In the Shadow of the Banyan (40 page)

She turned Grandmother Queen on her side to show me the huge festering welts on her back and buttocks. I held my breath, trying to keep the miasma of rotting flesh from entering my nostrils. She didn’t need to show me. I’d known of this decay, lived with it every day, slept beside it every night, grown used to it by now. Grandmother Queen’s clothes, the straw mat on which she lay, the pillow and blanket, the entire room reeked of it. Now I knew what it was—the odor of dying. Not of death, but the act of it, of your body giving up even as your mind fights to stay alive.

The young woman stood up and said, coughing, “I’ll let you have a bit of time with her. Then we’ll have to let her go.” She left the room, heaving with her own sickness.

“Grandmother,” I said, speaking into her death-embalmed face. She didn’t stir. I leaned in and whispered, “Grandmother Queen, it’s me.” Still no response.

I tried again. “Mechas Mae”—speaking the royal language, testing the weight of it on my tongue—“it’s me. Arun . . . your son. I have Ayuravann with me.” I placed my hand on my heart. “Yes, he’s here with me. He’s safe.”

She opened her eyes, just a sliver. “I know,” she murmured. “I see him.”

“He’s come to take you back home.”

She raised her bony hand and cupped my cheek, her thumb grazing my lips, wet and salty, and it was only then that I realized I’d been crying. My tears soaked her palm, and, as if she’d waited for this moment, for my tears to send her home, she pulled her hand back and, hugging it to her chest, closed her eyes.

I scooted to the foot of the mat and, bending down, touched my head to her feet, the way my father would’ve done, the way we’d all been taught, bowing to the life that gave us ours, laying bare our gratitude.
Three times—for Papa, for Radana, for the rest of my family. Finally one last time for myself. Then I got up and left.

I went down to the river. I slept on the shore, covering myself with a banana leaf. When I woke again, the morning sky was burning, scathed with streaks of red as angry as the wounds on Grandmother Queen’s back. She was gone. She’d died sometime in the night, and by the time I returned to the villa, Mouk had sent his soldiers to cart her body away and dispose of it somewhere in the rice fields. She, like Radana, would fertilize the ground.

All along I’d expected her death, but that she had died this way—without the comfort of her children—made me rage against her demise, against those who’d prolonged her suffering.

•  •  •

The next day I found Big Uncle waiting for me on the front steps of the villa. The sick young woman had sent him word to come and fetch me. I didn’t have to tell him what had happened. He knew. He’d seen Grandmother Queen’s death long before it arrived.

•  •  •

We hitched a ride on a series of oxcarts we encountered along the way. In the late afternoon we arrived at the work camp, a remote and barren place in the middle of nowhere. Before us stood a naked mountain ridge, holding the sky on its back. Silent black figures weaved their way up and down the long, jagged slope, like ants building a giant anthill in expectation of a great downpour. At the bottom, more silent black figures rose and bent, breaking the earth with hoes and shovels. A funeral, I thought, feeling dizzy. Something must have died. I turned to Big Uncle and asked, “What are they burying?”

“Everything . . .” he said, his voice muffled, faraway. “Everything . . . a whole civilization. Yes, that’s what we’re looking at. Buried civilization . . .”

There was a ringing sound in my ears, and I wasn’t sure if I heard him right. “I thought it was a dragon,” I heard myself saying. “A dragon
yiak
.”

“Let’s hope so,” Big Uncle murmured. “Or else we are burying ourselves. A people digging its own grave.” He gave me his hand. “Come, we have work to do.”

•  •  •

Thick curtains of dust rose up everywhere. All around us people had their heads and faces covered with
kromas
. I couldn’t tell who was who. There was no time to waste. No time to even look for Mama. A soldier handed Big Uncle a hoe and me a
bangki,
one of those bamboo baskets shaped like a half clamshell. While Big Uncle hoed, I pushed loose chunks of earth into the basket with my bare hands and feet. Workers came and traded their emptied baskets for the full ones. Revolutionary soldiers kept a close watch, making sure every hand and foot was moving, occupied in some task. No one looked up. No one talked. The sound of metal banging against the hard dried earth echoed across the sky.

It was a sick sky. A sky burning with welts. Angry and red. The colors of rotting flesh, of dying and death, of one heaving last breath. Of rains that hadn’t come, and rains that came a long time ago.

