Holiday in Cambodia

by Laura Jean McKay

  ‘Will not be singing tonight or any other fucking night for the next six months she tells me now.’

  ‘Of course not. She has the baby. And no one will ever replace her style, her elegance, her –’

  ‘I am going to rip your fucking head off and feed it to the lions in the jungle.’

  Vichet swallowed. ‘Perhaps, at this late notice, it would be useful to get someone local, someone who knows all the songs and, well, someone like my younger sister Bopha for example.’

  ‘And, well, someone like my younger sister Bopha for example,’ Hugo mimicked.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve heard her sing, sir?’

  ‘She never shuts up.’ Hugo snorted, narrowing his eyes. ‘Fifteen years of independence and you already think you run this country. If it wasn’t for us you’d be digging holes with the Viet Cong.’ Flecks of whiskey spattered out of Hugo’s mouth and onto Vichet’s shirt. Vichet nodded rapidly.

  ‘Indeed, as a French protectorate we were very grateful to –’

  Hugo grabbed him by the shirt collar.

  ‘She sings tonight only. She sings in English or French. She sings what I tell her. She misses one note and she’s gone from here – she doesn’t clean one bed pan or wash one petticoat, she doesn’t have a job, understand?’ Vichet nodded. Hugo let him go. ‘You understand?’ He turned on Bopha.

  ‘I understand. Thank you.’

  A cat started mewing from inside the house. The sound grew until Hugo realised it was his baby.

  Vichet found Bopha in the bamboo hut at the end of the garden. Their dad would be back with a haul of fish on the dusk tide. Bopha had their dead mother’s wedding dress on and was studying a photo of their mother wearing it; in the picture, her face was a mixture of hope and worry. Bopha tried both expressions.

  ‘How do I look?’ she asked Vichet when he poked his head into the gloom and saw the sequins winking in the dark.

  ‘Constipated. You’re needed up at the house. She wants you,’ he told her.

  ‘Stupid. Wait for me.’ She went into the other room to put on the black skirt and white shirt Hugo liked them to wear. At the door she pulled on her heavy shoes and tied the laces. She and Vichet navigated around the slowly drying swamp at the bottom of the garden. A fighter jet screamed high overhead. Bopha looked up at the white tear it left in the sky. ‘What are the songs?’

  ‘“Hey Jude,” “If You’re Going to San Francisco,” “Boum-Badaboum,” “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “Bravo pour le clown” …’

  ‘It’s too difficult!’

  ‘Skip it.’

  ‘He’ll scale me.’

  ‘He’ll be so busy with the gambling in the cellar he won’t even hear half our set. Also “Wooly Bully”, “Rain and Tears”, “La vie en rose” – you finish on that.’

  They parted at the steps leading up to the house and Bopha heard Vichet call, ‘And I think we can pull off “Reach Out”’ as she ducked into the corridor. Tola was in the bedroom, staring at the baby in her arms. It was large and red but made a peaceful sucking sound. A nanny had been hired from Kampot and Tola gingerly handed her the child and shooed her outside. She picked up a wooden hairbrush from the side table and ran it through her sharp black bob.

  ‘So, you’re singing tonight,’ Tola said in French. She spoke it always, even to the staff. ‘I know you can sing, I’ve heard you.’

  ‘I make too much noise.’

  ‘If you didn’t you wouldn’t be singing tonight. Do you want to or is Hugo making you?’

  ‘I want to.’

  Tola raised her eyebrows.

  ‘And is he setting up a fan-tan table in the cellar?’ Bopha smiled at the ground with embarrassment. Tola smiled too. She fluffed her hair and put the brush down. ‘May Hugo go off and fight in that war and come back with a limp that slows him down. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? A little limp? Though I suppose he’d find a way to make money even from that.’ Bopha smiled again. The tiles were patterned with fat blue flowers that sent out tendrils that reached towards but never quite found each other. ‘Stand straighter. Why do you have such dark skin?’ Bopha looked up. Tola’s eyes were like black ponds. ‘What will you wear?’

  ‘My mother’s …’ Bopha took a breath and slumped again. ‘I don’t really know.’

