by Tom Knox
I used to be a teacher. English teacher. At the lycee. Then the Khmer Rouge did there experiment on me.
‘What experiment?’ Jake said. ‘It left you speechless?’
The janitor, Ponlok, nodded – morosely. And then he slowly reached up to his cap, and pulled it off.
A hideous scar lurked beneath. But it wasn’t just a scar it was also a kind of concavity in the upper forehead. As if the skull had slightly caved in, as if a chunk of brain had been removed, then the skullbone had cratered – though the skin had grown over.
It was horrible, and it was pitiable. The damage was so bad the hair had refused to grow back, the livid pink scar was left naked in its strange hollow. No wonder the poor guy wore a cap.
The small Khmer man put the cap back on, and cast his eyes to the floor, like a child ashamed of bedwetting.
Jake swore, quietly. He was thinking of the skulls and the bones in the Plain of Jars. The skulls with holes in the same place. Jake remembered the old Cambodian prophecy: only the deaf and the mute will survive.
The first intimations of a narrative glimmered in Jake’s mind.
Chemda had taken over the interrogation.
‘Why did the Khmer Rouge do this to you?’
I do not know. They took away my memory with some of my brain. And my talking.
‘When did they do this?’
In 1976.
‘Did you volunteer to have this done to you?’
I do not remember. I hope not. I know some people did.
‘Do you know where this happened?’
Yes. Near here. Let me show you.
Chemda said nothing, her expression spoke of confusion.
Another note:
I know who you are. Chemda.
‘What?’
Your grandfather gave me this job. When he built the apartment. He took pity on me.
Amidst the strangeness, Jake could understand that bit of the story. He’d never felt such pity. To have your brain opened up, to be turned into this shrinking, deformed, helpless leftover man? Like an experimental rat, with pieces of your mind thrown in the trash.
Grotesque.
That is why I came here this morning. To tell you.
Chemda gazed at the man.
‘Tell me what?’
The next note took a long time to write. Jake stood in the heat, trickles of sweat down his back. This man knew who they were, even this wretched specimen of a man had identified them. It was hopeless: everywhere, everyone was watching. The fucking jackfruit trees were watching them. It seemed there was no shade in the entire country. Everywhere was exposed to the heat and the danger.
The sweat ran down his back like those tickling claws of the scorpion, the tickle of fear on his spine. He wanted to get back inside the flat.
At last the note was handed over.
I saw you coming into the apartment yesterday, I watched you. I know who you are, Chemda Tek. Because you are famous and on UN and because you are granddaughter of Sovirom Sen. Everyone knows who you are. But I know more. I knew your grandmother. I saw them bring her to Tuol Sleng and then to S37. They didn’t do anything to her in Lao. They did it here. They brought her back and experimented on her. I can show you. I do remember some things.
Chemda insisted:
‘I want to see this place. Now.’
‘Wait –’ Jake put a restraining hand on her soft bare shoulder. She was in a midnight blue singlet. Her skin was dark and lovely. He could still remember her naked, crouched over him, the man staring through the window.
‘Can we trust him?’
Chemda shook her head, frustratedly; Jake whispered in her ear:
‘I know he has information, Chem, and I know I feel sorry for him, but look at him! And he might go straight to your grandfather. And he was standing at the window.’
Ponlok was waiting, like a lowly servant, a man used to being ordered around, used to revulsion and disdain. The Khmer Rouge had turned him into a serf.
Chemda replied, her voice hushed.
‘He was just coming to see us! Hn? He wasn’t doing anything. And whatever happened to this poor man,’ she gestured at Ponlok, ‘happened to my grandmother. He may be able to help, to tell us. I want to know more. This is our chance. And besides he’s seen us now, we have to do something. We need to win him over, make sure he doesn’t go to my grandfather.’
Jake shrugged and resiled. Chemda’s willpower was formidable, and if she wanted to know about her grandmother’s fate, he could hardly argue.
‘If you want I’ll go alone with him,’ said Chemda. ‘You can stay here.’
‘Are you kidding?’
