by Knox, Tom
“Their backgrounds?”
Rouvier once more pointed to the photo. He was indicating another face, a young man, sitting at the front. “This is Marcel Barnier. From Sciences Po.”
“And?”
“He was, and maybe still is, an expert in animal science, in hybridization.”
“Meaning?”
“Expert in breeding between species.”
Julia gripped her coffee spoon. Hard.
“You’re saying … you’re surely not saying …?”
Julia couldn’t even begin to articulate it. The idea was insane. But the faces were smiling at her, in the bright Phnom Penh sun, in the dark heart of all that evil, as millions died around them—smiling.
Rouvier sat back.
“I’m certainly not claiming that la Bête de Gévaudan has returned to prey upon us.” He shook his head. “No. That is clearly absurd. But then, what are we to think? There is this strange network of facts. It cannot be disputed.”
The policeman took up the sheets of paper, folded them carefully, and returned them to his briefcase.
“Now I must meet my junior. We catch the train for London. I hope I have not unnerved you?”
She shook her head. He smiled quietly.
“Good. That is good. You are staying in Paris?”
“Alex’s brother has a flat here. It’s empty. We’re here to do some … research. Archaeology.”
Julia wondered if she should tell Rouvier about their pursuit, the hunt for Prunières. Maybe she should tell him about her skulls, the trepanations, the wounds in the vertebrae. The needling and insistent evidence was speaking to the trepanations, and to the injuries to Annika’s head, and to Annika’s references. But maybe it was still, just about, coincidence; possibly her idea was insane. Possibly it was irrelevant? Possibly?
Whatever the answer, she didn’t have the emotional energy to explain her findings and anxieties now. Not the energy, nor the time, nor the courage. She just wanted to get the hell out.
The policeman opened the door of the café to allow Julia through. The morning air was mild, for early November, wistful. He shook her hand. Then he said, “There is one more curiosity.”
Julia had already sensed there was more; with a creeping sense of dread, she asked: “Yes?”
“I was prepared to dismiss the crossbreeding as sheer speculation. A fanciful idea. But then, yesterday, my junior made another discovery.” His smile was bleak. “It seems there was a serious attempt in the 1920s to crossbreed man and animals, man and the higher apes specifically. And Professor Quoinelles, the grandfather, he was part of that. The leader, in fact.”
A flock of dirty city pigeons clapped into the air behind Rouvier, as if applauding this revelation.
“Why the hell would you do that?”
“Military purposes. Supposedly they wanted to create a soldier with the brain of a man and the strength of a wild animal. A real killer. They actually made the attempt! We must remember this was the 1920s, different morals would apply, eugenics was still permissible. But the lengths they went to—they are still incredible, repulsive. They used apes imported from French colonies, and human women. They seized African women, imprisoned them, and tried to impregnate them with animal sperm. We know this happened.”
“The French army did this? The French government? My God.”
“Ah no, not the French. I have misled you, sorry.” He hesitated, then explained: “Albert Quoinelles, Ghislaine’s grandpère, was another well-known leftist. A sympathizer with Bolshevism. Quoinelles did his experiments for Stalin, he was recruited by Moscow. He did his experiments for the Communists.”
He bowed her way, then turned and crossed the busy street, heading for the dark, mouthlike arches of the Gare du Nord.
18
An hour had passed since the fire-bombing. His phone was nearly juiced out. He’d called Ty, then the embassy—which was shut. Now he had just enough battery left for a conversation with Chemda. And he didn’t have time for niceties. Just the brutal facts. The fire-bombing. Sen’s bizarre offer.
She received his story with shocked silence; she stammered her sympathies about his apartment. But he interrupted her with a question.
“Why did you tell me your grandfather was away?”
“He was! He was away. But he came back early. The maid told him you were there…. Jake … Please…”
Her voice faded behind the noise of a tuk-tuk.
Jake was standing in the shuttered doorway of a pharmacy, near the great river. Sidling farther into the hot and tropical shadows, away from the street noise, he pressed the phone closer to his ear, waiting for her explanation.
