Little Brother Page 4

  The King had altered his earlier ideas on the chances of Vithy ever finding Mang, but not by much. He had decided that Mang would head west for the Thai border, even narrowing that border down to Aranyaprathet. And there were trucks constantly leaving Phnom Penh for places west and nearer to the border – if you were fast and sneaky enough to catch one. But there was fighting everywhere between the Vietnamese army and the Khmer Rouge and the fighting had concentrated on the Thai border, with shelling, tanks and troop battles.

  Vithy was able to forget about the fighting while he was looking for trucks, but a small part of him was hoping he wouldn’t ever find the right truck. That small part of him was very happy when he found that one truck was going to Kompong Speu, almost a suburb of Phnom Penh, and the second and third trucks were both going south to Takeo, not west. After that the boys were too exhausted to carry one more handful of rice. They collapsed on the bank of the Tonle Sap, gazed at the wrecked concrete river bridge and waited for enough strength to eat their Viet army dinner and trail off home.

  A final truck creaked in from the road, backed up to a pile of sacks and stopped.

  The King shook his head. ‘No. Definitely not.’

  The sergeant clapped his hands. ‘One more truck, then you can go home!’ he yelled at the Khmers lounging round a rice pot. Someone muttered.

  ‘Where’s it for?’ asked the King.

  ‘Does where it’s going make the sacks lighter? Siem Reap. Come on, come on.’

  Vithy sat up and stared at the truck, excited but with something prickling up his back. Dad had often talked of Siem Reap. It was near the ancient ruined city of Angkor, where he and Mum had worked and danced before he became a doctor, and is about three hundred kilometres out west. Less than two hundred kilometres from Aranyaprathet.

  ‘All right,’ sighed the King, ‘after dinner.’

  Most of the Khmers had left to sleep in the city. Vithy and the King quickly spread palm leaves before them and ladled hot rice and some curried fish on them. They rolled the leaves to form four large green sausages, tied them with twine then slung them from Vithy’s shoulders under his shirt. They ate from the pot hurriedly for ten minutes then joined the two men loading the truck.

  The King whispered something to the men. They nodded then resumed work. Now the men would heave the sacks up from the wharf and the boys would stack them, sack after sack of rice and corn, on the tray of the truck. Under the sergeant’s eye the work was innocent but slow, but when he drifted off the King rolled a sack away to reveal a dark cavity.

  ‘Now,’ he said and Vithy jumped for the hole.

  Vithy squirmed into a sitting position among the sacks and looked up. ‘Why don’t you come with me? Out of the war and everything.’

  The King laughed. ‘And leave my City? Oh, no.’

  ‘Well, thanks …’

  The King rolled the sack over the hole, plunging Vithy into darkness.

  Vithy rolled the words he had just said round his mouth, and frowned. ‘Out of the war and everything,’ he had said. Mang had said those words in the forest. ‘Follow the lines out of the war.’ Not ‘cross the line’ as if it was a border drawn in the mud, but ‘follow the lines’, as if –

  The sack was suddenly rolled aside and the King thrust a plastic bottle into Vithy’s hands. ‘You should have thought of this. It’s water.’ He frowned at Vithy and for the first time since Vithy had known him he looked uncertain for a moment. Then he shrugged, pulled something from his pocket and pressed it into Vithy’s palm. ‘This is for fixing the motor. So long, stupid.’

  He slammed the sack back and began heaving other sacks over the small hole. Vithy ran his fingers over the serrated edge of the gold leaf. He did not think of borders or lines again for a long time.

  Vithy heard a man take his place in the final loading of the truck. The man talked and joked with the King as they worked but neither spoke to or about Vithy. He felt as lonely as he had been in the forest after Mang had gone, but this time he was still within an arm’s reach of a friend. It felt far worse when the loading was finished and the truck was left alone in the night.

  He sat in silence for a long time, fighting to breathe the heavy corn-laden air and thinking of the Khmer Rouge lying in the dark forests and waiting for him. The taste of the air became bad and it was getting hot. The sweat gathered on his back, neck, forehead, and poured from his nose. He was only prevented from pushing the sacks away from the top of his head and giving up by the thought that the sergeant would see him and punish the King for helping him. He sipped some of the water in the plastic bottle and tried to imagine himself floating in the Tonle Sap.

