The King's Last Song

by Geoff Ryman

  Luc says, “In Sanskrit it's exactly 22,500 words and then another 750 in the last five leaves. But those were added later. That's important. Each leaf is exactly 150 words.” Luc grips Pich's arm so hard that he winces and coaxes Luc's hand away.

  "Yes, Comrade, I understand."

  Luc drifts in and out of fever. Pich sits cross-legged in moonlight as he reads, and Luc becomes convinced that it's Jayavarman who is talking.

  "Are you going to take over the government now?” Luc asks.

  Jayavarman rocks slightly.

  He clears his throat and continues reading from where he left off, as if the answer was there.

  I made a foreigner my crown prince and Brahmins my advisors in order to show that external forms mean nothing, and that there are no good or bad men. For it is a miracle of God that all men have right on their side. God is with all of them. All of them speak for justice. No one speaks for evil. The evil only comes when they think their small part of justice is all the justice there is.

  Luc asks Jayavarman. “Why are you crying?"

  "I'm not crying, it's just sweat on my face."

  "Then why are you whispering? Why does your voice sound strange?"

  "I'm thinking of the waste,” says Jayavarman. “I'm thinking of all the things that are too big to be put into words. I'm an old man at the end of my life, and life just keeps getting bigger. I'm wondering how big it would get if we didn't die, Comrade. If we didn't die.” Jayavarman shakes the top of Luc's hand.

  Luc's mother comes and sits down with a slump, dropping into her chair. “Oh, such a day I've had. You too. You look flattened! It won't be long now, and you can rest."

  His cousin, who came to Cambodia several times and with whom Luc was secretly in love, drops in bringing a gift of favourite comics. Tintin. And a new one, The Adventures of Jayavarman. The cousin talks about all the things he plans to do when he grows up. He died at fifteen in a skiing accident.

  Luc says aloud in Khmer, “Isn't it lovely the way Mother and my cousin are sitting here so quietly with us?"

  "Your dead are with you?” Pich asks.

  There is light all around, blazing on the water.

  And Arn comes and sits with him.

  Arn is a fifty-eight-year-old man in a white shirt. He takes Luc's hand. “We were so beautiful,” he says.

  "You're alive,” whispers Luc and goes to sleep, holding Arn's hand.

  In the morning, he wakes up sane.

  "This is not going to get any better, is it?” Luc says.

  Pich shakes his head. “I'm taking you in,” he says.

  Pich loads Luc up on his back, the gold book on his shoulder and the paper book on Luc's. He starts to walk, carrying Luc, at a slow, even, military pace. There seem to be miles of scrub. They batter their way through it. It is still broad daylight when they come in sight of a roadway.

  "You go this way. I go that,” says Pich, indicating different directions with his head.

  Long pause. Both of them waver as if a cord tied between them is unbalancing them.

  Pich asks, “Can you make it to the road?"

  Luc nods yes.

  Pich is smiling lightly, the tough guy amused by life. He shifts his bag and it clanks slightly.

  Luc looks at the bag containing the Kraing Meas and his throat aches with longing. “Bury it,” he says, and realizes just how big a commitment he is making by saying this. He starts again. “Bury it more than two metres deep, and metal detectors won't be able to find it."

  Pich closes his eyes and bows very slightly in acknowledgment. “There's nothing you want to check or look at again?"

  "My eyes won't focus and I'm hallucinating. I'm the last person who should be changing anything in those notebooks."

  Pich nods. “They won't believe you,” he warns. “They will think you know where the Book is."

  "I know,” said Luc. “But someone will publish the Book. The words will be out there."

  "They might arrest you for the theft."

  Luc shrugs and wavers. He feels like the shimmering air that rises up over tarmac on hot days. “There is nothing else to do, now."

  "Nothing else to do."

  Luc wants to shake hands, but Cambodians don't shake hands; it's a meaningless gesture they only use with Westerners. He wants to hug Pich, but Cambodians don't do that except within particular relationships.

  Their eyes latch. Beautiful faces, thinks Luc, they have such beautiful faces.

