How did she come to be involved in such a cynical set-up, the only purpose of which was to make a ruler, who consistently puts the interests of his own branch of the family first, appear in a sympathetic light? She had not thought it through when she first saw the advertisement, merely fallen for the temptation to enter her girlfriends secretly for the contest as a little joke between themselves. (Nana and Voisanne had, however, taken their role as contestants seriously.) Then it had occurred to her that this might be a chance for her to display some of the dresses she had designed, so the element of competition became secondary. But while she was preparing to step onto the stage, she realized she was bound to win. Not only because there was no doubt she was more beautiful than the majority of the other contestants, nor because they lacked her experience of being at the centre of attention, of feeling themselves to be among the elect. (This was something that Sar later—and rather pedantically—explained to her as being the privilege of the bourgeoisie: the fact that the upper class always feels it has the right to be involved in every context, whereas the working class stands cap in hand praying for invisibility.) She had thought about this later, but at the time been struck by how uncomfortable, how ill at ease, he seemed, as if—in a contradictory way—he was unconsciously marking some sort of prescriptive right of ownership of her. No, the decisive factor in the contest had undoubtedly been the title of princess. It would have been impossible for any jury to bestow the crown on anyone else without it being perceived as an act of political provocation in the run-up to a parliamentary election. Once she realized this she understood that the beauty contest was part of the prince’s electoral campaign, and she, as a member of the royal house, was guaranteeing the best possible result by being a participant.
Would she still have taken part if she had thought the opposite? Yes, she would, because she believes that, in spite of everything, there is more at stake for her personally than any benefit she may bring to the prince. When all is said and done, to the prince the beauty contest is merely an insignificantly small part of a big and complex game, but to her it could mean a ticket to Paris.
She wonders whether she is being too hard on the prince. The contest may well have been no more than a whim of the moment, not that that necessarily excludes ulterior motives. He does like enjoying himself and it’s common knowledge that he made his initial approaches to Monineth when he was handing out the prizes at a local beauty contest she won. (According to Sary, however, that is just a cock-and-bull story the prince likes to put about. Sary insists that the prince had known Monineth’s parents for years and that he first saw his wife—who is fourteen years younger than him—when she was just a baby.)
Kunthea has finished Somaly’s hair and Somaly now starts on her face, while the maid makes the bed and sweeps the patterned parquet floor with a broom.
She strokes soft light cream into her forehead and cheeks, and moistens the black cake of mascara with a drop of saliva that still tastes of milk. And she experiences the familiar feeling of concentration and control that can hold her in its spell for hours. Facial features slowly change character in the mirror. Eyes can be made more prominent and then, with just a few strokes of the brush and powder puff, moved back to allow the mouth and cheekbones to take over. The shape of the lips can be changed with the lip pencil. The boldness of her face will depend on how dramatically she chooses to emphasize the arch of her eyebrows. The woman in the mirror can be changed slowly and methodically to an image of childish innocence and then into one who is brazenly seductive. Years can be added or subtracted.
At the same time, however, it is as if every line she draws, however different, serves to fill in contours she otherwise feels herself to be lacking.
Or, more concretely: contours the world expects of her.
Today, however, today is a day for subtle nuances and discreet colours. She makes her mouth a light cerise, her eyelids just a touch more golden than her skin. A thin line of kohl around each eye, a little rouge on each cheek. She works quickly, the endless number of times she has done these things compensating for her weariness.
Her body recognizes this morning. It has always been the same as far back as her memory goes. A day of waiting, of ceremonies and of familiar scents. A day on which everything happens in the same order, irrespective of the year, the decade or the century. When she was a child it had been a day that stirred the imagination, of being allowed to devote yourself entirely to showing kindness to the spirits of your forefathers. Later she had come to hate the predictability and the compulsory participation. Now, instead, she recognizes the way in which she is being made part of an ancient fellowship. How she is carrying forward an image of the world that has been shared by all the generations of young women who have lived by this river since it first came roaring down from the mountains of China.
Papa in front of the car. The black paintwork gleams even though it’s an old model rarely seen any longer. Not so old then, perhaps, but still. A building of some sort in the background. A school?
It’s a poor photograph. The sun is high in the sky and the strong light has blanked out some of the details and put his face in shadow under the brim of his hat. His white hat, his white suit. His tie, where it shows above the edge of his waistcoat, is perhaps grey. Dark leather shoes in the dust. But there is a sparkle in that smile in the shadow. A quality she senses in her own smile sometimes. Something that can ignite the animal look in the eyes of men. (If she leans forward a little, pressing her breasts together with her upper arms and smiling into their faces.)
He is impeccably dressed in the picture. As always. But his posture suggests something other than success. His back is straight, but there is nevertheless something broken about him. A weak spot in his composure. As if this frozen moment of time has partly captured someone other than the man who can make a whole roomful of superficial acquaintances feel at ease. Who can coax genuine smiles from the most cool and calculating members of society.
Or is that just something she is reading into the photograph?