  Suddenly two men clambered onto the truck and Vithy held his breath. He was certain they were about to search for him. When he heard the metal click of a gun he opened his mouth to scream. The sacks over his head sagged under a man’s weight … and a man yawned.

  The truck slid out of the city, through a busy area with many men shouting at each other and heavy vehicles moving slowly, then accelerated to forty kilometres per hour on the smooth bitumen. Cool air filtered between the sacks, coating Vithy’s face with corn and rice husks but drying out his body and feeding him with air that was almost fresh. He began to get excited. At this rate they would get to Siem Reap in the morning, he might even beat Mang to the border …

  The truck slowed, and stopped. The engine died and the soldiers leapt down from the sacks, leaving Vithy alone and anxious. He knew this could not be Siem Reap. It was far, far too soon. Perhaps the sergeant was lying when he said the truck was going to Siem Reap. Or perhaps it had just gone to the war and the Khmer Rouge were all round and the soldiers would unload the truck in a minute, and catch him.

  After half an hour the soldiers climbed back on board and were joined by three others, all laughing. The engine was switched on, the brake released and the truck rolled slowly down to a road of creaking wood. A bridge? Then the truck engine was switched off and a clanking engine started with a gasp and a hiss. The truck and the wooden road moved slowly and very gently. They were crossing the Tonle Sap on a ferry, because the bridge had been destroyed. Vithy relaxed again.

  The truck moved off the ferry and drove quickly down the road for ten minutes before it stopped again. Someone on the road talked to the driver and a sack was thrown down to the road. The truck moved off again, but it soon wandered all over the road as if five people were fighting for possession of the wheel, or the driver had been shot. Vithy was alarmed until the truck lurched and swayed like a log in a flood.

  Of course, he thought. It’s the road. It could take a week to reach Siem Reap.

  But after a while Vithy became used to the erratic movements of the truck and went to sleep. He dreamed that Dad, Mang and he were chasing a duck, shuffling together with their hands outstretched as if in a comic dance. They were all laughing …

  ‘… Khmer Rouge?’

  The tautly whispered phrase plucked Vithy from warm Sambor and threw him back into the truck, awake and afraid. The truck had stopped, but the motor was being kept at a fast idle. Vithy could hear the sound of guns being cocked. Someone called from a distance ahead and the driver called back. The truck edged forward. A soldier was moving his body cautiously across the sacks that covered Vithy’s hole.

  The man on the road shouted in Khmer for a few minutes, something about five families and a dry paddy. The driver shouted back and the man over Vithy’s head sighed and eased to the rear of the truck. Two bags were dumped on the road. The truck moved on, but Vithy knew that it was a matter of time before one of the soldiers took the sacks hiding him to give to people on the road.

  Vithy tried to work out how far he had gone, whether it was still night or morning. He sucked at his water bottle and found that by pushing back on the sacks he could catch a little light. It was morning and the truck was probably above the Tonle Sap and passing the Tonle Sap lake. They were half way there.

  The driver drove the truck faster now, hurling it acr
oss craters he would have skirted cautiously during the night. Vithy saw the sack over his head slip and hurriedly propped it while he slowly eased it back to its right place. On one suicidal downslope he was banging on the walls of his hole rather than the bottom, and with every impact of his body on the sacks a little dust cloud escaped from the hessian. The air in his hole was getting foggy with floating particles and he was constantly fighting back the urge to sneeze.

  But the truck did stop for a long time in a makeshift army camp. Vithy moved the roof sack far enough to look around and decided that this was not Siem Reap. He stayed put while he finished the last of his water and breathed better air. He closed his hole as the soldiers wandered back to the truck twenty minutes later.

  After a while Vithy’s dim light began to fade. It must be the end of the day and Siem Reap must be getting close. He must get ready for a dash to freedom past the soldiers. He flexed his legs and a ball of pain shot up his right leg. He bit his lip to stop himself from shouting and rubbed his legs until they tingled, but he didn’t know whether he could move them at all at Siem Reap.

