Holiday in Cambodia

by Laura Jean McKay

  ‘Big penis,’ she whispered finally when he didn’t move.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You. Big penis,’ she repeated. Adam heaved himself up to look at the fading erection anchored limply to her stomach by the condom. ‘Mmm,’ Sopea said as though she’d eaten something wonderful, ‘very good.’ Adam thought he might cry.

  That night he told her how hard it was for him growing up in Bendigo; how one night Tristan had dared him to sneak into the pool and he’d almost drowned; how angry he felt when his mum went to work in the city and left him with dad. Sopea kept falling asleep but Adam woke her again and again, the light bulb glaring above them, until he passed out too.

  In the morning they had sex again. He asked if it would be alright if she lay on her back while he pushed her head into the mattress, and showed her how. She said okay and laughed her soft laugh against his hand as he came, laughing and grunting, his head thrown back. He got up to have a shower. When he came out in a towel he opened the small, unplugged fridge and found a bottle of warm water. The air was thick. He switched on the air-conditioner; it made a grinding noise and half a dozen mosquitoes flew out but after a moment the room crisped slightly.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked Sopea. One side of her face was red from his hand.

  ‘Time?’ she asked.

  ‘Never mind.’ Adam found his phone on the floor. There were no messages. It was almost eleven. He looked at her sitting on the edge of the bed in her underwear. Her eyes were big and dark, still ringed with mascara. She trusts me, Adam thought, and sat down beside her. ‘I want to see you again,’ he told her gently.

  ‘See me again?’ Sopea asked.

  ‘We could go out to dinner,’ he suggested. ‘You could wear a nice dress.’ Sopea shook her head to show she didn’t understand. ‘I want to see you tonight,’ he repeated loudly.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Okay. You’ll come to the bar?’

  ‘Or we could meet somewhere else.’

  ‘You need to come to the bar.’

  ‘What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy.’

  ‘I’m happy. Big penis,’ she laughed. Adam glanced between his legs then raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Yeah, well, there’s more where that came from,’ he said. ‘Guess you don’t get many guys like me around here.’

  ‘Yes, I like you.’

  ‘You do, don’t you?’ She was just as pretty as any other woman in this country, he decided. ‘We should go, though,’ he sighed, waving his phone at her. ‘My mates are looking for me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Okay.’ Sopea smiled. ‘You can pay me now?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can pay me twenty-five dollars now?’ Adam stared at her. ‘You took me home and so … you can pay me twenty-five dollars now?’ Sopea said, carefully.

  ‘What? As well as the hotel? And we only got here at 3 a.m.!’

  Sopea smiled. ‘We can have sex again,’ she offered.

  ‘Yeah right, more for you,’ Adam muttered and pushed himself up from the bed to find his wallet in the pocket of his jeans. It wasn’t there. He shook them and glared at Sopea. She was sitting innocently on the bed, legs fanned to one side. ‘Where the hell is my wallet?’ he demanded. She pointed to the floor. It was with his lighter and the receipt from 69ers. He counted the money inside but wasn’t sure how much had been there in the first place. He handed her a twenty and a ten. ‘Change?’ he demanded. She shook her head and smiled again.

  ‘Tonight,’ she said, ‘it’s cheaper for you.’

  ‘I just want to go home.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just go,’ Adam sighed. ‘I tried to make this real. For you.’

  They kissed and he didn’t feel a thing.

  ‘You did well,’ Tristan said approvingly. ‘My girl wanted forty. She was hot, though. Ambitious.’ They were on the balcony of their hotel looking down at the road.

  ‘Still, I don’t think I’ll be back tonight,’ Adam said and took a swig of Tristan’s water. It sweated cool drops over his fingers. Doug was still passed out naked on one of the beds inside.

  ‘Might as well.’ Tristan reached for the water and took a giant gulp that dribbled down his chin. ‘She said she’d be cheaper. You said it was good.’ Down in the street the horn of a motorbike bleated past.

  ‘It’s a good bit of money for them, when you think about it,’ Tristan added after a while. ‘Better than a T-shirt factory or something and half the work. I know what I’d do.’

