Little Brother Read online

  ‘And we don’t have a TV station either, or a tap that works. We wash in the river. I don’t suppose you can fix things.’

  Vithy could not talk, had to keep eating until the salad was no more than a smear on the silver. He shrugged.

  ‘Like an outboard motor.’

  ‘Sometimes.’ Vithy forced the word through a full mouth.

  The King smiled at Vithy and opened another tin – pears – and joined him. This time Vithy could talk between mouthfuls.

  ‘Where’s everyone?’ he said.

  The King shrugged. ‘All gone. After the war the Khmer Rouge marched in and kicked them all out.’

  ‘Oh.’ Like Sambor. Did it happen everywhere? The Khmer Rouge bandits come down from the mountains and fight the government. After the war they are the government and they say everyone who lives in a city or a town has to go to the country and plant rice. Everyone?

  ‘But I stayed. Nobody shoves me around. If I don’t want to go I don’t go. Once they see me, they try to catch me but I am a cyclo man. I know –’

  ‘What …?’ Vithy finished the last pear and felt beautifully heavy inside. He wasn’t really listening.

  The King clicked his tongue in annoyance. ‘Cyclo man, cyclo man. Rickshaw with a bicycle. What, you come from the mountains or something?’

  ‘I know it. My brother and me, we fix them a lot at home.’

  ‘Yes, well I’m a cyclo man and I know this city like a mouse knows his hole. They never catch me and I go around the city and fill my palace. I stay and they’re gone so I’m King of the City.’

  ‘No soldiers here?’

  ‘Not the Khmer Rouge. I say “Go!” and they go. Off to fight another war.’

  ‘Who against?’

  ‘Where you been? It’s the Viets this time. The Khmer Rouge attacked some Vietnamese villages, or something, and it’s war again.’

  Vithy leaned back and nodded. Vietnamese. They were the soldiers with the truck. End of mystery. And that’s one border Mang wouldn’t go to.

  The King took off his splendid shirt, changed his silver-threaded sarong for a black and grey rag, took off his sandals and stood up. ‘Now for a wash. Why have you come here?’

  Vithy told the King about Mang and the escape through the forest as the boys climbed out of the cellar and walked down a street to the river.

  ‘You really are looking for him?’ The King poised on a landing.

  ‘Yes.’ Vithy took off his rag, smelt it and threw it away. The King was right.

  ‘You’ll never find him.’ The King plunged into the dark water.

  Vithy jumped in after him, feeling the cold water lift weeks of sweat, dirt and weariness from him in a second. ‘Why?’ he yelled.

  ‘Where would he go? He could go anywhere. If he came here, even I might not be able to find him. But he might be anywhere. Or dead.’

  ‘He’s not dead!’ Vithy shouted.

  ‘All right, all right, take it easy. Have some soap.’

  Vithy caught the slimy white object and began to lather. He turned in the water and looked at the black city sitting on the black river beneath a single spray of stars. It wasn’t the city he had known. The sullen stone shapes were strangers to him, hostile and secret.

  He swam to the King’s side in a last clutch of hope. ‘Mang said something about a border …’

  The King laughed and kick-dived to the depths of the river. He stayed under for almost a minute and spouted like a whale when he broke surface. ‘What border?’

  ‘He didn’t have time to say.’

  ‘Well, there’s the border with Laos …’ He pointed across the river. ‘That’s more than three hundred kilometres away and you’d have to cross the Tonle Sap and the Mekong for a start. Or the border with Thailand. That’s maybe four hundred kilometres away and you’ll have to go through the war to get there. And then where are you going to look? It’s more than six hundred kilometres long from the sea to the mountains. And there’s Vietnam …’

  ‘There’s lines at this border,’ Vithy said in desperation.

  ‘And tigers too, maybe?’

  ‘Well he said they were there.’

  ‘’Course they are there. That’s what a border is. Cross the line and you cross the border and you’re in another country.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Vithy. There was something he should have remembered, but it remained just out of reach. ‘All right.’

  The King nodded sympathetically. ‘Look, you don’t need a brother. You don’t need anyone at all.’

