by John Burgess
A Woman of
Angkor
A Novel
John Burgess
First published and distributed in 2013 by
River Books
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Tel. 66 2 622-1900, 224-6686
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Copyright collective work © River Books, 2013
Copyright text © John Burgess
Copyright photographs © John Burgess,
except where otherwise indicated.
eBook Copyright © River Books 2013
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Editor: Narisa Chakrabongse
Production supervision: Paisarn Piemmattawat
Cover design and photographs: Paisarn Piemmattawat
Design: Reutairat Nanta
Map: Richard Furno
ISBN 978 616 7339 25 2
Printed and bound in Thailand
by Bangkok Printing Co., Ltd.
To Karen
Historical Note
The Khmer Empire ruled much of Southeast Asia for six and a half centuries, uniting lands of present-day Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. Its people lived and died in the belief they had a divinely commanded mission: Build heaven on earth. With strength and artistic vision rarely seen in human history, they toiled generation after generation to construct scores of ‘mountain-temples’ that replicate the Hindu cosmos in stone, sculpture and epic vastness. The focus of this energy was the capital, Angkor, Great Holy City.
Like all civilisations, this one reached its peak, then unravelled. Angkor was largely abandoned to the jungle half a millennium ago, for reasons that remain unclear. But its temples, shrouded in tropical growth, endured, awaiting rediscovery by the outside world. They are today drawing ever-larger numbers of foreign visitors. Awe is never in short supply. Whether the language is French or English, Greek or Japanese, the question is asked over and over: how was it possible to build such things?
The names of Kings and a few court notables have survived. Of the personal histories of millions of people lower down in society, absolutely nothing is known. What follows is a tale of one of the forgotten, a woman whose life coincided with construction of the greatest of the mountain-temples, Angkor Wat. Her story opens in the year Europeans marked as 1110 AD. The heat and privation of dry season have just ended; the rains are falling again, opening a new cycle in the sometimes tempestuous compact between Heaven and humankind.
Characters
Sray, wife of Nol
Nol, husband of Sray
Bopa, their daughter
Sovan, their son
Subhadra, the Brahmin priest
Narin, the priest’s scribe
Prince Indra, Nol’s master
Princess Benjana, Indra’s wife
Aroon, son of Indra and Benjana
Rom, concubine of Indra
Darit, son of Indra and Rom
Heng, Nol’s father
Prince Vira, Nol’s father’s master
Prince Teng, usurper of the estate
Sen, sergeant in the palace guard
Pala, Sray’s assistant
Chen, the Chinese merchant
Veng, Nol’s senior bearer
Yan, Bopa’s maid
Da, Sray’s maid
Rit, Prince Indra’s military commander
Kiri, keeper of the King’s cattle
Ton, Prince Aroon’s riding instructor
The Architect, builder of temples
Pin, assistant on the architectural team
Sao, the cart driver
Koy, Sray’s first husband
Vin, elder brother at the estate
Grandmother Som, Sray’s stand-in mother
Kumari, the holy elephant
Sadong, Kumari’s mahout
Part One
Recalled to Service
What if I’d told my husband no, no, we must reject the priest’s command, we must take the children and run away. I will do it on my own if you don’t agree. To this day I have wondered what our life would have been had I somehow acted in that way. I did voice questions, but my husband pushed them aside as visions of wealth and prominence took hold. Back then, I rarely challenged him. I placed myself under his protection in times of danger and followed his lead, as I had done at the very first moment we met.
I have wondered too which gods and ghosts played a role in the events of that day, though I know a life’s course is not set by a single intervention of the divine. Heaven steers us constantly, like an oxcart driver flicking a long-stemmed reed at his animals’ rumps to keep to the desired direction. Yet up until the priest’s arrival, everything that had happened seemed somehow inconclusive, a preparation about which Heaven might change its mind.
I will begin my story on that day, the day on which I enjoyed my last moments of true peace. Some things that I will tell you I saw with my own eyes. Others I did not and will describe in the way I believe they happened. All of them I will attempt to recount in a spirit of acceptance. Yet I know that when I retire to my mat tonight I will be unable to sleep. Lying in the darkness, I will wish again that a different plan had been devised for me. I will wish that the priest never came, that the King’s eye never fell on me, that a rebellion was never mounted in my name. Sleep will come only when I succeed in imagining that I was allowed to live out my life as the village girl I was born.
1: The Brahmin
Brahmin priests chart the turnings of the cosmic engine. They counsel princes and craft judgments of holy law. But concerning simpler things, such as getting where they want to go? They often need some help.
