Lawrence Osborne: Hunters in the Dark

One might be surprised to meet another Westerner in the ruins of Ba Nan, and he was sure this one was a fellow English speaker. But the surprise was not curiosity, it was just the elegance of the whites and the manner and their dainty anachronism.

He turned and walked back to the top of the steps. The monk was still sitting there under his broken parasol but he now saw that a small shrine lay to one side of the steps and that a lone incense stick burned there. Another monk had appeared and reclined there, shaded by a piece of tin on a stick. Black butterflies, stirred by the sun, began to swing lazily across the steps, circling their heads, and from the undergrowth came the susurration of revived cicadas. In the shrine behind him, a fortune-teller was reading texts to a small cluster of women and children. Suddenly they all laughed. The plain now shone far below and he felt for a moment an unsteadiness in his calves. He reached out and held himself firm against a huge carved jamb. The drink sellers were talking behind him and he turned to see them putting up a plastic umbrella and come toward him. In that moment he came to a decision, but it was unclear what it was going to mean — it was a decision about the plane ticket and the plan to drive back to Bangkok the following Wednesday. In the space of a few minutes that plan had dissolved and he knew that he would be staying on a little, now that he could afford it — a week, a few weeks, however long his winnings would last here. He would explain it to his parents by phone if he had to. One could always come up with an excuse about travel delays or minor illnesses. He could say that he had the runs and was laid up in bed for a few days. Many such things would sound entirely plausible. He began to descend the steps, followed by two young girls who had suddenly appeared waving paddles made of pieces of cardboard torn from commercial boxes. They came toward him and when they were a step from him they began waving the paddles as fans to cool him. They followed him down, fanning his back and giggling. It would cost him 2,000 riels. Soon he saw Ouksa waiting patiently at the foot of the steps in all his starched composure with his hair parted laboriously to one side and his dramatic scent. One didn’t know what to make of him. The way his eyes lifted slowly to find the man who was paying him, and to whom he was only partially obsequious.

“How was it?” he said as Robert came down into the clearing where the car stood and the children swarmed around him crying One dolla, one dolla.

“It was a hell of a place. There was a white guy up there too.”

“Oh? I not see that one.”

“He was doing what I was doing, I guess.”

It was noon and the heat made him fumble inside his own mind. He paid the two fanners a dollar and they cocked their heads with pleasure. He wondered about lunch. He wanted to invite Ouksa and make him feel more at ease. The flies tormented him, but they could not be discouraged.

“Why don’t we go and eat somewhere?”

“Why not. We can go to Wat Ek Phnom and buy some things.”

“I’d say I owed you lunch.”

—

They drove back into Battambang, shadowing the river promenades again. They went past the Masjid Dhiya mosque, and then northward out of town toward Wat Ek Phnom. The temple lay next to a pond filled with bursting water lilies. It was clear that these temples were all part of a known tourist circuit through which a privately rented car was bound to pass with the driver peddling cultural information. Ouksa, however, did not provide it. He sensed that this white man was as empty as himself and it suited him fine.

They had bought some chicken skewers and Cokes on the way and they walked to the edge of the pond and sat. The new part of the temple was a riot of gold leaf and dubious taste; the ancient prasat rose from shattered piles of blocks. They sat and ate and there was somehow nothing to say for a long time. A monumental chalk-white Buddha sat among the weeds on an unfinished brick pedestal, his hands raised in a mudra. Water-lily flowers opened in motionless heat on the surface of the water. Ouksa lay down, taking a small liberty with his young and easygoing employer, and they listened to a plane droning in the far distance and gardeners in straw hats raked the edges of the flower beds.

“Still,” he said eventually, “you are not really on normal holiday. You are doing some pass time, no? It must be nice to have money. Ort mean loy. I have no money yet.”

“I usually don’t have any.”

“Ah, but you have.”

“I got a little saved up for my holiday. But I’ll be going back soon.”

“How do you like this Ek?”

“It’s quite a place.”

“It’s haunted, did you know? The Ap is here.”

“Ghosts?”

“Like a lady ghost. She hunts all about at night. Can eat the dead water buffalo, you know, and eat children. A head that flies about — just the head. Ah.”

“And she is here in the temple?”

“Baht. So someone said. It may not be true. I never came here at night to see. I wonder you have Ap in your home?”

“England. We might, but I stay home at night.”

“Home?”

“Yeah, I stay at home.”

“Ah, Robert, you are not home now. If the Ap sees you she will hunt maybe. Believe it?”

“No.”

“You don’t know…”

Ouksa smiled at him; his eyes had their inborn mischief and he folded his hands on his chest. Robert had no idea if the Ap was a genuine folk belief or if Ouksa was just inventing it to spook him. The latter seemed more probable.

“I’ll bear it in mind,” Robert said.

He didn’t succeed in being as dry as he had intended.

They walked through the ruins in the crushing heat but in the interlocked shade of trees. A swarm of half-naked children followed them, brushing against their legs, their hands outstretched, the eyes mock-pleading. The shrines were filled with colored metal flowers. There were plastic tablecloths and bowls of incense sticks embedded in ash. A sign pinned to a ficus tree: Give earth a chance . They stood for a few minutes under a prasat tower open to the sky, the blocks arranged in concentric squares that tapered upward. The children had hung back. Ouksa seemed to be holding his breath. An uncharacteristic patch of sweat had appeared on his temple and his mouth had tensed. They came out into the open again and insects deafened them, and Ouksa shot a sharp word at the beseeching mites and caused them to scatter sulkily into the woods. The two men walked on. There was a fragment of ancient wall half buried in the trees, strangled by ficus roots, and they dawdled here for a while chatting desultorily about the remainder of the day. Would Robert like to see a curious monastery by a river outside town? It was a place that barangs did not go to see because there was no one specific attraction there. It was just a place where the monks would talk to them. The prime minister, Hun Sen, was building a bridge there, a special project that was a marvel to see. Though the words he actually used were “a big special thing.”

Robert was halfhearted. He was already thinking of going back to the Alpha and getting a nap in his chilled room with the blinds down. Darkness and sleep and a swig of Sang Som from the minibar. Another day of life. They walked to the car in the sun’s glare and he saw the brilliance diminishing at the sky’s edges and the mood of rain returning yet again. The weather was in seesaw mode. Why not? he thought. A day existed to be filled with bright activities and labors.

“Let’s go to the river and the bridge,” he said wearily. “Can we get a beer on the way?”

“Of course, mistah.”

They drove past old Khmer Rouge field guns rusting in paddies, the shell of a tank lopsided at the edge of a ditch. Thunder rolled in from afar, incongruous in that silver light, and the dried dust began to rise up again, shivering around the kapoks. They came to the river where Hun Sen was building his bridge and there a construction crew of several dozens spilled down the dark ochre banks with hods and sandbags. They went into the water where some of them bathed in their krama . The bridge was half completed. Ouksa parked above it among cement mixers and walked across a narrow footbridge to the monastery on the far side.