He needed to know.
“Talismans. What kind of talismans? How?”
She looked his way; she was visibly struggling to master her emotions. “It will all sound insane. But you must know the Khmers are very superstitious. Ah. For instance, you see the little spirit houses everywhere in Cambodia, to trap evil ghosts, the neak ta? Right? And gangsters with sacred tattoos, to ward off bullets: Phnom Penh is full of them.”
Jake nodded. He had seen these tiny, sinister shrines. And yes, the tattooed gangsters were everywhere, draped with blessed amulets.
“I’ve seen all that. But why here, us, why those things?”
“The belief in spirits goes deep in my culture, Jake.” She shuddered again. “Very deep. Even the Khmer Rouge, for all their atheism, were the same: animist and superstitious. And it’s not just Khmers who believe in the power of Khmer voodoo.”
“Sorry?”
“Khmer voodoo, Khmer black magic, is feared right across Southeast Asia. The Lao hate it, the Thais fear it, the Malays, the Burmese, the Chinese all pay homage. The Thai prime minister is thought, by Thais, to use Khmer talismans, kratha.”
Down by the pier, fishermen were hauling in nets, a meager catch of little silvery fish. Pungent and flapping.
“So what exactly are these talismans in our room? You called them something. Just now.”
“Koh krohen. They could be koh krohen. Ah. Dead babies. Embalmed.”
He shook his head, revolted and disgusted, watching the watermen on the river speeding past in their long-tailed boats, churning the chocolate-milk water.
“They are miscarried fetuses. Mummified?”
“Yes. But sometimes they can be worse than that. I suspect the kratha in our rooms are even more evil.”
“Worse? How could they be any worse?”
“The babies in our rooms… ah, I don’t know for sure, but my guess is they aren’t just miscarried fetuses.” She gazed away at the river, torpid and decaying; “I think the ones in our rooms were the worst of all. Even worse than the ghost children. You saw the maid’s reaction. Pure horror.”
“So? What are they?”
“What we saw, hanging from the door, was probably kun krak. Smoke babies. They are babies that have been…” She blinked, twice, and then again. “Ripped out of a woman’s living womb, then doused in some kind of sacred oil, then smoked over a fire. Some call them kuk krun. Well-done babies.”
She paused. Jake gazed between the papayas and the jackfruit, trying not to dwell on this truly appalling information. Murdered babies of a murdered woman; fetuses anointed and smoked.
“Sweet fucking Jesus.” His voice was choked.
Chemda’s eyes were moist and shy. “The fact that someone put them in… my room, our rooms, means someone wants us out. It is a direct and devilish threat, Jake. Designed to unnerve. And I am unnerved. The smoke babies. It scares me. Ah.”
He regained himself. Angrily.
“But Chemda. You’re a Californian, right? You went to UCLA. You know it’s all bollocks. This is just, just voodoo. Juju dolls, dead chickens, zombies. It means nothing—”
“I can’t help it. I believe it, Jake. Somewhere inside I do fear it, horribly; it’s part of my root culture. Maybe more than that; maybe it’s genetic. I wish I didn’t, but I can’t help it. Ah. Can’t help it.”
This was the closest she had come to breaking. So far, Chemda had been relatively unfazed by the bloody death of Doctor Samnang; she had been determined, and decisive, when they were fleeing the police at Site 9; she had arranged their escape from the Secret City with a valiant coolness bordering on sangfroid; but a brief if chilling encounter with black magic—that had thrown her.
But if Jake was honest with himself, it had also thrown him. Like someone were taunting him with his worst fears and guilt. The little dead child, eyes rolled and white.
Trying to void his mind of this revenant image, he looked around — Agnès Marconnet was standing, once more, at the edge of the riverside lawn, anxiously gazing their way. The hotel owner had been in a state of anguished nerves ever since the ghastly discovery, apologizing and speculating. Who had put these hideous things in the room. Mais pourquoi…. C’est pas croyable…. Mes propres employés? Je suis vraiment désolé….
But as he stared, Jake also became aware, through the screen of trees at the edge of the garden, of a police car, parked on the road that concluded at the Gauguin. A police car? When did that arrive? A few minutes ago? What was the policeman doing inside? Talking on his radio? To whom?
“OK. Fuck this. Superstition or not, Chemda, we need to go, now. Look!”
He tilted his head, significantly. Chemda squinted at the police car.
“How long has he been there?”
“Who knows. Maybe someone called them, about the… talismans. C’mon, we need to go.”
“But where? The roads, they are so long, and so bad. It will take two or three days. We cannot fly out.”
“Just grab the bags.”
Their luggage was still stacked at the rear of the hotel, in a pile, on a cart. A melancholy brace of tiny rucksacks, dirty and ragged. They had been left there as if their stay was expected to be brief. Jake turned at a noise. The policeman was stepping out of the car. The door of his Toyota closed. A two-way radio crackled.
The cop was walking to the hotel door. He was knocking at the door; he was talking to someone there.
They stood in the garden, screened by the trees — but paralyzed. There was no way out of the hotel now. Indeed, a second police car was sliding down the narrow road, lights flashing, pointlessly, in the tropical sunlight.
Agnès emerged. Her voice was tremulous. She stammered, for a minute, in French, gazing at Chemda.
Chemda explained.
“She says someone called the police, about the… kratha. She doesn’t know who. A maid, maybe. She says her husband is holding the police at the door, but they will force their way in if necessary—”
“So we’re screwed.”
“No.” Chemda looked at Agnès — and Agnès nodded. “There’s one other way, a path, down here, by the river, it leads around the wat, we can evade the police…”
Despair filled Jake’s thoughts. The idea was feeble. The path would still lead them back into Luang Prabang; but Jake also realized they had no choice.
“OK. The rucksacks.”
They snatched their bags, Chemda whispered a goodbye to Agnès, and then the two of them fled through the tamarinds, slipping into the cooler shadows, running down the lawn. As the garden approached the river, the lawn sloped, more severely, until it became a very serious incline. They were half scrambling, half crawling, almost rappelling to freedom.
Freedom? Jake winced at the idea. This wasn’t an escape to freedom, this was fucking futile. The riverside path would get them away from the hotel, around the police, but it would lead them straight back to town, emerging onto a main street, dirty and conspicuous, where they would immediately be spotted and arrested.
The riverside path led on, past the pier where the fishermen darned their nets in the sunshine. Jake stared.
The river. The pier. The river.