Ted Whittlemore was asleep in the chair by his bed when the phone rang. He came to on the ninth ring, his eyes blinking in the light. Just as he made sense of the noise, the ringing stopped. He folded his arms and adjusted the blanket that lay across his knees. He was cold, but if he put on a jumper he knew an acrid smell would rise out and shame him.
As he closed his eyes and settled, the phone started up again.
‘Hello? Yes?’
‘Ted? … Ted, buddy, is that you?’
‘Speak up, for Chrissakes.’
‘Ted, it’s me. It’s Cornell.’
‘Michael? Is that you, Michael?’
‘HEY BIG TED, IT’S CORNELL SPEAKING. CAN YOU HEAR ME?’
‘Cornell?’
‘It’s me, buddy, it’s me. Turn your hearing aids on ... How are you?’
‘I’m fucked, mate. Really rooted.’
‘Hey, that’s too bad. But, listen, guess where I am.’
‘Jesus, mate, how should I know?
‘Come on, guess.’
‘Up Abraham Lincoln’s nostril at Mount Rushmore?’
‘Phnom Penh. Can you believe it? I got a junket with Senator Kemp’s fact-finding mission. We went to Battambang for the election. You been to Battambang? Nothing but mud. Do you know Kemp?’
‘I’m not sure. I don’t think so.’
‘He sure remembers you: something about you claiming he was on the payroll of Handby Electronics? They make bombs, buddy, ring any bells? No? Well, he’s taken quite a shine to me, the senator. I can’t quite work out whether he’s doing it as a favour to Daddy or if he’s doing it to spite Daddy. Anyway, it’s all expenses paid.’
‘Lucky you.’
‘You got that right. I gotta tell you, it’s a beautiful thing, watching a whole nation discover democracy.’
‘Apart from the mud.’
‘I don’t mind telling you, I stood there watching all them people lined up in their Sunday best and I wept. But listen, buddy, this whole country’s a dump, even Phnom Penh. It’s nothing like how you described it, I’ll tell you that for free.’
‘Well, it’s been through a bit.’
‘Hey, haven’t we all. It still doesn’t hurt to spruce yourself up when you’re expecting visitors: put a clean shirt on, you know, comb your hair, maybe do the dishes, clean up the dog shit.’
‘When’s the last time you did the dishes?’
‘That’s not the point I’m making, now is it? So I’ve got a maid? So what? The dishwasher gets stacked three times a day and that’s all that matters. I tell you, I’ll be pleased to get home and get myself a decent feed.’
‘I’d do just about anything for a plate of chicken amok.’
‘Are you kidding? When they say it’s chicken who really knows? I had a pizza on the main street last night. Awful. “Just because it’s yellow doesn’t make it cheese,” I told the waitress, and do you know what she said? “You want happy herb? You pay extra?” “I don’t want happy herbs,” I told her. “I want pepperoni.” But listen, buddy, how’d you like a job?’
‘It depends—’
‘How’d you like to write it up for me? Give me your impressions, you know, Big Picture, just the way you like it.’
‘Of what, mate?’
‘The Cambodian elections. Come on, Ted, haven’t you heard? Prince Ranariddh won but Hun Sen wouldn’t accept the result. So the UN made them both prime minister.’
‘That’s the stupidest bloody thing I’ve ever heard in my life.’
‘Sihanouk’s king again, only he’s pissed off to France for medical tests, and the Khmer Rouge are licking their wounds. All in all, it’s a damned fine result, I reckon. What do you say, buddy: give me a few thousand words on the whole brilliant mess.’
‘Yeah, thanks but ... I don’t really get what you’re saying. Two PMs? Two? How does that even ... No, thanks mate, but I’d better say no.’
‘Don’t be hasty, buddy. Have you got some coffee there? Call room service. Take a moment to wake yourself up. I’m telling you that you can write whatever you want. I’m giving you complete editorial freedom. No swear words, mind, and no God jokes.’
‘Why? Are you running for office?’
‘My subscribers are very broad-minded, very open to new ideas, even to your brand of craziness, but there’s only so much I can ask of them. Of course, I’ll write a separate piece explaining, point by point, why you’re wrong, why you’re fundamentally misguided, but—’
‘But you haven’t a clue what I’m going to write.’
‘Buddy, we both know that isn’t true. So you’ll do it, then?’
‘No, mate. I’m a long way out of it now.’
