Authors: Tom Knox
She munched on a spider leg, delicately. Then she ate the fat, oozing black thorax of the spider, staring at Jake as she did so. She ate with her mouth open. He could see the pulp of black spiderflesh inside her mouth; he was staring at an old woman’s mouth with red lipstick on yellow teeth. And masticated black tarantula within.
A shudder of revulsion convulsed him. He was actually swaying. Maybe it was dehydration; he gulped down some more water, then busied himself with his camera, but he could feel the
tarantula
of fear slowly stalking down his spine. This was stupid. She was deliberately trying to spook him, as Tyrone had forewarned. The witch was trying to unnerve him; she was maybe succeeding.
The interview began almost at once. Ty asked questions in Khmer and the witch answered languidly, with a hint of vanity at certain points. She ate three whole spiders as they conversed. Jake watched her, helplessly fascinated. She was plucking off the big spider legs and popping them in her mouth, or chewing them like toffee strings. Her bangles chinked. She had crumbs of tarantula on her chin. One spider leg got stuck between her teeth – she pulled at it and then ate it, licking her fingers.
Jake did his duty, taking photos. He shivered in the cold of the overly air-con’d room. The witch had said something which made Tyrone pause, and turn. Jake noticed the witch was staring his way.
‘What?’ he asked. ‘What did she say? Is it about me?’
Ty shrugged, with an awkwardness. Silent.
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s just her doing her thing. Trying to freak you.’
‘Tell me Ty.’
‘She says you have sadness in your life . . .’
The witch spoke quickly in Khmer. Tyrone translated further:
‘She sees a ghost child. Uhm. The ghost of a ghost, a little girl?’
This was absurd. Jake felt a sincere irritation. He waved away the idiocy. It was so chilly in this stupid room, why did they have the aircon turned so high?
But the woman was persistent: pointing at Jake. Tyrone continued to translate:
‘She sees a floating head, long hair, white face, a head with . . . I don’t know, don’t know the word. Something to do with your mother’s spirit, her ghost?’
‘My mother? What does she know about my mother?’
‘Don’t know pal. I think it’s a Khmer ghost image, the
arb
, the floating woman’s head – trailing blood –’
The anger surged. Jake felt his own shameful stupidity. He had walked into this. The woman had researched them. She was, of course, a charlatan.
‘Fuck all this, Ty.’
‘Calm down.’
‘No.
Fuck
it. S’obvious. She’s got some inside gossip on me. Trying to spook me –’
‘Well. I did warn you. These people make a lot of money for a
reason.
’
‘OK let’s spook her back, the old bitch. Let’s just
ask her
, about the smoke children.’
‘But Jake – that’s a big risk –’
‘Fucking tell her we know about them!’
Tyrone paused, and pondered. Then he swivelled on the woman, and threw questions at her, urgent questions. The interview had become an interrogation. The witch waved an angry hand, bangles jangling. Her teeth were stained black from the roasted tarantulas. She didn’t care. She was irked and aroused, but she wasn’t saying any names. Jake heard no name in her stream of Khmer consonants.
Abruptly, the lady clapped her hands, twice, as if summoning guards. And then she started muttering – dark and urgent.
‘What the hell is she doing now?’
Tyrone backed away.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know – she’s casting some spell, some hex. Come on – let’s go!’
‘We’re done?’
‘I think we need to
go
? Don’t you
think?
’
The witch was swaying from side to side, hissing, pointing a varnished fingernail. But Jake was not done.
He still wanted the answer, he wanted a name: so he stepped forward and yelled at the hissing woman:
‘Who ordered the babies? Who?’
She hissed once more through her black, spider-stained teeth.
‘Tell us? Who the fuck was it? Who ordered the
kun krak
? The smoke children? Who paid you to do that?’
The woman’s hiss turned into a low and guttural moan. Tyrone grabbed Jake’s angry arm; Jake angrily shook him off.
‘Ty. You do it!
Ask her
. Tell her if she doesn’t help us we will write a story, tell everyone she is ripping babies out of women –’
‘But –’
‘And
threaten
her.’
Ty stiffened, as if snapping to attention; then he turned and he barked the question at the witch. He made the threat.
Her expression instantly froze. Her eyes iced, her mouth closed. Jake wondered if she was going to faint, or shout, or curse them again. But then she said, very slowly and distinctly:
‘Madame Tek.’
