The King's Last Song

by Geoff Ryman

  "But now I will remember you as the boy with the good heart. You know the greatest pleasure in being king? It comes when you know you have done something good.” Suryavarman mounted his kindly, regal countenance. It was a heaving great effort.

  The boy narrowed his eyes and considered. You're not supposed to think, lad, about what the King says. You're supposed to agree.

  "Yes,” the boy said. “Yes. That must be the greatest pleasure. That would be the whole reason to be king."

  "Yes, but bees make honey, only to lose it. Are you good with a sword, young prince?"

  The boy seemed to click into place. Good heart or no, he had a man's interest in all things military. “I'm better with a bow. Better with a crossbow on an elephant's back. Swords or arrows, the thing is to have a quiet spirit when you use them."

  Oh, yes! thought Suryavarman. You will be my revenge; you will be my scythe. I pity the poor cousin who succeeds me.

  "I want to train you specially,” said Suryavarman. “In the art of war."

  * * * *

  Everyone learned how the beardless Brahmin's scheme had backfired.

  Why exactly the King favoured his cousin's son no one knew. A cousin's son was there to be held hostage, ground down, watched and limited. Not raised up.

  Instead, the King demanded that the case be taken up by the Son of Divakarapandita himself, who had consecrated three kings. This highest of the Varna was to go to the consecration personally and ensure the foundation was well done, and it was said, ensure that the slave girl had the right to return to her own home.

  Some of the Brahmin said, see how the King listens, he is making sure they are separated.

  Then why does the King show the boy favours? He gave him a gift of arrows, and sent him to train two years early. And why were the palace women—wives and nannies, cooks and drapers alike—all told to let the boy and the slave girl be friends?

  The only one who seemed mutely accepting of these attentions was the Slave Prince himself.

  The rumour went round the palace that on the night before the slave's departure, the Prince had called for a meal of fish and rice to be laid on a cloth, and invited the girl Fishing Cat to share it with him.

  The girl had knelt down as if to serve.

  "No, no,” Prince Nia said.

  But he could not stop her serving. She laid out a napkin, and a fingerbowl.

  He reached up to try to stop her. “No, don't do that."

  Cat's sinewy wrists somehow twisted free. Out of his reach, she took the lamp and lit scented wax to sweeten the air and drive away the insects.

  "Leave the things."

  Fishing Cat looked up with eyes that were bright like sapphires. “I want to do this. I won't have this chance again."

  "Don't be sad. We will always be friends,” he said. “I will still hear you talking inside my head. I will ask how should a king behave, and you will say, how am I to answer that, baby? And I will say, with the truth. And you will say, the king should not lie like you do. And you will remind me of the time I hid my metal pen and made you look for it. It will be like we are still together."

  "But we won't be."

  "Huh. You will not even remember the name of the palace or one of its thousand homeless princes."

  Both her eyes pointed down. “I will never forget."

  The Prince teased her. “You forgot the name of your home village."

  "I was a child."

  "You are still a child. Like me. We can say we will always be friends and believe it.” He smiled at this foolish hope.

  Then Nia jumped as if bitten by an insect. “Oh. I have a present.” He lifted something off his neck. “Soldiers wear these into battle. See, it is the head of the Naga. It means no harm can come to them.” He held it up and out for her.

  "Oh, no, Nia, if I wear a present from you, I will be a target."

  "Ah, but no harm can come anyway."

  "It is for a well-born person."

  "Like kamlaa warriors, who go to their deaths? Look, there is no protection really. It is just something to have. You don't have to wear it. Just keep it.” He folded it into her hands. “When you have it you will think, I had a friend who wished that no harm could come to me, who wanted me to know my parents."

  Cat looked down at the present and it was as if he could feel her heart thumping. I wanted to make her happy and now maybe she thinks I have sent her away.

  "Fishing Cat,” he said, holding on to her hand. “I stand waiting with all those kids who hate each other, and I think of my last day at home. I was being taken away, and I was sad and frightened, but everyone in the house kept smiling. They had to look happy or risk being thought disloyal, but I didn't know that. My mother was allowed to kiss me, once. She whispered in my ear instead and she told me, ‘We did not ask for this. We are not sending you away. I will think about you every day. I promise. Just when the sun sets, I will think of you.’ So whenever the sun sets, I know my mother thinks of me."

