In the Shadow of the Banyan (13 page)

“A poem.”

“Of course it’s a poem! But what’s it
about
?”

Papa turned; his gaze shot across the rice fields to the sweeper’s hut. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ll tell you when . . . when I figure it out.”

“Promise you won’t forget?”

His brows furrowed in uncertainty, but he acquiesced. “Promise.”

I nodded, satisfied, and we continued on our way, hand in hand, arms swinging.

•  •  •

Back at the school buildings, people had begun preparing breakfast. They’d made a ring of cooking fires in the inner quadrangle, and patches of steam and smoke drifted about like the earlier haze. The smells of burnt wood, cooked rice, and grilled dried meats now permeated the air, masking the dewy scent of morning. Outside our doorway, a pot of rice porridge simmered over the fire Auntie India was stoking. “Well, good morning!” she greeted us with her musical voice, her dark complexion flushed by the warmth of the fire, her eyes radiant with the morning’s glow.
Indra’s earthly consort,
I thought. In her former life, Auntie India could’ve been that woman who wooed Indra to earth, who bore Melea and gave us the story that connected us to the divine, linked our world to the gods’. She chirped, “The whole family is looking for you!” She made everything sound like a declaration of joy. “You’d better go in!”

We went inside. “Oh, there you are!” Mama said, her voice taut with worries. She was sitting on the sleeping mat, folding the blankets and mosquito nets. I went over and handed her the lotus. She brightened and, glancing up at my father, gave him that tender look they often shared when thinking themselves completely alone. Mama inhaled the blossom’s faint fragrance. Then, as there was no vase, she broke off the stem and, turning to the drinking bowl on top of our sleeping mat, let it float in the water. Tucking her long hair behind her ear, she leaned forward and kissed my cheek. Beside her, Radana mimicked her every movement and expression, brushing her wispy curls aside and planting kisses on her own chubby palm.

“Where have you been?” Mama said. “You were gone so long.”

“I’m sorry,” Papa told her. “I guess we lost track of time.” Then, winking at me, he added, “We visited Indra’s palace.” His face betrayed no evidence of all we’d seen or heard.

To this, Big Uncle quipped, “Indra’s palace! And you chose to return to earth? Be among us mere mortals?” He stood by the doorway leading
to the adjacent room, legs apart and barechested, a twin hanging off each arm, alternately lifting them up and down like weights while the boys gurgled with glee. “How was it up there?” he said between intakes of breath. “Heavenly?”

“Just like here,” I replied, and turned to Papa, expecting him to smile at my cleverness, my ready witticism. Instead, his eyes clouded over. I didn’t understand.

Mama must’ve understood, for she gave him an empathetic look and, changing the subject, merrily suggested that he and Big Uncle take us children to wash before we all sat down for breakfast. At this, Tata murmured gravely from her corner of the room, “Could you bring me back some water to wash? I can’t go out there. I just can’t do this anymore . . .”

She seemed stupefied by all the change, and the night’s sleep hadn’t lessened her shock. Looking at her, it was hard to believe she was the same strong-willed aunt who in her youth had defied all societal expectations, not to mention Grandmother Queen, by refusing to marry, who was forever fond of reminding me that a girl didn’t need a man, that she could do anything herself. Now she couldn’t will herself to move even an inch from her spot.

Big Uncle put the twins down and said, “All right, boys, who would like to balance a bamboo yoke on his shoulders?” The twins jumped up and down excitedly, echoing each other, “Me me me!” Big Uncle clapped his hands and threatened, “Settle down or I won’t use you.”

The twins stood completely still. This drew a smile from everyone, because no matter how many times Big Uncle made this threat, it always worked with the boys, as if to have their father
use
them was life’s greatest privilege. Even Tata couldn’t help herself. “Thank you,” she said to Big Uncle, a shadow of a smile crossing her lips, and to the rest of us, “I’ll pull myself together soon enough.”

“Let’s go!” Big Uncle said, grabbing a checkered
kroma
and a shirt and throwing them over his muscular shoulders. “We have work to do—get ourselves clean and bring water back for Tata!” He strode through the doorway, the twins scrambling after him.