Big Uncle coughed, his face turning dark purple. I thought his tongue would fall out. A soldier looked our way and Big Uncle, suppressing his coughs, resumed his digging, his movements as mechanical as if he’d never known any other way to move, as if his mind was capable of no other thoughts except those of the task before him.

I looked around, searching for Mama, but I couldn’t see past the plumes of dust. My eyes felt gritty. When I blinked, I saw sandstorms, I felt fire. When I swallowed, I tasted the desert on my tongue. I felt my inside drying up, fissuring with drought lines, my entire body a cracked coconut shell. Around me the ground was broken and scarred, with holes and ditches that resembled half-dug graves.
We’re burying a dragon,
I thought,
but I’m the one dying under the sun. I’m digging my own grave. Or else we are burying ourselves.
Big Uncle’s words echoed in my head, mingling with my own thoughts.
Burying ourselves, burying ourselves
. . .

The bell rang, like a series of drawn-out gunshots. People put their tools down and began heading toward an elevated stretch of unbroken land where rows of straw huts stood against a background of trees. I stared and blinked, stared and blinked, my eyes searing with pain. I saw embers and flames, sparks flying everywhere.
Are the huts burning, or am I on fire?
I couldn’t be sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me. Flames leaped and danced, licking my face.
I’m on a funeral pyre. But whose?

Big Uncle sat down next to me, waiting for the traffic of black figures to subside. Baskets lay scattered all around us, like giant shells, a whole sea of dead clams.
The gravediggers have stopped digging
. . . Hoes and shovels crisscrossed like bones in an open field. Dirt and rocks gathered in small mounds resembling termite hills.
One small mound will be enough to bury Radana
. . . My mind wandered, a long, thin snake slithering across the bare ground.
She was small when she died. Even smaller than when she was born. If she had a grave, it would look like a termite hill. It wouldn’t stop the Mekong from flooding the rice fields, but it would keep Mama from drowning in her own tears. Tears that came and tears that haven’t come. Like the season’s rains. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll build a grave before I die. Not a grave for the Dragon Yiak. But a termite hill for Mama’s sadness.

I looked up, trying to guess what time of day it was. The sun was right above me, sitting on my head. I was ready to explode. The bell kept ringing.
Ringing ringing ringing
. . .

I was thinking strange thoughts. I was seeing strange things. I saw millions of tiny stars.
Blinking blinking blinking
. . .

A woman walked toward us. Big Uncle said something, but I couldn’t understand him. His voice sounded as if it came from the bottom of the Mekong, as far down as where the
naga
serpent lived.
Is Big Uncle a
naga
serpent—a dragon
yiak
called Buried Civilization?
Once he had been a
yiak
. Now he was a gravedigger, digging termite-sized graves.
Why? Why does everything seem so small?
The woman stood before me. She had no face. Only eyes. Black moons in clear white skies. I knew her eyes. She unwound the dust-covered
kroma
from her faceless face. A bandage around her wound. She smiled at me, and when I saw the sadness in that smile, I knew who she was.

The stars stopped blinking. Night met day. A
kroma
covered my body. I was dead before I could build Radana a termite hill next to the Dragon Yiak’s grave.

•  •  •

“You fainted in the sun,” Mama said, then added, attempting a smile, “but you’re all right now.” She felt my forehead and neck with the back of her hand, searching for traces of the sun in my skin.

Night had arrived, it seemed, and the only light was from the torch outside near the doorway of the long communal hut. I swallowed at the sight of its orange-black flame. I tasted its dry heat in my throat. My back was soaked with sweat. Yet I felt cold, shivering with lightness, as if my spirit had lifted and there was only this shell of my body.

Mama pulled the blanket up to my chest. I licked my lips, looking for water in the muted glow of the room, noticing a row of empty straw mats and pillows. Mosquito nets, with their sides thrown over the top, hovered above, like ghosts in flight.

“Here,” she said, handing me a bowl of what looked like watery rice soup. “It’ll make you feel better.”

I sat up and drank the liquid but left the rice. I wasn’t hungry, just thirsty. I handed the bowl back to her and, wiping my mouth with the back of my wrist, lay down again on the long communal bamboo bed.

