The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers (5 page)

But now it’s too late, Sâr knows, as he stands before the sentry box beneath the gate’s white spires and ornate festoons, a rucksack over his shoulder, one of his wooden
clogs tapping the concrete in anticipation. He watches a lacquered black Renault with curtains over its windows roll down the wide avenue. At last a Khmer guard emerges from the sentry box, wearing a hard white helmet and epaulettes reminiscent of the French Foreign Legion. The guard recognizes Sâr and smiles at him. Sâr presses his hands together before his lips and bows the respectful greeting appropriate for his elders.

“Is Roeung expecting you?” asks the guard.

“Yes,” answers the lad, his voice a near whisper.

It’s a good-enough answer for the guard, who slides open the copper gate and, with a short nod, lets the boy enter the forbidden palace compound without the accompaniment of his powerful sister. Sâr grows dizzy as he passes through the gate, his heart pounding so hard he can feel it in his neck.

He skims along a path beside the low wall enclosing the Silver Pagoda. He quickens his gait into a trot as he crosses the manicured garden and lengthy driveway before the Throne Hall. He’s quietly whispering a sutra he learned during his year-long immersion at the Theravada monastery, five years earlier. In the past, the memorized chants soothed him when he’d grown too excited or impassioned, but today he can’t find a rhythm strong enough to relax him. Sâr needs a plan, he realizes, as he tucks his shirt into his baggy pants. He should say hello and then leave, appreciating the dancers’ responsibilities and not imposing himself. Yes, he will be brief and polite, and the dancers will see that he’s kind, and be happy that he hasn’t overstayed his welcome. Still, his cheeks redden, as if the four serene faces of Brahma
were judging him from their mounts on the Throne Hall’s tallest spire.

The path splits in three directions outside the King’s residence. Sâr is about to head south at the crossroad—towards the cramped enclosure housing royal dancers, serving girls, and other wives—when the Khemarain Palace’s main gate fans open to reveal Princess Kossamak in quick departure from an audience with her father, King Monivong. Wrapped in a shimmering green and gold
sampot
and painted with Parisian cosmetics, the future Queen Mother is a living doll of brocade, jewellery, and cascading hair. She draws behind her a wake of aides: native servants, enormous guards, tailored Frenchmen. Sâr stops so suddenly that he nearly trips over his feet. He drops his rucksack, collapses to his knees, and prostrates himself, his nose pressing against the hot pavement. It won’t be long, he knows, before he’s accosted by these guards, questioned and roughed up a bit, certainly thrown out of the palace compound. But Kossamak and retinue charge past Sâr’s fallen body without giving him a glance. He raises his eyes in disbelief, just in time to witness Kossamak’s skittish sixteen-year-old son in military dress struggling to keep pace with his bustling mother.

Sâr rises to his knees, wondering why the guards have again left him unattended in the compound, why someone won’t prevent him from courting disaster. He detects the lingering floral scent of
Calotropis
from the Khmer princess’s European perfume, and wishes it were stronger. Sâr rubs his tongue along the inside of his teeth as he stands, brushes off his pants, and hurries along his original route.

The dancers’ compound lies on the far side of a sturdy brick wall, entered by means of an unadorned gate. All of the King’s secondary wives, including Sâr’s sister, live in this austere zone. There are no manicured lawns over here, no topiary trees or gilded fountains, no golden roofs or tapered spires. Dirt pathways weave between the two dozen unremarkable wood-and-brick homes, most of them no taller than a single storey. Windows are scarce and small. A few gardens contain mango and mulberry trees, but otherwise there’s a noticeable dearth of greenery. A garbage pile rots near the northern compound wall.

The front door of Chanlina’s house swells and retracts before Saloth Sâr as he licks his lips and tries to regulate the pace of his breathing. He knocks. Inside there’s shuffling, a baby’s wail, the gentle banging of pots.

“Get that, will you?” He recognizes Kiri’s voice, one of Chanlina’s roommates.

The door quivers, unstable, more liquid than solid.

“Veata!”

There’s further shuffling inside, and the low gurgle of boiling water. Kiri is singing a high-pitched phrase extracted from the chorus of a popular Reamker dance. They don’t want to answer, Sâr realizes, as he shifts his weight and groans. If he doesn’t run away this instant, he will embarrass himself.

“Veata, answer the door!”