  Fishing Cat thinned her mouth, trying to be brave. The Prince said again, “I am not sending you away. I will think of you every day. I promise. Just as the sun sets."

  A slave cannot afford unhappiness for long. Cat managed to smile. “I will think of you too, Nia. Whenever the sun sets. I will tell my parents about you, and how you brought me back to them. I will ask them to offer prayers for you."

  "And I will hear you in my head,” promised the Prince. “Now. Eat."

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  April 13, April 14, 2004

  People heard the shots and thought at first that they were fireworks.

  Then sirens streamed out towards the airport and ambulances screamed back. Soldiers had been shot. It was said the King had left his residence, his large dark-windowed car squealing as it pulled out of the drive.

  Pirates in the back of pickup trucks drove around the city, their faces covered with kramars. They had guns and took aim at hotel signs. All along the airport road, it was said, every hotel sign had been shot. Tourists walking on Sivutha Street had been screamed at. They turned, and saw a rifle and a deadly grin pointed straight at them.

  Cambodians in town for New Year scurried to their cars with suitcases. Traffic began to build. More shots were heard. Buses full of tourists came back from the airport and gathered in the hotels, forlornly asking if they could have their rooms back. At New Year? “I don't know what's goin’ on,” said an American. “But they closed the airport. No more flights and all these big ugly dudes are stopping all the traffic and checking everybody's bags."

  Then the power went. The hotels outlined in Christmas-tree lights, all the blazing karaoke signs, and all the brightly lit forecourts fell dark. In an instant, the music booming out of beer gardens and bars went silent.

  People panicked. The last time the Khmers Rouges attacked Siem Reap was in 1993, and it was just like this. They closed the airport and the power station.

  Soon the streets leading out of Siem Reap were crowded with unmoving cars stuffed with plastic bags, aunts, and wide-eyed children. Workers trudged home, holding their good city shoes and walking barefoot. Dust billowed up like a fog. Murky car headlights crept through it. Motorcycles weaved unsteadily around pedestrians. A woman lay on the side of the road, unconscious, bundles scattered, her tummy being plucked by anxious, helpful passersby.

  Just outside town, the cars encountered the first roadblocks. Furious-looking soldiers pulled people out of cars and emptied luggage onto the street.

  "Our colleagues have been shot and killed!” the soldiers shouted.

  People despaired. Was war really still this close? All it took was a few shots, and here they were, repeating history. Evacuating the city.

  * * * *

  It's late in the evening at New Year, but the restaurants outside Angkor Wat are dark and silent.

  The temple guards are glad.

  Normally at New Year, cars stop at the crossroads to beam their headlights on the temple towers. From across the
moat, the karaoke drums, the pounding of feet and voices, the revving of engines, the celebratory beeping of car horns and the light-scattering mist of exhaust fumes, all would usually have risen up as a haze of light and noise.

  This New Year, poor people keep their privilege of having Angkor Wat to themselves at night. Only moonlight shines on the temple. The towers are ice-blue and streaked with black like solidified ghosts. Bats flit across the moon.

  The guards sit on the steps of the main temple entrance, the gopura, at the end of the long causeway. APSARA guides and Patrimony Police relax together. They lean against the wall in shorts or kramars and wish each other Happy New Year in quiet voices that the night swallows up.

  Poor people still have to work. Village boys lead their oxen to pasture in the wide grounds of the temple enclosure. Farmers putter past on motorcycles.

  The temple guards share a meal of rice and fish from plastic bags. They've pooled together four dollars to buy twelve tins of beer, and they are all tipsy.

  "Did you see those City people run? They all came through here going Uhhhhhh!” An APSARA guide waves his hands in mock terror. He sports bicycling shorts with Velcro pockets: his best clothes.

  "Oh! Oh! Somebody turned out the lights, it is a disaster!” They mock their richer cousins.