  ‘Best not to look too Khmer, though we can’t really help that, can we? Open my wardrobe, would you? You’ll probably fit into some of my dresses from before this.’ Tola gestured at her voluptuous body.

  ‘You have put on a lot of weight,’ Bopha offered.

  Tola sighed and waved her towards the wardrobe. Bopha opened the heavy wooden doors where she hung Tola’s clothes every day. At one end were the dresses Tola had worn during pregnancy, gowns like small tents that widened from the neck. At the other, hung with citronella grass, were the ones she’d worn onstage.

  ‘Take out a few. Yes, those. Bring them here.’ Tola sorted them briskly, tossing most to one side. Bopha watched a long silk, green as the Gulf of Thailand, slide to the floor. ‘This one,’ said Tola with a small smile and handed Bopha a stiff yellow dress with more collar than skirt. ‘You can change behind the wardrobe door.’

  Bopha put it on and emerged covering her crotch.

  ‘It’s too short, madame.’

  Tola laughed. ‘Oh, you absolutely must wear that!’

  ‘But I mean, it’s too short.’

  ‘That is just …’ Tola threw herself back into the cushions and laughed until Bopha had to fetch her a handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

  La Villa was filling with guests. They arrived in cars and motorbikes that cracked the rocks as they came up the long driveway. Bopha stood out the front in the shadow of the banyan tree and watched them arrive. Mr Shuo, the owner of the Kep Shangri-La, strolled past her, accompanied by three women. French expatriates walked up from the beach with their sand-caked shoes swinging from their fingers, calling ‘Come on, I’m starving’ through the hot dark. Off-duty soldiers in faded khaki headed straight for the cellar. Two policemen in tight uniforms stumbled up the path. Bopha pressed herself further into the tree’s shadow but they saw her.

  ‘You’re more beautiful than even …’ One of them proclaimed and both the policemen giggled boozily. ‘Even the moon. Even the moon isn’t as beautiful as you.’

  Bopha touched her face. ‘I’m too brown to be the moon.’

  ‘From this far away the moon is silver and white, but up close … you know the Americans? They’ve been taking photos of it – really, I saw it in a magazine at my brother’s house. You know what? Brown. Up close the moon is just like you.’ He entered the shadows and stood close. She nodded. The moon lit the wide yard around the villa and the other policeman gestured to the door.

  ‘Please,’ he said and she walked in.

  ‘Fortunate enough to meet an elderly farmer …’ said Monique to Simone from the table they were sharing with Dr Munroe directly in front of the stage. Vichet was pouring their champagne.

  ‘Farmer whom I would marry …’ continued Simone. There was a pause. They both turned to Dr Munroe.

  ‘What? Oh, a farmer would be quite suitable, I’m sure.’

  ‘No, doctor, it’s daisy chain. The word game. You have to say “marry.”’

  ‘Marry? What?’

  ‘Marry me or I’ll die,’ Vichet suggested.

  ‘And he’s smart, too,’ said Monique. Vichet bowed and asked if they needed anything else. The women shook their heads.

  ‘Then I’ll go and prepare my instrument for the show.’ They watched his tight sharkskin-print trousers walk away.

  ‘I’d like to help him prepare his instrumen –’

  ‘Die of happiness,’ interrupted Simone, ‘over the suitability of the marriage … Dr Munroe?’

  ‘What? Oh, sure, very suitable.�
�� He craned his neck to watch a young woman in a yellow mini-dress enter through the front door, flanked by two policemen.

  ‘Do we know her?’ asked Monique. Vichet was signalling at the young woman from across the room.

  ‘Maybe that’s his girlfriend,’ Simone suggested. Monique downed her champagne and wiggled the empty bottle for another but she was served by Sros, the night waitress. Vichet mimed something to Bopha from the stage.

  ‘What?’ Bopha mouthed back. The microphone crackled.

  ‘Testing one, two, you look like a rock star, three, testing.’

  The Khmer-speaking guests laughed appreciatively but Bopha sensed someone moving towards her. It was Hugo. She wove swiftly between the tables and climbed the steps to the stage, pressing her dress flat against her thighs.

  Roth, the thin guitarist, whistled. ‘Your sister’s outta sight!’ he murmured, and grabbed the microphone to say something in French about a singing sensation. Bopha spun to face the crowd. Hugo was back at his post by the door, cigarette smoke rising around his face. The tables were full and the waiters were serving people on the terrace and at the bar.

