He kept saying: Oy, you want go Kambuja?
No want! No want! Kambuja people is bad people! Thai people like this (she prayed); Kambuja people like this! (she saluted fiercely). The journalist saluted her in return, and she cowered back. .
Oy was feeling fine from her injection. - But what if she wasn't? What if she'd been in terrible pain that first time and then the other time; what if she'd just done it for the money to pay the doctor or for rent?
Joy stayed with the photographer until the last minute, of course. Joy had class. The photographer had class. The whole time he was in Thailand, the journalist (poor slob) could never get any but short time girls. .
Grey-green and beige squares like a flaking dartboard showing its cork beneath; these and the other squares of grey water absorbed the plane's shadow as it sped through the morning-cooled patches of trees and rectangles of various greens and greys all shining wet. .
Cambodia seemed a no-nonsense country. There was a line of soldiers on the runway, each soldier directing the photographer and the journalist on to the next.
He went into the hotel lobby and took a few stacks of riels out of the paper bag. - Help yourself to some money, he said to the concierge. . and shot past the big traffic island with the monument to independence from the French. He was hot, weak and dizzy. Thanks to the caffeine injection, he hadn't slept for two nights. In the wide listless courtyard and porticoes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which seemed almost empty like the rest of Phnom Penh (how many people had been killed off?), he and the photographer sat playing with their press passes, waiting for their fate to be decided. - In our country, at the moment, the militia plays more of a role than the army, an official explained, and the journalist wrote it down carefully while the photographer yawned. - A tiled roof was flaking off in squares of pink like weird rust or lichens. The afternoon smelled like sandalwood. An official led them into one of the rambling yellow buildings and told them to come back tomorrow. They took a cyclo back to the hotel, and the photographer went outside to snap some landmine beggars while the journalist lay down on the bed to rest. As soon as he rolled over on his stomach, something seemed to move in his balls, weighing them down with a painless but extremely unpleasant tenderness, as if they were rotting and liquefying inside and slowly oozing down to the bottom of his scrotum. Thinking this, he had to laugh.
It was evening now, just before curfew. The boys were shooting cap guns and everyone was cheering. A boy in sandals, a dark blue shirt and a dark blue Chinese cap pedaled a cyclo slowly down the street. The photographer brought some takeout from the French restaurant across the street — steak and fries. The journalist appreciated it very much.
The morning sky was a delicate grey, cats stalking along the terraces, ladies puttering among potted plants, the rows of cool doors all open in the four- and five-storey apartment blocks, rows of x-shaped vents atop each square of territory, gratings on the windows. The journalist lay in bed, clutching his distended balls. It was warming up nicely. His underpants steamed against his ass. The hotel maid came in and cleaned. She made seven thousand riels a month. The Khmer Rouge had killed her father, grandfather, sister, and two brothers. She'd worked hard for the Khmer Rouge in the fields. .
A cloud blew over the street. Papers started to swirl. The vendors ran to cover their stands. Suddenly came a hiss of rain. A militiaman dashed. The almost naked children danced laughing. Potted plants shook on the terraces. Now as the rain slanted down in earnest, people braced themselves between the almost shut gratings, watching. A cyclo driver pedaled on; his two lady passengers held red umbrellas over themselves. Power wires trembled; the rain shivered in heavy white rivers. A boy prayed barefoot to Buddha in the street, then clasped his hands and danced, water roaring from his soaked shirt. A clap of thunder, then rain fell like smoke; rain spewed from the roof-gutters. .
The English teacher wrote sixteen in standard and phonetic orthography on the blackboard while the children wrote sixteen in their notebooks, and the English teacher got ready to write seventeen but then the power went out and they sat in the darkness.
Your English is very good, said the journalist.
Yes, the teacher said.
Where did you learn it?
Yes.
What is your name?
Yes. No. Twenty-two.
Well, that's red good, said the photographer brightly. That's red nice. Do you know what the word pussy means?
Steamy-fresh, the sandalwood night neared curfew while water trickled down from the balconies and orphans sat down on bedframes on the sidewalk, huddled over rice. The grilles were drawn almost closed now. Only one was open. A lady stood with her child in yellow light, guarding rows of blue bicycles whose wheel-skins caught a glow of gold. On the sidewalk, boys were carving a deer. Its head hung from a hook. The rest, now flensed to a snakelike strip of steak, red and white ribs, danced as their knives stripped it down. The journalist went to watch, and everyone crowded to watch him, crying: Number one! — He hadn't picked up any whores yet; they still liked him. - Another long strip peeled off — scarcely anything but bone now. A boy with muscled brown arms held the swaying backbone like a sweetheart; another fanged the cleaver blade down. Skinny-necked like a bird, the carcass tried to flail against a grating, but the strong boy wouldn't let it.
How happy he was when on the third day of the antibiotics something popped like popcorn in his balls and he started feeling better! The tenderness was now in his lymph nodes, but it would surely go away from there, too.
To celebrate, he showed all the hotel maids his press pass. -You very handsome, they said.
They had an engagement with the English teacher who couldn't speak English. The small children were silhouetted in the dark, singing A, B, C, D, E, F, G. . On the blackboard it said THE ENGLISH ALPHABET. The teacher pointed at this, and the children said: Da iii-eee aa-phabet.
Why does the alphabet only go up to S? asked the journalist.
Yes, the teacher replied.
The journalist pointed to a photograph that concentrated darkness like an icon. - My father is die by Pol Pot regime, said the teacher simply. He go to Angkor Wat to hide Buddha. They die him by slow pain. .
For a moment the journalist wanted to embrace him. Instead he stared down at the floor, and the sweat dripped from his nose and forehead. As soon as he wiped his face it was wet again.
The English teacher and his friend took the journalist and the photographer to someone's house. The room was dark. Someone lit a candle and connected a gasoline generator outside. Then the lights flickered on. The wall-gratings looked out on darkness. The journalist sat in a corner consuming cool tea and cakes; the photographer sweated wearily. It was very hot. After a few minutes they thanked their hosts and went to dinner.
They sat at an outside table on the rainy street, while everyone watched them from underneath lighted canopies or leaning against trees; the rain gleamed on bike lights. There was a pot of cold tea on the table. One-legged beggars kept approaching, some in soldier's uniform; the journalist gave each of them a hundred riels because he and the photographer still had plenty of money. The English teacher ordered Chinese noodle soup with organ meats and peppers. Then they went for a walk. The English teacher's friend suggested a movie, which proved not to be a Chinese story about angry ghosts as the poster had suggested but a dubbed American thing; lizards crawled up and down the cement walls, and it was sweltering. After five minutes the journalist was ready to go. After ten minutes he slid out of his seat and walked down the dark stairs, knowing that the English teacher and his friend would be hurt, feeling guilty, but only a little; after all, he'd bought them dinner. At least the photographer wouldn't care.