The Lost Goddess

30

The blow didn’t come. He waited. Still nothing. Khmer voices rose to a clamor, more voices: many voices, shouts even. Jake opened his eyes, looked left: beside him the soldier was still wielding the rusty iron bar, ready to execute him and Rittisak. But the iron bludgeon was hanging, unused, and the soldier himself was gazing offstage, with a distinctly nervous expression.

Why?

Villagers, at least a hundred of them, coming down the path from the main road, shouting and yelling and clutching ugly long knives and hatchets and machetes and old Russian rifles. Even pitchforks.

He glanced Chemda’s way, the tiny fledgling of hope in his heart. Chemda had shrugged off the uncertain grasp of her captors, and she was marching to greet the mob. Despite her ragged flip-flops and her muddy skirt and her dirty hair, she still looked like a Khmer princess, bold, proud, self-possessed: she was talking with the villagers, they were smiling at her, waving their fists in triumph and anger, gesturing furiously at the soldiers: the captors.

They were being rescued. The would be executioner dropped his cudgel to the ground and backed away. Raucous shouts apparently demanded that Jake and Rittisak be unhandcuffed.

The youngest soldier nodded, and humbly shuffled up, and turned a key behind Jake’s back.

He was uncuffed. Rubbing his raw wrists, he stood in the hot sun and stared at Chemda. The incense from the offerings to Pol Pot perfumed the smiles they exchanged, frightened smiles. Rittisak was also released. Jake crossed to Chemda’s side, walking around the low grave.

“Why…” He was almost muted by the reversal.

Chemda told him, “Your friend. He did this.”

“Tyrone?”

“Yes. Ah. So they say, these people. He has contacts here and he called them last night and asked them to help us, to watch out for us, and he said they should help us because of what I do.” She gestured at the triumphant crowd of Khmer peasants in their vests and kramas and dirty sandals.

“They know I am trying to get the Khmer Rouge imprisoned, and they want me to go on with my work. They want me to bring the tyrants to justice.” Her dark eyes looked up at his. A shine in the dark tropical depths of her eyes told of her emotion. “I thought they were going to kill you. Jake, I thought they were going to kill you.”

“Trust me,” said Jake, “so did I.”

So he had Tyrone to thank for his life. Of all people: laconic, selfish, hard-assed Tyrone McKenna. Jake felt a surge of love for his cynical friend, and he smiled at his own sentimentality.

But he was also swallowing the vinegary aftertaste of his intense fear. He breathed deep and long. His leg muscles were still weakened from the terror, and he felt like he might just crumple to his knees, right here and now, by Pol Pot’s graveside. He had been oddly calm, the moment that Death had approached, Death the dull functionary, Death who casually took his sister and his mother, Death the offhand commander of the killing fields.

But now he had survived, Jake was suffering the emotional aftershocks. Palpitations. The sweats. He tried to assert control over his own reflexes. Breathing deep.

A few meters away, the Khmer villagers were yelling at the soldiers, who were now silent and cowed. One of the locals walked up to the apparent leader of the squad and simply took the submachine gun from the soldier’s weakening hands.

The large eyes of the young Khmer soldier blinked rapidly, in anger or terror, or cowardly relief. But he did not move. He was rigid. Jake realized the soldiers were now, probably, in fear for their lives: outnumbered a hundred to one, caught by an entire village in the act of brutal, Khmer Rouge— style execution, in a region riven with loathing for the Khmer Rouge. The troopers knew they could die, any minute.

“We mustn’t let them kill them,” said Jake to Chemda. “The locals, they can’t kill the soldiers.”

Her face was contorted with disgust, but she nodded. “You’re right. Ah. They don’t deserve to live, but you are absolutely right. We need to be… inconspicuous.”

“And we’re still stuck, Chem. There’s no way we can just sneak down the ravine, not now, there are other policemen around—”

She shrugged impatiently. “So we’ll have to cross the border, at the official frontier.”

“No way. Come on. They’ll stop us and send us to Phnom Penh.”

Her frown was fierce. Jake gazed around at their rescuers. A possibility evolved in his mind.

“I have an idea. We could ask these people… to help? To come with us? With all of them we have a chance.”

Chemda didn’t even reply: she turned and she talked with the villagers. The villagers nodded and yelled, urgent and keen. And Chemda was smiling a half smile.

“They’re going to help.”

The crowd moved as one. Jake realized it was working. They were being escorted to the frontier. The soldiers were left behind, guarded and disarmed. The huge crowd of locals was now walking boldly up the burning sunlit road to the frontier, just a few hundred meters away.

As the mob approached the border, Jake saw the look of astonished alarm on the faces of the Khmer customs officers in their little glass kiosk. The officers had obviously been briefed to watch for escapees matching Chemda’s and Jake’s description; they had surely been told to stop them and arrest them at once, to prevent their crossing. But they obviously hadn’t expected Jake and Chemda to be accompanied by half of Anlong Veng.

