Between This World and the Next, page 8
What she felt when she saw them jumping down took her by surprise. It was like the urge she’d had to smash Thom’s head with the rice pot: the sensation that she no longer needed to accept life as it was. She could open up a vein to the anger she held on their behalf, a reservoir deep inside her which she had always sealed up. She could tap it, let its contents surge up and erupt.
“Hey, bong—let us in!”
Rathana was the first to rattle the gate. Bopha followed after, the letter necklace dancing on her stomach. The usual raucous hubbub began. Here was Rathana demanding his dinner before they washed, Samnang stripping off her clothes and falling over her shorts. There was Dara, hanging back, giving her that funny look he always saved for her.
“Is he here?”
“No—Thom’s been out all day, Dara,” she told him: up to something with his metal box; meeting with … why not say his name? Sokha. Yes. “Sokha,” she said out loud as the children raced past to the yard, not listening.
Soon, the naked mischief-makers were running water into the bucket, scooping it in their cups and splashing it around. This might be the last time she’d hear the joyful laughter that, in her darkest days, had been her only reason for living.
“Rice.”
“Mango.”
“Coconut.”
“Cassava.”
“Potato.”
“Papaya.”
“The flooded fields of lotus and lilies.”
“You wash with us today, pretty lady?” Rathana shouted, and, this time, feeling love rising up like the song in a bird’s breast, Song pulled up the plastic washing stool and offered herself to them, taking off her shirt and wrapping her sampot around her.
For a moment, the children were abashed, and then Dara stepped forward. When the others saw Song was happy to allow it, they helped him unwind her krama, their boisterousness forgotten. When the fabric was loose and her hair fell freely around her shoulders, Bopha folded the krama and left it to one side.
Then Rathana reached for the soap and delicately began to lather and rub it into and along her hair. The last time someone washed her, it had been frantic and terrifying, Bun Thim splashing her in the mud of the Tonle Sap, desperately trying to neutralize what Sokha had thrown on her. Other little hands now joined Rathana’s. They were gentle and tender, reaching all over her, sweetly, curiously, not pretending they didn’t notice but neither scared nor disgusted by her burns and grafts.
“Srey sa-art,” said Bopha in a whisper to herself.
When the soaping and shampooing had been done to their satisfaction, Samnang dipped her bowl into the bucket of water, bringing it up perfectly full to the brim. She poured it reverently, the water running through Song’s hair and across her face and over her covered breasts and stomach and thighs, washing away the smarting and stinging of her grazes. Again and again the water flowed, refracting the sunlight in white arcs and stripes. She cried as it came down, keeping a straight face so they wouldn’t notice, her tears becoming part of the flow of water that flowed from them.
Afterward, when she had dressed and settled them as usual, she began to work through her list. In the bar, behind the beer barrels, she found an old, transparent plastic tube; blowing sharply into it forced out a web of dust and debris. Then she took a crate, filled it with empty Stolichnaya bottles, grabbed the claw hammer that was kept on a nearby shelf, and hurried down to the entrance foyer where the motos were parked.
She closed her eyes for a moment, giving thanks to her father. It had been his crazy idea to keep a petrol bomb ever ready in their house. “What a waste!” Ma had said. “What if the yuon were to ransack this place?” She summoned her memories of the bike shop mechanics. How had they done it as she watched them from her window? Open the petrol tank. Submerge one end of the tube in the petrol. Make the tube into a U shape, ensuring the bottom of the U was always lower than the level of the tank.
Now all she had to do was raise the free end to her lips. A quick suck and the golden-brown liquid emerged, settling in the arc of the bottom of the U. After that, it was easy to fill the bottles halfway, screwing the lids tight and resealing the motos’ petrol tanks. When she was finished, she hid the bottles in the darkness of the broom cupboard, under an old bucket, covered with rags.
Back in the room, she pulled her picture of Ros Sothea off the wall and fashioned it into a kind of envelope. “What can I do to thank you?” she repeated under her breath.
