The King’s Last Song

Luc feels sweet air move on his cheek. He smells sun-baked wood, muddy water and reeds. Something in that smell tells him it’s early morning and he imagines open blue sky and the expanse of the Great Lake.

The boys on the deck grunt. ‘Ugh! It smells like a pigpen. You. Out here to wash.’

Wash! The only thing Luc wants to do now is wash; dust and sweat coat him like a layer of latex. Luc tries to sit up and bashes his forehead on the low ceiling. He inches his way forward on his buttocks. He hears the General being seized by his ankles and hauled backwards across the shallow hull.

No thanks. Luc rolls over onto his hands and knees, and backs his way towards the hatch. He hates not being able to see anything. The joists press into his shins.

Hands grab his arms and pull him up the hatch, peeling off skin from his elbows and ankles.

But the air is as sweet as spun sugar, and the sunlight as warm as a mother’s touch. The bungee cords around his wrists are unsprung. He can move! He hears the tape being torn away from the General’s face and then the plunge when the other man jumps off the boat. The thought of cool, cleansing water makes Luc chuckle with anticipation.

Then a boy shouts. ‘He’s gone under. There! There! There!’ Terrifyingly close to Luc’s ear, gunfire slams out towards the reeds. Feet thud on the deck and the water parts with a puff-whoosh as someone dives.

The General is trying to escape.

Luc reacts like a child. I won’t get my wash, he thinks. He wants to cry from disappointment. He imagines the General diving under the thick layer of floating plants and slipping away through the reeds. He imagines himself left alone with the kidnappers. Despair comes instantly.

Then a thumping on the deck and a streaming of water. ‘Get back up here you old roostershit! Move!’

And despite himself, Luc feels relief, a certain warmth around the heart. He will not be left alone.

Something is heaved onto the deck. The General starts to call out but two quick snaps of gunfire cut him off and he keens like a seagull.

They’ve shot him. The General yelps and squeals as he’s hauled across the deck. The boat’s tiny engine begins to throb and gurgle.

The boys shout, ‘Get in! Get in!’ The boat moves and turns. Cold wet hands grab Luc and push.

‘I’m going, I’m going!’ Luc grunts through the tape. He stumbles down through the hatch and the boys club his head with the butt of a rifle or pistol, to beat him down into the hull. He ducks and dives, slamming his forehead.

The boys clamber down after him and cram him up against the General. The General’s cold skin twitches and he makes a thin continuous wheedling sound, fighting pain. Tape is ripped around him; he howls in agony as someone lifts his legs presumably to bungee them together.

The boys leave the General tossing back and forth like a child trying to rock himself to sleep.

The hatch closes. The boat drones on for hours.

William pulls up at the Phimeanakas at 8.00 a.m. and finds the forecourt crammed with foreigners he doesn’t know.

They are climbing into the back of the dig’s pick-up truck. ‘They say the airport is open again,’ says an Australian tourist.

‘What has happened?’ William shouts to him.

‘They say one of the archaeologists who is staying here has been kidnapped.’ The man’s mouth sours into an odd mix of the fearful and the exhilarated. ‘We’re heading out.’

William tries to find the team’s Cambodian director. Prak the security guard stops him, a hand planted on his chest. William is only a motoboy and not allowed even into the forecourt of the Phimeanakas.

Normally Prak has a sweet temper, but not today. He glowers and his breath smells of beer. ‘Wait outside. If your friends are here they will come out for you.’

‘What’s happened? Who was kidnapped?’ William asks.

‘I don’t know,’ says Prak and stomps away.

If all the tourists leave, there will be no money. No money for anybody.

One of the other motoboys eyes William. William thinks of himself as a businessman. He lays claim to the patch outside the Phimeanakas. He pays a commission to Mrs Bou – and all the other Phimeanakas motoboys pay him.

This is Mons. Mons is older than William and doesn’t like paying him money or being trapped as a motoboy. He pretends to be friendly, but everything he says has hidden teeth.

‘So you have no more UN friends,’ says Mons.

‘Neither have you.’

‘Oh, I have plenty of business today. I drive people to the airport.’

‘Do you know who got kidnapped?’

‘It is a terrible thing. Grandfather Frenchman. Your mentor!’ Mons looks glum but he says it loudly, for everyone to hear. The other motoboys look sullen and confused.

‘You can drive a tourist back to the airport only once,’ William replies in a quiet voice. ‘And when all the other tourists stay away, you’ll see. This is bad for you, too.’

The other motoboys hang their heads.

William turns to the foreigners, smiles, takes off his baseball cap, dips and bows. He tries his Japanese on some Asian tourists and gets business. He’s unsure about some of the Europeans. He tries German; they turn out to be Italian, but they understand ‘Five dollars, five dollars to airport.’

‘I have suitcases,’ says a man in strange English. William organizes two motorcycles for him, ten dollars, but it’s still cheaper than a taxi. ‘I’m sorry,’ William says. ‘Today taxis will be hard to find.’

The man nods and smiles, grateful for anything. He’s from Iran. William gets his name and asks about the government. ‘Is the religion Islam?’ he asks.

He gets business for all the motoboys and pointedly leaves Mons until last.

Luc, he thinks. Of all the people they could have done this to. Those idiots! The foreigners bring money, they come here to help us! Why are they doing this? What will it do to Cambodia?

The US special quota for garments will end soon. The garment industry brings 250,000 jobs and when it goes, what will replace it? All we have is tourism!

William feels the trickle of dreams washing away. I won’t get my new bike. I won’t be able to help aunty buy her new house. The land we were hoping to sell for development – twelve thousand dollars we were told we would get for it – maybe that won’t sell. I won’t have the UN archaeologists to talk to, to find out about things.

He remembers one of Luc’s students insisting to Mrs Bou that William was a colleague, not a motoboy. He got William inside the pink marble dining room of the Phimeanakas and up the stairs into the social area. It was large enough to unfold huge photographs of Angkor taken from airplanes.

One photograph covered seven hundred square kilometres. It used a kind of radar to penetrate the ground one dot at a time, and a computer joined up the dots. The signals had bounced off a satellite in space. Luc’s student explained geosynchronous orbits to him. William’s head jerked back with shock and pleasure. What a wonderful idea.

The machine is always falling, but the ground falls away at the same pace. So it always stays above the same spot of ground. Who would do things like that for him now?

Luc had bought him a mobile phone. He simply passed it to him one day outside the guesthouse. ‘This is so we can telephone you whenever we need you.’

William had stood in silence, stroking the phone. He didn’t want to show strong emotion. He was embarrassed, and fearful of doing something unseemly like crying.

A mobile telephone made him part of the world. His friends could telephone from Japan, from Australia and say, William, we are coming, please organize a trip. William, we are at the airport, can you come and fetch us?

William was silent for so long, wary of speaking, that Luc had become worried that he’d done something wrong. ‘I’ve paid for the sim card and for fifty dollars’ worth of calls. But you’ll have to show up with your family ID card to collect them.’