Perhaps that is why I felt no apprehension when I first caught sight of the priest that rainy season afternoon. All I saw was a man who looked to be lost, and my sympathy went to him. With two soldier-guards, he had arrived on foot at the tiny settlement in the Capital’s eastern reaches that was home to my family at the time. Then he began a search for someone or something that wasn’t being found. He went first down one lane, then retreated from it and tried another, striding past a puddle and scavenging rooster, only to come back out from that one too. Rather, I should say that he and his guards and a small crowd did these things. Word of this visit had spread – could it really be that a man of high holy orders was muddying his toes in our humble quarter? More and more people were finding cause to step out of their homes for a look. A few bold children were following right on the heels of the priest, who did his best to pretend he didn’t notice.
He was tall, perhaps in his thirty-fifth year, and of course he was wearing the white silk garment that marks members of his sect. A silver neckpiece hung across his chest. His hair and whiskers were turning colour sooner than his age might suggest, as if they wanted to match that neckpiece.
These details I took in as I stood watching, unnoticed by anyone. It was not for a woman to approach and offer assistance. But neither did I want to be part of making this man an afternoon’s entertainment, so I told myself to continue on home.
But before I could, he spoke to one of his soldiers.
‘Ask, then.’
The man at arms stamped the base of his spear in the dirt, then called out to no one in particular.
‘Where is the house of the man known as Nol One-Ear?’
My husband! The breath went straight out of me.
Recalling that moment still causes me dread. But let me
try to put it aside. I could see that people were surprised that a visitor as fancy as this was looking for Nol. In their minds, Nol was just the little man with an ear on one side of his head and none on the other. A man of no consequence, a petty thief, no doubt, who’d been caught and paid the price. And on top of that, a canal dredger. That is how he earned his rice in those days. Day after day he would head for places around the Capital that had need of his labour, the clearing of muck from the bottoms of silted-up moats and canals. He would stand chest-deep in the water, lifting up load after load of the black stuff with arms that had grown thick from years of this repetition. The local men laughed at him, but I think not a few were afraid of him. He never cowered in the way expected of someone who is missing an ear.
To my left were two old bent-backed women, oblivious to me. ‘Surely it’s not Nol he wants,’ said one. ‘It’s Sray. He’s going to call her as a concubine for a prince.’
‘Oh! What a pity she’ll be taken,’ came the reply. And after a moment: ‘But strange that it took so long. As the epic says, “Pure and beautiful, she glows like the moon behind clouds.”’
I tell you this with hesitation. Likening me to the divine Sita, consort of our Lord Rama! There is no resemblance, in appearance or in character.
I found my wits and backed away. Panic was setting in. I raced the short distance to our house by a round-about way. I clambered up the bamboo steps, breathless and tearful. Just then the priest and his soldiers appeared from the side. They had come by the direct way, led by the settlement’s headman.
Nol was at home, thank goodness. Alarmed at my state, he dropped the bowl of cold greens and rice he’d half eaten and came quickly to me. There was no time to find the children and run away, no time to explain. All I could do was huddle at his side, for some false feeling of safety. His arm drew me close.
Now the priest was splashing his feet in the earthen pan at the base of our steps. I froze, listening to that sound, which normally was a welcome sign that husband or child had returned at day’s end. Now the priest was climbing the steps. The house trembled, as I did. Nol’s response was to hold me tighter. Whatever happens, I will take the lead, he was telling me. I will not abandon you.
The day had begun with no sign that something terrible might happen. I rose before dawn and cooked the first rice of the day on my clay brazier. Our boy and girl came to eat. Soon they left the house to wander with others in search of amusement, as children do. Nol went out to look over a potential dredging job and I to engage in my own trade, the selling of duck eggs at the market.
Everything unfolded in its normal, reassuring way. At mid-afternoon, I walked down the eastern trunk road toward the great mountain-temple Pre Rup.
As I drew nearer, the temple showed itself in stages. First the central tower that points the way to Heaven, then the sacred heights of brick and stone, guarded by sculpted lions. And finally, as I passed a stand of gum trees, the walls and gates and moats. The sun was beginning its daily gift to the temple, rays that have softened from their midday prime and in the hour before dusk will dress each of the bricks in a scarlet glow.
The ground beneath me was becoming more holy with each step. I paused to put hands together to show respect to the temple. But of course I was not going there. Like all of the mountain-temples, it was a place for priests and nobles, not a woman who sells eggs at the market. Rather, my feet were taking me to my usual destination, the shrine that stands just outside the moats, perhaps a hundred paces from the temple’s eastern gate.
The shrine is quite elaborate now, but in those days it was small and simple, barely taller than I. Just a weathered wooden box on four posts, a bit of thatch on top to ward off the rain. How old? From well before my birth in this life, certainly. Perhaps it was built by humans, perhaps by the god who lived inside. His name was Bronze Uncle. At least, that is what we called him, inspired by the kindly metal visage that was his greeting to worshippers.
