Chemda insisted: “I want to see this place. Now.”
“Wait—” Jake put a restraining hand on her soft bare shoulder. She was in a midnight-blue undershirt. Her skin was dark and lovely. He could still remember her naked, crouched over him, the man staring through the window.
“Can we trust him?”
Chemda shook her head, frustratedly; Jake whispered in her ear.
“I know he has information, Chem, and I know I feel sorry for him, but look at him! And he might go straight to your grandfather. And he was standing at the window.”
Ponlok was waiting, like a lowly servant, a man used to being ordered around, used to abuse and disdain. The Khmer Rouge had turned him into a serf.
Chemda replied, her voice hushed.
“He was just coming to see us! Hnh? He wasn’t doing anything. And whatever happened to this poor man”—she gestured at Ponlok—“happened to my grandmother. He may be able to help, to tell us. I want to know more. This is our chance. And besides, he’s seen us now, we have to do something. Ah. We need to win him over, make sure he doesn’t go to my grandfather.”
She was right. And if she wanted to know about her grandmother’s fate, he could hardly argue.
“If you want I’ll go alone with him,” said Chemda. “You can stay here.”
“Are you kidding?”
A minute later they were climbing down the fire escape, following the small, slightly limping Khmer man in his fleecy cap.
A hundred meters and two alleyways brought them to a slightly busier street. A spirit house stood on the corner, with offerings of dark fish sauce in little egg cups.
Jake waited, and listened. Chemda was explaining to Ponlok: why the janitor should keep this very quiet, that no one should know she and Jake were here, not even her grandfather. Even as he tuned in, Jake felt sure this plan was not going to work; it was too much of a risk, they couldn’t trust Ponlok. As soon as this immediate and ghastly task was done, they would have to leave, flee Phnom Penh entirely. Run away into the countryside.
But where the hell could they go?
Jake stared down the leafy suburban road, looking west, away from the sun: thinking of escape routes, places they could hide. He stared, and a brush of horror made him jerk, like an icy hand had been suddenly pressed to the back of his neck.
He realized where they were. The hulking, grimy concrete building at the end of the road was unmistakable. So that’s why he had recognized the area.
Tuol Sleng.
They were right by Tuol Sleng, the notorious Khmer Rouge prison.
At the end of the road Jake could see a bus, decanting tourists. People doing the Holocaust Tour. Jake had done it himself, when he’d first arrived in PP. He’d seen the iron beds where people were flayed with electric cables; he’d seen the bleak and fetid concrete cells where women and children were raped with batons, or tied down, screaming as their living organs were removed, in live dissections. Tuol Sleng. The Hill of the Poison Tree. S-21.
Seventeen thousand went through Tuol Sleng alone. And twelve survived.
Just twelve survivors, out of seventeen thousand.
Another note from Ponlok. The janitor handed it to Jake.
No. It is not in Tuol Sleng. It is secret place. S-37. Come?
He was guiding them away from the torture garden. Jake felt a brief frisson of relief: they were ducking away from the busyness and tourist police of Tuol Sleng.
But where were they going? Ponlok was heading down an alley, wet with rotting fruit and slimy, bulging garbage bags. The alley curved, then curved back on itself, and narrowed to a long, roofless concrete passageway where they had to climb the undulating heaps of trash.
Jake’s eyes stung, irritated by the reek and pollution. An empty Royal Ginseng beer bottle seethed with flies; a smear of banana skin stuck to his jeans. Chemda put a hand to her nose to block the stench.
It was a grisly ascent, led by Ponlok, whose farcical cap had slipped, showing his scar. Jake tried not to wince, to show his open repulsion. The old man was muttering as he guided them through the spoil and dreck. This maze of rubbish.
At length the caging walls opened out, and they descended. A dead dog lay prone at the edge of the trash heaps. It was, unaccountably, smoldering. A small fire had been set in the dog’s head, like an experiment. Jake looked away, and looked ahead.
The alley culminated in a very dead end: a patch of earth and rubble, and a shattered concrete building. On the face of it, this was just another of Phnom Penh’s many, many ruins. But this was no derelict slum, no gutted hovel. This was S-37.
It was surrounded by bamboo stands and high grasses and modest hillocks of glittering and discarded auto parts. Hubcaps and shattered glazing. The building was roofless, and the size of a large one-car garage. A sinister iron bed frame stood in the middle, rusting away.
Two metal cupboards sat next to it, the drawers flung open and empty. Only an ancient, grimy, very broken syringe, lying on the floor, showed that this place might once have had some medical significance.
Chemda spoke: “This is where they did the experiments?”
Yes.
The man was trembling again, glancing at Chemda, looking at her bare legs. Jake wished, suddenly, that she had worn jeans, not the short blue skirt.
Your grandmother was brought here. I know. Then they cut open her head and she was changed. Forever. Like me. Like many members of your family.
Chemda stared at the note.
“Other people? My family? Who else?”
The note fell from her hand to the floor. She was visibly and entirely shocked, her mouth trembling. Jake went to touch her, but she waved him away.
Jake turned to ask the janitor another question.
“How do you know?”
But Ponlok wasn’t listening, he was staring at Chemda’s legs. He moved closer to Chemda, then stopped. He trembled, quivered, riven with some internal conflict. At last he scribbled a note and handed it to Jake.
You must go. They make me.
“What? Make you what?”
Again Ponlok stooped to his notepad. Jake could see the man’s hand, trembling. His scrawny hand shook as he scribbled. The note was handed Jake’s way.
They make me like this.
“Like what? Ponlok? What?”
Ponlok stared directly at Jake, his sad old eyes filled with not-quite-human tears. The sadness of a dying hound, a beaten animal. A suffering creature. A mute creature, not quite evolved.
Ponlok’s mouth moved. Was he chewing? Spitting? What? With a shudder of helpless disgust, Jake realized Ponlok was trying to speak.
“Shhor… Kmmu…”
It was impossible. Jake shook his head.
“Sorry. I don’t understand.”
Ponlok tried again: “Mevv… kmm.”
Chemda stepped close. She put a hand on Ponlok’s thin old shoulder.
“Please. Write it.”
The old man gazed at her, the silence held among the three of them, awkwardly, and then he obeyed. He stooped to his notepad one more time. As he wrote, he dribbled. The line of spit from his mouth was shameless and silvery. Laboriously, the janitor wrote his note, with a talonlike hand. Then he moved closer to Chemda and his mouth whirred as he put a hand on her arm. He was stroking her. Pleading. Pleading like he needed feeding. The other hand held the note. Chemda took it and gave it to Jake, shrugging.