A Woman of Angkor

by John Burgess

  Then, he opened his eyes. Before him was dry paddy land again.

  He glanced about, a bit frightened, I think, wondering if anyone else in the group had seen. But no. They were all looking in the opposite direction, in fact, following the Architect’s lead.

  ‘It’s a fine site,’ the man was telling the host prince in his gruff way. ‘I thank you for showing it to us. Now we’re going to look around for a while.’ There was an awkward pause. The prince was being dismissed, on his own land. My boy sensed that it wasn’t really his anymore.

  The prince turned to descend from the hillock, but one of the assistants spoke up to him – what forwardness that was, but such was the honour and responsibility of assisting the Architect that they could break the rules. ‘We will need a parasol. Not a ceremonial one like this, but a real one, for real shade. And a bearer.’

  Sovan said instantly: ‘I’ll take care of it.’ He too felt invested with this man’s authority.

  He hurried back to the prince’s house, got a servant to show him the shed where the shades were stored, then returned to the site with a large white one. By now the Architect had left the mound and was standing alone, in thought, in a patch of ground that had never been cleared for cultivation. Those two assistants hovered nearby. One was holding a wooden box taken from his shoulder bag. It was a sort of portable desk, and on it was a piece of slate for writing.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the man when Sovan raised the parasol over him. ‘There are times when you actually need these things.’

  Then he surprised my son by dropping to a squat, right there in the dust, like a farmer. A small spade was in the left hand of this great man. He drove it firmly into ground, turned some soil over, then placed a pinch in his right palm. He brought eyes close and explored the sample with index finger, flicking away a pebble and a dead root. He sniffed. He touched finger to tongue and reflected on the taste for a moment. All this Sovan watched as closely as he dared.

  The Architect tossed the dirt aside and shuffled on his haunches to another spot, Sovan doing his best to keep him in shade. The process of examination began again.

  Finally, the Architect turned to the assistant with the slate: ‘Medium solid, some lime. No signs of clay at the surface. Quite good, all around.’ The words were written down with a piece of chalk.

  ‘All right. We’ll walk a bit now.’

  He repeated this procedure in four other places around the fields. Then he called to his assistants. ‘Now show me the holes.’

  The party moved to a circular pit, dug by the men whose presence had so concerned the young prince and, you will now understand, the people of the village my husband and I owned to the west of the site. The pit had the diameter of an outstretched arm and went a bit deeper than a standing man, with clean, sheer walls inside, and some water at the bottom. The assistants lifted their master by the arms, and lowered him in. Another remarkable sight! He spent some extended time down there, squinting close-up at the walls, running fingers over them, muttering, probing the mud beneath him with his toes. He called to Sovan. It was either ‘Boy, shade me, will you? It’s hot down here.’ Or ‘Boy, move that parasol out of the way, I want the sunlight to fall directly on the wall of the hole.’

  Later the man began a walking inspection of the entire site, tramping through bramble bushes, up and over more mounds and termite piles, past a nearly barren stream where a pair of turtles sunned themselves seemingly unaware of the great disruption that might be visited upon their home. Nothing escaped the man’s attention. At a gully baked dry and cracking, he ordered the assistants to run a long cord from one side to another, then pull it tight and measure the length of another cord that from the middle of the first hung down to the ground. Sovan watched every step. A King subdues enemy princes and armies to create an Empire. This man was going to subdue land, trees and water to create something which – who could say? – might last longer than an Empire.

  The work concluded in late afternoon. On the walk back to the prince’s house, my boy summoned up some courage and asked: ‘Is the soil solid enough to build here, sir?’

  The man at first seemed annoyed, but then he replied. ‘Yes. It will be very good. It’s a lot better than what’s under some of the previous reigns’ sites. They should have checked more closely and chosen somewhere else.’

  ‘That gully will have to be filled in completely, won’t it, sir?’

  ‘What, are you an architect, young man?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Sovan. ‘Only a boy who is interested.’ Others would have wilted in the face of such a remark. But such was my son’s engagement with this subject that he was not afraid.

  ‘Interested in the business of building?’ said the Architect. ‘You don’t like carrying parasols for famous men?’

  He grinned, and Sovan realized there was a hint of self-mockery in his words.

  ‘I do find value in the work, sir. It’s my family’s station. But I also love temples – not so much what goes on in them, but what they are. They give me peace of mind and proof of Heaven. But I’ve never understood how temples are conceived and built. There are just too many pieces.’

  ‘You don’t believe it’s the gods who build them, then?’

  ‘No, sir. Not the gods directly. But the gods making their will felt through the labour of human beings.’

  Now Sovan thought a moment, and decided to share what had come over him four hours earlier. ‘May I tell, you sir, that at the top of the mound, when we began, I felt that I could see the new mountain-temple in place already. It was like the gods created the site just so that men would come along and discover it and build.’

  ‘You think so, do you?’

  ‘I do, sir.’

  ‘And what form did this temple take, the one you saw?’

  The man was teasing, but he seemed also to want an answer.

