by Tom Knox
‘Chemda I have seen what they were looking for.’
‘What?’
Tou gave his anxious reply. ‘The stripe Hmong! One of them come to me yesterday, old Hmong man. And he told me – he told me stories of the Khmer Rouge came here, in the 1970s. And others. That’s what I tell Doctor Samnang last night. That’s what I try to tell you on the phone. Then Samnang he got sad, crying, and I ran away –’
‘What? What stories?’
‘Chemda. I show you. We must to be quick, but . . .’ He lifted a finger, invoking their silence, and their discretion. ‘I can show you.’
‘What do you mean? Show me what??’
‘I can show you what the Khmer Rouge found. Many many years ago. On the Plain of Jars.’
Chapter 6
‘Chemda, why are you taking this risk? Why not just give up? And go home?’
She didn’t answer. Jake wondered whether to try again. They were speeding south, jeeping into the heart of the Plain, with Tou and the old Hmong man, Yeng. They were taking a terrible risk, disobeying the cops, quitting Ponsavanh, going to see what Tou had discovered.
Yeng had swiftly agreed to help them, as he had already helped Tou: he apparently hated the Pathet Lao, the Khmer Rouge, all the communists; he was a wiry determined old guy, maybe an ex fighter, Jake suspected – certainly he was toughly contemptuous of everyone and everything. Yet likeable.
Jake had been told Yeng was Hmong Bai, Striped Hmong, one of the most rebellious and warlike of Hmong tribes. Jake could see his motivation.
But why would Chemda be so audacious, so foolhardly? The cops in Ponsavanh were truly menacing; rustic and clumsy, but definitely menacing. If he and Chemda got caught doing this, with the prime suspect for the murder – Tou – they would of course be immediately deported, if not arrested and imprisoned. And very probably they would be beaten. Badly.
Yet Chemda’s dark and serene Khmer face was impassive; only the tiniest tic of nerves showed in the corner of her eyes. Nothing else.
Frustrated, Jake looked out of the window, wary and nervy.
The old jeep was rumbling along lanes which were little better than cattle-tracks. Wooden houses of Hmong villagers lined the way, large wooden rice barns stood beside the laurel trees and the elephant grass. Some of the barns had strange metal struts supporting their thatched or iron roofs, fat pillars of steel curving to a point.
With a jolt – a physical jolt as the ancient American jeep vaulted a crack in the sunbaked muddy track – Jake realized the pillars in the rice barns were bomb cases. The Hmong were using bomb cases to construct their barns: there was obviously so much unexploded ordnance around here, so many old bombs and shells and grenades providing so much metal, the swidden-farming Hmong were scavenging the stuff for buildings.
And now Jake looked closer he could see American hardware everywhere: rusty shell-cases used as flower pots. Metres of corrugated tank tracks utilized for fences. Huge bombs sliced in half and employed as water troughs for oxen.
‘Why don’t you tell me? Why are you taking this risk?’
It was Chemda, at last. She had spoken. Her brown eyes secured his gaze; her expression was demure, clever, and opaque.
‘’Cause I want the story,’ he said. ‘I want to get a decent story for once in my life.’
‘You want it that badly?’
‘That badly.’
‘And that’s it? Just that?’
Jake paused. Obviously Chemda sensed there was more: and she was right. But he couldn’t tell the truth. Could he?
Two little Hmong boys ran uncaringly in front of the car chasing a rooster – the car slowed just enough not to kill them, then speeded again. He thought of his sister, killed by a car. The guilt was a burn on his brain, an ugly scar, never properly healed. He thought of his mother, and his sister, and their deaths: and the absence of femininity in his life.
Living his life was like living in a jail, like being in the army. Everything was crudely masculine. It was all beers and jokes and danger and ambition and cynical laughter with Tyrone. Maybe he needed some real femininity in his life. Maybe he already craved the elegant, clever, refined, mesmeric femininity of this Khmer girl, to fill the hole in his life, the hole like a bomb crater left by a war.
He didn’t know what he wanted.
They were headed deeper into the rough. The broken shallow hills where the lethal golden ‘bombies’ slept, un exploded, beneath the pine trees: like fallen Christmas baubles of death.
