She was going to tell the motoboy, drive me back to the Hilton, but she felt ashamed. Of what? Just how far was she going to run?
She asked him to take her to the old house on Monivong Boulevard.
As the motorcycle wove through back streets, dodging red-earth ruts and pedestrians, she felt rage at her father. How dare he involve her in something like that! Sith had lived a small life and had no measure of things so she thought: it's as if someone tinted my hair and it all fell out. It's as if someone pierced my ears and they got infected and my whole ear rotted away.
She remembered that she had never felt any compassion for her father. She had been twelve years old when he stood trial, old and sick and making such a show of leaning on his stick. Everything he did was a show. She remembered rolling her eyes in constant embarrassment. Oh, he was fine in front of rooms full of adoring students. He could play the bong thom with them. They thought he was enlightened. He sounded good, using his false, soft and kindly little voice, as if he was dubbed. He had made Sith recite Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Rilke. He killed thousands for having foreign influences.
I don't know what I did in a previous life to deserve you for a father. But you were not my father in a previous life and you won't be my father in the next. I reject you utterly. I will never burn your name. You can wander hungry out of hell every year for all eternity. I will pray to keep you in hell.
I am not your daughter!
If you were false, I have to be true.
Her old house looked abandoned in the stark afternoon light, closed and innocent. At the doorstep she turned and thrust a fistful of dollars into the motoboy's hand. She couldn't think straight; she couldn't even see straight, her vision blurred.
Back inside, she calmly put down her teddy-bear rucksack and walked upstairs to her office. Aido the robot dog whirred his way toward her. She had broken his back leg kicking him downstairs. He limped, whimpering like a dog, and lowered his head to have it stroked.
To her relief, there was only one picture waiting for her in the tray of the printer.
Kol Vireakboth looked out at her, middle-aged, handsome, worn, wise. Pity and kindness glowed in his eyes.
The land line began to ring.
"Youl prom,” she told the ghosts. Agreed.
She picked up the receiver and waited.
A man spoke. “My name was Yin Bora.” His voice bubbled up brokenly as if from underwater.
A light blinked in the printer. A photograph slid out quickly. A young student stared out at her looking happy at a family feast. He had a Beatle haircut and a striped shirt.
"That's me,” said the voice on the phone. “I played football."
Sith coughed. “What do you want me to do?"
"Write my name,” said the ghost.
"Please hold the line,” said Sith, in a hypnotized voice. She fumbled for a pen, and then wrote on the photograph Yin Bora, footballer. He looked so sweet and happy. “You have no one to mourn you,” she realized.
"None of us have anyone left alive to mourn us,” said the ghost.
Then there was a terrible sound down the telephone, as if a thousand voices moaned at once.
Sith involuntarily dropped the receiver into place. She listened to her heart thump and thought about what was needed. She fed the printer with the last of her paper. Immediately it began to roll out more photos, and the land line rang again.
She went outside and found the motoboy, waiting patiently for her. She asked him to go and buy two reams of copying paper. At the last moment she added pens and writing paper and matches. He bowed and smiled and bowed again, pleased to have found a patron.
She went back inside, and with just a tremor in her hand picked up the phone.
For the next half hour, she talked to the dead, and found photographs and wrote down names. A woman mourned her children. Sith found photos of them all, and united them, father, mother, three children, uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents, taping their pictures to her wall. The idea of uniting families appealed. She began to stick the other photos onto her wall.
Someone called from outside and there on her doorstep was the motoboy, balancing paper and pens. “I bought you some soup.” The broth came in neatly tied bags and was full of rice and prawns. She thanked him and paid him well and he beamed at her and bowed again and again.
All afternoon, the pictures kept coming. Darkness fell, the phone rang, the names were written, until Sith's hand, which was unused to writing anything, ached.
The doorbell rang, and on the doorstep, the motoboy sompiahed. “Excuse me, Lady, it is very late. I am worried for you. Can I get you dinner?"
Sith had to smile. He sounded motherly in his concern. They are so good at building a relationship with you, until you cannot do without them. In the old days she would have sent him away with a few rude words. Now she sent him away with an order.
And wrote.
And when he came back, the aged motoboy looked so happy. “I bought you fruit as well, Lady,” he said, and added, shyly. “You do not need to pay me for that."
Something seemed to bump under Sith, as if she was on a motorcycle, and she heard herself say, “Come inside. Have some food too."
The motoboy sompiahed in gratitude and as soon as he entered, the phone stopped ringing.
They sat on the floor. He arched his neck and looked around at the walls.
"Are all these people your family?” he asked.
She whispered. “No. They're ghosts who no one mourns."
"Why do they come to you?” His mouth fell open in wonder.
"Because my father was Pol Pot,” said Sith, without thinking.
The motoboy sompiahed. “Ah.” He chewed and swallowed and arched his head back again. “That must be a terrible thing. Everybody hates you."
Sith had noticed that wherever she sat in the room, the eyes in the photographs were directly on her. “I haven't done anything,” said Sith.
"You're doing something now,” said the motoboy. He nodded and stood up, sighing with satisfaction. Life was good with a full stomach and a patron. “If you need me, Lady, I will be outside."
Photo after photo, name after name.
Youk Achariya: touring dancer
Proeung Chhay: school superintendent
Sar Kothida child, aged 7, died of ‘swelling disease'
Sar Makara, her mother, nurse
Nath Mittapheap, civil servant, from family of farmers
Chor Monirath: wife of award-winning engineer
Yin Sokunthea: Khmer Rouge commune leader
She looked at the faces and realized. Dara, I'm doing this for Dara.
The City around her went quiet and she became aware that it was now very late indeed. Perhaps she should just make sure the motoboy had gone home.
He was still waiting outside.
"It's okay. You can go home. Where do you live?"