You have paid off the cyclo and you are now walking nonchalantly down an alleyway. You have already walked through the same kind of alleyway in a different part of the city. And in between you’ve changed cyclos twice. Now you are only two or three blocks away from the street corner where you started your circuitous route.
It is unusual and risky behaviour. You don’t usually bother about being so obviously careful and you don’t understand what the point of it is. But it was an order and you welcome the possibility that chance might lead Somaly to appear somewhere along your circuit. That you might see her in another cyclo, on the pavement, in a shop or out for a walk with her girlfriends.
Just seeing her would mean a lot.
Don’t bother counting the days again. It just puts you in an even worse mood. Concentrate instead on the task in hand. Something of considerable significance is about to happen. Or has happened. Otherwise the information would have been passed along the usual line from mouth to mouth, but now it’s going to be given to you directly.
You cross the street and enter the lane on the other side. There are children chasing one another, a man with two blocks of ice on the ends of a yoke, women hanging out washing, a seller of Vietnamese pancakes squatting on his haunches. Many people see you but there are many other passers-by just like you. You hope that their passage will erase yours.
You turn a corner and see that you are the first. Take a seat on one of the low stools of the street restaurant, order a misted glass of iced tea and open your paper. Let the news of the brutal way the French broke up the protests in Morocco harness your thoughts. A thousand dead. According to French military sources. The question then is, how many times does that figure have to be multiplied before it accords with the truth?
You are sitting at this restaurant waiting for someone and you don’t know who that someone will be. You are taking a considerable risk by coming here. But there is nothing about your appearance to reveal your mission. You are just a well-dressed young teacher reading his paper.
A man takes a seat, not at your table but on a stool at the neighbouring table. Cautious procedures of this kind seem almost ridiculous to you. But it points to discipline. There are two cyclos standing twenty or thirty metres away, and you recognize one of the drivers as the man who took you to your meeting with Yan and Sok last Tuesday. They are smoking and it’s impossible to tell whether they know one another, but each of them has an identical bamboo cane tied on parallel to the frame of the cycle.
You turn your head slightly towards the other table. Mumm is sitting there.
You are sitting at one table and waiting for your neighbour at the next table to say what he is here to say. He comes from an unbelievably wealthy family and is the only man in your country to have been to the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. Under no circumstances should the two of you be seen together, for your respective tasks are so similar. Like you, Mumm is one of the Organization’s trusted men and he too has infiltrated the Democrats’ election campaign. But while you are a secretary in the background, he has been elected to the committee of the party. You manipulate while he acts.
The security police would merely make a note of it if a member of the party leadership was seen in the company of an unremarkable bag-carrier from lower down the hierarchy. But if these two were already filed under “Paris” and “Communist Party Core Troops”, the police would not be satisfied with merely noting the fact. And the leadership of the Democrats, too, would almost certainly consider the hitherto unknown socialization between two party members worthy of investigation, particularly since those members had a questionable past in common.
You are in danger and at last you are able to drag your thoughts away from Somaly’s silence. Your thoughts are all on the here and now, while you wait for the man at the neighbouring table to address you. You are in danger, but you feel safe in his presence. It is an irrational feeling. Mumm brings Paris with him, and everything in Paris consisted of words and non-dangerous theory, whereas here and now it is a matter of potentially life-threatening practice. You watch him out of the corner of your eye. His suit, his high forehead, his heavy eyelids.
A waiter in ordinary clothes serves Mumm and Mumm turns to you and asks the time in the way anyone would ask a stranger for the time.
Stretch out your arm and look at your watch. Tell Mumm the time and hear him say thank you.
Start a conversation before he returns to his paper and say something about the price of rice—the biggest headline on the page he has open. Listen to Mumm complaining on behalf of the poor and hear him add that he, at least, is lucky enough to be able to leave the country in these expensive times. That he will be flying to Paris tonight. And then as an explanatory statement: that it is all the more welcome since you never can tell when distant visitors from a poor country district might come knocking on the door uninvited, force their way in and turn the whole house upside down.
You nod and smile and try to take in the information. Mumm is fleeing the country. A raid is imminent. Vannsak was right that there are no longer any restrictions on what Sam Sary can do. Not even the party leadership is exempt.
You hear Mumm saying goodbye. You say safe journey to his departing back.
You see him take a seat in one of the cyclos at the corner and once his cyclo has gone twenty metres, the other one rolls off slowly in the same direction. Your eyes follow them and you see the two cyclos turn left and disappear. All that’s left is a busy crossroads.
Stay where you are on your stool and keep your eyes fixed on the news and the notices. Things are serious now. They were before, but now there is no room for anything else. Danger is a permanent condition from now on. None of you is safe.
