Friday, January 9

Vignette #2: The Tenor

He is sitting across from me at the corner booth, smiling with a precocious and yet still innocent arrogance that quickly reveals itself to be entirely feigned. The man could easily pass for 18, and though I guess him to be about 28, is actually a decade older 38. He is introduced to me as Cambodia’s only operatic tenor, something I initially disbelieve. Flashing his deceptively boyish grin, he hands over a business card—his name is written elegantly in Khmer and English calligraphy, and then below in block print, plainly says “TENOR.” I am not fully convinced. He pours us each a Jaeger bomb, a rather foul concoction, and in one swift motion downs the drink and plunks the tumbler back on the table, clinking the shot glass inside. I follow. Wiping a drop from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, he tells me of his eight years of training in Russia and his performances of Puccini and Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff in Rome and Moscow and even Pyongyang. He is fluent in Russian and English, and yet sitting in a sleeveless T-shirt, flaunting his compact, sinewy biceps, he appears to me a cocksure young boxer. He pours two more shots before I can refuse. The conversation begins to flow as freely as the drinks, and we move on to politics and women and Pol Pot. The name. It slams into me as hard as the last shot hit my throat. Again, I have forgotten his age. He is not an innocent kid, his eyes have witnessed terrors I can’t imagine even in nightmares. He was five when Phnom Penh was overtaken and evacuated. Bluntly, he tells me about surviving the Khmer Rouge, the separation from his parents, and then much too candidly, about the loss of his brothers and sisters, mentioning them like marbles lost in a childhood game. I am shaken, and do not respond. He reaches for the bottle again, though this time I politely decline, and cover the glass with my hand. He drinks again, peering at me with painless eyes, eyes that reveal nothing at all. In two days, I will hear him sing, and the encounter will make even less sense.

3 comments:

goooooood girl said...
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Anonymous said...

This is the kind of writing you were meant to do. Both vignettes left me looking forward to studying the accompanying photo or portrait, then realizing I had already experienced a perception more complete. Thank you and don't stop!

Unknown said...

good stuff, keep it up. you should check out matadortravel.com. you can get paid to write.