Liminal Medicine.
By Jesse Bullington.
After the journalists discovered the killing fields and Tuol Sleng, the whole world knew about our ghosts. The metaphor is a strong one, I"ll allow: Just as the spectre of Nanking haunts the j.a.panese and Mao"s revolt made the tale of the hungry ghost more palpable, so, too, did the Rouge grant us our own haunted legacy. Movies and books and articles and television and a rather morbid tourism industry all parade the ghosts of Cambodia before the pitying eyes of the world, and even down all these years local witticisms, such as It is better to lose one leg than both, remind me that countless landmines wait like vipers in the fields, that the phantom of the Khmer Rouge will haunt my country for many lifetimes. The summer I returned home, the news fixated on the arrest of a deranged American murderer and I thus discovered another appropriate allegory for what the Khmer Rouge did to my country cannibalism.
My grandfather, like many Cambodians, had a ghost arm; unlike many, he lost his during the civil war and not afterward. He claimed that, had he found and cremated the limb, it would not have haunted him, but even as a child, I suspected this tale was told for my amus.e.m.e.nt, the waxy stump wiggling for my edification alone. After my uncle whisked me out of the village and bounced me from town to Phnom Penh to border to Bangkok to University, I ran across an article on the phantom limb phenomenon. I translated and copied it to show my grandfather, but by the time I graduated and returned home, he had found his way back to the arm the Khmer Rouge had taken so many years before.
After the train and boat and taxi and bus and rickshaw, I found myself on the familiar road home, debating how to approach my grandmother, as a cat mewled somewhere in the cab and insects hummed and the mud squelched under the tires and the jungle pulsed with all the sultry wetness of summer. Much to the curiosity of the two well-dressed men sharing the vehicle with me, I made the driver stop a kilometer outside the village to walk the rest of the way in; the lengthy journey from my new life back to my old had not been nearly long enough to prepare myself, and I thought returning as I had thousands of times before might help. Naturally, as soon as the mud coated my sneakers and the taxi resumed bouncing down the road to deliver my bags, I regretted my decision, the heat turning my dress to sticky rice paper.
I paused in the shade of the mango tree overlooking my village and smiled. Unlike many of my scholastic compatriots, I felt no shame regarding my rural upbringing and, after the intensity of Bangkok, I relished the notion of a neighbourhood not constantly throbbing with noise, traffic and electricity. Had I any intention of staying longer than the summer, I might have thought differently. That in itself was strange, I ruminated, that the one place I always considered home I now saw for what it was a quaint and antiquated little hamlet that would likely become intolerable within a few months.
The mango tree above me wilted pregnant over the road, its fruit crowning down, almost within reach. City living had not made me too proud to hop in the mud like a gibbon and soon, I netted my fingers over a plump, ruddy orb and rent the fruit loose of its moorings. My heel slipped in the muck as I landed and I fell backwards, knocking the wind out of myself as I slapped down in the road. My initial panic at how my grandmother would react to my soiled dress brought on a giggling fit that particular mango tree had brought on more than one lashing from similar circ.u.mstances.
"Are you a b.i.t.c.h, cooling yourself in the mud?" the thick country accent made it impossible for me to tell if the speaker was male or female, and I scrambled to my feet in embarra.s.sment.
"I fell picking " but I stopped as I turned and saw the witch scowling at me, her own dress blackened with mud halfway up her spindly legs. A basket hung against the sharp jag of her knees and she looked even more horrible than she had when I was a child, if such a thing were possible. Yet, I was no longer a child and studying medicine, I had of course thought often of this poor, maligned woman whom the village shunned, yet turned to in place of real medical attention. "h.e.l.lo, ma"am. It"s good to see you, again."
"Eh." She squinted at me then cracked a yellow-toothed leer. "Jorani"s granddaughter."
"Yes, ma"am. My name"s Malis," I said, resolute to make up for "You used to throw rotten mangoes at my house," she said, warily eyeing the fruit still clenched in my hand. "And worse. You and that Phirun child."
