Idling Song for an Approaching Storm

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78227-102-4
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 326 Seiten

In the hot, rainy summer of 1955, Cambodia is in upheaval. The first democratic elections, just weeks away, will determine not only the future of a country, but the happiness of three people.Sar is a quiet, serious schoolteacher, officially campaigning for the opposition, who is secretly working for an armed Communist takeover. Many years later, he will become known to the world as Pol Pot.Somaly - young, fragile, beautiful - refuses to be tied down. She is the woman Sar loves, the woman for whom he is willing to sacrifice his most dearly held beliefs.And Sary is the ruthless deputy prime minister - determined to keep the opposition from power by any means, and to make Somaly his lover.Amidst the poverty and the cocktail parties, the silk dresses, the divided loyalties and betrayals, a love triangle unfolds which will decide the fate of a nation.

Peter Fröberg Idling, born in 1972, is a writer and journalist. His first book, Pol Pot's Smile (2006) was a critically acclaimed work of literary nonfiction published in eight languages. He trained as a lawyer, and was working as legal advisor to an aid organization in Cambodia when the idea for his first book came about. His long anticipated first novel is also set in Cambodia, but like the debut, blurs fact and fiction in order to tell a truly remarkable story.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Idling, Peter Fröberg

Weitere Mitwirkende

Graves, Peter

Leseproben

II. SARY

WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

FRIDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 1955

And look, there he comes, the steps flit past beneath his Italian shoes, his manicured hand rises in a quick greeting, long strides, a half-smoked cigarette left lying on the marble floor. (The echo of heels.) And he moves on. In and out of rooms, up and down staircases, a signature here, a couple of comments there, before he sinks nonchalantly into an armchair while the permanent secretary stands at attention behind the desk.

And up. And on.

SATURDAY, 3 SEPTEMBER 1955

He puts the document with the others he has signed. A hand movement not unlike that of a Catholic priest. Unlike the sign of the cross, however, which dissolves into the air, his movement leaves An unbroken ink line. Not wrapping around itself in ellipses and bows as is usually the case. No, no, no.

The mark of power. His name.

Seven small hard clear letters (now drying on the paper).

Where is he? In his office. What time is it? He does not know, but darkness fell hours (several) ago.

The day’s newspapers are lying scattered on the floor. (7,000 DEAD IN ALGERIA HARD BATTLES IN GAZA THE OUTLOOK FOR A POLITICAL SOLUTION IN MOROCCO WORSENS THE MAU MAU REBELLION IS WANING STATE OF EMERGENCY IN ARGENTINA, etc., etc.)

The next document. With an accompanying map. He turns it the right way up, bends forward to look at the various districts. They have been drawn in such rudimentary detail that it is little more than a sketch. It depicts the area of the forthcoming EXPOSITION INTERNATIONALE DE PNOMH-PENH 1955. That is the southern part of the Troisième Quartier. Or of the city. (The division is not quite that categorical but, on the whole, the ambitions of have been realized. That is, one part of the city dominated by the whites (Power), one by the Chinese (Capital) and one by the Vietnamese (Bureaucracy). Many people (Sary, for instance) feel that the majority population of the country has been . Disadvantaged, as in many other respects.)

Sary runs his finger along the thick black line that marks the enclosure around the exposition. On the north-western side of Wat Phnomh he finds what he is looking for: six ovals marked with the figure 8 (defined in the column alongside as “zoo”).

He thinks: so our nation is supposed to regain its proper place in the world with the help of a zoo. A bloody zoo.

He thinks (it’s late, his concentration is not what it should be, the pills have worn off) of another exhibition, at another time, in another country. To be more specific: the carnival in Graneville in Normandy in 1949 (the year before he came home from France). A long pier running out to sea. White-painted wood, stained by standing where wind and water meet. Seasons which—unlike here—came and went. Pennants fluttering colourfully in the wind and people walking around in their Sunday best. Their eyes lingered on the foreign faces—his and his friends’. But he had been smartly dressed (it was just after his annual stipend had been paid). And for the war-marked participants at that festival, money had been almost as important as origin.

(That he had in the land of his colonial masters: there, but not here in his own colonized homeland, he could sit anywhere he wanted in the bus.)

