The Map of Lost Memories

by Kim Fay

  Irene was startled by Kiri impatiently tapping on her boot. He was grinning at a precarious tower he had built out of the watch pieces, eager for her approval. She smiled back at him and then looked out at the temple yard, half-expecting to see her mother walking across the grass. But the spell of her mother’s story had been broken, and only the shadows of old stones inhabited the grounds. Irene was confused, but scanning back through the words she had just read did not help clarify the mystery her mother’s story presented. She had written about a library filled with palm-leaf books, not a sanctuary containing ten copper scrolls. Irene did not understand and anxiously resumed reading.

  I wanted to race back to the temple to tell Patrik this fabulous story but the sister was not finished. She gave each of us a bracelet made of red stones. She told us they were from the king’s treasure house.

  Irene glanced from the diary to the strand of carnelian beads around her own wrist and then quickly read on.

  She wanted to know if there was anything more she could do to thank us. Madeleine has always been bolder than I and she declared we wanted to see the scrolls. Why she believed the scrolls were at the convent I still do not know.

  The sister escorted us to a large room and held up a lamp. A lacquer shelf hung on the wall. It displayed nine flat rectangular segments of unrolled copper identical in shape and size to the scroll we had left hidden in our cellar in Manila. I knew as I looked at Madeleine that she had spoken recklessly. She had not expected this and neither of us could guess why the sister was showing them to us.

  I knew how much Patrik wanted to find the scrolls. I knew the information they contained and how valuable they were, but I also knew I was carrying a child. I am six months along as I write this. I have never known why Madeleine agreed to my request to leave the scrolls and never speak of them even to Henry, but I know why I wanted this. As soon as I saw them, as soon as they became real, I realized how they would change everything for Patrik and me and for our new family. We would spend the rest of our lives searching and always wanting more. I want to be happy with our life as it is.

  It was here that the diary ended, the rest of its age-yellowed pages blank, but Irene did not need to read any more to finally put the entire story together from the beginning, the moment when her father had bought a trunk from a missionary’s estate in Borneo, a trunk with a secret compartment containing Reverend Garland’s diary. What had not occurred to her, until reading her mother’s story, was that in the trunk her father might also have found a copper scroll taken from the temple—only one scroll out of ten. The reverend could have stolen it and not written about the theft!

  As the torches nuzzled Irene with their fragrant heat, she thought about her father, her mother, Mr. Simms, and the woman who would become Simone’s mother traveling to this very temple, using the reverend’s diary as their guide to search for the other nine scrolls. Her father must have been greatly disappointed when they did not find them, never supposing that his wife had discovered them and left them behind.

  Upon returning to Manila, Irene guessed, he took the diary and the original scroll to be appraised. Word somehow reached the gangster named Fear, who then kidnapped Sarah Blum and held her for ransom. Fear was killed by Mr. Simms, and Irene’s mother was saved. But in the chaos of that night, Mr. Simms believed the artifacts were lost, stolen by one of Fear’s men who got away. There would have been no reason for him to suspect they were taken and hidden by his closest friend.

  Irene could understand why her father had done such a thing; the diary had come to represent danger to him. She could also imagine his shock, after his wife died, when he came across a second diary, this one belonging to her, describing how she had turned her back on the scrolls at the temple. How difficult it must have been for her father to keep this secret from Mr. Simms, the man to whom he owed so much.

  Now, clutching her mother’s diary in her lap, Irene mulled over the original scroll—Reverend Garland’s scroll—the one that had started this entire quest. If the reverend’s diary had been in the box that her father left to Mr. Simms when he died, it was logical to assume that the scroll was there too. Mr. Simms could even have brought it with him to Stung Treng. Standing up, she motioned to Kiri to gather the bits of the watch, certain she had only to follow her mother’s words in order to find the other nine scrolls, which would bring this journey to its end.

  Chapter 25

  The Last Orphan

  Leaving the puzzle-lock box on the bench in the dance pavilion, Irene tucked her mother’s diary into her pocket and rushed up the slippery causeway toward a yellow flame that fluttered on the bottom of the temple steps. She stooped to inspect the dish of burning oil and caught her breath as she recognized it—a black-glazed Jian tea bowl, one of a set that she had once inventoried for Mr. Simms. Ascending the steps to where a second Jian vessel sat, also filled with fire, she marveled that Clothilde had managed to keep such fragile objects safe from the attack by the Brau.

  With Kiri behind her, Irene ran toward another bowl shining at the far end of the east gallery, guiding her down the length of the arcade, past the Buddha, enlightened beneath the bodhi tree. A pottery lamp illuminated a path out the back of the temple and through the sleeping silence of the monastery grounds, to a gate where a lantern hung from a metal pole.

  Irene saw a dish of flame in the distance, burning in a bed of moss, and then a second lantern swimming in a snarl of branches. As she chased this stammering light into the forest, Kiri sprinted ahead of her, leaping the snares of banyan roots and creepers that crawled across the ground. Insects clicked in the trees. The base of a hillside emerged, its overgrown stairway edged with two glowing cups of oil. Clambering up the slick steps, Irene tried to ignore the blades of pain sliding into her sides.

