Cambodian Book of the Dead (7 page)

His second swig finished the can and he waved at Les. The Vietnamese silently put another can on the bar. She smiled, but not at her customer. Maier didn't like the man much, but you couldn't fall in love with everyone.

“I have retired here with my wife. My children have left home. I grew up in a France that no longer exists. In my time, one might have bought a little holiday house or apartment in Provence, but these days, too many Arabs and Africans live there. They steal your car while you are sitting in it. The concept of the Grande Nation is dead, completely dead. There's a McDonalds, Burger King or kebab on every street corner. If the Arabs don't burn our cars, the Americans force their fast food down our throats.”

The second can was empty.

“
Ca m'enerve
. Compared to that, the Khmer are just great. Here the communists killed everyone who could think, but at least the Cambodians have respect, and they smile when I ask them something.”

Maier silently played with the bar mat and tried to look neutral.

“Maupai is our village racist. He doesn't enjoy life.”

“You just enjoy life because you fuck your little Vietnamese and take drugs all day.”

“You hit it on the head there, buddy.” Les chuckled, trying to diffuse the Frenchman's aggression.

“Have another beer, Maupai, and enjoy the unique ambience of the Last Filling Station. Soon you're gonna die from misery.”

“Enjoy, enjoy, you are just running away from something. One day Kep will be returned to its former glory and guys like you will be thrown out. Kep will bloom, I tell you. Just like it did fifty years ago. A little island of civilisation in this tired country. Imagine if we had kept l'Indochine. There would be hospitals, schools, roads, electricity and good coffee.”

Les sighed and turned to Maier. “People travel around half the world because they don't like their own country and then they complain about how things are done in their adopted home.”

Maier was content everywhere. Maier never spent enough time anywhere to get bored. But the Frenchman was drunk and wouldn't let it go.

“That's all just talk. You know as well as I do how mad and murderous the Khmer really are. How can one be happy in a country like
Cambodge
, a land with so much sorrow? Look at what happened to M Rolf. A pleasant countryman of yours by the way, M Maier. A young man from a good family, that much was immediately clear. He came with great ideas and ideals. He wanted to help. And look what happened. And then take a good long look in the mirror.”

“One day I will bar you from the premises, Maupai, because you have a big mouth. You can go sit on the beach, converse with the dogs and get eaten by crabs.”

The retired bank director laughed loudly, his bitterness gurgling in his throat like long suppressed bile. “By then there will be a bistro and a wine bar here and only the rats will visit you. Until that time, you need my money. See you tomorrow. Salut.”

Maupai slammed a handful of dollar notes onto the bar and walked out into the sun. Les shrugged while the Vietnamese gathered up the money. ZZ Top played from the speakers overhead.

“Don't ask me about the young German straight away, otherwise I might really think you're a snoop, buddy.”

Maier also paid. There was no sense in putting a man like Les under pressure during a first meeting. The conversation would continue another time.

“Nice to meet you, Les Leroux. I will be in the area for a while, so I will drop by again. Great bar.”

“You alright, Maier, ain't you?”

“I am, yes.”

“Then take care. And don't believe everything you hear. Kep is a small place. Everyone knows everyone else and everyone thinks they know everything there is to know about everyone else. Almost everything. It's wonderful, really.”

 

 

KALEY

 

A sandy potholed track led from the Last Filling Station to the crab market. To the north of what passed for town, the densely forested Elephant Mountains rose into a gun-metal grey sky that had conspired with the jungle to fall down and bury everything. You always had to fear the worst in Cambodia. And usually it wasn't too far off the mark if you did.

Kep was no exception. The villas of the rich and gone stood on overgrown plots of land, demarcated by crumbling concrete fences and grandiose entrance gates. The side streets that branched off from the coast road had been claimed by tall grasses, and, following the rains, the former streets had turned into ponds and small streams, in which millions of black tadpoles flicked about, hoping to grow four legs before the water evaporated. Kep was an untapped archaeological dig of the very recent past, waiting to be rediscovered by twenty-first century history students. Cows grazed in the middle of traffic crossings. Twenty-year-old palm trees had replaced the street lamps and grew from the foundations of the old buildings. If nature had its way, all traces of human activities would disappear within a few years. No buildings, no streets, not even thoughts. Maier suddenly felt hopeful.