A minute later they were climbing down the fire escape, following the small, slightly limping Khmer man, in his fleecy cap.
A hundred metres and two alleyways brought them to a slightly busier street. A spirit house stood on the corner, with offerings of dark fish sauce in little egg cups.
Jake waited, and listened. Chemda was explaining to Ponlok: why the janitor should keep this very quiet, that no one should know she and Jake were here, not even her grandfather. Even as he tuned in, Jake felt sure this plan was not going to work; it was too much of a risk: they couldn’t trust Ponlok. As soon as this immediate and ghastly task was done, they would have to leave, flee Phnom Penh entirely. Run away into the countryside.
But where could they go?
Jake stared down the leafy suburban road, looking west, away from the sun: thinking of escape routes, places they could hide. He stared, and a brush of horror made him jerk, like an icy hand had been suddenly pressed to the back of his neck.
He realized where they were. The hulking grimy concrete building at the end of the road was unmistakeable. So that’s why he had recognized the area.
Tuol Sleng.
They were right by Tuol Sleng, the notorious Khmer Rouge prison.
At the end of the road Jake could see a bus, decanting tourists. People doing the Holocaust Tour. Jake had done it himself, when he’d first arrived in PP. He’d seen the iron beds where people were flayed with electric cables; he’d seen the bleak and foetid concrete cells where women and children were raped with truncheons, or tied down screaming as their living organs were removed, in live dissections.
Tuol Sleng. The hill of the poison tree. S21.
Seventeen thousand went through Tuol Sleng alone. And twelve survived.
Just twelve survivors, out of seventeen thousand.
Another note from Ponlok. The janitor handed it to Jake.
No. It is not in Tuol Sleng. It is secret place. S37. Come?
He was guiding them away from the torture garden. Jake felt a brief frisson of relief: they were ducking away from the busyness and tourist police of Tuol Sleng.
But where were they going? Ponlok was heading down an alley, slippy with rotting fruit, and soggy bags of discarded noodles, and clinking Royal Ginseng beer-bottles. The alley culminated in a dead end: a patch of earth and rubble, and a shattered building, a small concrete shack, just another one of Phnom Penh’s ruins.
It was surrounded by bamboo stands and high grasses, it was almost overrun by the riotous tropical fertility of the Cambodian lowland. Just another ruin. But not just another ruin.
This was S37.
It was roofless, the size of a large one-car garage. A sinister iron bedframe stood in the middle, rusting away.
Two metal cupboards sat next to it, the drawers flung open and empty. Only an ancient, grimy, very broken syringe, lying on the floor, showed that this place might once have had some medical significance.
Chemda spoke:
‘This is where they did the experiments?’
Yes.
The man was trembling again, glancing at Chemda, looking at her bare legs. Jake wished, suddenly, that she had worn jeans, not the short blue skirt.
Your grandmother was brought here. I know. Then they cut open her head and she was changed. Forever. Like me. Like many members of your family.
&
nbsp; Chemda stared at the note.
‘Other people? My family? Who else?’
The note fell from Chemda’s hand to the floor. She was visibly and entirely shocked, her mouth trembling. Jake went to touch her, she waved him away.
Jake turned to ask the janitor another question.
‘How do you know?’
But Ponlok wasn’t listening, he was staring at Chemda’s legs. He moved closer to Chemda, then stopped. He trembled, he quivered, riven with some internal conflict. At last he scribbled a note, and handed it to Jake.
You must go
‘What?’
They make me like this
This note was stained with spittle. Ponlok was actually drooling. Laboriously the janitor wrote another note, with a quivering hand.
The scrawl was so shaky it took Jake a few seconds to decipher the words.
At last he made sense of the spidery writing.
I cant help it
Too late, Jake realized the danger. Ponlok was already between him and Chemda, and Ponlok was moving fast. The janitor lunged at the girl. He grabbed her bare legs. She screamed. The wiry old man pushed her over, and down, and shoved his hand inside her skirt.
Jake grabbed the Khmer man by the arms, pulling him off, tearing at his dirty collar, pulling out fistfuls of the old man’s hair; but then Jake felt a flash of metal, deeply cutting his forehead.