Sitting at the window, she saw Thom return and head for the bar. Now all she needed was for darkness to arrive; everything else could be done at the last minute. She willed the sky to fade from bleached blue to gray to indigo. The owner of the bike shop mirrored her impatience, it seemed. He was pacing back and forth across the sidewalk. When his wife called him in, he hawked betel juice into the gutter. “Choi may!” he shouted, smacking his hands together.
Finally, when the sun set, she headed for Thom’s room, opened his top drawer, and ripped out the plastic bag of cash, stuffing the wad of money inside her waistband. She would do what she could for the children. Breaking the padlock on the box in the closet would be impossible; even if she had the strength, the clanging would draw too much attention. Using the claw hammer, she levered up the lid, finding exactly what she had expected inside—a video machine connected to the end of the wire. She ejected the tape and slid it into the envelope made from the picture of Ros Serey Sothea. Then, as she turned to leave, another idea came to her. She took the pillow from Thom’s bed and ripped it apart, spreading handfuls of polyester stuffing around. She turned out his drawers, tossing clothes and papers behind her, throwing any valuables—his alarm clock, a pair of fake Ray-Bans—into the plastic bag that had held his money. Then, in Fearless’s apartment, she did the same, tipping out his duffel bag and scattering the contents. It was a strange and strangely guilty pleasure for her: creating chaos for somebody else to clean up. Satisfied that the mess looked realistic, she slid the videotape under Fearless’s pillow.
Back in her room, she fashioned a sling out of her kramas, including the bloodstained half she hadn’t had time to wash. Once she had wrapped and folded the Stoli bottles into it, she shifted the bundle onto her back and knotted the ends around her chest, tucking the claw hammer into the folds of fabric. She squatted up and down to ensure the bottles didn’t clink, conscious of her breasts, which seemed swollen and more sensitive after the beating she’d had from Thom. Then she slipped onto the mezzanine and down to the next landing, the only sound the thumping of her pulse in her head.
At the bottom of the stairs, she wrought one final piece of havoc. Offering up a silent prayer of forgiveness, she placed her foot on the supporting post of the spirit house. As it crashed to the floor and its finial and balustrade cracked, a hot flush began to spread across her body. It was Thom who had always made a point with the observances, who presented one face to the world and pulled another behind closed doors. What came crashing to the ground was not the spirit house or the spirits, but his hypocrisy and venality and evil heart. Let them come, spirits of the ground, who were older and wiser and truer than the people who walked all over them. Let them no longer be falsely at peace in this place and rise up in anger, spiral up the staircase, into the Naga, down every corridor and fuck-room, howling, petrifying everyone in their way. She unlocked the street gate and left it wide open, the last piece of evidence that the place had been ransacked by thieves.
Then she was out, into the night, slinging the plastic bag containing Thom’s possessions onto a nearby mound of garbage. She moved steadily through the streets, across busy intersections, over shafts of light thrown onto the sidewalk from open shops, past the noise of karaoke and shouting televisions, around the corner restaurants whose plastic chairs and tables spilled onto the sidewalk and uniformed beer girls laughed politely at bad jokes. Blue plastic bags wafted in the monsoon breeze, floating no more than an inch above the sidewalk; rats as big as cats scurried among broken bricks.
As she went, she kept to the dark spaces and side streets. Fifteen minutes later, she entered Street 322, keeping a safe distance from the villa in case the guards recognized her. But as she edged closer, she realized these were different men—dressed in the sand-colored shirts of the National Police, with black and gold epaulets and hard, peaked caps. Lights were burning on the villa’s top floor—a sign that gave her reason to hope.
Going around the block, she leapt into the dead neighbor’s garden. At the foot of the jack tree, she put down the sling full of bottles. Deftly, she undid their caps, dipped the rags in petrol, and stuffed each mouth. Then she climbed the tree, swiftly, silently, and settled herself in the fork of its branches. Once she had tied one end of her second krama to the tree, she sat, ears cocked and eyes peeled for movement.
To the west, the traffic on Monivong sounded like the sighing of a sea. Mosquitoes banked and dived around her ears. She could still leave now. She could climb back down and out of the garden, return to the Naga, pretend she hadn’t heard the “thieves.” She had come this far, yes, but could she really go further? Someone like her. Someone so weak.