  Tristan grinned at Adam, who grinned back. Adam suggested they let Doug sleep it off and go get breakfast. Somewhere good. With bacon and sausages, the lot.

  TELL ME WHERE TO RUN

  ‘What about Kim, my grandson?’ asks Grandma when Stah-cee arrives with a Cambodian man in a suit.

  ‘This year at Suffer the Little Children, our focus is on vulnerable orphan girls,’ says Stah-cee. Kim is crouched in the gloomy corner, chewing on the knot of the book basket strap to loosen it and make it better. He pulls at the knot with his teeth and listens to the Cambodian man translate what Stah-cee says about sending his sister Sandy to school. Grandma listens too but doesn’t get it. Not because she’s stupid. Grandma went to school and learnt French. She fooled all of the Khmer Rouge and pretended she couldn’t read and by the time she came out of the work farm with three kids and no husband, she really couldn’t read anymore. It gives her pain to see all those letters in a row.

  ‘They don’t want boys like me,’ Kim tells Grandma now, ‘just girls like Sandy.’ The Cambodian man opens his mouth to disagree, then shuts it again. He dips his head and smiles. Grandma moves on to the next thing.

  ‘How much money do we get then?’

  Stah-cee grins and narrows her eyes. If it weren’t that Stah-cee is fat and orange and Grandma is skinny and black, when Stah-cee talks about money she and Grandma could be sisters.

  ‘A uniform, a personal hygiene kit, school books, pens, a bribe for the teacher and,’ (Kim’s grandma waits, almost licks her lips for this) ‘a small wage to cover the loss of income by sending her to school.’

  ‘We pay our rent with those books Sandy sells,’ Grandma reminds everyone. They listen to the wheeze in her chest and to the tin shed creak around them in a blow of wind.

  ‘If she went to school she could get a better job. You could see a doctor,’ the Cambodian man tells her.

  Grandma snorts and tries Stah-cee again. ‘What about Kim?’

  ‘At Suffer the Little Children this year, we have a focus on girls who –’ Grandma puts up her hand and peers at Kim. Night has fallen and they’ve put candles out for the guests. Kim has the basket of twenty books on the floor between his knees and is still trying to get the knots undone.

  ‘Stupid boy,’ Grandma hisses at him. Kim lets the strap fall from his mouth. ‘How can I trust you to sell all those books? They won’t even take you to school.’ The Cambodian man laughs abruptly in embarrassment. Stah-cee grins at them all.

  In the morning, Sandy gets up and pulls on the new clothes that Stah-cee got her – a white shirt and a blue skirt and underpants, shoes sitting outside a little bit big. Kim used to stay in bed until he heard Grandma trudge up the stairs with other people’s washing, but now he gets up too. Puts on his old clothes for his new job. Stah-cee, Stah-cee. He must have been saying it out loud because Sandy hits him with her plastic hairbrush and then keeps tying a knot in her hair.

  ‘That’s not how you say it,’ Sandy says.

  ‘How do you say it, then?’

  Sandy pauses for a while, concentrating on her hair.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she admits finally.

  ‘Is Stah-cee your mum now?’ Kim asks, jogging round and round to make himself dizzy. He likes to do that in the mornings
.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she says, but again doesn’t sound sure. ‘But she loves me and she doesn’t love you.’ She’s sure about that. He is too. He stops turning and waits for the world to catch up.

  Out in the street, a woman wants to buy Kim’s books. Her voice is a car horn.

  ‘Look, Ed. Eeeeed!’ she honks. Ed is asleep while he’s walking. The day has turned him red like a tomato and he’s about to burst in the heat. ‘Someone has set this child up in his own little small business. Whadayacallit? Micro-credit. Ed, look, he’s got all the books on the Cambodian Holocaust and, oh! Here’s a book on how to learn Ku-mar. You want to learn Ku-mar, don’t you, Ed? Is that how you say it? Ku-mar?’

  ‘This is a very good book.’ Kim points with his lips. The strap bites his back and his arms are full of the basket. ‘And so is this one, and this one is the best.’

  ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh.’ The woman’s head bobs. ‘Well, what do you think, Ed?’

  ‘How much are they?’ grunts Ed, staring off at the horizon. Kim looks too and wonders how fast he could run there.

  ‘Oh yeah, how much are they, these three?’

  ‘Fourteen dollars,’ Kim answers. His leg twitches. He needs to wait.

  ‘Fourteen, fourteen.’ The woman digs in her bag. It flaps around like her arm skin until she finds a shiny wallet.

  ‘Haggle,’ hisses Ed.

  ‘Oh, right.’ The woman straightens. ‘I’ll give you twelve –’

  ‘Ten,’ says Ed.

  ‘Ten, I’ll give you ten.’

  ‘For these three only thirteen, that’s one dollar off,’ Kim says. ‘They’re good books.’

  ‘Ed?’

  ‘Bloody hell, Lorna, I thought we were getting something to eat.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, ten is my final –’

  ‘Twelve … twelve and I’ll give you a map of Phnom Penh, no extra cost.’

  ‘Oh Ed, a map! We need one of those.’

  ‘It’s a bloody free map you can get anywhere!’

  ‘But he’s such a good little businessman and he needs the money to … what will you use the money for, hon?’ asks the woman.

  ‘Olympics school.’

  ‘There, he needs the money for school. Here now there’s ten and … two, that’s twelve, and you give me those books – Ed, you’ll be so happy when you learn Ku-mar and can talk to this boy! – and the map. Okay, bye bye! Ed, look in this book, will you? Find out how to say bye bye …’

  Late at night Kim and Sandy eat grilled fish on rice, sitting on a mat on the floor of their kitchen. They can hear Grandma coughing outside while she washes the clothes. Kim has the book basket by his leg and gets a sliver of fish skin on the cover of one of tourist guides.

  ‘You’re not even supposed to have them in the kitchen,’ Sandy whispers.

  ‘They’re my books, I can do what I want.’ He watches her wipe the oil from the cover with a tissue.

  ‘They’re not your books. They’re the book man’s and you get a little bit of money for each one you sell.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, no one’s going to buy a fishy book, you germ. Wreck one and you pay for the whole thing.’

  ‘What’s your problem?’

  ‘I’m tired. Sell this one at night and maybe they won’t notice.’ She tucks the book under the others.

  ‘You’re lazy,’ Kim tells her, twirling his fork like a drummer. ‘If I was at school –’

  ‘If I was at school, if I sold the books,’ Sandy mimics him. ‘You always just want what I’ve got.’

  ‘If I was at school,’ he continues, with a rat-a-tat on his plate, ‘I’d be the greatest athlete and top of the class and they’d send me to Italy. Are you top of the class?’ Sandy doesn’t answer. ‘You couldn’t be,’ Kim continues, ‘you’re a girl.’

  ‘Stah-cee says girls are as smart as boys. She says often they’re smarter.’

  ‘How could that be when girls’ heads are smaller?’ he asks her and they race to get out the string and it seems that, yes, Sandy’s head is a little bit smaller. She goes off sulking and helps Grandma rub underwear in hot soapy water. Kim peers at them through a hole in their tin house. He sees that Grandma likes Sandy best. Sandy looks like their mum but he’s more like their dad and so it’s all his fault, his fault, his fault: the rhythm of his feet as he runs down the steep, concrete stairwell that weaves in and out of the building to the street, where he kicks a can against a wall. He can hardly remember his dad who went to work in the border towns and came back a skeleton with no money, just the sex disease that he gave to their mum. When they were both dead Grandma went to sit in the temple for a year. In that time Kim got so hungry he stopped growing so Grandma gathered her mind up and came back to raise him and Sandy. When Kim tilts his head, he can see their house: a shed built on top of the block of flats – not supposed to be there so Grandma does the landlord’s filthy washing for free. She uses the money from selling books for rent and to pay the landlord’s police bribes so they won’t get kicked out. It’s good there at the shed. There’s plenty of room for washing and Kim can train for the Olympics and look down over the snaking mess of power lines to the street where everything happens.