The hissing began again. Jake grabbed his cameras and Tyrone snatched his notebook: they were fleeing, escaping the chilly house, scooting for the door – and ignoring the protests of the assistant, lurking in the hallway.
The door slammed shut behind them; the heat was intense and immediate, after the overly conditioned air of the witch’s villa.
‘My God.’ Jake said. ‘Is that who I think it is? Who ordered the smoke babies?’
Tyrone shook his head.
‘Yes. Yes it is.’ He hurried on. ‘It was
Chemda’s own mother.’
Jake called Chemda as soon as they got back from Skuon. It was dark. He sat at his empty desk in his sparse apartment that looked over the Tonle Sap river, and murmured the truth.
‘I’m sorry, Chemda.’
‘She said it was
my mother
?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
Chemda was silent; as silent as the Tonle Sap itself. Jake stared through the window at the reflection of a jaundiced moon in the sleepy waters.
‘But it doesn’t make any sense. My own mother paid for the
kun krak
? I . . . so . . . she was trying to frighten us? How does it relate to Doctor Samnang? Ah. I don’t understand.’
Jake was bereft of an answer. He muttered some consoling words, meaningless sympathies. But Chemda was in no mood for sympathy; her next reaction was much more articulate, and brisk:
‘Please come and see me tomorrow, at my house. I need support. I am going to confront her.’
‘What?’
‘This is too weird. So. Jake – I can’t live with this, knowing this, ah, I need to understand what is going on –’
‘But what can I do?’
‘Be my friend. Please, I need a friend. Just a friend. This is going to be hard.’
The words were alluring, even as the idea was discomfiting.
Chemda sighed and explained further, she told him her grandfather was away, as ever, on business, she had no one else to turn to, and she wanted Jake’s support, his physical presence.
She said it twice: his
physical presence
. A man. By her side.
‘Please. Will you come?’
The last words were murmured: sultry, dark, whispered.
He got the sense she was almost hypnotizing him, leading him somewhere. He thought of the
apsaras
of Angkor Wat, the bare breasted dancing girls of King Jayavarman. Dancing their endless nubile dances, wreathed in smiling inscrutability, twirling and alluring, teasing and divine. And always, in the end, unreachable.
Yet he was reaching.
‘OK Chem. I’ll be there.’
‘Thankyou. Jake. Ah. This means a lot. Thankyou.’
With a sense of great apprehension, and also the insistent stirrings of desire, he shut down the phone, and turned from the windowed view of the dark and aged river. He tried to distract himself with research on his shining laptop.
He scoured the Net, seeking information about the Plain of Jars, the burned bones. He researched the strange holes, the wounds in the crania. Jake looked at trepanations, he winced at medical images of opened braincases, he scowled at dissected human heads floating disembodied on the screen; he disturbed himself with stories of neurosurgery gone wrong: early lobotomy patients turned into drooling zombies, like Chemda’s grandmother.
This wasn’t helping. He turned off the computer and retreated to alcohol, hoping to lull his agitated soul to sleep with some Aussie wine. But his night was long and disturbed.
For some reason, he woke at three a.m, and he was sweating, heavily. Was he ill? He rubbed the sheet over his perspiring forehead. Drenched. Then he heard low voices outside his building. Why? Stepping to the window, he surveyed the humid night time streetscape. No one was there. Just the moon shadows of palms rustling in the breeze, and ranks of parked mopeds. A rowing boat was drifting down the Tonle Sap, with no one on board.
He went back to bed. Fought his way to a fretful sleep.
Early the next morning, he walked out onto a sunlit, empty, Sunday-ish Sisovath Boulevard and caught a tuk-tuk south along the corniche, deeply apprehensive.
The house of the Tek and Sovirom dynasties was auspiciously situated near the Imperial Gardens and the Embassies, very much the superior end of town. Where the Mekong braided with its sister rivers, the Brassac and the Tonle Sap, in a languorous troilism of the waters.
Whitewashed walls surrounded the Sovirom compound, he pressed the bell, said hello to a tiny camera, and the black electric gates swung smoothly ajar. He crossed a sunlit lawn of vivid green grass, and approached the impressive front door.
Behind it was a barefoot young maid, sweet, uniformed, humbly performing a
wai
, and also glancing anxiously at the ceiling. He soon realized the cause for her agitation. The house was filled with shouting.
Two women. It had to be Chemda and her mother. He could hear Chemda’s normally soft voice raised in real anger. Then an older woman snapping back. What were they saying? Even if Jake had understood Khmer he probably wouldn’t have understood the angry torrents of words.