Leave it to Big Uncle to turn the smallest task into a game and
simultaneously imbue it with a sense of purpose and importance. Papa and I grabbed a change of clothes and dashed to catch up with them. From the doorway Auntie India called out in her singsong voice for us to bring back some more lotus blossoms. “As an offering to the Buddha! And be careful with the boys, Arun; don’t let them swim out too far!” Big Uncle turned and reassured his wife with an exaggerated bow of servitude, mouthing, “
Oui, ma princesse.
” But to me—as I skipped up to him—he chortled, “We’ll
use
them as bait for the crocodiles!” The twins exclaimed in unison, “Oh Papa, you don’t mean that!” Big Uncle snorted, a stallion provoking his colts to action, nuzzling them forward with his nose. They bounced toward the water.

•  •  •

If one looked from the temple, it appeared the pond spilled into the marsh, but a long stretch of dike separated the two, then wound its way about the verdant landscape and diverged into innumerable branches among the rice paddies. As was his habit when we arrived at someplace new, Papa oriented me to the four directions. The sun would rise and set in a slightly different place, he said as we walked, depending on the time of year. In the east, past the marsh, the sun had risen above the forests and was now arcing westward at an almost imperceptible speed. We made our way along the northern edge of the pond toward the dike, Big Uncle leading with long, carefree strides; followed by the twins, one behind the other, shouldering a bamboo yoke and a pair of buckets between them; then me, a plastic bowl in one hand and a stick I’d found along the way in the other; and Papa in the back, arms around another bucket, thumbing it gently like a drum. To the south, the town of Rolork Meas lay in a blaze of morning light, golden and serene—a lovely patchwork of traditional wooden houses and fruit orchards. Papa promised we would go exploring later, maybe take some city items like a lighter and a bar of soap to trade with the townsfolk for rice and eggs. The Revolutionary soldiers had said we could, provided that we not try to run away but return to the temple as expected. Now that we’d settled in I didn’t see any reason to run away and seek shelter elsewhere. We were comfortable here. We couldn’t have hoped, I was certain, for a safer haven.

We’d reached a part of the dike that separated the marsh and the pond. Big Uncle stopped and took the bamboo yoke and the two buckets from the twins. Families gathered along the grassy embankment to wash and chat, hemmed on one side by water hyacinth and on the other by lotuses. Nearby two women were washing their children. “How long do you think we’ll be here?” one asked, scrubbing the back of her child’s ear with the edge of her sarong, and another answered, “My husband went into town last night and the locals told him they’d been ordered to prepare their houses for the ‘new people.’” The first woman seemed puzzled: “Who did they mean?” The second replied, “Us, no doubt. They’re going to settle us here. For a while, it seems.” The first admitted, “The town’s nice, I suppose. We could end up someplace much worse.”

Papa and Big Uncle looked at each other but said nothing. Big Uncle, the checkered
kroma
around his waist for modesty, slipped his pants off and placed them atop the buckets and bamboo yoke. He stepped into the water, pulling a naked twin on either side of him, like a tugboat with a pair of buoys. Also in a
kroma,
Papa followed them, taking the bucket he’d brought along, pushing away stringy plants as he went. When he got to a depth where the water was clear, he dipped the bucket in and carried it back for me.

“Sure you don’t want to come in?” he asked, setting the bucket down on the dike. “I could carry you.”

I shook my head, slipping off my shirt and leaving only my elastic-waist sarong on for washing. I didn’t know how to swim, and the twins would laugh if they saw me being carried like a baby.

Papa went back in, submerging himself like a crocodile. Big Uncle swam over to him. The two men stood talking, splashing water on their torsos, while the twins doggy-paddled around them. All the while Big Uncle’s expression grew more troubled, and once or twice his gaze shot in the direction of the monks’ sleeping quarters. I couldn’t hear them from this distance, but I guessed that Papa was recounting what the sweeper had told us, what we’d seen at the back of the temple. With the plastic bowl, I scooped water from the bucket and poured it over my head, pausing now and then to study the two men. The contrast
between Papa’s calm solemnity and Big Uncle’s agitated reaction began to disturb me. They went on talking for a while in this manner. Then Papa patted Big Uncle on the shoulder, as if to comfort him. Big Uncle nodded, his gaze now turned to some figures in black pacing the distant rice fields. I couldn’t tell whether they were Revolutionary soldiers or farmers, if what they had slung across their shoulders were bamboo yokes or guns.