  This happens: it’s day and Kim lifts the basket of books off his neck, just for a moment, and leaves them by the wall of a restaurant to go and look at one of the motodop taxi drivers who has fallen off his bike. He isn’t hurt. The men erupt into laughter – the tuk tuk drivers, the old man cyclo drivers with legs like rubber bands, the other kids who sell books. Women come out of the shops and laugh too. The tourists have missed it and look even more confused than before. Kim laughs with the men. One lets him sit on his motorbike and Kim re-enacts the scene, making the man who fell off drunk and a bit crazy. More laughter. Then the tourists want the tuk tuk drivers to take them to the killing fields, to the markets, to the hotel. Kim needs to sell them books before they go. He goes back to where he left them. There’s a space on the brown concrete by the cracked wall of the restaurant. The books are gone.

  ‘Where are my books?’ he asks the women who work in the restaurant. ‘Where are my books?’ he asks the girls and boys outside, who clutch their book baskets to their guts. ‘Where are my books?’ he asks the tourists sweating at the tables. He starts to cry. He wants to punch someone in the face. He does. Another boy whose basket is full, brimming with books. They push each other hard, with red cheeks. They’re going to kill each other. A man holds them apart easily, one hand on each. He laughs and glances at the other men, who laugh too. The little boys are fighting! When they stop laughing, they tell Kim a stranger must have stolen his basket. No one here would do that. Calm down, it’s your bad mistake for leaving them. Kim’s stomach aches. He sees a rotting banana, black and sweating in the sun. He wants to eat it. He wants to die. He wants Grandma’s dry hand against his hot cheek, like she did when he was small and starving. Wants her to slap him until his mistake goes away. He tries to run and staggers down the street – the beautiful street with the cool restaurants and the beer and the colourful lanterns on strings – past Sophon and Chaya who sit on blankets with acid-eaten faces watching over their babies; past Koy sitting in the cart without his legs (but with books); past the spot where his grandma and her friend will sit on wobbly deck chairs tonight in the breezes coming from the Tonle Sap, waiting for the children to bring the money from the books. He moves so lightly without the basket. He could run to Vietnam and be there by morning. He’s so light that he nearly falls over and when he does he vomits next to a doorway, until a woman comes out and screams at him to stop. Kim crawls away. He uses some water from a dripping pipe to clean his face. He slumps in the shade of a cool wall. He thinks: I will never become an Olympic athlete in Italy. I promise as long as Grandma never finds out about the books I will never run again. He doesn’t know how his bargain is
possible: Grandma knows everything. He stands up and feels way too tired to run anyway.

  Back at his apartment block the concrete stairs glow in the reddening sun. Inside the shed it’s dark. He calls out to his sister who rushes from the other room to quiet him, her face drawn on. Grandma knows about the basket, Kim thinks. The vomit stings his throat.

  ‘Grandma’s sick,’ Sandy tells him. She doesn’t notice the books are gone.

  ‘Grandma’s always sick.’

  ‘She won’t wake up. She was on the ground when they came to find out where their washing was.’ Kim looks for Grandma but over by the dark door to the bedroom is the gambler’s wife with her son and her sister. She holds her washing in a messy bundle, not neat like Grandma would. Kim greets her with a sampeah, his hands pressed together at his chin. She nods.

  ‘I need you to stay with Grandma while I go to Aunt’s house to see if she has money for the hospital,’ Sandy tells him. How does she know to do that? She looks taller. The school has made her grown up. Kim nods and his eyes hurt.

  ‘I … didn’t sell any books today,’ he calls after her. Sandy gives him a small smile.

  ‘Don’t worry. Grandma won’t find out. Tomorrow.’ She disappears down the steep staircase. The woman with the washing hands it to her sister and takes her purse out to pay the money she owes.

  ‘It’s too much,’ Kim tells her. ‘I don’t have change.’ The woman glances at her sister who turns her head away to study Grandpa’s picture on the wall.

  ‘Keep it,’ she whispers. ‘Your grandma works so hard!’ Kim looks at the note in his hand – it’s not enough to replace the books.