Chapter Forty
For three days Elliot hovered between life and death, sometimes consumed by the fire of his fever, sometimes shivering uncontrollably. In flashes of lucidity, between bouts of delirium, he was aware of a young face fluttering over his, a small feminine hand wiping his brow with a cool, damp cloth. He had the impression of being surrounded by countless tiny diamonds of light, a gently curving universe that shone with the fire of a million stars. He floated here, adrift between light and darkness, and dreamt that he heard the slap of water, the dull chug of a small motor, and, once, that he lay in the arms of a naked girl, her soft brown skin burning where it touched his.
The pain in his chest and shoulder pulsed like a heartbeat. At times it appeared to envelop him, smothering all other awareness so that nothing else existed; a relentless, endless pounding of his brain.
When, finally, his fever burned itself out, consciousness came like a waking dream. He lay on wooden boards covered with coarse rush mats, swaddled in blankets and bundles of cloth. He gazed up at the familiar diamonds of light. But even as he focused they seemed to fade. The light was dying around him, and yet the air still glowed. For some moments his sense of disorientation flooded his mind with panic. He attempted to raise himself on one elbow, but fell back with the pain that forked through his chest, while the boards beneath him rocked gently from side to side. The slap of water on wood increased his confusion with the realization that he was on a boat. It came to him then, as he gazed upwards, that he lay beneath a canopy of rush matting arched across him. Tiny chinks of fading light shone through the gaps in the woven pattern. This vessel could be no bigger than a sampan.
He tried again to pull himself up, this time gritting his teeth against the pain, and pressed his face to a slit in the matting to see the sun dipping behind dark, scattered clouds. As it set across a wide expanse of water, its liquid gold seemed to spill out towards him. He fell back on to the mat, breathless and sweating.
A ragged cloth partition at his feet was suddenly drawn aside, and in the dusk he saw the light of concern in Ny’s young eyes. ‘You hungry, Mistah Elliot?’
‘Thirsty.’ His voice creaked in his throat, like a rusty gate.
‘How you feel?’
‘Dried up. Like a raisin.’
She disappeared behind the curtain and returned with a cup of water. ‘Mamma boil it. It good.’ She helped raise his head, lifting the rim of the cup to dry, cracked lips. His mouth soaked up the water like a sponge. It caught in his throat and he choked, spilling it to cling in droplets to the thick growth on his chin.
‘You been very sick, Mistah Elliot.’
‘I guess. How long?’
‘Three day.’
‘Three days!’ He felt as though a slice of his life had been excised by a surgeon’s scalpel. What had happened in all that time? ‘Where are we?’
‘South.’
‘South where?’
‘Kampuchea. On river Mekong. We tied up till it dark.’ She gave him more water and he felt it track cold down to his stomach. The effort of raising his head exhausted him, and he let it fall back on the bundle of cloth that served as a pillow, confused, uncertain as to whether this was another delirium.
‘How?’ he asked. ‘How did we get here?’
‘Mamma,’ Ny said. ‘She bring us.’ She paused. ‘Mistah McCue, he go to shoot you, but I tell him ’bout your friend, ’bout his cancer.’
She leaned over him and dabbed his forehead lightly with a cool cloth. He rolled his head to one side and looked at the bandage on his shoulder. ‘Who did this?’
‘Me and Mistah McCue. It good. Clean dressing. You been very sick.’
The murmur of voices came from beyond the cloth partition. ‘Who’s there?’
‘Mamma, she cook rice and fish. Hau catch fish. He very smart.’
‘And Mr McCue?’
‘He there, too. You hungry?’
He nodded.
Nothing had ever tasted so good before. She fed him with chopsticks, morsels that exploded flavour on his tongue. But it was hard work eating — his jaw felt stiff and his throat swollen — and he tired quickly, lying back to drift again into the netherworld that had held him for the past three days.
He dreamed he heard the cough of an engine, the slow chug-chug of a propeller, water whispering past his ears. Then silence, a sensation of floating through space, followed by darkness and a dreamless oblivion. When next he opened his eyes he could see nothing. He heard the splash of water against the sampan, then smelled smoke — the sweet tang of tobacco. The red end of a cigarette glowed in the dark, and by its light he saw McCue’s face. He was squatted on the boards beside Elliot, smoking in silence.
‘Give me a pull at that.’
Without a word McCue leaned over to hold the cigarette to his lips. He took a deep draw and coughed violently. ‘Better?’ McCue asked.
‘Sure.’ The smoke drawn into his lungs made him feel giddy. ‘What time is it?’
‘Night. Does it matter?’
Elliot felt irritation rising in his chest. ‘Yes, it matters. Where are we?’
McCue’s voice remained calm and even. ‘We crossed the border a couple of hours back.’
Elliot frowned. ‘What border?’
‘Into Vietnam. Just like coming home, eh?’ His voice was edged with irony. ‘We set off just after sunset, then about a mile up river we cut the engine and just drifted over in the dark. Easy as pie. You can see the lights of Chau Doc from here. Ever been to Chau Doc? It’s a shitheap.’ He held the cigarette to Elliot’s lips again. Elliot took a light draw and managed this time not to choke.
‘How the hell did we get here?’
McCue shrugged, as if it had been nothing. ‘She did it. Mamma Serey. She’s quite a lady. Just sort of took over. You were as good as dead. Me, I’d given up. Didn’t see the point no more. She took the kids and her jewellery into town, bartered for food and a sampan. They came back with a cart. We got you on it, then they hid you and me under all kinds of blankets and shit and wheeled us right past the noses of the Vietnamese, down to the docks. The place was crawling with refugees, soldiers. All kindsa stuff was going on. It was chaos. Shit, no one blinked an eye at an old woman and a couple of kids wheeling a cart. We been on the river ever since. Same on the water, too. All kinda boats going up and down, and the gooks not giving a shit. They don’t know what’s happening any more than anyone else. We never even been stopped. Not once.’ He chuckled. ‘Some lady, that Mamma Serey.’
Elliot lay back, staring wide-eyed into the darkness, trying to block in McCue’s sketch of his lost three days. But his thoughts were as confused as the scenes McCue had described. He could form no picture of a Phnom Penh alive with refugees and soldiers; just empty streets and desolation. Neither could he picture the river, or the sampan in which he now lay; only the wide, empty waters of the Tonle Sap, and the small open boat in which they had so nearly perished. He felt lost in a void. And, for the first time that he could remember, he realized that he was not responsible for his own life. A huge burden had been lifted. He could embrace death with an easy conscience.
‘Why are we in Vietnam?’
McCue breathed a lungful of smoke into the darkness. ‘She reckons we can make Long Xuyen in a couple of days. I know a guy there, or did, if he’s still alive. Ethnic Chinese. Hated the Viets. I was stationed there for a couple of months. He and I played a lot of cards together, drank a lot of whisky, lost a lot of money. It’s not so far from there to Rach Gia, on the coast. I thought maybe he could help.’
Elliot laughed. The easy laugh of one who will never have to face the problem, of one suddenly free to no longer care. ‘What are you going to do, Billy? Just waltz into town, say “Hi, remember me?” Five years since the Yanks pulled out. Not many white faces around these days, I’ll bet.’