Private Demons

by Robert Masello

  Pran, whose night vision was apparently even worse than his day vision, came up nonetheless with an unopened bottle of rice whiskey. “Now we have something to celebrate with.”

  They returned to the beach, where Hun had single-handedly hauled the boat down to the river’s edge. He’d wrestled the mast upright, and hung from it the tattered gray sail.

  “I found these inside,” he said, holding up two large, and empty, condensed-milk cans. “They must have been used to bail the boat out.” He tossed them back inside. “But I think we should clear out of here. The guards might have discovered we’ve escaped.”

  Lucien agreed; they put what they’d found into the boat, then pushed it out into the sluggish waters of the river. Hun sat at the stern, and Lucien in the bow; Pran, like ballast, squatted down beside the mast.

  For hours, they drifted in darkness down the ever-widening channel. Lucien, armed with an oar, watched for obstacles, but with the exception of one ornery water buffalo, there were none. Most of the time, he found himself staring up at the stars, marveling at his escape, savoring a piece of the fruit they’d brought. He’d been starved for months now, but the taste of freedom was even sweeter, and more satisfying, than the food could ever be. He didn’t know what they’d encounter in the Gulf of Thailand, or where they’d put ashore, or how they’d be rescued—if it came to that—but he did know one thing: He’d never let himself fall into the hands of the Khmer Rouge again.

  And if he lived, he would find his sister, Lisette.

  By dawn, he could smell the faint tang of salt in the air; there was a morning breeze that rippled the gray sail, and a quickening of the river current. Pran, in his short-sleeved shirt and cutoff trousers, slept in the bottom of the boat. There was already an inch or so of water sloshing about; Hun had been right about the milk cans. Lucien hoped that his powers of navigation would prove just as true.

  He was staring down into the river, watching the flitting movements of a school of tiny yellow fish, when Hun said, “Look ahead.” Thinking he might have missed a sandbar, or a floating log, Lucien jerked his head up—and for a moment was blinded by the light off the water. The banks of the river had fallen away behind them, and the horizon was now a distant rim of silver and blue. The sail snapped, as if suddenly taking notice of the open sea, and Pran stirred in the bottom of the boat.

  “Where are we?” he mumbled.

  “The gulf,” Lucien replied. Hun still wanted as little to do with him as possible.

  Pran sat up, rubbing his bulging eyes. What was wrong with them? Lucien wondered. How bad was his vision?

  Bobbing on the water, rougher now than the evenly moving river, the boat sailed out into the gulf. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but the blue-green surface of the sea, and a pale sky streaked with shreds of cloud.

  Hun volunteered to set them on a course, south and west, while Lucien slept for an hour or two, and then they would switch. When Lucien awoke, nothing had changed. He took the tiller in one hand, and rested the other on the rope that secured the sail. Pran moved to the bow, to make room for Hun among the meager supplies.

  It was because Pran was acting as lookout, Lucien later thought, that the other boat had managed to come as close as it did before Lucien was even aware of it. Not that there would have been anything he could do to avoid it; not that he would have known enough to try. A good-sized junk, with a black sail, a covered cabin, and rows of oars—now still—it was like no boat Lucien had ever seen. It skimmed across the water like a sleek, black insect, and with the sun behind it, had come within hailing distance before Lucien had even had a chance to awaken Hun.

  “Do you need help?” a sailor on board it cried, in Cambodian.

  “Yes, yes,” Pran responded, “yes, help us!”

  Hun, hearing the voices, sat up, and saw the junk. “How do we know who they are?”

  “We don't,” Lucien said. “But what can we do?”

  The other boat was descending upon them with swift efficiency; it crossed their bow, and tossed a hook into their boat. Pran scrambled to lash it around the mast pole.

  The sailor who had called out to them leaned over the side and looked them over; he was bare-chested, with an elaborate tattoo that covered his arms and shoulders. When their boat had been brought alongside, he clambered down into it. His eyes, Lucien could tell, were taking in everything.

  “You're lucky we found you,” he said, flashing a big smile. “This boat won't take you very far.”

