Little Brother Page 7

  ‘Where’s the border?’ Saro gasped.

  Vithy had to stop and put his hands on his knees before he had enough breath to answer. ‘Just a little bit.’

  ‘I can’t see anything. You said the border would be here. Just here.’

  ‘It’s close. It’s easy to walk now. It’s downhill.’

  ‘It’s all right for you …’

  But they walked down and level and even a little up through the lightening trees. Waking birds called in a ghost forest as shadows formed and began to shift. The path was no longer a winding tunnel through the darkness but a dusty crack across a rolling plain of trees and scrub.

  But Saro was finished. She sagged slowly to the ground.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re almost there.’

  She shook her head. ‘We’re lost. I’m staying here.’

  ‘You can’t stay here.’ For an instant Vithy was looking at the remnants of the fine shirt the King had given him, the careful work with moss and palm leaf that Dad had taught him. He was thinking: she can’t stay here and waste all that.

  Then he saw Saro’s face, exhausted and beaten, the way he must have looked to Mang in the paddy and in the forest so many times before. He sat down beside Saro. ‘We’ll just rest here for a few minutes, ei?’

  She sighed. ‘Where’s the border? You’re lost and we’re just going round and round in circles. I’ll stay here until someone finds me. Someone who knows where we are.’

  ‘You have to try …’ Vithy’s nose twitched. He stopped and frowned. ‘Sniff.’

  ‘What?’

  Saro glared at Vithy, but she took a short breath through her nose.

  Rice, tomatoes, meat, poultry, soya, tea …

  ‘What is that?’ said Saro.

  ‘Breakfast,’ Vithy said.

  007

  They stopped on the path when the woman by the pot saw them. She did not seem surprised, but she turned and shouted into the camp. Immediately men and women tumbled from shelters of branches, twigs and roughly woven grass and hurried towards them. For a moment Vithy was badly frightened, but there were no soldiers and most of the people seemed to be smiling. The woman who had shouted came to Saro’s side and eased her down beside a tree, talking to her constantly and softly.

  A man with a shock of white hair scrabbled his fingers in Vithy’s hair. ‘Good, son, good. Are there any more coming?’

  Vithy shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  The man nodded. ‘We heard the shooting. We hear it all the time. You were lucky.’

  ‘Lucky?’ Vithy was looking at the pale girl as she sagged in the woman’s hands.

  ‘You reached us. Many don’t. Yesterday five people were shot no more than four hundred metres from the camp. We brought a big boy in to the hospital but he was shot in the head. He won’t live, but your girl will.’

  So it was that close. But was it over, even now? ‘Then this is Thailand?’ Vithy asked. There were no signs, no fences to mark a border.

  The man scratched his cheek. ‘Near enough. It’s the closest most of us are going to get.’

  ‘This is not the border?’ He was not going to be stopped now, was he?

  Two men hurried to Saro with a much-used stretcher, unfolded it and gently eased Saro on top. She seemed to have fallen asleep.

  ‘Oh yes, this is the border. The end of Cambodia. Now the Thais and the Red Cross feed us. You better follow your sister before you lose her.’

  Vithy started to tell the man that Saro was not his sister, but she was being carried rapidly into the camp and he didn’t want to be left alone any more. He ran after the stretcher.

  The two men walked swiftly into a growing city of shelters, relying on people moving out of their way as they approached. But they slowed suddenly as Vithy caught them, and began to skirt an open area with a few shelters and some sacks of rice.

  ‘What is this place?’ Vithy asked the rear stretcher bearer.

  ‘The camp, or that?’ The stretcher bearer nodded at the open area where about a dozen men in ragged shirts were squatting, working at something. ‘The camp is Nong Samet. The Thai army calls it 007. They think it is very funny like the super spy in the films. You see the films? Nong Samet is 007 because there is always trouble here. And that is most of the season.’

  The ragged men were cleaning their guns.

  ‘Khmer Rouge?’ Vithy whispered.

  The stretcher bearer nodded. ‘It’s all right now; they don’t do anything during the day. They’re here for food and maybe recruits to fight the Viets. Just keep clear of them.’