A knife. Ponlok had produced a huge knife from somewhere, he’d swivelled and slashed, slicing Jake hard across the face.
The pain was momentarily blinding. Jake staggered, and gasped. The blood was gushing from his forehead; frantic and angry he wiped it away, and stared through the crimson pain.
Ponlok was on top of Chemda, her panties were half-torn and they were dangling from an ankle. The janitor was unzipping himself, but the other hand was holding the knife, pressing it tight against Chemda’s throat, so tight it was whitening the dark skin of her neck. Chemda’s eyes blazed in terror, staring at Jake.
Help me
Jake stood, frozen with exquisite indecision. One slash of that brutal knife could kill Chemda.
But the janitor was going to rape her. In front of him. On the grimy concrete floor of S37.
Chapter 19
Alex Carmichael rolled off Julia, flopped back, and lit a cigarette.
‘That was nice,’ he said.
She slapped him.
‘Nice? You just had sex with me. You aren’t allowed to use the word “nice” for at least fifteen minutes.’
He laughed, puffed twice on the cigarette, then extinguished it in an old wine glass from last night.
‘Coffee babe?’
‘Please.’
She watched him swing his arms into a dressing gown, and disappear towards the kitchen. What did she feel? She felt more than ‘nice’. Perhaps she was falling for him. So far their relationship had been sexual but recreational, an agreement, friends-with-benefits, one of those things that happens in the intimacy and intensity of an archaeological dig, like actors and actresses on location.
Usually these flings flamed out, quite peaceably, when the season was over. But Alex was turning out to be more than expected: the sex was good, he was properly masculine, unruly, impulsive, posh, and frivolously cynical in a way that made her laugh when she really needed to laugh; he was forty-two, English, and married, though he was apparently getting divorced.
Julia sat up. This was the wrong time to be thinking about relationships: in the middle of all this. Ghislaine, now Annika, brutally murdered. But maybe that’s why she was thinking all this: right now it was good to have a boyfriend of any kind, a man around the place, she liked the protection and the companionship and the comfortingly satisfying sex. Why not? In the middle of all this terror? Or maybe that was cowardly in itself.
She showered, and the self criticism came quickly now, rinsing her, scalding her, like the water gushing from the shower-rose. Was she a coward?
Almost everything about her life had been too safe. She had let herself settle into a safe job in a mediocre university in London. Home was an average flat in a quintessentially boring suburb. She led a risk-free life as a permanent singleton, she always made sure the men she dated were unsuitable for real and possibly painful commitment. Like Alex.
Julia stepped from the shower and towelled, and assessed herself in the mirror.
But now things were different. She had, for the first time, discovered something. The skulls. Prunieres. She wasn’t going to let go, not now. Moreover, she was involved with these murders, the chain of mysterious events, whether she liked it or not. And she was increasingly sure the two evolutions in her life converged: the skulls and the murders, there was a link. But what?
The complexities were intense. She wanted to solve everything immediately.
But that wasn’t going to happen: Alex was so laid back, first he wanted coffee and croissants, then he wanted to read Le Monde very slowly, trying to improve his French, and failing. They had done this many mornings through the summer. The ritual was sometimes comforting; right now it was frustratingly sluggish, an unnecessary delay.
The ritual unfolded. Alex read Le Monde. Julia drank her coffee from a handle-less bowl, dispelling thoughts of Annika and the green Chinese tea in the porcelain cup. That last evening, a few days before she was killed. Executed. Now Julia lost a grip on her patience, she pulled down her lover’s newspaper and said:
‘Please, come on, Alex, this is unbearable, all this waiting, let’s go.’
‘Right now?’
‘Right now.’
An hour later they were in a taxi heading north for St Denis, a rougher part of Paris, not the Paris of Haussman and the boulevards, this was the Paris of les banlieus – literally, the places of banishment – the Paris of Algerian and Moroccan kids with no jobs, the Paris of couscous and Muslim rappers and nervy policemen in riot gear standing by vans just down the road from teeming mosques.
