The song flowers alongside the modern apartments painted cream, with bougainvillaea purple along the tops of the walls, and the palm trees and the sprinklers and the uniformed children and Librairies crowded with books in Khmer and French and pootling little Citroën 2CVs peeping horns as sharp and bouncy as Cambodian smiles.
I love it! I love it, thinks Luc as he cycles. I never want to leave; this will be my home. Goodbye medical school, goodbye hospital. I will become a cyclopousse driver and live under the stars.
Arn laughs and covers his face. ‘Oh! I cannot afford your fare.’
Something comes over Luc and he leans back. ‘My fare costs everything, but I do not charge money.’
My fare is you.
‘Oh, Monsieur!’ and Arn permits himself a florid khutuy gesture that would not be conceivable in Kompong Thom. ‘I fear my purse is not big enough.’
Luc doesn’t get what he means but something hot and heavy impels him. ‘Ah, but it’s not always the amount, it’s the quality that is important. Is it fine stuff?’
‘Oh, oh.’ Arn is leaning forward and shaking his shoulder. ‘It is the finest stuff. For you. Oh, everyone is looking.’
Luc only now registers Arn’s embarrassment. ‘They know we are just having fun,’ he says gently.
There is a look on Arn’s face that Luc has never seen shining out of anyone else’s. It is a kind of surrender. Very quickly, as they buzz past buses and women in stalls and lunchtime workers on their way back to the bank or telegraph office, Arn lifts himself up onto his knees, turns around over the back of the seat, and pecks a kiss on Luc’s cheek.
He plainly could not help it. Luc doesn’t blame him. Arn was overcome. But Luc does not know what to make of it. In the end, he decides to pity. His friend could not help it, he got over-excited, he is from a different culture, and you have to be aware of imposing Western meanings. It was a familial kiss …
No it wasn’t.
Luc feels the dark.
You know what this is, Luc. So does Arn; his expression is full of both love and awareness. It is kindly but not exactly innocent.
Oh God, this is what it is. I am that. That thing.
He looks at Arn, his gently burnished face, and accepts. If it means I get Arn, then yes. Yes I am. That is me. I am that thing. And right now, nobody can see, and if they can see I don’t care.
Suddenly Luc shouts like John Wayne, and drives the pedals even harder and faster, and Arn chuckles and laughs. Luc lifts his feet off the pedals and just for a moment, he is flying.
In those days Boeung Kak Lake was a park that people could stroll around. Luc and Arn arrive and Arn’s friends cluster round to laugh and joke about the spectacle of a barang pedalling a cyclopousse. The laughter is good-natured. It’s New Year, you get to do crazy things. The two men … boys … are sent on their way with good cheer by the other drivers who agree to look after Arn’s machine. Arn goes to the latrines, but not to relieve himself.
He changes into his white shirt, and his perfectly creased khaki slacks.
They head out for the park, full of prostitutes at night, but families by day. Halfway to the lake they are pelted with water balloons by a gang of kids. They are nice kids, boys and girls all about fourteen, so Arn and Luc just laugh. They walk along the pier and all the cubicles are taken. Well they would be full, wouldn’t they, it’s April 13th.
Luc sighs. ‘We can always go back and sit on the grass.’
Except that the very last little cubicle, right at the end of the walkway out over the lake, is empty. Maybe nobody persevered all the way to the end of the pier; maybe a family has just vacated it. But there it is – hammocks and a charcoal stove and a view of the little lake, with its lotus pads and dreamy girls and serious boys in canoes.
Heartbreak time. Arn has bought them lunch, bundled up his kramar. The kramar serves as his pyjamas, his modesty patch, his head-dress, and his shopping bag. He unties it carefully, gently and there is sticky rice in vine leaves, soup in perfectly tied little bags that have spilled nothing, pork in sauce with vegetables.
Luc tells him it is a wonderful lunch and they sit and talk about the usual things. And Arn becomes overwhelmed. Because his unlikely dream has come true. The huge beautiful kindly barang is his.
‘Luc, I want to study,’ he says as he eats. ‘Luc, I am so happy. I know life will be just great. Everything in Cambodia good now. We have our Prince. Your people good to us, but the politicians go home, so now we can be friends.’
Arn sways from side to side as if to music as he says, ‘We all live together and work hard, so Cambodian business, Cambodian factories, Cambodian music, all do very well now. We will become modern country. We join the world as friends.’
‘Modern country,’ says Luc and lifts his hand as if raising a toast. ‘Friends.’
It is April 1967 and rice exports have collapsed and the news says that in a place called Samlaut, somewhere near Battambang, the peasants are in revolt. The Prince blames Khieu Samphan and the communists.
For now the old French song keeps singing in Luc’s head. Lovers, the lyrics tell him, don’t fear for tomorrow.
Arn would be fifty-eight now, thinks Luc waking up in a tent in the dark, reeking of insect repellent. Where is he?
Whenever Luc visits Phnom Penh, he peers at the moto-dops and elderly motoboys. He scans bus windows, taxis and stalls in the Central Market. Most likely Arn would be using a different name now and his face would be changed. Arn could be bald, fat, or sucked-dry skinny. But most likely … well …
One out of three men died.
Leaf 35
April is when the red hibiscus announces the change of seasons like the musician blowing his conch. April is after the harvest and before the rains. April is when the ox-cart falls back, lifting its long neck to sniff the wind. The oxen sleep under the house. Inside it people sleep or dance. Season of rest, season of labour, April is when we hoe the earth to guide the waters like children to their beds, making straight canals to bear new stone. April is when we lay courtyard pavements. The people kneel and drop the stones like eggs. They hoot like birds and bellow like elephants and laugh and start to sing. April is when we bear the temple stones up the ramps and rock them to sleep like uncles. Season of war, April is when the generals make one last effort before the rain to press on with the campaign. April is when we create. April is when we destroy.
April is the Time of New Angels, just before New Year.
Old angels will be sent back to heaven. They will be replaced by new angels who take better care of mortals.
On the morning of April 13 2004, the year of his retirement, King Norodom Sihanouk himself visits Army Headquarters in Siem Reap to view the Golden Book.
He gives the Book its Cambodian name: Kraing Meas, which means something like Golden Treasure. Photographs are taken of the King standing in front of a green baize background with leaves from the Book balanced against it. He shakes the hand of General Yimsut Vutthy.
The National Museum is determined that the Kraing Meas should come to rest in Phnom Penh, but there are high politics involved. Sihanouk