Butterfly Stories

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Another boy who longed to learn English lured the journalist up lightless stairs to a lightless apartment which was empty except for a table, two chairs, and a wooden sleeping platform: six thousand riels a month. He took the journalist out to the terrace where they could look down on the yellow dome of the central market, bugeyed with terraces, bikes and motorbikes lined up in rows; and all the journalist could think was: The disco is on the other side; I wonder if Vanna is there… — But I have no good teacher, the boy whined; I have no money for good teacher… — and the journalist thought: Your obsession is no better or worse than mine. - When the boy's begging began to get under his skin, he went out into a new rainstorm, all the people laughing at him sweetly; a woman came running up with an umbrella to hold over him and he smiled and thanked her and then stuck his arms out wide into the rain and flew away, laughing so happily while she laughed; he splashed drenched through the street puddles, and, giving everyone his best thumbs-up, yelled: Number one!

At the base of the great bridge which the Khmer Rouge had destroyed almost twenty years ago now, during the Lon Nol time, were barber stands, which is to say greyish card tables and old chairs in which soldiers, police, cyclo drivers and others sat to have their hair snipped; the street was black with hair. A barber stropped his razor at a desk. There were little mirrors on the tables, and a styling poster. . On either side of barber's row was a cement well whose stairs were pancaked with excrement; there was no way to avoid stepping on it. The journalist ascended this stinking way and came out onto the bridge, which seemed very far above the wrinkled brown water with its thatch-roofed junks. The Khmer Rouge had done a good clean job, shearing through steel, concrete and asphalt to leave a squared-off edge of sunny air. Remembering this much later, he thought: Three steps, and I would have been with Vanna forever, even if she stayed alive… — But at the time he entertained no such designs because Vanna was present and urgent; he'd see her as soon as darkness came. .

Her hand and face were amazed at the ice cube tray in the freezer; he knocked a cube out for her and she crunched it happily between her teeth. She was finally laughing and smiling and going psssst!… - she finally trusted him; yes, she loves you, the interpreter said; she trusts you; you can see it in her eyes… — She lay in bed with him singing Khmer songs in a soft voice until the photographer, who was very ill, sat up in bed and started mimicking her in the ugliest way that he possibly could, and Vanna became silent.

The photographer had made a mess of things. He'd bought everyone a dictionary, but then he was too sick to be there when they made a banquet to thank him. He'd caught a fever from the journalist, who'd caught it from Vanna. . Then the money-changer saw him with two different women and cried her eyes out and hated him. . He'd made up with his girl at the disco, probably for the journalist's sake since the journalist was going to go there for Vanna no matter what; now the photographer's girl was weeping because the journalist was asking Vanna EVERYTHING (by means of the English teacher), while the photographer only lay there not caring whether she stayed or went — preferring, in fact, that she'd go, because the photographer knew it was only a matter of time before he had to puke, and anyway Cambodia wasn't exactly his country the way Thailand was; the girls here didn't attract him as much, and everyone seemed so docile and lazy to him whereas he only respected people like his next door neighbor in San Francisco whom he'd caught pissing in the hall and the photographer started yelling at him but the neighbor only swung round his bleary terrible face and shouted: Next time I'll shit on your head! and then the photographer had to forgive and admire him; his girl in Cambodia didn't do that, not quite; and when the time came to send her away forever because they were leaving for Thailand early next morning, the girl began to weep and grovel again, soaking his knees with tears, clinging to him; it was horrible to see her; as affectionately as he could, the journalist kissed her hand goodbye. .

THE END