He varies the scene. : his friends Bith and Van. : Somaly (dressed in a close-fitting red—no, cream—dress. Parasol in the same shade.) He imagines them walking together on the of the pier. The whites stare at them open-mouthed. They stroll (slowly) out towards the strip of the horizon. She has placed her gloved hand on his arm. (In his mind he has veiled the sky with thin white cloud.) Her voice through the wind, something that makes him smile (something like: He: “Why won’t you take the diamond ring?” She: “Don’t want it.” He: “But it’s a symbol of my love and you know that diamonds are forever.” She: “But it’s not me.” He: “What is the right thing for someone like you, then?” She: “I don’t know—cut flowers perhaps.”). His eyes never leave her face. And there is something he notices in particular: even her ears are perfectly formed.

His eyes focus again on the map he is holding. Lines, figures, unbuilt structures fall into shape again.

He raises his eyes and sees his own reflection mirrored in the windowpanes: a bespectacled and slightly distorted oval, ghostlike, lit diagonally from below (his papers are reflecting the light from the table lamp). White shirt, collar unbuttoned. His thick unruly hair is partially swallowed by the darkness.

The air conditioning is humming softly over in the corner.

He thinks: the future is here, not there.

The future—what can be said about it? A great deal apparently, since no one seems to do anything but discuss it. (After having been fixated on the past—the golden age, injustices and so on—the nation is now suddenly ready to turn and face .) And Sary is more than ready, he can be heard arguing that the country has , a that stirs the imagination (particularly of people from the West), excellent preconditions for tourism. In the vanguard of the young architects of the country, he can envisage a reallocation of national resources as simple as it is radical. Instead of allowing the country’s riches to be transferred to the vaults of foreign banks, they will be used to sweep away the hovels and palm-leaf roofs out in the rural districts (images he is fond of using in his many electoral speeches). Rubber, pepper and rice will pay for new roads to new cities. (Details of all this are to be found in a bulging folder in the archives of the Minister of the Interior Leng.)

Sary, his eyes still on his own reflection, notes that one advantage of earlier stagnation is that there is less outdated garbage to be incinerated. A hundred lost years will be made up in a decade. I’ll be damned if this isn’t the new America. . The Mekong will become a glittering mirror for skyscrapers and, he thinks, it will be from the sixty-second floor that I shall view the world—a world that will look with respect and astonishment and envy at what has been achieved.

This is the vision he has of her, at his side, electric lights burning below. (Her attire is the same, minus the parasol.)

. Irritated, he closes the folder with the sketch map. Prints REJECTED on the cover and puts it back among the others.

Then he takes it back. Looks again at the faint lines of the exposition pavilions drawn over parks and pavements. He moves it over to the pile of documents for

He takes the next folder in (dis)order. It contains a hundred or so sheets listing the customs revenues for the first half-year. He takes out the front flyleaf. Notes: that fatso Dara has written his name in cramped handwriting (wrapping around itself in ellipses and bows) below the heading, in spite of the fact that all the work was most probably done by some underling. (He rings for his adjutant: Lights another cigarette.) Leans back in his armchair, skims quickly/impatiently through the columns of typed figures.

SUNDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER 1955

He shuts his eyes, just for a moment. Opens them. Gets up. Walks briskly across the boards of the platform, gives the microphone a light tap. Hears the tap echo out over the faces turned towards him.

The sky is blue, the sun is scorching. Steam from the recent rain is rising from the foliage.

In a loud and clear voice he says: My dear fellow-countrymen!

He says: Kinsmen of our revered forefathers who built Angkor!

He says with a smile: Dear residents of Kompong Speu.

Then with a serious expression, an expression almost of concern, he continues.

The loudspeakers are good.

() Sam Sary is sitting in the back of his comfortable car (a modern car without a sliding window between the driver and the passengers). As usual, Phirun is his driver—a taciturn man. (Phirun is the same age as his boss as well as being the first cousin once removed of one of his wife Em’s maternal aunts, and he has, in the usual order of these things, not been given the job on merit but in accordance with the , which has provided the real structure of this kingdom since time immemorial. It is a system that they all agree, rather touchingly, must be abolished if there is to be any chance of introducing genuine democracy. But everyone—apart from a handful of —thinks it is up to the others to start the process of divesting themselves of the privileges they have acquired as a result of the well-oiled mechanisms of nepotism.)

The car brakes gently and stops. Sary steps out of the stuffy vehicle into the throbbing heat and...