‘All my life,’ Jake said, at last, ‘I’ve wanted danger and risk. The adventure. And yes, the story.’
She eyed him.
‘But why? What drives that?’
Her gaze was shrewd, even knowing. Jake now felt an enormous urge to confess: just get it out, cough it, purge the pain. Puke up the poison like when he was a teenager, drinking too much, drinking the pain away, with the room spinning: best to go and throw up.
‘My sister died when she was five. Run over.’
‘God. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t say that. Everyone says that, it’s bollocks.’
‘OK. OK. And?’
‘My mum was more broken than any of us. She was Irish, Irish catholic. Devout. Before it happened. You know. Then Rebecca was killed and she just fell apart. Mum lost her faith. Stopped going to church. Then she stopped going anywhere. She . . .’ He found it hard to say; he said it. ‘She changed. When I was about nine years old, she abandoned us, me and my brother, and my dad. Overnight. She never even said goodbye. She just walked out one night.’
‘Jake. Ah. God. That’s awful.’
‘She died of cancer ten years later. We were only informed when the police came to tell us. They took us to the hospital. We never knew she was living alone, in a different city.’
Chemda’s face was framed by the placid green hills beyond, cratered by the war. Like Jake. Cratered by a war.
‘So that’s what drove me out. In the end. I fled the UK. Just wanted to go anywhere else. Take risks. I didn’t care. Did lots of drugs, nearly killed myself.’
‘So it was nihilistic behaviour?’
‘I suppose, yes. Drink and coke and drunken rock climbing and bad bad places. And, eventually, photography. I wanted to do a job that entailed risk, you know? When I was in danger I didn’t feel so sad, I just felt scared. And I had a job, an excuse, a purpose. It wasn’t just drugs. So I went to Africa, south Russia, looking for action, seeking the work.’
‘But you didn’t get the story?’
‘Not anything amazing. There are a lot of guys – and girls – out there doing what I do. Lunatic photographers. Most of them are better than me. At least I can write a bit so I can work on my own if I need to – but these guys are better photographers than me and –’ He looked at her, he looked beyond her, at a flat blue lake surrounded by bushes with blue flowers and teak houses pillared by bombs. ‘And some of these guys are even more fucked than me. They will do anything. They don’t care. Really. They are broken. Damaged. Flawed. Junkies of one sort or another. Sometimes just basic junkies, heroin addicts. At least I managed to stop the drugs. I did a deal with Fate. I said just let me keep the booze, something to kill the guilt and grief – I’ll quit everything else. So that’s how I have survived my family. Now I stay cheerful. Sort of. When I’m not being threatened by cops.’
There. It was done. He’d said it. He had confessed. He felt a kind of lightness, his spirit unburdened; like he was on a better and smaller world, where the gravity was less punishing.
‘And you?’ he said. ‘Chemda? Why are you taking this risk?’
She was quiet again. Pensive. He didn’t know whether to insist, so he stared ahead at the track, at the widening landscape.
All around them stretched the Plain: in the bright harsh sun, the scenery had an astringent beauty; flat whispering lakes, groves of silent bamboo, docile parades of brown cattle pursued by bored-looking boys with willow sticks; and in the distance, modest green hills.
Chemda inhaled, and said: ‘As you know my grandmother was killed by the Khmer Rouge, probably somewhere . . . around here, in the Plain of Jars. Somehow she was killed. Maybe UXO.’ Chemda hesitated, and then added: ‘But I don’t know, just don’t know. And that, Jake, is the real cancer in Cambodia’s past. Not Knowing. Ah. I just know she is not here, no one is here, they all disappeared, got swallowed up. Dissolved. Maybe she wasn’t even blown up . . . maybe she just did her job and then they got back to Phnom Penh and Angkar, the Organization, the KR, they took her to Cheung Ek and smashed the back of her head with an iron bar. Because that’s how they killed, Jake, they didn’t even waste bullets – they just crushed heads with car axles and cudgels . . . two million heads. Babies or children they smashed to death against trees. Smashing babies against trees.’
