Butterfly Stories

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The night that the photographer and the journalist got back to Phnom Penh, they dropped by the English teacher's house. The English teacher was not back yet, and they could not communicate with the English teacher's mother except by signs. The English teacher's little sister was there, and she did her best, crooning to him: One is for man, two is for voman, three is for boiee, four is for guhl, five is for motahcah. . and he gave her a ride to the ceiling and was happy to be with her although she stank and had lice, and he dressed her up in his raincoat so that she laughed, and when the English teacher and his friend came home he invited the little girl out with them, and her mother hastened to dress her in her best, there in a dark corner where the candle did not reach, and then they all set out for a Vietnamese restaurant whose waitress the photographer had had his eye on for a week. The journalist put the girl on his shoulders. She was very small and light. At first she was happy to be carried, but then when everyone kept staring she became uncomfortable; the journalist put her down. He walked along beside the English teacher, holding her hand, and they kept staring… In the blue glow of the Vietnamese restaurant's TV they sat laughing around the table and drinking beer with their friends and the waitress, who kept dropping ice in everyone's drinks (the little girl had Seven-Up; everyone else had Tiger beer) and she lifted more ice with the tongs, robbing the treasure of coldness from the blue plastic bowl, and her fat brown face gleamed with exciting TV shadows while a TV monster roared around and the beers shone and got more and more watery with melting ice until they became one with the sweat that ran down everyone's cheeks, and the little girl looked up at the journalist with her gaptooth glistening, slowly stroking her glass, only wanting to add from the bottle to her pleasure little by little, like the sweat that crawled down the journalist's neck; and the ice in the blue bowl glistened more and more while the waitress laughed slit-eyed at the little girl and the checkerboard floor was like TV static. - Ask that waitress if she likes Ho Chi Minh, said the journalist, who was getting drunk. - Yes, the English teacher replied. - The photographer was making good progress with the waitress. - She want to come to your room tomorrow at twelve o'clock, said the English teacher's friend. - The waitress had a friend who asked the journalist's age and he thought that she was gorgeous but he didn't need any more complications; she thought or pretended to think that he was sleeping with the eight-year-old girl. -Well, it is true that the photographer had said: I bet you'd like to get into that! and it is true that the photographer had said: You know what the difference between us is? There's no difference. We're both assholes.

He went to the disco. The photographer did not come because he did not want his girl to know that he was back in town. The journalist knew that he was starting trouble for the photographer by going in there but he missed Vanna too much; maybe he loved her; maybe he really did. As always in that hot darkness, he felt that he was doing something stupid and dangerous by being there. He could see nothing. The air was brownish-black like the tree they'd shown him at Choeung Ek, the tree whose bark was ingrown with hardened blood where the Khmer Rouge used to smash babies' skulls. He fumbled his way to a table sticky with spilled beer. Is Vanna here?

You want one beer?

Vanna. Girl. I want Vanna. Tall girl.

You want Tiger beer?

No — no — Vanna — she here?

No no you miss mistake, my friend.

Vanna -

My friend -

I want to take home Vanna. Only Vanna. Vanna and me like this.

No no no!

I want to marry Vanna. I buy her gold ring.

No no no my friend no no!

Gripping the journalist's upper arm firmly enough to bruise, the pimp or waiter or bouncer or whatever he was led the journalist outside. He looked back at all the faces watching him in darkness, the fat yellow cat-faces -

Well, said the photographer, why should she come to work? You got her a fucking gold bracelet for Chrissakes. She probably sold it ten minutes after she got rid of you. That money should last her a few weeks.

I used to not have enough money to spend on whores, the photographer said. Now I don't know what else I'd ever spend my money on.

The photographer had fallen in love with the money-changer just outside the hotel, and asked her to marry him. All day she sat smiling at the world. So they were engaged. After that, practically every time the journalist went in or out, he'd see the photographer leaning on her glass-topped table grinning down at her as she sat there among her rubber-banded bundles of money sideways stacked; when customers came she'd look up with her calculator already in hand; she'd be ready to sell anyone her pink packs of Ruby Queens, her silver-topped red packs of Marlboros, her red-topped Bentleys, gold Dunhills, green Wrig-ley's spearmint gum; and then she'd go back to giggling with her fiancé, making him write down everything he said so that she could have the other English students translate for her, and the photographer said: I will come for you in one year. . and the photographer asked again: Do you love me? and she nodded radiantly and sold the customers cartons of cigarettes from her secret glass shelves. - Well, I guess I'll have to divorce my wife, the photographer said glumly.

