Song for an Approaching Storm

by Peter Froeberg Idling

  His eyes focus again on the map he is holding. Lines, figures, unbuilt structures fall into shape again.

  He raises his eyes and sees his own reflection mirrored in the windowpanes: a bespectacled and slightly distorted oval, ghostlike, lit diagonally from below (his papers are reflecting the light from the table lamp). White shirt, collar unbuttoned. His thick unruly hair is partially swallowed by the darkness.

  The air conditioning is humming softly over in the corner.

  He thinks: the future is here, not there.

  The future—what can be said about it? A great deal apparently, since no one seems to do anything but discuss it. (After having been fixated on the past—the golden age, injustices and so on—the nation is now suddenly ready to turn and face what is to come.) And Sary is more than ready, he can be heard arguing that the country has unique possibilities, a mystique that stirs the imagination (particularly of people from the West), excellent preconditions for extravagant and expensive tourism. In the vanguard of the young architects of the country, he can envisage a reallocation of national resources as simple as it is radical. Instead of allowing the country’s riches to be transferred to the vaults of foreign banks, they will be used to sweep away the hovels and palm-leaf roofs out in the rural districts (images he is fond of using in his many electoral speeches). Rubber, pepper and rice will pay for new roads to new cities. (Details of all this are to be found in a bulging folder in the archives of the Minister of the Interior Leng.)

  Sary, his eyes still on his own reflection, notes that one advantage of earlier stagnation is that there is less outdated garbage to be incinerated. A hundred lost years will be made up in a decade. I’ll be damned if this isn’t the new America. Mon Amérique à moi. The Mekong will become a glittering mirror for skyscrapers and, he thinks, it will be from the sixty-second floor that I shall view the world—a world that will look with respect and astonishment and envy at what has been achieved. Just as once upon a time they respected and were amazed by our forefathers.

  This is the vision he has of her, at his side, electric lights burning below. (Her attire is the same, minus the parasol.)

  And a zoo with a mangy tiger is not going to help to achieve that. Irritated, he closes the folder with the sketch map. Prints REJECTED on the cover and puts it back among the others.

  Then he takes it back. Looks again at the faint lines of the exposition pavilions drawn over parks and pavements. He moves it over to the pile of documents for further consideration.

  He takes the next folder in (dis)order. It contains a hundred or so sheets listing the customs revenues for the first half-year. He takes out the front flyleaf. Notes: that fatso Dara has written his name in cramped handwriting (wrapping around itself in ellipses and bows) below the heading, in spite of the fact that all the work was most probably done by some underling. (He rings for his adjutant: Whisky and soda. Lights another cigarette.) Leans back in his armchair, skims quickly/impatiently through the columns of typed figures.

  SUNDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER 1955

  He shuts his eyes, just for a moment. Opens them. Gets up. Walks briskly across the boards of the platform, gives the microphone a light tap. Hears the tap echo out over the faces turned towards him.

  The sky is blue, the sun is scorching. Steam from the recent rain is rising from the foliage.

  In a loud and clear voice he says: My dear fellow-countrymen!

  He says: Kinsmen of our revered forefathers who built Angkor!

  He says with a smile: Dear residents of Kompong Speu.

  Then with a serious expression, an expression almost of concern, he continues.

  The loudspeakers are good.

  (A couple of hours later) Sam Sary is sitting in the back of his comfortable car (a modern car without a sliding window between the driver and the passengers). As usual, Phirun is his driver—a taciturn man. (Phirun is the same age as his boss as well as being the first cousin once removed of one of his wife Em’s maternal aunts, and he has, in the usual order of these things, not been given the job on merit but in accordance with the client system, which has provided the real structure of this kingdom since time immemorial. It is a system that they all agree, rather touchingly, must be abolished if there is to be any chance of introducing genuine democracy. But everyone—apart from a handful of idealists—thinks it is up to the others to start the process of divesting themselves of the privileges they have acquired as a result of the well-oiled mechanisms of nepotism.)

  The car brakes gently and stops. Sary steps out of the stuffy vehicle into the throbbing heat and takes a couple of quick steps across the pavement into the cool shade of the Hôtel Angkor. A smiling red-coated doorman is waiting to accompany him to the dining room, where a smiling white-coated head waiter shows him to a window table.

  At the table Sam Nhean (his father, minister of culture, one of the leaders of the small and newly formed—but oh, so influential—Unity Party, and much more) is sitting reading the conservative Unity Party’s own newspaper. Printed in an ugly blue. (The authoritarian, some might say reactionary, newspaper bears the motto: COUNTRY RELIGION KING.) There is a half-empty wine glass in front of his father.

  After a brief greeting he takes the chair opposite. Then selects a dry cigarillo (Café Crème) from the tray of smokes. The dining room is almost empty and the head waiter himself brings his wine (Chateau Mont Redon) and strikes a match for him.

  He looks out of the window. Outside: people are moving with afternoon slowness in sunlight that is almost white. Over beyond the quay heavily laden boats glide back and forth across the swollen brown river. Inside: a son becoming more and more impatient, as he waits for his father to put down the paper and pick up his wine glass.