Her voice was dry, faltering; for the first time it was breaking: her demure composure was gone. She shut her brown eyes and opened them and shook her head and she was quiet, and then she said: ‘How can you do that? How could anyone do that? They weren’t even doing it to the enemy? They were killing their own people. Smashing their own babies. So I want to know what happened to my grandmother and, ah, ah, all the rest of my family. Because: if I can find that out, maybe I can understand what happened to my country.’ She stopped short. Then spoke: ‘The third jar site is over there. The red and white blocks are MAG warnings, Mines Advisory Group; warnings not to walk beyond the blocks. They mean the fields beyond are uncleared. One mis-step and – bang.’
Jake stared. The pretty green meadow, just visible through the trees, was scattered with large stone Jars. That was the only word for them – enormous jars – carved from old and coarse grey stone.
‘Tou,’ said Chemda, leaning forward and tapping the lad on the shoulder. ‘Where is this jar site the Khmer Rouge discovered. How far?’
‘Not so far,’ Tou said. ‘Jar site nine is called. But very very difficult road. Two hour. Maybe three? Only site left, not touch.’
The road was, inconceivably, deteriorating: it was now little more than a linear stripe of mud, just coincidentally the width of a car. The jeep banged and jumped and rocked. Yeng hawked and laughed and talked in Hmong.
‘I’ve seen the evidence. The pyramids of skulls,’ said Jake. ‘At Cheung Ek.’ He hesitated. Should he pry further? ‘Horrible. But . . . but all this must have happened before you were born?’
‘Yes,’ said Chemda, calmly. ‘I only heard of it. My father never got over the genocide. He lost so many relatives. As, perhaps, you understand?’
‘I understand.’
Jake knew what it was like for your family to disappear. To dissolve.
Chemda continued:
‘So my father died in California, years later. That was not suicide, strictly speaking. A broken heart maybe. Many others in my family were killed by the Khmer Rouge. My surviving cousins and uncles won’t even talk about it. My mother is the same. It shattered us as a family. Ah. The only true survivor was my grandfather.’
She gazed his way, her eyes candid and searching, seeking maybe for some reassurance that he could be trusted with these truths. He said:
‘Go on.’
‘He is a powerful man, my grandfather. Sovirom Sen.’
‘Sovirom Sen?’ Jake had heard of him. A businessman. In Phnom Penh. Fiercely anti communist. Rich. Powerful. Connected. ‘He’s your grandfather?’
‘He is my grandfather. He is the man the police spoke to in Ponsavanh.’
‘You said it was the UN.’
Chemda shook her head. ‘They tried the UN first, of course, but it was my grandfather who really pulled their stupid strings. Got us released. I didn’t want to say it out loud, at the police station, not so bluntly as that.’
It all made sense. Jake sat back. It made a lot of sense. That’s why Chemda felt able to take these risks. She had a powerful man in her family. That counted for a lot in Southeast Asia: a patriarchal culture. That was almost everything. Face and money and masculine power. Sovirom Sen. First name Sen, surname Sovirom, a regal name, a rich Cambodian surname. Most Cambodian surnames were short, perfunctory, monosyllabic, the rolling polysyllables meant money and class.
‘He’s involved in import and export, right?’
Chemda shrugged.
‘Business with China. His family is . . . or we were . . . upper class. It sounds absurd but that is the case. We were friends of Prince Sihanouk. Nearly all the bourgeoisie and the upper classes were slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge, as soon as they got the chance. But grandfather didn’t die. He survived. I have always admired him for that, loved him.’
‘So it was his idea you came here. To find out what happened to his wife?’
‘No, ’said Chemda. ‘It was my idea. But he was proud of me.’
Jake fell silent. The track was now so rough, so barely there, so narrow and unused, trees and bushes were reaching in through the windows, clawing. They all shut the windows of the rattling, scraping, Vietnam War era jeep; conversation was stifled by the crackle of the undergrowth, the squelch of the tyres, the jerk of the car slapping from rut to rut, then up onto the rattling craquelure of sunbaked mud. He was still trying to solve the sombre puzzle of Samnang’s murder: he didn’t believe Tou did it, for a moment. The boy was incapable, he had no motive; but then, what? Who? Why?
‘Here.’
