A Woman of Angkor

by John Burgess

  As the years went by, the dress of the women posing on the platform came to be more and more elaborate. Sampots acquired starched flares like the wings of birds. Jewellery was worn around ankles, wrists, upper arms and necks. Headdresses were the real field of competition. They grew taller and taller. Silver filaments, lotus buds, coconut palm blossoms were added to create the most elaborate ensembles. The masons couldn’t believe that a woman’s hair could rise so high. But it could, if reinforced with hidden bamboo strips and if the woman beneath it was careful to walk with the tiniest, most careful of steps. The main marketplace, in fact, now had shops whose only business was outfitting women who were heading to their posing sessions and coaching them in how to present themselves to the best effect. Not a few family fortunes, large and small, were depleted in these places.

  Being the model for an apsara marked a woman for life, in a very positive way. But none ever got to see her own likeness in stone. The Brahmins saw no reason to open the holy construction site for the sake of female vanity. So each woman made do with whispered assurances from her sculptor husband or boyfriend that her Heavenly twin inside was unique, her face so lovely and smooth, her chest and hips so alluring, her headdress so glorious and jewel-studded and tall that the King, when he came on inspection, could but only pause and gaze in admiration and think yearningly of that time in Heaven when he might encounter this being, in the playground of the heart’s desire.

  You know, I am told that the husband or boyfriend always followed up with a plea. Beloved, tell me that when that time comes, I’ll at least remain in your heart. Don’t worry, that woman always replied. My devotion to you will never be broken.

  Let us hope that she actually meant it, and that had the woman been me, I would have meant it too.

  51: Parental inspection

  Two, perhaps three, years passed. One day, it was arranged that Nol and I would come to the unfinished mountain-temple to see our son’s work.

  It was late afternoon when we arrived at its western bridge by palanquin. This form of travel was ostentatious, but on this day I did not object to it. My husband’s pains had spread to his knees now; he could have extreme difficulty walking. I knew that he would refuse to be carried around as we toured the temple, so it was good that his joints be spared the strain of the trip out from Angkor.

  The slaves set down the palanquins at the bridge, but there was no sign of Sovan. It’s unusual, I thought. It is his way to be on time.

  But after a bit came a squiggle of motion at the far end of the moat that extended to our right – a cantering brown horse, and on top of it, our son. Nol saw it was him before I did. His eyes, at least, were still good.

  Sovan kept the horse at a canter but the moat was so long that it took some time to reach us. Finally he jumped down from his mount, perspiring, and knelt. ‘Please, please, father, forgive me. I have no right to keep you waiting.’

  ‘Oh, get up, boy. It wasn’t so bad to sit for a few minutes. I got to take in what you’ve been up to out here. It looks like you’re making good progress with that tower on the entrance complex.’ He cast a hand its way.

  Entrance? I had thought this was the temple itself!

  ‘Yes, father. It should be completed in about two years.’

  ‘You do plan ahead.’

  ‘It’s a skill I learned from you, father.’

  I said nothing, just enjoying watching the two engage in this way. Then Sovan put out a hand to help his father up from the palanquin, but the old man shook his head. Grimacing, he got to his feet himself.

  ‘So,’ Nol asked, when he was finally standing straight. ‘What was it that delayed you?’

  ‘A problem at another construction site, father. You know it – the temple we’re building just beyond the eastern reservoir. I’ve been trying out some new design concepts there, on a smaller scale than what we will have here at the main mountain-temple.’

  ‘The designs didn’t work out?’

  ‘No, I think they’ll be all right. The problem has to do with people.’

  ‘That sounds like a parasol pavilion.’

