Bible of the Dead

Chapter 21

The head was floating. Another floating woman’s head, with a funereal veil of black gauze, or was it hair? The head was disembodied by dark, and it was sucking him, sucking his penis, Kali Kra, white toothed and drooling, fanged and desirous, with her two tongues black and blood-red, licking his erection, painfully, exquisitely, making him cry out.

He didn’t want the woman to stop, the witch, the spider witch, the apsara, to stop; surely it was Chemda who was blowing him, giving him pleasure, waking him with fellatio once again: and it was beautiful, Jake fought the beautiful feeling in his dreams, he was half awake now, yes he could see her, it was Chemda’s head above his groin in the darkness of the shuttered room above the krama shop in old Siem Reap.

‘Chemda, Chemda…’ He wanted real sex. Penetration. He grasped her head. He lifted her head from his erection, and she looked up at Jake, and her eyes flashed and smiled, and it was his mother, sucking him. His mother, smiling up.

He woke with a myoclonic jerk, rigid with horror. Properly awake this time. It was just a dream, a lucid dream. He shuddered and looked around. The day had barely dawned: ladders of pale and unfading blue showed the slatted shutters of Sonisoy’s apartment.

Where was Chemda?

Jake swept a hand across the empty bed.

‘Chemda…’ he could sense the fragments of the dream fleeing him. Yet he kept seeing the image, of his mother, a head, disembodied, blood dripping from somewhere, the image of Kali, the Mother of Dissolution.

‘Hello.’

Chemda had walked into the room. She was dressed, and frowning.

‘Chemda. Are you OK?’

She shrugged.

‘Couldn’t really sleep. Ah. Not after hearing that about my father. We talked, me and Sonisoy.’ Her hands were hovering on her hips, impatient or wary – like a Western sharpshooter approaching a gunfight. ‘He wants us to see something in Angkor Wat, to tell us something.’

‘And?’

‘We’re gonna meet downstairs in ten minutes. Pack everything.’

Obedient, he threw a towel over his shoulder and walked for the shower. He really needed a shower.

Chemda loitered by the door, watching him, she looked at his nakedness as he walked. And lust flashed for a second in that gaze, he saw it: fleshly hunger. Kali, the devourer, with her seven black tongues.

She waved a dark hand at the bathroom.

‘Please, Jake, we need to be quick -’

‘I thought you said we’d be safe here. For a night.’

‘I did – I thought we would – until I heard that about my father. Now I wonder: is my whole family cursed, do they want us all dead? I don’t know. But this means everything is worse than we imagined -’

‘So. Let’s get to Thailand!’

‘But first I want to hear Sonisoy’s story. Then we go to Thailand.’

‘But what about Sonisoy?’

‘He’d have turned us in by now, if he was with them. I told you. I trust him more than anyone. Apart from you.’

Her eyes fixed on his. She continued:

‘Quick, ah, please, be quick. Sonisoy will take us to Angkor. Ten minutes.’

The shower took him two minutes: towel, clothes, socks, boots. Then he loitered in the bedroom packing his pitiful bag: two pairs of jeans and tee shirts bought from Siem Reap nightmarket, passport, cards, little camera, and a mobile phone. Jake stared at the phone, and took it out of the bag.

He dialled a number. Right now he needed a friendly voice, a western voice, an English speaking voice, a white voice. He felt so lost and isolated.

‘Yyyyyo?’

It was Tyrone at his groggiest. Just waking up, probably just assessing his hangover.

‘Ty. It’s Jake.’

Immediately, his friend sharpened.

‘Jake, for fuck’s sake where are you? The whole of PP is looking for you, you and Chemda.’

As concisely as possible Jake explained the situation – the grandfather, the firebomb, the janitor, the escape to Siem Reap. Tyrone cussed, urgently, a couple of times. Then Jake told his friend about Chemda’s father. Also lobotomized.

‘Fuck.’ Tyrone said. ‘How did she take that?’

Jake paused. He walked to the window and looked down at the unbusy streets of Siem Reap. He could see a street cleaner with a wicker hat and a municipal jerkin, brushing indolently – and a waiting tuk-tuk close to the front door.

‘Apparently it happened a few years after her family fled to California. She was young, nine or ten. All she remembers is that her dad was very depressed a lot of the time, drank too much. Silent. Taciturn.’

‘Sure, but a lot of Khmers were, like, traumatized by the genocides…’

‘And that’s what she presumed but last night she told me she dimly recalls a scar, on his head, under his hair. And very deep deep depressions.’

‘So he killed himself?’

‘No. He walked under a bus, very drunk, Chemda says. An accident. At least that’s what she was told at the time, by her mother. Madame Tek. But of course now she wonders if it wasn’t a total accident. There was some volition there, an act of self destruction, or at least nihilism. A brain damaged man in terminal despair.’

‘Jesus,’ said Tyrone. ‘No wonder grandfather Sen hates the Khmer Rouge so much, they did frontal lobotomies on half his family. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. And now you’re going to Angkor on some Indiana Jones malarkey, nice timing -’

‘Sonisoy insists he has important evidence. We’re going to see it.’

‘And then?’

‘We will escape. Thailand.’

Tyrone drew breath.

‘That ain’t gonna be easy

– ’ ‘Of course, I know – how can we do it? Any ideas?’

A pause. Then an answer.

‘When you’re finished in Angkor – head for Anlong Veng. Most remote border crossing. Chong Sa. I got friends there, from when I did my Ta Mok story. Might be able to help you. But just get there, as stealthily and as quickly as you can. Anyone repeat anyone could be a danger. Anyone at all.’

‘Anyone? Surely we are a little safer, this far out of Phnom Penh -’

Tyrone whistled impatiently.

‘Thurby, you’re not getting me. You don’t understand what’s fucking happening here in PP. It’s mayhem. The police are hunting for you, it’s all over the FCC, everywhere. Grandfather Sen has an advert in the Post this morning, asking for help in locating his granddaughter. And the article is worse, it has quotes from the Phnom Penh police, claiming you have kidnapped Chemda Tek. There’s even a fucking price on your head. You’re actually wanted. Like in a Western.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘I’m sorry Jake. It’s true. Why don’t you just go? Fuck the evidence. You need to get out now, Jake. Just go.’

‘But Chemda wants to see -’

‘Leave Chemda behind. Go now. You’re better off without her. Fucking safer.’

The idea was sensible, the idea was ludicrous.

‘I can’t leave her, Ty. You know that…’

He groaned.

‘But they’re after your ass! With guns. This is not a rehearsal. The chief of police says it, literally: any means necessary may be used to rescue Chemda Tek from the kidnapper, i.e. they can take you dead or alive as far as the authorities are concerned.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘And knowing this is Cambodia, what that really means is -’

‘I can’t leave her.’

Tyrone sighed.

‘I know you can’t. I know.’