The Lost Goddess

13

“Hell of a story,” said Tyrone. “Hell of a story.”

“I guess.”

“I’m serious.” Tyrone lifted his beer bottle. “Dude, you’re on your way. Nail this one, and you could make your name.”

They were drinking on the top floor of the FCC, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, in Phnom Penh. The top floor extended to a terrace that stared out over the Tonle Sap river, sluggishly reflecting a fat and queasy moon. Beneath them the clattering lamplit riverside boulevard was full of motos and cyclos and taxis; and jingling snail sellers and wandering tourists and unemployed tuk-tuk drivers arguing over rancid glasses of palm wine.

Jake had been back in the chaos of the city just three hours. It was only twenty-four hours since they had crossed the border into Thailand. From there they had walked for two hours into a village, then got a cyclo to a taxi, caught a taxi to Chiang Rai. Then jumped on a plane to Phnom Penh.

He stared around: the FCC was its normal, comfortable, languid, semicolonial self, with its yellow shutters and overhead fans and wicker chairs. Journalists were talking with UN workers, photographers were boozing with bohemian locals.

But it had changed; or Jake had changed. By rights he knew he should be exhausted, but he wasn’t. Why? Maybe he was pumped with adrenaline, and maybe he was still energized by the fear, and the unforgettable horror. The dead baby swinging from the rafters, with the little milky eyes. It was impossible to forget that.

He was being tapped. Tyrone was rapping him on the knee with the butt of his bottle.

“Dreamboy. You OK?”

He snapped out of his reverie.

“I think so. It’s just — you know. It was pretty unnerving. And the mystery goes on. It’s freaking me out.”

“Uh huh.”

“You’ve been through all this, Ty. Bosnia. Darfur. Chechnya. You’ve been in danger. It resonates for a while, right?”

“It does. Dude, you have to let yourself down. Or you could drink it away. Or do some number four.”

“I’m done with drugs, I want answers.”

“Shame. It worked for me, till it fucked me up. China white heroin, like Himalayan snow. Ahh.” Tyrone slugged the last of his Angkor: “Où sont les neiges d’antan?”

Jake had heard this spiel before, Ty romancing the powders; he diverted their dialogue onto more useful territory. He urgently wanted explanations.

“So, please, what do you think of it all. The jars, everything?”

“Obviously the Lao government was very keen to get this research — Chemda’s project — aborted.”

“Agreed.”

“The Commie Lao, the Pathet Lao, they are still in power up there. And if they did anything dodgy in Laos back in the seventies, they’ll wanna keep it under wraps, even now.”

“Again, agreed.”

Tyrone sat back, his empty beer bottle in hand.

“So that’s your answer. The government put the frighteners on the two professors. Scared them, menaced their families. Yet these poor historians were also getting pressure from the Cambodian government, and the UN, and KR victims, to do the right thing.” Tyrone accepted another Angkor lager from the waiter, and continued. “No wonder they folded: pressure from all sides. Sounds like your ass-over-tit guy got so shit-scared he killed himself, no other way out, especially when he found out the jars had been rediscovered. But, like you say, he did it in a way that sent you a message, the draining-blood stuff, a Tuol Sleng torture. He was telling you that it was the Communists that were pressuring him. A final despairing signal.”

“Yes, my thoughts completely, that has to be it. But… Chemda isn’t quite so sure it’s suicide.”

“Well, I think you’re right. But what happened up there back in ’76, anyway? Madness. And the dead fucking baby hanging on the coat rack? What’s that about?! What kind of fucking hotel is this? Maybe they do that to all the guests, as a welcome gesture. Like a chocolate on the pillow—”

Tyrone was laughing at his own black humor. Jake was not laughing; he was wholly unnerved.

“But Ty, why didn’t they just deport us, why did they let us go into Ponsavan—”

Black mosquitoes buzzed between them. Tyrone flicked the air with an irritated hand and speculated: “Say they were planning to kick you out, but you went straight to the jars. Possible. And of course the Lao cops were well aware who Chemda was, by then. A Sovirom. Not a family to mess with easily. If it had just been you — they would probably have taken you down to the basement and got all Torquemada on your ass.”