  ‘Very similar, father.’ He laughed. ‘There’s a feud between two men who should be working together to make a balustrade. Did I tell you about that last time? On both sides of the entrance causeways at the temple out there, we’ll have long balustrades, made of the bodies of stone Nagas. They’ll be about as thick as a large coconut tree’s trunk. They’ll be held up off the pavement by a line of stone posts. One team of masons is making the bodies in sections, and another team is making the posts. The pieces have to fit together just right – the tops of the posts have pins that go into holes in the undersides of the Naga bodies. So the holes have to be chiselled in the right places, at the same interval as the posts.’

  How intense my boy was just now, how proud he was making his mother. The Empire could have no one better in charge of this work.

  ‘The team making the posts and the team making the Nagas are headed by these two men who don’t get along. Apparently it goes back to having come to blows over a girl when they were young – they’re from the same village out east. I split them up a couple of years ago, had them work on opposite sides of the site, and didn’t realize they’d be paired up again for this job. It turns out the feud continues and they don’t even talk to each other and don’t let their men talk either.’

  ‘I’m getting worried,’ Nol said. He was feeling nothing of the sort, of course – he was enjoying the story.

  ‘Yes, and I should have been. This morning I was at the site for a ceremony, the first union of post and Naga on the causeway. The posts had all been carved nicely and put in place the full length of the causeway – it’s quite a long one, though not nearly as long as what we’ll have here. Then an elephant dragged out the first section of serpent body. The pin holes had the wrong spacing! A full cubit off! And the holes were too small for the pins. A priest was there to bless the first union, and you can imagine how horrified he was. He began chanting prayers to frighten off the bad spirit that must have caused the mix-up. I told the Naga man, well, don’t make any more sections with the pinholes spaced like that. The posts are already up, so you’ll need to accommodate them. And he said, sir, we’ve been making Naga sections for the last twelve months. They’re all done and they’re all like this. He started to get a bit worked up. He pointed at the holes. We did them like this, he said – and now he was almost shouting – because this length is the standard separation for pinholes. This man, he says – now he was pointing at the other foreman – never told us about any change. Now the other foreman became riled and there was almost a fight. They had to be pulled apart.

  ‘So I went to the stone-cutting yard and spent an hour looking over the Naga sections the team had made and thinking out what to do with them. We’ll manage something. Maybe we’ll send them out to a temple that we’re doing in a district a couple of days’ travel to the east. But it won’t be easy getting them there – there’s no stream to transport them. So, that’s the story. All this made me late leaving the site to come here. I had to borrow this horse.’

  We crossed the bridge, the sun behind us, two parasols overhead. Sovan followed his father at a creep, as if that pace was his usual. I walked behind.

  We entered the entrance complex’s left gate – only His Majesty could use the centre one – then passed down a corridor where the air was cool and wood shavings littered the floor. Carpenters, sweat-dampened kramas wrapped around their foreheads, had been fitting the first panels of the wooden ceiling overhead. But now they knelt, hands together.

  We emerged again into daylight. We were at the western extreme of a stone-paved causeway. How far did it stretch? I cannot say. A thousand paces, perhaps. At its end was the emerging mountain-temple, covered in bamboo scaffolding, for now just two towers rising in stubby form from the outer left and right. In the air was the pleasing clink-clink of a hundred masons’ hammers.

  ‘We’re focusing on giving them a
bit of height, now,’ said Sovan, his eyes on the towers. ‘All the stone that’s floated down the river and into the moat goes to them.’

  We began walking again. Poor Nol – for him it was a forced march. His objective was to reach the end of the causeway without assistance. But part way down, our son stopped our party again. He motioned to either side of the causeway. ‘Here and here, father, we’ll be building a pair of annex buildings, for astrological instruments and records. And some secondary ‘

  Nol asked: ‘When will that begin?’

  Sovan assumed the earnest look that I remembered from childhood. ‘If we keep to schedule, we’ll break ground four years from now.’

  ‘It’s been twenty-two years since work began on this place. It would be possible to assemble an entire Empire in that time.’ In his mind, if gods were going to inhabit this place, then gods should do the work, applying some magic to make things move more quickly.