  Saom Pich sniffs, nods again, and turns and walks off towards his fate.

  Arn, thinks Luc. This is Arn and me saying good-bye, which we never did properly, and off he goes. He's survived gunfire, hunger, disease, and age. There they all go, everyone for whom the last thirty years mean anything, off into the reeds. The Great Lake dries, the forests are cut down, the wildlife dies out, and the kids buy mobile phones and Game Boys.

  He let me live. He helped me. He took me to the road. What a miracle.

  I'd better move before I disappear.

  * * * *

  A tall, torn, bloodied barang staggers half dead from dehydration, dengue, and malaria onto Highway 6.

  A pickup truck stops for him, and he climbs into the back. He's plainly half-starved, and the sun has peeled off his skin in patches.

  A woman with a kramar wrapped around her face gives him water. A farmer with a big plastic bag of bananas pulls some off the stem for him to eat. They are all surprised when the barang starts to sing old Sin Sisimuth songs, his face streaming with tears. He gets all the words perfect. He begins to sing another song with Khmer words, about chanting in a monsoon.

  He looks up at the old woman. He has the eyes of a dead man, flat and dry. He pulls a notebook out of a plastic bag, grasping it so hard that it crumples and he says, “Kraing Meas."

  The old woman was once a schoolteacher and has weathered all the storms. “This is that book,” she says. “The one that was stolen."

  Slowly as if underwater, the foreigner takes a chewed pencil and writes in Khmer.

  For Cambodian

  Then he writes

  Loak Tan Map

  Police Village

  Angkor Wat

  He looks into the old woman's eyes and something of his spirit passes into her. A good man who has accepted death has a task for her, a task of particular merit. She takes the plastic sack and sompiahs.

  It starts to rain. The people try to shelter him with their scarves and their bags of produce but water flows over him; the truck lurches and slams him. Looking utterly spent, he dies.

  The rain passes, and the old woman looks at the notebook.

  "These are happy words,” says the old woman. “That means he died happy, bringing good luck."

  She starts to read them aloud. As they bounce and rattle around new construction, dipping off the roadway onto temporary tracks, she keeps reading. The farmers sit in silence.

  The truck stops in front of a hospital. The old woman shows the name and address the Frenchman had written, and everyone in the truck agrees. She slips away with the bag under her shirt.

  It is not yet evening when she comes walking towards Angkor, out of the rain.

  Map sees her from a distance. He sits drinking beer at the café by the east-facing gate. In most temples, it would have been the main entrance, coming from the direction of sunrise, the direction of life.

  With Teacher Luc so long disappeared, Map has no daytime work, except drinking beer. His smile is crooked. Why is this crazy lady walking up here in the rain?

  She walks straight up to him, and says, “Are you called Tan Map?"

  Map nods. What of it? The woman doesn't seem to like his looks much, but most people don't. “A Frenchman on a truck died, but he gave me these for you.” She passes him the rain-soaked rucksack.

  Map fires questions at her. “Where, when? Where on the road? Did he say where he'd been? Did he say how he had escaped, or how he got there?"

  The old woman shakes her head. “He sang old songs
. He was very sick. I think you'd better look in the bag."

  Map pulls out ten ordinary school notebooks. He recognizes Luc's handwriting, then the Khmer and then the words, reading the first two or three leaves. By the time he jumps awake, heart pounding, the woman has gone, taking her name and address with her.

  Map takes off on his bicycle after the woman, cycling through the rain. He needs a full statement from her. He might need her to come to court and verify the story.

  It's as though she has melted into the downpour. He doesn't know that she is not walking back towards Siem Reap, but walking westward, towards the setting sun through Angkor Wat. The last of the sunlight catches the clouds, burning them bronze.

  He cycles almost all the way to Siem Reap and then stops. Leaning one foot on a muddy bank, drenched, he takes stock for a moment, wiping the rain and sweat out of his eyes.

  What now?

  The notebooks.

  He cycles back as the sky clears and night falls. The moonlight is reflected on the glossy tarmac. It keeps pace with him. Map begins to hear a squeaking sound. The moon is bicycling beside him.