  RIVER OF GOLD

  Vithy slept high in the King’s palace that night, in a room with a hole for a window and very little roof. He lay on his back looking at the stars and tried to think about Mang and how he would never see him again, but he was just too tired. He woke to the sun rising over the river and the smell of fish frying. The King had found a tin of kippers in tomato sauce and was cooking them with rice over a portable gas burner. When he had finished eating Vithy would follow the King anywhere.

  They did not go far. The King found a simple shirt, shorts and a pair of new sandals for Vithy, then he picked up his rattan ball, walked outside to a clear space in the street and kicked it to Vithy.

  ‘Can you play?’

  Vithy instinctively stopped the ball with his knee. ‘Not any more.’ He dropped it to the inside of his right foot and skied it towards the King. The effort hurt: he hadn’t used those muscles that way for a long time.

  ‘Ah, come on, you’re better than a brick wall.’ The King swung his hip at the ball.

  ‘I’m terribly stiff.’ Vithy danced back to meet the ball and missed. That annoyed him. He missed twice more in the next three minutes, bounced the ball erratically away from the King five times and then caught the rhythm.

  The two boys danced around each other, whistling, clapping, singing little songs with the ball always spinning in the air. Vithy would sky it with his head, then slap it with the sole of his right foot, left knee, left shoulder, right toe, hip, nose, side of leg, heel and back to the clapping King. And for a while he was grinning again.

  They moved from the ruined shops to large stone houses in avenues with tall trees, then to the quiet park surrounding the hill, the Phnom. They collapsed by the many-headed stone serpents guarding the stairway to the top of the Phnom and laughed.

  ‘I think I am dead,’ Vithy panted, when he had recovered enough breath to speak at all.

  ‘That was fun,’ said the King. ‘I will allow you to stay in my City.’

  ‘Why, thank you very much.’

  The King arched an eyebrow and sat up. ‘Up the top, then.’

  Vithy looked at the distant temple or wat at the top of the Phnom and groaned. ‘Why?’

  ‘To see if there are any trespassers.’ The King got up and carried his ball like a royal orb for the first few steps.

  They climbed past tall and broken park lights, past the stained stupas, immense stone ice-cream cones thrust into the earth, past the canopies of trees and finally reached the small and battered wat sitting on top of the Phnom.

  ‘Wasn’t that worth it?’ said the King.

  The Phnom was only a small hill, but the entire city was as flat as a dinner table. Vithy could see down a broad road to the monument on the other side of town. Pagodas glittered gold and green in the sun, and the central market was now a flashing white. Buildings had been destroyed and broken glass looked like ponds in the roads, but the city no longer seemed frightening.

  ‘I used to wait outside that big building, over there, for most of my business,’ said the King. ‘Hotel Royale, always full of reporters and photographers from all over the world.’

  ‘In those days you weren’t a king?’ Vithy was smiling.

  ‘Better than that. They’d come to me and say, “Ang, take us to the best restaurant, or a crime boss, or the best money black market or where the Khmer Rouge blew up the Tonle Sap bridge.” And they knew that I knew where it all was …’

  ‘Soldiers!�
� shouted Vithy and threw himself on the ground.

  Something big and fast was boiling along the road from the monument.

  The King peered at the approaching army truck and raised his hand in a lazy wave. He squatted by Vithy. ‘You are really hung up about the Khmer Rouge, aren’t you?’

  Vithy turned his head on the gravel and looked up at the King. ‘They are very bad.’

  ‘You were at one of their rice farms, weren’t you? What was it like?’

  Vithy shook his head. He did not want to talk or think about the Big Paddy.

  ‘How long were you there? With just your brother?’

  Vithy pressed his lips together. He wanted to pull the King down beside him and get him to shut up. ‘A year. With my mother, and my sister and Mang.’

  ‘And now you are just looking for Mang. Only Mang.’

  The two boys looked at each other in silence. Then the King turned away and stood up.

  ‘Get down!’ Vithy hissed. ‘They’ll see you!’

  ‘Ah, it’s all right. They’re Viets. I allow them to come.’