  Vithy shuffled so the stretcher was between him and the ragged men. He looked over his shoulder and wondered whether he would ever get away from them.

  But the rest of the camp was made up of people, not soldiers. The shelters became thatched huts, occasionally with a roof of heavy blue plastic. Children weaved across the path with yokes of kerosene tins full of water. Women hung shirts and trousers on lines running from huts to trees and men talked gravely in circles around low fires. Nobody paid much attention to the stretcher.

  They reached a dirt road, turned along it and stopped outside a large building with a wall of sticks and a roof like a circus tent of blue plastic. There were two four-wheel-drive vehicles parked under a tree outside the hospital. Two men bustled from the hospital, a Thai and an American, and took the stretcher from the tired bearers.

  ‘Shot?’ said the American, in English. He realised what he had said the moment he had said it and fumbled for the Cambodian words.

  But Vithy nodded in understanding and groped for the English words. ‘Ei, she has … Is she well?’

  The American looked at Vithy in surprise. ‘I think so kid. Just tag along.’

  Vithy followed the American and the stretcher into the blue light of the hospital. The American called to a nurse: ‘Tad Wan, give the kid a drink and show him a cake of soap.’

  The nurse, a tired Chinese girl of twenty, steered Vithy to a plastic barrel of cold water over a plastic sink. Five minutes later the sink was awash with evil-looking black water. The nurse found him a cheese sandwich and he was trying hard to eat it slowly when the voice of a woman boomed across the hospital, in English.

  ‘Hey, who the hell’s done this?’

  ‘Must be the kid. He brung her in,’ said the American.

  Alarmed, Vithy peered into the main ward. A woman in a blue smock, almost as huge as her voice, was glaring at him from behind thick glasses. Saro was on a bench beside the woman and people were lying on mats on the earth. Vithy ducked out of sight.

  ‘Boy …!’ The big woman’s bellow was shaking the hospital.

  Vithy turned to run, but the nurse was clutching for him. What had he done? What was wrong? He shouted wildly and kicked out at the nurse. The nurse screeched, but she had his arm now and she wouldn’t let go. He hurled his body away from her and he was free and running …

  The American plucked him from the air and carried him backwards towards the huge woman, his legs thrashing the air. He was dumped on a chair.

  ‘Now,’ the huge woman raised her finger like a club, and pointed. ‘You just stay there. Right?’

  Vithy stayed where he was put.

  ‘He speaks English,’ the American said.

  Vithy froze in the chair. At that moment a black terror was sweeping over him. It was as if everything that had happened since his flight through the forest with Mang was a dream, and now he was back in the paddy again.

  ‘Oh, you do that too? Speak English?’ the huge woman said.

  Vithy looked rigidly ahead. He was going to use the stock defence Mang had taught him in the paddy. He was going to play dumb, but he knew it was far too late.

  ‘You don’t speak English?’

  Vithy did not move a muscle.

  ‘It’s a pity, because my Kampuchean is very bad and I’d like to talk.’

  They even call Cambodia Kampuchea, thought Vithy. Like the Khmer Rouge.

  The h
uge woman sighed. ‘Oh, that.’ She waved a bright little knife at Vithy, then beyond at the wall. ‘Over there is Kampuchea, where you came from. This is Thailand. We don’t punish people for what they know.’

  Vithy realised he was staring at a bottle of blood suspended over Saro and followed a red tube running from the bottle to her arm to focus on the huge woman. Funny thing, close up the woman seemed to shrink a little. She was still very big, but she was not huge any more.

  ‘I’m Dr Betty Harris,’ the woman said, now keeping her eyes on Saro’s body and her voice very low. ‘You’ve got nothing to be frightened of here.’

  Dr Harris carefully lifted the palm leaves, then the moss from Saro’s shoulder, and studied the wound. ‘I think Khao I Dang, eh, Frank?’

  ‘Sure. And this time we can do something.’ The American held Saro up a fraction as Dr Harris swabbed the wound clean. Everything calm and efficient.

  ‘You know you saved your sister’s life,’ Dr Harris said.

  Vithy frowned and again decided to leave the error alone. ‘She’s all right, perhaps,’ he said, in English.