  Kiri reached the top first. Silently, pounding his fist against his thigh, he urged her on. On the muddy landing beneath him, she bent forward with her hands braced on her knees to catch her breath. When she stood up, Cambodia had spread itself at her feet. The storm had moved on, the moon was bare of clouds, and she saw the immensity of the temple below. The King’s Temple. Her temple.

  She panted up the last of the steps. A narrow path pushed through a grove of jackfruit trees, and with Kiri she bounded out of the darkness and onto the edge of an open ground. His hand reached for hers, and her fingers tightened around his as she looked across the muddy grass at her mother’s dream house.

  Afraid the great white building might vanish like a mirage if she took her eyes from it, Irene concentrated on its details as they walked toward it. Even from a distance she could see the apsaras dancing on the pedestals that flanked the imposing front doors. It was not the human fluidity of their gold-leafed bodies that amazed her, or the jewels that shone in their diadems. It was that they were as tall as she was. In the iridescent light of moonbeam, they leapt in a life-size ballet, just as she had danced among their sisters in the museum when she was a girl.

  Reaching the porch, she let go of Kiri’s hot fingers and laid her palms against the doors. Like those at the sanctuary below, they were carved in a floral crochet, within a hardwood frame that was more than twice her height. As she stood before their sculpted surface, they opened. Clothilde stood in the space behind them. Silently, she motioned Irene inside.

  Glazed floor tiles the color of marigolds filled Irene’s vision as she entered the foyer. The hall was cavernous, rising into a coffered ceiling. Kiri tried to scamper past Clothilde, but she caught him by the arm. He squeaked in protest as she pushed him outside. When she turned to Irene, she looked dazed, as if she had not quite expected this moment to come, despite how long she must have been preparing for it with Mr. Simms. She had shed the blanket she’d been wearing earlier to keep herself warm, revealing a deep blue dress that fell all the way to the floor. Her feet were bare, and she gestured to Irene to remove her boots.

  As Irene knelt to untie her laces, and also took off her poncho, Clothilde regained her self-assurance. Lau
ghing, she admitted, “I did my damnedest to open that box, but I couldn’t force it without breaking it.”

  Skeptical, Irene said, “Don’t tell me you’ve done all of this tonight just because he asked you to. You must know why.”

  “I know it has to do with the history you’re looking for.”

  Before Irene could question her further, she was stunned into silence.

  A woman was gliding into the foyer. She was exactly like the nun Sarah Blum had described in her diary, a Cambodian with a shaved head, wearing a powder gray gown. But she could not have been the same one that Irene’s mother had met, for she did not appear to be much older than Irene. She studied Irene uneasily, her brown eyes roaming from head to toe, seeking some kind of recognition that she did not seem to find. In French she asked Clothilde, “This is the one you were instructed to bring to me?”

  Clothilde nodded.

  How awful Irene must have looked to this woman. Her grimy clothes were beyond salvaging, and the stinging wound from the leech was so inflamed that it would no doubt leave a scar on her cheek. Although she knew it would make no difference, Irene instinctively smoothed her hair, bedraggled from the storm. “Do you know who I am?” she asked the nun.

  The woman glanced at Clothilde. “Should I?”

  Irene had already used the pair of keys. Kiri had taken the watch apart. All she had left was the carnelian bracelet. She slipped it from her wrist and held out the string of stones. “Does this mean anything to you?” she asked.

  The nun was startled. “Where did you get that?”

  “It was among my mother’s belongings when she died.”

  “Who was your mother?”

  “Sarah Blum.”

  “How long has she been dead?” the nun asked, lowering her eyes.

  “She died when I was a girl.”

  The nun took the bracelet. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “My name is Irene.”

  “I am Loung.” Her fingers closed around the stones. “I have heard the story. Your mother told the abbess she was with child and asked for her blessing.” She smiled at Irene, but there was a sadness in her expression, as if they were sharing a melancholy secret. “You pursue knowledge and have a strong sense of planning. You are sober-minded too.”

  “What are you talking about?” Irene asked.

  “You were born in the Year of the Monkey. 1896.”

  A powerful feeling of déjà vu washed over Irene. But she actually had been to this temple before, although in her mother’s womb. She asked, “How do you know these things about me?”

  “Your mother and her friend saved my life.”

  “You’re the chosen one,” Irene uttered.

  “What does that mean?” Clothilde asked, spellbound by their exchange.

  Irene had forgotten that Clothilde was there, and her voice prodded Irene back to the present. “Extinguish the lamps,” she ordered Clothilde. “Take down the lanterns. If Simone wakes up and sees that I’m gone, she’ll go to the temple—she’ll find her way here. Do it now! I’ll explain later.”

  Clothilde clearly wanted to stay, but she was doing a job, and she had not finished. If she wanted the money Mr. Simms had promised her, then she would obey Irene. “I’ll come back as soon as I can,” she said.

  The moment the door closed behind her, Irene whirled to Loung and said, “You’re the one who transcribes the history.”

  “So that is it. The history. That’s why you have come.”

  “Where is it?”