"I"m sorry ma"am," I said. "We were just "
"Nasty little things," she muttered. "You know how he ended up after you left, that boy you ran with? You hear the bad end he came to?"
My grandmother had answered every letter I wrote and while, over the last few years, I had not found the time to write as often, she had never mentioned anything happening to Phirun in her replies. We had terrorized this lonely old woman, Phirun and I, and gauging by the s.a.d.i.s.tic glitter in her eye, something dire had happened indeed. Perhaps noticing the worry on my face, she grinned even wider and fumbled in her basket.
"What"s happened to Phirun?" I said, when I realized she had no intention of volunteering the information. Withdrawing a hand-rolled cigarette and a matchbox, she lit up and blew an ivory cloud in my face.
"Gone," she said, her ghastly face obscured behind the smoke. "Met a bad end."
"What happened?" I snapped, remembering I was no longer an ill-behaved child to be talked down to.
"Run off with a Viet," she took a drag on her cigarette. "Went to Ho Chi and ain"t come back."
"That"s it?" I asked, relieved.
"Bad end, eh?" The witch was clearly disappointed Phirun"s desertion of the village had not disturbed me. "Living with the Viets?"
"Let me help with your basket," I said, the mud drying all over my back and legs encouraging me to get on with my penance or abandon it all together.
"You sound like a Thai," she grumbled, but handed off her basket, and together, we walked slowly down the road, the emptied taxi soon pa.s.sing us on its way back out of the jungle. "Why"re you talking like a Thai now?"
"I"ve been in Thailand," I looked off into the eye-scalding brightness of the verdant foliage to hide my smile. "I"ve been training to be a doctor and "
"Doctor?" the witch took a long drag. "Why"d you leave, then? Think a Thai knows more than me?"
"No, ma"am," I said, leaving the road and following her onto the trail leading to her hut beside the landmine-riddled Dead Field. "I just wanted to learn a different kind of medicine."
"Different?" she snorted. "s.h.i.tty Thai medicine"s different than the real thing, sure enough. That"s where you"ve been? Learning Thai tricks?"
"Ma"am, setting bones and st.i.tching up cuts aren"t tricks" I said, reminding myself that her racism and hostility were but results of her upbringing, and she probably had dementia besides.
"Could"ve taught you that and more, had you shown a bit more sense."
"As I said, I"m sorry "
"Had another skilled set of hands about, could"ve saved your grandfather."
"What?" I stopped, allowing the mosquitoes to swarm me and the fronds she had held back to whip my legs. "What about Grandfather?"
"Was my master what saved him when he lost that arm, but I helped, yes, I did. And had I a helper when we tried to get the demon out, it might"ve worked." She clucked her tongue. "Get along, then. I"ve got guests waiting."
"Yes, ma"am." I followed her, blinking the sweat and tears out of my eyes. Grandmother wrote when he fell ill and said she was taking him to a doctor, and by the time my response received a response of its own, he had pa.s.sed away. I a.s.sumed she had taken him out of the village, to a real clinic instead of "Coated him in chili oil, bound him tight, and kept the coals good, but it was tough, didn"t want to go. Took him with it."
"Coals? Chili oil?" I stopped again, but seeing her advance over the twisted roots, I had to continue as well. "A demon? He had a fever, didn"t he?"
"Burning up," she nodded, ducking under a plump vine. "So, I got him on the coals, but it still wouldn"t come up. Toughest little demon."
I could hardly believe what I was hearing; I knew rural healers like the witch used genuine natural remedies in conjunction with liberal quackery, but this seemed beyond all reason. That my grandmother would allow it surprised me even more, for she was a smart, semi-educated woman. Fevers can be fatal if medicine is not received, of course, but to roast him over coals would be a virtual death sentence to even a healthy man of my grandfather"s age.
"You witch!" I blurted out. "How dare you!"
She stopped and turned, her hut jutting out of the jungle over her shoulder. Her narrow eyes and sharp nose appeared stuck halfway between scorn and pity. I noticed the two well-dressed, middle-aged men from the cab standing by the door to her hut, watching us, but did not think anything of it until much later, after my anger and disgust were shed with the quarts of sweat flowing from me.
