A Woman of Angkor

by John Burgess

  The women passed through several gates. At each one Rom drew deep bows from sentries and servants.

  By the door of a kitchen, they came upon two girls eating cucumbers slices from a tray. When Rom approached, they fell silent, put hands together and lowered their heads.

  ‘Newcomers,’ whispered Rom. ‘Junior concubines. And just about as ignorant as the maids...’ She gave a smile; Bopa felt proud that such a confidence was shared with her.

  Rom led the way into a large sleeping pavilion and invited Bopa to sit. Yan sat near her mistress, feeling she needed protection. Tea was brought.

  Suddenly there came a squeal from the door, and a tiny boy came toddling in, dressed in just as tiny a sampot with silver brocade. Around his neck was an amulet, a magic one, no doubt, wrapped in cloth so that its identity would remain unknown. A wet nurse trailed behind, and behind her, a man with a knife at his waist. He looked a bit frightening, but none of the concubines paid him any attention.

  Rom took the boy on her lap, and there he sat for a while, sometimes studying Bopa and Yan, sometimes thrusting his mouth at his mother’s breast, though each time he tried she turned him away from it.

  This of course confirmed Yan’s feelings about this woman. Wet nursing is a long tradition in the palace, of course, but to see a baby denied his mother’s milk, and with no sign of regret from that mother – well, how can one think well of that? Yan shuffled a tiny bit closer to her mistress.

  ‘This is my boy, my son – Darit is his name,’ Rom announced. ‘He’s not even a year and half old yet, but already so strong. But there’s an easy enough explanation for that, isn’t there? Well, show us, Darit. Show us how you can shoot an arrow.’

  The boy struck a pose, miming the drawing of a bow. Everyone laughed in delight, even the man with the knife.

  Bopa waited for some other performance by the boy, but Rom simply gave him a hug. It seemed not an embrace of love, though, but of ownership. Then she touched the amulet, mouthed some kind of prayer, and handed him back to the nurse.

  ‘So Bopa,’ she said, ‘not many girls have a life like yours. Your father is one of the King’s closest advisers. Your mother runs the royal stores. Her influence is everywhere, though so few of us ever see her. I don’t know that I ever have – maybe just once.’

  ‘Yes, she doesn’t go around the palace much. Either she’s in the house, or in a warehouse or travelling somewhere.’

  ‘Is she at home now?’

  ‘No, she’s gone on a trip. She left yesterday morning.’

  ‘Really? Where did she go?’

  ‘Down to the port at the Freshwater Sea.’

  ‘And what’s she doing there?’

  ‘Visiting a temple that’s up on a hill there. She’s going to give it some silver, I think. I don’t know much more, really. I was taking a nap when she came in to tell me she was leaving. I fell back to sleep and when I woke up I hardly remembered talking to her.’

  ‘I’m that same way,’ laughed Rom. ‘I wake up and I can’t remember a thing.’ She laughed. ‘Well, it was so nice of you to come.’

  Yan urged her mistress to her feet. But I think Bopa was sad the visit was ending, just when she was settling in.

  They all walked to the gate.

  ‘I hope we’ll see each other again soon,’ Rom said. ‘Perhaps at the bathing pool.’

  Bopa and the maid walked home. Yan recalled that the girl was smiling so broadly that people she passed looked a second time.

  At the gate, Bopa stopped: ‘Wait! We should go back. Rom’s garment people didn’t get a chance to look at my sampot.’

  ‘On another day, mistress. On another day. But quick – come inside. Don’t you smell the rice soup?’ It was like Yan was addressing a child, don’t you think? Bopa would often respond to that kind of authority, even when she was long past the age. She passed through the gate.

  The next morning, without anyone having to rouse her, my girl went to the pool at just the same time. But Rom was not there. Nor was she the following day. Yan said the concubine must have gone out of the Capital. Bopa wouldn’t accept that. She insisted that they call at the concubine compound. So they went. The guard at the gate made the two of them wait while word was sent in. Finally, they were admitted and shown to the presence of the concubine, who smiled broadly and declared it was wonderful she’d come to visit.

