In the Shadow of the Banyan (23 page)

But I did not think them ugly. To me, they looked like old trees that walked and talked, their rustling, noisy presence a refuge, a kind of sheltering from the aloneness that had trailed and shadowed us all day.

At the sound of wheels turning, our eyes went to the soldier still perched on the cart. The husband finally spoke, at last coming out of his silence: “The rain will come.” He looked up at the sky, and then at our driver. “Maybe you should wait until it passes.”

“Yes, stay—you can eat with us!” the wife offered, as if finishing his thought.

The soldier took off his cap, acknowledging the invitation, but his hands lifting the reins told us he would not stay. He turned to me and, noticing the bamboo branch in my hand, gave me a hint of a smile. Then, with his cap back on and pulled down low over his forehead, he turned the cart around and headed back toward the dirt path, retracing the steps that had brought us here.

•  •  •

The first part of the trip had been a blank—a silent depth. I’d slept through it, pulled under by the tide of grief. When I woke again it was to the sound of people talking around me. It seemed our truck had left Prey
Veng and was now entering Kompong Cham. They looked the same, one province and the next. Forests surrounded us on all sides, impenetrable and infinite. It looked as if it would rain but didn’t. The sky hung low and grey, heavy with heat and humidity, a silent, unrequited mourning. But far off in the distance, past a mountaintop, it was blue and brilliant. I couldn’t tell if a sanctuary was waiting beneath the light, where we’d reunite with the others, or the edge of the world, an abyss.

Mama squeezed my hand, as if reminding me she was still right beside me. On her lap, Radana continued to sleep. We both kept our gazes on my sister, unable yet to face each other after that moment when she’d stood still and I was forced to choose.

Gradually, the forests thinned out. The trees along the road became less wild looking, recognizable again—eucalyptus, cassia, acacia—their leaves and barks Papa had taught me to distinguish during our various visits to the countryside. Here and there, under the shade of these roadside trees, stood open-air huts built for travelers to rest. Rice paddies came into view again, and with them, silhouettes of towns and villages, dotting the muted landscape like murmurs and sighs.

We arrived in a country of sky-tall sugar palms. A group of village men, along with some children, waited for us on the steps of an open-air pavilion. I quickly scanned the group for Papa even as I knew he couldn’t possibly be among them. As we descended from the truck, the men greeted us with reserved curiosity. One of the children, a girl with a rag-like elastic sarong and no shirt at all, came over to offer me water in a coconut shell. I stared at it, swallowing, imagining the water against my parched throat, but the girl’s grubby appearance made me hesitate. She pushed the coconut shell into my hand and scuttled off toward the parked truck, where her older sister—it seemed, from the facial resemblance—had perched herself on the driver’s seat, playing with the steering wheel. The other children, half naked and dirty like the two girls, circled the vehicle, equally spellbound, sniffing its gas-fume breath, banging on its hood and front doors, marveling at the headlights and rubber tires. They prodded it, kicked it, and tried pushing it forward and back, as if it were a mythical iron water buffalo that could be provoked to stir, teased into snorting at least.

A caravan of oxcarts appeared, each driven by a Revolutionary soldier. Again we were divided and sorted—a family in this cart to a village in the north, another in that cart to a village in the south, and so on and so forth.

Mama gathered our two bundles and lifted Radana and me into our designated cart. The driver, his black cap pulled down low to shield his eyes, didn’t turn around to look at us, but feeling our settled weight, flicked the reins and clicked his tongue at the oxen.

The cart jerked into motion and once again we trundled toward the unknown, the path before us weaving through the green paddies, like a snake lost among the grass. Thatched huts speckled the still, monotonous landscape, and except for the swirls of smoke rising past the rooftops, it felt as if we were moving through a painted canvas. The tall, slender sugar palms, their dark silhouettes like charred torches, shot from the dikes of the paddies, aspiring to an even loftier existence. Above us the sky hung low and greyer than ever before, a giant belly about to erupt. Two bolts of lightning crisscrossed silently like a pair of fencing swords clashing, sending a shiver down my spine. I wondered how much farther we’d have to go. If we didn’t get there soon, we’d be caught in the full force of the monsoon.

