The Atlas

by William T. Vollmann

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)

  Phnom Penh was so utterly different that he began to clown around with riels and dollars and taxis so desperately that the Cambodians shook their sides while he almost cried. The bicycles were almost gone. It was all cabs and everything was new and they wanted you to pay in dollars.

  In the hotel where his wife had shaved him they had mirrors now and refrigerators and toilets, televisions and bedside phones with music on hold and automatic redial. He couldn't believe it. The price had tripled, but they charged him only half again as much as before, for old times' sake. He asked for the maid he remembered, and she came to him with a cry of joy. He said to her: I came here to find Vanna. Can you come to the disco, please, and help me?

  She shook her head so miserably. — I am very sorry, she whispered. I cannot go there. No good. I want to be married, so I cannot. I am so so very sorry.

  Never mind, he said. I love you like a sister.

  Her salary was thirty dollars a month. He slipped her a twenty. At first she wouldn't take it. She kept saying: Why you pay me?

  He said: Because you are my sister.

  She rolled the twenty tight in her hand and thanked him in a whisper.

  He went into the nearest restaurant, where a girl sat playing some electronic game, and two men were drinking Tiger beer, so he ordered a Tiger beer, trying not to cry, and he arm-wrestled one of them and won, felt dizzy with beer after no breakfast and no lunch, and pulled out Vanna's photograph.

  Her name not Vanna, said the old proprietress, whose skin was bleached gold like lemongrass. I know her. Her name Pauline. Wait.

  She took the photo from his hand and walked away. He wondered if he'd ever see it again.

  After an hour went by without her coming back, he stared at his empty beer and his dead heart exploded with hope because maybe she might actually be doing or finding out something.

  The floor pattern was a series of three-dimensional squares which bulged and trapped his drunken eyes.

  The proprietress's middle-aged daughter sat nibbling at her fingertips, and the granddaughter read a newspaper with her bare feet up.

  The proprietress came in and said: She change house.

  No good, eh?

  She shook her head.

  To restore the past, which cannot be restored, it is most expedient to perform rituals. Belief, while useful, is not indispensable. With his Happiness razor she had once made him young for her. He would youthen himself against all censure, so that by sympathetic magic he could become hers again, hers only. No matter that being hers was as impossible as being young. As he passed a beauty parlor, the women called to him, and he let one lead him into that white bright mirrored place of music; he couldn't get over the newness. The woman who'd hooked him was very beautiful and kept asking if he was married. He allowed that he was. — You no like me? the beautician said, putting his hand on her breast. — I like you very much, but I'm married already, he said. My wife lives here. She's Cambodian. — She didn't understand a word. — He signed to her to cut all his hair off, which would render him monkish, so she washed his hair twice, smeared a beauty mask all over his face, struck his forehead with her clasped wrists in such a way that the bones made a strangely musical clacking sound, shaved his face and neck hair by hair with a straight razor, and then brought a huge dentist's lamp with which to besiege his ear so that she might clean it with no less than twelve instruments: ferruled feathers of various sizes, loops of fine wire to dislodge his lifetime of earwax, and even a fine razor to cut the hairs inside his ears so as to strangely pleasure and tickle him and sometimes spice him with keen short-lived pain. She warmed every implement upon the lamp's lem-ondrop face. The hot feathers anointed him with sleep. Every time he turned his head to look at her or see what time it was she slapped his cheek lightly, saying, Sa-leep! Sa-leep! She spent half an hour on each ear. Then she did his fingernails. After peeling off the facial and purifying his now angelic countenance with a chemical-scented towel she combed his hair and then presented him with the bill: seven thousand riels or three dollars, as he preferred. He paid her ten thousand, and she clasped her hands Ah khun.* In the next chair an UN-TAC✝ soldier from Germany was getting the works, too. Das Leben ist hier so gut! he laughed to the soldier, and the soldier, unsmiling, gave him the victory sign. He turned to the mirror. No matter that she'd never cut his hair. Once again he looked so young and handsome—ready in case he might meet his wife.

  * Thank you.

  ✝ United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia.

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)

  The streets were now grayish-brown canals as in Thailand, through which the shiny white UNTAC police cars and the motorcycles and the cyclo drivers ferrying their passengers under sheet plastic all swam, honked and hulked. Sandalled people waded, holding umbrellas.

  In the café where he passed that rainy hour (it being too early for the discos to open), old men with puppet-string necks leaned forward so that he could see their ribs change angles under the skin. Dinnertime. The proprietress brought the chicken in a great tub. Her husband, who was an ambulating skeleton, mopped the dead flies from the glass case with a paper towel. He hung the cauliflowers, lemon-grass and eggplants in the upper storey and stuck the chicken pieces on hooks, while the son brought blocks of ice. A man in a dripping black raincoat rushed in, bearing an immense prism of ice that was hollow like a glass brick. Slowly the glass case lost its transparent freedom, becoming instead a cabinet of morbid curiosities silhouetted against the rain. At last it was closed, and the skeleton-man stood beside the man in the black raincoat, looking out at the rain.