You try to sort through all these new questions. What does it mean that the security police are intending to arrest Mumm? What does it mean that he is fleeing? For the Democrats? For the election? For your mission? For you? Is your name the next one on the chief of police’s list?
And in addition to that:
What does this mean for the other young radicals in the party leadership? For Vannsak? You think you must warn him, but you ought not to. How would you explain that you know about Mumm’s flight? An official explanation of his sudden disappearance will come soon enough.
You are sitting in an open-air restaurant and in a rather convoluted way you are glad that these new problems are forcing you to give your attention to them rather than to Somaly’s damned absence.
You are sitting by a paraffin lamp. You are sitting in a room that is lost in darkness beyond the circle of yellow light made by the lamp. Two faces are lit up in front of you, one wide jawed and one thin. The table is covered with sheets of paper with writing in French and with long lines in your own language. A rolled-up mosquito net is hanging over a low bed.
Sok and Yan look more tired than they did last Tuesday. So do you. Sok offers his cigarettes around—Red Club. Take a Red Club. It makes a welcome change from your perpetual Globes.
Your folders contain important information. Pass the folders across to Yan and Sok. Give them one each to look through. Explain to them how the information should be interpreted. Then give them an account of the developments of the last week and describe the deliberations that are going on within the left wing of the Democratic Party. You have the reputation of being a good analyst. Analyse the situation. Justify your reputation. Clarify the reports and fit them into a context that can be understood.
Then tell them about your meeting with Mumm and that the friendship between his mother and the old queen is probably what saved him. Tell them about Mumm and watch the relief spread over their faces. You could perhaps add something ironic about the advantages of the upper class in comparison to the masses waiting to be liberated. Or rather, in your opinion, to liberate themselves.
After that it is Yan’s turn, followed by Sok. Listen to what they say in their quiet musical voices. Make a note of keywords to help your memory, but not so many of them that they could
be understood if the document fell into the wrong hands.
Take one of the five glasses of tea. Lift the lid and drink. You have drunk too little in the course of the day and your thirst does not begin to ease until the fourth mouthful.
Yan reports from memory on the new people who want to join you. What a memory he has—everything in it seems immediately accessible. Everything is structured and archived in a simple way. Now he plucks two or three candidates from his memory. You can refer to them as one, two and three. Three and two are students, number one moved in from Svay Rieng. From memory Yan gives an account of their family backgrounds, how they approached the Organization, what they have said about the ways in which they could possibly make a contribution.
Think about what has been said about one, two and three. They aren’t unsuitable nor, however, are they particularly suitable. There are circumstances that need further clarification, follow-up questions to be asked, simple tests of loyalty and ideological receptiveness to be gone through. The very fact that someone wants to join you given the current situation suggests that they are either infiltrators or lacking in judgement. But what can be done about it? Your ranks have thinned out in recent months. The Organization has to be ready for every eventuality.
Which way will you vote? Recommend acceptance or rejection? What do your instincts tell you?
A picture comes to mind. Manicured fingertips resting on a collarbone, dark hair, curled and let down. A smile, red-painted lips, a smooth neck in a high collar.
Cut there.
A loud unabashed laugh after a reply given with long Chinese vowels.
Cut there. Hurry up and cut there.
So.
Scrub the picture from your mind. You have no use for it there. Quite the opposite.
Scrub it.
Now you are scrubbing a picture from your mind.
Now.
Now you are in a house with the lights off. It’s on stilts, in a street you don’t know, in a part of the city you seldom visit. You are sitting facing two men, both dressed like you. They are waiting for you to answer a question.
Answer it.
Ask them to postpone the question of membership. Argue that you should wait and see, that you should think of the times. Say all that stuff about infiltrators and lack of judgement; it sounds good. There is a risk of the election turning everything upside down. It is only a few more days and waiting is something that every soldier must learn, isn’t that so, especially those who are fighting for the revolution with fliers and good arguments as their weapons. Let the Organization say nothing. Let them understand the absolute precondition of their future involvement: that they will never get to know more than they need to know. That preparedness is the quality that ranks highest, after their loyalty. That they must always be prepared simply to get up from the dinner table and go straight out into the jungle without any baggage other than their sense of duty and their burning conviction.
Argue for the question to be postponed. You will get your own way, just as you almost always do when the number of people around the table can be counted on your fingers. You are not a mass orator who can spellbind an audience from the rostrum. You strength reveals itself in thoughtful, low-key conversations.
Yan nods and says, let’s move on to the next point.
Now you should all practise self-criticism.
Practise self-criticism.