"I only work when I"m paid," she said, s.n.a.t.c.hing the basket from me. "And I"m only paid when folk come here. Me and the Thais got that in common, at least. You come back at dusk and I"ll teach you something they won"t have showed you. He won"t live out the night, to be sure, and looks like they"ve brought what I need."
Much as I wanted to slap her or scream at her or even somehow calmly explain to her how what she did was wrong, wrong, wrong, I did what I had always done as a child when the witch told me something horrible I turned and ran down the trail without looking back, her cackling laugh sending the cuckoos into flight. By the time I entered the village proper, I had calmed somewhat, and then my neighbors took turns swooping me up, and praising my maturity and beauty, and laughing at my bedraggled appearance, and welcomed me home with an embarra.s.sing amount of fanfare. Grandmother saw at a glance that something other than emotion at my homecoming had darkened my countenance. After we had all eaten together in the village centre, she spirited me inside her our sweltering stilt-house to have a proper talk.
"You took him to see the witch," I said, when she finally ceased her interrogation of my (long and dangerous) trip, my (obviously poor, without her cooking) health, and my (not too trampy) appearance.
"Now?" she asked, setting her gla.s.s of nectar down. "You"ve just got "
"Now," I nodded. "Why didn"t you take him to the clinic? Pho"s still got his jeep; I saw it."
"He wouldn"t listen," she said and I realized with irritation her sorrow had more to do with my reaction than Grandfather"s death. I guiltily tried to rein in my frustration and, unlike the witch, she had the decency to continue without being pestered. "I"d taken him to that clinic a dozen times. When the last fever got him, he said, "No, take me to her." What could I do? He was dying, Malis."
The heat and the sun streaming into the room sapped some of my melancholy and I simply felt exhausted. Grandfather had rolled cigarettes as fat as his thumb, worked shirtless in the jungle, drank mostly rainwater, and essentially lived a life as far removed as possible from what I would come to consider healthy. The only real surprise was that he had lived as long as he had, the weathered old veteran, and after what the Rouge had done to him, being slathered in chili oil probably seemed more an indignity than a torture.
"Who told you?" she asked, in her slightly nosey, high tone. "I didn"t hear anyone mention it at lunch."
"You know how I walked in and had the driver drop off my stuff?" I nodded towards the small bags crowding a corner. "I saw the witch on the road and she told me. Probably couldn"t believe her luck to deliver some bad news."
"That poor woman." My grandmother suddenly looked her age, thin, silver hair clinging to her sweaty forehead like spider silk.
"She " I began to say, when something the witch had said finally sank through my heat and emotion-clouded consciousness. "The witch said something to me about tonight, about a patient she had that wouldn"t last until dawn. And two men, city-men, shared the car in with me and didn"t say a word, and then I saw them waiting at her hut."
Grandmother clicked her teeth and reached for my gla.s.s, but I s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and drained the last of the bright-orange, fibrous juice. "You shouldn"t meddle in her business."
"Who"s meddling? She invited me herself, to watch whatever mummery she"s got planned, and there"s no chance I"m going to sit here while she cooks another patient. I"ve got some aspirin in my bag and I"ll bet my magic little pills will do more than her exorcism, regardless of the malady."
I offered her my empty gla.s.s and she s.n.a.t.c.hed it; her eyes narrowed in the angry expression I had missed so much.
"You"re not going, and that is that. I saw those men who got out of the cab, and I saw them yesterday when they brought in their sick friend. They"re Rouge, girl, and you are minding your business under this roof tonight."
"How do you know they"re Rouge?" I asked, knowing full well she would not have said as much if it were not true. You do not lose a daughter and son-in-law to monsters and then invoke their t.i.tle flippantly. Grandmother turned away, rather than answering my question, and looked out the screened window into the dense greenery swelling up behind our house.
"Pho thinks it may storm later," she said, eventually, and although the obedient part of me willed my churlish mouth to be silent, I would not let it rest.