  Yan felt it might be wonderful for the concubine, though she wasn’t sure why. She reaffirmed to herself that she would never let her mistress out of her sight during these visits.

  29: Sovan’s vision

  In my absence, there was that trouble for my daughter. But for my son, the seeds of something glorious. I will tell you.

  At the start of the Eighteenth Reign, my husband had decreed that our son would no longer maintain or repair the parasols, fans and whisks. I was there the evening when Nol delivered that message. You’ve learned those skills in full, he said. Quite well, in fact. Now you will supervise. You will serve only the King. You will begin leading a team that attends at court. You will never touch things in the workshop. Sawdust in the hair, gilding on the wrists, the smell and stickiness of lacquer oils on the fingers? Anyone who serves before the King must be perfectly groomed. There cannot be unseemly odours. And there is something else, Nol continued. It was one thing for you as a boy to be seen squatting in the parasol pavilion, sweating over a rip in the silk of a parasol. But if you continue this work now, as you became a man, the artisans will come to see you as no different from themselves. They will take advantage. They will pretend not to hear when you assign them unpleasant tasks. They will connive to borrow money from you or disappear on trips to their home villages. You know the kind of thing I mean, you’ve heard it. ‘Please, I must go be with my grandfather. He is not well. It could be that his time in this life is near its end.’ If all these stories were true, it would mean that every grandfather in every province of the Empire was ill all of the time.

  I said nothing that evening. These were men’s concerns. But I knew very well how my son felt. He told his father that he understood. He told him that, but when Nol was away he continued to go to the pavilion, to squat there contentedly, tools in hand, dealing with those rips in silk and the myriad other things that went wrong with the delicate creations that were stored under the pavilion’s roof. One day, when some latest repair had been completed, I saw him take up a slate and sit to the side to sketch patterns for the fabric of a future parasol. Several artisans looked over his shoulder, with interest, with respect, and offered thoughts on this new design. Take advantage? I can assure you they did not.

  This state of affairs continued until a rainy afternoon when Nol returned ahead of schedule from a trip, and saw. In the house that night, with our son kneeling before him, he delivered the sternest kind of lecture, and when my boy next stole into the pavilion, during a paternal absence, the chief artisan came near. ‘Please, master Sovan,’ he whispered, ‘please only look. If you do more than that, I will be in grave trouble with your father. He will banish me. I will have no work and my family will be without rice.’

  So from that point on, my boy left behind the tools and camaraderie of the workshop. The men and women there, whenever they saw him pass by, whispered among themselves that he seemed to have lost the serene spirit he had always displayed with them. I felt it too. Looking back, I wonder if perhaps it was more, a quiet kind of despair.

  All this occurred sometime before I fled the Capital for the Temple of the Trinity. But, about two weeks into my stay there, Heaven deigned to open for Sovan a path that was entirely new.

  One morning word reached my husband that the Brahmin Subhadra would visit a minor prince whose land lay a short distance south of the Capital. Nol decided, on the spot, to make an exception to his rule that his son would serve only the King.

  ‘Go along and oversee the bearers for the Rajaguru,’ he told Sovan. ‘And when you get to the estate, make sure you keep your ears open.’

  So
van welcomed a chance to get away from court – he never felt comfortable with that duty. But he knew there was some special reason for his father’s instruction. ‘What should I listen for, father?’

  ‘Just listen, discreetly. As they say, “catch the fish without making the water muddy.” Then come tell me what you heard.’

  At the appointed hour the next morning, Sovan arrived at the Brahmin’s house with six parasol bearers and an eight-slave palanquin. Presently Subhadra emerged, and if he felt any curiosity as to why he was being paid the honour of Sovan’s attendance, he didn’t show it. He offered greetings to the young man, then took his place in the conveyance. It was hefted to eight shoulders and the trip began. Sovan walked silently to the side, his feet raising tiny puffs of dust. It was late in the dry season. He was perspiring already.