“Are you still cold?” she asked, head tilting, worries fluttering across her face. Or maybe they were shadows of her eyelashes when she blinked. “Do you want to eat something?” She caressed my chin. “I can try to get you something. Fruit, sugar. Just tell me.”

I couldn’t speak. I could only remember . . . the feeling of her hand on my skin.

“Maybe you just want to sleep now.” She let down the mosquito net above me, tucking in the edges under the mat. “I have to get back to work.”

I nodded.

She walked to the doorway and then turned to look back at me. In the torch’s light, her shadow grew and threw itself on me.

I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. She left, the light of the torch fading with her footsteps. I turned and faced the wall in front of me. A narrow walking space separated the wall from the bed. I knew she had chosen this place because of the wall. She could climb in and out without having to talk with the other women who shared her hut, and
when she slept, she could face the darkness, alone. It was how she had slept since Radana died, hugging the wall, facing nowhere.

I heard noises outside, the hums and drones of night creatures. An owl hooted, and another answered, telling each other an endless tale amidst an endless banging of hoes and shovels, the earth being smashed. When you hear an owl, so they say, death is nearby. But owls were always hooting in Democratic Kampuchea, and when someone died, they were as quiet as people, afraid to speak up, to cry out loud. I had learned not to be afraid of owls or other night creatures. Animals are not like people. If you leave them alone, they won’t hurt you. But people will, even if you’ve done no wrong. They hurt you with their guns, their words, their lies and broken promises, their sorrow.

The crickets made whirring music to accompany the owls’ tale. The trees stirred to listen. Once in a while the wind yawned. In the distance metal tools broke the earth in a monotonous rhythm, and nearby, just above my head, whispers echoed tentatively back and forth.

“How is she?”

“I’m losing her . . . Maybe I’ve lost her already.”

“You’d better head back to work. I’ll check on her.”

At night even the walls had voices.

•  •  •

He walked into the hut. I knew his limping even if I couldn’t see his face. He stood at the foot of the bed where she had stood just a moment ago. In the dark Big Uncle was all shadow. “Are you awake?” he asked.

I nodded and sat up in the mosquito net.

“Hungry?”

“No, just thirsty.”

“Come outside then.”

I followed him, wrapping the blanket around myself. Outside, the moon was a white hole in a black sky. We sat side by side on the giant root of a tree with leaves that resembled turtles’ hearts. In front of us a kettle perched on three rocks and, under it, the ash was still warm.

“We borrowed the kettle from the kitchen,” Big Uncle said, pouring
water into a bamboo cup and handing it to me. “The camp leader allows us to take turns to come and check on you. How are you feeling?”

I kept quiet, my eyes on the Dragon Yiak’s grave. It seemed bigger at night. Everything was under its shadow. Bright orange flames dotted the broken landscape, illuminating the endless lines of black figures digging and carrying baskets. Buriers of dragons, I thought. Diggers of graves. Up and down. Up and down. They looked like ghosts. Ghosts burying ghosts.

Big Uncle, noticing my stare, said, “There’s no logic to it.”

Buried Civilization,
he had called it. The Dragon Yiak had a name. It had no logic. But it had a name.

Suddenly, a patch of clouds glided past the moon and, for a moment, I thought I saw the spirit of the Dragon Yiak floating above us.

I put my cup out for more water. Big Uncle refilled it. A warm breeze blew, rustling the leaves above us. Big Uncle looked up and said, “There will remain only so many of us as rest in the shadow of a banyan.”

“A prophecy, I know.”

The prophecy, Papa had explained that day long ago when Om Bao went missing, said a darkness would settle upon Cambodia. There would be empty houses and empty roads, the country would be governed by those with no morals or teaching, and blood would course so high as to reach the underbelly of an elephant. In the end only the deaf, the dumb, and the mute would survive.

Big Uncle stared at me, startled.

If he meant to comfort me by saying that there was nothing I could’ve done because Grandmother Queen and the others were among the damned of the prophecy, I wanted to tell him there was no such thing—no such prediction, no such curse. Neither was there a sacred tree under whose shade we’d be safe. There was only this burial ground, and we would all die here, in our communal grave. I couldn’t find the words. So instead I said, “Grandmother Queen said it was our karma.”