“Maybe it was stupid, asking you to, ah, ah, come to the house. I am sorry. I was nervous, scared. But believe me, please believe me, I am perhaps almost as disoriented as you. Can you understand that, Jake? Hnh? My own mother is trying to frighten me, to curse me, and now my grandfather, the man I most respect in the world, he has—he has tried to marry me off, like chattel.”
Another tuk-tuk passed, its two-stroke engine rasping in an ugly and primitive way.
“Jake, I need to know. If you don’t trust me … then I understand. But then you must leave me alone. I’ll manage.”
What to do? He pondered her words. But even as he steeled himself he could feel the lush emotions melting his resolve; he was wary of her, yet he also felt a powerful sense of mutuality: they were in this together. She knew his darker secrets; she was closer to him than Tyrone now. And besides, he also craved her friendship. Her warmth. That proud and royal smile. He couldn’t deny it.
“Meet me.”
She whispered her reply: “Where?”
“You tell me, Chem. Somewhere discreet.”
Her silence spoke of her thoughts; then she answered. “A temple. Near the central market. One hour.”
He agreed and closed the call.
Jake stepped out of the shadows. The city stared at him, blankly. A moto hooted, seeking business. Sensing his exposure, he slipped down a side road, then doubled back down an old alley paved with rotting banana leaves. The alley led to the rear of his block. The fires must have been doused, there was no smoke. He could see hoses, and a couple of firemen at the corner, in wet, yellow overalls, smoking cigarettes.
A back door gave onto his stairwell. He walked to the gray metal lockers: he was lucky, the fire hadn’t made it to the ground floor. Jake twisted his little key and swiftly grabbed his stuff: his spare passport, some money, a few cards. He kept it all here so he could jump on a plane with a few minutes’ warning, imagining himself as the dashing foreign correspondent. He had never imagined this stash would be so useful—after an attempt on his life.
Cards and passport zipped in his small rucksack, he hurried to the temple. It took twelve anxious minutes. Chemda was waiting in the courtyard. Her face was beautiful and it was dark and her skirt was very blue. He felt a sudden and unwarranted need to kiss her. Perhaps the surge of the life force, in such proximity to death.
“Jake, we have to hide.”
“Where?”
Chemda reached out and touched his hand. Like a nervous bride in church, meekly seeking reassurance from her groom.
“I know a place, my grandfather owns a block of apartments. One of them is empty, it’s just come up for sale. Jake, I have a key—and he doesn’t know.”
He shook off her hand, gazed around.
A young novice monk in his saffron toga was sitting on the steps, vaguely looking their way, lazily swatting flies from his face. His expression was sleepy; it was so hot. The smell of incense, and rotting fruit, spiced the air.
Chemda had chosen this place because it was supposedly discreet, but the ambience was unnerving: blue smoke and hot sun and intense dark shade from the overhanging eaves of the temple. And a languid, skinhead monk, observing them.
Still shaken by the attempt on his life, Jake didn’t know if he could trust his own feelings. He swallowed the bitter dryness of anxiety.
Two men wandered through the ornate wooden gate and nodded at the monk, then made a ponderous bow, a samphae, at a gilded and gaudy shrine. The men were clean-cut, prosperous, thirtyish. Businessmen? In a temple? Jake watched them leave again, his eyes following them suspiciously, ensuring they were really gone.
Chemda came close, and repeated herself; still meek, but also insistent:
“Jake, there’s no one I can trust. Not anymore. Can you understand that?” She bit a lip, shut her eyes. “The only person I still trust in Phnom Penh is you. Only you. My friends are in America, my mother is … I wonder if she knows me. Loves me. My own mother. How could a mother do that? With the kun krak? I don’t understand, I don’t understand them. Not anymore. Maybe I have been away too long. They are dissolving again, dissolving all over again—like the past coming back. And then my grandfather, how could he just sell me off, like a concubine for Sihanouk, like meat, like the pigs’ heads in the market. Jake. And the people at the UN, they are the same, they do not understand, they are not Khmer. I am lost in the middle of it all. So it’s you. Just you. Not even my grandfather. Just you.”