So they went to the market to get flowers for their girls. It was the journalist's idea. He wanted to give Vanna something. He wanted to get down on his knees before her, in the disco with everyone watching; maybe then she'd know he meant it even though what did he mean?

The Vietnamese waitress, henceforth known as the plump girl, was coming to meet the photographer at the hotel at seven although she was scared because she wasn't a taxi girl so she asked the English teacher who couldn't speak English to take her there. That rendezvous had to be taken into consideration, explained the photographer as he led the journalist into the market where a woman passed by with a wide plate of fruit on her head. - I'm pretty sure I know where the flowers are, the photographer said. - Down the long aisle crowded with combs and light bulbs and locks and cords of string, a series of counter-bays enclosed the people who worked beside the orange flames bending out from sooty ash cans to stroke the undersides of gigantic frying pans mountained with sprouts and noodles; underneath the ash cans, tables were stacked with cordwood to feed them; there was a sound of sizzling; steam came out just like the vapor from the journalist's ice-crammed soda glass; and the girls who shooed the flames away from their bowls of rice and occasionally added pinches of flour to things and stirred thick sauces and spooned purple slush into plastic bags for whoever paid, topping the treat with crushed ice, laying the banknotes down on top of a tray of dried yellow fruit for a minute while they went to retrieve their soup bowls, these girls stared at him and the photographer just as everyone always stared at him in Cambodia, maybe considering him a tall fat-buttocked white idiot or maybe just considering him a novelty; the answer was surely as complicated as the bewildering central polygon with its glass counters of watches, gold bracelets and lenses, where he was always certain to get lost, and they did get lost but since the journalist had learned the Khmer word for flower and kept saying it they got where they were going finally and they each bought bouquets which immediately began to wilt in the heat.

When they got back to the money-changer's stand she was busy piling bundles of banknotes into other men's paper bags, so she had the photographer sit down in her chair. The street kid called the Playboy came up to see the photographer's bouquet. Usually the photographer bought the kid cigarettes. This time he yelled: These flowers aren't for you! Can't you see that? Get lost, fuck off, screw! For two cents I'd knock your block off! — The photographer's fiancée giggled nervously.

Raise the curtain on the next act, the plump girl on the bed laughing, the English teacher who couldn't speak English and his best friend laughing at their ease, basking in the reflected glow of their masters, the plump girl glittering the place up with her white teeth and black eyes, sweeping and gesturing until the photographer dug her in the ribs. The photographer was talking with the money-changer, his fiancée, when the plump girl came to the hotel, so the journalist had had to bring her in himself, to keep the photographer's fiancée ignorant of this minor unfaithfulness; as a matter of fact the photographer had already made up his mind not to screw the plump girl so her very presence was pointless but she didn't know that yet; the journalist led her into the lobby and all the bellhops, maids, concierges and Ministry of Foreign Affairs underlings who just happened to be there watching him go in and out did not exactly stare him down in any unfriendly way but somehow conveyed that the world disapproved of this his latest action; he took the plump girl upstairs and made her comfortable and then the power went off so he found his headlamp. Just then the photographer came in, glum because his fiancée had not been fooled (probably because the plump girl had gone right up to the photographer as he stood at the money-changing stand and she'd squeezed his shoulder); then the English teacher and his friend knocked, and the party began which I have just described. The plump girl was starving. The photographer had promised to take her out to dinner. He'd already eaten. - Well, I really think you should do it, the journalist said. I feel kind of bad for her. - Tell her I'll take her out to any restaurant she wants, the photographer yawned to the English teacher who couldn't speak English. But tell her I'm very sick; tell her that after that I must rest. - The plump girl was giggling and the journalist played with her feet to make her laugh because the photographer was ignoring her and the photographer groaned: God, I'm tired. How did I ever get myself into this?

The English teacher (who did not always speak English) said: She is not a taxi girl.

She isn't? said the journalist in amazement.

Yes.

You're trying to tell me that she isn't a taxi girl?

Yes.

So why's she here?

Yes.

She comes to sleep with my friend?

Yes, sir, she sleep here, in hotel, with your friend.

And she wants him to give her money?

Maybe yes, she want money your friend.

Then if she sleeps with him for money, isn't she a taxi girl?

