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.
91.
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.
92.
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 x.x.x
93.
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 ma.s.ses of water out of them. The proprietor of the cafe 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 cafe 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 d.y.k.es fast enough? If he could have gotten into his hands the people who"d done that to her, he would have killed them.
94.
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!
95.
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 . . .
96.
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.
97.
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 p.i.s.sing 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 s.h.i.t 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.
98.
But that wasn"t the end, either, because in the morning, " very early, there was a tapping at the door, and when he got up sick and fat and groggy in his underwear to see who it was he still didn"t know; he opened the door and shouted VANNA! with glee and thankfulness and she was glowing at him; she"d brought loaves of bread for his journey; he shared one with her; the photographer, who"d pa.s.sed out puking on the floor, lay feverish in bed; and the journalist opened the refrigerator door where the photographer had left his fruit to be abandoned and gave it to her, a gift for a gift, and she smiled and took it so that it became something special; lying in bed beside him she peeled a fruit somewhat like a giant grapefruit, each sector of it walled off by a bitter cuticle as thick as a flower petal, the reward inside being a ma.s.s of rubbery pale yellow teardrop-shaped fibers with bittersweet juice; and she put the segments into his mouth, and she said: I wuff you -
THE END.
99.
When they got back to Bangkok, the journalist said to the photographer: Well, that was it. No more wh.o.r.es for me. - And he"d start talking about how he was going to marry Vanna, until the photographer said: Aw, you"re driving me crazy! - The photographer went and got laid. He really wanted the journalist to do it, too. He looked out for him. When the journalist"s b.a.l.l.s had been at their worst, the photographer always got him meals in bed. But the journalist wanted to be good now; he said no. - Can I at least bring you back something? - Red-boiled by the sun until he resembled a vulture, staring blearily, grimly ahead, the harsh light of Bangkok illuminating the insides of his ears, the photographer had had a hard time getting through the daylight hours. But now all his grace was back. As ever, the journalist envied him and wanted to be like him. - Oh, that"s all right, he said. You go spread one for me. - He stayed in and washed his underwear in the sink. The room was bright, cool and quiet, with hardly any c.o.c.kroaches - this being the world-famous Hotel 38, you see, which they"d never heard of before; the two lower floors were all wh.o.r.es; and their room number was special also, for the Pakistanis down the hall had said: Room 302? Very unlucky. Whenever someone in Pakistan gets murdered in a hotel room, it"s always 302! - Looking around and smiling, the journalist had said to the photographer: I think I"m going to LIKE this place! and the photographer laughed so hard he had to hold onto the wall. - I wonder, said the journalist to the air conditioner, do they call it the Hotel 38 because it has thirty-eight stars? I"ll give it that many in m} book ... - but the air conditioner didn"t answer. When he"d scrubbed his underwear from brown to grey, he squeezed them out and left them hanging and dripping on the bathroom doork.n.o.b. (The photographer sometimes rearranged his laundry for him neatly. The photographer, pitying his incompetence in almost every sphere of life, did what he could to help him. - Don"t ever leave your wife, the photographer always said to him. Without her you"d really have problems!) The journalist stood in the empty room. His mouth was very dry. Too tired to pump the filter anymore, he decided to go down to the alley to buy bottled water. The miniature paG.o.da was illuminated in the courtyard; the neon sign darted on its pole like a string of lizards, a spill of water on the concrete below twisting rhythmic orange in sympathy . . . His guts churned a little, and so did his b.a.l.l.s. Time for dysentery. The second-floor girls were coming down the corridor arm in arm, linked by pink lights, laughing harshly. One had already snagged some geek in a white shirt . . . The girls poked the journalist in the belly and he poked them back. He stood on the landing between the second and third floors looking across interstellar darkness into the window of a garment factory where girls in pale uniforms sat sewing; it seemed to him very strange and bleak; the prost.i.tutes probably had a better life, in spite of the shame . . . Just after he"d turned the light out and gotten into bed, the light came on, and he opened his eyes to see the photographer with someone else in the hot glowing doorway. A moment later, Joy, the photographer"s old Bangkok girl, was on the journalist"s bed, holding his hand and hugging him so naturally like he was her brother while the photographer laughed. - Only one boyfriend me! she said, pointing to the photographer. I love him! - You are so sweet, said the journalist in wonder, meaning every word of it, wondering how many times he"d meant it . . .
Joy went into the bathroom. Then she and the photographer went to bed. The journalist told them both goodnight. Soon he heard Joy"s soft rhythmic moans, faked or unfaked, while in the hall a cat in heat went aaoow, aaoow . . .
100.
At six-thirty in the morning, when the maid was sweeping the courtyard and hooking up various-colored lengths of hose to water the plants, he stood on the fire escape watching an old lady across the street turn slowly on her heels while a dog ran in circles around her, and two schoolgirls in uniform marched down the alley; a boy balanced a huge book on his head; the maid swept water across the concrete, toward the wicker baskets loaded with papers and trash; the photographer slept on with his wh.o.r.e in the cold dark room.
He"d given away most of the bread that Vanna had given him, because he couldn"t eat it all before it went stale. Last night he"d shared the last loaf with the photographer as they"d stood together in this very place. The photographer had taken one bite and then thrown the rest down onto the roof-ledge. The journalist had felt a weird heartache when he saw that. He ate his half without saying anything. This morning the bread was still there, brownish-black with dirt, rocking under the surges of voracious ants.
101.
