Phnom Penh Express (7 page)

“Tut-tut,” Alexander scolded, wafting himself with one of the stolen passports, “it’s all about market economics you know. Supply and demand, darling. It’ll be ready tomorrow. Ninety-five per cent deposit now, fifteen at delivery.”

“That makes a hundred and ten.”

“Mmm.”

Colonel Peeters had no choice. Especially when, during the final, crucial negotiation, a clearly drunken Van Noten entered, swung himself around the Colonel’s neck, landing square on his lap and let his hand rest on the Colonel’s left thigh, all the while staring into his eyes with a longing smile. At that moment, money no longer topped the list of Colonel Peeters’ concerns.

Back within the safety of the street, the Colonel orders his thoughts. All that’s left to do is book myself a ticket, he thinks. Via Bangkok, so he can return his supposed Thai fiancée to her shack. She’s been boring him out of his mind. What’s her name again, Nit, Nat, Noi? Something like that. Whatever...

ONCE AGAIN, PHIRUN wakes up to the penetrating stench of
prahok
rising from the flat downstairs and the relentless wailing of the karaoke addict upstairs. This morning’s cut is the Khmer dubbed version of Whitney Houston’s ‘Can’t Live Without You’. At the part in the song where the ‘live’ becomes ‘liiiiiive’, the neighbour sounds like a tortured cat, making Phirun wince in sheer pain.

He tries hard to ignore the raging headache throbbing in every cell of his alcohol soaked brain. This must be the worst hangover since... since when? he wonders. He tries to focus his memory on last night and recalls a lot of Leffe beers, but the sheer concept of alcohol makes him feel sick now.

He lets out a faint moan while upstairs the neighbour’s voice is still raping the airwaves. Why is it that countries that don’t need the death penalty have one, and those who do, don’t? Phirun wonders. For the second time this week, he tries to remember where the Paracetamol tablets are.

Grumbling, he rolls over but then stiffens with surprise at the human body lying just inches from his. It’s the body of a young brown-skinned woman, Cambodian, lying motionlessly as if sculpted out of palm tree wood. The white bed sheet exposes one of her plum-shaped breasts — quietly undulating in harmony with her breathing.

Oh my God... Phirun thinks. At least she’s alive, he assures himself, but nevertheless panics about what he should be doing next. For what seems a very long moment, he remains frozen, undecided about the right course of action and fearful of waking her up. He quietly studies her face and can’t help congratulating himself. She’s exceptionally beautiful, floating in a little silken lake of abundant black hair that seems to flow with sensuality. No earrings, no necklace, no tattoos, as far as he can see, just a cute birthmark on her cheek. She seems vaguely familiar and he racks his brain trying to remember how this wondrous creature ended up in his bed. Suddenly her eyes flutter and a moment later she speaks.

“You
saat
,” the girl says, calling him beautiful.

Phirun’s heart skips a beat before he manages a smile.

“You
saaaaaat
,” the young woman’s voice insists. She moves her body and reaches for Phirun’s nose, pulling it playfully. The white sheet drops further and exposes the girl’s other breast. She doesn’t seem to mind.

The upstairs neighbour has meanwhile moved on to ‘Take Me To Your Heart’, at full blast. It’s preventing Phirun from gathering his thoughts and trying to remember what might have happened over the past eight hours. It’s not his style to bring a random girl home, but now that she’s here, perhaps he should consider changing styles. Maybe she kidnapped him. And brought him to his own flat?

The girl has now curled her slender brown body up against his. Not an entirely unpleasant sensation, Phirun admits to himself, but he’s in far too much pain to enjoy it. Where’s the damn Parecetamol?

“Er... sorry er... but... what is your name again please?” he tries to establish contact with the alien girl.

“You
shkoot!”
she laughs, now calling him crazy and pulls his hair.

“Ouch! Where you from?
Moak peenaa?”
he asks in Khmer.

“From bloody Melbourne, you tit. So you don’t remember a thing then?” she suddenly replies in a heavy Australian accent.

“What? Jesus!”

“Merrilee, for the record, not that you seem to care much anyway.”

Phirun hesitates, still unsure what to do. This is all too confusing. One moment he’s asleep, the next he’s got a stunning Cambodian-looking Australian curled up to him, asking him complicated questions such as whether he remembers her. Did he really drink that many beers? She seems pretty blasé about it all, Phirun thinks, judging from the way she’s now casually playing with his penis. It resoundingly fails to respond.