What could five border policemen do against maybe a hundred angry people with knives, guns, and rusty machetes?

The crowd fell into an oddly solicitous silence as it met the white wooden boom that marked the Cambodian frontier. Jake saw the blue-and-red stripes of the Thai flag fluttering languidly from a flagpole, a hundred meters farther on; he saw Thai faces leaning to the window in the glass-and-steel office, observing the strange scene unfolding on the Khmer side of the border. Behind the Thai officers, he could just make out the kindly portrait of a bespectacled King Bumibhol of Siam, hanging on the wall.

Jake wiped the sweat from his eyes and assessed the situation. He knew they would have little trouble getting into Thailand. Their passports were in order: British and American citizens could enter Thailand freely and get a visa anytime.

But Jake and Chemda still had to cross the Khmer border first. Would his plan work?

The Cambodian officers inside their kiosk were making frantic phone calls. Two of the officers had guns drawn — the revolvers were laid significantly and blatantly on the counter before them. But the crowd, still ominously silent, moved closer, gathering around the kiosk. The sheer weight of numbers threatened to topple the little building; the sad little office, with its sad men inside, rattled and vibrated.

Victory came quick. The guards surrendered: behind their grimy panes of glass they did deep submissive bows, with their praying hands high above their heads: they were doing the high wai, the deep inferior samphae of total submission.

The fattest Cambodian border guard urgently beckoned Chemda and Jake to his little hatch, past the white barrier. His hands were shaking and sweat was dripping in long rivulets down his chubby, frightened face.

Wordless, he took their passports. He glanced at the crowd behind the barrier.

He stamped Chemda’s passport, he stamped Jake’s passport. With the same weak, unspeaking demeanor he waved them on. His face said, Just go, please. Go. Now.

But Jake lingered for a second, savoring the moment, this tiny refreshing moment of his victory, in all the recent tragedy of flight and defeat; Chemda walked over to Rittisak, who was smiling, at the front of the crowd. She hugged him.

Then she ran back and took Jake’s hand, and they walked the hundred meters of no man’s tarmac, to the bigger, glassier office on the Thai frontier.

“Sawadee kap!” said the Thai border guard. He glanced down at their passports. His smile was brief, but subtly meaningful. “Thirty-day visas?”

“Yes,” said Jake, “thirty-day visas.” He clutched Chemda’s hand. “Kappunkap.”

Jake found them a cab to Surin, a badly abused Toyota Corolla with a fat Isaan driver and maybe thirteen monastic amulets hanging from the rearview mirror. He gazed ahead of them as they motored past the cane fields, and so did Chemda. Their mutual good mood, their sense of wide-eyed astonishment, at their own gruesomely belated good fortune, had already dwindled; it was entirely gone by the time they reached the train station, whence they had decided to catch the night train to Bangkok. To Bangkok and Marcel Barnier.

At the station, Jake took out his little camera. He still had this precious new camera with the precious photos. He had lost his sister’s photo, but now he had new photos. The slight sense of resurgent possibility elevated his mood once again. Get the story. Pin down the past. Defeat the world, just for once. Be a real photographer. Yes, he could still do that.

At a newsstand in the station Jake picked up a copy of the Bangkok Post; he was surrounded by Thai workers reading manga. Half interested, half anxious, he flicked the pages as Chemda bought the tickets.

But he soon stopped flicking pages.

The Post had an article about him and Chemda. UN worker missing from Phnom Penh… granddaughter of Sovirom Sen, noted Chinese-Cambodian businessman… photojournalist linked to the disappearance….

The article was very small, and tucked away, and neutral in tone: it didn’t accuse Jake of anything, but it did mention the reward for Chemda’s return, and the mere fact that the article was printed in the most important Thai English-language newspaper brought the rest of Jake’s unease surging back. Who might try and claim that reward? And how?

The afternoon hours ticked by until the night train’s departure. Jake drank bottled water and cans of cold Japanese coffee and sat nervously on a station bench, next to Chemda, both of them trying to be inconspicuous. He telephoned Tyrone.

Tyrone told him to shut the fuck up and stop being so “minty” when Jake tried to say thank you, you saved my life. Tyrone listened to the epic story of their escape from Siem Reap, and swore and even chuckled, and his good humor helped dispel the darkness, just a little.

Tyrone asked: “So you’re going to Bangkok?”

“Yes.”

“To find Barnier. You don’t give up, do you?”

“Not after all this, Ty, no, I don’t. You said I had a good story and I’m on it. I want it. And Chemda wants the truth. What happened to her family. But we need somewhere to stay, incredibly discreet. Near this guy’s apartment, in Nana. You know Bangkok. Any ideas?”

“Yes… The Sukhumvit Crown, Soi 8, you can only find it if you go the wrong way down Soi 6.”

“Anything else? Any other advice?”

“Stop walking across lakes filled with corpses.”

“Ty. Please God. Ty!”

