Zero Hour in Phnom Pehn

by Christopher G. Moore

  “Eat shit,” one of the soldiers said.

  “Powerful black magic. The kind that plants evil deep inside your love glands. Tick, tick, tick, and one day, you’re walking or taking a piss and it goes off. Or maybe you’re fucking. You don’t hear a thing. You only see the damage. Maggots and snakes.”

  None of the men standing over him believed this for a moment but not one of them liked admitting the chill they felt up the spine hearing this white man leaking blood talking like some kind of witch doctor about infecting their balls with a bomb timed to go off any time they were starting to feel free of Cambodia and all the bullshit of Phnom Penh.

  Calvino had been no more than two steps outside of the hospital entrance, talking with Dr. Veronica who walked alongside on his right—she had touched his hand. One of those gentle, loving touches that wires a hundred connections. They had just finished talking about good and evil, right and wrong, ends and means. And the next thing he knew was that he woke up as he was being dragged from the street into a small room and several fists the size of freight trains were slamming into his face. More images came back to him. Dr. Veronica was saying how men experienced life in images. She was right. What he remembered was the picture of how these men had pushed Dr. Veronica away. She stumbled, fell to the ground on one knee, shouted at them to leave Calvino alone, but they didn’t listen to her, and a moment later she was down altogether, in the mud, crying. Another act of violence in Phnom Penh. Brute strength and power instilled fear and obedience. Fear wasn’t an abstract idea in Phnom Penh. This was a place where ideas mattered for nothing, the words were captions to actual events. He thought of her story about the rocket attack upcountry. How the face of the maid who had awakened Dr.Veronica had stayed fresh in her memory, and how it flashed through his mind, registering a certain terror in the eyes. She had said that Pol Pot had returned. The point of Dr. Veronica’s story was that he had never left. The man, his name, continued to haunt the land.

  His last image of Dr. Veronica was of her raising herself up in the mud and screaming at them, “You can’t do this.” They did what they wanted. What they liked. Then some of the other pieces came back in his memory. Thu was going to live. She would live but she had lost one leg.

  He tried to open his right eye but it was swollen shut. They had stopped hitting him. He had passed out and they were waiting for him to regain consciousness. It was no fun beating a man who didn’t know he was being beaten. When he opened his eyes, he was looking at the officer.

  “You walked into the road, stopped the vehicle of my men and at gunpoint stripped them of their clothes and money. You threatened to kill them. And you robbed their money. It was because they were Bulgarians. You did this because you look down on us. We are inferior to you or so you think. You hurt a man and he comes right after you for revenge. It is our right for your insult,” he paused, some of the anger had vanished from his voice. “Why did you humiliate my men who were performing their UN duty?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly say it was their UN duty that they were performing,” said Calvino, his hands tied behind his back.

  “But you admit you used a gun to steal the UNTAC vehicle?”

  Calvino, his eyes like puff pastry shells with blood filling, bled from a cut on his upper lip. He leaned back in his chair, the pain shooting through his brain. He nodded and tried to look tough and brave but knew it wasn’t working. He looked like someone who would by-pass the hospital and go straight to the cemetery. With his hands tied, he couldn’t feel the exact amount of his injuries; but he tried to think how the pain was registered in physical damage. He became disoriented; unable to tell whether he had closed his eyes or they had been closed for him.

  “Your friends were off-limits out at the lake. And they were armed. Or they left that part out?”

  “That’s another lie to slander us.”

  “The Cold War’s over. Or don’t you read the newspapers?” The interrogating officer struck Calvino, knocking him from the chair. “Get up. Get up or I’ll kill you,” he said.

  Calvino’s first try to get to his feet was a dismal failure. He slumped, lost his balance and fell face first on the floor. The three men standing over him laughed. I hate getting mugged, he thought. It was like being back home in Brooklyn.

  “You guys ever think of immigrating to the lower east side? Half of Eastern Europe is already there,” he said, coughing up more blood.