  ‘Yes, the work goes slowly, father. But I can’t complain. The estates have only so many workers to contribute, only so much stone and bamboo. Many of them are already sending slaves to supplement the volunteers. That’s the only way they can meet their quotas. It’s gruelling work and sometimes the conditions are horrible.’

  I knew what he was describing – the previous month, my cart had stopped for directions at one of the quarries north of the Capital. The conditions in which people were living were shocking. Several lay in troubled sleep on grubby mats unrolled in the open, shoulder to shoulder. They were dirty, they seemed to be surviving on nothing but rice and fish paste. I sent word back to the city for my people to send some bamboo so they would at least have proper huts.

  Sovan continued. ‘Many of our people, father, aren’t stone workers by trade. They’re ordinary farmers. They have to keep it up for months at a time, then they go home just in time to get started on a new rice planting. The work gives them merit for the next life, but there needs to be balance so they can take care of the obligations of this life.’

  Sovan was caught in a trap, I could see. What builder does not want more men, more stone? Yet my son’s heart could not ignore the human costs of infinite supply. My own thinking was somewhat different. This was not merely my son’s project, it was Heaven’s. Through a series of visions and transcendent communications, the gods had made known the form and scale of our King’s future monument. What better purpose for sacrifice than seeing to a divine wish? And how much better than devoting this sweat and treasure to war.

  Nol said: ‘Everyone must give, Sovan. In fact, soon everyone is going to give more.’

  ‘What do you mean, father?’

  ‘Let’s finish our walk.’

  Ahead were stone steps that took the causeway to a higher level. They were hard to climb, but climb my husband did, again turning aside our son’s offer of a hand. At the top was a mat, shaded by a parasol and tended by a servant who had laid out flowers and refreshments.

  ‘What’s this?’ Nol said. ‘Let’s go on. We didn’t come here to rest.’

  ‘Please, husband,’ I said. ‘It’s hot and I’m a bit tired. Let us sit down, just for a moment.’

  He acquiesced. It was for me, after all. We sat shaded by the parasol, and the water did Nol some good. Sovan let a few minutes go by, then asked, ‘Father, you were saying people would have to sacrifice more?’

  ‘Don’t look so worried, Sovan. It’s good news for you. The palace has decided that construction must proceed more quickly. No, it’s not that they’re unhappy with you. I’ve heard it said very clearly that the problem is that you don’t have enough to work with. So a proclamation will be drafted that will increase by one half the levies on the estates. All other stone construction in the Empire will be suspended, so that the materials and labour can be diverted here.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘The provincial princes will be called to Angkor to hear the decision personally. They will sign documents agreeing to it and will renew their oaths of allegiance to His Majesty. This is a secret for now, do you understand? His Majesty will inform you officially soon, but I thought you should know in advance.’

  ‘Thank you, father.’ Sovan looked down, his face still showing concern. Nol saw it.

  ‘Boy, don’t be foolish! That is why princes and farmers and artisans and slaves exist – to serve the King. Just as you and I do.’

  ‘Some of us give more than others, and some are better rewarded.’

  ‘Of course. The world everywhere is that way.’

  ‘Can you say, father, is this a decision of the Brahmins, or of His Majesty?’

  ‘I would say both, though His Majesty is not the direct source of the order.’ Nol took a sip of water. ‘No, it’s coming from the priests, but they sense what is going on with our King and want to accommodate him. He has passed his fiftieth year, like your mother and me. He looks to the future and for him this life no longer seems to stretch forward without limits. Each time the rains begin, he is thinking, “I will see only a certain number more wet seasons in this existence.” Now, were some other man to feel such concern, I would say that the reason is that he feels death approaching, and he wants to make sure that everything is in order for the cremation rite, for the passage to the next incarnation. But in the case of our King, I would say something different. He is a man who can never sit still. He wants the temple to be completed so that he will see it in completed form. He wants to know that he did in fact build the greatest the world has ever achieved. He wants to watch people come from all over the Empire to see it. He wants to look at it and tell himself that in seven, eight, nine centuries from now, people will still be coming to this place and they will marvel too and know the name Suryavarman.’