  "What now, Jayavarman?” Map asks. By now, out of respect, he can only look at the reflection on the road as the King keeps pace with him.

  For Cambodian, says the King.

  Luc didn't want it to go to other people. He wanted it to go to a Cambodian person. That's what he said first.

  He wants us to have it; he doesn't want it to be a book like a western book, one of those guides in English, French, and German but not in Khmer.

  A different way, says the King.

  I have an elementary education. I don't know the history. I have no books. Who am I to do this, Jayavarman?

  A Cambodian. The moon smiles at Map with forbearance.

  One particular Cambodian. A Cambodian who lived through many wars and lost many friends and who still smiles.

  Like I did.

  Map cycles on. The moon starts to falter and fall behind.

  The moonlight says, This will get you into a lot of trouble, Map.

  "I like trouble,” Map replies.

  You like trouble, Jayavarman Chantrea repeats. Like me.

  Map sets up a gas lamp under the café awning and reads everything, the translation, the notes, the sections of copied Sanskrit, and he realizes how much work there is to do. He will need to set it out in order and get some help with the Sanskrit words. Then he will need to get it to other Cambodians, to publish.

  A sarika bird starts to sing.

  "Okay, Luc,” Map says to a spirit he is sure is not in hell, a spirit he is sure stands by him. “We begin."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  April 1181

  Jayavarman returned to the land of the Chams, as if on a pilgrimage, as if they had never made him a slave.

  The Cham conqueror looked on this with favour. Jaya's visit seemed to imply that the two kingdoms were one, and also got the Little King out of the way.

  Jayavarman spent six months in the city of Vijaya, smiling calmly, as round and sweet as a melon. Like a melon, he attracted flies.

  The sons of Jaya-Harideva, his old protector, needed to talk to him. The new Cham King had killed their father. The sons sent Jayavarman gifts of maidens, supposedly from some other, minor prince. At night, next to the King, the girls whispered messages along with allurements. Jayavarman made sure he resisted both. He praised the beauty of the girls, kept an arm's distance from them, and said nothing that could get him killed if they were spies. He went to the temples and was as devout a Buddhist as always.

  Jayavarman had other, more original ways to pass messages.

  "Hmph!” he said aloud to one of his enemies. “I don't like the way people keep trying to pass me messages. I tell you, the only way I would trust anyone is if they came and spoke to me out in the open.” The way he said it sounded like a rebuke to the dispossessed Chams.

  Then, professing himself pleased to be part of a new empire and expressing gratitude to his hosts, he made preparations to leave.

  Oh, he added, he was looking forward to seeing the lords of Vijaya when they visited the Universal King in Yashodharapura. He would recommend to the Chakravartin how well the shadow government ruled in the lesser city.

  Thus he chafed wounds while pretending to bandage them.

  A month after his return, Fishing Cat came running to Jaya. “Lord,” she said, her eyes sharp as knives. “It has happened as you said it would. Three Chams at the gates, and they talk like aristocrats."

  Jaya streamed forth, all affection and generosity. “Food!” he called, “Food for our cousins!"

  The sons of Jaya-Harideva looked as if they had risen from the grave. Their families were hostages; their elder brother was dead; and their eyes burned with the desire for revenge.

  Rice and fish arrived, wafting cardamom and lemon grass. The Cham princes feasted and went faint from the impact of food on an empty stomach.

  They spoke of their military might, the numbers of their men and elephants. Jaya pretended to be impressed. He did not have to pretend to look pleased. The value of Cham allies would be mostly symbolic. If the Cham King needed murdering, then Chams had better do it.

  Cat watched Jayavarman for any slips of comportment. Years of enslavement had built a huge and ugly temple of resentment in the King's heart. He had had to dismantle this bitterness stone by heavy stone and even now the task might not be complete.

  Cat also knew what the devout Queen Jayarajadevi did not. Jayavarman had changed. This was now a man who was determined to be Universal King.