  ‘Oh,’ said Bopha, amplified. On the drum kit, Vichet began the cha cha cha that opens ‘Hey Jude’. Bopha stood at the microphone, her knees bent as though waiting to jump onto the back of a motorbike. But the words were gone.

  ‘I don’t know how to be,’ she hissed to her brother with her hand over the microphone.

  ‘Just … do it like Madame Tola does.’

  ‘Have you ever seen Tola wear this dress?’

  Vichet glanced nervously at his sister’s legs.

  ‘No, baby, I would remember that dress,’ Roth answered for him. ‘You could try being Sinn Sisamouth. A lady version.’ Roth had brought Sinn Sisamouth’s latest album down from Phnom Penh. The singer stared out from a purple oval frame. He looked as though he was thinking of someone sweet. Bopha and Vichet’s father had a sweet round face. He would be in bed already in the bamboo hut. He always called Bopha ‘Sky lark’.

  ‘That’s the look,’ said Vichet. ‘I’m counting you in … two, three …’

  Bopha straightened and stared over the audience. She opened her mouth. Some of the guests started laughing.

  ‘She’s singing “Hey Jude” in Khmer!’ one called, but Bopha’s voice seemed to hold her and wouldn’t let go, even when Hugo threw his cigarette down and stalked towards the stage. The kitchen door was crowded with hotel staff. A steak charred somewhere behind them. The soldiers down in the cellar stopped gambling and came upstairs to look. The laughter faded. Bopha’s hands remembered a dance they’d learnt in school and they wrapped around the air with each word. Her tongue rolled the r’s and flattened the vowels of the song. Her voice was so high, it sounded instrumental. When the guitar riffed, her hands continued their arching egret dance and she shook her hip so that Tola’s dress flicked out and back again.

  ‘Naah naah naah nah-nah-nah naah.’

  The song finished. Hugo was two feet away. He stared up with bright black eyes – like Cambodian eyes, but angry.

  ‘Do you think I’m fired?’ Bopha hissed. Her voice shook.

  ‘No chance, babe,’ said Roth.

  In the audience, Monique looked drunkenly up at Hugo. ‘Who knew The Beatles could sound so Cambodian? Get her to sing another.’

  Dr Munroe reached out and grabbed Hugo by the arm. ‘Genius, Hugo, my friend. Genius! You’ll make a killing off her!’

  The clapping grew until it was a storm and drowned Dr Munroe’s voice. ‘More! More!’ people shouted in two languages. Hugo saw teeth, bodies pushing for the stage, the waiters running to fetch and serve drinks.

  ‘Hugo, darling, could we get a waiter over here?’ yelled Simone. Hugo waved his arm and the night waitress rushed over.

  ‘A killing!’ Dr Munroe ordered two bottles of Bordeaux. Hugo nodded at the band to continue. Bopha wiped her wet cheeks and took a breath that hushed the sweaty crowd.

  Outside, the hotelier Mr Shuo was blowing smoke rings at the moon.

  ‘The world is changing,’ he said to the sky, in French.

  ‘Cambodia doesn’t change,’ said Hugo around his cigarette. He patted his pockets but Mr Shuo handed him a box of matches with Kep Shangri-La written on the front.

  ‘It’s changing. Not just your music in there, either. You won’t know Cambodia in ten years time.’

  ‘Horse shit. It’s not Vietnam. Or China.’

  ‘But it’s involved now.’

  ‘Cambodia won’t be any different in ’79 from now. We’ll be older, that’s all.’

  ‘You think you’ll still be here in a decade?’

  ‘Of course.’ Hugo glared at the ocean. ‘Why would I live any place else?’

  Bopha was moving her hips to Roth’s gritty guitar when Hugo pushed his way back inside.

  ‘A man is looking at me, there must be something wrong with him, he’s old, he’s a gentleman, I love no one else but him …’ she sang slowly in Khmer. She’d heard The Golden Voice, Ros Sereysothea, sing it on the radio and slowed the song to match. Those who weren’t dancing leaned forward, sucking in each note.

