A Woman of Angkor

by John Burgess

  The man said nothing. He didn’t move, or display any fear and this seemed to anger Vin. The young prince began dancing around him, the point of the knife striking out again and again.

  ‘You don’t talk much, do you? Just like her.’

  The knife shot closer in, this time etching a small line of blood on a shoulder.

  The man looked to me and with a flick of his head, said, run! I watched. I was unable to get up.

  Vin continued the dance and opened more of these minor cuts. Then he stepped back and seemed to consider something. He raised the knife high, held it there an instant, then brought it down lightning-fast on the left side of the man’s head.

  ‘Got it!’ he shouted.

  Then the little man came alive, and his shovel moved in an arc. Vin sprang back, but not soon enough. The shovel’s blade caught him full on the side of the head, digging deeply in. He went down heavy as a sack of rice.

  I was on my feet now, telling myself to run. But then I saw the little man sink to his knees, clutching the side of his head.

  I asked: ‘What can I do?’

  He did not respond, but closed his eyes, and I saw blood running through his fingers, down his neck.

  My sampot lay a few steps away, tangled in some brush. I went to it and tore a piece off.

  ‘Here. Use this.’

  He took it without a word, and pressed it to his head and looked away. I stepped back and, feeling shame, put on what was left of my garment.

  I asked: ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Nol. I was passing by on the road and I heard you. Are you all right, then? Your mouth…’

  ‘I’m not all right. But neither are you.’

  ‘Nor him,’ he said. Vin lay still. ‘I guess I hit him with the sharp side, not the flat one.’ He turned away, remorseless. ‘Come on, I’ll take you back to your house.’

  I couldn’t go there. ‘No, no, I need to go somewhere else, not around here, back to my real place.’

  I turned and began walking quickly. The main district road was just ahead; I would follow in reverse the route by which the cart had brought me here. I was pretty sure I could remember the way. I reached the road and began to hurry down it, then realized I should not be in the open. I’d be seen. I turned down a small path that cut through forest land. But in a few minutes, I felt afraid to be alone with the creatures and spirits of the wood, and perhaps the ghost of the dead son, flying through the thick foliage in pursuit. My mouth, I noticed now, was strangely warm and wet, with a taste in it. I stopped. I heard footsteps, but this time they were comforting.

  I waited for this man Nol to catch up. He said: ‘Wherever it is you want to go, I’ll take you.’ He was still holding the cloth to his head.

  ‘It’s a long way.’

  ‘That’s all right – I can go. Wait – you’re bleeding too. We have to find a place for you to wash.’

  I looked down. My breasts were streaked with something red. My hand went to my mouth and I realized there was a strange taste there, a wetness of blood. My fingers found a gap. Vin’s blow had knocked out a tooth, one in the back.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ I said, turning from him. I felt ashamed again.

  We walked, the little man now in the lead, his shovel in his hand. He seemed to have an instinct for avoiding people. We circled a settlement unseen; just beyond it, he signalled me to step off the path. We crouched in the vegetation, ants labouring silently around us, while a pair of farmers passed. Then we rose, and he led me further. When we came to a pond, we waded in to wash, I turning my back to him, then stealing looks to make sure he had not abandoned me. When I was clean, I made him lift the rag away from his head, and I winced when I saw there was no ear. It had been cut clean away.

  ‘I brought it with us. Your tooth too.’

  ‘What?’ I was horrified again. He motioned to his waist, where he had stuck a folded rag.

  Six hours later, with a three-quarter moon overhead, we approached the home for parentless girls. Faint voices carried out from over the wall. So carefree, they were – it was almost sleeping time in the pavilion. They would be unrolling their mats now.

  I told this man Nol that we would wait until everyone had settled down, then I would go inside. I sat down by a ditch; he joined me, keeping a proper distance.

  I asked: ‘Do you suppose he got up after we left?’ I would have been both relieved and terrified if he had.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘They’ll come after us, won’t they?’

  ‘Yes. But that doesn’t mean they’ll catch us.’

  I wondered how he could be so calm. Even if there were not magistrates coming after us, there was still the ghost, whose presence I could feel nearby. I shuddered.

  Later I entered the gate and crept to the priest’s quarters. I called to him softly through the door. He lit a lamp and came outside, and gasped when he saw me – my mouth was blue and swollen. He went for a cloth and dabbed my lips, putting aside for the moment his vows of never touching a woman. Then I sat before him and told the story. He listened solemnly. And when I told him that this man Nol who had rescued me was outside, he insisted that we go to him.

  ‘It’s a brave thing you’ve done,’ the priest told him.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘You saved the girl who’s the most decent, the most innocent and faultless in the whole Empire. Now, your name is Nol?’

  ‘It is, sir.’

  ‘What is your occupation?’

  ‘I am a clearer of silt from canals, sir.’

  ‘Are you married, Nol?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Do you have a family that relies on you?’

  ‘No, sir. I am alone.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Nowhere, sir. I travel. I was walking through the district, on my way to a job on the southern coast.’

  The priest looked at him hard in the dark. ‘Well then, Nol, you must forget about that job and do something more important. You must take this girl to the Capital, without anyone taking notice, and you must protect her and find a place for her to live. You must behave honourably toward her; you will be all she has.’

