by Kim Fay
“I can’t say for certain, I don’t know you well enough, Irene, I can only speak for what I know about myself, but maybe you’re tired of having to harden your heart to get what you want. Maybe you’re finally afraid there will come a day when you’ll go too far.”
“But what if I don’t realize it until it’s too late?”
Fashioning a headband from the bandanna he carried in his back pocket, Marc arranged it beneath her hat, to soak up the sweat dripping over her brow. “Whatever you decide to do, don’t change tonight. Not if you really want to find this temple. We’re walking into an armed village operating under the orders of a man who dresses like a circus clown and seems to be using ‘Heart of Darkness’ as his manifesto. It’s no place for feeling guilty, because I can promise you, the villagers won’t feel guilt over anything they do to you.”
Chapter 19
Complete Certainty
As the moon returned, it felt to Irene as if they had walked full circle, right back into the previous night. The same slow brown river flowed to their left. The same vague patterns of leaves swayed in stands of tall bamboo to their right. But they must have made progress, if only because of the searing pain in her calves and the stinging, swelling, red bramble scratches on the backs of her hands. Still, she was not entirely convinced until she smelled burning wood and saw blue-gray smoke spiraling above the distant trees.
One of the coolies had been sent ahead to announce the expedition’s arrival. As they approached, the village of Leh trembled in a glow of torches that filled the air with the smell of scorched resin. Flanked by half-clad men, women wrapped in sarongs, and clusters of naked children, an old man stood in a dirt clearing in front of a shack that sagged on its stilts. It was as rudimentary as every other shack in the impoverished compound, with the exception of a totem pole of boar skulls stacked beside its bamboo ladder and an arsenal of muskets stockpiled beneath it.
“The chief,” Clothilde whispered to Irene.
There were too many guns to count in the dark, arranged within a large wooden frame, but Irene saw that each was strategically angled, accessible in an instant. Behind the frame, a shadow moved, and she made out the shape of a sentinel with a rifle pointed in their direction. She shivered with cold terror and exhilaration.
In the wavering torchlight, Irene could tell that as Louis and Marc walked toward the village, Marc was keeping back, although he was not as far back as the women. She had helped him fasten one holster inside his shirt, and she knew that he carried another revolver in the baggy thigh pocket of his trousers. Her own pistol was tucked into her belt, the steel muzzle pressing against her hip bone. Marc looked back at her and mouthed, Are you ready?
She noted Clothilde, dutifully vigilant, earning her keep. Nearby, Simone held Kiri’s hand, while in his other arm the boy cradled his gibbon. Both she and the child were bleary-eyed. Positioned in front of his son, Xa surveyed the scene. Irene could not guess what he was thinking. That morning, his response to the lie about Ormond had been unreadable, and he had not said a word to anyone as he led the expedition onward. If he had managed to warn the coolies, there was no way of knowing, since they remained with the oxcarts, silently watching from afar.
“If there’s shooting and Xa is hit,” Irene said quietly to Simone, “take the boy and run for the forest.” Then, to Marc, she nodded, yes.
He made a clicking sound with his tongue, as if spurring on a horse, and Louis stepped forward and approached the chief. Although the light was poor, Irene could see the chief’s face well enough, dark and wrinkled as a walnut shell. Four village men, two on each side, moved closer to their leader, but he remained still.
Having cleaned himself up as best he could given the circumstances, Louis was moderately presentable as he performed the expected honorific greeting, genuflecting with his hands folded together as if in prayer. With his head lowered before the chief, he waited for Xa, who also performed the traditional sampeah while he introduced the two men to one another. Although Irene did not take her eyes off the chief, she was listening carefully to Xa for any hint of worry or warning, but she was unable to read the unfamiliar tone of the tribe’s dialect and didn’t want to draw the chief’s attention toward her by asking Clothilde.