  ‘Sir, it had five towers, the five peaks of Mount Meru. Each was gently curved at the top like the closed blossom of a lotus. There was a long causeway approaching the main entranceway, with two stone libraries on either side. And a great moat. The temple was larger than any I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘That does rather sound like a vision from Heaven,’ said the Architect, suddenly serious. Then his former tone returned. ‘But I’m afraid you saw the wrong temple. The one that will be built here will have three towers, and they will be straight and square at the top. A pyramid form. No curves. This is the temple that the King’s priests have seen and that His Majesty has now seen, drawn out on palm leaves by those same priests. Though I must say that five towers would be beautiful and pleasing to Heaven. You say they curved like lotus buds?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  They had reached the estate house. The Brahmin had returned to the city, but the prince was waiting attentively at the door. He voiced an invitation to food and water, and this time the Architect accepted.

  It was well past dusk when Sovan arrived back at our family house. He bathed, then went to see his father in the main room. ‘So, tell me about the day,’ my husband said. ‘But first let me speculate – Subhadra went there to inspect the place as a possible site for His Majesty’s mountain-temple.’

  ‘Yes, father, that’s how it was.’

  People sometimes said that Nol heard more with one ear than anyone else heard with two. They never said it in front of him, but he would not have minded if they did.

  Responding to questions, my son described the Architect’s visit. But Nol didn’t seem to care about the details. He just wanted to know whether the visitor had settled on this site. My son was quite sure that this would be the place, but he replied there was no clear answer.

  Nol would not accept that: ‘It sounds to me like this is the place,’ he declared. ‘The family’s going to do very well by this – I figured it out right!’

  ‘Heaven has favoured us, then.’

  ‘Sovan, be sharper than that. What people say is the gods’ favour is usually something that’s been thought up right her
e on earth. All of us in court have known that a decision on the site was close. So I’ve been asking people...’

  ‘Only asking?’ Sovan asked dutifully.

  ‘Well…’ And a sly look crossed Nol’s face. ‘I did go to the Architect’s office and tell one of the draftsman there that I’d secured a place for his daughter in the royal dance school. And, do you know what? He let slip that the selection had been narrowed to two possible sites. So I went out and had a look, and then last month, when word came that our family was going to get a couple of tracts of land, I went to see a man at the royal land office, and presented some blandishments that persuaded him to recommend that we get two particular sites.’

  ‘And both happened to be near a place where the temple might be built?’

  ‘Why yes! One of them is the land of the village your mother visited. Just to the west of the place you were at today!’

  My husband always preened when talking about property in the family’s hands. Sovan thought a moment and I think took secret satisfaction in asking: ‘But father, isn’t there a problem? A temple’s entrance is always on the east. Isn’t that where you’d want your land to be? That’s where the markets and public shrines and hostels for pilgrims will go up.’

  Nol frowned; the boy had put his finger on the one weakness of his scheme.

  Later, Sovan walked in the dark toward the jars for a final bath of the day, but halfway there, in the middle of a courtyard, he stopped. The temple was again presenting itself in his mind’s eye. Five glorious towers. The Architect had said three, but Sovan nonetheless saw five, each with the gentle curves of a lotus bud.

  30: The night festival

  At this time of the year, the only place in the house where the air was bearable was the veranda, and so Sovan sat down there that night to eat his final rice. Then he went to his room, where his mosquito net had been strung. But he didn’t lie down. He picked up three sticks of incense, stuck them in his waist and stole silently down the back steps.

  My boy passed quickly across the Naga bridge to leave the royal sector. There he dropped his pace a bit, relieved to have departed without questions being asked. He kept to the avenue that led toward the Pre Rup mountain-temple. People passed him in the darkness, laughing, already tipsy as they headed for a festival that had begun that night across the city.

  At the shrine by the mountain-temple’s east gate, he approached Bronze Uncle and lit the incense he’d brought. He knelt, and whispered prayers for my safe return, confident that through the god his words would be accorded a special hearing in Shiva’s court. He raised his head and looked toward the old temple, whose outlines loomed high against the night sky. Here and there lamps burned on its heights, like new stars in the Heavens, just as they did when we lived as a family of commoners in the little quarter on the other side.

  He walked quickly away, not wanting the acolytes to recognize him.

  Prayers for me, of course, were very important to my boy – such was his devotion. But what he was to do next, well, it was very important too. Do not ask me to guess which one was the more so in his mind.

  He headed for a temple near the city’s southern edge, following the revellers he had passed earlier. The occasion was the Festival of Heavenly Fertilization. The miracle of rain drawn from barren skies! The heat of dry season in retreat, dried, crumbling leaves blowing away, parched paddies welcoming water again, the Freshwater Sea expanding its domain. So it is that life becomes possible for another year. As you know, any number of temples put on variations of this festival, but in those times people travelled for days or even weeks from every province to the one to which my son was walking. Part of the reason was that this was not a royal temple, and ordinary people could pass inside to say devotions, at least at some of the lesser shines. More important was that some years earlier the temple’s priests had persuaded men from the Upper Empire to conduct the festival in the particular way of their home villages, only on a much more spectacular scale. With the help of Chinese merchants, who provided special powders from their native country, the festival at this temple was each year more of a show than it had been the previous year.

