Lawrence Osborne - Hunters in the Dark

“Did you board there?”

“No, I lived at home. My mother said she’d never allow me to board.”

Chalvington with Ripe — it was where Malcolm Lowry died of alcoholism.

The doctor listened patiently and something told Robert that he didn’t believe it. He didn’t believe Robert, but he also didn’t care.

When the chicken was finished they went back to the sofas and the maid brought the candles over. The doctor said that it was an unusually long power outage and that normally they only lasted two or three hours at most. Yet they did seem to be getting worse. It was the rain that triggered them. The city flooded easily and the generators went out. In his youth, however, they had gotten used to doing without electricity. He and his wife didn’t mind it, they liked the return of heat, starlight and nature. They secretly preferred it. One would have thought, however, that with the advances of technology and the huge increase in the country’s wealth — well, it was exasperating. He told Robert that he ran an exclusive private clinic for patients with psychological problems. Such problems were on the rise these days and doctors were at a loss to know why. The recent protests in the capital against Hun Sen had contributed, perhaps; dozens of people had been shot dead. There was a curious ripple effect from such things.

The maid then brought in coffee and some rice-ball desserts not unlike the Thai boua loy Robert had eaten in Bangkok. Sophal was next to him on the sofa with her legs crossed and their arms rubbed against each other as they used their spoons. It felt like centuries since he had felt anyone close to him. He could smell the rose talc under her T-shirt now turning faintly sour with the heat. Her father suggested they set up a time for an inaugural lesson and she said, “Well, I can come to Colonial Mansions the day after tomorrow if you like.”

“How about it?” the doctor said.

“If you like,” Robert replied, but now he had to think fast. “On the other hand,” he suggested, “we could just meet in town. You can take me somewhere.”

“All right,” she said slowly. “I can take you somewhere.”

The doctor and his wife exchanged a clearly delighted look.

“You two will figure it out,” Dr. Sar said with finality. “What about a Vietnamese lunch?”

“I’ll come and pick you up at the Mansions,” Sophal decided. “We can just stay in the lobby there if it’s convenient.”

“I’m not sure what I’m going to teach you,” Robert said. “Your English seems perfect as it is.”

“I need to practice — don’t we all?”

“If you say so.”

“She gets her future tenses mixed up,” the wife said. “And her past tenses too.”

Robert put down his dish, looked at his watch and said, “Maybe I’d better be going. That driver has been waiting outside for two hours.”

“So he has,” the doctor said, and put his dish down as well. “Sophal, give Simon your phone number and you two are all set.”

The girl, in fact, walked him down to the outer gate in the rain. She seemed nonchalant about the lessons and said that all she wanted was some fun conversation, which her family was prepared to pay for. She saw no reason to pass it up.

“By the way,” she said, “my father said to give you this. He didn’t want to give it to you himself. He’s quite shy about things like this.”

It was an envelope, and it obviously contained money in cash, and she pushed it gently into his hand and shook her head as if to say, “Don’t worry about it, it’s normal — he likes you.”

He took it and there was no awkwardness at all.

“He needn’t have,” he muttered and quietly gauged the amount inside.

“Tomorrow I can’t,” she said as the gate came open, and they saw the driver sprawled inside his tuk-tuk, his bare feet balanced on the metal rail. “The day after, Colonial Mansions. About two is OK, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, that’s fine with me.”

“Goodbye then, Mr. Beauchamp. I forgot to tell you what a weird name that is — but I’ve heard it before somewhere. I can’t remember where.”

“It’s not a common name.”

“Is it an American name too?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it is.”

She shook his hand, and there was a subtle mockery in her look.

He said, “Bonne nuit,” and went down to the tuk-tuk, whose driver had stirred. She waited by the gate and the driver peered out and then looked up at the rain. He saw that the electricity had not come back on.

“It’s going to be a dark night,” Sophal called down to him. “I’d go straight home if I were you, Mr. Beauchamp.”

“I’ll do that.”

“ Bonne nuit yourself.”

And as the tuk-tuk pulled away she smiled and the gate closed and the driver shot him a knowing look. Robert asked him to drive to Street 102 and he slumped into the backseat and held the rails tight. The evening had been a success, but he couldn’t really say why that success had happened.

—

They went down Norodom again and the lights came back on. He opened the envelope and looked inside, feeling slightly guilty that he had taken the unexpected gift without more of a protest. It was five hundred dollars which he had done nothing to earn and which the doctor had given him as an encouragement. Or else as some obscure gesture which could not be reciprocated. Five hundred. It was the windfall that changed the situation. It made no sense at all but, as he now thought, the lucky have great timing and he knew that he wouldn’t think about it again.

He pocketed the bills and threw away the envelope. At Colonial Mansions, which was his destination, he found the boys scooping up the water that now formed a moat around the buildings and the night manager standing in a black suit with an opened umbrella. Robert jumped over the moat and went into the ice-cold lobby, where the air-conditioning seemed to have been on the whole time. The manager came to the reception desk with him and Robert asked him if he had any units he could rent him starting from the following day.

It took a while to find a smaller unit on the first floor that Robert could rent by the day or by the week, as he pleased. It was furnished and it was discounted because it had an obscured view and little natural light.

“All right,” Robert said, and laid down a hundred to hold it. “I’ll take it from tomorrow afternoon. Does it have a table?”

“A table, four chairs and a sofa. And a king-size bed.”

“Kitchen stuff?”

“All equipped. It’s a one-bed apartment.”

It was perfect.

Robert thought for a moment about whether he should see it first but then he let it go: if it was unacceptable he didn’t much care.

The manager gave him a receipt then took him around the ground floor to show him the facilities. There were two wings to the property, one with the handsome old pool and one with a sleek new pool. Both were lit from below and the rain puckered their surfaces.

“Most of our guests are long-term residents,” the manager said. “They work at the embassy next door or with the Korean construction company up on the boulevard. It’s very quiet.”

“I was looking for a quiet place. I’m having good luck today.”

“We are getting more Chinese now.” The manager lowered his voice. “They like to swim late at night.”

At the center of the old pool was a woman’s head patiently making its way along its length, beaten by the rain but calm-looking, the hair trussed up above it. A strangely nightmarish sight, with the goggles and the rhythmically gasping mouth.

Robert stood just out of range of the rain dripping from the eaves and looked up at the balconies stacked on top of each other with their foliage and waxy flowers. The French windows darkened and yet open here and there, the resumed glare of the city glowing against low-hanging clouds. Every step of the way things had been laid out for him, from the very moment he stepped across the border. It was neither good luck nor bad, just luck in itself. Phnom Penh was a city that encouraged such things. He could see the tight discretion which had come over the manager’s inscrutable face as they turned and walked back into the lobby, upon whose walls old photographs of colonial Indochina made an unnecessary case for a difficult romanticism. Robert told him that he would be around after lunch the following day.