  "They all sleep out here tonight."

  "Good, let the mosquitoes bite them for a change."

  In the hot dry season there are few insects, except in the temple park with its sweltering moats. The guards slap their arms and wipe their legs almost unconsciously. Malaria is as common as a cold. They get sick; they go to bed.

  Map sits with them wearing only his underpants. His police uniform is laid out on the steps like shed skin.

  Map is about to go to work. He will walk the corridors armed until about midnight. Then he will string his hammock across the main entrance and get some sleep.

  Once he caught thieves hauling off a celestial maiden they had hacked out of a wall. Chopping Angkor Wat, what jerks! He opened fire and they ran. Everybody thought that they'd got away with the treasure, but Map knew they couldn't run that fast with a statue. He figured out which way they'd gone, and so he went swimming. Sure enough, they'd hidden her in the moat, to come back for her later. So he camped out by that moat for weeks and got all five of them. Just kids. Man, they'd been in prison for years.

  One of the APSARA guides sighs and stretches. “I get to go home and see my wife next week. That will be my New Year."

  "New Year is not always such good luck."

  "Tooh! That is true."

  The guide has a story. “My village is out towards Kompong Thom on Highway 6. Every year they have the party on the road. They don't think that trucks ever come that way anymore."

  Map says in his quiet spooked voice, “It used to be dangerous to drive that road."

  The guide from Kompong Thom holds his ground and keeps talking. “One year all the kids were out on the road singing, and at midnight a truck came driving through. It just smashed into the kids. It was like the war all over again. Bad, bad luck, all that year, for everybody."

  "Then bad luck for us this year as well,” says one of the police. The theft of the Golden Book has been big news.

  Map's face settles into a lazy, hooded grin. “I drove that road when the army told you not to do it. I wanted to go to Phnom Penh to see this girl, and they said, you go that way those bastards at Kompong Thom will steal our motorcycle."

  The guard from Kompong Thom chuckles. “Did we?"

  "No. I killed all you guys.” More chuckles, heads shaken. Map is always extreme. He sits up and mimes riding a motorcycle one handed, while armed. “I tell you. I had one automatic here. I had my grenade here, my buddy was on the back and he had his grenades too. We had guns like a tiger has teeth. We just drove, man, no lights. We drove full speed across bridges that were just one plank of wood. Nobody touched us."

  "What about the girl?"

  Map beams. “She touched us."

  They all laugh. Map shakes his head, with the same sleepy smile. “She was a nice girl, my buddy's sister. Oh, she was beautiful. I thought I would get married to her and then me and my buddy, you know, we'd make a new family for ourselves. He was like me, all his family dead. It was a good thought. A meritorious action.” He raises his can of beer up in salute. It's empty. “More bad luck."

  A motorcycle coughs its way towards them from the main gate. “Oh man,” says Map. He recognizes the sound of this particular bike.

  "Bad luck,” grunts an APSARA guard.

  Map calls out in English. “Mister, you want cold beer?"

  The guards murmur laughter. Nobody else treats the Captain this way. Map is so rude.

  The causeway is high off the ground and the steps are higher still. Map's boss Captain Prey straddles his bike four metres below them. He shines a torch up at them. “Ch'nam t'mei,” he says to the men who murmur respectfully back. Then he raises his voice. “Chubby. How can you be wearing even less of your uniform than normal?"

  Map's smile is thin, like a snake's. “I could be naked."

  "Wild man,” says Kompong Thom with something like affection. Map is famous for shunning the police village and camping out in the woods around the temple, as if it were still wartime.

  His boss laughs, weary and tough. “I tell you, one day I'll come past here and you will not be modest."

  "You can come and guard all night too if you like."

  "If I see your bum in this temple, you're fired, okay, no job.” Captain Prey sounds mad, but not that mad. It's New Year and Map is at his post. I do my job, thought Map, just in my own way.

  "Look, Chubby. I came out here to give you some news. They think whoever stole the Book also got your Frenchman."

  "What?” Map flings himself to his feet and exclaims, "Chhoy mae!" The expression means, precisely, mother-fuck.