  As Sovan neared the temple, the streets became busier. Vendors who couldn’t afford the high rent that was charged on its grounds had set up along the approaching street instead. With fruit snacks and coconut milk laid out on brightly coloured cloths, they called out to people passing by to come have a look. Sovan did, and at one lamp-lit cloth he found what he wanted – dried banana sweets. He bought some, thanking the old vendor woman as she wrapped them in leaf. He rejoined the flow toward the temple.

  He passed a wine stall. In front was a girl who caught his eye and refused to give it up. He looked away, but she countered by falling in step alongside him. ‘What, no girlfriend for a handsome boy like you? I can do something about that.’ I can imagine that she did something like stroke his forearm as she spoke, or perhaps she was even more direct with her hands. It is sad truth that women enter this profession, but once they are there, it is only natural that they do what they can to get business.

  My boy would have found it hard to say anything at all to this sort of thing, I think. He would have shaken off that hand and quickened his pace, she calling after him: ‘On your way home, maybe? You know where to find me.’

  Outside the temple’s main gate, torches illuminated other people who had set up for business – a fortune teller plotting the future of a shy young couple, a vendor selling charms he swore had been blessed personally by the holy hands and voice of the temple’s founding abbot a century earlier. Atop a tiny stage – it was a market crate actually – pranced a monkey wearing a tiny sampot, drawing smiles from a clutch of children. Sovan’s eyes scanned the faces around him, then he moved to the gate, where people were crowding in to make offerings of the evening. Sovan had already made some elsewhere, of course, but he joined the throng anyway and edged through the entranceway. He went to each of a dozen separate shrines and images to look over the people who were kneeling and lighting incense and placing garlands around the necks of images. Then he passed back out the gate.

  To the side was a large field with another crowd, and more torches. Sovan stopped, wondering what would be the best strategy. Then, ahead, two young women, their backs to him. They were on a festival stroll. An older servant walked behind, keeping an eye. He thought: a chaperone, a sister brought along – it might just be possible! He hurried forward, murmuring apologies to people he jostled. When he got ahead of the promenading group he turned as casually as he could to look. No! These were two young women well into the age of motherhood; the maid was no one he’d ever seen.

  He stopped, oblivious to the crowd. I think it was now that the thought sank in that it would be so much easier, so much more dignified, to find a wife in the usual way. And so much faster, which would be a blessing. He had to marry; he was past the age. His father was demanding it. As for me, I was not pressing him, but waiting out this period with some impatience. His own soul and body craved it, I’m sure. Is it possible for a young man to go on forever this way, never giving in to the wine-stall girls? Perhaps only if he takes holy vows, and even then… But each time my boy prepared for a possible match, putting on his best sampot, calling on the latest well-bred girl nominated by priests or parents, or sometimes ones he’d become aware of on his own, he never got beyond the preliminaries. Nol complained many times – to him, to me – about the string of break-offs, saying that people were starting to talk, that parents weren’t going to risk letting Sovan add their daughter to the list. My boy did tell me once that he felt he’d behaved unfairly toward these young women. But he knew why nothing was working out. I did too – it was a secret we shared: No one measured up to the standard, the standard of the girl at the stone-edged pond in the country house six years earlier.

  It was more than his memory of that encounter. One night, he told me, a spirit had planted confirmation in him. He had been tossing and turning on his mat, and then h
is eyes closed, and opened again and there she stood before him. She had grown to young womanhood. Her hands were together, there was that same faint smile of mischief on her lips. She was not doing anything – she was not even looking at him. She was just being. After a moment, she sat down, on that same grass, and Sovan saw the same stone-edged pond behind her. With that same reed she stirred the water gently.

  Do you know, for years he believed that Heaven did not intend them to be joined. It had created them of quite different social ranks, after all. He had always worried that her invitation to call at the estate house that long-ago day was meant only to spare his feelings. It was given with the expectation he would not act on it. Heaven had not allowed him to hear her name, nor even the name of her estate. It had led the prince to leave the district the very next day for the Siamese border, taking his entourage along, Sovan included. On this last point, however, my boy felt that his father had played a role as well – he had dismissed a very strongly stated request to stay behind a day or two and then catch up.

  But a dream has the power to clear away all uncertainties. When Sovan woke up, he knew he must take the initiative. A young man in search of a wife is like a bee buzzing about a garden – the flower does not come to him, he must go to it. But where would he go to find this particular flower? That was something his father would know how to answer, but Sovan didn’t want his help. Instead he got up his courage and went to the market to talk to one of the men there whose specialty is confidential assignments on hire. Sovan told him as best he could remember how to find the little house in the forest and the girl’s estate. Four weeks later, the man reported back. He had located both houses, he said, and both were empty. Local villagers remembered the noble family but said they’d moved away some years earlier. To where no one could say, the man said. No one knew the lord’s name, just the title by which he was referred. As for his daughters, the people did offer some help, three names. Of them, Sovan settled on Suriya, because he liked its sound and its meaning – the sun, which had shown on her so fetchingly that day.