Jake sat back. It was true. He had been saved, paradoxically, by Chemda. She had led him into danger and then saved him. And the thought of Chemda stirred his anxieties further. He had told her, on the plane, Pang’s backstory of her grandmother: she had reacted quite calmly, or just wearily. But with flickers of sadness and puzzlement.

And he knew that she was right now confronting her family, down the road, in their large villa, beyond the vast, ugly concrete pagodas of the Cambodiana Hotel: telling them everything. Did they already know? What would they say? Jake checked his watch again. He thought of calling her. But maybe he should wait for her to call him.

Tyrone had guessed his thoughts.

“Ahhh… Missing her already? Bless.” The American smiled. “Jake and Chemda, sitting in a tree.”

Jake attempted a dismissive and nonchalant laugh, and failed. He couldn’t fake it. He knew there was truth in Tyrone’s implication: he was deeply drawn to Chemda, already. And their lives were now entangled by what they had been through.

Tyrone leaned forward, cynical yet smiling, like a conspiring cardinal.

“You want some advice?”

“No.”

“Just be careful. Be careful with this girl. That is one powerful fucking family. You get involved with Chemda, and you’re involved with the entire clan, Teks and Soviroms. Especially her grandfather.”

“Sovirom Sen. You’ve met him?”

Tyrone affirmed. “Just once or twice, embassy parties. Y’know. He is tough, very smart, and has that old-school charm. Same as the Khmer Rouge leaders.”

“Come again? The Khmer Rouge… charming?”

“It’s true.”

“Not a word I’d associate with mass murderers—”

Tyrone lifted a hand.

“Remember. I have interviewed some of these men. KR leaders. It’s actually a pretty unsettling experience. Because, like it or not, they do have this wit, this intellectual wit, and very good manners.” He tilted his beer bottle and drank, and elaborated. “Guess it’s the background, the old-world culture. Pol Pot was a dullard, a mediocrity, a functionary like Himmler with, I dunno, a weird gift for management — and killing. But lots of them went to the best schools here and the best universities in Paris. So they can quote Baudelaire and Rimbaud and Byron, they tell intellectual jokes and they know about Schubert. It’s most fucking unnerving, ’cause you’re sitting there, thinking, Jesus, this bastard helped run maybe the most evil government in history, his government used to crucify people and burn them at the same time. Yet he is making me smile, he is interesting.”

“And Grandfather Sen is like this?”

“A touch. Upper middle class, Chinese Cambodian. His wife was true royalty, I think….” Tyrone paused. “And then there’s his daughter, Madame Tek. Oh wow. Let’s not forget your potential mother in law.” Tyrone was chortling. “She may be three inches high, she could probably run under a weasel, but man. These little Khmer women, they wai and scrape and make your noodles, but you cross them, just once?” He did a scissoring gesture. “Snip.”

Jake winced. Tyrone snatched up a menu.

“Hey, I’m hungry. Aren’t you? Must be. You’ve probably been eating bees for a few days, no? In Laos? You gotta love that variety.” Tyrone turned to the attendant waiter. “Burger, please. Rare. Properly rare. Aw kohn!”

“I’ll have the… the pad thai. Whatever. Thanks. Aw kohn.” Jake handed the menu to the waiter, who executed a wai, then returned to the kitchen.

Tyrone was quiet for a moment, then he turned to Jake.

“There’s one other thing that worries me. Your story.”

“Yes?”

“One bit you skipped over.”

“What?”

Tyrone spoke quietly. The moon was sickly yellow in the sky behind him.

“Jake. You say those police cars coming after you — one of them hit a bomb or a mine.”

“Yes.”

“And possibly some cops were thrown, maybe injured — even killed?”

“I’m not sure. I saw one of them stumble out. Jesus. Jesus Christ… of course—”

The ugly reality dawned on Jake, like he’d woken to a nasty breakfast. The police car that exploded. Now he dwelled on it, conceptually, for a moment — it was obvious. Trouble. Serious trouble. They wouldn’t just let this go. Would they?