  Right away, Sovan broached the subject of my situation – such was his devotion to me. When might it be safe for me to return to the Capital? The Brahmin gave a morose look in reply. Unfortunately, he explained, there is no news at all. His Majesty simply will not discuss it.

  An hour later, the party reached the destination, a rather small estate house that stood to the side of an ancient gum tree. The young prince who was its lord was waiting at the door with an unsettled air about him. He went to the dust for Subhadra, who thanked him and bade him get up. The slaves and bearers were directed to the back for food and water; Subhadra and Sovan and the two bearers were shown up the steps through the house’s main door, then down a hallway with floors that seemed just to have received a polishing. At the end was a small audience room.

  Subhadra and the prince took places on the mat. Sovan sat to the side; the prince’s own fan bearers would take over now.

  ‘How nicely your fields are being prepared for the rains,’ Subhadra began. ‘It was a pleasure to pass down the road and see people working with such energy. And in such heat.’

  ‘We try our hardest,’ replied the prince. ‘His Majesty has entrusted this land to us and we can only do our best to keep it at its full potential.’

  Two maids entered the room, walking on their knees in the presence of such rank, and put out tea and cut pineapple.

  When they had withdrawn, the prince said earnestly: ‘The land has been very productive in the past two years. We have more rice and animals than we can use here, in fact. If it’s not presumptive of me, I would like to propose that we increase the estate’s contribution to the royal grain stocks. I believe that a sixty-forty split would be appropriate.’

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ said Subhadra, puzzled. ‘But it’s not necessary. His Majesty’s stores already have all they can hold. As you may know, fields in the Empire as a whole have become productive with the peace that has set in under His Majesty’s blessed reign.’

  The prince seemed not to hear. ‘We have served His Majesty to the best of our ability. We fought in the northern campaign. My own brother died there, and I received a wound from a Siamese arrow. Right here.’ He twisted to show a scar above his left hip. ‘We have served, and we believe that under our guidance the land can produce far more than it could under another family...’

  ‘Please!’ said the Brahmin. ‘What is this about?’

  The prince took a moment preparing his answer. ‘Sir, with your permission, I will speak plainly. My message is that whatever I have done that has disappointed the palace, I will undo. Whatever the mistake, I will correct it. I ask for a second chance, to remain on the land, to show His Majesty my love and devotion.’

  ‘And why do you think you have disappointed?’ Subhadra had no idea.

  ‘Because...because...because there have been men from the palace inspecting the land, sir. They don’t even ask permission to come...’

  Now Subhadra smiled with a father’s affection. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘His Majesty is entirely pleased with your stewardship. There is no problem. In fact, the work of the men you have seen may result in a remarkable honour for you and your family.’

  ‘Whatever this honour might be, we don’t deserve it.’

  ‘Let me explain,’ said Subhadra. ‘In fact, this is the reason that I am here at your estate today. The King has been on the throne for five years now. It is time to begin the great project that anchors every great reign, construction of a mountain-temple. The Temple of the Eighteenth Reign will be dedicated to our Lord Shiva and, as you can appreciate, will contain countless lingas reflecting Shiva’s great generative powers. The temple will be His Majesty’s citadel on earth, his place for private devotions and the conducting of an annual cycle of rituals. Now, the palace geomancers have been conducting investigations to determine the perfect site for the monument. They have drawn lines on charts, in consultation with the texts and priests, they have made observations of the sun and stars and their movements in the sky during the annual cycle. There are different ways to carry this out, you might know, and from different ways come different results. But what I have come to tell you is that by one formulation, the lines of divination intersect at a point on your estate.’ He paused to let this sink in. ‘That’s why those strange men have been coming here – they are surveyors, seeing if they can confirm on the land what the charts show on palm leaf. They could not, of course, announce to you their purpose in coming.’

  My son was paying special attention now. This was the news his father had predicted and to Sovan it was interesting in its own right.

  The Brahmin continued. ‘If your land is selected – and that decision has not been made, I must tell you – then the first ground will be broken early next year. Foundations will be dug, great stores of building materials will be brought.’

