The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers

by Anton Piatigorsky

  They’re laughing. This seems to be what they wanted, what they’d expected of him. It’s not a surprise to them.

  Sâr turns and grins at Chanlina. Now that he can breathe, he suddenly wants more than anything to speak with her. He wonders if there might be some intimacy, a special connection between them, different from what he feels with Veata and Kiri. But Sâr’s favourite dancer has unexpectedly turned sombre. Without matching his smile, she stands and goes to the sink, using her hip to nudge Kiri aside. Chanlina cleans the semen off her hand. It seems so perfunctory. Her cheeks are red and her breathing’s clipped. She needs something—but what? Sâr knows she’s unhappy and unsatisfied, but he’s incapable of detecting the signs of her own longing.

  “Chanlina,” he says—the beginning of a question he can’t complete.

  She doesn’t try to draw him out. Chanlina returns to her bed, picks up her pipe, and pulls the palm partition, but not quite far enough to hide herself completely. Sâr’s cheeks droop. She strikes a match, lights the pipe, and inhales. Chanlina leans back on her sampot, holding her breath for five seconds and then—as the opiates relax her muscles and frost her gaze—expelling the dark smoke. It forms an ominous cloud in the air before thinning and scattering. The room’s musky odour strengthens.

  Sâr snatches his pants and pulls them up. He’s so quick to button his shirt that he fumbles several times before closing it askew. Chanlina inhales a second drag, lies back on her bed, and stares at the ceiling with blank eyes. It doesn’t look as if she has any intention of moving.

  Now Nhean’s crying resumes and Veata hurries to the boy, withdrawing him from his crib and plopping him down on the floor. The baby stops crying, gapes at Sâr, and crawls to his favourite spoon, which he resumes munching as if no time has passed at all. In the kitchenette, Kiri stirs their meal, fluffing the rice to make it look more appetizing. She lays the bowl in the middle of the floor and takes a seat on one of the woven mats.

  “Come,” she says, nodding at Sâr. “Eat.”

  Eating is the last thing Sâr wants to do.

  “Come on,” Kiri commands with some irritation.

  He moves to sit beside her.

  Both Veata and Sâr scoop glutinous clumps of rice into their hands, and Nhean, smelling the prahoc, moans with hunger. Veata grabs the baby, lays him sprawled on her lap, and lets him suck on her breast.

  No one mentions Chanlina or asks if she wants to eat. Sâr steals furtive glances at the almost closed partition and the enticing sliver of flesh that remains exposed. The girl is prostrate and submerged in some sort of dark reverie, her eyes open but empty, her mouth parted with a bit of drool pooling at the corner. He wants to say something but doesn’t know what. Between bites, Kiri half-heartedly sings the musical phrase that Sâr heard earlier through the door.

  Without his furious charge of desire, the dancers’ small home now feels dingy and overheated, stifling and depressing. He doesn’t want to be here. He grabs some rice and takes a bite, but his eating lacks joy. The young women have abandoned their perfect postures and atrophied into older figures, more slumping grandmothers than strong girls. Veata rubs her lower back and sighs. The diffuse opium smoke irritates Sâr’s eyes. He rubs them dry with the corner of his shirt. He feels like a captive in this stuffy room. When the silence grows too awkward, Sâr forces himself to speak.

  “I suppose,” he says, “you’ve been practising dances all day?”

  “All week,” replies Kiri.

  “All life,” corrects Veata.

  Kiri chuckles bitterly. “Yes, we practise all life.”

  “Is it especially difficult to prepare for the New Year’s dances?” Sâr asks the question quietly, his eyes downcast, head barely raised, knowing full well the answer.

  “Of course,” says Veata. “Very gruelling. Your sister’s hard on us.”

  Sâr’s cheeks flush with shame.

  “But the New Year is not half as difficult as the Water Festival,” says Kiri.

  Veata groans in remembrance of last November’s dances.

  “I’m never more tired than I am each year after the Water Festival,” Kiri adds. “We sleep for a month after that. I mean, when we’re not practising.”

  Nhean chokes, coughing sharply, spraying droplets of breast milk all over his startled mother.

  “Aayh, Nhean!” Veata cries as she pulls him away. Kiri chuckles while the boy wails in his mother’s arms. Veata brushes off the milk, pats the baby on his back until he’s calm, and lets him return to his meal.