  While Queen Jaya invented the ideology of the new land to come, Cat had found a way to hide their army. She made them into monks. In deep discussions with Queen Jaya—who was pleased to see that her adopted sister had grown so interested in debate—Cat convinced the First Queen that in their new state all men should be monks for a while. In that way, all men would have religious instruction.

  "Let's begin with the troops,” she said. “Queen Jaya, you must teach them."

  Cat had learned to love her adopted sister, whose heart was bottomless and whose learning surpassed that of anyone else in Kambujadesa. Cat felt her own heart soar when Queen Jaya spoke of goodness, wisdom, and compassion. Cat was sure that the many angry rebels would benefit in their hearts from her teaching.

  Cat also knew that they would fight better the more they had to fight for. A new and more human Way would serve.

  So she sat, humble Cat, still accepting that she was lowly, stitching monkish robes and listening to the teaching of the First Queen.

  Jayarajadevi still had the figure of a slip of a girl, and she had a girl's open face, wide-eyed, vivid, full of hope and happiness and delight. Her too-wide mouth would open up in a smile that was full of love for the world. This beautiful, beautiful creature spoke from her beautiful heart.

  Cat feared for her. Oh, Queen, you are not of this world.

  "Consider the King's Consort,” said the Queen at one lesson. Jayaraja's eyes shone out at Fishing Cat with joy, with love. “There you see before you the proof of my husband's great heart and great sincerity. In his own house, at the core of his domestic life, where you might expect to see hypocrisy arise, you see the King follows the Way. If he follows the Way in his own personal life, rest assured, he will follow it wherever the Path might take him."

  Queen Jaya looked up at the skies beyond the dark ceiling, as if she expected to see her husband embodied there in the clouds. Her eyes shone like candles; the oil lamps made her skin golden. “You will be fighting for a new age, a new beginning for all the land."

  Fishing Cat looked down in something like shame.

  The peasant warriors gaped, open-mouthed.

  Cat had to smile: they think they are seeing a celestial maiden come to earth. Okay, Sister, they believe you. Okay, that was a smart thing in its own way.

  Maybe it is best you do not know all the truth, that your philosophy has become a weapon of war. Cat continued
to cloak trained killers in the robes of saints.

  * * * *

  In the fields, in the temples, in the houses of district administrators, people began to sing songs about a white rabbit.

  The white rabbit disguised himself as a white royal elephant, said one song. No one thought that he was a sharp-witted Khmer bunny.

  The white rabbit pretended to be good friends with some hunting cats in the next forest. The white rabbit learned to sing songs that lulled the hunting cats to sleep, but which told the other animals of the forest what was true.

  In one of the songs, the tiger pounced on the burrow of the white rabbit and found him in his hammock looking fat and well fed.

  The tiger demanded, “Why are you so fat and well fed?"

  "Because I eat so much lovely grass,” said the white rabbit and pushed some at him.

  "No, thank you,” said the tiger in disdain. “I demand a richer diet than grass. I eat rabbits."

  The tiger looked up but the fat, slow white rabbit was already gone.

  Rabbits reproduce. The land was full of burrows. Peasants would sing the songs and smile and say, “There are more white rabbits in the fields."

  The peasants hid young warriors in their huts and said they were their older sons. The warriors would say to them, “Categories. Tooh, categories, who cares about the categories, that is the old religion.” The warriors were dressed as mendicants or traders or rice farmers. “When the white rabbit raises his parasol over us, everyone will be shaded."

  "They burned our city,” the soldiers said to the slaves, “but they can never burn our hearts."

  This white rabbit preaches compassion. This white rabbit cares for his people.

  This white rabbit will fight for us, as no one ever has before.

  The songs also carried messages to all the other little kings. Hide the many rabbits safe in burrows. With so many rabbits, how can the tiger eat them all?

  The other little kings thought, this man Jayavarman, he is honest, a bit awkwardly so. Unambitious. He's got the favour of the Chams, and he's bumptious enough and naive enough to put himself forward, but he'll never be Universal King. Let him clear the space. For me.

  The little kings did what the songs bid them do.