  The bartender waved desperately at Hugo.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but you told me to tell you when we were down to spirits.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We don’t even have soda to mix.’

  ‘If you give them shots they’ll be too sick to come back tomorrow.’ Hugo frowned at his patrons. ‘We’ll have to end it.’

  ‘Will we take them outside and lock the doors, sir? Like Khmer New Year?’

  ‘No, they’ll burn down the hotel. Do we have any coconuts? Pineapples?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Make piña coladas, one each, on the house.’

  ‘But sir? Sir?’

  Hugo made his way towards the stage. The tables had been shoved to one side to make a dance floor. A Chinese woman and one of the policemen were locked together, swaying. A young soldier was teaching three others the twist. Simone and Dr Munroe circled each other in silent sweaty courtship. Monique pawed at Hugo’s arm.

  ‘Get that drummer for me, Hugo darling, I want –’

  ‘Fuck off, would you?’ Hugo signalled to Roth, who leaned towards him to listen, his fingers still clenching and unclenching the strings of his guitar. ‘Enough of this. You’re playing “La vie en rose.”’ Roth nodded. Hugo waited by the stage until they finished their song and he saw Roth strumming the opening bars of the ballad, then went to check on the gamblers. Bopha’s French was nervous through the microphone. She peered at the audience. They sang too, over the top of her, with hands on their hearts. It was as though the song was the national anthem. As though it meant their entire country, and it did – it was all some of them wanted. That and all the food and wine from France brought to their tables.

  At dawn someone was playing the khloy. The melancholic sound of the wooden flute floated down from one of the houses in the hills, carrying on the sea wind. Hugo and Vichet lifted Monique from her dead slump over a table and carried her up to her suite.

  ‘She’s nicer like that,’ Vichet said as they came back down the stairs. Hugo snorted and clapped him on the shoulder. In the dining room, Bopha’s knees buckled and she steadied herself with the broom. She’d changed back into the white shirt and black skirt but her hair was up and her makeup looked garish in the lemon-butter morning light.

  ‘Do it later. There won’t be any breakfast guests until noon,’ Hugo told her.

  ‘No breakfast?’

  ‘Why waste good eggs on drunks?’ Bopha smiled and closed her eyes. ‘What does your father the fisherman think about this singing?’ he asked her.

  She blinked. ‘Our mother used to sing, sir. He says I could be like Pan Ron if I keep practising.’

>   ‘Who the fuck is Pan Ron?’

  ‘Oh. She’s one of the greatest singers in Cambodia. She –’

  ‘I don’t care who she is. You’re doing it again tonight. Not for as long, but they’ll be back. Okay?’

  Bopha leaned the broom against a table. ‘Will the King of Cambodia be here?’

  ‘What? No. Why would he?’

  ‘He’s making another film, I heard anyway.’

  ‘Jesus. Go to sleep.’ Hugo watched her leave.

  Vichet was smoking under the banyan tree. He crushed the cigarette under his shiny shoe and the siblings made their way slowly around the swamp to the hut at the end of the garden. Two hundred and forty kilometres away, a B52 flew into the country and dropped its bombs. Operation Breakfast had begun.

  A THOUSAND COBS OF CORN

  I’ve listened to the night change every hour. At dusk men walk with their baby sons through the streets, their songs like dust on the air. Soon after, mothers cry, ‘Don’t play so near the string!’ and order their children inside. Then the animals take over. The cows call no, no and the dogs circle each other in the dark. My kids were asleep hours ago. Number One is in ashes at the temple. I sway my legs to bring some air to the bed.

  The green coveralls hang on a nail from the wall. Once I found a black scorpion on my dress there – his polished tail dripping, so he’d seen me first. If I were bitten I couldn’t go in the morning. My neighbour would come with dust on her face, tell me I’d lost my job, and what a shame! That much money in a month. A thousand cobs of corn.

  How many hours left? My legs ache. As I shift them a girl enters the room and stands in the mosquito net by the bed. Its material folds through her. She smiles a little. Her hair is too short around her face where I cut it that way for the nits. I see she has her legs again. I want to ask where she found them but who could ask her daughter that? Better to smile and hope she can see my teeth in the dark. It’s always she who visits, never my old husband, and though I’ve been to see the monks, she always returns.