  “That sounds very difficult,” says Sâr. Each word sprouts thorns that torture his throat. His politeness feels grotesque—a trite and obvious dressing that can’t cover the crude purpose of his visit, the nakedness of his now-fulfilled desire. Sâr’s delicate hand reaches for another ball of rice in a gesture that feels forced, stupid, and obscene. He imagines a machete falling, slicing the hand off his arm, the severed limb bleeding and pulsing beside the rice—he believes he deserves this fate. He scoops a ball of moist rice with his fingers and brings it to his lips, forcing himself to chew and swallow. The rice is thick and flavourless, a mass of glutinous paste, more like mortar in his mouth than food. The hunger he’s identified as his own feels remote and obscure. Nhean’s slurping makes him want to vomit. He has to get out of here.

  Saloth Sâr. He can still recall Chanlina’s smooth voice, singing his name.

  There’s a hard rapping on the door. As the women widen their eyes and turn, Sâr’s body surges with adrenalin. Outside, Roeung calls to the dancers.

  “Girls! Open up!”

  Chanlina rouses from her drugged stupor and jolts up. “What?” she cries, blinking fast, trying to force her eyes to function.

  “Evening practice in ten minutes. Have you eaten? Open the door!”

  “The fan,” says Chanlina in a panic. “And the curtains!”

  “One moment, Lok Srey Roeung,” calls Kiri as she stands. She runs to the window, opens the curtains, tries to fan some fresh air into the room with her hands. “We’re just cleaning up.”

  Sâr stands, checks his shirt, and notices that it’s fastened incorrectly. He frantically re-buttons it while trying to slip on his clogs. Chanlina has managed to stand. She tucks her pipe beneath her pillow and works to tie her sampot. She represses all signs of intoxication; her motions are precise and deliberate. Veata fans the air with her hand as she moves towards the door.

  “We’re just finishing dinner, Lok Srey,” she calls.

  “Let me in,” commands Roeung, her voice lacking menace.

  Veata checks to make sure Chanlina’s dressed and Sâr’s prepared before she opens the door. Roeung steps inside and immediately scowls at the opiate smoke she can smell in the air. She opens her mouth to speak, but as soon as she sees her younger brother standing in the centre of the room, her expression freezes in blank astonishment.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “He just came by to say hello for a minute after school,” answers Kiri.

  Sâr shifts his rucksack to the opposing shoulder and forces a smile for his sister.

  “He said he was looking for you,” adds Veata, “and that you must’ve been with the King. We gave him some dinner. He played with Nhean. He’s very good with babies!”

  Nhean, on the floor, blinks at the intruder.

  “You should be home for dinner,” Roeung scolds Sâr. “Your brother expects you right now. He will be worried.”

  “Yes,” says Sâr. “I was just going.”

  “Well, go on, then. Go!” Roeung turns away from her brother and fans the air, giving Chanlina a hard stare. The dancer, standing motionless by her palm partition, regards the floor in a failed attempt at appearing innocent. “I hope you’re ready, Chanlina,” warns Roeung. “Lady Meak expects a full practice this evening.”

  “I am ready,” whispers Chanlina. “I am always ready, Lok Srey Roeung.”

  “I am going,” whispers Sâr as he stands by the door. “Goodbye, and t
hank you.” He stands tall, presses his hands before his lips, and bows so deeply to the women that they can’t help but giggle. Such reverence is more fit for the King than for his lesser wives, this group of common dancers.

  “Bye,” says Veata, offering the boy a smile and a little bow.

  Sâr scurries out of the house and quietly closes the door behind him. Although the sun is nearing the horizon, it still beats down on him with vengeance from its extreme angle. He squints, sighs, and wipes his sweaty brow. To stand in this open-air compound, despite the garbage pile by the wall, the grungy stone, and the weedy path—it is a real liberation. The expansive Cambodian sky is a welcome contrast to the compact darkness of the dancers’ home. Sâr hurries away, hoping he won’t encounter anyone else he knows.