“You should buy new sim cards for you and Chemda, now you are in Thailand… use True, no, DTAC, just give a few people the numbers. Use the phones sparingly.”

“Thanks.”

“Mai pen rai. Stay in touch. And remember, you are still in serious shit. People will come after you in Bangkok. They won’t do it openly, but they will try. Be very, very, very, very fucking careful.”

As instructed, Jake went straight to the nearest convenience store, at the front of the station, and bought new sim cards for himself and Chemda; they swapped numbers, he texted the number to Tyrone. He sat down on the bench again. Waiting. Passengers came and went, eating fishball noodles at the fishball noodle stalls. Amputee beggars lifted their stumpy arms, pincering plastic cups of loose change. Commuters yawned. Policemen patrolled. Their train was ready. They climbed on the carriage.

They had bought first-class berths mainly because first-class berths had a tiny shower. The shower was risibly small but Jake didn’t care: as the train rumbled out of town he stepped straight in and rinsed away all the mud of the Butcher’s Lake, and all the grease from Pol Pot’s house, and all the dust from Preah Kahn, where Sonisoy was taken. He only wished he could sluice away the terrifying memory of kneeling there, in the dirt, by a shrine to the ghost of an atheist dictator, waiting for a man to casually smash his brain through his mouth with a rusty iron bar.

Crack.

Chemda was already fast asleep in the bottom bunk. She had held his hand as she fell asleep, but now the hand was limp and unconscious, and he folded it onto her breast, and he climbed the bunk-bed steps to slide between his own crisp, clean white cotton sheets. The sensation was unfathomably blissful.

The train was rattling through the dark Isaan countryside. The comforting rattle of a train, ta chakkating over the points, soon lullabyed Jake into sleep.

Most of his sleep was undisturbed. He woke just once, when they pulled into a hick little station with moonlit palm trees, at about five a. m. Hushed voices muttered outside in the tropical stillness. Jake sweated in the airlocked compartment. Who was that? Outside? Someone quietly passed down the train corridor, seeking a berth, whispering. He waited, tensed with fear. But nothing happened. Chemda’s unconscious breathing was regular and low.

The train pulled out. At length he fell asleep again and this time he dreamed — he dreamed of someone hitting his head and his head being smashed off his body, and then somehow he was looking down at his own head fallen to the ground and the head rolled over, and it was his mother’s head, smeared with violet lipstick. The eyes opened.

Jake woke with a jolt. Their compartment was bright with morning sun, and skyscrapers and motorways paraded past the uncurtained window. Chemda was awake and dressed.

“We’re here. Bangkok.”

She leaned over and kissed him.

His returning kisses were slurred, reluctant. The dream had been so vivid; why did he keep seeing this image, the disembodied head?

“Chemda.” He wanted to confess, to share, to divide his anguish. He’d had enough of lonely wondering. And he had been through so much with this girl, why not tell her?

He felt he was falling in love with her. He had no idea what falling in love meant or felt like, but if it was something like this, then he was happy to call it love, so yes, he was falling in love with Chemda Tek. But love meant he had to be truthful. He wanted to be truthful.

“Chem, I keep having these dreams. Sometimes daydreams. Nightmares, just idiotic nightmares, but they are persistent, this image I see.”

He told her. About the head, the floating heads, his mother’s face.

As his story unfolded he watched her expression turn from curiosity to concern — to piercing anxiety.

“The krasue,” she said. “What you are seeing is, as far as I can tell, the krasue.”

She explained further, quietly.

“A krasue is a malign spirit, cannibalistic, ah, bloodsucking. It appears mainly at night. It manifests itself as a woman, usually young and beautiful, with…” Chemda winced. “With her internal organs hanging down from the neck. Because she has no body. So she floats, with her spine and her organs trailing behind.”

“OK.” Jake swallowed hard. “And what does she do? This demon?”

“The krasue preys on pregnant women. It uses…” She sighed. “She uses an extended tongue to catch the fetus, by, ah, probing inside, up the vulva and inside the womb to devour the fetus. This causes diseases during pregnancy. Or so many Southeast Asians believe.”

“Sorry?”

“Jake.” She held his hand tight. “I know you don’t believe this stuff, and it sounds like a cartoon, but this really is an iconic demon, all across my part of the world. The legend comes from ancient Hindu India but it is deeply rooted in Cambodia, and Cambodian voodoo. The Filipinos have their own version, the Manananngal; the Balinese have the Leyak. Some call her the arp.”

“What about Angkor? I saw something like this in Angkor. A sculpture on the wall.”

“In Angkor they are called kinarees. Female spirits. But it is basically another krasue. They are everywhere. This icon is everywhere. There are legends and prayers about krasue, spells and stories. Even horror films.”

He stared at her. She looked at him. The train stopped, they had arrived. They had to disembark.

Chemda said, “The thing I don’t understand is… this is my culture. Not yours. This is not your culture. So why are you dreaming of an Asian demon?”