Tyrone summed it up: “Maybe a cop died, maybe he didn’t, but that’s serious. Add it to the doctor’s death — murder or suicide — and you have a very serious incident. Perhaps the Lao government will forget about the problem, rather than publicize it.” He squinted at Jake. “That is possible. But maybe they won’t just forget it. They could go through the Cambodian authorities, ask them to arrest you. Or someone might just quietly tell someone… who hires someone. Maybe you should watch your back on Monivong Boulevard.”

The scorpion of fear scuttled down Jake’s collar, under his shirt, and down his spine. He shivered at the sensation. Red-haired, war-chewed old Tyrone McKenna was surely right. Watch your back on Monivong.

Jake stood. He felt ill at ease again, very ill at ease.

“I need a leak.”

Turning on a heel, he crossed the bar to the toilets. He unzipped and sighed, and gazed anxiously out the bathroom window at the river. On both riverbanks, people were out walking. Poor families were frying eggs in braziers on patches of scruffy grass. Bonfires burned. The squid sellers hawked their racks of dried translucent squid. Dried and swaying, like the kun krak.

Jake felt the scorpion move under his shirt. The fear. This city: it always got to him. He found Phnom Penh addictive in its anarchy and energy and exoticism, but it was also a truly harrowing city. Menacing by day and haunted at all times. A city spooked by an unknown future — and a tragic and appalling past.

Down there on those crowded boulevards, on Monivong and Sisowath and National Highway 5, the Khmer Rouge had marched two million townspeople, out of the city, in two sunburned days in April 1975: they had cleared the whole capital as soon as they had won the civil war. People were tipped from hospital beds and forced to walk. The elderly who stumbled were left to dehydrate in the gutter. Children were lost in the chaos and never found again. The capital city was emptied, society was deconstructed, all was dissolved. Two days.

They even blew up the central bank, destroying all the money in the country, sending banknotes and government bonds flying into the shattered streets. The banknotes hung for weeks from the wilting jacaranda trees, like old confetti. Money was officially useless. And then the Khmer Rouge sent the nation into slavery, and they worked and starved a quarter of the population to death, and bludgeoned half a million more. Killing their own parents, their own sons, their own brothers, their own families. Devouring themselves in an orgy of self-harm. The nation that hated itself. The nation that killed itself.

His phone was ringing. It was Chemda.

Her voice was an urgent whisper.

“I got a call from Agnès, in Luang.”

“And?”

“One of the hotel workers, a bellboy. He confessed. He put the things in our rooms.”

“But why—”

“He was told to do it. The smoke babies were ordered, by the kra, the Neang Kmav of Skuon.”

“The who? Who is that?”

The line hissed and deadened for a moment. “Sorry, Jake. I—” The voice was gone, then it returned. “My mother is crying. The whole family is in chaos. Have to go — maybe I can call you back—”

The call ended. Jake waited for a moment, and another moment, and nothing happened. Slipping the phone into his pocket, he returned to his bar stool. His plate of pad thai was sitting on the table. Tyrone was already assaulting his burger. Jake picked up his knife and fork, but he didn’t feel remotely hungry anymore. His stomach was full of fluttering nerves. He had already dined, too much, on fear and angst.

He told Tyrone what Chemda had told him. Tyrone stopped eating.

“The Neang Kmav of Skuon?”

“What? What is the Kmav? What is Skuon?”

Tyrone looked atypically rattled. “Skuon is a small town near here. They eat spiders there. Tarantulas.”

“What?”

“And the Neang Kmav is the Black Lady, a notorious fortune-teller who lives there.” Tyrone was shaking his head. “It sounds like a stupid cartoon, but that… that is bad news.”

“But—”

“She’s an extremely powerful sorceress, one of those Khmer witch doctors that gets hired by Thai generals, Malay sultans, Chinese billionaires. Jake, this is the spider witch of Skuon we’re talking about. The spider witch of Skuon.” He gazed at Jake’s frightened face. “Hey. Chillax. At least if she turns you into a frog it will make a good headline.”