Give an account of your shortcomings, because you have not succeeded in completing all the things you promised to complete. Give an account of the priorities you have privately set yourself. Be open with your comrades, accept your guilt face to face. Tell them how you have neglected your studies, that you chose to turn off the light and go to bed even though there was still work to be done.
Ask forgiveness for your shortcomings. Dig deep into yourself and promise to redouble your efforts in order to measure up to the expectations of the Organization. Promise to be stricter with yourself, to discipline your indolent will and make it one with the Organization.
Ask your comrades honestly for their forgiveness.
But make no mention of what really matters. Say nothing about the picture that was occupying your thoughts earlier. Don’t tell them why it made you stare off into the shadows for several seconds, while they thought you were turning things over in your mind. Keep quiet about your urge to miss this meeting and go looking for her instead.
Drink your tea. Listen to your friends’ confessions with benevolent attention. Be understanding and constructive in your comments. Say that all of you are human. That you do as well as you can.
We all do as well as we can.
The meeting is drawing to an end. An understandable weariness has replaced the earlier tension. Everything has gone as intended. The security police haven’t come pounding on the door. Sam Sary’s mob of liberated jailbirds hasn’t called you out into the gleam of their torches, while working themselves up by pummelling the stilts of the house with bamboo clubs.
One more step towards justice has been taken. There are many left, but with each step that is taken, there is one fewer left to take. There is more suffering on earth than stars in the sky, but the country as you know it is not static. It is possible to change it, history will be your witness on that point. There are great resources and no one will need to go to bed hungry if those resources are shared out better. Everyone can learn to read as long as someone teaches them.
Everything belongs to all of us.
You have just left a secret meeting with your revolutionary comrades and you are walking through dark streets that are still waiting for tarmac and lamp-posts. It was a rewarding meeting. You agreed on a date for the next meeting and you are already looking forward to it.
But you do not feel the degree of commitment you usually feel.
The sound of your footsteps beneath a moon that is somewhere between half and full sets off the usual series of excited barks. There was a time when you, like most other people, believed that dogs that bark at night were barking at a passing ghost.
That has been a fair enough description of you for some little time now. Things should be different.
With every step you take you feel yourself swelling up with unusual bitterness. You, one of the chosen ones. You, a man with the right contacts, the right experiences, the right knowledge. This is your great challenge. You are now being put to the test. And it is a test you have all the qualifications to pass, as long as you can concentrate on it to the exclusion of everything else. But what do we find? We find the struggle between petit bourgeois private interests and the just liberation struggle of the people materializing within you of all people. And while this is going on Meas is consolidating his position.
You think about silence as a means of power. The pressure it is capable of exerting. In another part of yourself, one that is capable of cold and clear thinking, you note the thought that it is silence that produces speech. It is, at least, a useful experience.
But what is the value of speech if no one is listening? Or, to be more precise, what sort of statement is needed in order to make her respond?
How long will it be before you drive your car through the closed gate of her house? Before you visit her and call her to account for what she is doing to you?
Slow down, your annoyance is making you walk faster.
Stand still for a moment and take a deep breath. Inhale the scent of damp earth, the odour from the simple kitchens outside the houses that surround you. Meat being grilled on skewers, jasmine rice, fish oil.
Tear your thoughts away from her.
You know the importance of avoiding open confrontation, of retaining control. That all significant actions in a schism between two sides gain by being postponed. That is the basic principle of your political dealings, and there is no reason to believe it would not be the right method now. Victory goes to the man who is patient, the one who can wait for the right opportunity. Who can mask his rage with a friendly smile and then strike with all his stre
ngth when his opponent thinks the battle is over.
The ancient custom of your people, which is to ensure that when vengeance is taken it is many times greater than the original injustice, is not something you see any reason to break with. Quite the reverse—it is a very effective arrangement.
Listen to the barking of the dogs, which cannot be directed at you any longer and must be following a dynamic of its own, a contagion moving from one farm to the next. You have just attended an important meeting. Try to concentrate on that.
You are standing in pale moonlight and taking long deep breaths. Put her to one side.
Free yourself.
And move on. Move on with calmer steps. A bat flutters noiselessly past your head. Follow its shadow and see it disappear into the night.
You pass a man urinating against a wall. It reminds you that tea is the only dinner you have had up to this point.
You walk along slowly and recognize the district you are in. You are approaching the racecourse, which lies there silent and huge under the stars. You have your thoughts under control now and there is a knot of hunger in your stomach.
It has been a long day, full of suppressed disquiet. Mumm’s hasty departure, your meeting with the party cell. But you are still free. You should have been arrested many times over in recent months, but you are still walking free, and you are finding it more and more difficult to resist the smell of food.
Song for an Approaching Storm Page 6