What is she to you? a cyclo driver had shouted from among the crowd that encircled him as he walked her across the street on that last morning, his fingertips gentle and careful against her back.
She"s my friend, he said.
102.
And what was she to him? She said she loved him, and he did believe that if he asked her to marry him she would do it, come with him, bring her child (her other husband had kicked her in the face and abandoned her), and he thought that she must love him as she understood love, and he loved her as he understood love; was that enough? When he drew sketches of the Hotel 38 maids they kissed him on the lips and asked him to take them out dancing; later that day one said to him very tentatively: I love you?
103.
The next night the photographer brought some p.u.s.s.y back for each of them, a sort of midnight snack; he"d asked again before he went and this time the journalist had said: Go ahead; twist my arm. - The photographer"s p.u.s.s.y was Joy again. The journalist"s was a greedy thief smooth-shaven between her legs and he kissed her but her breath tasted horrible and he ate her out but as soon as he"d stuck his tongue in her he knew that it was a mistake. He got up and rinsed his mouth out. Then he put a rubber on. The next day his tongue was coated with white fungus and his throat was so swollen that he could hardly breathe. Over and over a fierce fever grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and lifted him out of his dreams, then let him fall back to sleep exhausted. Afterward, the crusts of something on the sheets p.r.i.c.king him like needles, he remembered Vanna"s face. Well, doubtless Vanna wasn"t celibate, either. Was it then that he began to get the unbounded confidence and ease that permitted him to cut any pretty girl who caught his fancy right out of the Pat Pong herd and take her straight back to the hotel, so that later, when he awoke in the middle of the night, jet-lagged, and saw a woman sleeping beside him, at once, not knowing who she was, he pulled her underpants briskly down to her ankles and rubbed her fuzz and spread her until she stirred and muttered: What... ? and he suddenly remembered that this was his wife? The next day he walked back and forth very quickly and his wife said: Why are you pacing? - I guess I need the exercise. - His wife said: There was a look on your face just now as if you"d done something naughty. - There was? he said in amazement. He inspected his reflection in the window of darkness, but learned nothing; his reflection decomposed in just the same way that the white dogs scuttling in front of the TV in the beauty parlor and the whirling checkered sign became part of the same blur after a giant Singha beer on an empty stomach. He wanted to say to his wife: Who am I? -only to see her expression when he said it, of course. - I"m thinking of leaving my wife and marrying an illiterate prost.i.tute from Cambodia whose language I can"t speak a word of, he said to one of his friends. - That"s very interesting, his friend said. Maybe you should sleep on it. I wouldn"t do anything drastic. - How much do you think I"d need to support her and her baby? he said. - We can run through the numbers together, his friend said. A thousand a month for a two-bedroom place. You"d need that; you"d need a room to work, a room for the kid. That"s twelve thousand. Then there"s food and health insurance. Transportation. She"d be learning English the first year; there"d be a bill for that. Maybe day care. Figure twenty-five grand. That"s after taxes. So you"d need thirty-five, forty grand. - So much? whispered the journalist in dismay . . . Turning left, he found himself by the Snake Farm. He went into the ice cream parlor and ordered. - Okay, sir, said the waitress, whom he"d seen before. Won mickshake waniwwa. - I love you, he said, and she giggled and said: I you my heart . . . Now he became in truth a crazed and greedy b.u.t.terfly, no longer pretending to know who he was or what he was looking for, dreading the weary moment when he must stick it in, dreading the moment when the lady must leave, but avid to have and have had, his tips becoming smaller as the money went, the girls giving him colds, coughs, sore throats, weird new aches in his b.a.l.l.s . . . What he was doing was systematically dismantling his own reality, blurring faces and names (sometimes he couldn"t remember the name of the woman he was on top of; of course she couldn"t remember his, either), forming mutually exclusive attachments that left him a liar and a cheat attached to no one, pa.s.sing his own reckoning by. When he wanted to eat out a wh.o.r.e, he"d say: I want to kin kao you, which means, I want to eat rice you, and then he"d point to her p.u.s.s.y -
104.
b.u.t.terfly! Joy crooned drunkenly. Go work, go dance, go dingalow, go f.u.c.k a lot! I say h.e.l.lo how are you where you come from, what city? I say buy me drink. I go work six o"clock thirty. I no show; you give me money too much OK I show.
When the gunfire drumming of rain disturbed the metal roof, Joy jumped up to bring her laundry in, sat back lotus-legged on the green plastic, folding her bluejeans neatly shipshape while Pukki came back bare-shouldered in her Pat Pong dress, having just showered (remember Pukki? The journalist didn"t. But she remembered him. She"d tried to get him to buy her that night in Joy"s bar when he told her he loved Oy. He"d never seen Oy since coming back to Thailand. He"d been faithful to Oy; so if he saw her again that wouldn"t be faithful to Vanna . . .) Joy"s lingerie became square white bales. In her bra and white-striped black skirt, Joy sat folding and smoothing; then she made the bed and lay beside the photographer and stretched - The journalist sat staring at her long smooth brown legs. He didn"t love her the way he loved Vanna; but he LIKED her, of course.
Faces peered in the door-crack.
Joy yawned into the photographer"s ear. - I want to take shower and uh - Pukki came back from another shower, wet, wrapped in a towel, and borrowed a tampon. - p.u.s.s.y accident, said Joy. You know?
She straddled the photographer and lovingly drummed his shoulders. - No b.u.t.terfly, you? she whispered anxiously.