I knelt and lit a stick of incense, then placed a lotus blossom at his feet. I had picked it not a quarter hour earlier; the god smiled down upon its freshness. I said a prayer. Then I took in hand an old reed broom that lay waiting and swept the area in front. There wasn’t really anything to sweep up, but I wished to show the god that his servant was making herself useful. After that, I sat down to the side to see if anyone else would come and need a lotus as an offering. Such things are usually sold but I always gave them away for nothing. I don’t say that as a boast. It was simply that it was my privilege to attend this god. He had done too many things to count for me and my family.
No other worshipper came that afternoon. I savoured a breeze and the faint clink of bells on an oxcart that passed unseen behind me on the trunk road. It came time to leave. I rose, placed a silver pebble and the rest of the blossoms before the deity and began the walk home. The sun was hiding for a bit now. The sky had reached that pregnant stage of late day in the monsoon season, clouds gathering purposefully, about to bless the earth with another shower. I looked up. I remember thinking how lovely the first drops would feel on my skin.
Our settlement lay to the west of the temple, on a rise just high enough to keep from flooding in the rainy season. You turned off the trunk road, followed a trail through forest for a minute or two and there it was, a clutch of thatch-and-bamboo houses with banana trees spread among them. By now you would catch the scent of charcoal cooking fires and the calls of playing children. No different, really, from a hundred other quarters in the Capital city that we call Angkor. On this day, this walk too proceeded by the routine, until I neared the houses and saw the Brahmin.
And now he was standing in our doorway, a large, foreboding outline, lit from behind like some avenging deity. I went straight to the floor, pressing my face hard against the bamboo slats. Nol did the same, though not as quickly as I. He insisted on keeping an eye in the direction of the man, though of course he did not look straight at him.
The priest stood motionless for a moment more. ‘I won’t be invited in?’
That was not what I was expecting to hear, of course. My husband and I murmured assent, keeping our faces down. The priest stooped to pass through the door, then, getting no guidance from me, he lowered himself slowly onto the house’s main mat. I remember he let off a barely discernible groan from some ache of midlife.
Another troubling silence followed. I stole a glance out the doorway. Not twenty paces from the house stood one of those sturdy-shouldered soldiers, clutching his spear. I resigned myself. It would not be possible to run and in any case we could not abandon our son and daughter. Where were they? They must not come back right now, I thought – may Heaven keep them away!
The silence continued. Then, from his place on the mat, the Brahmin said: ‘You won’t offer me something to drink?’
I shuffled on my knees to the wooden box where I kept the only thing of value that we had in those days, a Chinese tea set of blue and white porcelain. It was the kind you might see in the house of a rich merchant, arrayed on an elegant teak tray. The pot and cups are so smooth, so shiny, that you think they will improve the taste of the tea they hold. I filled a cup. With trembling hands – I worried the priest would take the shaking as a sign of disrespect – I placed the cup on the mat in front of him. That done, I moved back to my place beside Nol, feeling some tiny portion of safety there.
The priest looked down at the tea and, after a moment’s consideration, decided it was fit to drink and brought cup to lips. His eyes moved around the room with silent disapproval, taking in mats, brazier, and the upended bowl that Nol had dropped. I only noticed the bowl now. As quietly as I could, I reached out a hand and set it right.
The priest’s eyes came back to us.
‘I am sent by command of Prince Indra, Whose Arrows Darken the Sky, Holder of the Third Rank, Trusted of the Gods.’
The words were recited with a certain weariness. But my husband and I pressed our faces to the floor again before even the first title was out. Our
voices returned. ‘May we be worthy to gaze upon the dust of his feet,’ we responded, in a murmur lest we sound too eager to do even that.
I waited for the next words from the priest. But it was my husband who spoke up, in a voice whose steadfastness seemed at odds with our precarious situation. ‘Sir, it should be known from the start that whatever was done was by my hand alone, and that this woman my wife had no role whatsoever.’
‘That isn’t true!’ The words flew out of my mouth like a startled bird.
‘You must pay her no mind, sir,’ Nol said, refusing to look my way. ‘She is a woman who tells lies by second nature, even before an image at a shrine.’
‘Husband! How can you say such a thing?’
‘You must ignore anything that she may try to...’
‘WILL YOU BOTH BE QUIET!’
The priest spoke sternly, yet I could sense that such a tone did not come naturally. I felt less threatened.
‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Now, then. I need some information. Are you the man known as Nol One-Ear?’
‘Of course,’ Nol replied, because this was self-evident. ‘I don’t deny it.’ He turned his head to demonstrate; the Brahmin frowned.
I looked to my husband. I was stunned. I only now grasped that he had been speaking the language of the palace, fluently. Like many people, I could make out the basics but I never dared try to speak it.
The Brahmin continued. ‘Are you the son of the late Heng, who was parasol master to the late Prince Vira?’
Now this question startled Nol, and there was a long pause. Then he answered, with dignity: ‘Sir, I am.’
‘Were you raised at the Chaiyapoom estate of the late Prince Vira in the Upper Empire?’
‘I was.’
‘And your father died at the time of Prince Vira’s own passing, is that right?’