Cambodge: A Mystical Vision of Shangri-la

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Looking for Duras weaves three strands of memoir into one: my lifelong infatuation with the French writer Marguerite Duras, a journey through Vietnam and Cambodia tracing her footsteps, and a musing on mothers and melancholy. (Read prev chap here or browse all chapters here.

Before I left on this trip I had the chance to watch the movie Un Barrage Contre Le Pacifique based on MD’s novel The Sea Wall. It was made by the Cambodian director Rithy Panh, who said he kept Duras’ novel under his pillow for many years before finding the way to make it into a film. Rithy lost his entire family under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and was a teenager when he escaped to a refugee camp in Thailand. Later he ended up in Paris where he studied film and went on to make a number of award-winning documentaries. Un Barrage came out in 2008 and tells the story of MD’s mother battling the rising sea tides on the plot of land in Cambodia between the Elephant Ranges and the Pacific Ocean.  French actress Isabelle Huppert plays the mother and while her slim beauty bears little likeness to the overburdened countenance of Marie Donnadieu, she brings a tough and stubborn stoicism to the role.  In Indochine Duras was praised for giving the exploited underclass of Indochinese labourers a voice and Pahn said he felt a connection with her non-judgemental eye which he described as, ‘an almost “inner” outlook about my country and people.’ *

        I also watched another telling of The Sea Wall called This Angry Age. * Released in1957, it was directed by René Clément and produced by Dino de Laurentis, starring Silvana Mangano and Anthony Perkins, who was offered the role when James Dean wasn’t available. Its hyper-dramatic scenes, filmed in 1950s Thailand, feature opening  aerial shots that sweep across a Siamese landscape of temples, stupas, and rivers, accompanied by a wild upbeat big band music score. The film did well in France but MD didn’t like it. She was never happy with filmic renditions of her books by other directors.  By all accounts she didn’t ever watch the film version of The Lover although the director Jean-Jacques Annaud claimed that once when he bumped into her in a restaurant, she told him privately that she had seen his film and thought it was wonderful. *

        I’m glad to have seen these movies before my trip and while there is a danger in watching the film versions of books you have loved, for me MD’s written words remain the strongest experience.  Watching MD’s films as well, has also added richness to the kaleidoscope of her art and given me reference points for the journey. In fact the border post we arrive at next wouldn’t look at all out of place in the Di Laurentis movie.

The Cambodian official stamps our passports with a rapid-fire thudding that sounds out across a sleepy garden of coconut palms and fruit trees. Only several hundred metres upriver from the Vietnamese border, it feels more like the palace grounds of a Siamese prince than an immigration office — neat lawns, a badminton court and some elaborate red and gold carved spirit houses glittering in the sunlight. A spirit house, the NZ couple tell me, is a tiny shrine in the shape of a miniature temple that sits on a pole at chest or waist height, outside a house or building, where offerings are left to appease the spirits of that place. The one I am looking at is as large as a kid’s cubby with steps leading from the ground into its entrance, a perfect size for a toddler to crawl into. I’d rather go exploring than stand in the line as it inches forward but when it’s my turn, the small uniformed official sitting behind a window stamps my passport exactly thirteen times, his arm a blur between the inkpad and the page. There is no time to congratulate him on his dexterity and he is the first immigration official I have encountered wearing a facemask to protect him from the swine flu epidemic that was predicted before I left. Our Cambodian guide on the other hand is taking the scare semi-seriously. A pale green surgical mask hanging off his ears and dangling around his chin gives him the look of an amateur surgeon just out of theatre. Mr Thom is not of the same suave guide school as Mr Tip and Mr Thao. Middle-aged, with a bung eye and a wispy moustache, he speaks English with a stutter that makes him hard to understand but somehow we all do.

        When everyone in our group is processed, he rounds us up and leads us back through the garden. Down the gangplank our flat-bottomed barge boat awaits. It looks more like the slow boat, not the fast boat everyone except me seems to have signed up for. We climb on board, predictably taking the same seats as before.

            Our new boat suits the tempo of the countryside we pass, and there’s not a factory or river craft in sight as we hug the left bank so close we can almost peer in the open windows of occasional clusters of bamboo stilt houses. Tall cones of hay stand nearby, white cows munch in gardens of corn, banana trees give shade to kids playing on the shore, men are waist deep in the river washing bullocks, women bathe young children, boys check fish traps and a young bare-chested fisherman with a net, grinning, hand on hip, strikes a pose for us.

        Around a bend, tucked behind a vast bed of reeds, the distant roof of a golden temple glitters in the midday sun. As we drift closer I can see an ornate gateway with stairs leading directly into the river. It feels as if at any moment a royal barge will dock and a procession of orange-robed monks and priests will disembark. It is a heavenly vision, like nothing I have ever seen before, with layered gables and artful finials snaking up into the sky.  So tall and imposing and seemingly out in the middle of nowhere, its shimmering presence hovers like a mystical vision of Shangri-la.