She was gazing at him, unblinking. “You are different. Aren’t you, Jake? You come from outside and yet you, you became my friend, you are unsullied. I trust you. Jake. But if that is not given back … if it’s not what you feel, then that’s what … I understand, of course, ah, but we can’t meet again. Never. Because.”
She was standing close to him to meet his gaze, standing so close her perfume was discernible. Her face was flushed with urgency; she was looking up at him, feminine and defiant and proud and bewildered all at once.
He was also bewildered. He half understood her, he half shared her feelings. Yet he still didn’t quite believe she was telling him everything. Was there something else?
Yet he also wanted her: that slenderness. More than he wanted to leave the country, more than he wanted to save himself, he wanted simply to kiss her. Now. He just did. Jake thought of her sleeping that day on the pirogue from Luang; the way her delicate head rested on a folded sarong, with the smear of gray river mud on her bare legs; he saw the red petals of flame trees falling on the muddy Mekong.
He knew he was being seduced; even if she didn’t mean to do it, she was seducing him. Yet this was not right: his life was at stake, he had to stay lucid.
“Who tried to kill me?”
Her frown was impassioned.
“It is obviously the Khmer Rouge loyalists. It must be. The government. Revenge on my family, on all of us. Kumnun. Ah.”
“Not the Laotians?”
“Ah, no. Would they be this direct and uncaring of the consequences? No, this is local and powerful people. Very, very powerful.” She looked left and right; a Buddha statue squatted in the corner, grinning the perpetual smirk of nibbana. “This … degree of violence, it sometimes happens in Phnom Penh; gangsters, maybe. But this is also aimed at you, a foreigner, therefore it must surely be political: that means we must have uncovered something in Laos, something very serious. You know this.”
She reached out a soft hand once again and took his fingers in hers, interlacing them, like the waters of the Mekong and the Brassac. Her voice was soft and clear and sad.
“You must be frightened. Of course. You could easily have been killed. If you want to fly back to England no one could blame you—I wouldn’t blame you—no, you mustn’t stay here for me, my insanity is mine. I’ll deal with it. I will.”
Again he shook off her hand, but this time with a certain reluctance. Instead he grasped her by both wrists and spoke to her upturned face. His masculinity was affronted by her words. Frightened?
“Chem, I’m not running away—it’s just—I came to Cambodia to do something. If I let them scare me off I have done nothing, proved nothing. Where am I going to go, anyhow? Back to England, for what? Somewhere else? Another war-torn country? What’s the difference? This is my job, my home—I want to stay—I’m not frightened. But—”
He dropped her wrists, still stymied. What could he say?
Dumb with frustration, Jake walked a few paces, farther into the shade. He was staring through an open door at a side temple. Statues sat on a dais at the end, statues of deities, gods, demons, whatever. It was all so alien, exotic, confusing.
He gazed.
Jake didn’t truly understand Buddhism, Hinduism—or how they mixed or differed. He had tried, and tried hard, but some essence always seemed to elude him. Even here, even now, he was befuddled: he’d thought this was a Buddhist temple, Indochinese, but this shrine seemed more purely Indian. The statues were garishly painted, like plaster gnomes, with red lips, yellow teeth, turquoise eyes; a blue woman with many arms and yellow swords danced her frozen dance of death, with her necklace of severed heads. Was that Kali?
Someone had made offerings to the shrine; tiny, poignant offerings had been placed on the steps—a ripe nectarine, two broken cigarettes, some sticky rice on a plastic plate; the ball of rice seethed with black flies.
She came up behind him.
“We can hide in this apartment? No one will know we’re there. My grandfather never goes there.” He remained silent. She repeated. “Please, Jake. This is it. I’m going to go now. If you don’t want to come with me, I understand, but … I have no more time. Goodbye….”
Kali waved her many swords, in her blue eternal dance. He made his resolve.
“We got out of Laos—we can get out of this. Come on.”
She looked at him briefly, and he thought he saw a flash of shy delight in her eyes—but then her royal determination returned.