Then Sovanna walked past one of the upper floor windows. The stars were in alignment: they were ordering her onward.
Song inched back down the tree, picked up one of the bottles, climbed back over the wall, and scampered to the edge of the block. When she peered around the corner, she saw the policemen were still there, but talking and making no effort to keep watch. She took a deep breath and pulled out the cigarette lighter. The wick of rag flowered into flame.
She hurled the bottle toward the men, sprinting away, hearing shouts as she scaled the neighbor’s wall again.
Now she was a thundercrack, the sun at its midday cruelest, the monsoon rain on the skylight, the pounding music of the Naga. She was her hatred for Thom and her love for Sovanna. She was all the biggest things she could summon in her mind concentrated into the one thing she needed to be in that moment—pure, focused speed—hopping down from the tree and lighting her second rag. Making for the right-hand side of the villa, she punched the claw hammer through one of the liquid black windows of the four-wheel drive, transforming the glass into tinkling shivers of sound. As soon as she threw the bottle onto the front seat, flames rippled up, erect and vertical. The third bottle she hurled in the direction from which the guards would come, creating a barrier of flame that she hoped would hold them back. The fourth exploded on the grill of a downstairs window. The fifth smashed and exploded inside, the dragons painted on the closet coming alive in the firelight. The sixth landed perfectly on the upstairs balcony; she had a feel for them now, their precise weight and flight. Sprinting back to the wall, she threw herself into the foliage, clutching in her hand the very last bottle—her insurance policy should she be cornered by the guards.
Trembling with adrenaline, her toes curling in friable earth, she was captivated by the bright banners of flame, the sharp shadows on the walls and decorative plasterwork, the flickering illumination in the garden, every leaf and flower lit and aquiver. She felt connected to a great power that had started as a vision in her mind and traveled through her hands. She was the Naga come to life, each of her heads spitting fire.
From where she watched, dark silhouettes ran from the house, shadow puppets trapped in hellfire. Which meant she was safe, on the side of the angels, no longer trapped in her own burning world.
13
After the Land Cruiser had roared away, locals appeared from nowhere. One, who was lugging an orange jerrican, attempted to splash gasoline over Amos’s cuts.
“Get the fuck away!” he screamed. “My shoulder! Just do it, man.”
As Amos lay back in the dirt, Fearless braced one foot under his armpit. Amos didn’t even grimace when he pulled the shoulder into place, but leapt to his feet and began searching in his rucksack. From its depths, he produced a khaki-colored plastic box the size of a walkie-talkie, with a short, stubby antenna. Fearless watched as he held the box aloft, the dust swirling in the light of the shacks on the crossroads.
Then Amos heaved his bike up and kick-started it roughly. “F-F-F-F-Follow!” he shouted.
So that was it, thought Fearless: it was a stammer that made Amos so reluctant to speak—not rudeness or distrust or instinctive aversion.
The two of them rumbled into the darkness, past warehouses, wastelands, depots, and truck yards, turning off the straight highway onto a road that curved and doglegged. As he stamped through the gears, Fearless shook his head. Alyosha had always had his finger in dozens of pies—jeans, cigarettes, fake Napoleon brandy: small stuff. But what the hell was going on here?
Amos slowed down and Fearless caught up as the open fields were interrupted by an outbreak of shops and houses.
“Where the hell are we?”
“Somewhere to the w-w-est of the city. Between the airport and the center of t-town.”
Amos braked, held the box up, and led them down an alley barely wider than a car. The houses were constructed in concrete and red brick, all of them on stilts with tall, pitched roofs. Save for the pink and blue flash of televisions, there was no sign of life and no sound louder than their engines.
“C-c-cut it,” Amos said, as he turned off his engine, letting his bike coast freely around a corner. Then he dismounted, pushing it silently along the rutted track. Every fifteen feet, he would stop and consult his box. Struggling to read the machine’s display, he kept searching for patches where moonshine broke through the trees.
