Holiday in Cambodia Read online

  Where am I? I ask her. On a hard bed until morning. My second husband snores. My second child coughs. It’s quiet. But still the sound of explosion booms through me. My first husband was alive when I got to him. He’d been working alongside my daughter, pulling corn for the owner. That land has red signs on it now. A skull and crossed bones, scarlet string. All the way down to our houses and back up over the hill.

  You will see explosions, they warned us. We were crouched under the tree in our new green coveralls, eight women from the village. My neighbour squeezed my hand; I remembered she was clutching my daughter’s hand the same way when I got to the field, as though she could save either of us. My son coughs again. Who’ll make him soup if he’s sick tomorrow? My girl with her too-short hair is translucent. She smiles again – it’s all she can do.

  The landmines are presents left behind the year before I was born. Khmer Rouge bombs, Vietnamese bombs, American. Like the countries that made them, they’re all different. This one is just for maiming, they explained, and this one scatters to kill and this one … Which bomb killed my daughter and my husband? This peg is for showing you’ve found a mine, they continued, this peg is to show it’s safe. We’ll wear our green coveralls and over this we’ll wear lead vests and helmets – our dust and our detectors. Just our legs will go free. It will be hot but that’s better, they said. In the rainy season, mines slide under the mud. Landmines are travellers. They shift like worms and you have to find them again. Old ones rise to the surface and ones marked as found sink and disappear. You could end up with one next to your house, they warned, where your children play. We have to work quickly.

  Quickly. The night moves like mud. But not slowly enough. My oldest boy coughs and gets up. The red string will be invisible in the dark. My ears strain to hear him: down the steps and across the yard, over by the corn where I’ve taught him it’s safe. Except when the rains start. He urinates in spurts and then crosses the yard again. The door creaks open and closes. He settles.

  It’s already tomorrow. With dawn comes noise, drowning out the long blast that only I seem to hear. The birds wake. The lizards sway back to their hiding places in the beams. The rooster scratches and eyes the horizon. My daughter fades from beside the bed. There’s just a mosquito net and, beyond that, my sleeping children lit slowly by the day: Two, Three and Four. Two stops coughing. My husband shifts closer to me in his sleep, his breath blowing garlic and booze. It’s no job for a woman, he told me yesterday. Will you do it then? I asked and we both looked at his hands, which have shaken since he was a boy soldier. His watery eyes blinked out the light. I told my son to go and ask the neighbours for beer.

  I’ll get up, wash my hair, make breakfast. I’ll have my boy get ready for school, then pull on my coveralls and wait for my neighbour to walk with me over the hill. We’ll pass the farm with the dying corn and the red signs dropping like blood. I shift myself to the edge of the bed and my leg buckles and cramps. I wait for something to tell me I’ve slept through the day. For the men singing through the dimming streets, the cows lowing mournfully home.

  Through the wall the neighbour strikes a match, then calls to her husband that it’s morning.

  TAXI

  It was late when they got to 69ers. The restaurants on either side were caged and padlocked, motorbikes brought inside. 69ers, though, was far from closed. Adam tried to say something to Tristan and Doug about 69ers being the 7-Eleven of bars but it was lost in the noise and the cold smoky air that burst out when they pushed on the dark doors. A high-pitched chorus of ‘hellohowareyou’ drew them inside. At first women were about all they could see but as their eyes adjusted to the dim, they became aware of others. The stillness of men’s bodies at the centre of each clump of females. Guys like them.

  Women were grasping at Tristan’s arms, pulling him forward. Adam followed close behind.

  ‘Lets go to the sports bar,’ he yelled at Tristan’s back. Doug was already at the bar with three women, grinning wildly from one to the other. Tristan struggled a hand free to find a cigarette and popped it into the corner of his mouth. Adam squashed his fingers into his jeans pocket for a lighter but by the time he’d got it out, several women were jostling to give Tristan a light. Others leaned over the bar to order rounds of drinks, collecting four at a time with muscular hands that splayed from their narrow arms. The doors opened again and Adam was shoved against the bar. He got close enough to Tristan to pull up a seat beside him. ‘Let’s go to that sports bar.’

  A woman edged up close and stared at Adam with a lopsided smile. She was drunk or strange. She put a hand on his thigh.

