Lawrence Osborne - Hunters in the Dark

They went to a place called Pomme d’Amour and had a quick dinner washed down with Chilean wine. Still they didn’t speak. The streets became ominous and still. There was a small meeting of the Cambodian People’s Party at a street corner near the restaurant, the voices amplified through the cheap megaphones somehow dulcet and detached from the usual menu of political angers. They sat outside, close to the bustle of passersby. The warmth of bodies unconcerned by the secret dramas of others. The delivery girls from the restaurant itself came out with enormous plastic bags which they balanced on the handlebars of their bikes before riding off. Along the top of a roof the silhouette of a cat appeared; Sophal pronounced it bad luck. “Rubbish,” he snorted.

“Let’s go into Thailand and find a place in Bangkok. No?”

“Do you mind?” she asked, as if she had been wanting this all along, but without mentioning it to him.

“Of course I don’t mind. I wouldn’t suggest it if I minded. I’m glad you want to as well.”

“I just need to get out of this country for a while.”

“I know what you mean. Then we’ll get out.”

“Can we take the car over the border?”

He laughed grimly. “Of course we can’t take the car over the border. Why would we want to anyway? The car is evidence — we’ll dump it.”

“Really?”

“Obviously. We’ll take a taxi on the other side.”

So that’s how it’s done, she thought.

“Then what?”

“Then nothing. We’ll let everything calm down.”

“But the very fact that we’re not there—”

He rolled his shoulders and looked away.

“What does it matter? We haven’t done anything wrong. We don’t know where that bastard is. I don’t care where he is.”

“Who is he?”

“How do I know? I’d never seen him before I met him in the lobby. Anyway…”

Robert turned it over in his mind but there was no way of accounting for it. It felt, to him, like a coincidence that he would just have to leave by the side of the road.

She sipped at her wine and soon she began to feel more resolved.

“All right,” she said, “we’ll go to Bangkok and then the sea. Maybe we can come back through Trat. One can cross the border there.”

“It’s a plan.”

He tried to telegraph an encouragement through a better smile than the last one.

“The situation’s not as bad as all that,” he went on. “It’s just confusing more than anything.”

“And what about your American friend?”

“No idea. He’s not my friend though. He’s probably selling dope to some hippies somewhere.”

But he didn’t know, he couldn’t imagine.

After dinner she got a new seven-dollar mobile phone with a SIM card and called her father. There was a small uproar. Her mother came on the line.

“I’m perfectly fine,” she hissed. “Simon and I are going to Bangkok — oh, for God’s sake stop worrying. We’ll call tomorrow night.”

Her mother spoke.

“No, no, leave us be, we’re fine. I’ll call tomorrow.”

They went for Vietnamese coffee at the White Rose and suddenly they didn’t care as much. The border closed at eight and they just had to be there by seven thirty. There was a little time. They wandered down to the fairground which they had heard from the river. It was rustic and loud and they went on one of the machines as the light dimmed and the ancient bulbs large as grenades came on and began to steam. The whole town stirred into nocturnal illumination, or so it seemed to them. The villas, the utility buildings, the rows of shophouses by the river, the French cement buildings which looked, for once, like the monuments of tenuous conquerors. Bats swirled around the riverbanks and the hospital, too, was lit up. Was it a celebration neither of them had heard of? He had the feeling — it could not be verified — that the population was turning through the grid of streets in a wheel-like formation. Cabarets on the pavements, the old ladies with their tea and shots laughing uproariously and holding their hands up to their faces where the makeup had streaked. The cats sat still and watched. Girls in bridal dresses came down the street they were navigating, their heads covered with plastic flowers. And, a few streets away, moving within that same crowd, Ouksa was walking with an ice cream, morosely picking his way from street to street looking for openings.

—

His wife was now in the hospital and he had been to see her an hour earlier. Finally, exasperated and drawn outdoors by the sound of music in the streets, he had gone wandering along the lit-up river and turned into the maze of streets. It was here that he came upon Davuth’s car parked next to a barber’s shop. He recognized it at once and yet continued walking as if nothing had happened, then stood at the corner looking back down the street and licking his ice cream. He was not sure, in fact, if running into that demonic personality was such a good idea. But at the same time, he had a secret he could maybe cash in and now that he was more desperate than he had been, he was more prepared to risk it. So he waited until the night was almost upon them and he was sure that eventually Davuth would appear and this time the odds would not be stacked against himself. They would just be two men in the street, almost equals. In that context he would no longer be afraid of the policeman. He would act friendly and surprised and Davuth would find it awkward to get away easily. He would ask him for money, and if he refused he would suggest a bribe, a threat.

Wild, and on the spur of the moment! But the man who came down the street to reclaim the car was not Davuth.

Ouksa dropped the ice cream at his feet and rushed down to greet Robert and a nice-looking girl he had with him. They met right at the car itself, in a whirl of teenage boys in party hats.

“You!” Ouksa shouted, and his mood had to change into a different gear. Robert, stunned, simply shook his head.

“It’s Ouksa,” he said to the girl. “My driver from the first day.”

They shook hands and the driver began to think as fast as he could. In the first place, he said nothing about recognizing the car.

“I was just walking down the street,” he said, smiling his smile.

“My friend and I are just leaving.”

“Leaving? Leaving where?”

“Back to the border.”

“In that Khmer car?”

“It’s what we have.”

“But why didn’t you call me? I could have driven you!”

“I didn’t have a number.”

Ouksa felt a keen anxiety now.

“Shall we have a drink?”

Robert tried to remember the hour.

“We haven’t got time. The border closes in two hours.”

“You’ll never make it.”

“Of course we’ll make it. It’s not that far.”

“A quick drink—”

“Sorry, it’s impossible.” Robert turned to Sophal. “Isn’t it?”

“Totally,” she said.

“No, no, you can’t leave like this. Not after such a coincidence!”

Robert opened the car and the driver became a little frantic.

“Just one drink—”

“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you drive us to the border then? We don’t need the car anyway. You can keep it.”

“What?”

“You can keep the car.”

“Keep the car?”

“Yeah, you can keep it. I want you to keep it.”

It was a huge windfall and Ouksa blinked and picked at his mouth.

“Then I’ll drive you!” he cried.

They all laughed and Sophal got into the backseat.

“I can’t believe I ran into you,” Ouksa rambled on in Khmer. “It’s because I prayed to Buddha last night. I was in the hospital and I prayed. Buddha listened this time. He didn’t ignore me.”

He took the driver’s seat and Robert sat next to him. As he turned to speak to Sophal he noticed the bag sitting next to her and he recognized that as well. So it was a bonanza, and the Lord Buddha had laid it at his door. He felt suddenly elated and hopeful about his wife. Such a large bounty and in the space of a few minutes — he was reentering the loop of luck. Soon, moreover, they were out of the town and on the road to Pailin, where the monkeypods were now red from the dried dust again. It was a ninety-minute drive.