The maid blushed, said nothing, looked left and right in confusion. Then she escorted Jake down a wide parquetfloored hallway to a large white sitting room. This house was so
big.
The maid departed, and he was alone – alone with the voices screaming upstairs.
He didn’t know what to do? Intervene? Surely not: this was a domestic, this was family, this could get nasty. But could he
not
intervene? What if it got
nastier
? Bewildered and uncertain, Jake sat down on a modernist leather chair and gazed around the enormous room.
It was sunny and bright, and decorated with antiquities. A Garuda stood in a corner, a winged and beaked Hindu deity carved in red sandstone – like a mute and flayed opera singer. Next to the Garuda was the enormous stone head of a Naga, a Hindu snake demon, snarling at a large black Samsung TV. Behind the antiquities was a huge wall of window, then a garden of grey sand, small trees, and soft grey rocks.
The argument upstairs was getting worse.
Steeling himself, he stood up: he had to take action, step between these women. But as he walked to the door he was met by the door swinging open.
A man entered. A small Asian man, with a yellowish complexion, attired in a beige linen suit. Jake instantly recognized this man from the newspaper and TV as Sen, Sovirom Sen, the businessman, the banker, the friend of prime ministers, confidant of Sihanouk.
The patriarch.
Jake felt intense relief. Now someone else could intervene and solve the argument upstairs.
Grandfather Sen smiled, and put a finger to his lips. Then he gestured at the ceiling, and spoke.
‘I always think
cherchez le femme
is a rather absurd expression, don’t you? Women are not exactly hard to find. They are so
audible.’
Jake didn’t know what to say; Sen was shaking his hand, warmly. Sincerely.
‘Please. I am Chemda’s grandfather. And of course you are Jake Thurby. My granddaughter discourses on you,
nightly.
’ A delicate pause, Sen smiled opaquely. ‘Ah. Shall we step into the garden? Women are like the weather. Their moods are tropical depressions. We must simply wait for the rains to pass.’
Outside, and with the glass door shut behind them, the noise of Chemda and her mother was almost completely muffled. Sen led the way along a path to a kind of summer house, with wooden benches and silk crimson cushions, that looked out over the sands and posed rocks and the small, pale-green trees.
‘Please, Mister Thurby. Be seated.’
Jake sat down on the wooden bench. Sovirom smiled, and regarded the exquisitely raked grey sand. Jake noticed the man was wearing beautiful shoes, of fine grained leather. Probably bespoke: handmade in London or Paris.
A pause.
Sovirom Sen leaned an inch towards Jake, and said:
‘This garden is . . . one of my greatest passions.’
Jake wasn’t sure how to reply. He attempted a sensible remark. ‘It’s beautiful. Japanese, right?’
‘Of course. It is closely modelled on the famous withered gardens in the Zen temples of Kyoto. You have seen them I imagine?’
‘No, I’ve never been to Japan.’
‘But you must, you
must go!
I visit Japan regularly, for my business. I adore the great Zen temples of Kyoto. Ryoanji. The Silver Pavilion.
Nanzenji.
Hence my garden here.’ He raised a modest hand. ‘The essence of the Zen garden is abstraction. The more you take away – the more you have. And that is the true genius of Japanese culture, they see the beauty in nullity. Abstraction is perfection. The haiku is but a few parched syllables. Japanese cuisine is rawness and purity. And Japanese Zen Buddhism – that is the greatest of religions. Why? Because there is no god, no afterlife, no superstition, there is
nothing.
’
Fittingly, this speech was concluded by silence. But Jake had to break it, he had to say something.
‘Mister Sovirom, I want to thank you for saving us, in Laos. The airplane, the soldiers.’
The patriarch smiled, distantly.
‘It is nothing.’
‘But I also have questions.’
‘Yes yes. Of course. I am aware what has happened. In Ponsavanh. In Luang. You must be confused. Please accept my profound apologies for this.’
‘OK . . .’
‘Happily, I can explain everything. If you will permit.’
‘Please?’
The grandfather spoke quietly. But with firmness.
‘My daughter, Madame Tek, is a shrewd and educated woman – like her daughter in turn. But, Jacob, they profoundly disagree. Madame Tek believes that Chemda’s determination to dig up Cambodia’s tragic past is, shall we say, unideal. She thinks the bones of the killing fields should be left to moulder. Why open the coffins, why break the tombs? Why dance around with our skulls, like Mexicans after too much tequila?’