  Calvino slowly raised his head from the floor; he could barely make out Pratt who had kicked down the door and burst in holding an M16. He pulled the M16 to his shoulder, aiming at the head of the officer.

  “Hit him one more time, and I’ll kill you,” said Pratt. The officer stared at him, having no doubt for a second that this man would kill him.

  Calvino looked up, smiling; his teeth running with blood. “He usually quotes Hamlet,” said Calvino. “As in Shakespeare.”

  Shaw followed Pratt inside. He kept some distance from the action, standing behind and to Pratt’s left. He held his walkie-talkie at his side.

  “What took you so long, John?” asked Calvino. “We got here as fast as we could.”

  He had tracked down Calvino from the license registration that Dr. Veronica had been fortunate enough to remember. She had called into UNTAC HQ. Then she had called Pratt at the Monorom Hotel and told him that his friend was in trouble. Shaw swung around and picked up Pratt. During the ride, Shaw explained how some officers had previously used this room for gambling, drinking, and screwing. It had been closed down twice. Shaw had a gut feeling that they would find the Bulgarians and the vehicle with the registration number given by Dr. Veronica parked out front. He was right. The Land Cruiser was beside the entrance to the building. They had taken Calvino to the first place Shaw would go looking for him. Not because other people didn’t know about it; but because they actually thought they could get away with it. With power comes arrogance and a feeling you can do anything and no one can stop you. These kinds of cops made the same false assumption as all criminals—that they could get away with their crime.

  As Shaw helped Calvino off the floor, Pratt covered the other men with the M16. Calvino, his hands still tied behind his back, sat upright, bleeding down his shirt and tie.

  “Untie him,” said Pratt, pointing the M16 at the interrogating officer.

  “Excuse me. I happen to be an officer in the UN peacekeeping force. I don’t take orders from gooks in civilian clothes,” said the Bulgarian in disbelief, staring directly at Shaw. From the shoulder badges the officer out-ranked Shaw but pulling rank didn’t seem a likely option.

  Calvino had enough strength left in him for one field goal; he kicked the Bulgarian officer as hard as he could in the balls.

  “Don’t ever call my friend a gook,” Calvino said.

  The officer went down on the floor, holding his crotch and his eyes bulging out. The two soldiers looked at their fallen colleague.

  “I wouldn’t think about doing anything if I were you,” said Shaw, nodding at Pratt who had the rifle pointed at one of their heads.

  “You heard me. I said, untie him,” said Lt.Col.Pratt. “Now, move.”

  Calvino walked over to the interrogating officer and turned his back to him.

  “I told you about black magic. And bad things happening to your balls. You didn’t believe me,” said Calvino, feeling better by the moment, feeling better than he had felt in days.

  The officer looked nervously at the M16. There was a moment—a single flash of emotion—when Calvino and everyone else in the room thought Pratt would pull the trigger. It was something about his mouth and eyes that looked prepared for killing.

  “Deputy Superintendent Shaw . . .” stammered the officer. “Your men were in an unauthorized area,” said Shaw.

  “They know that the lake is off-limits.”

  “This man hijacked an UNTAC vehicle at gunpoint. What he did has political implications,” said the interrogating officer.

  “Because you are Bulgarians?
”

  “Of course because we are Bulgarians. You can’t go around sticking up UNTAC soldiers and stealing their Land Cruisers. Why, it’s illegal. And besides, it makes certain elements in UNTAC go crazy.”

  Pratt watched the officer use his knife to cut the rope around Calvino’s wrists. Calvino stepped away rubbing his wrists until the circulation came back. The officer rose to his feet like a boxer who had been punched too many times, his knees all wobbly, but as a matter of pride refused to fall down. Calvino walked around him and over to the soldier who had his .38 Police Special.

  “I’ll take that now.”

  The soldier looked at the officer and talked in Bulgarian for a few heated minutes. The officer stared at the floor where Calvino had spit blood, his shoulders hunched together.

  “Give it to him,” said Shaw. “Think of it as a kindly gesture of international goodwill.”