“So, ‘up with the cock’ is not part of
your
morning vocabulary, then?” she joshes with a tinge of cruel amusement in her voice.

Phirun is concentrating hard on several things at once. Getting his little man into action (because, despite his nervousness, this is an opportunity that may not occur again for some time), remembering who this irresistible apparition might be, and ignoring the neighbour from hell upstairs. Unfortunately Phirun’s never been good at multitasking.

“What the hell is that bloodcurdling racket upstairs? Is your neighbour slaughtering animals?” the girl asks. Then she cups her hands around her mouth and yells toward the ceiling, “Please! Put the poor beast out of its misery!”

To his shame, Phirun notices the girl has given up on animating action man. He clenches his teeth — if only his splitting headache would disappear.

“Are you always this quiet, or what?” she asks, playfully pinching one of his nipples. “Yesterday you weren’t so quiet, were you?”

“Well, yeah... listen, er...”

“Merrilee.”

“Right. Merrilee. I’m sorry, I...”

“What for?”

“Well, er..., I don’t exactly recall in detail what happened yesterday. Maybe too much to drink...”

“You don’t remember the foursome we did yesterday?”

“The four... What?”

“Yeah, those two other guys, you and me.”

“What?”

“Just kidding.”

Phirun has never ended up in bed with such a gorgeous looking girl. But now that the long awaited miracle finally happens, he can’t remember anything of it. What an idiot he is, he thinks, he could kill himself for it.

“I’m really sorry. This normally never happens to me, it’s...”

“Spare your breath, mate,” she interrupts. “I had a fab time yesterday — you too, you will be pleased to hear, in case you don’t remember — but there’s nothing more to it. You were very sweet and it was all good fun last night.”

She pauses for a second, then adds:

“And I still have a couple of hours to spare for breakfast if you fancy one, but then I’ll have to go — no hard feelings, yah?”

“Okay,” Phirun replies, “so you’re not upset or anything?” he asks, trying to hide his disappointment.

“Of course not,” she laughs at him. She kisses him quickly on his mouth and throws the sheets aside, exposing the rest of her perfectly curved, naked body. Then she energetically jumps out of bed.

“C’mon, time for breakie, I’m starving!”

***

Two Paracetamols, one long breakfast and three hours later, Phirun is standing in Street 240 in front of Nina’s bakery and café. He’s still thinking of Merrilee — what a stunning, divine creature she is. God does exist, it’s official.

After breakfast in The House he asked her if he could get her telephone number.

“What for?” she said.

“To call you,” he replied, simple logic being one of his few remaining reflexes.

She took his hand, smiled and gently but clearly explained that she wasn’t interested in pursuing a relationship.

“Me neither,” Phirun lied, “but just, you know, I’d like to invite you to, er... the opening party of a chocolate shop soon. That’s where I’m working, making chocolates.”

It was the best excuse he could come up with, and it had worked, strangely enough. Although she had quite reluctantly passed him her number and made him promise her free chocolates at the launch party.

While he tries to kickstart his old motorcycle, Phirun tries to replay last night’s events. He still can’t remember much. What a shame, he thinks, considering how attractive Merrilee is. Why had she agreed to come home with a drunk, average guy like him? She must have been drunk, too, after all, she’s Australian. Luckily, she hadn’t taken any offence to him not remembering. He wonders if that is a good or a bad sign. Good, maybe, in the sense that she’s easygoing and cool and not like those girls who make scenes because you leave the toilet seat up (although Phirun always closes it). Bad, perhaps, in the sense that she doesn’t really appear to care about the episode or seem especially interested in him.

The second possibility puts him in a foul mood and he resolves to find out for himself whether it’s true or not. And even if it’s true, even if she isn’t much into him, then why shouldn’t he at least try to win her over?

Phirun accepts that he might be overreacting, for he doesn’t really know the girl. She might be a terrible character. But then, the couple of hours that they had spent together over breakfast had been wonderful. He had learnt that she is twenty-eight, a year his junior. He’s tired of all those immature girls that swarm about Phnom Penh’s nightlife. Merrilee sounded mature, intelligent, witty and charming. And she looks like a direct descendent of one of those stone-carved celestial dancers adorning Angkor Wat. Just the memory of her naked body makes his knees buckle. Phirun realises that he might be in love.