‘I . . . don’t know.’
‘Well, there is one answer. My wilful granddaughter would say, with her American education, that we cannot “move on” as a country until we have confronted the past. And it is not an argument without merit. Perhaps we should stare at the head of the
naga
, the snake, Kali. I myself have truly difficult memories of the Khmer Rouge regime, maybe I have not dealt with these memories.’
Jake felt a need to be bold.
‘You mean your wife? We know something terrible happened to her.’
The elegant old man continued.
‘Yes indeed. We don’t know
precisely
what happened to her. We
do
know they did some experiment, on her body and her mind. Perhaps akin to brain washing.’
‘Your wife volunteered for this, uh . . . experiment. That’s what we heard.’
Grandfather Sen looked at the concentric circles of sand.
‘This is apparently the case. And it is quite plausible. You see, my wife
believed
in that absurd regime, she was a true
cadre
. She
supported
the Khmer Rouge.’
‘Why?’
‘You must understand, at the time many people believed in the new regime. Because they wanted to believe. The Americans were bombing us. The country was in uproar. The king was on all sides at once. The Vietnamese were abusing us. The fascist, Lon Nol, was in power. Brutal and gangsterly, a son of a bitch, as they say. The Americans’ very own son of a bitch.’
‘Therefore?’
‘The Khmer Rouge seemed like a salvation. They were unsullied, pure. Incorruptible. Of course we heard reports from those places in the country where they had already seized power, reports of killing. Horrible killing. But these reports came from the CIA. When they said the Khmer Rouge will kill your mother and your father and your sister and your daughter, we did not believe the stories. My wife certainly did not believe them.’ Sen gazed almost longingly at his garden. ‘And yet . . . in my heart,
I believed the stories
. I knew some of these Khmer Rouge leaders from Paris, at least by reputation. Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon. Brilliant scholars, and also the most
passionate
of ideologues. From the beginning, I suspected they were capable of . . . extraordinary acts.’
‘Why didn’t you do anything?’
‘Take my family out of Cambodia?’ Sen smiled a bitter smile. ‘I am Cambodian Chinese, but my wife, she was pure Khmer, dark Khmer, royal Khmer, daughter of a concubine in the court of King Monivong. She was not going to leave. Besides, as I say, she supported them, even as they turned people into manure, even as they fertilized the rice paddies with the ashes of the bourgeois.’
‘Then they took her to Laos.’
‘She was a scientist. The government said they needed her. I watched her go. And then I heard that she had let them perform their brain surgeries, their experimental interventions, she actively volunteered, or so we were told –’
‘When did you find all this out?’
Sen was silent, regarding his rocks and tiny trees. The grey sands of the Zen garden shifted in a slender breeze off the river, whispering like something sleeping, but restive.
The old man spoke:
‘In 1980. After the Vietnamese invasion. I was living like a peasant near Battambang. starving, like everyone. Starving but surviving. And finally she returned from Laos, from the Plain of Jars, and she was . . . a dribbling doll, a Port-au-Prince zombie.’ His steady gaze became an anguished frown. ‘But we struggled on. There was so much pain in those years, this was merely an addition. And miraculously she had survived the mercies of Pol Pot and Ta Mok, survived their religion of hatred and holocaust, their god of smoke and ash. Yet it soon became apparent that whatever they did to her in Laos was irreversible.’ Sen touched a single fingertip to his forehead, and closed his eyes.
‘My daughter and her husband had already escaped to America, where they had baby Chemda. The paradox was piquant, first America tried to kill us, then it saved us. Ah. America with her bipolar moods, so generous and so unhinged. What a strange country it is.’
‘And you?’
‘I remained here. I stayed silent. And I decided to send this emptied husk, this creature that was once my wife, back to Luang. I sent her to our good friends the Marconnets, to live out her remaining years beneath the shade of the papayas, in beautiful Luang Prabang, Xien Dong Xieng Thong, the city of the Golden Lord Buddha. You see, she always loved Luang: it was emotionally appropriate. And I told no one she had come back. We did not want her to be ridiculed, to be gawped at in Phnom Penh, as the monkey woman, the ghost of herself, one of the
araks brai.
My proud wife would not have wanted anyone to see her salivating. In a wheelchair. And we did not want anyone to know her shame: that she had volunteered herself for this terrible surgery, that she had selected herself to be turned into a living corpse, a smoke woman.’