  As for Vanna's husband, he sat looking across the street-river at the striped awnings of the New Market, knowing that the disco was almost in sight; and his heart suddenly rose.

  But he kept believing that this was a spurious double of the city, that the true Phnom Penh, where the disco was in which Vanna had always worked and always would, must be farther east. This was another way of saying that he knew he wouldn't find her.

  A cigarette stand girl told him that her business had cost two hundred and fifty dollars to establish. That was how much she made in a month. He had brought five hundred for Vanna; now he was happy; now that sounded like enough.

  It began to rain harder. In his camouflage raincoat, he saluted and greeted all as he had done two years before on that armored personnel carrier in Battambang; they smiled as before, but as far as his heart was concerned he might as well have been inside one of those blocks of ice. He was not exactly sad or lonely. He was simply a marionette pulled by strings of resignation.

  As he splashed in his sandals through the calf-deep streets into which squatting children pissed, he saw that there were new lights, sometimes even neon, trembling jellies of light that lay on the black night he sank his legs into, that night between steely grayish walls and shut windows, that liquid night of dark crowds walking slowly, some bearing lighted cigarettes like torches, that night of glowing trucks splashing; and he came to a man. He and the man had never seen each other before. He said to the man: Je cherche ma femme.

  The man looked at Vanna's photograph. Then he said: Je demanderai si ma femme la connaît.

  Non, he said a moment later, with the young wife peeping out through the open door. Pourquoi vous cherchez cette femme?

  Parce qu'elle est ma femme.

  Je comprends. Mais pourquoi vous la cherchez?

  Merci, said Vanna's husband, suddenly exhausted.

  He went another block and came to where the disco was, and it was not there.

  Maybe I made a mistake, he thought. He went up and down the next two streets on either side, soaked to the knees.

  No, he said to himself, it's not there.

  Three blocks from where it had been he found an absurd new whorehouse shaped like a wicker beehive. The motorcycle drivers at the entrance stood silently aside. He opened the door and went in.

  The ceiling was an immense whee
l whose infinitely packed bamboo spokes recalled for him the density theorem of numbers. The circular bar had a circular island with bottles on it and ashtrays crammed with cigarette butts. That was where he sat. UNTAC soldier-boys were playing pool beneath the tigerskin-hung walls. The jukebox sang "You Ain't Nothin' But A Hound Dog." There were tall girls in bathing suits moving about. They did not look Cambodian at all. He said hello in Khmer to the barmaid and she did not understand.

  Where are you from? he said.

  I am Filipina. Me, her, all from Philippines. Manila.

  How long have you been here?

  Two weeks. All girls very news. This bar very new.

  He pulled out the photograph, which now had a water-spot on the corner. — I'm looking for my wife, he said. Have you seen this person?

  She called the other girls, and the soldiers looked at him with the neutrality that comes just before anger, because he had stolen their girls, and the women all inspected the photo and said: No. Never seen that one.

  He bought a beer to make the barmaid more helpful. She made him pay in dollars; Cambodian money was no good there. He asked her where he should go next and she told him the Martini. — Many Kampuchean girls there, she said.

  If I paid you, would you take me there? he said.

  We are not allowed to go out, the girl said carefully. Not ever.

  Oh, that's a great job you have, then, he said wearily. He wanted to crush the world under his heel.

  Have a good night, Ernie, a soldier said, and he saw another soldier walking beside a girl, going into the back. No, the girl was right. Only the soldiers went in and out. There were no Cambodians in this place at all. He was the only one who wasn't either a soldier or a whore; he was both.

  Three dollars for the beer. He left a twenty on the bar and went out. He heard a seashell's silence behind him.

  Girl good? Girl number one? laughed the motorcycle drivers in the rain.

  He took out Vanna's picture. — This is my wife, he said. Which of you will take me to my wife?

  A raindrop fell on Vanna's mouth.

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)

  The motorcycle stalled in deep water. He and the driver knee-waded between bamboo fences which leaned in darkness, pushing the motorcycle down a prison-like corridor of bamboo in which giant rats swam. The driver cleared the engine. — Quickly, quickly! he cried. — They yawed back into the night. Occasionally motorcycles of other dreams passed like lonely motorboats. This street was a dark lake whose window-shores very rarely shone.

  They came to the Lido now, and at first when he saw the sign he thought: Yes, must be the place because it was about here that that hot low dark disco used to be. But as soon as the motorcycle driver began to slow down he saw a doorway with crimson-carpeted stairs and he knew that it was not the place. He took out the photograph, now somewhat more spotted with rain, and held it out to the woman who stood there, but she brushed it aside impatiently. The next woman took it for a moment and shook her head. — No use, said the driver, who was actually a very good person, but Vanna's husband waited until some more girls came out; they shook their heads and sent him away. It was a mark of their business sense that they did not try to entice him into spending money on a drink or on them, locum tenens; seeing the photograph, they seemed to calculate that he would not be worth their effort to persuade, and they were right. So they sent him on his way. At the Pussy Doll, the Savoy and the Tilden it was the same.

