Tom Knox - Bible of the Dead

Chemda’s face was framed by the placid green hills beyond, cratered by the war. Like Jake. Cratered by a war.

‘So that’s what drove me out. In the end. I fled the UK. Just wanted to go anywhere else. Take risks. I didn’t care. Did lots of drugs, nearly killed myself.’

‘So it was nihilistic behaviour?’

‘I suppose, yes. Drink and coke and drunken rock climbing and bad bad places. And, eventually, photography. I wanted to do a job that entailed risk, you know? When I was in danger I didn’t feel so sad, I just felt scared. And I had a job, an excuse, a purpose. It wasn’t just drugs. So I went to Africa, south Russia, looking for action, seeking the work.’

‘But you didn’t get the story?’

‘Not anything amazing. There are a lot of guys – and girls – out there doing what I do. Lunatic photographers. Most of them are better than me. At least I can write a bit so I can work on my own if I need to – but these guys are better photographers than me and -’ He looked at her, he looked beyond her, at a flat blue lake surrounded by bushes with blue flowers and teak houses pillared by bombs. ‘And some of these guys are even more fucked than me. They will do anything. They don’t care. Really. They are broken. Damaged. Flawed. Junkies of one sort or another. Sometimes just basic junkies, heroin addicts. At least I managed to stop the drugs. I did a deal with Fate. I said just let me keep the booze, something to kill the guilt and grief – I’ll quit everything else. So that’s how I have survived my family. Now I stay cheerful. Sort of. When I’m not being threatened by cops.’

There. It was done. He’d said it. He had confessed. He felt a kind of lightness, his spirit unburdened; like he was on a better and smaller world, where the gravity was less punishing.

‘And you?’ he said. ‘Chemda? Why are you taking this risk?’

She was quiet again. Pensive. He didn’t know whether to insist, so he stared ahead at the track, at the widening landscape.

All around them stretched the Plain: in the bright harsh sun, the scenery had an astringent beauty; flat whispering lakes, groves of silent bamboo, docile parades of brown cattle pursued by bored-looking boys with willow sticks; and in the distance, modest green hills.

Even from ten kilometres away Jake could see the hills were marked by the smallpox of bomb craters; regular in dentations of shaded circles. This region really had been bombed to fuck , as Tyrone put it, and now it was like a landscape that had survived death, a land in traction, floating on its memories of pain – but alive. Even the landscape was a survivor.

Chemda inhaled, and said: ‘As you know my grandmother was killed by the Khmer Rouge, probably somewhere… around here, in the Plain of Jars. Somehow she was killed. Maybe UXO.’ Chemda hesitated, and then added: ‘But I don’t know, just don’t know. And that, Jake, is the real cancer in Cambodia’s past. Not Knowing. Ah. I just know she is not here, no one is here, they all disappeared, got swallowed up. Dissolved. Maybe she wasn’t even blown up… maybe she just did her job and then they got back to Phnom Penh and Angkar , the Organization, the KR, they took her to Cheung Ek and smashed the back of her head with an iron bar. Because that’s how they killed, Jake, they didn’t even waste bullets – they just crushed heads with car axles and cudgels… two million heads. Babies or children they smashed to death against trees. Smashing babies against trees .’

Her voice was dry, faltering; for the first time it was breaking: her demure composure was gone. She shut her brown eyes and opened them and shook her head and she was quiet, and then she said: ‘How can you do that? How could anyone do that? They weren’t even doing it to the enemy? They were killing their own people. Smashing their own babies. So I want to know what happened to my grandmother and, ah, ah, all the rest of my family. Because: if I can find that out, maybe I can understand what happened to my country.’ She stopped short. Then spoke: ‘The third jar site is over there. The red and white blocks are MAG warnings, Mines Advisory Group; warnings not to walk beyond the blocks. They mean the fields beyond are uncleared. One mis-step and – bang.’

Jake stared. The pretty green meadow, just visible through the trees, was scattered with large stone Jars. That was the only word for them – enormous jars – carved from old and coarse grey stone.

‘Tou,’ said Chemda, leaning forward and tapping the lad on the shoulder. ‘Where is this jar site the Khmer Rouge discovered. How far?’

‘Not so far,’ Tou said. ‘Jar site nine is called. But very very difficult road. Two hour. Maybe three? Only site left, not touch.’

The road was, inconceivably, deteriorating: it was now little more than a linear stripe of mud, just coincidentally the width of a car. The jeep banged and jumped and rocked. Yeng hawked and laughed and talked in Hmong.

‘I’ve seen the evidence. The pyramids of skulls,’ said Jake. ‘At Cheung Ek.’ He hesitated. Should he pry further? ‘Horrible. But… but all this must have happened before you were born?’

‘Yes,’ said Chemda, calmly. ‘I only heard of it. My father never got over the genocide. He lost so many relatives. As, perhaps, you understand? ’

‘I understand.’

Jake knew what it was like for your family to disappear. To dissolve.

Chemda continued:

‘So my father died in California, years later. That was not suicide, strictly speaking. A broken heart maybe. Many others in my family were killed by the Khmer Rouge. My surviving cousins and uncles won’t even talk about it. My mother is the same. It shattered us as a family. Ah. The only true survivor was my grandfather.’

She gazed his way, her eyes candid and searching, seeking maybe for some reassurance that he could be trusted with these truths. He said:

‘Go on.’

‘He is a powerful man, my grandfather. Sovirom Sen.’

‘ Sovirom Sen? ’ Jake had heard of him. A businessman. In Phnom Penh. Fiercely anti communist. Rich. Powerful. Connected. ‘ He’s your grandfather?’

‘He is my grandfather. He is the man the police spoke to in Ponsavanh.’

‘You said it was the UN.’

Chemda shook her head. ‘They tried the UN first, of course, but it was my grandfather who really pulled their stupid strings. Got us released. I didn’t want to say it out loud, at the police station, not so bluntly as that.’

It all made sense. Jake sat back. It made a lot of sense. That’s why Chemda felt able to take these risks. She had a powerful man in her family. That counted for a lot in Southeast Asia: a patriarchal culture. That was almost everything. Face and money and masculine power. Sovirom Sen. First name Sen, surname Sovirom, a regal name, a rich Cambodian surname. Most Cambodian surnames were short, perfunctory, monosyllabic, the rolling polysyllables meant money and class.

‘He’s involved in import and export, right?’

Chemda shrugged.

‘Business with China. His family is… or we were. .. upper class. It sounds absurd but that is the case. We were friends of Prince Sihanouk. Nearly all the bourgeoisie and the upper classes were slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge, as soon as they got the chance. But grandfather didn’t die. He survived. I have always admired him for that, loved him.’

‘So it was his idea you came here. To find out what happened to his wife?’

‘No, ’said Chemda. ‘It was my idea. But he was proud of me.’

Jake fell silent. The track was now so rough, so barely there, so narrow and unused, trees and bushes were reaching in through the windows, clawing. They all shut the windows of the rattling, scraping, Vietnam War era jeep; conversation was stifled by the crackle of the undergrowth, the squelch of the tyres, the jerk of the car slapping from rut to rut, then up onto the rattling craquelure of sunbaked mud. He was still trying to solve the sombre puzzle of Samnang’s murder: he didn’t believe Tou did it, for a moment. The boy was incapable, he had no motive; but then, what? Who? Why?