The Lost Goddess

19

Chemda gathered a sheet around herself, backing up to the bed, calling out:

“Jake, what is it? What?”

The figure at the window shrank away as Jake walked across and pressed his face to the glass.

He scanned. His eyes absorbed: a fire escape, metal walkways, stairs, the shadows of jackfruit trees. And there—a Khmer man, hiding in a corner, nervous yet staring out, a pleading expression on his face.

There was something deeply strange about him. He had a hat on, a red fleecy baseball cap. In this heat?

Jake wasn’t scared now: the man didn’t look frightening, just eerie and furtive. Flinging on some clothes and finding the back door of the apartment took half a minute; Jake stepped out onto the shade and heat of the fire escape.

The Khmer man was still there, in grimy overalls, old shoes, that peculiar cap. As Jake approached, the man shrank farther into the shadowed and dusty corner.

“It’s OK,” said Jake. “It’s OK.”

This was ludicrous, it was not OK. The man had been staring in at the window when they were having sex, a leering expression on his awkward face: he was a peeping Tom, he was deviant. But as Jake neared the trembling Khmer man, he began to feel pity; he couldn’t help it, this disheveled figure was so weedy, so pitiable, like a street urchin unfed for a week.

Chemda had dressed and joined them on the hot shadowed walkway. The jackfruit trees kept the direct glare of the sun off the metal, but the ambient dry-season heat smothered everyone, like a hot blanket, like an arbitrary punishment they all had to suffer.

She spoke in Khmer to the man. He mumbled incoherently, not even words. He pointed to his mouth and shook his head. She murmured, “I’ve no idea what he is… who he is. But maybe harmless.”

Again the man pointed to his mouth and shook his head.

But Jake understood.

“You can’t talk, can you? You’re mute?”

The man nodded.

“But,” Jake continued, “you can understand English?”

He nodded again, this time vigorously. Then he reached into the pocket of his overalls and pulled out something. Jake flinched, but it was just a small notebook and a stubby pencil. The man was writing in the pad, awkwardly using his knee as support. The little scene exuded sadness.

A glance was swapped between Chemda and Jake. Her dark eyes were wide with mystification.

The man had finished his scribbling. He tore out the note and handed the paper over. Jake took it and read.

The English was good. This was bizarre. He showed the note to Chemda and she asked:

“How do you know such good English? Why can’t you talk?”

The man’s eyes moistened; for a second they seemed to fill with a memory of tears. Jake felt the surge of pity again, the stifling, discomfiting pity.

Another note was rapidly scrawled. Jake snatched it from the man’s hand.

“What experiment?” Jake said. “It left you speechless?”

The janitor, Ponlok, nodded — morosely. And then he slowly reached up to his cap and pulled it off.

A hideous scar lurked beneath. But it wasn’t just a scar, it was also a kind of concavity in the upper forehead. As if the skull had slightly caved in, as if a chunk of brain had been removed, then the skull had cratered — though the skin had grown over.

It was horrible, and it was pitiable. The damage was so bad the hair had refused to grow back, the livid pink scar left naked in its strange hollow. No wonder the poor guy wore a cap.

The small Khmer man put the cap back on and cast his eyes to the floor, like a child ashamed of bedwetting.

Jake swore, quietly. He was thinking of the skulls and the bones on the Plain of Jars. The skulls with holes in the same place. Jake remembered the old Cambodian prophecy: Only the deaf and the mute will survive.

The first intimations of a narrative glimmered in Jake’s mind.

Chemda had taken over the interrogation.

“Why did the Khmer Rouge do this to you?”

“When did they do this?”

“Did you volunteer to have this done to you?”

“Do you know where this happened?”

Chemda said nothing, her expression spoke of confusion. Another note:

“What?”

Amid the strangeness, Jake could understand that bit of the story. He’d never felt such pity. To have your brain opened up, to be turned into this shrinking, deformed, helpless leftover man? Like an experimental rat, with little pieces of your mind thrown in the trash.

Grotesque.

Chemda gazed at the man.

“Tell me what?”