Yes. Yes, she is taxi girl.

That point having been cleared up and epistemologically grounded, the taxi girl who was not a taxi girl led everyone to the Hotel Pacific. She knew exactly where she wanted to go. She took them past the dancing girls going slowly aieeeeeyoo in the grid of flickering spots and before he knew it she'd brought them into a private room in the back where the waitress came at once, bearing menus in French with no prices — always a bad sign. The journalist sat thinking the same things he'd thought at noon, while the photographer slept and he lay staring up at the ceiling's fan and blue decaying paint, wondering whether Vanna had been there last night and he hadn't seen her or whether she'd been out fucking, whether she'd sold the gold bracelet yet, whether she wanted to see him again; she always seemed so sad and distant. - Meanwhile the plump girl ordered lobster and rice while everyone else got Tiger beer or Coke, and it was already five of eight, which meant that in five minutes the journalist's new English learner was due at the Hotel Asie to go with him to the disco to interpret for him with his now possibly never to be seen again Vanna; this same slender boy in the high-collared white shirt was the one who'd written out at the journalist's dictation that letter suitably transposed into Khmer which described the journalist's truest feelings. - Well, it felt quite jolly to be racing back for this new appointment even though his balls ached. The plump girl, pouting, said she'd see him tomorrow -

No, sir (the boy interpreted), I'm sorry; she's not here today.

Then she came like a ghost in the darkness, smelling like her sickly-sweet face powder, giving him for awhile her triangular face, and he had to concentrate too hard on everything to be happy but he knew that later on when he had time to remember he'd be happy, and she sat beside him and he slipped her ten thousand riels under the table, a middling stack of money which she made vanish; then the photographer showed up with the English teacher and the English teacher's friend, saying that he'd given the plump girl the slip but she'd be back tomorrow, and here came the photographer's girl, the same one that he'd dropped before Battambang, and the photographer was saying: Now, do you think my fiancee's gone home yet? I can't bring this one back to the hotel until she does. .

Can I buy you a beer before I go? said the journalist to the new interpreter.

But, sir, I have not had any supper! the boy whined.

The journalist started to despise the boy then. He'd showed up uninvited at lunch time; the photographer had yelled: Fuck off! Screw! — but the journalist had said: All right, if you want to come to lunch you can come to lunch, but you have to pay for yourself. . and then the photographer said: Aw, you can't make him pay for his own meal; the kid's probably got no money… — and so they'd taken him out, handing the waiter rubber-banded blocks of hundred-riel notes that smelled like mildew; it was after lunch that the journalist had gotten him to write the love letter, a commission he'd fulfilled in beautiful script, even folding the sheet of paper as delicately as if he'd studied origami, so the journalist had been grateful, but this request to be bought dinner at a rip-off place was too much, especially with Vanna waiting to be taken home; he told the boy he'd buy him a beer and a dance but that was that. He was already on his feet following Vanna out. She never wanted to take his hand in public. She walked the way that many a lady walked with her tray of wares balanced between right shoulder and upturned palm, the conical hat hanging from the crook of the other elbow; those vendeuses walked in an effortless-seeming way because there was only one thing for them to do and so they had to do it; without any tray or cone-hat Vanna walked the same way, specialized and powerless. Now he was behind her on the motorbike, telling the driver: Hotel Asie. . and they were speeding toward that lobby of spies where everyone waited to frown upon his latest activities, and Vanna paid the driver two hundred from the money he'd given her. .

As soon as he'd closed the door of the room behind them he gave her the love letter, and she sat down to read it. (I have one sure rule for you, one of his friends said to him much later, when he told the friend about her. The rule is this: Whatever you think she's thinking, you're going to be wrong.) It took her half an hour to read the letter. He saw her lips moving three times or more over each word. Then he saw that instead of explaining himself to her and making the situation easier, he'd only set her another ordeal. But he had to know. He had to know! He gave her pen and paper and waited, drinking her in like the kids did clutching the grating of the Muslim restaurant, peering in at the video wide-eyed like beggars while the bicycles crossed silently behind them in the empty sunlight and they stretched their necks to see better and nosed the grating and held the grating tighter. . She smiled anxiously. She strained over her writing, sounding out every letter in her whisper-sweet passionless voice. Then she crossed out what she'd written — only a single word — and turned the page. She tried again and again. Finally she had three or four lines for him. It had taken her twenty minutes. The next day he got his government interpreter to translate, and the man laughed and said: But it is all together like nothing, all these words! She does not know how to write! I cannot, I. . uh, she say, uh, that she watch you very carefully the first time, and she is very happy with your letter, her happiness, uh, beyond compare.

