The Rent Collector

by Wright, Camron

  Sarann was about to explain—to show her stepsister the flowers, and to tell her all about the bird and the boy, when she glanced down at the dancing flames of the fire and noticed the charcoaled remains of a box corner. Also littering the outer circle of ashes were glowing golden threads. As reality registered, Sarann couldn’t help but scream.

  “What have you done? What have you done?”

  Hearing the commotion, the stepmother rushed from the house—but it was too late. Sarann ran as fast as her legs would carry her, with tears streaming down her face, back into the darkness of the wild jungle. When the vegetation became too thick for her to run, she dropped to her knees sobbing, praying that an animal would appear and eat her, for she could bear her misery no longer. And an animal did appear, but it wasn’t a boar, snake, or crocodile. Instead, it was the Asian Fairy-bluebird that had led her previously from the jungle. It fluttered close, then landed beside her. Suddenly, before her eyes, it transformed into a beautiful woman wearing a flowing golden robe and holding the lovely green branch of a willow. She spoke to Sarann.

  “What is the matter?”

  “Who are you?” Sarann asked.

  “I am the Goddess of Mercy. I have come to ease your burden.”

  “It’s too late,” the girl cried. “It is simply too late.”

  “It is never too late. You are barely just beginning.”

  “But they have burned my sampot, and I have nothing left to remember my parents.”

  “My dear,” she answered gently, “you don’t need a sampot to remember. Your heart is flowing with memories. Signs of their love and admiration are all around you, whether you choose to see them or not. All that your parents wish is that you have a happy and fulfilled life. I think it is time we get started.”

  The Goddess of Mercy then waved her willow, and, as she did, the lights in the heavens above began to swirl.

  The sound of distant laughter caused Sarann to awaken from the spot at the edge of the jungle where she’d fallen asleep the night before. As she sat up and rubbed her eyes, she wondered if it had been a dream. However, when she looked down, she was dressed in a vivid red and gold sampot of the most striking hues. Her hair lay as a dark mantle draped gently across her shoulders, as if it had just been washed clean in the river and it now flowed radiantly from beneath the flowering wreath that still adorned her head.

  When she heard voices, she stepped out from the jungle growth and called toward the streaming throng of people, “Where is everyone going?”

  “Why, to the Water Festival, of course. Have you been living in the jungle?”

  They laughed but then invited the stunning stranger to join them as they walked to the river’s edge. She hadn’t eaten a good meal in days, and so upon arriving at the festival, she stopped first at the food sellers. She reached into an empty pocket, only to find that it wasn’t empty at all but contained sufficient money for her needs. She bought a large bowl of cooked rice, pork, and vegetables, just like the one she and her parents used to share together. As she ate, she smiled, remembering how her father would make her eat the vegetables first, before she was allowed to fill up on too much of the sweet pork.

  Next, she wandered through the sea of vendors offering drinks, fish, hats, sandals, toys, incense, clothing, and just about everything else one could imagine—even ceremonial sampots. She looked until she found one similar to hers, the one that had been burned, and she recalled the day it had been purchased.

  “You are growing up, daughter,” her father had said. “Your mother and I spoke and we agreed that even though you are still young, it is time for you to pick out your Sampot Lbak—the one most special that you will save until the day you marry.”

  As she listened again to the words that echoed distantly in her head, she whispered her reply, “Thank you, Father, for having so much trust in such a young and naive girl.”

  Sarann wandered to the river, where she and her father would stand atop a stone wall built along the deepest edge of the river. (It was always too scary for her mother, so she would wait below.) Her father would climb up first and then take his precious daughter’s hand to lift her gently up. It was the perfect spot from which to watch the races, as it raised them above an otherwise thronging crowd and allowed them to see the boats, even when they were still distant. Today, there was no one there to lift her up and hold her hand, so she climbed alone. While she was sad that her father wasn’t with her, she was also grateful he had taught her how to climb by herself. Standing atop the wall, she felt an unusual peace.

  Shouts from the crowd grew loud as the racing canoes appeared. It was just like old times, and, encouraged by those around her, Sarann also waved and cheered. Even from far away she could see that the canoe on the near side, closest to the wall, reflected a deep crimson red, almost the color of her sampot, and she guessed it must be Kamol’s canoe.

  The crowd roared as the crimson boat won, and as it shot past the finish line, Kamol, the head oarsman and navigator, turned his head for just a moment as if to acknowledge her. He must be well loved in his village, she thought. Not only would her newfound friend’s victory gain him the respect of his village elders, but Kamol would also have the honor of meeting the king.

  Sarann climbed down from the wall and pushed her way through the crowd to the place where the boats docked, to get a better look at the victorious oarsmen. To her surprise, the handsome boy noticed her peeking through the well-wishers and waved her to come forward.