‘Bullcrap. Thirty years of insight. Misguided insight, of course, weirdo commie claptrap, but thirty years of it just the same. Come on, buddy. You know I pay well.’
‘Mate, that sounds like charity.’
‘Philanthropy: that’s a whole different deal.’
‘My son’s helping me out now with the bills. I’m not sure I really need the hassle.’
‘I’m paying for your experience, for your opinions. You’re worth every penny. Give it a go at least, won’t you? Think about it. In the meantime, I’ll wire you the cash.’
This is surely the UN’s finest hour
.
I say this because the recent election typifi
es everything about the UN’s many years of abject failure towards Cambodia.
Remember this: after Vietnam entered Cambodia and defeated the
Khmer Rouge, who had tried to kill off Cambodia’s whole population, the
UN, in its wisdom, chose to punish Vietnam for invading Cambodia. They
allowed the Khmer Rouge to regroup – hell, they more or less funded them
– and so the war inside Cambodia carried on for another decade. Has there
been a more awful sight in the last few years than Mr Nhem Kiry, as conniving
a politician as I have ever met, once again strutting the world stage?
The UN claims the Khmer Rouge are terminally weak, but I for one have
heard it all before.
As for the election itself: what a shambles; what a joke. The UN does not
care about Cambodian democracy. They care only that there was an election
and that the Khmer Rouge did not disrupt it with violence. Now they can
pretend that they – the UN, I mean – did a great job. Their equation is simple:
election plus the façade of democracy equals Cambodia must now sort
out its own problems. Including the Khmer Rouge. The international community
has spent a fortune absolving itself from its shonky and bloody past
practices. The UN is like a mafia assassin, cleaning up after itself. And
now the poor, desperate, war-weary Cambodians will have to fend for themselves.
And what’s more,
Ted tried hard to give Cornell what he wanted. He forced a few lines out, but after that the page sat in his typewriter for a week. Every time he sat down to work his mind rebelled. But each time he turned away, regret washed through him. He desperately missed the cut and thrust of it all but he knew that a reporter with old news was irrelevant.
Ted had never worried about what other people thought of his journalism. In fact, he was honoured by the number of people – prominent people – who hated him. But now he recognised that he had nothing to say. Nothing new, at least. And so he stopped bothering to fill in gaps.
He knew he owed Cornell a letter, but he didn’t want to explain himself. And the more he thought about it, the more he didn’t see why he should have to, just because Cornell had done so much for him, just because he threw money around. He wasn’t being generous. He just had too much of the stuff.
‘Do you need me?’ Nhem Kiry asked Ta Mok.
‘I have everything under control. If I can think of anything I want you to do, I will certainly call for you,’ Ta Mok replied.
Kiry stood outside, under a tree, while Mok went inside Pol Pot’s hut to tell him that Ieng Sary had taken a thousand or more troops and supporters and defected to the government, who had rewarded him by letting them take over Pailin.
Ta Mok and Pol Pot spoke for less than ten minutes. Pol Pot occasionally asked a question in his quiet, calm tone, but Mok did almost all of the talking. Kiry could hear their voices but could not make out what they said. When Mok emerged his mouth was set grim yet Kiry detected a sparkle of amusement in his eyes.
‘That shook him up,’ Mok said.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. The last thing he needs is shaking up,’ Kiry said. ‘Did you at least break it to him gently?’
‘Gently?
Gently?
What is he, a baby duck? “Let me stroke you, dear duckling, while I inform you that everything you hold dear and have sacrificed your life for is crashing down around you. A terrible thing, terrible, what with you too lame to fly, but don’t let’s worry about it, don’t be concerned, dear duckling, everything will be okay.” No: I told him plainly. He would expect nothing else. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.’
‘Doesn’t matter? How can you say that?’
‘I will take a battalion and we will retrieve Pailin. And then I will have some fun with Ieng Sary.’
‘I’m not sure that’s wise.’
‘I don’t care what you think.’
For several hours after Mok delivered the news of Ieng Sary’s defection Pol Pot stayed alone inside his hut. His young wife, Mea, spent the afternoon washing clothes at the river. His daughter, Sisopha, old enough to know to make herself scarce but too filled with joy to be fussed by the tension, wandered around the village chattering to anybody willing to listen. Kiry walked about too, waiting for Pol Pot to call for him, trying to think about something other than the implications of these latest defections. He wished Kolab did not insist on going to the fields every day. He needed her and he could not imagine what point she thought she was making. He wished his daughters were not studying in Bangkok, buying clothes and eating Big Macs or however it was that they spent their time.