  The test came sooner than he had expected. Once again the road became smooth, the engine accelerated and the truck skidded badly round a corner. Sacks were thrown from one side of the truck to the other, one soldier was nearly catapulted to the road …

  And Vithy was tipped from his hole.

  ‘Eih!’ A young soldier squealed in surprise and pointed. Another soldier reached for the body that had been dumped at his feet.

  Vithy didn’t wait. He rolled over two sacks and leapt from the truck.

  THE BICYCLE

  Vithy rolled along the road like a flung coin. He tumbled until he could spread his arms and legs in the dust, jerking himself to his feet and trying to run. He listened for the shouting and the shots as he reeled sideways, ran, fell and ran again. But when he turned he saw the soldiers just sitting in the truck, staring at him as they disappeared round a distant bend.

  Vithy stopped in the middle of the road and coughed until rice husks stopped tickling his throat. He was picking grit from his skin near a street of shattered shops and a sluggish canal when he saw a cyclo parked in the long shadows near the canal. He walked towards it with growing excitement.

  The cyclo couldn’t be much different from the one the King once rode round Phnom Penh. It was an old bicycle with its front fork bolted to a wheeled seat with a folded canopy, so that instead of having two wheels this cycle had three. But it was badly browned with rust, the wheels were missing several spokes and there were torn flaps trailing from the canopy. This cyclo could be abandoned, and maybe Vithy could ride it all the way to the border …

  Vithy stopped in the middle of the road when he saw a leg dangling over the canopy. He looked hard at the shadowy seat and made out the long form of a sleeping youth. Then the youth opened one eye.

  ‘Ah … hello,’ Vithy said.

  ‘Um.’ The youth closed his eye again.

  Vithy hefted the banana leaf sausages around his neck. ‘Is this Siem Reap?’

  The youth opened both eyes. ‘Used to be. You a tourist? Want to see Angkor?’ He laughed. ‘Where you from?’

  ‘Phnom Penh.’

  ‘Long way. You want the border.’

  Vithy was surprised and it showed on his face.

  ‘So many people trying to reach Thailand. Now there aren’t many left.’

  ‘Are there any lines or something at this border?’

  ‘Lines. Oh sure. Lines of people, our people, trying to get out of the country. Like I said. Why?’

  Vithy smiled for an instant. This time it fitted. Follow the lines of people. Vithy’s smile died as he realised that this could be anywhere on the six hundred kilometre border with Thailand. ‘How do you get there?’

  The youth jerked his thumb past the street of shops. ‘Just follow the sun.’

  Vithy pressed his hands together and bowed his head. ‘Thank you. Ah, are there any other bikes around?’

  The youth looked at Vithy shrewdly. ‘No. They’re all gone.’

  ‘Oh.’ Vithy half-turned away in disappointment, then remembered the King’s last gift to him. ‘Can I buy this one from you?’

  The youth threw his head back and laughed, rocking his cyclo and slapping his palm on the mudguard.

  Vithy waited patiently for the storm of laughter to subside. ‘I was not making a joke.’

  ‘But you were!’ the youth spluttered. He gasped for air. ‘What were you going to use to buy my beautiful cyclo? The rice around your neck, your clothes, your sandals, maybe a million paper riels?’

  ‘I have a little gold.’

  The grin disappeared from the youth’s face. ‘Let me see.’

  Vithy looked at the youth. The youth was bigger and stronger and older than he was. He could take the gold leaf from him and ride away. There was nothing he could do about it. But how can you buy a bicycle without showing the price you could pay? You just have to take a chance.

  Vithy pulled the leaf from his shirt pocket and passed it to the youth. The youth held the leaf between his first finger and his thumb, raised it to the setting sun and flicked it to spin, a flashing spark of gold in his hand.

  ‘Do you have any more?’ the youth asked.

  ‘No.’ Vithy watched the spinning leaf and the gold light flickering across the youth’s face.

  The youth threw the leaf into the air, and caught it. ‘It’s not enough.’

