The car rumbled over potholes, the road worsening even as the landscape was improving. They were more than halfway to Skuon, skirting the river lands, the water meadows and swamp zones of the Cham, the secretive, Muslim, animal-sacrificing, river-fishing tribes of innermost Cambodia: descendants of the ancient kingdom of Champa, inhabitants of these desolate riverside settlements for centuries.
Jake knew the Cham had been almost wiped out. Yet more victims of the Khmer Rouge.
Water buffalo twitched their pink ears and stared at the passing car, truculent, inert; Cham fishermen patrolled the brown-yellow waters, gathering bamboo cages half immersed in the mud. Wooden stilt houses loomed beyond the stooping palms. Dark houses where old faces stared from the empty sockets of windows: old Cham women in strange white veils and robes.
The car jolted and swerved, abruptly, to avoid a barefoot child. She had just run out onto the road, between the cactus hedges.
“Fuck,” said Jake. “That was close.”
Tyrone said, “Lucky girl. The one thing you never get used to is the damn roads — the danger.”
Jake watched the girl disappear in the rearview mirror. She was playing with a ball, entirely unaware of how close she had come to dying.
He shuddered. His little sister hadn’t been so lucky. She was knocked to the ground, her eyes rolling white. Milky white, and staring; staring at her brother, who didn’t hold on. Who let her go to her death.
“You OK?” said Tyrone.
Jake shrugged. “Thinking about Becky.” He had told some of his story to Tyrone long ago: his guilt trips and his grief trips. He hadn’t told Tyrone as much as he’d told Chemda.
The American sighed. “Families! Jesus.” He cleared his throat, aggressively, and spat out the window. “What the fuck are families for? What do they give you but grief and guilt? What do they give anyone?”
“How about love?”
“Oh yeah. Love. Nice. And toasted sandwiches. Fuck that shit. You have to move on, Jake. The only exit is survival. Remember that’s what Duch said, at the Khmer Rouge trial? Last week? He may have been a mass-murdering cunt but he got that right. He could have been talking about the average nuclear fucking family. The only exit from your childhood is survival.”
The palm trees thinned. The river lands dried. The car took a left and a right and rattled down one of the more appalling roads in Southeast Asia, and then, at last, the haze of dust ahead showed they were approaching another dusty Cambodian town.
Skuon.
They pulled into the main square, essentially a sunburned roundabout with old buses waiting by beer shacks, and noodle stands, two hairdressing shops, and dirty palm trees. Jake and Tyrone climbed out of the car and stretched for a second, and then they were mobbed.
Cambodian ladies were running toward them. Young ladies, old ladies, fat ladies, lots of ladies were zeroing in, with tin trays balanced on their heads. And on top of the trays were pyramids of fried black tarantulas, decorated with rose petals.
“They dip them in Knorr ready-mix soup,” said Tyrone, waving away one lady. “No, aw kohn, no spider, aw kohn, not today—”
He turned and motioned to the driver: wait. Jake stared at the trays piled high with fat, ugly, greasy black spiders. The women were pointing at the spiders, smiling, begging them to buy.
“No. No thanks—” He edged away. “What is it with the tarantulas?”
“Tell you in a minute. C’mon, let’s go. Before we are forced to eat one in a bun.” Tyrone was already walking away from the car, and the women, and the trays of fat spiders, down a lazy dust-hazed street. The American elaborated as they walked.
“They claim it’s a tradition, the spider-eating. But I reckon it just goes back to the Khmer Rouge. In the late seventies everyone in Cambodia was starving — absolutely everyone. But they weren’t even allowed to eat their own rice or they’d get shot by Khmer Rouge soldiers. So I reckon someone dug up a tarantula one day and thought — hell with it, let’s roast this massive eight-legged motherfucker and eat it, and then they developed a taste, now they are a delicacy: people drive for miles to buy ’em.” He lifted a hand. “OK. You wait here? I’m gonna ask some questions. Find the house.”
Here was a collection of plastic tables outside a concrete beer bar. Jake sat down, watching his friend disappear. Tyrone spoke Khmer, after a fashion, and that meant he could do this kind of thing quicker if alone; Jake’s muted presence might unnerve people. But that also meant Jake would just have to wait. And watch. And perspire. And wait.
The sun was violently hot. Jake shifted his little chair into the shade of a red parasol. He ordered an Angkor beer. The beer arrived, it was stupidly warm. He left it undrunk, and gazed around. Two kids at an adjacent table were sipping 7 Up through straws, and staring at Jake with blank, cold expressions.
Jake looked the other way. Across the street in a small, scruffy square lot, a circle of men were sitting on their haunches, shouting and gambling, and drinking.
A cockfight.
He surreptitiously reached for his camera and took a few clandestine shots. The men were excited, calling out numbers, yelling. A flurry of dust in the middle showed where the cockerels were fighting. Jake used his telescopic lens, his sweaty hands urgently locking the gear into place.
There. He could see the roosters now, scrabbling in the dirt. One of them had pecked out the other’s eye; the defeated rooster was stooped, half blinded, bleeding and dying. A hand swept down and collected the victorious bird while the men laughed and chinked glasses and swapped wads of grubby riel banknotes. The blinded chicken was taken to the side and its neck was wrung, contemptuously. It flapped in the dust for a few moments.
“I found her house.”
It was Tyrone.
“That was quick—”
“Small town. Everyone knows her, she only lives around the corner. I’ve already spoken to her… secretary. If that’s the right word.” Tyrone exhaled. “OK, let’s get on with it. I really don’t like this town. Lot of people died here under the Rouge. A bad ambience.”
“And? The witch?”
“Her assistant said she can give us half an hour. So we need to work fast.”
The walk was as brief as promised. Two hundred meters of sandy road, past wilting stores selling Pringles, bottled water, and tarantulas, brought them to a large vulgar white house with fake Corinthian pillars. Like something particularly nasty in Miami.
Stupidly, crassly, Jake felt a slight tremor of journalistic disappointment. Somewhere inside he had hoped for something romantic and witchy, something vividly characterful to photograph, an old incense-sooted shack, cauldrons boiling with serpents, chicken blood on the walls. Not a coke dealer’s villa.
The big new wooden door was painted an insistent blue. It opened. A young woman with dark, dark eyes stared at them and conversed with Tyrone as they crossed the threshold.
The house was air-conditioned. Mercilessly air-conditioned: it was actually cold, like the owner was trying to prove something. Jake felt the blast of chilly air on his bare arms.
The girl escorted them down a hallway with kitsch paintings of Buddha and Jesus and Princess Diana, and showed them into a large room.
The spider witch of Skuon was a middle-aged woman wearing too much makeup and jewelry. She had a Chinese aspect to her eyes. She was seated on a leather sofa with her legs tucked under her, like a girl, oddly neat, even gamine. Her turquoise jumper was decorated with hearts made of sequins; around her neck, dangling from a gold rope necklace, was a glass amulet: a monastic talisman of luck. Jake reckoned she was maybe older than her face implied. An older woman who could afford a face-lift.