The baby’s wailing grows louder as someone approaches from inside. At last the front door opens, revealing a woman with unkempt hair and a noticeable sag beneath her eyes, holding a scruffy baby. Sâr clutches tight to his rucksack
and lowers his head. A musky burnt-leaf odour wafts from the enclosure.

“L-Lok,”
he begins.

“Well,” says Veata, cutting him off. “It’s Roeung’s little brother.”

The wailing, naked baby wraps his plump legs around Veata’s hips, clutching her shirt with one hand and a large wooden spoon with the other. As he fixes his gaze on Sâr, his crying stops and he stuffs a portion of the spoon into his open mouth.

“Lok Srey
,” Sâr greets, pressing his hands together and bowing with composure.

The spoon falls from the child’s mouth, and he giggles.

“Lok,”
says Veata, regarding her son’s change of mood. “I think Nhean likes you.”

“I am very sorry to bother you,” says Sâr. “I was visiting my sister and … and thought only that I’d stop by for a minute and … I don’t know … say hello.”

“Hello,” says Veata, grinning.

Sâr looks down at his clogs. “I hope I’m not bothering you.”

“What’s your name again?”

“I’m Saloth Sâr,” he answers, his gaze still averted. “I’m Roeung’s younger brother, Saloth Sâr.”

The baby on Veata’s hip grins, tenses his body, and releases a high shriek of joy.

“I know who you are,” says Veata, rubbing the baby’s back. “Just not your name. Come in before anyone sees you.”

“Who’s there?” asks Kiri from the small kitchenette, as she shovels rice from a steaming pot into a bamboo bowl.
The young woman puts down the pot and shuffles over to see. “Is that Roeung’s little brother?”

Sâr offers Kiri a second deep bow.
“Lok Srey,”
he says.

“Don’t stand there. Come inside and close the door.”

Veata and Kiri giggle and step back to let the thin teenager enter their tiny home. Although the curtains have been pulled to counteract the sun’s strength, the brick walls have trapped the day’s warmth like an oven, so that now, late in the afternoon, with dinner still simmering, the heat is at its worst. Both women’s faces are flushed. Besides an indoor sink and gas stove, there’s a circle of mats in the middle of the floor where the women can eat their meals and relax. In the back of the room, raised a step, is a compact sleeping section separated by traditional partitions of dried palm. There are two high windows on the southern wall, both missing glass, but with screens for the bugs and drawn curtains, each no bigger than a square foot.

“Take off your shoes,” says Kiri.

Sâr slips off his clogs and lays his rucksack on the floor. Veata places her now-squirming baby onto the ground. Nhean crawls onto a mat, sits tall, and munches his spoon, happy to study the enchanting face of young Sâr. Veata straightens her
sampot
and rubs her hands through her long hair, trying to tame the tangles. She’s a high-cheeked, handsome woman, bustier than her friend, no older than twenty-one.

“We’re having rice and
prahoc
,” says Kiri, referring to the traditional fermented fish paste. “Do you want to join us?”

“No, no,” whispers Sâr. “I don’t want to impose.”

Veata laughs at the boy’s politeness.

“You’re not an imposition,” says Kiri with a grin.

“I should’ve never come,” says Sâr. “I owe you my sincerest apology.”

“You don’t want to join us for dinner?”

The boy’s face lengthens and furrows, and again he stares at the floor. “Of course, I’d—I’d … but I should never, and it’s—”

“You’ll join us for dinner,” says Kiri, turning away to settle the matter.

Kiri returns to the stove, where she finishes transferring the rice and dressing it with fish paste. Sâr steals a glance at her smooth legs in motion, her calves taut and strong from hours of gruelling rehearsal. Kiri’s younger than Veata by a couple of years. She wears an identical dark
sampot
, a golden necklace, and a tight white shirt with many small buttons up the front—the standard practice costume worn by all royal dancers.

“Chanlina,” calls Kiri. “Do you remember Roeung’s younger brother?”

Sâr watches the palm partitions in the back of the house for any sign of Chanlina, but there’s no movement on that side of the room.

“How’s school, little boy?” Veata teases.

“School is good.”

“Roeung said you go to the Catholic school.”

“Yes,” says Sâr. “The École Miche.”

“That’s strange,” Veata giggles. It seems she’s letting her hair flop forward against her cheeks on purpose. “What do you do all day in Catholic school? Pray?”

“Yes,” says Sâr. “That’s all they have us do. Pray and pray and pray. But their prayers are not like our sutras. They don’t focus your mind or anything else.”