  ‘No!’ I cried. ‘I have to go back and tell the rich man what happened.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ replied the priest. ‘A member of a noble family has been killed. He was a corrupt one, a criminal, it is clear, but if you go back you will never get a chance to explain. I will say prayers to try to assuage the man’s ghost. I will give you some rice and silver, and an introduction to a cousin I have in the Capital. He is a priest, and he will do what he can for you. And when some time has passed, I will go to the patron and talk to him privately, and tell him what happened. Maybe he will be ready to hear it then, from me. He is a good man.’

  He went back to his cell. Presently he returned with a note to that cousin, and with food and things in a bag and a cloth wet with cream to prevent infection. He took the rag which contained the ear and tooth and promised to deal with them with fire, as should happen with any fleshly loss.

  Then the priest gave a whispered blessing, and ordered us to go.

  Six days later, we reached the Capital, having encountered no real trouble on the way. Still bearing the dust of the road, I knelt at the first shrine for humble folk that we came to. It was in front of the mountain-temple Pre Rup. Thus did Bronze Uncle hear my first prayer. Nol did not pray; he stood back and kept watch. We found the cousin and on his advice we built a house in the out-of-the-way neighbourhood behind the temple. After some time, Nol resumed work as a clearer of silt. I began selling duck eggs in the market, but I gave most of my earnings as offerings at the shrine. Each day I prayed to Bronze Uncle, seeking forgiveness and intercession for my role in the young prince’s death. I knew, of course, that he was probably my husband’s murderer, yet this second killing would not have followed had a foolish girl not offered temptation by walking in the forest alone.

  It was my hope
, of course, that this stay in the Capital would be of limited length. After some time we would receive word from the old priest that he had gone to the estate and convinced the patron that we deserved forgiveness, or at least some lesser punishment. But then, several weeks after we arrived, there came quite different news. The cousin sought us out to tell us that the priest had suddenly died. How I wept that night, for the soul of this remarkable man, but, I will confess it, for my own sake as well. Clearly he had not yet gone to the estate – he would have sent word right away. This life as a fugitive was to be my life forever.

  Now, it was safer if people thought that Nol and I were a married couple, so in public we behaved as one. But in private, no. Nol could have imposed himself on me – I had nothing of my own, no money, no place to go. But he always behaved with the utmost honour, as if the old priest’s commission outside the temple that night remained ever in his mind. Other women might have begun to wonder if he really was a canal dredger by birth, but I did not. I merely saw him as a man who was devoted to me, devoted far more than I deserved. In the house at night, he always turned his back when I removed my garment to prepare for sleep. He unrolled his mat well apart from mine. I would blow out the lamp, and sometimes fall asleep right away. Other times we would talk for a while, in whispers, in the darkness. It was always according to my whim; he never insisted on anything.

  One day he came home with something white and delicate in straw wrappings. A mosquito net. It was for me alone, of course. He had saved his silver, in secret, putting aside bits of it for months, and he bought the net, even though when at night we strung it up with yarn and I went inside it, he would feel the barrier between us to be all the greater.

  This situation continued for perhaps six months, maybe a year. I have no clear memory. What changed? I cannot say exactly. Perhaps it is that Heaven does not intend that a young man and woman live in proximity this way indefinitely. Either the two must grow apart, becoming impatient and cross with each other, or they must come closer together. All I know is that one morning, as I folded the net to put it away, I decided that this life would not go on. I went to Bronze Uncle. I placed my bit of silver in the tray, I lit a stick of incense and I said one more prayer seeking peace with the dead prince’s ghost. And then I said another, for dispatch to the soul of my late husband. I said to him, silently, my love, please grant forgiveness for what I am soon to do. I don’t mean to abandon you, but since you have gone ahead and I remain behind in this life until such time that Heaven decides differently, I must move on to the next phase of it, to be united with another man, to have children. I do believe that my words reached his soul, and that he gave approval.

  That night, I bathed at our rainwater jar for an extra-long time, I put on scent I had bought in the market. In the house, after darkness fell, I put up the net as usual and went inside it. I did nothing to signal to Nol that tonight would be different. I was having second thoughts. But then Nol unrolled his mat across the room, as he always did, and I had before me proof again of what an honourable man he was, living at close quarters yet never taking advantage. So…I came out of the net, bringing my mat. I rolled it out alongside his. How shocked he was! There was no talk between us, just awkward silence. For a long time we lay there in the darkness, on our backs, our upper arms touching. He was trembling. It was going to be up to me. And so I rolled over, and I pressed myself to him, and we proceeded from there. Even in the darkness, I could see his deformity, but it seemed not repulsive but yet more proof of his courage and devotion to me, a sign again that Heaven intended that we should now live in this intimate way.

  I believe I was the first for him, though a wife can never ask her husband such a thing.

  Let me finish the story now – it is almost done. Not long after that first night, Nol and I were formally united in a rite conducted by the priest cousin. No one else was present. Just before the start of the rains the following year, I gave birth to a baby girl. But she was sickly, unable to feed from my breast. Her spirit departed after only eight days. I was grief-stricken. The following year, Heaven smiled on us. We welcomed another child, a strong one, a boy. We called him Sovan.