  ‘She will be. Just a small scar. Sutures.’

  ‘I am very …’ Too late Vithy realised what he was saying.

  ‘Yes, I know. Glad.’

  And it didn’t matter at all. For the first time Vithy began to feel that he had really crossed the border.

  ‘What’s your sister’s name?’

  ‘Sorei – Saro. Saro.’ Vithy flushed.

  Dr Harris looked up at Vithy for a moment. ‘All right. And you?’

  ‘Vithy.’

  ‘All right, Vithy. We’re going to take Saro to a better hospital at Khao I Dang this afternoon and I think you’d better come along.’

  ‘Where’s Khao I Dang? Is it on the border?’

  ‘Almost on the border, but it’s not as close to the border as this. Why?’

  ‘I’ve got to find my brother.’

  ‘You were separated?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’ Dr Harris’ fingers were moving gently over Saro all the time.

  Vithy hesitated. ‘Two weeks.’ Yes, it was only that long ago.

  Dr Harris nodded. ‘That is not so bad. So many people come to the camps and look for wives and families they have not seen since the first war ended. Where did you last see your brother?’

  ‘In a forest near Phnom Penh.’

  Dr Harris frowned at Saro. ‘You’ve been together all that distance?’

  Vithy did not answer.

  ‘Frank, you might as well take him over to the café. He might be lucky.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘I’ll clean up.’

  Frank stripped off his gloves and found a spare green smock for Vithy to use as a shirt. He led Vithy from the hospital, getting some of his story while they strolled along the dirt road.

  Vithy stopped to watch several men hurling themselves about in a wild game of volleyball beside several concrete tanks of water.

  ‘You used to play?’

  ‘Not much. I was too little. But Mang was very good.’

  ‘Ah. Do you see him?’

  ‘No.’

  They skirted the Nong Samet morning market, five women with some vegetables and some shreds of meat, and passed two men repairing old bicycles under a tree. They stopped before the second biggest building in Nong Samet, a thatched hut of lashed stick walls, a low verandah and a painted sign that moved in the breeze, proudly announcing that this was the Café de la Bohème. A few men slouched against stripped poles and waited for Frank to speak.

  ‘This is – ah – Muong Vithy,’ Frank fumbled in Cambodian. ‘He’s looking for his brother.’

  A man in an open black waistcoat smiled at Vithy, showing the glint of gold in his teeth. ‘We’ll see. You leave him here.’

  Frank nodded. ‘Thank you.’ He turned to Vithy. ‘You come back to the hospital early in the afternoon. Okay? Otherwise you’ll miss your sister.’

  The man with the gold tooth beckoned Vithy into the café. Rectangular tables covered in tightly-pinned blue plastic sat against the glassless windows with hard wooden benches on either side. The floor was hard-packed and thoroughly-swept earth. There was only one decoration in the café but it sent a shiver down Vithy’s spine.

  Above the bench which separated the tables from the simple kitchen was a crude painting of Angkor Wat, the same grey stone colonnades and lotus-bud towers that marked a rich and happy time for Mum and Dad but now was nothing more than a desolate memory. He shifted his eyes from the painting and pretended it wasn’t there.

  ‘Now sit down, Vithy.’ The man with the gold tooth motioned to a bench. ‘Would you like some tea?’ A woman with laugh wrinkles around her eyes pushed through the men, carrying a large pot and a few cracked cups. ‘She is Madame Bohème,’ the man said and laughed. ‘And I am Sokhar. Now, about your brother. You do not want to find anyone else, as well?’

  ‘No.’ Vithy shook his head.

  ‘I understand,’ the man said sadly. ‘What is your brother’s name?’

  ‘Mang. Muong Mang.’ Vithy searched Sokhar’s face for recognition but found nothing but a frown.

  Sokhar looked around at the others, shrugged and took a big black book from a younger man. He slammed it open, showing yellow pages with an endless list of names, many of them crossed out or with initials written over them.

  ‘When do you think he arrived?’

  ‘Maybe a week ago.’

  Sokhar riffled through the pages almost to the end, then ran his finger quickly down the list. ‘He might not be on the list. We try to keep up, but it is very hard. People come and go all the time. No, he is not there.’