  He marches towards the nearest exit from the royal grounds, which is through the eastern wall facing the river. His eye muscles twitch and his jaw tightens, but Sâr fails to relate his tension to the fact that he’s passing the royal monastery, Wat Botum Vaddei. He reaches the exit and knocks on the copper gate. The sentry, rooted in a stance of gruff suspicion, leans out of his guardhouse and asks: “Who’s there?” Dancers, of course, are not allowed to depart. When Sâr bows in respect, the sentry abandons his aggressive posture and smiles. It’s only Roeung’s little brother. He has seen him before and, like everyone, he enjoys the boy’s wide smile. The sentry opens the gate and lets Sâr exit without comment.

  Now, out in the street, Sâr thinks about Wat Botum Vaddei. The pagoda and its sealed compound loom ominously behind him. He imagines its pointed, bluish-grey stupas toppling over and crushing him, a gruesome death beneath the heap of ruined beams, shattered and splintered naga heads. As if to escape the improbable threat, he jogs across the wide avenue and enters the expansive manicured park that hugs the riverbank.

  The change of location doesn’t clear his thoughts. The royal monastery continues to irk him, fuelling his shame, funnelling Sâr into a state of limb-weakening emptiness that can only be described as despair. Although he hated his long year as a novice in Wat Botum Vaddei—but what nine-year-old boy would enjoy the rigid prescriptions and denials of monastic life?—that time now stands in stark contrast to his present, decadent existence. The bitter memory of the monastery’s privations and restrictions has faded with time, leaving Sâr with a distilled recollection of that period in his life: the pride warming him each evening as he lay on his thin pallet, staring at the ceiling’s wooden slats, weary from hours of prayer and study, from washing and sifting rice, from sweeping courtyards covered in banyan leaves, from countless mundane but purifying tasks that were executed in an air of enforced silence, that were always done with great awareness of right conduct, right diligence, right motivation. His muscles ached each night inside his red novice’s robes. Goodness, wholesomeness, and purity filled young Saloth Sâr all throughout that year. Yes, there was the constant threat of beatings—and the pain of actual abuse—but that was nothing compared with this present torture, this pointless life of filth and shame.

  Sâr walks towards the water, conscious of his body, all too aware of how his muscles move his legs. All around him the grass is mowed, the paths paved, the weeds pruned. Tall trees, mostly palms, spot the terrain. This pseudo-French park, extracted from a south Asian jungle and groomed into compliance, is located on a protruding elbow of land that marks the merging point of the powerful Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers. The wide blue sky above is fermenting into a longer spectrum of orange, yellow, red. The sun moves to kiss the horizon. An almost imperceptible breeze dries his skin. A distant kahark escapes from the throat of a grey heron riding the air currents above the river. Each step on the downy lawn forgives the trespass of his foot. Sâr wants none of this worldly stimulation. This body, this fleshy thing that pulses incessantly, that eats and ejaculates, imprisons with its various hungers, is not a welcome home. At this moment he would very much like to do away with it.

  He finds a wrought iron bench beneath an ornate lamppost and takes a seat. The water passing before him is calm, almost still, and the far shore is imperceptible in the distance. The Chaktomuk, he thinks. Sacred Four Faces: the confluence of Cambodia’s two powerful rivers, merging, mixing, and splitting again into two separate entities.

  He knows it was not right to visit them like that, to arrive at their small home fuelled by such desire. It was not proper at all. He must resist thinking about their bodies. He must not submit. But even now the boy can’t stop the flood of images, can’t stop his recalled bliss—the unimaginable pleasure, the way they stroked and pawed him, those gentle kisses delivered with smoky lips, the long scratches from hard fingernails. All of it makes his ears grow hot. His stomach churns rice and prahoc. Digestion seems a base and loathsome thing. An image of Chanlina, glassy eyed and recumbent, too intoxicated to get herself dressed, steals across his mind, and he clenches his teeth in an effort to make it go away. “You must not visit those dancers again,” he says out loud. “You must begin to foster a pure consciousness.” If he does not think in a pure way, how can his behaviour be pure?

  Now, closing his eyes, sealing them tight, Sâr tries to recall the sutras he memorized years ago, the ones he repeated by rote every day for the holy purpose of erasing himself and suppressing his desire, but the only thing he can manage to recall is the thrilling swelter of the dancers’ dingy room, the hot flush in their cheeks, the moisture of their brows, Chanlina’s smooth skin and tapered breasts, and the way her palm enveloped and cupped and stroked his—

  No!