  Vithy very cautiously picked himself up and watched the truck reach the sweeping circular road round the Phnom. It could have been the same truck Vithy had run from, what – yesterday?

  The truck squealed half way round the circle and sped away from the Phnom as suddenly as it had come. Vithy began to relax, then saw the truck’s destination.

  ‘There’s a ship,’ he said in astonishment.

  The ship was sitting in the river, very close to the shore and less than a kilometre from Vithy, but through the buildings he saw little more than a funnel with a vapour of steam escaping, some white superstructure and a white flag with a red cross on it.

  The King waved it away. ‘It’s unloading rice. I let them come and go. Let’s catch some fish.’

  Vithy followed the King as he skipped down the steps and walked to the river. ‘But where’s it from?’

  ‘What? Oh, that one? I think it’s from France.’

  The King wasn’t interested in ships or soldiers in the City, so after a while Vithy gave up asking questions. They walked along the river bank until the King stopped by a crumpled tarpaulin. He pulled it away to reveal an old but newly painted boat, ready loaded with net, and a long-shafted outboard motor.

  ‘Can you fix that?’ said the King.

  Vithy knelt by the small motor and lifted the cover. To fix a motor Mang would examine it like Dad with a patient and ask Vithy for tools. But now there was no Mang, and Vithy didn’t think he knew what to look for.

  ‘It’ll take a little time,’ Vithy said. ‘Got any tools?’

  The King drew a blue tool box from under the net. ‘Tell you what, we’ll paddle out. I catch fish, you fix the motor and we zoom back.’

  ‘If we’re lucky,’ said Vithy gloomily.

  They pushed off from shore and paddled away from the city, to where the river became a motionless lake of deep gold. The King cast his net at the dying sun and caught a handful of fish while Vithy fiddled with a spring.

  Vithy looked up from the motor in exasperation and was surprised to remember that he had been here before. On a riverboat with Mang, Dad, Mum and Sorei on this particular patch of water. On his left there was the city and the Tonle Sap river, flowing very slowly from the Great Lake, the Tonle Sap, and on his right the mighty Mekong and home. If you went down the Mekong for long enough you would reach Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City, once Saigon. If you went up the Mekong for long enough you would reach Laos, then China and even the Himalayas, but before Laos you would reach Sambor. Home.

  ‘Where you from?’ said the King.

  ‘Sambor.’ And now Vithy was remembering Sambor before the Khmer Rouge, before the war, before the generals who threw out the Prince and started everything. When it was a very sleepy little town with a market, pagodas, rice, fish, boat races and the family. Once upon a time.

  ‘I been there,’ the King said, ‘where the road stops. I love the river. Was working on one of the riverboats, all the way from Phnom Penh to Kratie. One trip I went past Sambor to see the rapids. D’you ever see the Prek Patang Rapids?’

  ‘I went down them, with Mang.’

  ‘Not in the wet.’

  Vithy smiled and shook his head. ‘No. Not in the wet.’

  In the wet the Mekong turned from a lazy village dog into a roaring monster. It seethed over the rapids, plucked stilted houses from its banks and often flooded the streets of Sambor. Every year it poured into the Tonle Sap river and forced that river to change direction and flow back into the Great Lake. You didn’t do much on the Mekong in the wet.

  But when the rain stopped the Mekong calmed and dropped, leaving millions of fish in the Great Lake and rich new soil on the paddies. And the Tonle Sap river changed direction again, to flow into the Mekong. And in the old days Cambodia celebrated with a great Water Festival at its capital, Phnom Penh.

  Vithy sat up in the boat and remembered how it was just before the Prince was overthrown and the war began. How the family crowded into the riverboat, with most of Sambor, to cheer Mang and the rest of the dragon boat team on to victory. All the way down the Mekong with the riverboat going pocketapocketa and Dad, the dignified Doctor Muong, playing the Pan pipes of a khene while he danced with the others. Until they reached the city.

  Vithy turned to look at the city, and from this far out Phnom Penh had not changed. It still looked like something out of a story book, with gold and green roofs glittering in the sun. The Royal Palace gleamed like wet marble and – who knows – the Prince might be in, the monks might be walking past in their orange robes and the people, thousands of them, might be gathering before the palace for the boat races.