Sisopha and Kiry sat down together – she was bored, he was tired – close enough to Pol Pot’s hut that they could hear him moving about inside. His movements had always been characterised by a slow evenness, but these days they were laborious and punctuated by worrisome pauses. The stroke, a year before, had affected his left side, a fact that Mok made a constant joke about: ‘He’s lost his left side, who would have ever imagined it after all this time? His left side: do you get it?’
‘I understand. It’s not funny.’
‘He has abandoned the left and collapsed to the right, ha ha ha.’
Kiry had noticed that when circumstances warranted it, Mok could act as if he was gentle and kind, in amateurish but passable imitation of Pol Pot. But at other times he filled his followers with terror. And Kiry, too.
While they sat there, Kiry taught Sisopha to count to ten in French. She especially liked ‘one.’ She was running around in a circle with her hands lost inside her flapping shirtsleeves, calling out ‘oughn, oughn’ to great guttural effect, when Pol Pot appeared in the doorway of his hut.
He blinked in the harsh light. ‘Hello, my sweet darling,’ he said to Sisopha softly. As she ran to him and wrapped her arms around his legs, he wedged himself in the doorframe so that she would not knock him down. A month earlier he had slipped on a rock while washing in the river. It had taken two weeks for his swollen buttocks to return to their normal size. He still had a scab on one elbow, to which Mea administered an antiseptic powder twice daily. But the powder came from Ta Mok’s supplies, and since he had started using it Pol Pot’s hut was often overrun with giant red ants. Kiry suspected that its principal ingredient was castor sugar.
‘What are you up to, little bird?’ Pol Pot said.
‘Oughn, oughn, oughn.’
‘Oh my goodness. Are you a monster? Do you live in a cave?’
‘Oughn, Pa, oughn,’ she admonished him. ‘Oughn, duh, twah, qwat-r-r-row …’
‘Very clever, my precious darling. Off you go now so I can talk to Grandfather Kiry.’
‘Perhaps, Sisopha, you can go to Aunty Sisi and ask her to bring us ginseng tea,’ Kiry said.
‘Yes. That’s what we need. Can you manage that, do you think?’
‘Of course, Pa.’
Pol Pot motioned Kiry inside and onto a wooden stool on the plastic mat in the middle of the room. He sat on a straight-backed chair, the only one in the room.
‘I have bottled water. Have one while we wait for the tea,’ he said. ‘My little girl is beautiful, but speed is not her greatest asset. So, for now, you will have water?’
‘Thank you, Big Brother. Please let me fetch it.’
‘Don’t be silly. Sit. Sit, I say.’
Pol Pot did not walk easily but neither did he seem to be on the verge of collapse. He carried himself a few steps to a cardboard box with Nestlé stamped on its side that sat beside the wooden wall. He stayed bent over the box for so long, hands connected to a couple of plastic bottles, that Kiry rose to help.
‘No, I am fine. No, I say,’ Pol Pot said. He straightened and faced Kiry, one eye squeezed shut. ‘It makes it easier to focus, sometimes,’ he said as he peered at one bottle, then the other. ‘I always check, always: sometimes the bottles are filled with river water and the caps have been burned to the seals. Such unscrupulous behaviour, all for the sake of a little profit. So sad.’
He sat, grappled momentarily with the seal on his bottle and then handed it to Kiry to open for him. Kiry drank silently. Pol Pot made sloshing noises and let out a tiny gasp when he swallowed too quickly. He righted his head and waited for the gurgling to cease.
‘I suppose we must denounce Ieng Sary, him and his no-good wife and their cronies.’
‘Mok has somebody attending to it, Big Brother. There is no need to trouble yourself with such details.’
‘I want to trouble myself. Do not order me about.’
‘I did not mean to, Big Brother. I just wanted you to know that Mok is preparing a formal response.’
‘What good is friendship – a lifetime of friendship – if it does not last until death? Of what value is the history of a friendship, let alone the history of shared experiences, shared sacrifices? What good is—’
‘Pa? Hello, Pa?’
‘Hello, my sweet one. What is it? I am quite busy at the moment.’
‘I brought tea.’
‘Oh yes. Thank you, darling. Leave it by the door, that’s a good girl.’
Pol Pot deposited the teapot on the mat. He took several deep breaths and said, ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind doing the pouring.’