“Look!” suddenly Sotanavong yelled out. “A turtle, a turtle!” Satiyavong screeched, “Where, where? Oh, I see it! There!” They pointed to the spot directly in front of them. Slick as an eel, Big Uncle dove for it, and at the very same moment Papa slapped the surface of the water with his hand. In the blink of an eye, he snatched the creature by its shell, held it up above his head like a prize he’d just won, and spun it around for all to see. People around us clapped and cheered, and one man piped from among the water lilies, “We can have turtle soup!” Papa laughed, sank heavily into the water, like a drowned man, and then reappeared a few seconds later, the turtle gone from his grasp. Everyone groaned with disappointment. Big Uncle roared, and the twins chorused, “Do it again, do it again!” as if it was some sort of magic trick my father could repeat on demand. I shook my head, smiling. Papa shrugged, palms open in innocence, as if to say the turtle had simply escaped on its own from his grip. But, of course, he’d let it go. There would be no turtle soup.

We finished bathing and changed into clean clothes. Big Uncle hooked the full buckets to the bamboo yoke, one at each end, and hoisted the yoke onto his shoulders. The twins protested, speaking in turns. “But Papa, you promised! You said you’d use us!” Big Uncle plopped a wet
kroma
on their heads. “Here, you little tadpoles, you can carry—”

Before he could finish, a loud rumble came from the road. We whipped around to look. Amidst a blooming cloud of dust emerged the silhouette of a camion similar to the one that had brought us here the day before. It roared past the stupa, then reversed clumsily back to where the entrance was.
Oh no,
I thought with dread,
we’ll have to leave again
. Everyone rushed back to the temple.

•  •  •

As it turned out, the camion had brought another load of passengers. Two more followed in immediate succession. More than a hundred people, it seemed, tumbled out from under the blue tarpaulin covers into the morning light, looking more bedraggled and rattled than we had when we arrived. As they gathered on the temple grounds, it was clear from their conversations that they had come straight from Phnom Penh and, having been driven through the night, were sleep deprived and disoriented and had no idea how far they’d traveled. One elderly man fell prostrate, forehead touching the bare ground, weeping loudly to the Walking Buddha statue. I couldn’t tell if he was overjoyed to have at last arrived somewhere or burdened by sorrow for having traveled such a long distance to nowhere. A young woman quickly helped him up, murmuring, “Come, Father, come,” as if she were the parent trying to comfort a child. “We’re here now.” She looked numbed by fatigue and shock. She turned toward the group of Revolutionary soldiers accompanying them. One met her gaze and quickly looked the other way, pretending he hadn’t witnessed her distress or her father’s. The rest of the soldiers—about eight or nine of them—were busy collecting their guns and ammunition. They seemed to be more stern than the ones who had traveled with us. Two or three soldiers appeared to have just joined this new group, and it was clear they had come from the town because they seemed rested and their clothes were clean and neat. They gestured to the school buildings and ordered us to help the newcomers. “Show them the way,” one shouted, hands cupped around his mouth in place of a bullhorn. He appeared to be the leader of the pack and spoke with confidence. “More will join you! You must make room! The sooner you settle in the better!”

More people are coming?
I didn’t know whether to feel excited or worried. Another camion snorted into view. It was smaller than its predecessors but was packed so full that some of the passengers were hanging off the sides. Seeing this, the lead soldier tried to disperse the throng lingering at the entrance. “GO!” His voice grew louder above the rising murmur of the crowds. “THIS IS ONLY TEMPORARY! THE ORGANIZATION WILL DECIDE LATER!”

A frightful feeling came over me. What if these trucks were also here to take us away—out with the old and in with the new?

I had to find Papa and alert him. I found him by the front steps of the prayer hall talking with a young couple. I hurried over, and he, noticing me beside him, said excitedly, “Raami, this is a former student of mine and his family.” He gestured to the couple, the husband balancing a heavy valise on either side of him, the wife cradling a small baby in her arms, a
kroma
draped over her head and shoulders to protect the little one from the elements. Papa noticed my nervousness, took my hand and squeezed it, and in that instant I felt my anxiety begin to ebb. “Mr. Virak took several poetry classes with me when he was a university student,” Papa explained happily—to me as much as to the young wife—as if this was just another serendipitous meeting. “He was the only engineering student interested in literature.”