  ‘It was good, wasn’t it?’ the King said.

  Vithy looked at the King in surprise and then realised that they had both been thinking of the same thing. He smiled at the King. ‘You know, Mang was in a crew that almost beat the Prince’s boat …’

  The King hurled a piece of black wood into the river. ‘That brother again. Do you ever do anything without him?’

  ‘You don’t have a brother?’

  ‘I don’t have anyone.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  The King ran the net through his fingers. ‘I never had anyone. Just me.’

  Vithy looked at the King for a long time and tried to think of something to say.

  In the end the King shrugged and said: ‘I suppose it must be different with a family, eh?’

  Vithy stared at the bright shell of the empty city. ‘Mang is all I’ve got now.’

  The King nodded once and hauled in the empty throwing net. Vithy pulled the cord on the outboard motor a few times before it coughed, shuddered and pushed the boat across the golden water. The King looked at the vibrating motor in surprise but did not speak during the return journey.

  They reached the city as the sun set behind the pink walls of the palace, dragged the boat up from the river and covered it with the tarpaulin. The King lay the motor on his shoulder and began to walk to his ‘palace’.

  ‘I suppose you better find him,’ the King said.

  THE TRUCK

  Vithy shuffled behind the King towards the soldier, instinctively shrinking as he approached and with his legs quivering, ready to run. His hands were sweaty.

  But this soldier smiled. He looked up from a list he was making and waved a pencil at the King. ‘Eh, Ang? Hungry enough to work?’

  The King shrugged. ‘What you got?’

  ‘The same. Who’s your friend?’

  ‘Vithy. Wants to load your trucks.’

  ‘Always room for one more.’

  Vithy realised he was being spoken to and looked up nervously. He had been catching the heavy scent of pork and noodles – almost as good as last night’s fish – and he was fascinated by the boots on the soldier’s feet. They were even polished. ‘Yes,’ he said lamely.

  ‘Good. I’m Sergeant Trang. You work with us, you eat with us. The morning mea
l is round the corner. You better be quick, before it’s all gone.’ The sergeant waved the King and Vithy away.

  Round the corner of the river-shed there was a huge steaming cauldron, a few soldiers eating in a huddled group and – to Vithy’s surprise – about thirty-five Cambodians, in rags but waving chopsticks at him in greeting. Cambodians, Kampucheans, not Khmer Rouge but just Khmers, his people. Vithy quickly scanned the faces, from the old man with the single tooth to the tough little girl, but Mang was not among them.

  ‘My City is getting crowded again,’ muttered the King, and moved towards the cauldron.

  Vithy ate two bowls of pork, fish, noodles and greens answering and asking questions between mouthfuls and staring at the white ship with the red cross a few metres away. It was the greatest ship he had ever seen, almost fifty metres long.

  No, nobody had seen Mang.

  ‘He might be at the border,’ said the tough little girl, and shovelled her mouth full of rice.

  Vithy stopped eating and looked quickly at the King. His reason for working on the Viet trucks was supposed to be a closely guarded secret, but a grimy girl of no more than eight was almost telling the world.

  ‘Which border?’ said the King with a shrug.

  ‘The Thai border, of course, Ang. There’s refugee camps there.’ The girl sniffed.

  ‘Ah, you’re so smart, Monkey. That border is more than a thousand kilometres long. Where would you start looking?’

  The girl shrugged and left the King in triumphant relief.

  But a long thin man squatting beside Vithy said: ‘Aranyaprathet. That’s the closest Thai town to here, maybe five hundred kilometres away, and it has camps all round it.’

  The girl beamed over her rice. ‘Maybe you could catch a truck,’ she said.

  Vithy hung his head and heard the King groan.

  After the meal the Khmers began to earn their meal and Vithy started looking for the right truck. The ship was being unloaded at the same time as the loading of army trucks. The King and Vithy ignored the ship and spent the day heaving bags of rice, noodles, milk powder and corn onto trucks and learning where they were going. They could not get rid of the feeling that all the Khmers and all the Vietnamese soldiers were watching their every move.