"A sick man is a sick man," I said evenly. "No matter who he is or what he"s done, it"s my duty to help. That witch said whoever it was wouldn"t live the night and, unless I examine him, I don"t doubt it. I didn"t spend all those years away from you to shirk the very responsibilities I have accepted."
"Please," she whispered, sitting back down across from me and taking my hands in her own gnarled fingers. I winced at the sight of the arthritis-swollen digits, realizing how much agony writing me all those letters had been. "You"re old enough I won"t try ordering you about, but listen to me she will do everything in her power to save him and if she can"t, then I know what will come next. They brought a black cat, didn"t they?"
At this, my scorching skin went Pacific and my mouth became dry and clammy. One of the men had an occasionally purring pet carrier between his legs on the long drive, a detail I had found curious and then forgotten. I felt her sweaty palms shaking against the backs of my hands, and her tongue flicked nervously over her teeth. I had never seen her look so uncomfortable in all my life, and this unnerved me even more than her comment about the cat.
"I don"t know if it was black," I said, suddenly curious as to the speed of my pulse. "But they brought one, yes ... is she going to sacrifice it or something?"
"Bah," Grandmother released my hands with a smile. "The cat will be fine and they"ll get exactly what they deserve, Rouge b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."
"I"m going," I said again, although my voice did not sound so steady, anymore. "I told you; it"s my responsibility. I can"t start my residency knowing I ignored an ailing person, even if he"s Pol Pot."
She spit at the hated name and cursed quietly, immediately cleaning up the smear of spittle with the hem of her skirt. "I won"t tell you again, Malis; stay away from that hut. She"s half-ghost, herself, and those men are all-demon. What can a doctor do for devils and ghosts?"
"I"m going," I whispered resolutely, growing ever more nervous at the superst.i.tious turn the conversation had taken. This was the woman who had chastised me a thousand times for calling the witch a witch, after all. "I don"t have a choice, Grandmother. This is who I am."
"Why won"t you listen to me? That sick man, he came from here. He"s the one who took your mother and father! And you want to help him?" Grandmother trembled all over and wagged her finger at me. "A good doctor, yes, but what kind of daughter, then?"
"I " had nothing to say to that, nothing at all. Never in my life had I dreamed a face could be attached to the end my unremembered parents had come to. That I would be put in such a melodramatic moral quandary struck me then, as it does now, as a contrivance more fit for a Thai soap opera than a life. Maybe that is why I recovered so quickly and told her, "I"m still going."
"It"ll be all right," I heard my grandfather say. "I"ll keep an eye on her."
Grandmother wearily closed her eyes. I snapped my head around and there he was in the doorway, smiling softly like he always did when we were having a spat and he interrupted. Light-headed and wondering why everyone had tricked me into thinking he had died, it took me an instant to notice that his left arm terminated in a wide-palmed hand instead of a knotted stump. Then I did what any grounded, logical young doctor would do in my situation I screamed and fainted.
When I came back around, they were arguing quietly and rain rattled the house. Most of the details of that afternoon are lost to me, but, somehow, I made peace with the impossibility of the situation. When I recovered, I inspected my grandfather with the sort of stoic practicality that only absolute shock could grant to one in my position. He appeared identical to how he had in life, khaki pants and a wide-brimmed hat his only attire. With a slight grimace of effort, he could pa.s.s through solid objects, clothes and all, but my trembling fingers were able to settle on his frigid skin. At this realization, I threw my arms around him and cried.
The rain slowed and finally withdrew, fog and twilight conspiring to provide a more appropriate atmosphere for the evening. Grandfather ate bowl after bowl of rice, and both Grandmother and I politely pretended not to notice that he kept a larger bowl underneath him as he ate to catch the food that fell through him onto the floor, so that only the same two bowls of rice were consumed over and over. Grandfather eventually set down his bowl and Grandmother joked that the reason for his insatiable appet.i.te was his extraction Grandfather had fled Southern China when Mao"s followers descended on his family farm like locusts, and emigrated to Cambodia to avoid the brewing war and famine in his homeland. He often lamented his ill luck in that regard, and now was no exception. Finally, the happy, surreal reunion came to a close, as the fog blotted out the setting sun, and Grandfather and I rose to leave.