  ‘What?’ he barked and she jumped away.

  ‘Just chillax, mate,’ Tristan said and ordered whiskeys and then tequila slammers were a dollar and he called Doug over from the group of three that surrounded him.

  ‘Hey, why are they called taxi girls?’ Doug yelled, a residue of salt on his lips. Adam and Tristan shook their heads, grinning. ‘Because they’re for hire and you can ride them all night long! Guy in the dunny told me that.’ He snorted and went to rejoin his group. Tristan raised his eyebrows at Adam.

  ‘Yeah … we’d better keep an eye on Dougie tonight,’ he said. One woman pushed closer to Tristan and wrapped her arms around him possessively. The others fell away. She was taller, with a ponytail, and her singlet pulled tight. Tristan looked down at her a moment before draping a large arm around her waist and shrugging at Adam. A girl like that wouldn’t talk to you back home, Adam thought dimly, and here was Tristan with his arms around her. Adam ordered cigars and lit them, passing one to Tristan. They hunched over the bar. Tristan’s date laid her head on his shoulder and waited, one finger hooked in a belt loop at the back of his jeans.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t love Amanda,’ Tristan said to Adam, breathing out a thick smoke that smelled slightly sweet – like shit. ‘It’s just that she’s the only one who wants to be in this relationship. I tell her I need a bit of a break and she goes mental. What am I supposed to do?’

  He turned to his date. It was too dark to see her eyes but a smile filled her face. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ he asked her. She whispered in his ear and he laughed, his head thrown back, like a hero. ‘This girl’s gonna freak when she sees my jock rot,’ he confided to Adam out the side of his mouth and Adam snorted with laughter as Tristan scratched his balls. The woman smiled at them and ordered a round of beers. ‘It’s not as if I wouldn’t marry Amanda,’ Tristan continued. Tristan’s date whispered in his ear again but Tristan didn’t respond so she did a neat twist in his arms to watch the rest of the bar. ‘I would. Just not yet. I’ve got some things I want to do in my life first, you know?’

  ‘You should just tell Amanda to fuck off if she doesn’t like it.’

  ‘Nah, you’ve gotta be gentle with them.’ Tristan turned back to his date, who was ready with another whisper. It worked: he laughed again. They kissed wetly. Adam hiccuped and gulped his beer but it was already flat.

  ‘Where’s your girl?’ Tristan asked him. More women had come to stare at Adam but he didn’t like it when they pawed at him so they drifted away. It was almost two now and the music was louder, the bar packed. A group of men, footy types, had arrived and were dancing with two women each, ordering rounds of shots. One guy holding a whole bottle of vodka had a woman hoisted over his shoulder. He staggered in circles with her and the bottle. The woman’s face swung close to Adam’s – laughing, almost hysterical, eyes darting desperately. Adam tried to explain to Tristan that the women here seemed immune to him, but Tristan couldn’t hear him over the din.

  ‘Asian chicks don’t like me,’ he finally shouted.

  ‘You think the girls like you any better at home?’ Tristan laughed his laugh again. Some half-chewed nuts lay on his tongue. Tristan’s date laughed too and Adam glared at her. ‘Just kidding, mate,’ Tristan said. ‘Don’t be so rough and you’ll be right. Lo
ok at poor Dougie.’

  They both glanced at Doug, who had placed an experimental hand on one girl’s breast. She gazed up at him with a half smile. Doug turned to his friends in delight and Adam gave him a thumbs up. Doug’s divorce was a bloody mess, he thought. His mind drifted briefly back over the ocean towards Bianca, wondering if it was too soon to email her again and if she would write back this time. Playing hard to get, Tristan had told him. Adam shifted on the stool and it rocked unsteadily. He gazed into his empty glass. Doug leaned across the bar, knocking the oily peanuts over as he spoke to Tristan.

  ‘We’re … ah … heading off,’ Tristan advised Adam. ‘Dougie really needs this girl tonight.’

  ‘Where you going?’ Adam asked stupidly but Tristan was distracted by his date, who was undoing the buckle of his belt and doing it back up again.

  ‘Wherever this little thing wants to take me,’ he replied eventually. Adam tugged his phone from his pocket and peered at the time. He pressed some random buttons and watched the screen flick as he tried to remember how to get back to the hotel.