The next note took a long time to write. Jake stood in the heat, trickles of sweat down his back. This man knew who they were, even this wretched specimen of a man had identified them. It was hopeless: everywhere, everyone was watching. The fucking jackfruit trees were watching them. It seemed there was no shade in the entire country. Everywhere was exposed to the heat and the danger.

The sweat ran down his back like those tickling claws of the scorpion, the tickle of fear on his spine. He wanted to get back inside the apartment.

At last the note was handed over.

Chemda insisted: “I want to see this place. Now.”

“Wait—” Jake put a restraining hand on her soft bare shoulder. She was in a midnight-blue undershirt. Her skin was dark and lovely. He could still remember her naked, crouched over him, the man staring through the window.

“Can we trust him?”

Chemda shook her head, frustratedly; Jake whispered in her ear.

“I know he has information, Chem, and I know I feel sorry for him, but look at him! And he might go straight to your grandfather. And he was standing at the window.”

Ponlok was waiting, like a lowly servant, a man used to being ordered around, used to abuse and disdain. The Khmer Rouge had turned him into a serf.

Chemda replied, her voice hushed.

“He was just coming to see us! Hnh? He wasn’t doing anything. And whatever happened to this poor man”—she gestured at Ponlok—“happened to my grandmother. He may be able to help, to tell us. I want to know more. This is our chance. And besides, he’s seen us now, we have to do something. Ah. We need to win him over, make sure he doesn’t go to my grandfather.”

She was right. And if she wanted to know about her grandmother’s fate, he could hardly argue.

“If you want I’ll go alone with him,” said Chemda. “You can stay here.”

“Are you kidding?”

A minute later they were climbing down the fire escape, following the small, slightly limping Khmer man in his fleecy cap.

A hundred meters and two alleyways brought them to a slightly busier street. A spirit house stood on the corner, with offerings of dark fish sauce in little egg cups.

Jake waited, and listened. Chemda was explaining to Ponlok: why the janitor should keep this very quiet, that no one should know she and Jake were here, not even her grandfather. Even as he tuned in, Jake felt sure this plan was not going to work; it was too much of a risk, they couldn’t trust Ponlok. As soon as this immediate and ghastly task was done, they would have to leave, flee Phnom Penh entirely. Run away into the countryside.

But where the hell could they go?

Jake stared down the leafy suburban road, looking west, away from the sun: thinking of escape routes, places they could hide. He stared, and a brush of horror made him jerk, like an icy hand had been suddenly pressed to the back of his neck.

He realized where they were. The hulking, grimy concrete building at the end of the road was unmistakable. So that’s why he had recognized the area.

Tuol Sleng.

They were right by Tuol Sleng, the notorious Khmer Rouge prison.

At the end of the road Jake could see a bus, decanting tourists. People doing the Holocaust Tour. Jake had done it himself, when he’d first arrived in PP. He’d seen the iron beds where people were flayed with electric cables; he’d seen the bleak and fetid concrete cells where women and children were raped with batons, or tied down, screaming as their living organs were removed, in live dissections. Tuol Sleng. The Hill of the Poison Tree. S-21.

Seventeen thousand went through Tuol Sleng alone. And twelve survived.

Just twelve survivors, out of seventeen thousand.

Another note from Ponlok. The janitor handed it to Jake.

He was guiding them away from the torture garden. Jake felt a brief frisson of relief: they were ducking away from the busyness and tourist police of Tuol Sleng.

But where were they going? Ponlok was heading down an alley, wet with rotting fruit and slimy, bulging garbage bags. The alley curved, then curved back on itself, and narrowed to a long, roofless concrete passageway where they had to climb the undulating heaps of trash.

Jake’s eyes stung, irritated by the reek and pollution. An empty Royal Ginseng beer bottle seethed with flies; a smear of banana skin stuck to his jeans. Chemda put a hand to her nose to block the stench.

It was a grisly ascent, led by Ponlok, whose farcical cap had slipped, showing his scar. Jake tried not to wince, to show his open repulsion. The old man was muttering as he guided them through the spoil and dreck. This maze of rubbish.