At the end of the lane, music floated from a house—a garish Cambodian pop tune with a nasal vocal. Moving in slow motion, Amos returned the machine to his backpack, leaned his bike on its kickstand, and motioned for Fearless to do the same. Then he drew out a handgun, a Browning or Sig Sauer: a weapon whose brutalist look made Fearless’s blood run cold.
Crouching down, they edged their way toward the house. Inside the open gate sat the Land Cruiser that had sideswiped them. A weak light burned in a second-floor room, the music pouring from its unshuttered window.
In the darkness, Amos’s lips were blue against his Black skin. His short, dense dreads, silhouetted by the moon, were the bent legs of a tarantula, still and tense. Then a light clicked on in another room and they heard the sound of trickling water. At the same time, a stifled groan went up from the other room. Alyosha: the timbre of his voice was unmistakable.
Then the DJ announced another song and the music began to blare a fanfare. Under its cover, they scurried to the bottom of the stairs. As their heads reached the level of the second-floor veranda, they could see Alyosha’s feet and then his naked body, gagged and bound to a wooden chair. On top of the battering he had taken in the crash, his back was marked by bloody, raw tissue where the skin had been burned, wounds upon wounds. A clothes iron on the floor told the story.
Holding his gun out, Amos scuttered in, Fearless behind, rushing to Alyosha, lifting his slumped head from his chest.
As another stifled mumble escaped Alyosha’s lips, the sound of trickling water in the bathroom stopped abruptly. The man who had been torturing Alyosha was there, his feet breaking up the line of light under the door.
Amos reached out to Fearless and handed him the gun, motioning that he should keep it trained on the door. He swiftly pulled the tape from Alyosha’s mouth, cut through his ropes, and pulled the sheet from the nearby bed.
They heard the sound of a flush. The pipes began to rattle.
Fearless held the gun out stiffly in front of him, pea-sized beads of sweat breaking out on his scalp. He could feel the texture of the stippled gun grip imprinting itself into the flesh of his palm.
At the moment Amos draped the sheet around Alyosha’s shoulders, the bathroom door opened and the gaunt man—bare-chested and heavily tattooed—stepped out. As soon as he saw Fearless’s gun, he raised his hands, a little smile creeping into the corner of his lips.
Something came out of Fearless’s mouth—enough to indicate that he was willing to shoot, though in truth it was just a dumb expression of terror. The man stared back, his body perfectly still. Fearless tried to focus his gaze on the man’s face, but he was transfixed by the eyes tattooed under his collarbones, each of them the size of an open mouth. Below them, across the whole of the man’s chest and abdomen, a standing Madonna cradled the Child in her arms, rays of heavenly light fanning out in a semicircle around her head, winged angels gazing down from either side. Above his forearms—covered in lines of Cyrillic script—both of the man’s shoulders carried a trompe l’œil epaulet, the braided tassels of their bullion fringes draped perfectly straight over each upper arm. Fearless had learned about these tattoos in Russia. They signified the man was a vor—a Russian “thief in law”—who had consecrated his entire life to criminality.
Amos finished swaddling Alyosha’s burned torso. Finding a water bottle beside the bed, he raised Alyosha’s head and made him drink. The room quivered with every beat of Fearless’s heart. He tried to keep his eyes focused on the man as Amos lifted Alyosha and swung him onto his shoulders. But somehow the man vanished: so instantaneously that if the scene had been captured on film, his body would have appeared motionless in one frame and, in the next, completely absent.
“No!”
The shaking of Fearless’s gun hand set off his whole body. Amos, carrying Alyosha as if he were a child, stepped over and skillfully uncocked the weapon, took hold of it, and cocked it again once he had it in his grip. Then he turned and made out of the room, Fearless stumbling after him, face flushed with blood, a howl lodged deep inside his gullet. Halfway down the stairs, Amos fired a warning shot as Fearless lost his step and clattered down on his back.
A minute later, they were roaring northward, heading toward the distant orange glow of the city. Alyosha, half-conscious, his body slumped against Fearless’s back, moaned and huffed at random intervals. Under cover of night, a hot tear gathered in Fearless’s eye. He resented the endless darkness of this little kingdom and the sense of terrible smallness he felt within it.