  He catches himself tapping his shoes on the stone floor and thinking that time is moving at a different speed for the two of them during the week that remains before the crucial day.

  (His father’s face over the top of the newspaper: heavy eyelids, the wart with long hairs on his cheek, certain lines and proportions he recognizes from his own face in the mirror.)

  Then his father folds the paper and meets his gaze. Sam Sary and Sam Nhean, hair parted on the same side, suits that are stitched by the same tailor. (An informal node crackling with the sparks of naked power.) The son waits in a filial way for his father’s opening remark.

  For some years now Sam Nhean has been his old self again. That is to say, he is the Sam Nhean who made his way from province to palace, from nothing to everything. The man who was so (advantageously) close to the old king, whose services were sought by the French colonialists and then by the Japanese occupiers. And then, after the war, he made a number of uncharacteristic mistakes for a man on the make. (Officially it was all about trading in cotton thread without approved import licences. Unofficially it was about trading in goods of a very different sort.) After being out of favour for a few years he recovered with the support of the most gifted and energetic of his sons (Sary)—the launch pad being the founding of yet another new party (People’s Party), which afterwards merged with the prince’s Popular Socialist Community as final proof of the unswerving loyalty of the Sam family. In return he was rewarded with glittering but less than demanding posts: minister of culture, member of the Council of State, master of ceremonies at certain royal occasions and so on.

  Is he satisfied? Yes, at this stage of his life (sixty-five), this is quite sufficient even for a man of such extraordinary ambition.

  Does he want to see change? No, and that is what he makes clear (yet again) to his son. According to the patriarch Sam, ideologies are nothing but figments of the European mind, which will only lead people astray in this part of the world. His analysis? Power is a constant and its institutions only change form marginally over the centuries. Revolutions signify nothing more than changes in terms of the individuals who, for the moment, sleep in the palace and use its lavatories. The foundation on which the outer works rest remains the same. (And that is where all the elements of any im
portance are located.)

  What does Sary do? He smokes another dry cigarillo, tries to look attentive. His father has now moved on to report what his conservative colleagues among the leaders of the Unity Party (Army Chief of Staff Lon Nol, old Nhiek Tioulung, Yem Sambur et consortes) have been up to recently. Cautious gentlemen all of them, who (rightly) consider they have a good deal to lose. But pragmatists, his father assures him, and explains: their ambivalence is increasing in the run-up to an expensive election—not least because the outcome of the election looks as if it will need to be fabricated. And his father asks rhetorically: Who are you and the prince actually trying to fool? The repression is already being reported in the international press, he says and points to the Unity Party newspaper (which will most certainly not contain a word about anything of the sort).

  Sary:

  That’s not what I want, Father. Quite the opposite. If I had my way the election would be run properly.

  Nhean:

  And that monk Chung?

  The one you killed?

  Sary:

  As you know, Father, I’m not alone in this.

  His father looks at him without any warmth and, after a moment’s silence, says you’re the one who’s responsible anyway. That it would be better if we just went back to the traditional system, with none of these idiotic facades. That the colourful rags the prince has stitched together to form the patchwork coalition of his Popular Socialist Community do at least have one thing in common: they support the prince and don’t give a damn as to what title the country is ruled under as long as their interests are preserved!

  His father gives him to understand that he has carried out certain surveys. And this is what the results look like. Conclusion? Childishly simple—reduce the whole spectacle to a referendum. To a yes or no to the prince’s policies (like the “election” of last spring). Or, and his father is not against the idea, off with the silk gloves! Give the police free rein, lock up the troublemakers, shoot those who refuse to play along.

  (Nhean: You are not a realist. The Democrats have 54 bloody seats out of the 78 in the current National Assembly. How are you going to be able not just to cut that majority but to overtake it in a week? Without resorting to force?)

  Sary objects. He says, with all due respect, that his father and his father’s allies are underestimating the potential of the international non-aligned movement. India, the biggest democracy in the world, has taken the lead. Two thousand million people in total. All countries with a similar background, with the same problems and the same goals. (Sary took part in the Bandung Conference last April and is attracted, not to say impressed, by the visions and principles that were drawn up there. A road that is independent of the two Cold War superpowers (both of which insist on the express loyalty of all small states).)

  He says: In the long term it seems to me to be a possible way to retain the freedom of the nation. To put it more forcefully, our only possibility.

  He continues: If we take sides internationally, it will lead to a simultaneous polarization in terms of domestic politics. And that might lead to developments beyond our control, especially bearing in mind the considerable support which existed, in spite of everything, for the communist cause during the independence struggle. In order to win the respect of the Non-Aligned Movement and to gain influence with it, a free parliamentary election is absolutely essential—one that is approved of by electoral monitors from all the major powers and their satellites. The rest of the world was not impressed by last February’s referendum, and that is putting it mildly. And, he adds with a shrug of his shoulders, the prince is still enthusiastic about his election campaign.