  Tristan grabbed at a woman limping past in too-high heels and planted her firmly in front of Adam. ‘You with him, okay?’ Tristan told her and she nodded automatically. ‘Take her,’ Tristan coaxed Adam. ‘She likes you. I can tell.’ Adam blinked and gingerly raised his arms, like a child to an unknown aunt. She slid expertly beneath them, pulling his hands down around her waist. Her hair was silky on his neck and smelled of cigarettes and shampoo. It felt magic. ‘You be right from here or do you want me to take her home for you as well?’ Tristan asked. Doug barked with laughter as they went out the door. Adam didn’t care. His date was soft and a bit rounder than Tristan’s date. But, Adam reassured himself, still petite. In her high heels, and with him sitting on the bar stool, she almost reached his shoulder.

  ‘What’s your name? Where are you from? Do you like me?’ she whispered in quick succession. Adam barely had time to answer before she leaned over the bar to order him another drink.

  ‘Are all these girls your friends?’ Adam asked when she was back beside him. She laughed knowingly. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked but couldn’t understand what she said. He felt her small hand on his cock.

  ‘Do you like me?’ she asked again. They were swaying along to ‘Under the Bridge’, the same music Adam and Tristan used to listen to on similar, but less successful, nights out at uni.

  ‘I do like you,’ he slurred. ‘I really do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I like you,’ he repeated. She murmured something and pressed closer, outlining his penis – he had an erection now – with a long, thickly painted nail. A short distance away, Adam saw another man, older, place a woman’s hand over the bulge of his jeans. He looked away.

  ‘You want to go to another bar?’ he asked her.

  ‘You want to take me home?’ She pressed his cock again.

  ‘Very much,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Another woman appeared and stood near him. She was even prettier. Adam couldn’t believe his luck. He moved to bring her closer. She laughed efficiently and pushed something into his gut. The bill. Tristan must have paid for his drinks but Doug’s line of whiskeys was still there. At the bottom, two amounts of five dollars. Adam gazed at it unsteadily as the women spoke to each other.

  ‘The bar fine,’ the cashier explained. ‘The tax.’

  ‘What’d I do?’ Adam asked. ‘Drink too much? We did drink a lot,’ he confided in his date and she hugged him tighter. ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘Bar fine. You’re taking the girl,’ the cashier said, ‘and your friend took the other girl, so you need to pay the fine to the bar.’

  ‘Oh, it’s like insurance? Don’t worry, I’ll look after her!’ He ventured a hand down to the woman’s bum and gave it a hesitant squeeze. She laughed. The cashier pressed the paper towards him.

  ‘Would you like to stay for more drinks, sir? I can keep your bill and the bill of your friend behind the bar until you’re ready to leave and –’

  ‘How much is it?’ Adam interrupted. ‘I can’t see in this bloody light.’

  Out in the night the streets were quiet. They walked past lines of cyclos parked along the footpath, cradling the sleeping bodies of old men. Tristan would have crept close and snuck a look at their faces, just to see. Probably did it when he left the bar.

  Adam fumbled for his date’s hand and linked his fingers with hers. The streetlights hung in battered moons over their heads. Around the corner a ring of women stared into a fire that sparked and spat in the gutter. One leapt up, circled the flames and jumped through, once, twice, and once more.

  ‘Hey, cool!’ Adam said and went to do it too, but his date tugged him away.

  ‘Don’t. It’s their tradition. For luck …’ But Adam didn’t understand. She put her fingers under his shirt and ran a fingernail down his back. He grinned and grabbed her upper thigh.

  ‘I know what you want!’ he said. They passed the fire and found themselves in another dark street, this one lined with caged doors. A group of men crouched on a corner beside tuk tuks. Dogs quarrelled nearby.

  ‘What’s your name again?’ Adam asked her.

  ‘My name’s Sopea.’

  ‘Sofia?’ Adam repeated. ‘That’s, like, Italian.’ There was no response for a few high-heeled steps but then she let out a sudden hoarse shout of laughter, different from the laugh she had used in the bar, and the men on the corner glanced up from their game.