  I affected to listen to all this as if it were mere palace gossip. I had not been in His Majesty’s presence since the night by the river.

  ‘Whenever construction is sped up,’ observed our son, ‘the rate of accidents, of falls from high places, increases. We say the proper protective blessings, but there is only so much we can do.’

  ‘Sovan – it is better not to resist. It will be an instruction to you direct from the palace.’

  ‘I will remember that, father. Thank you for the advice.’

  ‘Yes, sometimes an old man knows a thing or two...’

  Sovan smiled and got to his feet. He put out a hand to his father, and this time it was accepted.

  For the next two hours, we toured the site, slowly. First we walked around the lower galleries of the temple. Sovan pointed out a long, bare stone wall which would become the Churning of the Sea of Milk, in which gods and demons worked in union, pushing and pulling on the body of the Naga Vasuki to create the nectar of immortality. Another lengthy wall, our son explained, would become the epic battle of the Kaurava family against the Pandava line, who were undefeatable because they grasped the Way of Higher Truths.

  We passed up a half-finished stairway, stepping around tools and stone chippings, to reach the temple’s second level. There we came to the foot of a very steep, very tall staircase. Nol looked up to the third level, holiest of holy places, knowing he was incapable of the climb.

  But then two labourers approached, carrying a plank.

  ‘This is how we go up, father. Let me show you. Now Mother…’

  ‘I will stay here. You go with your father.’ I had come high enough; I did not feel I had a right to go to the top.

  Sovan sat on the plank, his back to the steps. The labourers lifted it, then put their strong legs to use to carry my son up the steps. How quickly they went! Sovan held his hands out to show how safe it was. Nol smiled at the sight. Then it was his turn.

  I walked now to the point at which the east-west axis passed through the level on which I stood. I gazed west. My son and husband did the same, but from the third level, directly above me.

  What I saw made me truly grasp the greatness of this place for the first time. The causeway on which we had approached ran straight as a ray of sunlight. To its left an
d right were square pools of water, beyond them great rectangles of manicured grass. Further on, the entry complex in perfect symmetry, and beyond that, hidden by the walls but there nonetheless, the bridge and the moat and a road that ran straight and true, like the causeway, further than the eye could see. It was the view from Heaven to earth. Everything made perfect sense in scope and resplendence.

  All this was the work of my son, who as a boy had run naked in the old neighbourhood. Above me, I could sense that my husband was feeling the same stirrings.

  Nol later told me that he had turned to his son and said: ‘You have created something that has no equal on the face of the earth. I have the deepest pride in being your father.’

  And Sovan dropped to his knees and put his head to the stone at his father’s feet.

  We reached the gate of Sovan’s residence at dusk. Suriya welcomed us, then led us to the bathing area. Servants helped us there. Later they showed us up into the house for evening rice. The three sons, waiting in a line, greeted us their grandparents. By lamplight, everyone ate and talked and traded views and opinions. There were moments when Nol and I thought the boys laughed too loudly, or were too quick to challenge their parents – our eyes seemed always to meet at these times. But I found myself reflecting on how different life might have been had talk flowed so freely in our own house.

  52: Parade of the princes

  My husband was not mistaken concerning what the King was about to do.

  Some weeks after our visit to the temple there began a grand spectacle on the streets. Everyone was talking about it, and so I went to look myself. Princes of the Empire were entering the city one after the other, borne by gilded chariots. It was odd, as if each prince had decided to put on a different kind of show for the adults squatting at roadside and children darting close on dares to touch the wooden spokes of the vehicles. One prince made his horse prance, one stood so straight that people thought he was an image, one pretended to cast a spear, wearing so fierce a look that he seemed genuinely in battle, one tossed bits of silver, causing a rush by children and adults alike.