  Is Nhean even listening to him?

  Yes, he must be, because now he mutters: What do you mean by free?

  Free to make completely crazy choices? The prince clearly doesn’t know his own people.

  His father continues (eyes gazing out of the window): Well, you know where I stand on the question of suffrage. But ever since you and the prince were permitted to rub shoulders with the real bong thom (godfathers) in Geneva and Bandung, you seem to have lost all sense of proportion. Your own proportion. The country’s proportion. You seem to me to be more and more some kind of idealists without any sense of reality, and this kingdom doesn’t need any more of that sort. Lowering his voice even though the dining room is empty: This country is an insignificant little country, not a great power. And we should behave accordingly. Understood? Free elections? Where are you going to find them among the non-aligned nations? With Nasser? With Tito? Or Sukarno?

  Sary does not answer. He has no desire to prolong this conversation, which is not so much a conversation as a confirmation of long held positions.

  So the silence spreads, filling the dining room (apart from the whirring hum of the fan on the ceiling).

  Sary opens his mouth to excuse himself but his father speaks before he has a chance to do so. Says, glossing things over (at the same time as making it obvious that this is the real purpose of the meeting): It would be best for us to see each other more regularly in future. We must act as one from now on. I may not always be properly informed about the very latest developments, but I do have a perspective (based on my long experience) that you will find useful.

  Shall we say the same time tomorrow then?

  The question strikes a spark that comes close to igniting his son’s accumulated irritation. His days between now and the election are divided into half-hour slots, each of them already filled in. Why can’t his father understand that? But he swallows hard and switches to his ministerial persona (thus making use of a formal structure that is actually the reverse of the real actual order of precedence). Says: I’ll ring you.

  His father looks at him with an inscrutable gaze, then answers (his mouth fixed in a scornful expression), that will be good then, before opening the newspaper.

  And out. And on.

  Madame Shum passes him a stiff photograph. (Shortsightedly, Sary holds it at an angle in the light of the oil lamp.) He remarks how time passes.

  The shy young girl, who was introduced to him once (it couldn’t have been very long ago, could it?) on the same veranda where he is presently sitting, looks out of the portrait with the self-confidence of a young woman. There is a hint of her mother’s features. Though everything that is sweet and pretty in the daughter is only faintly discernible in the fat face that is hovering like a grotesque grinning mask in the shadows by the table.

  Madame Shum:

  Don’t you think she became beautiful while she was in Saigon?

  Sary:

  Undoubtedly. How old is she now?

  Madame Shum:

  21.

  The scene: A large bamboo building under a starry sky, framed by a garden with dense foliage. The window shutters are open, the light inside the room muted. The rattan furniture on the large veranda is unoccupied apart from two armchairs in which Sary and Madame Shum are sitting (he on the left, she on the right, seen from the entrance). There are small lighted oil lamps on each table. There is a sign over the door: SALON DE DÉSINTOXICATION. (Yes, well.) Dogs can be heard out in the darkness, a radio is playing hot jazz. Apart from that, a quiet September night between the rains.

  The contents of the glass in front of him have separated out into lukewarm gin, lime juice and the water from the ice cubes. He leans back against the hard back of the chair, closes his eyes. And thinks some more about the girl in the photograph. (Elle est pas mal la petite.) 21, 21, 21. Even younger than Somaly, then. But what’s the old woman Shum up to, showing off her daughter like this? Is it an offer? Or just boasting?

  Whichever: one thing must be weighed against another (as always).

  He thinks: what if we look at it another way? What if this woman is permitted to keep her establishment—would that be enough recompense? If she can first be convinced that closure is the alternative? Once the election is over the occasional trip to Saigon will certainly be on the cards. (Or exile, for that matter.)


  On the other hand: wouldn’t it be smarter to rely on the local talent over there? Rather than on someone who could simply pick up a phone and ring the gossipmongers back here?

  He empties his drink, gets up. Madame Shum leads him through the double doors. The row of rooms is just as it was. The same Chinese furniture, now rather past its prime, the same dim lighting as when he was last here. The same glazed eyes glinting from the benches along the walls. The same sweet and sickly haze.

  (And, as usual, reality corrects the remembered images. The young women in classically cut silk dresses, who are carrying trays to the men stretched out on the bamboo mats, look very dreary and ordinary.)

  Low-voiced conversations, the bubbling of the pipes. Stifled coughs.

  Madame Shum leads him to a room on the right. Screens separate the low tables. At one of them he catches a glimpse of the pale Western torsos. At another, Non is half-lying. She leaves them as she came, swaying, the glow of her cigarette in its holder like a firefly in the hazy darkness.

  (Condensed Biography: Lon Non (d.o.b. 1930), number seven in the uncontrollably growing horde of children (ten so far) of the district chief Lon Hin; Lon is the little brother of Lon Nol, chief of staff of the army (whom he worships, with the result that some people scornfully refer to him as petit frère). All in all, a vain, energetic but competent 25-year-old. With the future (if short) in front of him.)