        Such vistas must have made a profound impression on the early colonists. After the French began their forays into regions of southern Vietnam (as early as 1863), explorers, botanists and scientists began publishing their travelogues detailing their journeys into the wilder and lesser-known regions of Cambodge. As a result a new sub-genre of French literature known as La Littérature Coloniale was born.

        Pierre Loti, a French naval officer and orientalist travelled the world writing novels and essays about the places he visited, including a trip to Cambodia’s Angkor Wat. His Un Pèlerin d’Angkor (Pilgrimage to Angkor) has an account of a reception given for him at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. Other travellers and civil servants wrote murder mysteries, high octane adventures, romance, tales of intrigue set within a fictional Cambodian Royal Court. Just like MD’s The Lover, these fictionalised accounts of the authors’ experiences were usually taken as the truth and helped lure more French citizens to colonial life.* While the reality they found there may not have matched their expectations, the call of the colonies was strong and for some, like MDs parents, the commitment to remain amidst all the hardships, was even stronger.

        Strangely enough MD did her first writing for the Colonial Office in Paris, where in June 1938 after graduating with a degree in political science, she took a job in the Office of Information and Documentation. *  By September MD had been promoted to publicising French bananas and tea, before being commissioned to co-write a book on the virtues of the colonial empire with her superior Philippe Roques.

        L’Empire Français was published by Gallimard in April 1940 with little impact. Most of the copies were purchased by the same colonial department who had commissioned it. Paternalistic and overtly racist, the book was an exercise in propaganda designed to show colonialism in a good light, especially in the sombre atmosphere of pre-war Europe. By June 1940 the Germans had occupied Paris and along with millions of other Parisians, MD fled south. On her return she resigned from her job at the Colonial Office. In retrospect she was not at all proud of her work on L’Empire Français and promptly obliterated it from her curriculum vitae, describing it as a youthful mistake. The one positive in the exercise was that she now had standing with a publisher. In 1943 after taking a chance on her first novel, Les Impudents, Gallimard would go on to become MD’s main publisher.

        It’s mid-afternoon and Mr Thom tells us we are getting close to Phnom Penh. I am imagining our arrival at the main wharf in the centre of town, but suddenly our boat veers full left and lines up parallel to the riverbank. Dodgy Tours is back again! Someone on land throws us a plank and Mr Thom instructs us to pick up our bags and disembark. Where to, we wonder?  The plank is thin and bouncy, so it must be a very funny sight to watch our ungainly bunch trying to wheel their luggage on a virtual tight rope. A group of workers on a barge next to us confirms it. They laugh, yell and have a grand old giggle at our expense. The plank ends on the reedy bank and we follow Mr Thom into someone’s backyard — along the side of their substantial concrete house past four or five large rain jars filled to the brim with rainwater. Our procession continues through a middle courtyard where the family sit having tea, and out into the street to our waiting bus.  Once we are all seated and waiting to go, one of the group asks our guide the pressing question.

       ‘Was that slow boat or the fast boat?’

        Mr Thom feigns innocence and answers,  ‘Fast boat, of course’.

       ‘So why don’t we arrive in Phnom Penh? The brochure says — fast boat to arrive in Phnom Penh!’

        Mr Thom waves his arms about and insists: ‘Oh no, no, no, theese the way we go, we go this way, always like this, always boat-bus to Phnom Penh, see it’s very nice trip, see the house and farm and this is Cambodia, no, no, no, Cambodia people very friendly, no reep off, no, no, no.’

        He walks down the aisle of the bus handing out leaflets and launching into a new spiel.

        ‘So ladies and meesters please when you go to Phnom Penh and you want find pa-lace to stay, some one pa-lace have no hot water, some one pa-lace have no air con, some one pa-lace not so nice, so you can stay my guesthouse, very nice, hot water, all mod con and not so expenseeve.  You see in picture, you can decide you like, you not like, which one you like go, but I recommend my one, best one, thank you, merci, dunka shane and now I will say thank you in 50 languages.’

And he does. Our complaints dissolve into the muggy air as we give him a generous round of applause. Sad to say our dodgy tour is nearly over although we know our dodgy tour stories will live on forever.

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*Screen Anarchy web article, Sept 25, 2008, TIFF08 Un Barrage Contre Le Pacifique (The Sea Wall) Interview with Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh. https://screenanarchy.com/2008/09/tiff08-un-barrage-contre-le-pacifique-the-sea-wallinterview-with-rithy-panh.html

* This Angry Age, 1957, film by René Clément, with Anthony Perkins and Sylvia Mangano. Filmed in Thailand.

* Adler, p 382

* Vietnam and the Colonial Condition of French Literature, Leslie Barnes. University of Nebraska Press, 2014.

* Adler, p 84.