  “And you promise there will be a full report of this incident?” asked the officer, looking up.

  “That would include the part about your men having unauthorized weapons and sleeping in a Vietnamese brothel, and beating a civilian in a place known for illegal drug activity. Of course I can make such a report that will be sent to Headquarters and your commanding officer. There would be a hearing. The press would likely cover the hearing. But I’m willing to file the report if you request one.”

  The officer thought about this. The two words of horror were ‘hearing’ and ‘press’ and confronted with them he backed off.

  “I will accept an apology,” said the officer.

  “For my face beating up your hands?” asked Calvino. “And roughing up a French doctor?”

  “For what you did to my men,” he snapped.

  Everyone in the world worshipped the same god of face. All eyes were on Calvino. He thought, what difference does it really make giving face to an asshole? Calvino’s law—Bottom feeders always swim in a pack at the same end of the tank. If one wants to be called a goldfish, why not call it a goldfish?

  “I promise never to do it again,” said Calvino, and under his breath to Shaw, “unless, of course, it is an emergency.”

  Pratt was surprised that Calvino was still alive. What Calvino had done made no sense. He had damaged the pride of military men to help a wounded prostitute. He had left them naked and stolen their vehicle and given away their money to whores. And Americans thought of Asians as emotional and irrational people. No Asian would have done this for the girl. Not because they might not have felt sympathy for her plight; but out of real understanding that such actions destroy the pride of a soldier and invite great violence, and in the aftermath of such violence more than one prostitute’s life is on the line. Men in uniform are proud. They have power and privilege. Their presence has instilled fear throughout the centuries. An insult by an outsider is about their manhood, their honor, and entitles them to exact revenge. The man who robs you of your pride must suffer the torture of the man who has been shorn of his pride, thought Pratt. He looked at the Bulgarian soldiers and he could see many other men just like them who would have done exactly what they had done and no one would have blamed them. They would have blamed Calvino.

  ******

  “HOW did you find me?” asked Calvino, feeling his face that was numb in spots and elsewhere tight like a mask. They were at the French hospital. Five stitches were required on his right cheek and another four on the chin to close the cuts. He looked at himself in the mirror, thinking that he had looked better, and then he glanced back at Pratt standing behind to his right. And a few feet behind Pratt was Shaw, arms folded, smiling at himself in the mirror.

  “We had a little help from a very good doctor. You seem to have impressed her,” said Shaw.

  “Dr. Veronica’s okay?”

  “She was shaken up and went home. But she’ll be okay.”

  “For a reason Mr. Shaw can’t seem to understand Dr. Veronica seemed very concerned about you,” said Pratt.

  “The Khmer doctor who works as a hotel receptionist helped out as well,” said Shaw.

  “Between the two of them, you owe those two doctors your life, Vincent,” said Pratt.

  “That’s what I call room service,” he said. That wasn’t good enough and he knew it.

  “Okay, what I did was pretty stupid. We asked first. Told them it was an emergency. It didn’t matter. They were too busy screwing to care. If we hadn’t stolen the car the girl would have died. As Dr. Veronica said, sometimes the ends justify the means,” explained Calvino, turning around. “You hear what I’m saying? Without the Land Cruiser, she was dead. What’s the mission of UNTAC? Helping people.”

  “And you helped the UN with their mission?” asked Pratt.

  “I know you’re upset, Pratt. You have every right to be. I broke enough faces in Phnom Penh to qualify as some kind of basher, smasher, champion. An asshole who will go down into the records books of lost and cracked faces,” said Calvino.

  “Your face isn’t looking so good,” said Pratt, smiling for the first time since the rescue operation and the arrival at the hospital.

  “I would understand if you wish to write a press report,” said Shaw. “Against the men who beat you up. If, of course, you had a real newspaper to write for.”

  “It was a misunderstanding. It’s better to forget it. Don’t you think?”