  Vithy sagged on his elbows. Suddenly he was very tired.

  ‘But I’ll put you down.’ The man scribbled. ‘How do you know he came here?’

  ‘He said he would come to the border.’

  ‘It’s a long border.’

  ‘I know.’ Vithy’s voice was weighted with lead.

  ‘Where did you come from?’

  ‘Near Phnom Penh.’

  ‘A long way.’

  Someone said: ‘He might be dead.’

  Sokhar said, ‘Shut up Khieu,’ very quickly but the damage was done.

  ‘No he isn’t!’ shouted Vithy. ‘He’s smart and he’s fast and they’d never catch him …’

  ‘Of course he’s not dead.’ Sokhar patted Vithy on the shoulder. ‘There are many camps, and he may still be coming. You were very fast.’

  Vithy relaxed a little. With the truck and the bike and the cart he had been lucky. Maybe little kids can be faster than big kids. So he wasn’t going to find Mang just like that, but imagine his face when he finally reached the border to find his little brother waiting for him …

  Sokhar stood up and studied Vithy. ‘When did you last sleep?’

  Vithy looked at him blankly. He couldn’t remember.

  Sokhar led Vithy from the Café de la Bohème without a word. The boy was pushed into a nearby hut and onto a matting bed. Someone said something to him but he was too far away. He could feel the roughness of the matting on the side of his face but that was all …

  Almost immediately Sokhar was shaking his shoulder. ‘It is three o’clock. You must leave.’

  Vithy blundered out of the hut and along the track while Sokhar told him, no, Mang wasn’t in Nong Samet, 007. He’d checked while Vithy was asleep, but he would keep on looking.

  Saro was lying in one of the vehicles, still asleep. A few nurses sat facing her. Dr Harris helped Vithy into the front, next to Frank.

  ‘The army wants us out of here before the sun gets low,’ Dr Harris said in a troubled voice.

  They drove across a huge moat which fenced 007 from the rest of Thailand, across a deserted paddy, past a shelled house and into the hills.

  Vithy thought he heard shots behind him.

  THE HOSPITAL

  Vithy awoke slowly to a gentle sun on his face, the rich tang of rice and
fish and the bright din of children chattering. He opened an eye.

  ‘Hello.’ A gentle woman smiled at him and spoke in soft Cambodian with a French lilt. She squatted easily before him and offered a steaming bowl. ‘We thought you were going to be asleep until the rainy season.’ A small boy with a shaven head laughed from the eating mat.

  Vithy sat up and winced. His legs and back did not want to move any more. And the sun was terribly high. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘am I still at the border?’

  ‘You are at Khao I Dang, in my house.’ The woman tempted him by swaying the bowl under his nose. ‘I’m Ponary.’

  He weakened and accepted the bowl hurriedly. ‘Thank you for breakfast.’

  ‘Yes, well it’s really lunch …’

  ‘Tomorrow’s lunch!’ giggled the bald little boy and the dozen children around him shrieked with laughter.

  ‘You slept for a day and a half. You needed it,’ said Ponary.

  Half a bowl, or two minutes later Vithy had cleared his mouth just enough to ask Ponary politely if all the noisy tribe around the mat were her family.

  Ponary laughed. ‘And there are five other boys out building a house. All my family. Until an uncle or a mother crosses the border and finds them.’

  ‘Oh.’ Vithy filled his mouth with rice. He could think of nothing else to say.

  ‘But you have family here, haven’t you?’

  Vithy stopped chewing and looked up. He half expected Mang to rise from that pile of children.

  ‘Your sister, Saro.’

  Vithy dropped his eyes to the bowl. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Good. You can go to the hospital and visit her this afternoon.’

  Over lunch Vithy got to know most of the children, particularly Sen, the boy with the shaven head. Sen had been in Ponary’s house for no more than a month, but he was considered an ‘old boy’. Sen was only a few months younger than Vithy, but Vithy could not shake off the idea that Sen was just a kid, a baby brother. Sen joined the other children as they laughed and joked but Vithy could only wear a weak smile like a mask. He was too old.