After a moment Xa stepped aside, and Louis presented the chief with an offering of English snuff in an oak box. The chief examined the finely worked gold lid, and although he ran his fingers appreciatively over it, his only response was a noncommittal grunt that revealed a glinting gold tooth framed by dark, toothless gaps. Then he turned his gaze on the women.
His eyes shone like onyx, and Irene was mesmerized, staring into the stern face of this man who had been charged with standing in her way.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Clothilde whispered, urgently. “Irene, Simone, bow your heads.”
“I know what to do,” Simone hissed back, while Irene, immediately realizing her impudence, did as instructed, listening to the men communicate in a stop-and-start of French and the Brau’s tribal language until she heard footsteps scuffling away through the dirt. This was followed by the creak of the ladder up to the chief’s home. When Clothilde motioned for her to look up, the men were gone.
This was going to be the hardest part for Irene, to behave as if she was not waiting—for an argument to erupt and even the sound of a gunshot, or for the men to bring word of the chief’s approval to let the expedition continue on.
In Irene’s profession, there had often been a need to blend in, and she had perfected the art of seeming invisible in the middle of a crowd when she wanted to. But as she was shuffled toward a wood fire beneath one of the huts, the curiosity that followed her was inescapable. Village women swarmed around her, peering so intently it felt as if they were trying to see inside her. They were so close that she could smell the coconut oil they used to style their cropped black hair. An older woman scrutinized her throbbing cheek, with its discharge of blood and pus where Marc had burned away a leech, and around the fire, women continually glanced up at her as they squatted on the ground, mincing pork and stringy forest greens with cleavers on slabs of tree trunks.
“The chief’s wife has invited us for dinner,” Clothilde said, referring to the eldest of the women, whose breasts, unlike those of the younger women, were not covered in cloth. Instead, they hung exposed, low and pendulous on her chest.
Despite the exoticism of her surroundings, Irene could not stop thinking about Xa and Marc’s guns and the lie being told in the chief’s bungalow. “I’m not hungry.”
“You should eat anyway,” Clothilde said, and Simone interrupted, “It’s nearly ten. Do you think these women are cooking for themselves at this hour, Irene? It’s a sign of goodwill to offer a meal.” She gave Clothilde a frown that declared her understanding of the customs. “It’s an insult if you don’t accept.”
“And it’s not going to be an insult if they tell us to go back and we refuse?” Irene asked.
Ignoring her, Simone leaned against the ladder that led to the women’s communal hut and took off her mud-encrusted boots. Under the ever-watchful gaze of the women at work, Irene followed her example, struggling with laces that felt as if they were bound with glue. She peeled off her clammy socks. Released, her feet expanded, puckered and red, like overripe fruit. With an easy flick of her toes, Clothilde slipped out of her moccasins, and after conferring briefly with the chief’s wife, she led the way up the ladder. Irene came after Simone, followed by nearly every female in the village, with the exception of those doing the cooking. Along with the rest, she sat Indian-style on the bamboo floor, since there was no furniture, only reed sleeping mats folded in one corner.
As the Brau women encircled their visitors, and Irene shifted with the discomfort of being so tightly and thoroughly surrounded, the flimsy floor vibrated. While giggling girls took turns sneaking up from behind to graze their fingers against her sun-lightened hair, the women clucked and whispered among themselves. They were the descendants of the
women her own mother would have encountered if she had in fact made this journey to the temple. Perhaps Sarah Blum had sat even with some of the eldest, who were now tucked into the corners of the room, gnawing on betel leaves, crimson saliva glistening at the edges of their pursed mouths. Irene felt sick with wanting Clothilde to ask if any of them had met her mother. But she kept quiet, giving Clothilde the opportunity to interpret their muttering, in case any of it revealed what could happen if the expedition tried to proceed.
Instead, Clothilde leaned toward her and said, “I was raised in a room exactly like this one. It had palm-leaf walls that were alive with roaches and spiders. The interesting thing about the story you’ve made up, Irene, is how true parts of it are. It is only a matter of time before the government swoops in and all of this is gone.”