  "Chubby, please be more polite.” The Captain shifts. “I know this is bad news for you. The army says that Grandfather Frenchman and a general took the Kraing Meas with them. One of the army guards says the thieves took them both as well."

  Map is shaking his way into his T-shirt and trousers. “More like the army got them."

  "Or the Thais,” says one of the guides.

  "The Thais gave us back a hundred stolen things,” Map snaps back. He's fed up, angry, sick at heart. “It's not the Thais, it's our own people, it's just we want to blame the Thais. Captain, I need to go into town. Can you give me a lift back to my bicycle?"

  "Chubby. Your job is to guard the temple."

  "Who do I value more, Captain—you or Grandfather Frenchman? You can keep your sixteen dollars a month; the Teacher pays me more. Any of you guys want two dollars? I'll pay you two dollars to sleep in my hammock. Here's my gun."

  Map holds his gun out to one of the guides. The guide doesn't want to touch it. “You might need it man, the army hate you."

  "I won't need it. My dick shoots bullets."

  The guides hoot: Map knows no bounds. He squats down and laces up his shoes. “A snake bites me, she curls up and dies. A jungle cat comes to eat me, I eat her."

  "Map, Map.” Captain Prey shakes his head. “Talking that way is why you sleep in a hut."

  "I don't sleep in a hut. Huts give me bad dreams. I sleep like I got used to sleeping for twenty years—on the ground. Gunfire helps me sleep."

  "Ghosts like huts,” someone says.

  Map jumps down from the causeway, three metres to the ground. His short thick legs soak up the shock and he lands like a cat on all fours. “I can walk to my bicycle."

  His boss chides him. “Chubby. I'll give you ride."

  With an angry sniff, Map kung-fus himself onto the back of the bike. “Okay, let's go."

  The Captain revs the bike, then turns to him. “Chubby, the thing that bothers me is that really, under all the rude talk, you are a good man."

  "Yeah, I know. I also know that life is shit and I don't see why I shouldn't say so."
/>   "Because,” says his boss, looking at him seriously. “It makes it sound like you're shit too."

  "You are what you eat,” says Map and grins like a corpse.

  * * * *

  Map is bicycling alone into Siem Reap.

  The Patrimony Police don't have enough money for motorcycles. They keep their men occupied by training. Every day, the Patrimony Police cycle all around the Western Baray or up the main hill of Phnom Bakeng.

  Map always has to be the first. He boasts that he can cycle as fast as any motorbike. He certainly can cycle faster than his captain or any of the younger guys. He is the oldest man on the force. He says: from the neck up, there's a face that should have had grown-up sons to work for me. From the neck down, I am my own sons. I have no sons, so my legs are sons for me.

  He cycles now with his eyes fixed on the moon. He thinks of the famous stone portrait of Jayavarman. The stone face is white too, and it also glows, with wisdom and love. The face of the moon is the face of the King.

  So what is all this about, Great King? How come someone with as many good actions as Ta Barang gets taken by pirates? Explain to me how that can be justice. Tell me how there can be any justice.

  There are whole fields of angry spirits, Jayavarman. Am I the only guy who can see them? I see their hands coming out of the ground, all prickly like thistles. All around here, in the ditches, are bones and mud that used to be people. You can put out your tables of food at New Year and Pchum Ben, but these ghosts don't want rice cakes. They want me, Jayavarman, because of what I did. So I just keep laying them down. All those ghosts. The grass in Cambodia is ghosts, the termite nests swarm with them.

  And no one remembers. No one talks. They don't want to harm the children by telling the truth. They think the truth is dust that can be raised. The truth is teeth in the air. The truth bites. Truth is thicker around us than mosquitoes.

  I know who stole the Golden Book. At New Year? It's us again, isn't it, Jayavarman? It's the Khmers Rouges, Angka. We've come back like all those vengeful spirits that don't want to be forgotten. Just when they thought they'd paved us over, built a hotel on top of us, and made themselves rich, we jump up and take their strong man, and the barang who wants to help us. Like the spirits, we come back not because we think we can win. We just want to make this world hell. Like the one we live in.