My grandfather pecked my grandmother on the cheek as we descended to the bog of a road. When I later realized they both suspected they were seeing one another for the last time, I marveled at the brevity of their goodbye. Then again, few couples are afforded the reprieve that they were and they surely knew this. The jungle inhaled us into its misty belly, and I would have lost both my way and my grandfather had he not taken my hand in his. My fingers crept reflexively to his wrist, even though I knew nothing pulsed there.
"Malis," he said, as we walked, "while you were asleep, Jorani told me you were planning on interfering tonight."
"Not interfering," I said defensively. "Helping. There"s a difference."
"You think you can do more than Theary?"
"Theary?" I had forgotten the witch"s real name. "Oh, yes. I hear she rubbed you down with a nice chili oil liniment."
"That didn"t burn as bad as the coals," he laughed. "But look at me now! I owe my current condition to her skill. I approve of your work, but can the medicine you learned perform as well as hers?"
He had me there and he knew it. The damp, cold mud filled the sneakers I had foolishly forgotten to leave behind, but otherwise, the evening walk was as pleasant as any we had taken before ... before he died, I made myself think. The ethereal road vanished before us. I nearly panicked at the thought that I had somehow died and he was escorting me to whatever lay beyond.
"The sick man," Grandfather said, his voice low and sad, "Jorani"s told you who he is?"
"She said he was the one who sent my parents to Tuol Sleng."
"I went there, after the Viets took over." His voice sounded harsh in the way it always did after he had been looking at my mother"s pictures. "They called it a prison. We knew then, but to see it oh, Malis, can you imagine? To do such things to other people? And for what?"
I knew of no answer, nor did he expect one. I squeezed his hand and we came to a stop, the miasma thinning around the mouth of the trail to the witch"s hut. He rubbed his eyes and then squeezed my shoulder; I felt his phantasmal tears dampen my neck.
"He grew up here," Grandfather went on. "That man and your mother played together, like you and Phirun. I never cared for him he was cruel and cowardly. After the war, when your father came here and met your mother, I knew that little coward would cause a stink. But how could I know? How? We all deserved peace. The coward joined up right away, gone from the village overnight. Your father returned to Phnom with your mother and then you were born. By then, things were getting bad ...."
He stared past me into the mist, haunted by his own ghosts. When he finally continued, his voice had steadied. "They were going to come and stay with us, rather than risk being sent to a farm, risk being separated. Then he showed up at their apartment, and I know it was him because your uncle was visiting, recognized him through the window and knew enough to go out the backdoor with you. Then they took your mother and father to that h.e.l.l, and your uncle took you to us. That is why I could not leave, yet, Malis."
"What?" My own eyes were blurry, as much from confusion as from the details of the story I had never before heard in its entirety. "Why can"t you leave?"
"I can," he corrected himself, his voice harder, sharper, "but I won"t. Not until I see what happens to that monster who took my daughter."
"But how could you know he"d come back? And so soon?"
"Soon? I died over a year ago, Malis." He smiled at my guilty frown. "And I knew he"d be back because he"s a coward and, no matter what faith they might profess, all cowards fear death. I knew he"d do everything to stave off his end and that would mean coming home. He knows how powerful Theary is; everyone who lives here does."
This last seemed to have the air of reproach in it, but I felt far too unnerved to defend my beliefs. Perhaps sensing this reluctance on my part to acknowledge the witch"s prowess, he adopted a different strategy. As he spoke, he again took my hand and we began threading our way between the hazy trees towards our destination.
"You know I"m not some traditionalist stooge," Grandfather said. "I"ve always respected your decision to practice the new medicine. But don"t you have a responsibility to respect the wishes of your patient?"
"Of course," I allowed. "But if they don"t know what"s best for them, sometimes a doctor must make a decision for them."