“Not if I can help it,” Simone said, caressing the gibbon in her lap. Xa’s son, because he was male, had gone to the chief’s hut.
“Why would you want anyone to keep living like this?” Clothilde asked.
“Why do you want them to change?”
“If by change you mean why should they have electricity? Why should they have vaccines or clean water or Monet? Are you really going to insult me by asking that?” Clothilde’s voice rose, and although they did not understand the language she was speaking, the children perked up and the women inched closer, fascinated by one of their own arguing in a foreign tongue. Clothilde neatened her pretty shift over her knees and adjusted her emerald ring, as if to confirm that she had not somehow been transformed back into her past self upon entering the village. “I was malnourished my entire childhood,” she told Simone. “Four of my brothers and sisters were dead by the time I was born. Idealists! You’re certain you know what’s best for the natives. You think there’s nothing more romantic than living in a grass shack. Try living in one during monsoon season.”
“My parents were born here,” Simone said. “This is my country as much as it is yours. I know what the Cambodians want.”
“You were born into the privilege of French citizenship. That may give you many rights, but not the right to think you know who these women are.”
“Stop it, both of you,” Irene said, softly. “This isn’t the time or place.”
But Clothilde, who had been so dispassionate up until now, was not finished. “I remember the first time I saw a book. I didn’t recognize what it was, but somehow I knew it meant more, it meant better, and I wanted it. The first time I heard Mozart, I was outside Ormond’s porch like the poor wretches you saw the other night, and I wanted nothing more than to find the source of that beautiful sound. Not the phonograph but the village. That’s what it was like for me then. A world so confined and pitiful that I could only conceive of it in terms of villages. They should know that living like this, living in complete poverty and isolation, is not all there is.”
Slowly, deliberately, Simone focused on Clothilde’s flamboyant ring, which unawares, Clothilde was still twisting round and round. “Clearly,” she said, “the life you have chosen is a much better alternative.”
“Simone!” Irene was fed up with her hostility. “Stop being such an ass.”
Clothilde blinked around at the village women, who were warily eyeing the threesome, tigers loose in their midst. “How awful,” she spat out, “being put in a position to have to defend yourself with those decrepit muskets down there. What I’m trying to say is that when I was one of these people, when this was my life, I would have wanted to know I had other choices than to follow Ormond’s suicidal orders or believe the ludicrous lie your men are telling the chief right now.”
It was nearly dawn, and the torches that had illuminated the expedition’s arrival were burned down to char. The orchid glow of the sky was growing visible through the gaps in the clouds as Irene, Simone, and Clothilde climbed down from the women’s hut to join the men, who were gathered in the bare patch of earth that served as a village square. Having been roused unceremoniously by one of the Brau girls, Irene heard Simone whisper to Louis, “What’s going on?”
“We tried,” he said, his voice graveled with lack of sleep. His jacket was not even buttoned, and one of his boots was untied. In his fatigue, he seemed to have forgotten his unhappiness with Simone, and Irene could hear the echo of his old intimacy with her as he said, “We’ve been up all night trying to convince the chief that Ormond sent us to protect what’s left in the temple, but he still wants us to leave.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
Irene sought further explanation from Marc, but his face was grim as he kept watch on something behind her. She turned, and she shivered.
She had envisioned opposition, of course she had, but still she was not prepared for the rank of Brau men lining the trail that led out of the village in the direction of the temple. There were at least fifty of them, a small militia, all armed with the exception of the chief, who stood at the head of the dragon their dark bodies formed, observing the small expedition with no doubt in his expression that it would retreat.
Looking around, Irene saw that he had no reason to believe otherwise. Of their own accord, the coolies had gathered the horses and oxcarts at the start of the trail back to Stung Treng. Xa was with them, standing protectively in front of his son, who was peeking around him. Simone’s face was taut, and she concentrated on the rhythmic stroking of the gibbon’s head with her forefinger. Her eyebrows drawn together, Clothilde did not try to hide her worry, even as she held on to her Mauser, which she claimed to be able to sight to the centimeter at fifty yards. Although Marc and Louis appeared intent on holding their ground, revolvers firmly in hand, this could only be for show, for they were outnumbered. What the Brau lacked in the quality of their old firearms they made up for in manpower.