They had emerged from the woodland onto another flat meadow. And there were the large stone jars, in direct view.
The jeep parked. Yeng climbed out, smiling, proudly: pointing. Jake looked at the fields and the shining rice paddies stretching to hills; a waterbuffalo, tethered to a wild magnolia, stared back at them, pugnaciously bored.
‘Is it safe?’
Tou nodded, leading the way. ‘No bomb here. Yeng say no bomb.’ The young Hmong man was almost running. ‘The Khmer Rouge took most of the remain in other place, but here you can still see some. In here. And here. And here. Soon this will be gone. They want to destroy this. But they wait because Yeng say people come here, last year. Still looking. American.’
Jake stepped closer:
‘Sorry?’
‘He say . . .’ Tou turned to the Hmong man, his dark face lined with a smile. Tou asked the question again, and Yeng repeated his narrative; then Tou interpreted: ‘Yeng say he was driver for them. Many days. He know the area, the bomb. So they hire him. Last year. American. Fishhook. Fishwork? Don’t know.’
‘They came here to examine the jars.’
‘Yes!’ Tou said. ‘Last year. See. Here. Look. Yeng say this is what they find. And this is what I tell Mister Samnang. He sad then, scared.’
He was pointing inside one of the nearest jars. The large, two metre high, very crudely carved vessels were made of some prickly stone, rough to the touch; Jake leaned over and stared into the foetid darkness of the jar indicated by Tou. His eyes adjusted.
Several human skulls stared back at him, sitting forlornly on the stone floor. Next to them lay a small pyre of burned bones, ribs or femurs, pelvic bones maybe: with the appearance of old, charred wood.
The skulls had holes in them. Like the skulls at Cheung Ek, smashed by the cudgels of the Khmer Rouge. But the holes here were at the front, smaller. And of course the skulls were much much older. Jake was no scientist, but he could tell these skulls were ancient – by the mouldering. Yet they were also preserved somehow. By lids, maybe? Some of the jars had until recently possessed lids – he had read that. The lids may only have been wrenched away, in the last few decades: by the Khmer Rouge, or by this mysterious American. Exposing the archaic remains within.
It was intriguing. But even so, these were just
old bones and skulls. Why would the rediscovery of these bones provoke such emotion in Samnang, and how did it cause his murder?
Chemda was obviously working the same mystery. She was peering into the jars, talking quickly with Tou, in English and French. Maybe Khmer. Jake couldn’t quite follow.
‘Many people have speculated,’ she said, coming over to Jake, a little breathless. ‘Speculated that the jars were urns, funeral urns, for a civilization we do not understand, but this is nothing amazing. I don’t see why the communists got so excited by this. Or Samnang. It merely proves an existing theory – Tou – Tou –’ She swivelled on the young man. He was smiling, shyly. Anxiously. In the silent countryside with the solitary waterbuffalo still gazing their way.
‘Tou, ask Yeng what the Khmer Rouge found, why they were so drawn to this site – more than others?’
Tou shrugged. ‘I already know: I ask him that. He heard the American talking, he know some English.’
‘So?’
‘Thousand year ago. Many people here, Khmer people, black Khmer. They have . . . much war, many killing, many war. And then . . . then they . . . suicide themselves, kill themself. And they put each other in the jar. Like tombs, hide themselves. Kill each other and burn the bone.’
Jake intervened.
‘How did they establish this? The Khmer Rouge? The American?’
Tou pouted his ignorance, then turned, and asked in Khmer a question of the Hmong man – who was now glancing anxiously at the horizon. The old man shrugged and muttered. Tou interpreted.
‘We not know. But he know the people in the jar were Khmer. And the hole in the head . . . the skulls. They were . . . in the story I think. There is the Khmer curse . . . The Black Khmer?’
Yeng interrupted, unprompted, gesturing, and very agitated. A frown of real fear on his face.
Jake turned.
Noises.
The silent countryside was silent no more. The trees bent, the sun glared, the noises grew. The waterbuffalo was straining on his tether. Loud car noises were coming towards them. Jake strained to see: then he saw. Rolling over a hill, maybe five kilometres away. Big white 4 by 4s. Like the ones that had arrived in the hotel, dirty but new.