  “It’s you!” he shouted as she approached. “You helped us win!”

  “I don’t understand. I just watched,” she replied.

  “To win the race,” he said, “the navigator must pick out a distant landmark and then guide the boat hard and fast toward it. To deviate left or right will increase the distance traveled and slow the overall time. As we rowed toward the finish, I picked out a woman in a bright red gown, and I steered the boat toward her—never wavering. We were behind at first, but with concentration and focus on our goal, we soon pulled ahead. As we shot by the wall where the woman stood, I realized it was you, the girl from the jungle, and I don’t even know your name.”

  “My name is Sarann.”

  The boy held out his hand to her as the crowd looked on, wondering about the beautiful girl in the red and gold sampot.

  “Miss Sarann,” he continued, “would you care to take a victory ride in the winning canoe?”

  She was honored but also confused, for the king himself stood several yards away watching but had not yet stepped forward.

  “The king is always the first,” she replied.

  “The king? Of course,” said the boy, as he turned toward him. “Father, this is the girl I told you about. Is she not even more beautiful than I described? Shall I take her for a ride first?”

  The king smiled, nodded to Sarann, and then waved his permission.

  “You are Kamol, the prince of Angkor?” Sarann asked with disbelief.

  Before he could answer, Sarann felt a terrible tug as the wreath was jerked off her head. She had not noticed her stepmother and stepsister, who had worked their way through the crowd, creeping up on her from behind.

  “Finally, I have them. I have the flowers!” the stepmother shrieked as she tore a single blossom from the headpiece and furiously rubbed its petals against her face, arms, and hands. The stepdaughter followed her mother’s example, tearing two flowers from the mangled vine instead of one.

  Before the king could command his soldiers to step forward and arrest the two women, the flowers’ magic began to take effect. But the petals’ power was to bring beauty already deep within to the surface, to reveal one’s true nature. Since the stepmother had long ago replaced any goodness with greed and vanity, there was no virtue left to surface. There, in front of Sarann, the king, the prince, and throngs of onlookers, she painfully twisted and withered into a common swamp leech, then dropped from where she stood into the river’s muddy depths.

  Moments later, the s
tepsister also began to change. However, instead of becoming a leech, she shrank into a small, lifeless rock—doing no evil, but doing no good—and she also rolled into the river with a plop and sank from view.

  Seeing the danger the flowers posed to those in the crowd, the prince grabbed what was left of the magical wreath and, before others could touch it, flung it far out into the river, where it disappeared forever into the watery depths. Since the prince had also touched the flowers, all held their breaths to see what would happen to him. But, like Sarann, his true nature was already known and he could not be changed for the worse. Instead, he stepped to Sarann’s side, held out his hand, and helped her into his canoe for the victorious ride around the river. As they circled, those on the banks cheered for the girl who they understood would soon become the new princess of Angkor.

  *****

  Sopeap turns the last page and waits for my reaction. “Did you enjoy it?” she asks.

  “Oh, yes, it’s a wonderful story,” I answer before I fittingly add, “though I am very inexperienced in these things.”

  “Can you tell me why you enjoyed it?”

  Speaking to a teacher, I feel duty bound to offer a reasoned and thoughtful reply, one that recognizes the story’s qualities. The truth, however, is much simpler. “It makes me happy.”

  Sopeap tips her head as if to agree, but it’s so slight I think I may have imagined it. “The story we have just read,” she says, “can be found in hundreds of versions all over the world, in every country, continent, and culture.”

  “They all know the story of Sarann?”

  “The girl’s name is different and her circumstance will vary. However, the story’s message is the same. She is Ye Xian in China, Tattercoats in England, Aschenputtel in Germany, Critheanach in Scotland, Nyasha in Africa, Cinderella in North America—which story is probably the most well-known—and the list goes on and on.”

  “Where did the story begin?”

  “No one is absolutely certain. There are so many versions that researchers can’t accurately count them. Some say there are hundreds, others cite thousands. Many once believed that the first Cinderella story was written in seventeenth-century France by a man named Perrault. Then they discovered a Chinese version told hundreds of years earlier. Still others say the first is Rhodopis, a story recorded in the first century B.C. by a Greek historian. It seems that every time old records are uncovered, another version pops up.”

  Sopeap speaks with genuine excitement.

  “Do you understand, Sang Ly? People living on distant islands of the seas, isolated from all other civilizations, they also have their own Sarann stories as well.”

  “How? Why are there so many?”

  “I think the answer lies in the story itself. Perhaps you touched on it when you said that it made you feel happy. It seems, quite simply, that as human beings, we are born to hope.”

  “To hope?” I ask, wrinkling up my brow. “But you told me that hope died at Stung Meanchey.”