The English teacher translated: Thank you when I wrote letter to sent to you I'm please so much. It hasn't find to as.

The English teacher's friend translated: Thank you when I write letter to you I'm very glad. It nothing to say.

She was so slender, like a thin hymen of flesh stretched over bones; he could feel her every rib under his palm. Her long brown nipples did not excite him, but enriched his tenderness. She held his hand all night. In the morning she turned away from him with a sour face; she didn't want him to walk her out. .

That same morning the photographer had said as before: I'd sure like to hop on her. Why don't you send her over here for a minute?

I don't think she'd like that, the journalist said levelly.

When she left, she sounded out the syllables of farewell one by one, and as always it seemed the first time that he had ever heard her speak: — Bai-bai.

He had lain beside her thinking she was already asleep and touched her hand but at once her fingers closed around his very tightly. He began to play with her but she was still. He touched her cunt but she kept her legs closed. So he patted her and rolled over to sleep. Suddenly she was smiling and slapping his butt. Pretty soon he was pointing to his dick and her cunt and she was nodding and he got out the K-Y jelly -

That afternoon the Vietnamese girl came back for one more try; since the photographer was paying no attention to her and the journalist felt sorry for her she started smiling at him and his heart ached because he couldn't help her but by now those feelings were nothing personal. After awhile she got into a cyclo and went away. The English teacher said proudly: I tell her you no want her, because she Vietnamese! Rob you, steal you, Vietnamese no good! I no like!

The English teacher was so happy, knowing he'd done the right thing like a pet cat that brings you a bloody screaming bird in his jaws…

Back to the disco, with the photographer and the English teacher. He had a sinking feeling of what's the use. He always dreaded going there. - So! he said. You have a good day today? — The English teacher looked at him. - Everything good for you today? — Yes, the English teacher said. - They sat in the loud hot darkness, waiting for her to see him and find him. Drunken monsters grinned at them like the green sun-frogfaces in temples that waited to swallow the moon at eclipses; would the moon come out on the left side or the right side? — that would determine the harvest. Maybe something in the way those faces drank blackness would determine whether she'd come or not, but the photographer would say that that was all bullshit, and it was; the photographer was always right. The photographer's girl had come right away with loud cries of delight. For some reason he thought of the rubber-band game that the children played on street corners, shooting elastics from a distance to try to strike other elastics and win them. What did his game mean? Across the table, the photographer and his girl were drinking something canned, probably carbonated water or cream soda; in the disco you always had to order something. The journalist had a Tiger beer; he bought the English teacher who didn't speak English a Tiger beer. .

She came like a ghost, looking at him.

She say she's busy with another guest, the boy said. Do you want her to come to your bedroom, sir?

Oh, I dunno, said the journalist despondently. Let me think about it.

He sat there and the waiter came back and he said: Tiger beer.

He took one sip that he didn't want and said: Tell her it's OK. Tell her she doesn't have to come. Tell her I'll say goodbye.

Eyes bulging, the English teacher repeated this information in a voice of machine-gun command. Or maybe he said something entirely different. That was the beauty of it.

She said something to the English teacher, who said: She is very happy to have meeting you.

Well, the journalist thought or tried to think, that's it. Really it's just as well. .

… as Vanna came to him and gave him something wrapped up neatly in a square of paper, and again he had a sinking feeling, believing that she was returning his letter, and it seemed right and fair but also very sad, and then because she was still standing there he opened it to learn that it was something very different, lines of Khmer written very neatly (possibly professionally) with loops, wide hooks, spirals, heart-shaped squiggles, everything rounded and complicated, flowing on indecipherably.

The English teacher said: She go to get free from customer.

OK, he said -

He was happy and amazed. He sat there and the English teacher sat with him.

She came back and said something to the English teacher, who said: She will go home now to dress. Please wait for her. She return in twenty minutes. She come for you.

She comes for me at the hotel?

Yes, said the English teacher.

He took the English teacher outside and sat him down in the light outside an apartment building. He asked him to translate. The English teacher looked at the letter for a long time. Then he said: I will tell you only the highlights. .

Please tell me everything. Can you write for me everything? Then I go to the hotel to wait for her.

