Authors: Tom Knox
Sonisoy turned, a faint smile of pity on his face.
‘Few people make it this far into the jungle – to Preah Kahn, one of the oldest temples of Angkor. Originally a university. Here.’
The temple loomed, old and vast and very ruinous. More giant
garudas
guarded the walls, at every corner.
Nagas
lay waiting either side of the entrance; headless statues of gods stood as sentinels at the porch.
‘Through here, and here . . . left here, just down this way . . .’
It was a labyrinth of dozing sunlight, ancient darkness, fallen stone pillars and mutilated stone buddhas. Enclosures, gopuras, doorways, columned doorways, and then long broken corridors where bats nested in the upper corners.
‘It’s vast,’ Chemda said.
‘Twenty thousand people lived in Preah Kahn at its height,’ said Sonisoy. ‘And we don’t know what they studied.’
He had finally brought them to a kind of open cloister. The far wall backed onto the jungle.
‘That place there,’ said Sonisoy, gesturing, ‘is unique in Angkor. The only building with round columns. Probably some kind of sacred library. As for what it contained . . .’
It was a roofless pavilion, elegant, empty, desolate. Big spider webs hung from the empty sandstone windowframes.
‘Books,’ said Chemda. ‘It would have contained, ah, books, parchments, wooden tablets, but they would all have been destroyed by time –’
‘Yes,’ Sonisoy gestured them to the side. ‘But stone can survive in great detail if it is buried. We have dug around this library in the past year, since our discussions with Monsieur Barnier, and we found these.’
He gestured over a heap of rubble. Beyond it was another pile of rubble, covered in dusty plastic.
Like a magician, Sonisoy swept the large sheet of plastic away. Jake stared. It was still a heap of nothing. They had come all this way to look at some ancient bricks.
‘Uncle, I don’t –’
‘Look harder. Use your eyes.’
Amidst the rubble stood two larger pieces of stone. Pediments, badly worn, with several carved panels; figures etched into the stone.
Apsaras
,
garudas
, the usual.
‘So what?’
Sonisoy sighed in the breathless heat.
‘These were special carvings kept in the special library in the intellectual heart of Angkor, the greatest city of its time, in the world. They must tell a story –’
‘You tell it to us,’ Chemda said, ‘and fast. Please.’
‘Of course.’ He turned to his niece. ‘We all know the prophecy, don’t we, every Khmer learns it: a darkness will settle on the people of Cambodia. There will be houses but no people in them, roads but no travellers.’
Chemda finished the prophecy for him: ‘The land will be ruled by barbarians with no religion; blood will run so deep as to touch the belly of the elephant. Only the deaf and the mute will survive.’
‘So,’ said Sonisoy, pointing to the pediment. ‘Here is the belly of the elephant. Here is the sea of blood.’
Jake knelt and squinted. He could barely see what Sonisoy was pointing out. Maybe that was an elephant, that could be an ocean, a ripple of water – or of blood. But now he was close he could definitely see one thing. One thing was perfectly plain.
‘My god, that’s a jar! From the Plain of Jars, in Laos! This is a carving of whatever happened to those people? In Laos?’
‘The Black Khmer. Exactly.’
Sonisoy was nodding; his bald head was sweating. He unwrapped his
krama
from his waist and dabbed his scalp, then he returned to the carvings: ‘When you told me of them last night, I thought of these carvings. Now it all makes sense. Here are people, Black Khmer, being drilled in the head, turning them into warriors. See, there, the drilling.’ He moved his hand. ‘And you see the metamorphosis here, and here. From cringing peasant to proud Khmer warrior, when the skull is drilled. These are probably Vietnamese prisoners, decapitated, after the wars, the triumphs of the Khmer.’
That was also clear: a row of heads on the ground. The panel was surely showing a great military victory, by Khmers, Black Khmers, in the Plain of Jars. Jake grabbed a couple of photos; poor photos, yet still evidence. Khmers with trepanations . . .
But evidence for
what?
Sonisoy intoned:
‘But here, see, in the next panel we see the jars and the weeping women. And the blood and the destruction, the burning of bones, a mass suicide. You see, it is a story, it is
the
story –’
‘A story of what?’