“Why do you go there?” asks Veata. “Isn’t it very expensive?”

“I don’t know,” he says, shrugging.

“Did your parents become French and Catholic?” she giggles.

“No,” says Sâr, growing embarrassed by the line of questioning.

“That’s where all the rich kids go to school,” calls Kiri from the kitchenette.

“Tell me a prayer,” says Veata. “I want to hear one.”

Nhean shrieks in apparent agreement.

“Um,” says Sâr.

“Go on,” commands Veata. “Teach Nhean a prayer.”

The authority in Veata’s voice relaxes Sâr, making him feel as if he has no choice but to comply. “All right,” he says. He kneels and looks into the baby’s wide brown eyes, and then chants:
“Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

Veata and Kiri laugh, their giggles girlish and playful. “Art in heaven?” one of them repeats.

“Thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.”

Nhean lowers his wooden spoon while his mother and Kiri tremble in paroxysms of laughter. As Sâr speaks these incomprehensible words before him, the child struggles to comprehend, sensing a swirl of excitement and mischief rising in the room. He can only try to join it by widening
his bursting face and shrieking in a hearty combination of frustration and joy.

“And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive—
”

“You’re wrong,” interrupts Kiri. “Nhean’s father is not in heaven.”

“
Art
not in heaven,” corrects Veata.

“His father’s over at Khemarain,” says Kiri. “Probably halfway through the act of fathering another.”

Sâr stands and blushes.

“He’s the lucky one, isn’t he?” Veata asks.

“I don’t know,” says Sâr.

“He
is
the lucky one.”

“Well,” says Sâr. “He’s the King.”

“Do you want to be lucky like the King?”

Veata is approaching him, a slow and rhythmic walk, her eyes intense, lips pressed together.

Sâr opens his mouth but can’t bring himself to reply. He’s hypnotized by the soft pulsing of her steps.

“I asked you a question, little boy.”

“I don’t know,” says Sâr. “I’m not the King.”

“Don’t you want to be lucky? Didn’t you come here to be lucky?”

“I don’t know,” says Sâr, backing up a step. “I just came to say hello.”

“Hello,” says Kiri, the corners of her lips rising. “Lucky boy.” Now she’s approaching Sâr too, staring at him with a mischievous grin.

“What’s your name again?” asks another soft voice. “Roeung’s little brother?”

Chanlina has pushed aside her palm partition and stepped down into the main section of the room. Sâr gazes at her, wide-eyed, for she is as beautiful as he remembers. Her lips are so plump and full. With her hair tangled and her pupils constricted, wearing the standard white dancer’s blouse—with six or seven buttons undone—and a pair of skimpy underwear, she is far more languid than the others. Chanlina’s feline padding as she moves towards Sâr has a dancer’s natural grace, but it’s undermined by the way she scratches a patch of inflamed skin on her ruddy upper thigh. Her colouring is dark. She looks no older than eighteen. On the steel-framed bed behind the partition, Sâr notices Chanlina’s discarded
sampot
and a small wooden pipe.

“Sâr,” he whispers to her. “My name is Saloth Sâr.”

He’s been cornered by Kiri and Veata, and now the grinning third dancer slips between them into their tight semicircle. Chanlina rests a hand on Kiri’s shoulder and lets her fingers drape over her roommate’s collarbone. “Saloth Sâr,” she repeats, almost singing his name. Her long and bare legs electrify the room, although Sâr doesn’t dare to look at them.

“That is my … yes …”

“Are you hungry?” Kiri asks, prompting Chanlina to giggle.

“Yes,” whispers Sâr.

Nhean drops the spoon from his mouth. His enormous cheeks sag into saddlebags, the envy of any ibis or other fish-hoarding bird, and his eyebrows rise in curiosity as he glances from Sâr to Chanlina and then back to his mother. The adults seem so grave and solemn and possessed, but the
boy does not understand the magic transpiring in the room. Nhean’s groan this time is extended, ambiguous, and low.

“I think the baby needs his nap,” says Veata. She scoops Nhean off his mat and hurries him into his bamboo crib, hidden behind one of the palm partitions. He lets out a holler as his mother lays him down. “Shhh,” says Veata. “Sleep!”

She pulls the partition forward so Nhean won’t see them and rejoins the others. The child’s groans of complaint transform into shrieks of real protest.

“Never mind him. He’ll sleep soon.”