He steers his motorcycle out of Street 240 onto Norodom Boulevard, past the Independence Monument, narrowly missing a hand-pushed mobile stall selling fried chicken feet, and continues until he stops in front of the traffic lights at the intersection with Mao Tse Tung Boulevard. Just before him, three guys on a rusty Daelim motorcycle are transporting a king-sized bed. The driver’s body is shoved up so tight that he’s almost glued to the handlebars while the second person is pressed against his back with the huge bed upright behind him. On the other side of the upright bed is a third guy, standing on what is left of the motorcycle’s seat, trying to prevent the bed from falling by bear-hugging it with his arms spread wide, reminiscent of the Christ’s crucifixion. The circus is out again, Phirun thinks, observing the mid-traffic acrobatics.

Merrilee had done most of the talking, explaining that she was born in an Australian refugee detention centre, where her then pregnant mother had been incarcerated upon arrival. She said that she had never known her father, who had stayed behind to look after his parents in Cambodia because they were too old to board the boat. They had never heard from him or his parents again and naturally assumed that they had died at the hands of Pol Pot and his cronies. Or perhaps even the Vietnamese forces, they weren’t sure.

Life as a single mother and refugee in a country of which she didn’t speak the language had been particularly harsh for Merrilee’s mother. But somehow she had managed to send her only daughter to university, determined to give her the education of which she had been deprived. It had been her mother’s hope that if Merrilee could be educated in Australian schools, she would not have to face the humiliation and discrimination that she had endured in later life.

The lights turn to green and Phirun drives his motorcycle onto the wide boulevard, carefully avoiding the clowns with the king-sized bed. He zigzags between the herds of motodops coming from every possible direction, all bestowed with licences to crash. He makes his way with difficulty through an intersection where a lone policeman is causing widespread confusion with his failing attempts to regulate traffic and soon he’s pulled up again by a red light. He looks to his left and makes eye contact with one of two bored-looking cows. They are harnessed in front of a wooden cart loaded with earthenware from Kampong Cham province in the east of Cambodia. Phirun looks ahead and waits for the lights.

Her mother had been wrong, Merrilee told him. At school, she still had to deal with discrimination and stupidity. But instead of being intimidated, it had toughened her and strengthened her resolve to succeed. She felt she owed it to her mother, who had done everything within her power to offer her daughter a fair chance in life. Her mother, Merrilee confided, had once told her that Merrilee had inherited her father’s stubbornness and intelligence, and she was very proud of that.

Well before the lights turn green, the unorganised army of countless motorcycles, bicycles, tuk tuks, cyclos, cars, pickup trucks, SUVs and the two cart-pulling cows, push into motion for an early invasion of the irresistibly beckoning intersection ahead. Phirun joins the traffic avalanche and continues his journey. He’s looking forward to a cold shower and a half-hour nap. After two near-collisions, he passes the white perimeter wall of the Chinese embassy and is again halted by traffic lights. There used to be hardly any traffic lights in Phnom Penh, Phirun realises, and now there are suddenly too many. Not that it really matters, as he seems to be one of few drivers naive enough to acknowledge them at all, during the fifty per cent time window when they are not deactivated by power cuts. His eccentric habit of stopping for red lights must have been acquired in Belgium, and now, for the sake of his own safety, he’ll have to try and get rid of it.

Merrilee was now about to graduate as a lawyer, she said, specialising in human rights. She’s visiting Cambodia to research a paper she’s writing for her university thesis back home. She plans to stay for only three months, four at the most, she told him. Then she suddenly changed subject.

Phirun finally stops in front of a simple house in a backstreet behind the Chinese embassy. He looks up at the metal gate decorated with barbed wire that serves as the front door of the building in which he rents his little apartment. At knee level, a little custom-made hole is cut out in order to be able to unlock the heavy padlock on the other side of the gate. After all these months, Phirun still hasn’t got the knack of opening it without dropping his keys. As he can’t directly see the gate’s bolt on the other side, he wriggles his hand through the small opening and blindly tries to insert his key in the padlock. Just after he manages to find it — it took him two long minutes — the neighbour’s poodle starts barking viciously as if that’s its only purpose in life. Phirun drops his keys with a fright, cursing the dog.