  Loung could have stalled Irene, or simply lied. But without hesitation the nun walked directly toward one side of the foyer, to a timber door overlaid with silver panels adorned with tendril script. Still clutching Irene’s bracelet, she unlocked it and stepped aside.

  Irene could not get past Loung and down the long hallway quickly enough. Reaching a second door, she groped for the handle, but her sweaty fingers slipped around the metal knob. The door was heavy. She shoved with all of her strength, until it gave way, pitching her into a black room.

  “Loung?” she whispered.

  The nun did not reply, but Irene could hear the chafe of her feet on the tile floor. There was a sulfurous hiss, and Loung emerged beside a lantern mounted in a sconce. In front of her, Irene made out what seemed to be a stack of palm fronds on a table. Loung lit a second lantern, and the fronds became palm-leaf books. With a third lamp, volumes made of mulberry paper appeared upon shelves. A fourth and final lamp, and the library was revealed.

  Irene stared in amazement. Books covered the trestle table and filled the hardwood shelves against the walls. In those that were open she recognized the arabesque text, not carved on stone doorjambs, not inscribed on stone steles, but handwritten on pages made of palm leaves and lavender-hued paper. Not a single such volume was known to have survived from the time of Angkor Wat. Standing before the table, she drew her finger across the tip of a metal stylus. A wisp of black ink clung to her skin. She said, “Read something to me.”

  “What would you like to know about?” Loung asked. “His childhood? His exile in Vijaya? Even his record keeping is poetry.” She plucked a volume from one of the shelves and spread its accordion pages onto the table. “This inventory is from a storehouse in his royal treasury. Honey and beeswax and camphor,” she recited, as if the words were verse. “Parasols and silk bedding and kingfisher feathers.”

  “So everything in this room is about Jayavarman the Seventh?”

  “Yes.”

  Captivated by the thought of finding more than she had anticipated, so much more than only the scrolls, Irene asked, “The other kings, where are their libraries?”

  “What other kings?”

  “All of them.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” Loung said. “There are only records for Jayavarman here.”

  “But there were more than thirty Khmer kings. They ruled for hundreds of years. Jayavarman doesn’t even account for fifty.” Irene’s gaze darted from corner to corner, scanning the spaces between the bookshelves and beneath the table. She had been so astounded by all of the books that she had not immediately noticed what was missing from the room: the lacquer shelf described in her mother’s diary. The shelf that held the scrolls. “The history of the empire, the whole empire, not just one king. Where is it?”

  “Is that what your mother told you that you would find?”

  “I know she saw the scrolls. They were in this room, nine of them. I believe my parents had the tenth. That’s why they came here, to find the rest.”

  “And you think you are the first person to come looking for them since then?”

  Irene was distressed by the condolence in Loung’s voice. “Aren’t I?”

  “I’m sorry, Irene, if that’s what you thought you would find. You’re too late.”

  Was it possible that Stanić had gotten here first? Or Ormond? Irene’s body prickled with heat. Cold sweat ran down her spine. Grasping the corner of the table, she lowered herself to the floor. “No,” she whispered, laying her head back against the wall. “Please, no.”

  “Your mother didn’t want them,” Loung said, coming closer, watching Irene intently. “Why do you want them so badly?”

  Irene murmured, “I’m never going to know what they say.”

  “No, Irene,” Loung said, “you didn’t come all this way just to know what they say. No one has ever come all this way just to know what they say.”

  “I was going to take them back to America,” Irene confessed. “I was going to steal the scrolls and use them to cement my reputation. It used to be the only thing I could think about, but I can’t even imagine why I wanted that anymore.” She closed her eyes, as if shutting out the room could shut out the deep wave of disappointment that was rolling in with the awareness of what she had really lost. “I don’t want to go back to Seattle. I don’t belong there anymore. I belong here. I want to be a part of this.”

  “A part of what?” Loung asked.

  “There was
so much I didn’t understand about the Cambodians,” Irene said, still hiding behind the reddened shelter of her closed eyes. “I couldn’t understand it until I came over here and saw them for myself. I’d been told how far removed they are from their own history, but it was a revelation to see how much of that was forced on them by colonialism. It was also a revelation to discover that they’re not as far removed from who they once were as it may at first seem. No one wants to admit it, I haven’t wanted to admit it, but it’s careless, not to mention arrogant, to try to understand how they were able to achieve what they did in the past without understanding who they are today. Their day-to-day life could be as important in reviving their culture as how their royalty lived. Maybe even more important, since that’s what has lasted. Not the gold spires. Not the god-king hierarchies.” She sighed. “Keep them safe.”

  “Keep what safe?”

  “That’s what I would do with the scrolls. I would keep them safe. I would keep them from being exploited by people like me. But I’m too late.”

  As Irene sat on the floor, this realization sank in, and she bowed her head into her arms, listening to the rustle of Loung’s gown as the nun walked about the room. Papers were being shuffled, and something made a clicking noise on the table. Then Loung said, “Jayavarman the Seventh was an extravagant king. His lifestyle was too opulent.”

  Shaken by her defeat, Irene remained quiet.