She turns a page in the album. The next one is empty. She looks up at her mother who is sitting on the sofa but their eyes do not meet. And she thinks of what Vannsak told her about the time her father was his teacher at Pursat Provincial School before she was even born.
In his white suit, he lived in a tumbledown hovel by the river. Why? He must surely have had his appanage from Maman’s family, didn’t he? He should have been able to live somewhere decent.
The schoolchildren used to bring coconuts there for him. He played cards through the night. With whom? He would be so tired during the day that he often fell asleep during lessons. Vannsak claimed that he had been given the job of keeping lookout at the door in case the rector came.
She can hear Vannsak laughing that loud laugh of his. The born storyteller.
“You know what boys are. They chased one another around between the rows of benches throwing paper pellets at each other. I was drawn into the riot and forgot to keep watch on the corridor. The door suddenly opened and there was the rector!”
She shuts her eyes. The blackboard is empty, her father is asleep with his head resting on his arms on his desk. Beside him his white hat. Pieces of chalk in half a coconut. The boys don’t stop immediately. One by one, however, they notice the figure by the door and hurry back to their seats.
The shutters outside the barred windows are open. Silence falls. And her father is asleep.
Yes, well.
That was his time in Pursat. He had presumably been sent there to humiliate him. To teach him a lesson. To make him stop the nocturnal card sessions and the palm wine. But there can be little doubt that he seems to have walked straight into even deeper humiliation.
What a fool, she thinks.
What a good-natured, charming bloody fool. Not a bad word for anyone.
And then Vannsak’s laughter.
“What a walloping he gave me afterwards. He was quite calm and collected as he kicked me with his
elegant French shoes and punched me with his fists. I had bruises everywhere. One kick landed at the back of my head and that’s probably why my hairline doesn’t run where it ought to!”
The eyes of all the others rested on her when he had finished his story. How she had laughed with them, made a joke of it all. But the shame had made her cheeks burn and brought a knot to her throat.
She lights a cigarette. She doesn’t bother with a cigarette holder and sees how her lipstick colours the thin white paper. A little redder with every puff.
THURSDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 1955
She is taking clothes out of the wardrobe and is inspecting them. Looks at the big black patches that have spread on the silk, the rot that has got into the cotton. One by one they join the heap on the floor, at the bottom of which lies her beloved evening dress by Pierre Balmain. The high humidity and constant heat—there are times when they seem to be targeting her personally.
She feels as if she is moving in a mist of mould spores that the floral scent of perfume intensifies rather than disperses.
Once a week she gets Kunthea to burn rotting clothes behind the house. She sits on the veranda and watches the maid feeding the flames in an old tin drum. Thinks that this smoke must surely be one of the most exclusive scents in the world.
EX-KING OF CAMBODIA ASKS
FORGIVENESS FOR VICTORY
PHNOMH PENH, Cambodia, 14 September
(REUTERS) At a press conference on Wednesday Prince Norodom Sihanouk asked forgiveness for “an all too convincing victory” in Sunday’s election. Norodom’s party, the Popular Socialist Community, won all 91 seats in the National Assembly. The prince also used the conference to accuse the opposition of being guilty of serious violations during the election campaign, including murder and physical assault. The new government is expected to be announced shortly. Norodom repeated his earlier assurance that he himself will not be leading it.
A police spokesman confirmed that Keng Vannsak, the left-wing vice general secretary of the opposition Democratic Party, has been arrested in connection with Saturday’s murder of a driver.
The murder suspect, an “ex-communist” policeman, stated during questioning that Keng Vannsak had also been planning to assassinate Deputy Prime Minister Sam Sary.
The usual group is at the usual table. Sunglasses and cigarettes, clothes in the French fashion. All the same age, each with a Kir Royale. Small sweet pastries, salty fried insects.
They are talking about the evening before, about the reception at the American Embassy. Who had been there, what those who were there had said and not said, what they and the others had been wearing.
Somaly had not been there. She had started feeling out of sorts while still sitting at her dressing table. Or perhaps when she was looking at the photograph album and remembering her father in that hovel by the river. She had stayed there on the sofa with the photograph in front of her, and she didn’t have the strength to get up and become her usual eye-catching self. All of a sudden the desire to be invisible was greater than her need to be seen.
And this strange debilitating weariness that comes over her more and more often these days.
Voisanne asks where she was yesterday and she answers, nowhere, it had just been one of those evenings.
They haven’t all been together for a while and so Mari wants to hear all about the prince’s dance at Kep-sur-Mer the week before. Mari had been forced to go away to a wedding in Battambang, and she gives them to understand that it was very expensive but oh, so provincial. She stresses that the flight itself was the best feature, while her fingers pick and choose among the crickets with pork stuffing. Somaly thinks that her reference to the aeroplane is meant to compensate for the fact that she missed one of the most prestigious soirées of the season. She herself has never flown and she has no idea whether Voisanne and Nana have done so, but since they refrain from asking what things look like above the clouds she does so too.