“Once the first shot is fired,” Marc whispered to Irene, “there’s no turning back.”
His warning jarred her. Despite his experience in the underworld of Shanghai, and his words of caution the previous day, even he had not expected the situation to go this far. But she felt that it could only have come to this, so that she could know with complete certainty that she wanted the scrolls no matter what.
The village men stood before Irene in the cloudy gloom, narrow waists wrapped in sarongs, chests bare, muskets held at the ready. Cords of white mist spiraled over the dense olive green of the Sekong River. Dew dripped off the fog-soaked trees, tapping from leaf to leaf. She took a step toward the chief, and the muskets were raised. She took another step, and they were aimed. The irregularity of her heartbeat pounded in her ears. The village women were gawking out at her from the doorways and windows of the surrounding huts, but when she stood before the chief, looking once again into his dark eyes, his old face was like a mask. Marc was right. This was not her known world. How confident she had been of her skills at manipulation. How transparent and irrelevant those skills now seemed. A ludicrous lie, Clothilde had called it. As Irene accepted this—the insult it was to both the chief and herself, the ways she had turned this into a game—she could feel something within herself being set free.
She reached into her pocket and took out her pistol. The forest’s sounds gave way to the staccato ticking of muskets being cocked. She sank to her knees. With her face lowered, hidden from view, she blinked back tears of pure fear. Holding the gun flat between her shaking palms while she drew her hands to her forehead, she bowed to the ground three times, a sampeah to show her respect. She set the gun at the chief’s gnarled bare feet. She slowly stood. His countenance had not changed.
She had always operated from behind the impervious shield of her strategies. This morning she would be unarmored. She persisted across the impossibly fluid ground, through the village square, toward the trail that led to the temple. She was staring straight ahead, but she could see that none of the Brau were focused on her. Their gazes were fixed on the impenetrable border of forest behind her, as if it contained a repository of hidden strengths.
The men stood side
by side, forming a chain along the rim of the path. They were close enough to strike her down with the wooden stocks of their guns, but she could not even hear their breathing. With each man she passed, her back felt broader, more exposed, but she kept walking, despite the melted rubber of her knees, until she reached the last of them. Finally, her eyes could not stay away. In the single instant of her glance, she saw him as if he were standing in a spotlight, the serrated puffs of ritual scars on his arms and cheeks, the resoluteness of his posture. She felt the potency of his waiting for instruction from his chief.
She lifted one leaden boot and forced it forward, and lifted the other and forced that one ahead too. If the man were to lower his musket, he would shoot point-blank. He could not miss. Bats tore at the cindered sky, and the village men began to murmur. The jungle ahead was a frayed green wall. She was as terrified of backing down and never knowing what lay ahead as she was of defying the chief and being shot. So she kept going, one step at a time, into the turbulent discord of frogs and cicadas, growing so loud that eventually she could hear nothing else, not even her own footsteps. She walked blindly into the first rays of sunlight, for how long she didn’t know. She did not pause until a hand reached into her trance, touching her shoulder.
Irene expected it to be a Brau, and longed for it to be Marc so she could collapse into him, but it was Clothilde, still holding her gun. “I think your courage impressed even the chief,” she whispered. “Here, have some water, you’ve been walking for more than an hour.”
As Irene took Clothilde’s canteen and drank, she looked back down the path. Adrift a few yards away, Simone stood with May-ling curled head to tail on her shoulder, watching Irene and Clothilde with bewilderment on her face. Next came Xa and Kiri, and beyond them, Marc and Louis, holding their rifles to their chests in positions of readiness, still on guard, for farther on, in the morning’s smoky blue light, Irene could make out a group of ten armed Brau villagers in a somber file behind the coolies and the oxcarts.