But Kep had not yet recovered. In 1994, a train had been attacked nearby. A number of Cambodians had been killed, while three foreigners had been kidnapped and taken into the mountains along the coast where they had later been executed. Cambodia found it hard to rid itself of its old revolutionaries. Maier walked from property to property, aimlessly at first, in order to think, and to get the vodka and the joint out of his system. He hadn't smoked for a long time. In Germany it no longer suited his lifestyle. But here… he laughed at himself, anything was possible in Cambodia.

Maier took a closer look at some of the abandoned properties. Some of the buildings were occupied by penniless Khmer – most of these casual tenants had no belongings and simply strung a piece of tarpaulin between walls that remained standing, to find refuge from the rain. Feral-looking children grew up beneath the improvised plastic roofs. But for the squeal of a child or the squawk of a chicken, the silence amongst the buildings was complete. Lizards slid silently across hot stones. If not for these occasional signs of life, Maier thought, Kep might have been the perfect town to encounter a ghost. For the Khmer, ghosts were as real and commonplace as the monsoonal rains. And down here, in the blinding humidity of an inebriated morning, it was easy to empathise with their superstitions.

The crab market, a long row of wooden sheds, which lingered under palm trees in front of a ruined colonial rest house, appeared abandoned. Young salesgirls dozed in their hammocks, dogs scratched themselves on the broken tarmac and the surf slashed hesitantly across the narrow, dirty beach. A few hysterical seagulls circled above heaps of rubbish by the shacks. Maier bought a bottle of water and sat in the shadow of a tall coconut palm. His mind replayed the Frenchman's drunken speech. What had happened to Müller-Overbeck?

 

The woman appeared silently, like a cat. Maier's eyes had fallen shut for just a second. Now they were open and the detective held his breath.

The famous, impenetrable smile of the Cambodians, the
sourir Khmer
, a phrase the French had coined a hundred years earlier, was shining down on him like a floodlight at the Millerntor-Stadion, and flushed over him like a hot, lazy wave. She was the most beautiful woman Maier had ever seen. Not quite perfect, in fact, not perfect at all. But breathtakingly, stunningly beautiful.

“Hello, Maier.”

The detective was lost for words. That didn't happen very often. The woman was well-informed.

“My name is Kaley.”

She stood in front of him, stock-still, tall for a Khmer, wearing a colourful sarong with flower patterns and a black blouse. Her hair fell straight down to her hips, like a waterfall of black pearly drops cascading in the midday sunshine that just touched her face, fragmented by palm leaves overhead. She studied him.

Maier recalled old Cambodian ghost stories. Perhaps Kaley was a vision. Had someone slipped something into his vodka? The detective swore never to drink or smoke in the mornings again. Eastern promises.

Kaley was barefoot. Silver rings curled around her toes, the toenails painted in a garish red. Her hips were broad, perhaps she was a mother. The black blouse was buttoned up, her prominent breasts vibrated slightly underneath the worn cloth. Her neck was delicate and thin, fragile even. Maier guessed she was between thirty and forty. But he found it hard to guess. Perhaps she was two thousand years old. Maier pulled himself up and looked into her face with care. Through the pitch-black eyes of this woman, you could see all the way into the heart of the world. Or at least into the heart of this unhappy country. A risky business.

She put her hands together in the traditional greeting and slowly, ever so slowly, and with the utmost elegance, sat down, two metres away under the next palm tree, and stared at him. Directly, openly: vulnerable, invincible. Maier felt his balls contract. Some men would kill for a woman like this one.

“I am looking for my sister, Maier. Can you help me?”

Her English was pretty good. But Maier could hardly focus on what she said. He was completely captivated by what she looked like. A long red scar crossed her right cheek, which gave her a crude and mystical aura. A broad white tuft of hair cut across her forehead and across her face like a knife, parallel to the mark on her skin. Her extraordinary physical uniqueness reinforced his first impression: he was facing a formidable, exceptional being.