  Vithy nodded sadly. He had lost his gamble and he knew it was a useless gesture when he held out his hand. ‘Can I have my leaf back then?’

  The youth opened his hand, then closed it and waved a finger at Vithy. ‘Tell you what I’ll do. I’ve got a yard full of old bikes. For the gold I’ll let you build your own. Hop in.’

  The youth climbed from the passenger seat to the saddle without touching the ground. He put the gold leaf into his own pocket, leaving Vithy with little alternative but to climb on board. The youth rode off along the side of the canal.

  They passed many clusters of bamboo waterwheels straddling the canal. Many of them were jammed with weed or broken, but sometimes a wheel four times Vithy’s height was still turning, scooping water from the canal and pouring it into a wooden pipe. The pipe carried the water to a dark jungle of weeds, turning what had once been a paddy into a swamp.

  The youth stopped at a shambles of a house, a wreck that had been sagging and shifting before the war and now had no windows, no door, a hole in the roof and the paint was peeling off the plaster board. But the youth took Vithy into the back yard with an air of pride. In the back yard there was a graveyard of motor bike parts, motor scooter parts, skeletons of cyclos and rental bicycles. Tins half-full of grease, bottles of oil, wheels upon wheels upon wheels with tyres and tubes hanging from rusty rods.

  ‘Okay then?’ said the youth.

  ‘It’s a lot.’ Vithy stared at the bits and pieces of thirty bicycles and again wished Mang were here. Mang could stand here and work out exactly which part went with which to build a bike and how long it would take to do the job. He could build a bike out of almost anything, but he wasn’t here …

  But sometimes Vithy would fix a bike all by himself. Maybe he had learned enough.

  ‘Thanks. It’s okay,’ Vithy said.

  ‘Big business when the tourists were here. They’d take a bicycle to see Angkor and crash and the bicycle would have to be repaired. Now you can use anything you find here and you can live here while you’re working.’

  ‘Yes …’ Vithy had a sudden doubt. ‘This is your house?’

  The youth shook his head. ‘Nobody owns anything any more.’ He flicked the leaf into the air and snatched it. ‘Goodbye.’ He walked back to his cyclo.

  A sudden idea flicked into Vithy’s mind. ‘Wait a minute …’ He ran after the youth.

  The youth climbed onto the cyclo and turned to face Vithy warily. ‘What? You can’t have it back.’

  ‘No, no, that’s not it. I was just thinking.
With all the people you see going to the border, have you seen my brother?’

  The youth laughed and shook his head. ‘Maybe. Who knows? There’s hundreds of people going to the border. How would I know?’

  ‘Well, he looks like me, only bigger.’

  The youth smiled and framed Vithy’s face with his fingers. ‘Let me see now …’ And the smile disappeared. ‘Um, might be.’

  ‘Did you see him?’ Vithy pushed forward in excitement. ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘Might’ve been him. On the back of a truck going towards the border maybe four days ago. Whistling. Might be.’ The youth shrugged and mounted his cyclo.

  ‘What was he whistling?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Anyway, it wasn’t Khmer. It was stuff you hear from the tourists. When they were here. But you couldn’t tell. He was a terrible whistler.’ The youth shook his head and rode away.

  Vithy raised his arm and started to shout for the youth to come back, but he stopped. He knew all he wanted to know. He turned from the road and wandered over the yard and the house without seeing much and with a quick skipping step.

  He could see Mang paddling in the rapids of the Mekong grinning and whistling so out of tune it sounded like a balloon going down. Whistling ‘Ol’ Man River’ like the tourists.

  Vithy tried to whistle the way Mang had done as he took off his three sausages of rice and put them in a cupboard but it couldn’t be done. He was even grinning as he walked across the road to the canal and stepped straight off the bank into the shining black water.

  ‘I know where I am,’ he sang, and ducked to the cool clean water under the scum. ‘I know where everyone is.’

  He swam slowly under a waterfall created by a big but broken waterwheel, took off his clothes and scrubbed them clean.

  He was now no more than a few days behind Mang, who had not been shot in the forest but was waiting for him up ahead. All Vithy had to do now was to catch him.