  “Who are you?” Lucien said.

  “Fishermen,” he said, “from Thailand.”

  “You spoke to us in Cambodian.”

  “Because I thought that's what you were.” He smiled again, revealing a large gap between his front teeth. “And I was right. Come on,” he said, helping Pran to the side of the boat, “let's go aboard our boat before this one sinks.”

  There were half-a-dozen others at the railing now, and several of them wore knives and machetes at their waist. They didn't look like fishermen to Lucien.

  But it was too late to argue, he knew.

  He and Hun took the hands that were extended to them, and were hauled up onto the deck of the junk. There were fishing nets on board, but they lay in a tangled heap, dry. The crewman with the tattoo—Lucien could see now that it was a dragon, with its wings spread—went to the stern of the junk, knelt down, and called something to someone inside. Then he stood up again, holding back the flap of black cloth that covered the hatchway.

  A moment later, the captain of the ship emerged from the cabin. He came up slowly, with a lumbering gait; he was hugely fat, and wearing only a pair of red pantaloons. His head was bald, except for a black topknot tied with a red silk ribbon; from one ear dangled a large golden hoop. The crewmen stepped back, almost as if they feared him themselves, as he approached.

  Pran nervously rubbed his eyes.

  Hun stood still, his feet solidly planted on the gently rolling deck.

  The captain, followed by the man with the tattoo—presumably his first mate—stopped a few feet away from them, and placed his hands on his hips. His deeply slanted eyes were black as charcoal; his skin was a tawny, weather-beaten brown. In the center of his fleshy, hairless chest, he bore a circular scar that resembled a snake. He looked at the three of them with no expression whatever.

  “Only these?” he finally said to the mate. “No women?”

  “Only these.”

  He snorted. Lucien seemed to catch his interest. “What are you?” he asked.

  “Cambodian.”

  “What else?”

  “My father was French.”

  “Who?”

  “A soldier. I never knew him.”

  The captain appeared to mull this over. Lucien could think of only one reason for his having asked: He wanted to know if Lucien was worth a ransom to anyone.

  These weren't Khmer Rouge, Lucien knew, but they also weren't fishermen. They were Thai pirates, notorious for their cruelty.

  “Do you know who I am?” the captain asked.

  “No.”

  “I am Ratsada. Now do you know?”

  Lucien had never heard the name before, but he noticed Hun visibly stiffen.

  “I fish in these waters,” Ratsada said. “Anything in these waters is rightfully mine.” He drew his fingers lightly across the scar on his chest, then turned his attention to the fidgeting Pran.

  “Everyone in Kampuchea must work to create the new order there. What did you do?”

  “I taught history, in Battambang,” Pran replied, with great agitation. “In the secondary school.”

  Ratsada paused. “That's not what I want to know.”

  “Oh, I'm sorry, I—”

  “What did the Khmer Rouge put you to work at? They don't want schoolteachers.”

  Lucien prayed that he would have the wit to lie, that he would say that he'd been sent to the rice paddies, or the poppy fields—anything but the mines.

  But he didn't.

&nb
sp; “I worked in the mines,” he said, “sorting stones.”

  “What sort of stones?”

  “Rubies, chiefly. Some sapphires. Zircons. Garnets.”

  “Where were these mines?” he said, stepping closer.

  “Where were they?” Pran repeated, looking helpless and confused, and turning toward Hun and Lucien. “I don't know how to tell you,” he said. He rubbed his bulging eyes. “They were north of here, up a river, about two days’ sail.”

  Ratsada's hand reached out to the neck of Pran's shirt, then ripped it open. Around his neck there was a small cloth sack.

  “Yes, yes,” Pran said, “you can take those. I was going to give them to you. You can—”

  Ratsada yanked the sack away, and Pran stopped talking. Ratsada spilled the stones out into the palm of his hand, and examined them in the sunlight. He grunted toward the mate, who stepped forward and stripped the shorts off the shaking Pran. The mate turned them inside out, shook them, then combed over the discarded shirt. Pran, naked and emaciated, held his hands in front of his genitals.