I stole a glance at our driver. The long-barreled gun that earlier had hung on his shoulder now lay across his lap. He hadn’t spoken a word. The only sound I heard from him was the click of his tongue every now and then as he tapped the yoked oxen gently with his bamboo goad. He appeared unfazed by the gloomy sky, the lightning with its brilliant flashes of muteness. Instead, he seemed part of it, part of the stillness, the silence that was everywhere, that magnified the distance and spaces around us.

My thoughts turned to the others. I closed my eyes, picturing their faces: Grandmother Queen, Tata, Big Uncle, Auntie India, the twins, first Sotanavong, then Satiyavong—separately, individually, as I rarely thought of them. I counted each person on my fingers—one, two, three, four, five, six—taking comfort in their numberness, if not their actual presence. Where were they now? On an oxcart too, heading toward their
new home, their new life? Were they thinking of me as I was thinking of them? And Papa? Where was he? How often I would let myself dream he would suddenly appear. That he could materialize even out here, among the rice fields, a figure walking toward me.

I looked at Mama cradling Radana in her lap, a blue-and-white checkered
kroma
across her shoulders, shielding my sleeping sister from the elements. It was a good thing Radana was sleeping so much, that she was easily lulled by the rhythm of a cart or truck on the move, allowing Mama to rest most of the time. We’d hardly spoken to each other, Mama and I, certainly not a word about the others. What was there to say?—
I know you wanted to go with them. Yes, I did.

I no longer regretted I’d chosen her over the rest, over my own sense of safety in numbers. But I regretted what I saw, which all along I hadn’t wanted to see: her incompleteness, she without him, Mama without Papa. Since he was gone, I’d avoided being alone with her, avoided looking into her eyes. I didn’t want to witness her devastation—I could hardly bear my own. Now here she was in front of me—her face gaunt, lips dry and cracked, her entire being stretched to a breaking point. Where was that beautiful butterfly with flowers in her hair? Sadness enveloped her and she seemed to have changed from this weightless creature capable of flight to someone who walked and moved with limbs of clay.

Those days and nights following Papa’s departure, I’d often told myself that at least there was Mama: she would hold my hand, shelter me from any storm. But when that moment came she’d stood frozen amidst the surging throngs, unable to draw me to her, neither by gesture nor word, and it was painfully clear that she’d needed me as much as I’d needed her, that without Papa, she and I would always need each other when calamity hit.

Now, as I gazed at her, as I felt her yearning for him, missing the others, I thought maybe we mourned not only the dead but also the living. We felt their absence before we knew for sure they were gone.

Mama looked up and, perhaps ashamed of the way she appeared to me, lifted the
kroma
over her head to hide her face. She let herself be rocked by the movement of the cart, her body swaying, as though
she’d stopped fighting the exhaustion. In no time at all, she was asleep again, dreaming a joint dream with Radana, bound together at least by their unawareness of the dips and bumps along the way. I didn’t blame her, nor did I envy this connection she and Radana shared. As much as I longed for the bond I’d had with my father, I knew I could not repeat it with anyone. Others would appear and disappear like fireflies; I could never know when. The best I could hope was to draw from each the light I needed to guide myself on this dark and uncertain path. The rest I’d have to do on my own. And my aloneness, this solitude, would be my strength.

Again lightning flashed, followed by what sounded like a mountain ripping in half. I jumped up and squeezed myself in beside the Revolutionary soldier, almost knocking the long-barreled gun off his lap. He didn’t move or chase me back to my seat, or even laugh at my fear. Instead, he removed the gun and laid it parallel to the side of the cart to his right. Then he tapped the oxen again with his goad to hurry them on, murmuring tenderly some unintelligible terms of endearment I was certain they understood. The oxen hastened their steps, ears twitching, tails swishing, their hides rippling as if absorbing their master’s sense of urgency.

I turned back to look at Mama and Radana. They were still asleep, not the least disturbed by the thunder and lightning or even aware that I had moved from my place beside them. I decided to stay in the front, feeling less alone next to the soldier, taking comfort in his vigilance and wakefulness. If I got struck by lightning, I thought, at least he would witness it. I wasn’t completely alone.

Another clap of thunder resounded. I pressed closer. He didn’t object. I didn’t know if I was more scared of his silence or the roar of the sky.