The English teacher wrote: Dear my friend.

She comes for me at the hotel?

Yes.

The English teacher wrote: It's for a long time wich you went to Bat dorn Bang provinc by keep me alone. I miss you very much and I worry to you.

She comes for me at the hotel?

The hotel? said the English teacher in surprise. No. She — she arrive for you at disco. .

He rushed back across the street while the English teacher sat translating. The doorway to the disco was very crowded. As he tried to enter, a man stuck out a leg, and he clambered over it. Another man pressed a glowing cigarette against the thigh of his pants. He pushed the hand and cigarette away, and brushed off the sparks, which were already half quelled by sweat. The photographer and his girl were still there, drinking Tiger beers at the same hot sticky table, while the music pounded indistinctly through the dripping air that stank of ghosts and sweat and lust and fear and unhappiness.

Has she come back? he said.

No, said the photographer. The photographer's girl looked at him owlishly from under the photographer's arm.

Tell her I'll be waiting right across the street, he said.

The English teacher had translated: I think that maybe you was abandoned from Kambodia & not told me.

Why can you write so much better than you can speak?

Yes, the English teacher said.

She wouldn't ride in front of him on the motorbike anymore. She made them ride separately and pay both drivers. Had people been torturing her too much, or was she just lazy? His driver paralleled hers, so that all the way back to the hotel he could watch her sit side-saddle on the bike, gripping some handle between her legs, her clown-pale face almost a toy, smiling like a happy mask.

He was desperate to know what her letter said. It was so hard not to be able to talk with her. He wondered if she'd had to pay someone to write the letter for her, or whether they'd done it for nothing.

He held her, and when the photographer came in and turned on the light, he saw that she'd fallen asleep smiling at him.

The letter said:

Dear my friend.

It's for a long limes wich you went lo Bai dorn Bang

provinc by keep me alone. I miss you very much and I

worry to you. I think that maybe you was abandoned

from Kambodia & not told me.

Since you were promiss to meet you at hotel I

couldn't went because Ican'l lislen your language. So

you forgive me please. In fact I was still to love you

and honestly with you for ever.

After day which I promissed with you I had hard

sickness, and I solt braslet wich you was bought for me.

So you forgive me.

When will you go your country. Will you come

here againt? And you must come Cambodia don't

forget I was still loves you for ever.

In final I wish you to meet the happiness and loves

me for ever, I wish you every happiness and loves me

for good.

Signature, love VANNA xxx

He sat rereading the letter under the rainy awning where the cyclo drivers sat drinking their tea from brown ceramic teapots with bird-shapes on them; they recounted their skinny stacks of riels as lovingly as he retold her words to himself; they rubbed their veined skinny brown legs; and he thought: Am I so far beyond them in soul and fortune that I can spend my time worrying about love, or am I just so far gone?

After a quarter-hour the rain stopped, and the cyclo drivers took the sheets of plastic off their cabs and dumped masses of water out of them. The proprietor of the café brought them their bills. The Khmer Rouge had put his family to work near Battambang. They'd beaten his wife and three children to death with steel bars because they couldn't work quickly enough. He had seen and heard their skulls crunch. They did it to them one by one, to make the terror and agony stretch out a little longer. They'd smashed in the baby's head first; then they deflowered his four-year-old daughter; then it was his seven-year-old son's turn to scream and smash like a pumpkin and spatter his parents with blood and bone. They saved the mother for last so that she could see her children die. The proprietor was a good worker; they had nothing against him. He knew that if he wept, though, they'd consider him a traitor. He had never wept after that. His owl-eyes were wide and crazy as he fluttered around the café exchanging bread and tea for money. He was like a mayfly in November. And the journalist thought: Given that any suffering I might have experienced is as nothing compared to his, does that mean I'm nothing compared to him? Is he greater than I in some very important way? — Yes. - So is there anything I can do for him or give him to demonstrate my recognition of the terrible greatness he's earned?

But the only thing that he could think of to help the man or make him happy was death, and the man had refused that.

Then he thought about giving the man money, and then he thought: Yes, but Vanna is as important as he is. And because she loves me and I love her, she is more important.

As for tragedies (which were a riel a dozen in Cambodia), what about the circular white scars on her brown back, put there forever by the Khmer Rouge when as a child she couldn't carry earth to the rice field dykes fast enough? If he could have gotten into his hands the people who'd done that to her, he would have killed them.