It was dull and cold and drizzly: late November. Their destination was the subsidiary archives of the Musée de l’Homme: the most farflung outpost of the empire of Parisian ethnology.
Alex spoke.
‘You know I met him. Just a couple of times.’
‘Who?’
‘Hector Trewin.’ The taxi had stopped at a junction. Alex gazed out at some Arab kids in Inter Milan football shirts, doing nothing.
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Well, it’s true. Sort of. I mean, we weren’t best mates. But I went to a few of his lectures at Balliol, the Ashmolean, when I was a student. And we chatted. He was very very slightly famous.’
‘And?’
Alex shrugged a laconic shrug. Julia insisted, she wanted to talk.
‘Go on, tell me! Trewin, what was he like?’
‘A lot of the students revered him, this great Marxist intellectual. But he creeped me out. Everything was theoretical. The world was theoretical. Breakfast was bloody theoretical. He simply wouldn’t acknowledge that there was a practical problem with communism; as far as he was concerned Marxist theory was fine so it should work, and one day it would. We just had to keep trying. I asked him about Stalin and Mao and he actually said: You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.’
Alex laughed, bitterly.
‘I pointed out to him that sixty million dead people was possibly an oversupply of broken eggs. And the fucking omelette turned out to be the Gulags, and the Lubyanka, and the Purges. He just looked over my head and sighed. He was an arsehole. An idealist and a thinker, but an arsehole.’
The rain was streaking the cab windows. Alex snapped the words.
‘Arsehole. Like all of them, all of those soixante-huitards and those 70s radicals and those CND Marxists, all of those euro-communists. I hate them. Wankers. How could you be a communist after Mao, after the Terror? It’s like being a Nazi AFTER the Holocaust. How could you be a communist at the same time as the Khmer Rouge were killing babies?’
Julia had rarely seen Alex th
is sincere and vehement. Normally he was sarcastic and languid to the point of nihilism.
They sat in silence. Then Alex patted her on the knee.
‘Anyway, darling – I think we have arrived.’
He was right. They’d arrived at the archives of the archives of the Musée de l’Homme. It was a huge grey warehouse on an industrial estate. A post-industrial estate.
Tipping the cabbie, they crossed the rain-stained empty concrete carlots. Alex said it reminded him of IKEA in far north London. Julia had a childish urge to cross her fingers. This was their last best hope, it was definitely their last hope. They had tried literally everywhere else: the Louvre and the Pasteur, private museums, the Broca archives, and now they were down to a bleak steel warehouse in a dismal burb of Paris beyond La Peripherique. One last shot.
The only official presence, the only human presence, was a large grouchy Frenchman in a small depressing office with a sliding glass window. The archivist of the archives of the archives.
‘Eh, bonjour,’ he said, giving them a curt nod through the open window. ‘Et vous êtes?’
They explained in bad French. He clocked their credentials, yawned, and did a magnificently Gallic shrug. ‘Pas de problem.’ He returned to his sports newspaper, L’Equipe.
With an air of tourists approaching the Parthenon, they stepped into the vastness of the secondary archives of the Musée de l’Homme. It really was like IKEA – but a frighteningly disorganized IKEA. It swiftly became apparent that the archives had not been indexed in any way. It was just stuff: vast acres of steel shelves with boxes and artefacts and plastic bags, it was academic debris, the forgotten old dreck in the curatorial attic.
For an hour they wandered disconsolately around the vast building, peeking in boxes of tiny amber beads from Mauritania, staring in perplexity at half a broken bird-god from Malagasy. In this hour they realized they had scrutinized maybe 0.5% of the collection.
In despair the couple retreated to the office, to ask the archivist for help.
He shrugged, like they had asked him if he could spit further than a llama. Like their question was quite surreally redundant.
Pressed once again, the official relented: grudgingly he told them that this cathedral of stuff, this huge warehouse of rubbish, was what remained following the recent trans-location of the museum from the Palais Chaillot to its new site at the Quai Branly. Everything the Parisian authorities thought too worthless or irrelevant to be stored in the official archives had been thrown in here. The Frenchman specifically used the word ‘thrown’: jetes.