At length the caging walls opened out, and they descended. A dead dog lay prone at the edge of the trash heaps. It was, unaccountably, smoldering. A small fire had been set in the dog’s head, like an experiment. Jake looked away, and looked ahead.

The alley culminated in a very dead end: a patch of earth and rubble, and a shattered concrete building. On the face of it, this was just another of Phnom Penh’s many, many ruins. But this was no derelict slum, no gutted hovel. This was S-37.

It was surrounded by bamboo stands and high grasses and modest hillocks of glittering and discarded auto parts. Hubcaps and shattered glazing. The building was roofless, and the size of a large one-car garage. A sinister iron bed frame stood in the middle, rusting away.

Two metal cupboards sat next to it, the drawers flung open and empty. Only an ancient, grimy, very broken syringe, lying on the floor, showed that this place might once have had some medical significance.

Chemda spoke: “This is where they did the experiments?”

Yes.

The man was trembling again, glancing at Chemda, looking at her bare legs. Jake wished, suddenly, that she had worn jeans, not the short blue skirt.

Chemda stared at the note.

“Other people? My family? Who else?”

The note fell from her hand to the floor. She was visibly and entirely shocked, her mouth trembling. Jake went to touch her, but she waved him away.

Jake turned to ask the janitor another question.

“How do you know?”

But Ponlok wasn’t listening, he was staring at Chemda’s legs. He moved closer to Chemda, then stopped. He trembled, quivered, riven with some internal conflict. At last he scribbled a note and handed it to Jake.

“What? Make you what?”

Again Ponlok stooped to his notepad. Jake could see the man’s hand, trembling. His scrawny hand shook as he scribbled. The note was handed Jake’s way.

“Like what? Ponlok? What?”

Ponlok stared directly at Jake, his sad old eyes filled with not-quite-human tears. The sadness of a dying hound, a beaten animal. A suffering creature. A mute creature, not quite evolved.

Ponlok’s mouth moved. Was he chewing? Spitting? What? With a shudder of helpless disgust, Jake realized Ponlok was trying to speak.

“Shhor… Kmmu…”

It was impossible. Jake shook his head.

“Sorry. I don’t understand.”

Ponlok tried again: “Mevv… kmm.”

Chemda stepped close. She put a hand on Ponlok’s thin old shoulder.

“Please. Write it.”

The old man gazed at her, the silence held among the three of them, awkwardly, and then he obeyed. He stooped to his notepad one more time. As he wrote, he dribbled. The line of spit from his mouth was shameless and silvery. Laboriously, the janitor wrote his note, with a talonlike hand. Then he moved closer to Chemda and his mouth whirred as he put a hand on her arm. He was stroking her. Pleading. Pleading like he needed feeding. The other hand held the note. Chemda took it and gave it to Jake, shrugging.

The scrawl was so shaky, it took Jake a few seconds to decipher the words. At last he made sense of the spidery writing.

“What does that mean? Ponlok? What does—”

Too late, Jake realized the danger. Ponlok was already on Chemda, and moving fast. The janitor grabbed her bare legs. She screamed. But the old man had pushed her over, and down, and shoved his hand inside her skirt. Drooling on her neck.

Instantly, Jake grabbed the Khmer man by the arms, pulling him off, tearing at his dirty collar, pulling out fistfuls of hair; but then Jake felt a wild flash of metal across his forehead.

A knife. Ponlok had produced a huge knife from somewhere, he’d swiveled and slashed, slicing Jake hard across the face. The quivering cur of a man was transformed into something powerful.

The pain was momentarily blinding. Jake staggered and gasped. The blood was gushing from his forehead; frantic and angry, he wiped it away, and stared through the crimson pain.

Ponlok was on top of Chemda. Her panties were torn and they were dangling from an ankle. The janitor was unzipping himself, but the other hand was tightly holding the knife, pressing it hard against Chemda’s throat, so hard it was whitening the dark skin of her neck. Chemda’s eyes blazed in terror, staring at Jake.

Help me.

Jake stood, frozen with exquisite indecision. One slash of that brutal knife could kill Chemda.

But the Khmer man was going to rape her. In front of him. On the grimy concrete floor of S-37.