  Now you can imagine how the shock that the prince’s face had been displaying turned to elation. Then his head went straight to the mat, hitting it with a bump that made my son suppress a smile. ‘I thank His Majesty, sir,’ the man murmured into the straw. ‘I thank the lords of Heaven for an honour of this sort.’

  ‘We expect that the mountain-temple and its moats and outer walls and lands would occupy about a quarter of your estate,’ the Brahmin said. ‘It might become necessary for you and your family to vacate this house. You would of course be compensated, with silver and comparable land and residence elsewhere.’

  ‘I would need no compensation, sir. The honour would be enough.’

  Subhadra had lived in the Capital long enough to know that this young prince might come around to the idea of being paid.

  Then the priest turned quite serious. ‘This information must remain entirely confidential. If it becomes known, there will be the most serious kind of trouble for everyone involved.’ He cast an intimidating glare toward the fan bearers and my son. ‘You may know that when word of this gets out, land around the edges of the site that will be needed for construction staging, huts for the workers and things like that. This land will tend to change hands and to rise very quickly in price. There is even a family in the city whose fortune began with a bribe given a man in the palace surveyor’s office for advance word on the site of the temple of a previous reign. These people bought the site and everything around it. When it came time to build, they sold it back to the crown at a very high price, which they negotiated with the very man whom they’d bribed for the information in the first place. No doubt he got part of the sale price himself. Anyway, we are determined there will be no repeat of that sort of thing.’

  ‘I give my sacred word,’ replied the prince. ‘There will be no disclosure from this side.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that. I’m told the site is a place the local people call the Field of Three Spirits. His Majesty’s chief architect is on his way here to have a look.’

  My son was excited at that news – he was going to see the man who created temples.

  Presently the bells of an approaching procession were heard. The men rose and went to the house’s front door. A covered palanquin carried by slaves had come into view, and on it sat the Architect. He was at this point already getting on in years
, but he retained a lean face and physique that showed few effects of age. Sovan took note of everything about him and his entourage. At the door, he hopped to the ground in an impatient way, as if he’d have preferred the quicker transportation of his own feet. He traded quiet words with two young men who’d followed his palanquin in. They carried woven-straw bags and long-bladed knives and seemed to be assistants.

  The young prince crouched and made an offer of refreshments, but the Architect waved it off, despite the heat. ‘What I’d like,’ he announced, ‘is to see the site.’

  The prince pointed the way, a narrow path that ran south from the estate house. In hardly an instant the Architect was striding down it, in the lead. He moved so fast that bearers whom the prince ordered along with a couple of small parasols had trouble keeping him in shade. The Brahmin chose to stay behind; it was too hot for this kind of exertion.

  After ten minutes of this brisk pace, the prince called from behind for a stop. ‘This is it, sir. The Field of Three Spirits.’

  Now my son felt some disappointment. The place seemed nothing special, just a collection of rice fields like any other, dry, barren, awaiting the rains, broken here and there by copses that had never been cleared and by the piled dirt of termite nests.

  The Architect looked to a small promontory, covered with thick weeds and bushes. He turned to one of his assistants: ‘Hack us a path up that thing.’ The young man took out a long-bladed knife and began slashing.

  Sovan was last in line, and when he reached the top, he turned by himself and looked again to the fields.

  He would always remember what happened next – he told me many times about it. From this new height, from this different vantage point, Heaven caused something remarkable. Paddy dikes, stretching toward the horizon, seemed to my boy to hint of a broad avenue. Fallow fields to the right and left evoked sacred moats. A distant tree line, shimmering due to the heated air, seemed very much like a body of stone, with five gently curving peaks atop it, shaped like lotus blossoms. What he saw might have been man-made, my boy told me, or it might have been placed there by the gods. He closed his eyes, and everything came into even sharper focus. He was standing at a great gate, looking down a long avenue that gave onto a great stone citadel, larger than anything he’d ever seen. He was looking at Heaven on earth.