  Hee, hee, hee! laughed the cyclo men in raincoats when they heard that he wanted to marry Vanna. One bouncer analyzed his face and pronounced him Japanese. Their opinions of her showed a like sense of the exogamous. They concurred that she was Vietnamese, hence hated, enemy. When he told them that she was Cambodian, they said: Ah, very good! but he could tell they didn't believe him.

  Old! Ugly! Vietnamese! the whores laughed over that sad and skinny image of his wife in the straightbacked chair in the hotel that didn't have straightbacked chain anymore. Whaiiiieeeeeee?

  Because I love her, he said.

  Does you loves her? For all night? Hee, hee, hee!

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)

  Seeing the photograph they usually yelled for him to go away. They looked him up and down, peering over each other's shoulders, and laughed, not always derisively. In only one bar did the girls crowd around him, looking into his face with something like hope that if he could fall in love and marry a whore, then maybe somebody might marry them someday, too.

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)

  From among the sneering girls came a girl whose name was also Vanna. Snatching up the true Vanna's photograph, she stared at it and then shrieked in disgust.

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)

  At the Regent he entered through the gate and then crossed a grand courtyard to the steps which led to this temple of flesh where women stood, and as he ascended in his rolled-up sodden trousers they jeered. The motorcycle driver nudged him; he passed Vanna around . . .

  Yes, the motorcycle driver said. They have ever seen her. Ever? They have or they haven't? They have all seen her before. When? When?

  I don't know. They have never seen her.

  At the Martini they all said that they knew her, and two girls in a bar by the Russian market in dresses of netting and sugarcaned starch insisted that she worked at the Lido.

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)

  So they went back to the Lido. A woman sat outside looking old. At first he thought her the madam. She was merely another dancer who'd accomplished too many dances. His wife probably looked like that now.

  She know her! cried the driver, so happy for him. By the river, in floating restaurant!

  You believe her?

  She say she know her, said the driver. She have house by the river, but she change her house. Now she work at floating restaurant. Yes. No. She have ever seen her.

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1993)

  It seemed almost a platoon that set out for the nightclub where his wife, who might or might not be dead, might or might not be working. There was the husband, of course, first, last and foremost. He had his driver to speed him there through the rainy streets. At his side rode the dancer with her motorcycle driver. Two other motorcycle drivers followed for a time just to keep company with their own amazement. A dozen barefoot kids in torn gray rags ran behind them laughing; they were, however, soon forsaken. The two supernumerary motorcycle drivers duly recollected their responsibilities to Cambodian commerce; they peeled off. (And speaking of Cambodian commerce, they passed the false Vanna, who was riding on a motorcycle behind a suited man; Vanna's husband nudged his driver and pointed to her but the driver only laughed: You cannot be Kampuchea. Your nose too big!) So there were four who arrived at the market in front of the floating restaurant, and the motorcycle drivers stayed to watch their vehicles while he followed the Lido girl up the gangplank over the water where two women patted the Lido girl down and he offered them his thighs and buttocks to pat down, too, but they only laughed, proving him not consubstantial with the Lido girl, who led him onto the deck around the floating restaurant, led him under weird still lights on the black water, and girls girls girls lined up on the porch as they came in. In that season they seemed to like black skirts with silver belts. They strolled with heads tossed back and pouting lips. They had rounder fleshier faces than the Thai girls. Some had a Chinese look. Every now and then one would go to the railing and smoke a cigarette, staring out into the water and the still Cambodian darkness.

  There was a disco ball like a die in the darkness, waiters in white passing on creaky boards over the water. One waiter seated him, so he ordered Tiger beers and a plate of nuts for the Lido girl. The Lido girl said something and nodded at him. To the waiter he showed Vanna's photo, his logotype.

  Just wait and they will inform you, said the waiter.

  He sat outside with devitrifying eyes, unmoved by the dancing or the dark-clothed figures at white-covered tables. He and the Lido girl had nothing to say
to each other. He watched as an UNTAC guy from Holland with a nice ID got pulled inside by his Khmer girlfriend.

  You must come back tomorrow, the waiter said. (They all spoke some English now, it seemed.) She did not come because of the rain. Tomorrow, ninety-nine percent, one hundred percent, she will come. Come to this table at seven or eight-o'-clock.

  The woman from the Lido took his hand, pointed to herself, and said: Dancing?

  He patted her shoulder. — Me-you brother-sister. I dance only with Vanna.

  She nodded sadly.

  What is this one's name? he asked the Cambodian at the next table. The Cambodian had been an interpreter until his identity card expired.