Free Cambodian Book of the Dead by Tom Vater Page B

the squawk of a chicken, the silence amongst the buildings was complete. Lizards slid silently across hot stones. If not for these occasional signs of life, Maier thought, Kep might have been the perfect town to encounter a ghost. For the Khmer, ghosts were as real and commonplace as the monsoonal rains. And down here, in the blinding humidity of an inebriated morning, it was easy to empathise with their superstitions.
    The crab market, a long row of wooden sheds, which lingered under palm trees in front of a ruined colonial rest house, appeared abandoned. Young salesgirls dozed in their hammocks, dogs scratched themselves on the broken tarmac and the surf slashed hesitantly across the narrow, dirty beach. A few hysterical seagulls circled above heaps of rubbish by the shacks. Maier bought a bottle of water and sat in the shadow of a tall coconut palm. His mind replayed the Frenchman’s drunken speech. What had happened to Müller-Overbeck?
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    The woman appeared silently, like a cat. Maier’s eyes had fallen shut for just a second. Now they were open and the detective held his breath.
    The famous, impenetrable smile of the Cambodians, the sourir Khmer , a phrase the French had coined a hundred years earlier, was shining down on him like a floodlight at the Millerntor-Stadion, and flushed over him like a hot, lazy wave. She was the most beautiful woman Maier had ever seen. Not quite perfect, in fact, not perfect at all. But breathtakingly, stunningly beautiful.
    â€œHello, Maier.”
    The detective was lost for words. That didn’t happen very often. The woman was well-informed.
    â€œMy name is Kaley.”
    She stood in front of him, stock-still, tall for a Khmer, wearing a colourful sarong with flower patterns and a black blouse. Her hair fell straight down to her hips, like a waterfall of black pearly drops cascading in the midday sunshine that just touched her face, fragmented by palm leaves overhead. She studied him.
    Maier recalled old Cambodian ghost stories. Perhaps Kaley was a vision. Had someone slipped something into his vodka? The detective swore never to drink or smoke in the mornings again. Eastern promises.
    Kaley was barefoot. Silver rings curled around her toes, the toenails painted in a garish red. Her hips were broad, perhaps she was a mother. The black blouse was buttoned up, her prominent breasts vibrated slightly underneath the worn cloth. Her neck was delicate and thin, fragile even. Maier guessed she was between thirty and forty. But he found it hard to guess. Perhaps she was two thousand years old. Maier pulled himself up and looked into her face with care. Through the pitch-black eyes of this woman, you could see all the way into the heart of the world. Or at least into the heart of this unhappy country. A risky business.
    She put her hands together in the traditional greeting and slowly, ever so slowly, and with the utmost elegance, sat down, two metres away under the next palm tree, and stared at him. Directly, openly: vulnerable, invincible. Maier felt his balls contract. Some men would kill for a woman like this one.
    â€œI am looking for my sister, Maier. Can you help me?”
    Her English was pretty good. But Maier could hardly focus on what she said. He was completely captivated by what she looked like. A long red scar crossed her right cheek, which gave her a crude and mystical aura. A broad white tuft of hair cut across her forehead and across her face like a knife, parallel to the mark on her skin. Her extraordinary physical uniqueness reinforced his first impression: he was facing a formidable, exceptional being.
    Maier had been around long enough to evolve from atheist to agnostic. The Khmer lived in a different world to the barang , a world in which ghosts were as real as a cup of tea. This enabled curious visitors to open doors in their heads through which they could peer into this other world, which was subject to different laws. Maier enjoyed looking. His ten