Lawrence Osborne - Hunters in the Dark

“You said you’d show me around.”

“Let’s go to Street 136 and eat some pho . Then I’ll take you somewhere else.”

“Let’s.”

“It’ll be stinking hot.”

“I don’t mind.”

—

Robert was pleased to be out of Colonial Mansions. He made to pay for her salad and drink but she had already settled up. He left his bag at the reception and they went out into the cloying heat and took one of the tuk-tuks that were always loitering along 102. They sat side by side and rattled without words into the maze of streets which shone in a dour, metallic sunlight. Sophal now assumed a cool, tensile posture, as if she were in public and this required a different composure. She looked straight ahead with her neck poised and upright and her eyes did not stray to either side. High above the city, however, the familiar atomic cloud that seemed to appear there every day was moving with its silent fatalism toward the sky’s apex, where the sun monopolized all the light. Its edges were frilled like the coat of some unimaginable sea creature. There the mass of cloud turned suddenly brilliant and hysterical. It’s moving, he thought idly, watching from under the tuk-tuk’s shade, moving like a predator toward our light.

They came to 136 and 13 and a place called the Café de Coral. It was a Viet place with cheap outdoor tables opposite a Smile supermarket. The little area had an alarming concentration of dentists, with molar-shaped signs dangling above the mayhem with happy faces painted on them. They sat outside just at the edge of the fans’ refreshment and ordered iced water. When it came she loosened up and took off her straw-brimmed hat and laid it on the chair next to hers.

“Is this the kind of place you like?” she asked.

“I love this kind of place.”

“I come here all the time by myself. Do you know bau buns?” He shook his head. “Then we’ll try bau buns. You’ll like them.”

It was the hour for bau steamed buns and purple kelp roll and turquoise herbal pudding downed with salt lemon water. She added twist rolls and mini cage buns and then iced Vietnamese coffee with the filters resting on the glasses. The sun went out as they sipped coffee and she talked about her year in Paris, because he had asked her to. At the junction the traffic began to thin and a few raindrops hit the dust and speckled it. She ate her buns with her fingers and when she looked up her eyes were obscure and resilient, giving away nothing.

“I even had a boyfriend there, a French stockbroker. The stockbrokers love Khmer girls. He told me that. He used to take me on holiday to Morocco and Rome and all that. I never told my parents.”

“You’re telling me.”

“I told my friends so why not you? You’re not going to report me. It’s a private matter anyway — we don’t tell our parents everything these days. We keep it to ourselves. Claude still writes to me.”

“What does he say?”

“He says he loves me and can we go on holiday to Marrakesh again.”

“And you don’t go.”

“Of course I don’t go. C’est fini. He’s not going to come and live here. If he’s not going to come and live here it’s out of the question.”

“You could go back and live in Paris.”

“No, like I said — when something’s finished, it’s finished. For me it’s finished. I want to live near my parents. I want to live in my own country.”

“Unlike me, then.”

She smiled. “It’s a different circumstance. Are you close to your parents?”

“Not at all.”

“So there you are. Girlfriend?”

“C’est fini.”

“You’ve made a new start.”

“Yes, you could say that. I guess I have…”

“My father says one has to do that from time to time. Do you smoke?”

He took out a packet of the inevitable Alain Delons and she laughed.

“You’re smoking those?”

“I got into the habit.”

“You’ll be dead within a month.”

“I doubt it. They agree with me.”

“You’re a strange one, Mr. Beauchamp. My father says you’re getting over a broken heart.”

“It’s not the case. I wish it was.”

“I don’t think it’s the case either. I think you’re just kicking your heels.”

“All right,” he drawled, “you got me there. I am kicking my heels. It’s not a crime.”

“I didn’t say it was a crime. It’s better to do it somewhere hot and cheap. Do you like the girls here?”

“I haven’t got to them yet.”

She pulled out her own cigarettes, a Thai brand called Wonder.

“These aren’t much better,” she said. “But they taste good with Vietnamese coffee.”

He took one and they shared the smoke.

“If this was an American movie,” she said, “we’d be censored. We’d be erased.” She mixed four spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee and gave him a smile which had maybe been enhanced on that same street.

He said, “Yeah, whatever. I find I’m smoking more now.”

“My father says it’ll make me older by ten years by the time I’m twenty-eight. I’ll give it up then.”

“You should give it up now.”

“I certainly won’t.”

—

The afternoon began to wear down. Egg sellers on their bikes moved down 136 with their loudspeakers; the molar signs began to glow. One could feel the rain coming, the tingle on the tongue.

Sophal looked through him, but it was not coldly. She was merely curious about him. She had met men like him before in Europe, the subtly vibrating ones that have an uneasy distraction about them. The ones who are polite and impeccable and who never tread on your toes. They usually came from a little money and had been to good schools, but they were not happy or festive — it was not enough for them. They were brooding, internal men living in their world of ease and frost and corduroy and she found them attractive and chilling at the same time. The bright light here exposed them in some way. They became happier and more ghostlike at the same time. Some of them married local women and settled down and managed bad restaurants; others drifted about. One didn’t know what to say about them. It wasn’t pity exactly, it was more like a maternal anxiety. One wanted to save them, to put them right. She wondered if she had a sad propensity to be attracted to the exotic. Because for better or worse the Khmer boys didn’t do it for her, for some reason. She always said to her mother that she was “spoiled.” The stint in Paris had ruined her for life and it was the world of the barang that now seemed richer in possibilities. She might once have felt guilty about it. But there is no guilt in the ruthless pursuit of happiness, there is just the pursuit. It’s like moving toward the light. One crawls on all fours, if need be. One crawls on one’s belly and whimpers, it doesn’t matter. And in the end weren’t the white men the same the other way around? What were they looking for? They didn’t even know. Her father had a fine phrase for it which he had found in his history books: hunters in the dark. It came from medieval Japan and referred to the restless courtiers of the Imperial Court who were always hunting for their own advantage. But also, as her father liked to add, for happiness. The phrase was his favorite way of summing up younger people of the present age. His own ravaged generation was another matter.

She had intended to go back to the house and practice the piano, but as the skies darkened she lost interest in the thought of Brahms and asked the charming boy if he’d like to go to one of the Chinese places on Monivong and then maybe a bar on the other side of the river. He seemed an idle type, and not as busy as she’d thought at first. His days empty and long and confused; like hers, in other words. He said he’d love to.