We’d come to a part of the path made narrower by bamboo bushes growing on either side. The soldier pulled hard on the reins and the oxen came to a full stop. I thought he would wake Mama and Radana and tell all three of us to get off, that this was as far as he’d been instructed to take us, the rest we would have to brave alone. Instead he reached over the side of the cart, broke a long slender bamboo branch, and, without a word of explanation, handed it to me, nodding at the oxen, indicating
I should goad them. I tapped the one on the left, as gently as I’d seen him do it, then the one on the right. The soldier clicked his tongue and loosened the reins. Once again we were moving.

“So there were these two deity children, right?” he suddenly said, as if picking up a conversation we’d begun earlier. “A
tevoda
and a
yiak
.” He didn’t turn to meet my shocked gaze but kept his eyes on the path straight ahead. “They’d been studying magic with this hermit, a sorcerer.” His voice was as composed as his profile, and I wondered if he himself wasn’t magic, a trick manifestation of some sort. “One day the sorcerer gave them a challenge. He told them whoever collected a jar full of dew first would get the
keo monoria
.”

I swallowed and asked, “What’s that?”

“A crystal ball that contained light—power.” He nodded toward the oxen, and again, I tapped them with my bamboo branch. “That night the two students went out, each with a jar. At dawn the next day, the
tevoda
came back with a jar full of dew. The
yiak
. . . well, his jar was only half full. The sorcerer gave the crystal ball to the
tevoda.
The
yiak
was upset. He deserved something too. So the sorcerer gave him an ax, also a weapon of great power. But the
yiak,
unsatisfied, took the ax and started chasing after the
tevoda,
and each time he swung his weapon at her, there came this awful, thunderous roar. The
tevoda
jumped out of the way to avoid being hit, tossing the magic ball into the air, sending out these brilliant flashes of light.”

We bounced up and down on the oxcart, the path marked with holes and humps. I waited for the soldier to go on, but we’d come to a canal brimming with muddy water, and across its width lay a partly inundated crossing made from felled palm trunks. Leaning left and right, checking the positions of the oversized wheels, he guided beasts and cart across the precarious bridge.

“You shouldn’t be scared of lightning and thunder,” he said, once we were on dry ground again. “They’re just two children playing with magic.”

Silently, secretly, I wondered if this moment could be captured somehow, in a crystal vessel of my own, to be invoked again and again should I find myself forever alone. “I like magic,” I ventured. “Do you?”

He didn’t respond. And, just as unexpectedly as he’d spoken, he became part of the silence again.

At last, we came to a split in the path. The soldier turned the oxcart, bearing to the right, and we trundled onto an even narrower track, hemmed most immediately on either side by an irrigation ditch, then by an expanse of green paddies spreading boundlessly into the greater distance. Up ahead the track opened onto a piece of slightly elevated land, surrounded by fruit trees. In the middle of the land, rising toward the open sky, a pair of sugar palms crisscrossed at the trunks, then curved like arms lifted to implore the gods. To the right of the palms, at a distance that seemed far enough to avoid falling fruits or fronds, stood a small thatched hut on stilts. From its bamboo steps, two shadows rose. My heart quickened.
Could one of them be Papa?
Always I hoped, seeing him everywhere, in every silhouette and form, in every gesture that might intimate he was still part of my world. One of the shadows waved tentatively, the other vigorously, ecstatically.

•  •  •

“Come,” the wife urged, pulling my attention from the receding figure on the cart.

The sky rumbled and shook, enigmatic as its emissary, who was disappearing with the noiselessness of a mirage.

The wife grabbed Mama by the elbow and led her and Radana to the stairs. The husband and I followed, he carrying our two bundles, and I dragging my bamboo branch against the ground. “You came just in time,” he murmured, looking up at the clouds moving overhead, as if the sky was his point of reference to everything, to every conversation he wanted to start. “It’ll be a big storm when it comes.”

His eyes went to the wooden weathervane spinning on the roof of the hut. It was in the shape of a rooster, and even though it wasn’t a detailed carving, there was something about it that made it seem alive, like it was on the verge of flapping its wings and crowing. It spun left and right, then turned in the direction the clouds were moving, as if envying their flight, longing for its own release.