William Vollmann - The Atlas

The first pass of the blade caught the hairs of his moustache painfully, matting them up against the steel edge as they twisted and ripped from the skin. He could almost hear the hairs roaring out. He had not changed his expression; in that respect he lived up to his resolution; but perhaps she saw that she'd hurt him because after that she shaved him in smaller, more nibbling caresses. He could not tell whether she'd cut him yet or not. He was no longer afraid. He lay quite naturally on her lap as she bent over him, uttering her little hisses of concentration and pride. At last she was finished. He opened his eyes. She held the mirror before him triumphantly. He saw his upper lip immaculate and pale, younger than the rest of him (it had not been exposed for years). He got up and looked into his compass mirror so that he could see his whole face. A pretty young boy looked back at him — the true husband of his wife.

The girl from See Sar Ket sat behind the bar with her hands in her lap. There was a long silver cross between her breasts. He bought her a drink, so she came and sat on the stool beside him and pinched his thigh.

I go Kambuja to find my wife, he said. Me no butterfly.* Oh OK, she said. Broken heart.

* Philanderer.

The woman beside him on the plane was going to Battambang, because after twenty yean of paying detectives she'd finally found her sister. Her father had been killed. One of her two children was dead, and the other would be twenty-two now; he was still missing. The woman had pearl earrings and bright red fingernails. She said she prayed every day.

My sister have three children now, she said. She is old. I want to get her out. I can work hard for money to pay her visa. But I have to wait.

He supposed that she if anyone would understand him. On a page of his notebook he wrote: I am searching for the lady in this photograph. Her name is Vanna. Can you help me, please? He asked her to translate this into Khmer for him, so that he could show it to people in Phnom Penh. But she turned away, saying: I prefer not. Because my Cambodian writing is now me embarrass. — For the remainder of the flight she tried to talk with her other seatmate, a German who rudely ignored her.

Phnom Penh was so utterly different that he began to clown around with riels and dollars and taxis so desperately that the Cambodians shook their sides while he almost cried. The bicycles were almost gone. It was all cabs and everything was new and they wanted you to pay in dollars.

In the hotel where his wife had shaved him they had mirrors now and refrigerators and toilets, televisions and bedside phones with music on hold and automatic redial. He couldn't believe it. The price had tripled, but they charged him only half again as much as before, for old times' sake. He asked for the maid he remembered, and she came to him with a cry of joy. He said to her: I came here to find Vanna. Can you come to the disco, please, and help me?

She shook her head so miserably. — I am very sorry, she whispered. I cannot go there. No good. I want to be married, so I cannot. I am so so very sorry.

Never mind, he said. I love you like a sister.

Her salary was thirty dollars a month. He slipped her a twenty. At first she wouldn't take it. She kept saying: Why you pay me?

He said: Because you are my sister.

She rolled the twenty tight in her hand and thanked him in a whisper.

He went into the nearest restaurant, where a girl sat playing some electronic game, and two men were drinking Tiger beer, so he ordered a Tiger beer, trying not to cry, and he arm-wrestled one of them and won, felt dizzy with beer after no breakfast and no lunch, and pulled out Vanna's photograph.

Her name not Vanna, said the old proprietress, whose skin was bleached gold like lemongrass. I know her. Her name Pauline. Wait.

She took the photo from his hand and walked away. He wondered if he'd ever see it again.

After an hour went by without her coming back, he stared at his empty beer and his dead heart exploded with hope because maybe she might actually be doing or finding out something.

The floor pattern was a series of three-dimensional squares which bulged and trapped his drunken eyes.

The proprietress's middle-aged daughter sat nibbling at her fingertips, and the granddaughter read a newspaper with her bare feet up.

The proprietress came in and said: She change house.

No good, eh?

She shook her head.

To restore the past, which cannot be restored, it is most expedient to perform rituals. Belief, while useful, is not indispensable. With his Happiness razor she had once made him young for her. He would youthen himself against all censure, so that by sympathetic magic he could become hers again, hers only. No matter that being hers was as impossible as being young. As he passed a beauty parlor, the women called to him, and he let one lead him into that white bright mirrored place of music; he couldn't get over the newness. The woman who'd hooked him was very beautiful and kept asking if he was married. He allowed that he was. — You no like me? the beautician said, putting his hand on her breast. — I like you very much, but I'm married already, he said. My wife lives here. She's Cambodian. — She didn't understand a word. — He signed to her to cut all his hair off, which would render him monkish, so she washed his hair twice, smeared a beauty mask all over his face, struck his forehead with her clasped wrists in such a way that the bones made a strangely musical clacking sound, shaved his face and neck hair by hair with a straight razor, and then brought a huge dentist's lamp with which to besiege his ear so that she might clean it with no less than twelve instruments: ferruled feathers of various sizes, loops of fine wire to dislodge his lifetime of earwax, and even a fine razor to cut the hairs inside his ears so as to strangely pleasure and tickle him and sometimes spice him with keen short-lived pain. She warmed every implement upon the lamp's lem-ondrop face. The hot feathers anointed him with sleep. Every time he turned his head to look at her or see what time it was she slapped his cheek lightly, saying, Sa-leep! Sa-leep! She spent half an hour on each ear. Then she did his fingernails. After peeling off the facial and purifying his now angelic countenance with a chemical-scented towel she combed his hair and then presented him with the bill: seven thousand riels or three dollars, as he preferred. He paid her ten thousand, and she clasped her hands Ah khun.* In the next chair an UN-TAC✝ soldier from Germany was getting the works, too. Das Leben ist hier so gut! he laughed to the soldier, and the soldier, unsmiling, gave him the victory sign. He turned to the mirror. No matter that she'd never cut his hair. Once again he looked so young and handsome — ready in case he might meet his wife.

* Thank you.

✝ United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia.

The streets were now grayish-brown canals as in Thailand, through which the shiny white UNTAC police cars and the motorcycles and the cyclo drivers ferrying their passengers under sheet plastic all swam, honked and hulked. Sandalled people waded, holding umbrellas.

In the café where he passed that rainy hour (it being too early for the discos to open), old men with puppet-string necks leaned forward so that he could see their ribs change angles under the skin. Dinnertime. The proprietress brought the chicken in a great tub. Her husband, who was an ambulating skeleton, mopped the dead flies from the glass case with a paper towel. He hung the cauliflowers, lemon-grass and eggplants in the upper storey and stuck the chicken pieces on hooks, while the son brought blocks of ice. A man in a dripping black raincoat rushed in, bearing an immense prism of ice that was hollow like a glass brick. Slowly the glass case lost its transparent freedom, becoming instead a cabinet of morbid curiosities silhouetted against the rain. At last it was closed, and the skeleton-man stood beside the man in the black raincoat, looking out at the rain.