Maier had been around long enough to evolve from atheist to agnostic. The Khmer lived in a different world to the
barang
, a world in which ghosts were as real as a cup of tea. This enabled curious visitors to open doors in their heads through which they could peer into this other world, which was subject to different laws. Maier enjoyed looking. His ten years hopping from conflict to conflict had led him somewhere else. Borderline situations were always crowded with ghosts. Kaley was different from any other woman he had ever met. For the first time in his life, Maier felt fear in the presence of an unarmed, friendly woman. A strange, foreign feeling and one he relished. Mostly it was her black, so very black eyes. The expression in her eyes made him want to offer her some commitment, a promise, a finger, anything, even if it would bind them to the bitter end.

Her end, not his.

Maier felt callous for a second. Then he remembered to breathe slowly and enjoy life.

“How do you know my name, Kaley?”

“Les told me. Les my friend.”

“Was your sister just here a moment ago?”

“No.”

“When did you last see your sister?”

Her expression remained impassive. She just kept looking at him. He had the feeling that she was very close to him now and that she could sense something in him that he had no conscious knowledge of.

“When I am little girl. In our rice field. But now she is coming back to come and get me. I think that maybe you see her?”

Maier shook his head.

“What gave you that idea?”

“Les told me that you are good man with good heart.”

“I am a man.”

“I know.” Maier began to sweat, sitting in the shade.

“I have to go.”

“Where do you have to go, Kaley? Stay another moment.” As soon as the words passed his lips, Maier knew he shouldn't have asked.

“Les said you are good man,” she said stubbornly. But she stayed. And smiled at him. He'd be responsible for what was to come. He'd asked her to stay.

Maier knew she'd go with him. He only had to ask. And then she would never be able to sit in front of him as she did now. He remained silent. Her first question had been her last. You were only asked this question once in a lifetime, if ever. It was like a Grail. He offered her his water. She took a swig and handed him the bottle back. A few drops ran down her chin and fell onto her black cotton blouse where they turned into steam.

“I tell you a story. An old Khmer story that people tell in the village at night.”

Maier nodded to her with encouragement.

“A long time ago, a rich woman live in Kep. Her name Kangaok Meas. She very cruel woman and treat her husband and her slaves very bad. Kangaok Meas have slave called Kaley. Kangaok Meas beat and curse Kaley every day. Even Kaley work in the field all day, she hardly have enough to eat. When Kangaok Meas find out Kaley is pregnant, she send her husband away to the harvest and make her work harder. On the day Kaley get her pains, Kangaok Meas beat the girl with a yoke and shout, ‘Because you love your husband, you forget that you are my slave. I will kill you and your child.'

“The husband of Kangaok Meas felt sorry for Kaley, but he scared of his wife. When she angry, she bite him, scratch him in his face and kick into his balls, so he almost fall sick. Soon Kangaok Meas died and was reborn the child. The people in the village hated the child. Not even Kaley like the child. Ten years pass and one day, Kaley tell her daughter to work. Now Kaley daughter work in the sugarcane field from morning to night time. Then she marry the man who is no good, always drunk. When the girl get pregnant, the husband beat her and she die with her child.”

Somehow, Kaley took something like a bow in front of him as she rose and for a split second Maier could see into her blouse. Her breasts shifted with the rhythm of her sparse, elegant movements. Kaley moved so slowly that he could enjoy the eternal second. These were forbidden fruits. You did not look at the cleavage of a ghost, a goddess or a cursed being.

“Thank you, Maier.”

Kaley departed as silently as she'd come. He was alone. More alone than he'd ever been in his entire life. In a sudden flash, helped along by her outlandish tale, the monotonous, lazy rush of the surf and the shrill squawking of the seagulls, he was acutely aware of the terrible transience of life's most wonderful moments. He sat in the shadow of the palm tree, as if paralysed, desperate to stop time.

 

A long while later, Maier shook his head. He'd made a promise to a vision, he knew that much. He smiled. Now he was in the story, in the case and on the case, now the action could begin. Now, he was sure, he had the case of a lifetime to work on.

And who had named her Kaley?