  “And therein lies another lesson—consider the source.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Never rely on the advice of a disillusioned drunk.”

  “Then you do believe in hope?” I ask.

  A longer pause, a deeper breath. “I believe the message of the story that we have just read anchors deeper than our doubts.”

  She can see by my face that my tired brain is working hard to process her comments and so she decides to make it easier for me. “Sang Ly, the desire to believe, to look forward to better days, to want them, to expect them—it seems to be engrained in our being. Whether we like it or not, hope is written so deeply into our hearts that we just can’t help ourselves, no matter how hard we try otherwise. We love the story because we are Sarann or Tattercoats or Cinderella. We all struggle with the same problems and doubts. We all long for the day when we’ll get our own reward. We all harbor hope—and that’s why it’s such a problem.”

  “Problem?”

  “Yes, an issue that bothered so many teachers at the university—myself included—a problem we could never explain away. Is our DNA to blame for this inherent desire to hope? Is it simply another survival mechanism? Is that why we love Sarann or Cinderella? Or is there more to it?”

  “Such as?”

  “I had colleagues who would dissect and quantify the stories, as though the paragraphs were laboratory frogs. They would split the sentences apart, dig through their insides, write up theories about the why and how and when—but in the end, when the letters all settled, their answers often pointed to something deeper. It would make them crazy. I’ll admit that, at times, it still makes me crazy.”

  “When you say deeper, are you talking about the ancestors?”

  “I am talking about the constant nature of truth. Look at Buddha’s philosophy—it’s about the path and our journey. That’s what his teachings of the Noble Eightfold Path are all about. Do you see what I mean? Have you ever found a classical book of literature that isn’t about a journey—whether actual or within?”

  Other than the few I’ve read with Sopeap, I can’t name any other stories. It doesn’t matter. She answers her own question.

  “There isn’t one. It’s not just Sarann and Cinderella. Look at all books, plays, movies—we keep writing the same plots, with the same characters, teaching the same lessons. Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Nobody has an original idea?”

  She eyes me intently. “Or is the original idea so intrinsic, inherent, and ingenious, so fundamental to our existence, that we can’t help but be drawn back?”

  I try to grasp what she means but can only shrug.

  “I’m suggesting writers can’t help themselves,” she says. “Our trials, our troubles, our demons, our angels—we reenact them because these stories explain our lives. Literature’s lessons repeat because they echo from deeper places. They touch a chord in our soul because they’re notes we’ve already heard played. Plots repeat because, from the birth of man, they explore the reasons for our being. Stories teach us to not give up hope because there are times in our own journey when we mustn’t give up hope. They teach endurance because in our lives we are meant to endure. They carry messages that are older than the words themselves, messages that reach beyond the page.”

  She takes a deep breath and waits.

  “Your words today are all so beautiful. Why did you ever quit teaching? Why would you ever give up on literature?”

  “Perhaps it gave up on me,” she answers more faintly.

  “Do you believe that our ancestors care about us, that they watch over us?” I ask Sopeap, still a bit unsure of the point she is trying to make.

  She licks her plump lips, hesitates. “I’m inclined to, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “We all want to be Sarann, to have hope for our future. While I also want to have my story end happily, there’s a problem that keeps getting in my way—I wake up most days to find I’m just another ugly stepsister.”

  “Do you say this because not all our stories end happily?”

  “That, Sang Ly, is the paradox,” she continues, “the part that is perplexing. It seems that if we take these stories too literally, if we expect our personal lives to always end with a handsome prince, most of us will close our books with shattered dreams. Yet, on the other hand—and this is the part that frustrates—if we don’t take the meaning of these stories literally, if we treat these tales as simply entertainment, we miss the deepest, most life-changing aspects of the stories. We miss the entire reason they even exist.”

  This time her pause is longer. Then her tone changes. “And if that happens, we grow cynical, teach literature at a university, and end up drinking rice wine at the dump.”

  Only when Sopeap forces a smile do I understand that her last comment is meant to be funny. “Besides,” she adds, perhaps to relieve us both from an awkward moment, “if every story ended with a handsome prince, there wouldn’t be anybody left in th
e kingdom to stand around and cheer.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  On the far southeastern side of the dump, where the bulldozers have not yet piled mountains of trash, the ground turns to swamp and the water pools into small, irregular ponds, each a foot or two deep and a couple of hundred feet across. Reeds thrive around the edges, and, at certain times of the year, the snails that live in the water will grow big enough for us to gather.

  Since I’m now seldom picking trash, and since Sopeap has only forgiven the single month’s rent, I’m hesitant to spend too much of the money Ki Lim earns to buy pork at the market. Instead, when Ki arrives home early today, I grab one of the bags we use to gather recycled trash, ask him to watch Nisay, and tell him that I’ll be back home shortly with dinner.