  ‘Not Italian! Cambodian!’ she shouted and the gambling men murmured and grinned. ‘I’m Cambodian,’ she repeated, but Adam had started singing.

  ‘Sofia, I just met a girl called Sofia. Sofia, Sofia, Sofia …’

  ‘You sing about me? I’ll sing about you!’ Sopea shouted, but she didn’t. They had reached the Happy Days Hotel and Guesthouse.

  In the stairwell of the hotel he pushed her clumsily against the wall and kissed her hard. She laughed gently into his mouth. Then he kissed her softly, like Tristan had told him girls loved it. She laughed the same way so he did it hard again. In the bright light she looked younger, Adam thought – her makeup too big for her face.

  ‘You really like me, don’t you?’ he said after he’d pinched her nipple through her sequined shirt and she didn’t move his hand away. She laughed again. It occurred to him that she was drunk and he put a protective arm around her, guiding her upstairs. Lucky he was taking her home with him, out of that bar.

  The room was purple. Heart-shaped purple pillows on the two beds. Adam picked up the laminated menu from the bedside table and looked through it, his eyes resting on ‘condoms,’ listed after ‘coffee with milk.’

  ‘Have you been here before?’ he asked Sopea. She sat down on his lap and put her tongue in his ear but he didn’t like that so jerked his head away. ‘Have you?’ he repeated. ‘Have you been to this hotel?’

  ‘You like this hotel?’ Sopea asked him. Adam glanced around, as though surprised to find himself there.

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Do you like me?’

  ‘Of course I like you!’ He kissed her roughly again.

  ‘You want to have sex with me?’ Sopea asked against his mouth.

  ‘Aw khun,’ he thanked her in Khmer – the only words he knew. Sopea pulled back and hooted and fell from his lap.

  ‘You speak Cambodian!’ she yelled and crawled away from him, over the low bed. Her sexy smile was gone. Cross-legged, skirt cutting into her thighs, she spoke rapidly in Khmer. Adam shook his head to show that he didn’t understand and reached to pull her closer. Her laugh hooted out again. She attempted English. ‘Because my family is so poor …’ She gesticulated wildly when she couldn’t find the words. ‘So poor. They live in Kampong Chhnang province and I need to make money for them i
n Phnom Penh. Sure. I thought maybe a factory or restaurant but then my friend’s uncle told me there was work in a good bar –’

  ‘Do you want to fuck now?’ Adam said. Sopea looked ungainly, almost boyish, on the bed. His mind flashed to Tristan’s date. He wondered if they’d had sex yet. Or if they were having sex right now. Sopea nodded and slipped over the shiny quilt to the telephone. Her voice was furious and nasal when she spoke into the receiver.

  ‘I just feel like I can be really honest with you,’ Adam explained when she’d finished.

  ‘You like me?’ she asked. She was back on his lap, voice gentle, face arranged, giggling like she had in the bar, soft and promising. Teeth perfect. ‘Wait,’ she whispered in his ear as he tried to pull off her top. In a few moments there was a knock at the door and a very young man, a boy, handed Adam three condoms from a tray and left. Adam closed the door and Sopea took off her sequined top and tight black skirt and stood beside them in lacy underwear. Red on the top and black on the bottom. A small gold chain snaked around the stretch marks on her stomach. Her feet were raw and she rubbed one against her ankle. Adam stared awkwardly at her crotch. She came forward and cupped her hand under his cock through the jeans. He closed his eyes.

  ‘You like me. You like me,’ she said, leading him towards the bed by his balls.

  ‘I like you,’ he answered automatically, his eyes still closed.

  ‘I like you,’ she repeated and Adam felt a surge of triumph. He grabbed Sopea by the hair and mashed his mouth into hers and when she responded with her tongue he tilted his head back and laughed like a hero. She undid his belt but she was too slow and so Adam took over, ripping his jeans down and then her underpants. She stopped him to put the condom on with her mouth – a neat trick, not one that his other girlfriends had known. Adam pulled her up again. Sex was quick and hard. He knelt on the floor, pulled her to the edge of the bed and was coming before he knew it with his customary final grunt that chicks loved. He fell on top of her. The sweat dripped from his face and into her eyes and mouth. She stayed still while he panted on her shoulder.