"The coward"s dying," Grandfather said, almost happily. "Like most of his compatriots like those two lackeys who came here with him he"s been taken into the fold of the new government. No arrest, no tribunal. Don"t you think a man in such a position, if he desired it, could receive better western treatment than a young doctor without her tools in the middle of the jungle?"
"I suppose ...."
"Those folk at the clinic helped me enough that I know the good your stuff can do. But the Rouge spit on your learning. Many less might have died had they not outlawed any but Theary"s way, for hers is a special sort of medicine and requires more skill than you might think. So this patient, if you must call him such, this dying, murdering coward, he has come all the way out here to receive treatment far different from any you might provide. And yet, you insist you must interfere?"
I stayed quiet, the only sound my sneakers pulling in the mud and slipping on roots. I wanted to tell him how badly I had wished for such an excuse not to even look at this man, to stay inside my warm childhood home and bore my grandmother, and have her bore me, until we both pa.s.sed out from exhaustion. But I was prouder then and, even believing as I must have that I either dreamt or hallucinated the ghost leading me deeper into the jungle, I did not give him the satisfaction of an answer. We both knew, though, and as the lights of her hut appeared like the eyes of a smoke-wreathed demon, we approached the side window instead of the front door.
A stool waited for us in the mud beneath the window. From within came the chanting of the witch. I slipped out of my filthy sneakers and socks, rather than risk slipping from my perch, and stepped onto the stool. Grandfather floated higher off the ground to watch beside me. I felt a strange giddiness, as though I were a child peeking in on a secret adult activity.
The heat, the stink, and the light pouring out of the room blinded me, but when my eyes adjusted, I almost laughed at the ridiculous sight before me. Prostrate and still on a bed, in the centre of the one-room hut, lay a man swaddled in damp bandages from head to toe. Three other figures danced around him in pursuit of a trotting black cat. They followed it around the room, but my attention shifted to the patient, who was not breathing. The witch and the two men from my car-ride goaded the cat towards the patient, but the cat seemed intent on avoiding the man and made for our window. Before I could duck out of sight, Grandfather leaned forward and the cat jumped backwards, preferring the chase to confronting a ghost in the window. The witch saw us, even though the men did not, and she smiled.
Then one of the men startled the cat from the other direction, and it deftly leapt onto a chair, only to have the other man direct it back towards the bed. At this, the cat dived over what I now took to be a corpse and the two men cheered, their faces bright and sweaty. Glancing with confusion at Grandfather, I saw him grinning. After another few minutes, the cat again found itself on a chair and again pounced over the corpse, and at this, Grandfather floated behind me and gripped my shoulders tightly.
The two men exchanged wary looks and cautiously approached the corpse, and the witch put herself between them and the door. I leaned closer, as did Grandfather, as did the two men. Then the corpse sat upright on the bed and I jumped, falling backwards off the stool. Grandfather smiled even wider and beckoned me back up, whispering, "You"ll miss it; look quick!"
Inside the house, the men were shouting and I quickly righted the stool, my legs trembling and my brow drenched at the knowledge that all my childhood fears of the witch were justified. I clambered back up, soaked in mud and puddle-water, and saw one of the men on the floor, the risen corpse squatting over him. The other man had a machete and wrestled with the witch in the doorway. I realized he must have cut her when blood began soaking the neck of her dress. I was so transfixed by the sight that it took the corpse bellowing a wordless, terrible cry to startle me into action.
Even if my grandfather"s presence beside me had left any doubts that the dead can return, the scream of that bandaged corpse now straddling his fellow would have dispelled them. I had put in several eighteen-hour shifts in the emergency room, and heard every manner of sound the human body can produce, and that shriek dwarfed them all in its fury and pain. The sound made me sick to my stomach. Then the man underneath the crouched corpse gave a very human scream of his own. Before I could move to help, the corpse brought its mouth down on the pinned man"s throat and ended the wail by biting through every major artery in his neck. Blood jetted over them both, Grandfather cackling with glee beside me.