  He knows sutras of great austerity. He knows antidotes to desire. His Pali, however rusty, allows phrases of extreme admonition to slip from his lips. He will loop them, repeat them, ad infinitum, until his need is gone, his desire abolished, his body lost in rhythm. “The eye is to be abandoned,” he chants in a steady and monotonous tone. “Forms are to be abandoned.

  The ear is to be abandoned. Sounds are to be abandoned.

  The nose is to be abandoned. Aromas are to be abandoned.

  The tongue is to be abandoned. Flavours are to be abandoned.

  The body is to be abandoned. Tactile sensations are to be abandoned.

  The eye is to be—”

  “Sra-thnot?” interrupts a craggy voice.

  Sâr twitches with surprise and opens his eyes to an old, twiggy Vietnamese man in wide trousers and a full-body robe standing too close to his bench. His turtle-like face is withered and toothless. From a long bamboo yoke draped over his narrow shoulders dangle a dozen or so hollowed sections of cut bamboo, fastened with twine. They bump and bong against each other like a pagoda’s wind chimes.

  “You want some sra-thnot?” the Vietnamese man repeats. His broken voice, husky and soft, implies a larynx riddled with cancer, as well as a more rudimentary geriatric decay. “It’s very good areng palm. The best and strongest. Try it. I think you want to.”

  The man has already tilted his yoke and started to untie a hollowed bamboo section filled with rich palm wine.

  “No,” says Sâr, “please.”

  The vendor holds a pungent cup of syrupy liquid beneath Sâr’s nose. “Here,” he says. “Take it. Very strong. You like to be drunk? Only one piastre.”

  Sâr bows his head in deference. “Thank you,” he whispers, “but I don’t want any wine. Thank you very much, but I will say no.”

  “It makes you laughing drunk. You don’t like that?” The man’s tone has grown more aggressive. “Why not? You’ve never had it maybe? It makes you laugh. You understand? It’s fun. It’s very funny. If you’d had it before, you wouldn’t refuse.”

  Sâr bows his head several times, exaggerating his respect. “That’s very kind, thank you. But no, I am sure. I must say no.”

  The vendor grunts and retracts the wine. He takes a moment to study this mysteriously sombre boy, assessing whether or not he can push him into a sale. Conceding defeat, he ties the bamboo section back onto the pole with the twine. When the yoke is balanced on the vendor’s shou
lders, he digs his hand into a hidden pocket and extracts a small packet of tobacco wrapped in banana leaf. He peels it open, takes a pinch, and packs it into his cheek. As he regards the grand scope of the riverscape before them, he gnaws at the raw leaf with his toothless gums.

  The sun is half hidden behind a strip of foliage on the far shore. A jumping fish breaks through the surface and then cuts back into the deep. An egret flaps its wide wings and floats across the sky. Smooth water reflects the increasing orange of the sun.

  “Very pretty,” says the man. “You like the sunset?”

  “I do,” whispers Sâr.

  The vendor spits a thick gob of tobacco juice on the manicured lawn. “Why not have a cup of sra-thnot to better enjoy this pretty dusk?”

  Sâr, in lieu of another denial, presses his hands to his lips. “Thank you,” he says. “It’s kind of you to offer.”

  The vendor grunts his disapproval and wanders along the path in search of other customers. His upper body remains a fixed support for the seesawing cups of palm wine, his thin legs absorbing the shocks of the sloping pavement.

  Sâr watches the vendor depart. The Vietnamese are disgusting, he thinks.

  The air has cooled. The sunset stretches brilliant fingers into the sky before him. The intruder has disrupted Sâr’s attempt at equanimity, and now there’s no chance he will lose himself in sutra recitation. His skin tingles and his heart thuds. Desire is already recharging inside him. He tries to empty his mind, but his sharp and electric thoughts crack through that failed void like lightning. They were using him, of course. All they wanted was for him to put in a good word with Roeung. They read his desire—because it couldn’t have been more obvious—and found it innocent enough, maybe even charming, or amusing. You are a fool, Saloth Sâr. Why did you let them know what you wanted? Why did you ever tell them your name? You are nothing but a plaything for the king’s superfluous wives. They will tell your sister Roeung. They know all your secrets. They know you. Sâr’s face heats into crimson red; he wishes he could rip the sod beneath his feet and bury himself inside it.