Nana turns her sunglasses towards her and says that she hasn’t seen Sar for a long time. It doesn’t come as a surprise, Nana has always had an eye for Sar. Somaly has never known whether it is mutual, nor what to make of the friendliness and interest Sar shows towards her friends. And, not knowing, she has swung between jealousy on the one hand and pride on the other—pride that she has a fiancé so modern that he can mix with women so naturally. Nana says that yesterday’s reception was the sort of function he might have been invited to, but in the following subordinate clause she notes that there had been no sign of any representatives of the Democratic Party. Voisanne jokes that it’s probably difficult to convince the warders to let them out for a cocktail party. Then, turning to her, she covers herself by saying that it’s dreadful, isn’t it?
(An image: Vannsak hanging in an unnatural pose in front of a table on which there is a typewriter. His clothes stained with sweat and dirt, his face contorted.)
(Another image: Vannsak, eyes glazed, neck and cheeks flushed red by wine, hissing with a sort of strange satisfaction that Sary was the most brutal examining magistrate in the city before he went to France. That some interrogations ended with what remained of the suspects being buried in the rubbish tip.)
She hears Nana ask what Sar will do now that there won’t be a post in the civil service for him. She answers that she doesn’t know and after an audible hesitation Nana asks if they have split up.
At this point Somaly is in a good position to pre-empt the speculation that her friends will otherwise indulge in when she leaves. But her instinct fails her and she is forced to say that she doesn’t want to talk about it, which is closer to the truth than she would have liked. She picks a sugar-coated doughnut ring from the plate and says that things haven’t turned out as planned. That they’ll have to see.
They know one another well enough for no one to press her, but Voisanne says that it is about time Somaly did the same as the rest of them. An older but well-established man is best. As a mistress it’s all benefits and very few duties. And the duties are not always unpleasant. Quite the reverse. (General laughter.) As long as you take precautions not to end up in certain circumstances, it is actually an ideal situation. Nana and Mari smile in agreement and Somaly says, well yes, who knows, and does her best to say it boldly and without any undertones that might spark her friends’ curiosity. If they suspect anything they don’t show it.
She remembers them as the schoolgirls they were just a few years before. Sitting as they are sitting now but at one of the ice-cream bars and wearing white blouses and dark blue skirts. Giggling about things that at the time they could only guess at. They are the same but not the same. Even though she has always been one of them, she has never enjoyed that forced sense of excitement. It is better now, as if she has finally grown into herself. She doesn’t know how the others feel and were she to ask she would not necessarily get an honest answer.
Suddenly she thinks she recognizes one of the cyclo drivers in the shade of the palm trees by the police station, diagonally across the sun-baked square. They are standing lined up side by side waiting for customers. The man with the familiar face slowly sets his vehicle in motion, as if he has noticed that she is watching him. He pedals languidly into a side turning that leads to Wat Phnom. And then he is gone.
Was it the same man who carried her the other day? Or is it just that he reminds her of someone else?
She turns back to her girlfriends’ conversation about the next night’s soirée. They are talking about the older men who pay for their dresses and earrings, who provide them with suppers and hats.
She feels no desire to tell them about Sary. Why should that be? It has nothing to do with keeping it secret because her girlfriends would not pass it on without her permission. No, Somaly’s unwillingness is different. She realizes that part of the attraction she is experiencing lies in the fact that she and Sary exist, so far anyway, in parallel worlds which she can move between as she pleases. That makes it quite different from her public relationship with Sar. There is s
omething attractive in the very exclusivity, in the fact that their meetings are not public goods to be chewed over by all and sundry.
In that sense he is hers, just hers.
When a transparent plastic bag like a misshapen jellyfish passes the hull of the boat, she suddenly remembers the dream she had in the night. In her dream she had seen herself floating above the floor in a room completely filled with water—a rather grand room in a palace, in fact. There had been nothing unusual apart from the water. It was a beautifully furnished room with light pouring in through tall open windows. She had been wearing a light cotton frock, one that did not resemble any of the dresses she owns in real life, and both the fabric and her hair were swaying with the slow sensuousness of seagrass. She had studied her own face, seen the closed eyes and the slightly parted lips, but it had all possessed the restfulness of someone sleeping rather than the dead look of a drowned woman. A blue-green shimmer is still lingering at the back of her mind, as she watches the opposite bank slowly drawing closer while the swallows swoop boldly above the brown whirls of the river. The ferryman standing behind her shouts a greeting to another boat. It is the same shamelessly staring and leering youth she had this morning, and in spite of his powerful strokes with the paddle he is having trouble holding course. She thinks that the most remarkable thing about her dream was not that she had been under the water, nor that she had been asleep and watching herself sleeping, but that she had dreamt what someone else would dream about her. That she had dreamt a man’s dream about Somaly.
She slides a shiny black new record out of its stiff paper sleeve, lets the sleeve fall to the floor and turns the record the right way round between the palms of her hands. She puts it on the turntable, winds the handle and carefully places the needle in the groove.
Song for an Approaching Storm Page 24