  “Do you have more?” Ratsada asked, still studying the collection he held in his hand.

  Pran shook his head, unable to speak.

  “You haven't swallowed any, have you?”

  “No . . . no. That's all I have.”

  Ratsada grunted again, and the first mate shoved Pran forward, onto a closed hatchway. Two of the crew pressed his head and shoulders to the wood; another crewman revealed an AK-47, which he casually trained on Lucien. The first mate, all business, slipped a long, curved dagger from his belt, and resting one hand on the small of Pran's back, he used the other to insert, and then wedge, the knife deep into his rectum.

  Though muffled by the hands holding him down, Pran's scream was high and seemingly endless.

  The first mate twisted the knife, to dislodge anything that might be secreted, then pulled the knife out.

  A torrent of blood streamed onto the deck. The pirates watched it to see if it contained any stones.

  Pran, catching his breath, screamed again.

  Ratsada looked over and said, “Finish up.”

  With no more care than if they were working in a slaughterhouse, the two crewmen flipped him over and shoved his chin back; the cords of his neck stood out like rope.

  The AK-47 glinted in the morning sun.

  The first mate, curiously, wiped off the flat of the blade on Pran's stomach, before touching the point to the base of his throat, and slicing him open all the way down to his crotch.

  Pran didn't even have time to scream. The first mate stepped back, to let the blood and loose organs spill out onto the deck. Then he leaned close again to saw open the stomach and intestines.

  While they emptied themselves, he sorted through the steaming viscera that had already fallen, and tossed each piece overboard after a quick look-see.

  The sharks would pick up the scent, Lucien thought, from miles away.

  Ratsada poured the uncut stones back into the sack, then stuffed it into the top of his red pantaloons.

  The first mate motioned another of the pirates over, and the two of them poked through the punctured guts with their fingertips.

  Ratsada patiently awaited their findings.

  “Nothing,” the first mate eventually declared. “Nothing here.” He used Pran's hair to towel the gore off his hands.

  “Get rid of it,” Ratsada said.

  The first mate stepped aside, this task apparently being beneath his dignity, while the crewmen dragged the eviscerated corpse to the side of the boat. Pran's eyes still bulged open, now as if in shock at his own mangling. A sailor took hold of his feet, and jack-knifed the body over the railing. There was an immediate splash.

  And then Ratsada returned to Lucien and Hun.

  “Do you two have anything to declare?” he asked, in a parody of the customs office ritual. “It's so much easier if you tell me.”

  The black sail, with a red circle, snapped above his head; the wind was kicking up.

  Lucien knew it was just a matter of time—minutes at best—before the ruby was discovered on him. And death—whether he offered the stone or not—would be inevitable.

  But their own boat, he noted, was still lashed to the junk.

  “That one,” Ratsada said, tilting his chin at Hun.

  The sailor with the gun directed it at Hun, and three others moved closer, surrounding him.

  “Wait,” Lucien interjected. “Wait. I have something to give you.” He dug into the loincloth under his shorts and took out the black stone with the ruby entombed within it. “Let us go, and you can have this.” He held it up in the sunlight, so that Ratsada could see the fire gleaming at its core. A moment later, a cloud passed in front of the sun, and the fire winked out. The junk rolled with a heavy swell.

  Ratsada glanced up at the darkening sky, then back at Lucien, still clutching the ruby. For the first time, he smiled. “And if we don't let you go,” he said, with heavy irony, “you won't let us have it?”

  “I'll throw it in the sea,” Lucien declared, closing his fist around it.

  “Shoot him,” Ratsada said to the sailor with the rifle.

  The gun swiveled toward Lucien, and Hun suddenly lunged at the barrel; he banged it toward the deck, where the shot shattered his own left foot. The sailor went down.

  The deck heaved with another sudden swell.