They ran to the entrance and stepped over the wooden threshold. It was hot outside, lazily hot: Sunday in Phnom Penh, a few motos jeering, cyclos jangling. Jake felt seriously exposed. He was standing in the sun where anyone might see him; someone could shoot him, snatch him, anything.
A tuk-tuk.
“Here.”
They grabbed it. Chemda said some quick words in Khmer. The driver nodded—indeed, he almost saluted. The journey was swift: instructed by Chemda, the driver took back routes and darkened shortcuts; they sped down long, squalid lanes where dogs ran out to snap and bark, they rattled past a row of tenements entirely shattered and burned, still empty, forty years later, still empty. Then they briefly turned onto a boulevard with adverts for Delon cigarettes, and big Hyundai showrooms, and Jake shrank into himself, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. At last they reached the quietness and greenery of the suburbs.
An old wooden house, some gardens, a shady road with frangipani trees. Jake vaguely recognized the district.
“Down here.”
It was a modern apartment block. White, clean, quiet, and concealed at the end of a side road.
Chemda paid the driver. She looked at Jake as he stepped from the tuk-tuk, the little rucksack slung over his shoulder.
“That’s all you have?”
“It was in the stairwell of my building, my second passport, coupla cards. Everything else is gone. Everything.”
“Well, I have money. Ah. We can buy some clothes and things tomorrow. We need to get inside.”
The apartment was on the first floor. Sterile but comfortable, antiseptic, air-conditioned, sparely furnished, two bedrooms. A pied-à-terre. An investment opportunity, waiting for some Cambodian expatriate to show his confidence, at last, in the local property market.
Jake sat on the expensive leather sofa and stared at an almost abstract photo of light and shade on the wall. Another temple.
Chemda sat in the wooden chair opposite him. She kicked off her sandals. Her light cotton, pale blue skirt was notably short. She stared his way. He felt an acute discomfort at their sudden intimacy. And again a tinge, much more than a tinge, of desire. He averted his gaze.
The silence was piercing. The room was oddly hot, despite the AC; like the closeness on the Mekong delta before the wet season.
She rose, and walked across, and stood right next to him.
“If anyone is going to give me away, it will be me.”
Chemda took his hand. She put it inside her skirt, up inside, between her legs, between her soft, warm thighs.
He stood up and kissed her. Her dark eyes fluttered, yielding, feline, vivacious; her tongue, her lips, her hands were taking him, pulling him into the bedroom. She was a dancing and barefoot apsara, and he wanted to be seduced. He wanted to vanquish. He wanted, he just wanted.
Dark raw sugar. She reminded him of dark, sweet, fierce unprocessed sugar. There was a harshness to her lovemaking; she sought him with a sly animality. They kissed and stripped, she pulled him closer, closer and harder. He kissed her bare breasts, kissed her again, saw red petals on muddy water, sensed the darkness, the commingling of the rivers, the Mekong and the Tonle Sap. He sensed topaz, lemongrass, her urgent heartbeat, and prahok.
They made love twice, and slept for several hours. Then they snuck out to buy food and clothes, ate a twilit dinner, and afterward fell asleep, once again.
When he woke the sun was diagonal at the windows and it was Monday morning and she was fellating him. He gazed down as she sucked, at the veil of her dark hair flung over her head. Jake sighed, tightly gripping the cool cotton bedsheets. He felt himself concentrated into one tiny, intense source of joy and disquiet, down there, as she swallowed him, beautifully, frighteningly, carnivorously; she was voracious Kali, the eater of men, she was a disembodied face, hovering over him, submissive yet delicious, exquisitely devouring—yet this was wrong, something was wrong: there was a shadow on the window, that was it. He jerked upright—
Something was outside. Chemda was naked, and kneeling, gazing down. She couldn’t see.
Jake could see. His blood thumped.
A man was standing there, at the window. Staring in.
19
Chemda gathered a sheet around herself, backing up to the bed, calling out:
“Jake, what is it? What?”
The figure at the window shrank away as Jake walked across and pressed his face to the glass.
