(The bluish blotch like a smeared tattoo above one areola had proved a splash of paint, nothing more convoluted.)
At last he heard bootsteps, hard and businesslike, coming down the main corridor. He went into the hall, where the small Khmer attendant was searching for him.
“All ready now. I take you up?”
“I know the way.”
The American slipped a wad of bills into his hand and pressed past him down the hall toward the stairs.
At the first landing, he paused and drew a pack of cigarettes from inside his vest. He lit one and watched the smoke swirl around his fingers, as if he might find what he sought in the whorls of soot. Below, he heard footsteps on the stairs, curious murmurs from the European couple. A guard called out and the steps retreated. He crushed out the cigarette without taking a puff.
On the second floor, only one door was open to him. Here stood the custodian of records, waiting impatiently. The bony, scarred Khmer looked irritated to see him again, but official arrangements had been made. He had no choice but to stand aside.
The small room was sweltering. It held very little but still felt crammed: two old desks, a filing cabinet, an ancient photocopier. A file folder rested on the farthest desk, under the window. The custodian gestured for him to sit. As he approached the desk, he passed a door that was slightly ajar, opening into another and much larger room. The American glimpsed shelves full of folders, student composition books, yellowing paper. A sampling of these journals were on display downstairs, confessions of crimes against the DK, written in Khmer and occasionally in French. The sheer number of folders was almost inconceivable: each represented a death, eked out page by page. The custodian, noticing his interest, quickly closed that door.
He turned his attention to the folder waiting on the desk, and grunted when he read the name written on the cover.
“This isn’t the file I asked for,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I said, it isn’t the file I—”
The custodian handed him a written request, in his own handwriting, stamped with the Ministry’s seal. It puzzled him for a moment, until he felt his fever’s resurgence. He sank down into the chair, hugging his guts, clenched over the table while bright dots swarmed his eyes and cold sweat came. When the moment of illness passed, he sighed and pulled the folder toward him.
“Yes?” said the custodian.
“Yes,” he agreed leadenly.
The custodian held out his hands. “Cameras.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Cameras. Now.”
Instead the American produced his wallet. Twenty bucks ought to have taken care of it, but the man struck the proffered money aside—a gesture he had never experienced in the city. He had a bad feeling now—a sense of his failure, and the trouble he’d be in. He put his wallet away, sensing that a larger bribe would only meet with greater resistance.
Again: “Cameras.”
The American glared for a moment, then unslung the straps and black bodies of the three FM2’s. In his sack was a copying stand, useless now. The Khmer piled the cameras on the other desk. Then he went to the other desk and sat staring out the window above the American’s head.
When the American set his bag on the desktop and unzipped it, the custodian started to his feet again. He took out a pen and a notebook. As the Khmer sank back down, he tipped the pen toward the copier. “I don’t suppose that thing works.”
The little man paled with anger. “You write by hand! Only by hand!”
“I’m kidding. Relax.”
Inside the folder was a stack of unlined paper an inch thick, each page dated, signed, and marked with a thumbprint. He riffled the sheaf, heart quickening when he saw the first mandalas flicking past, elaborate wheels with wavering arms and spiral centers. This was what he’d been looking for. The circles were enclosed in Khmer script, as if the entire confession were an exegesis on the nature of the symbols. Highly unlikely. The Khmer Rouge had not allowed their guests to discourse on metaphysics.
The American could not read Khmer. He noted instead how the handwriting deteriorated page by page, and then grew further obscured by reddish-black smears and splatters whose frequency increased toward the bottom of the stack. He went back to the beginning, stared for a moment at the first mandala, then drew his notebook closer and uncapped his pen. The custodian’s eyes locked onto him.
The wheel was carefully, intricately drawn, as if every jot of the author’s energy had been conserved for this task. Why had the KR interrogators tolerated the time it must have taken to set down the pattern? It must have been an enormous distraction from the task of confession; yet there were dozens, equally elaborate, scattered throughout the text.
He could not imagine how long it would take him to copy one, let alone all thirty-seven. The last thing he wanted was to spend days in this hot room, in this horrible museum, so drenched in the smell of blood that already he was ceasing to notice it. He did not want to become inured to this place, but he had no choice.
He was slightly surprised to find that he’d tucked a sheaf of tracing paper into his notebook. He could not remember bringing it. He laid one sheet atop the mandala and carefully began to trace the perimeter, which ringed a complex core of woven lines. Sweat from the edge of his hand caused the paper to crinkle; he had to take care not to smear the ink. Finished with the outermost lines, he began to work his way into the whorled center. This required great patience, a hand far steadier than his. He was no artist.
Stealing the file intact would have been the obvious solution, but he would have been the sole suspect in such a theft. He did not want to spend the rest of his life in a Cambodian prison. Nor could he fool himself into thinking he could make it as a fugitive to the nearest border. Cambodia was one vast mine field. No… he would have to trace each mandala by hand, however long it took.
Each line seemed impossibly long. He came upon tangles and involutions he hadn’t noticed until they enmeshed him—endless twists and curls, impenetrable thickets. He didn’t dare lift his hand from the paper. In order to rest, he had to anchor his penpoint in one place and close his eyes; but even then he continued to see the pattern throbbing behind his lids, swimming in the blood-reek, fanning the phosphene currents gently in time to a throbbing in his head. He heard a knocking, too brittle to be his heart, and opened his eyes to discover that his hand, unwatched, had continued tracing the shape. The pattern was complete now; and it had drawn itself in something like an instant.
The custodian stood at the door, peering into the hall. The Khmer began whispering, gesturing angrily. Glancing back, he gave the American a warning look, then opened the door just wide enough to slip out.
The American was startled to see the young Europeans outside. The man’s eyes met his for a jolting instant. His pupils constricted, expanded, tightened again. The woman gave him a smile and a nod. Then the door shut. Voices rose in a babble—the custodian quite upset, the Frenchman calming him, the woman speaking low and soothingly, almost cooing to him. Their voices had an empty, echoing quality in the corridor. He sensed that they were drifting away from him.
The mandala still burned in his eyes. Without further hesitation, as if he had planned for this moment, he took the folder to the copier. He touched the start button but got no response. The plug lay on the floor, below a wall socket. He plugged it in. The copier rattled to life. He didn’t want to know how much time he wasted waiting for the machine to warm up. He laid the first sheet, the same he’d traced by hand, on the glass. Light blazed beneath his fingers, sweeping along in a hot bar. The copier creaked like a metal insect singing in the hot afternoon, calling out to everyone in Tuol Sleng. Once the light had measured the dimensions of the page, he snatched the sheet from the glass and put down a second, which he had in readiness. He flipped through the folder looking for the third mandala, embedded in miserable script. Two different hands seemed to have been at work simultaneously: artist and author.