Cambodia Calling by Richard Heinzl

Author:Richard Heinzl [Heinzl, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443429702
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

One day we heard thunderclaps on all sides but we couldn’t see any clouds. In fact, we couldn’t tell if they were thunderclaps or landmines; there was just a fuzzy horizon three hundred and sixty degrees around us and the noise seemed to be coming from everywhere. I tell Chuon to keep a lookout for rainbows and I am trying to explain how you get rainbows when the sun and rain are out together. He finally gets it.

That afternoon a KPLNF commander arrived in town. He and his aides-de-camp are meeting with counterparts from the Hun Sen Army, the government’s army. We’d never seen this before. It is some kind of a ceasefire and the two sides are meeting only a few doors from the MSF Blue House at the Lotus, the town’s only restaurant. I am at a table when they arrive, off in the corner minding my own business reading Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night. I was at the point where Alasander had lost his job as a médecin and was now wandering aimlessly around the United States. Usually the military people make eye contact and say something cordial. Other times they ask insipid questions and you can’t get them to leave you alone. “Are you truly a bar rang?” they ask. “Is that really a book you are reading?” But not today. There is military business at hand and I am not part of the equation.

There are half a dozen vehicles outside the restaurant and many soldiers. The Hun Sen commander comes out from the dark inside of an armored troop carrier squinting at the day. He is wearing impeccable army greens and has a briefcase. His aide carries a mobile radio on his back and occasionally answers messages, consulting his superior and making demands of the soldiers at the front.

The KPLNF soldier is a colonel. He wears a dirty uniform and has only a stump for a right arm. He is using the stump to great effect, waving it around to make his point. He has a Bowie knife in a sheath at his side, and a black-brown pistol, probably a Chinese Hanyang. Scary, brainwashed soldier from the front. The colonel has been out in the forests so long he has gone mad. Here he is deep inside his enemy’s territory, drinking in a restaurant with a commander he has been trying to kill. He makes a speech holding the brandy and cream soda glass straight out while his right stump makes circles in the air like a mad conductor. Down goes the brandy.

Now it’s the Hun Sen Army commander’s turn. More nice words. He holds the drink with two hands in the subservient way, looking up at the colonel, bent over like he is sacrificing himself. They are all having dinner together and the brandy and cream soda is flowing. The matron of the Lotus, tiny Dee Ling with the squawking voice, is running in and out of the kitchen hoping she gets it all right.

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