  Lucien hurled the ruby into the air, Ratsada's eyes following its path; leaping over the fallen gunman, he shouted, “Jump!” to Hun. With two steps, he had hurtled himself over the railing, and crashed down into their leaky boat. He scrambled for the machete, floating beneath a thwart. Hun fell over backwards, nearly capsizing them. Lucien hacked at the rope that tied their boat to the junk.

  The first mate, with his own machete drawn, jumped into the boat after them. He landed on Hun, but before he could swing the blade, Hun had smashed his knee up between his legs, and then thrown him, headfirst, over the other side of the boat.

  Lucien hacked again at the rope, and at last it snapped.

  The pirate with the rifle was aiming at them, from the rolling deck of the junk. He fired, but the shot was thrown off, ripping through the sail.

  There was a scream from the water, and a flurry of motion. The hands of the first mate grasped at the sides of the boat. Lucien saw a flash of fins, a streak of silver. The man's fingers scrabbled desperately for a hold, but the sharks already had sunk their teeth into him. He was dragged under the waves, arms flailing, in a frenzy of blood.

  The two boats were drifting quickly apart, the waves surging between them.

  The rifleman fired again, but this time he was shooting at the sharks.

  Ratsada had gone to his stern; Lucien saw him standing on the raised deck, glaring, as the approaching storm gathered its strength.

  “This will pass!” he shouted, pointing at the dark clouds scudding across the sun. “And then I'll come for you!”

  The junk was buffeted by a sudden swell, and Ratsada had to clutch at the wooden railing.

  “I will come for you,” he shouted again, into the wind that filled the black sail, “whether you're living or dead!”

  Lucien grabbed the tiller with both hands. Hun was sitting upright, tying a loose piece of rope around his lower leg; his foot was a bloody pulp.

  “What do I do?” Lucien called to Hun.

  “Just hang on!”

  “What about the sail?”

  “Leave it!”

  The sun was now entirely obscured; the sky and air had turned a shimmering shade of green. Lucien saw the junk, racing before the wind, its bat-wing sail billowing out.

  A huge wave lifted their boat, then dropped it like a stone into a watery trough; Lucien was nearly knocked off the thwart. The sea was roiling around them, and the bottom of the boat was already several inches deep with water.

  The storm had saved them, Lucien thought—and now it was about to kill them.

  Hun had finished tying hi
s tourniquet; his arms were braced against the sides of the bow. The supplies—what was left of them—were washing around him. Their own gray sail rippled and shook with the gusting wind; the slender mast creaked and groaned. Lucien expected the boat to come apart at any moment. He expected to die.

  Another wave hit the boat broadside, and Hun was almost lifted out of the bow.

  The sky was a seething bank of black clouds, shot with lightning.

  The boat would have to be bailed—but how? If he let go of the tiller, he'd be knocked into the sea.

  And then the rain came—it was as if a solid sheet of water had suddenly engulfed them. The rain was strangely warm and brackish, as if it had traveled far, over stagnant swamps and empty fields, and picked up the scent of decay and abandonment. It was coming down so thick and hard, sluicing down into his eyes, that he could no longer see as far as the bow. The world had become a gray haze of water, of pelting rain and crashing waves, all lit by an unearthly green glow. If he had not been at sea, about to drown in a ferocious squall, Lucien would have imagined himself in the midst of a monsoon, trapped in the deepest part of the jungle; there was a smell in the air of rotting vines.

  The sail ripped loose, flapping wildly; the boat rose up, on the crest of a monstrous wave. Lucien clutched the tiller, waiting for the fall, waiting for the boat to be thrown over.

  But instead, the boat continued to rise, and then to hang there, as if suspended on the surging swell. To Lucien, it felt like the times he'd raced his motorcycle over the top of a hill, and then been airborne for a few seconds on the descent; it felt as if he'd lost touch with the earth . . . as if time had stopped . . . as if he'd found some unknown power.

  Maybe he'd died, he thought. Maybe that's what this was. He had heard that drowning was a peaceful death. Maybe this was it. You didn't even know it was happening.

  The sides of the beat were edged with foam; the sail snapped like a shroud unfurled. The mast bent toward him under the punishing wind.