‘Did you see those city people run? They all came through here going Uhhhhhh!’ An APSARA guide waves his hands in mock terror. He sports bicycling shorts with Velcro pockets: his best clothes.
‘Oh! Oh! Somebody turned out the lights, it is a disaster!’ They mock their richer cousins.
‘They all sleep out here tonight.’
‘Good, let the mosquitoes bite them for a change.’
In the hot dry season there are few insects, except in the temple park with its sweltering moats. The guards slap their arms and wipe their legs almost unconsciously. Malaria is as common as a cold. They get sick; they go to bed.
Map sits with them wearing only his underpants. His police uniform is laid out on the steps like shed skin.
Map is about to go to work. He will walk the corridors armed until about midnight. Then he will string his hammock across the main entrance and get some sleep.
Once he caught thieves hauling off a celestial maiden they had hacked out of a wall. Chopping Angkor Wat, what jerks! He opened fire and they ran. Everybody thought that they’d got away with the treasure, but Map knew they couldn’t run that fast with a statue. He figured out which way they’d gone, and so he went swimming. Sure enough, they’d hidden her in the moat, to come back for her later. So he camped out by that moat for weeks and got all five of them. Just kids. Man, they’d been in prison for years.
One of the APSARA guides sighs and stretches. ‘I get to go home and see my wife next week. That will be my New Year.’
‘New Year is not always such good luck.’
‘Tooh! That is true.’
The guide has a story. ‘My village is out towards Kompong Thom on Highway 6. Every year they have the party on the road. They don’t think that trucks ever come that way anymore.’
Map’s says in his quiet spooked voice, ‘It used to be dangerous to drive that road.’
The guide from Kompong Thom holds his ground and keeps talking. ‘One year all the kids were out on the road singing, and at midnight a truck came driving through. It just smashed into the kids. It was like the war all over again. Bad, bad luck, all that year, for everybody.’
‘Then bad luck for us this year as well,’ says one of the police. The theft of the Golden Book has been big news.
Map’s face settles into a lazy, hooded grin. ‘I drove that road when the Army told you not to do it. I wanted to go to Phnom Penh to see this girl, and they said, you go that way those bastards at Kompong Thom will steal our motorcycle.’
The guard from Kompong Thom chuckles. ‘Did we?’
‘No. I killed all you guys.’ More chuckles, heads shaken. Map is always extreme. He sits up and mimes riding a motorcycle one handed, while armed. ‘I tell you. I had one automatic here. I had my grenade here, my buddy was on the back and he had his grenades too. We had guns like a tiger has teeth. We just drove, man, no lights. We drove full speed across bridges that were just one plank of wood. Nobody touched us.’
‘What about the girl?’
Map beams. ‘She touched us.’
They all laugh. Map shakes his head, with the same sleepy smile. ‘She was a nice girl, my buddy’s sister. Oh, she was beautiful. I thought I would get married to her and then me and my buddy, you know, we’d make a new family for ourselves. He was like me, all his family dead. It was a good thought. A meritorious action.’ He raises his can of beer up in salute. It’s empty. ‘More bad luck.’
A motorcycle coughs its way towards them from the main gate. ‘Oh man,’ says Map. He recognizes the sound of this particular bike.
‘Bad luck,’ grunts an APSARA guard.
Map calls out in English. ‘Mister, you want cold beer?’
The guards murmur laughter. Nobody else treats the Captain this way. Map is so rude.
The causeway is high off the ground and the steps are higher still. Map’s boss Captain Prey straddles his bike four metres below them. He shines a torch up at them. ‘Ch’nam t’mei,’ he says to the men who murmur respectfully back. Then he raises his voice. ‘Chubby. How can you be wearing even less of your uniform than normal?’
Map’s smile is thin, like a snake’s. ‘I could be naked.’
‘Wild man,’ says Kompong Thom with something like affection. Map is famous for shunning the police village and camping out in the woods around the temple, as if it were still wartime.
His boss laughs, weary and tough. ‘I tell you, one day I’ll come past here and you will not be modest.’
‘You can come and guard all night too if you like.’
‘If I see your bum in this temple, you’re fired, OK, no job.’ Captain Prey sounds mad, but not that mad. It’s New Year and Map is at his post. I do my job, thought Map, just in my own way.
‘Look, Chubby. I came out here to give you some news. They think whoever stole the Book also got your Frenchman.’
‘What?’ Map flings himself to his feet and exclaims, ‘Chhoy mae!’ The expression means, precisely, mother-fuck.
‘Chubby, please be more polite.’ The Captain shifts. ‘I know this is bad news for you. The Army says that Grandfather Frenchman and a general took the Kraing Meas with them. One of the Army guards says the thieves took them both as well.’
Map is shaking his way into his T-shirt and trousers. ‘More like the Army got them.’
‘Or the Thais,’ says one of the guides.
‘The Thais gave us back a hundred stolen things,’ Map snaps back. He’s fed up, angry, sick at heart. ‘It’s not the Thais, it’s our own people, it’s just we want to blame the Thais. Captain, I need to go into town. Can you give me a lift back to my bicycle?’
‘Chubby. Your job is to guard the temple.’
‘Who do I value more, Captain – you or Grandfather Frenchman? You can keep your sixteen dollars a month; the Teacher pays me more. Any of you guys want two dollars? I’ll pay you two dollars to sleep in my hammock. Here’s my gun.’
Map holds his gun out to one of the guides. The guide doesn’t want to touch it. ‘You might need it, man, the Army hate you.’
‘I won’t need it. My dick shoots bullets.’
The guides hoot: Map knows no bounds. He squats down and laces up his shoes. ‘A snake bites me, she curls up and dies. A jungle cat comes to eat me, I eat her.’
‘Map, Map.’ Captain Prey shakes his head. ‘Talking that way is why you sleep in a hut.’
‘I don’t sleep in a hut. Huts give me bad dreams. I sleep like I got used to sleeping for twenty years – on the ground. Gunfire helps me sleep.’
‘Ghosts like huts,’ someone says.
Map jumps down from the causeway, three metres to the ground. His short thick legs soak up the shock and he lands like a cat on all fours. ‘I can walk to my bicycle.’
His boss chides him. ‘Chubby. I’ll give you ride.’
With an angry sniff, Map kung-fus himself onto the back of the bike. ‘OK, let’s go.’
The Captain revs the bike, then turns to him. ‘Chubby, the thing that bothers me is that really, under all the rude talk, you are a good man.’
‘Yeah, I know. I also know that life is shit and I don’t see why I shouldn’t say so.’
‘Because,’ says his boss, looking at him seriously. ‘It makes it sound