office, Arn lifts himself up onto his knees, turns around over the back of the seat, and pecks a kiss on Luc’s cheek.
He plainly could not help it. Luc doesn’t blame him. Arn was overcome. But Luc does not know what to make of it. In the end, he decides to pity. His friend could not help it, he got over-excited, he is from a different culture, and you have to be aware of imposing Western meanings. It was a familial kiss …
No it wasn’t.
Luc feels the dark.
You know what this is, Luc. So does Arn; his expression is full of both love and awareness. It is kindly but not exactly innocent.
Oh God, this is what it is. I am that. That thing.
He looks at Arn, his gently burnished face, and accepts. If it means I get Arn, then yes. Yes I am. That is me. I am that thing. And right now, nobody can see, and if they can see I don’t care.
Suddenly Luc shouts like John Wayne, and drives the pedals even harder and faster, and Arn chuckles and laughs. Luc lifts his feet off the pedals and just for a moment, he is flying.
In those days Boeung Kak Lake was a park that people could stroll around. Luc and Arn arrive and Arn’s friends cluster round to laugh and joke about the spectacle of a barang pedalling a cyclopousse. The laughter is good-natured. It’s New Year, you get to do crazy things. The two men … boys … are sent on their way with good cheer by the other drivers who agree to look after Arn’s machine. Arn goes to the latrines, but not to relieve himself.
He changes into his white shirt, and his perfectly creased khaki slacks.
They head out for the park, full of prostitutes at night, but families by day. Halfway to the lake they are pelted with water balloons by a gang of kids. They are nice kids, boys and girls all about fourteen, so Arn and Luc just laugh. They walk along the pier and all the cubicles are taken. Well they would be full, wouldn’t they, it’s April 13th.
Luc sighs. ‘We can always go back and sit on the grass.’
Except that the very last little cubicle, right at the end of the walkway out over the lake, is empty. Maybe nobody persevered all the way to the end of the pier; maybe a family has just vacated it. But there it is – hammocks and a charcoal stove and a view of the little lake, with its lotus pads and dreamy girls and serious boys in canoes.
Heartbreak time. Arn has bought them lunch, bundled up his kramar. The kramar serves as his pyjamas, his modesty patch, his head-dress, and his shopping bag. He unties it carefully, gently and there is sticky rice in vine leaves, soup in perfectly tied little bags that have spilled nothing, pork in sauce with vegetables.
Luc tells him it is a wonderful lunch and they sit and talk about the usual things. And Arn becomes overwhelmed. Because his unlikely dream has come true. The huge beautiful kindly barang is his.
‘Luc, I want to study,’ he says as he eats. ‘Luc, I am so happy. I know life will be just great. Everything in Cambodia good now. We have our Prince. Your people good to us, but the politicians go home, so now we can be friends.’
Arn sways from side to side as if to music as he says, ‘We all live together and work hard, so Cambodian business, Cambodian factories, Cambodian music, all do very well now. We will become modern country. We join the world as friends.’
‘Modern country,’ says Luc and lifts his