  Pratt nodded, then smiled. Calvino was signaling him that it was better to leave things at a draw. The soldiers had their revenge for his actions. The balance had been restored. The emotions would cool.

  Shaw’s mouth twisted into a jagged grin. “That’s kind of you. Not to mention that it makes my life a lot easier.”

  The door opened and Dr. Veronica came in with Thu in a wheelchair.

  “I thought you’d gone home?” asked Calvino. “I heard you were here.”

  “You’ve got some intelligence network, doctor.”

  She didn’t respond. Calvino knelt down beside the wheelchair. Thu’s pale, drawn face filled with emotion. The amputated limb had come off at the knee. The stump was bandaged and her arm in a sling. Whatever drugs they had given her had started to wear off and she belonged in bed and not in a wheelchair. She looked at Calvino and tears welled up her eyes, and she started to cry. The Khmer doctor arrived a moment later.

  “We insisted she stay in bed. But Ms. Thu has something she wants to say,” said the Khmer doctor. “She says it is very important to her.”

  Thu fought back the tears, sobbing. “Thank you for helping me,” she said.

  It was one of the few sincere statements Calvino had heard in his life. He took her good hand, kissed it and, looking up, brushed the tears from her face.

  “When you get out of this joint, I’m gonna take you back home. Back to Saigon. Something tells me you’d feel a whole lot better back with your family. You know, your own people. So you do what these doctors tell you to do. And I’ll be back. You know what I’m saying? I’m coming back tomorrow and the next day until you’re okay. Then we’ll figure out the rest. So don’t worry about that. Get some rest. Listen to what these two good doctors tell you. You promise me that?”

  “Promise,” Ms. Thu said.

  He looked up at Dr. Veronica who hadn’t taken her eyes off him. She was thinking of something that she wanted to tell him. That she had stood in the door and watched him at Thu’s bedside and fell a little in love with him at that moment. He could see her lips start to move but the words wouldn’t come out. It wasn’t the right time for words. So on the way out he touched her hand, gave it a squeeze.

  “You did good,” he said.

  “Sometimes I think not good enough.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  She watched them from the driveway as Shaw pulled the Land Cruiser out of the compound.

  ******

  WHAT did it mean to rescue one peasant girl, Pratt asked himself as they left the hospital. He sat in the back of the Land Cruiser, looking out of the window. The peasants had always lived in fear, had been exp
loited, taxed, killed, imprisoned by their warlord rulers. These strongmen had the unquestioned right over the peasant population. Who among them would have cared about the fate of one such girl? Hundreds of Khmers were stepping on land mines every day of every week, and it looked like that would keep on happening for the indefinite future. It’s just the way it was, and they would adapt to the death and loss of limbs. This way of thinking was hard for Calvino to swallow; he was representative of his people and culture—who had religious faith in the idea of human rights. For fifteen centuries the peasants had had no rights. The right to vote, the right to speak or assemble—of course they had none of these rights. If they were lucky they had solace in the protection of an influential ruler whose ability to protect was only as good as his alliances, weapons, and the loyalty of his men. Killing peasants who lived in one of the hundreds of scattered, small principalities under another prince’s protection was a way to wound his pride, to destroy his power and honor. It was a means of expanding influence and control—kill the local prince and slaughter his peasants. A warlord prince like Pol Pot who wanted to unify an entire country would kill many peasants. It was to be expected. Ten times in the last two hundred years the Cambodians had gone on killing sprees. If rescuing a peasant to whom you had no allegiance was the path to human rights, then human rights would be a long time coming to the region, thought Pratt.

  Other princes’ peasants were not objects of compassion; they were merely objects. To topple all those centuries of fractured history would take more than time. The old system, which was divided between cut outs and masterminds and princes and peasants, had been formed on power and fear, and not on rights and security.

  “You’ve been quiet since we left the hospital,” said Calvino, looking back from the front passenger’s seat.

  “I wonder if the elections will make any difference in Cambodia?” asked Pratt.

  Shaw glanced at the colonel in the rear-view mirror. That was a question he had asked himself.