  16: Freedom

  Let my story return now to the prince’s compound in the Capital. I was becoming a trader and learning how to read. My girl had found a few friends. Life was stable. But there was still no sign of my husband and son. And even if I had come to learn that they were in no danger, it is Heaven’s design, is it not, that a family will be together, a wife at her husband’s side.

  So I formed the notion that Bopa and I should go to the Upper Empire and find Nol and my boy.

  Probably four weeks passed between that thought and the day that Bopa and I put spare garments, a brush and a few other essential items in shoulder bags. Early the next morning, we walked to the compound’s gate. Mrs Pala would see to the business of supplying the prince’s household while I was gone. I felt a bit guilty. We were in essence sneaking away. I had not told Mr Narin of my plan – I knew he would be concerned, and see it as his own fault in some way, and try to talk us out of it.

  But what a sense of liberation I felt as we passed through the gate and walked on, moving fast in case someone came after us. We were on our own! Perhaps you have guessed, but this was another big part of the reason why I wanted to make this journey.

  In my life, to travel had always meant to walk, but this trip’s distance was going to be so long that I knew our feet would not be up to it. Certainly my daughter’s would not. So we went to the north gate of the city, and there, in exchange for a few silver pebbles, we got our first ride, on a farmer’s oxcart returning empty to an estate a day’s journey up the trunk road. At a crossroads, we picked up another cart, going toward the mountain pass, and after that another. Most of the drivers were pleasant, helpful men, who welcomed the company on the long journey, but a few looked on us in the wrong way, especially when we were passing through strange forest land. In those cases, I made a point of working into the conversation a mention that my daughter and I were of Prince Indra’s household. That never failed to correct any troublesome behaviour.

  What a long trip it was – I had no real idea of the size of our great realm – and there were times my girl pled that we turn around. But after twelve days we reached the estate where the last report had placed the prince and his entourage. There was no sign of an army, though. I should not have hoped for that. We could not expect to find Nol and Sovan in the first place we looked. But at least it was true that the prince and his people had been there, until about ten days earlier.

  We heard all about it as we sat eating and drinking that evening in the estate’s guest pavilion. Servants, retainers, farmers crowded around to hear our story and to tell theirs. Happily the estate’s lord was away.

  From their accounts, it seemed that across the Upper Empire, Indra’s army on the march had become a familiar sight. He was on a mission to secure this entire part of the realm and root out any other traitorous lords who had secret dealings with the Siamese. People at the estate talked about the visit as if it had happened just an hour before. First came the scouts, restless young men on snorting mounts. Next a dozen fighting elephants, plumes on their heads, red silk drapes flapping from their sides, followed by the prince himself, in jewelled armlets, atop an elephant, with four parasols aloft. Then chariots, cavalry, archers, great ranks of spearmen. Finally, an extended tail of camp followers – wives, children, cooks, prostitutes, baggage wagons, scruffy brown dogs quick to fight over anything edible that the column cast off.

  It seemed that when the prince’s throng entered your district, the only sensible response was to put face to dirt and submit. That was what had happened here. There was no fighting, no resistance of any kind. Farmers presented rice, fish and fruit in baskets to soldiers and found places for them to sleep, often in houses made empty for that purpose. The estate’s lord came to the prince with a higher grade of gifts: heirloom swords, silver boxes, samples of the dist
rict’s specialty honey wine, a jar of ritual bath water that signified the lord was no more than a body servant to the prince. The lord also brought a daughter, wearing her finest sampot, as a candidate concubine. Bopa perked up on hearing this; I wished that that particular detail had been withheld.

  And, I asked, what of the parasol master and his son? Oh yes! they replied. The parasol master was always at the prince’s side, walking by the elephant, so attentive to every detail in the fans, the fly whisks, the other beautiful and delicate accoutrements that he oversaw. The boy? The same – scrambling to serve the prince, to serve his father. In Sovan’s case, at least, I felt that our hosts were saying what they assumed we wanted to hear. Never mind. They had seen the both of them alive and well.

  Now, as we sat eating that night, there was one man, the estate’s granary manager, who said nothing for the longest time, but then he spoke up to observe that theft and drunkenness on the part of the prince’s men had been something of a problem. The estate’s rice stocks were now well down and there was no divine explanation he could think of. There was also the issue, he said, of soldiers paying attention to females who weren’t on offer. That was as far as he got – other retainers him cut off and said no, it wasn’t like that at all. Eyes began darting to me. Clearly people worried I would report these remarks as disloyal. I felt the best I could do was change the subject. I did, but not before the granary man got one more point in. ‘If we had to grovel, at least we grovelled at the feet of a prince who looks chosen by Heaven.’ That brought nods all around.

  I asked, so where had Indra’s army gone? Everyone knew the answer. The prince was eager for a real fight. No Siamese were to be found around here, so he had set out for their districts to the north.

  ‘Your husband,’ said one of the retainers, ‘helped persuade the prince to take that step.’

  ‘What? That cannot be.’