‘Who knows. But –’
A noise interrupted, a buzz of static. It was a twoway radio attached to Sonisoy’s belt. Jake guessed you might just need such a thing, to stay in touch, in such a vast place as Angkor.
Sonisoy unbuckled the radio and talked. His face grew dark, then darker. Angry. He gabbled, and stared at Chemda.
Then he said:
‘That was the gatekeeper, a friend. Warning me. Someone has spotted you. National police, they are coming for us right now, surrounding the temple –’
Chemda grabbed Jake’s hand. She yelled at her uncle:
‘How do we get out?’
‘It’s too late, we need to hide –
this way.
’
They were about to be caught. The fear shrilled through Jake’s body, a klaxon in the night. Sonisoy guided them swiftly over fallen columns and rubble, and through a small empty window, which led to a dimly lit, elongated chamber, a virtual tomb of unaired heat.
The room was darkly concealed at the very heart of the temple, the bat-haunted core of Preah Kahn. The three of them pressed flat against the wall. Jake could feel the damp cold sweat of his own shirt. Chemda was next to him. her face a waxen and perspiring mask of unease, the heartbeat visible in her neckveins, pulsing, rapidly.
What next?
They were successfully hidden, for the moment. But they were also trapped inside the cardiac darkness of Preah Kahn. Sooner or later they would be found, in a minute, or five, or ten. Jake was prey, a targeted man. He would go to jail. He probably wouldn’t make it as far as jail. They would find a reason to execute him. This was Cambodia. People died with the merest blink.
Jake stared at the temple wall opposite. The chamber was decorated with a stone frieze. He realized it was a series of smiling, floating and completely disembodied female heads.
The she-demons stared. Jake could hear the police now: young male Khmer voices clacking orders at each other. A far wall was dazzlingly overlit by sun, then a shadow fleetingly shot across it: the shadow of a man. One of their pursuers.
‘This way,’ whispered Sonisoy. He gestured, low, beckoning. They followed. The stone corridors narrowed. A strangler fig-tree loomed in the middle of a tiny lightwell, growing out of the architrave, its enormous roots were like muscles and tendons grappling the stonework into sub mission, arm-wrestling the temple into dust. A spider hung sacred and scarlet, poised on a sunlit web.
They ducked. Another corridor, more voices. The policemen were flooding into the ancient maze of Preah Kahn: it sounded like a dozen men, at least, climbing through the
gopuras
, patrolling the
naga
balustrades, pointing torches and guns into thousand-year-old alcoves where blind white salamanders feasted on the pristine darkness, and scuttled from the hideous light.
Sonisoy’s shaved head was brightened by another shaft of sun, slanting through the broken roof. He glanced all around. Thinking – and gesturing.
‘Along here –’
It was pointless. Jake felt the utter futilty dragging like leg-irons as they scrambled over the fallen columns and pediments and the cracked and tumbled bas reliefs. They were going to get caught. Death always caught up.
The young cops were engulfing the place, he could hear them everywhere now, those dark high clamorous Khmer vowels, clashing, unpleasant, stern and yet juvenile. They could not escape.
Abruptly, Sonisoy stopped, and raised a hand. He was pointing through a stone windowframe – at an open space. Great kapok trees loomed beyond a wall, like watchtowers around a concentration camp.
‘See. The lions of the stairway, there –’
His gesture led Jake’s eye to a stone lion.
Sonisoy explained.
‘There’s a small path at the right of the lions, the stone lions, you see it?’
‘Yes.’
‘That path leads to the fourth enclosure and then it goes under a wall, we dug a tunnel under a wall to extract rubble.’
Jake leaned forward, excited:
‘So we go, use the tunnel.’
‘Wait!’ Sonisoy hissed, quiet and urgent. Another clamour of male voices passed right behind them, just a wall away
.
‘Jake, you go, you’re the one they want. Chemda and I can stay here, get captured, nothing will happen to us –’
Chemda’s intervention was fierce:
‘If Jake is going I am going.’
‘But Chemda.’
‘No!’ Her eyes burned in the darkness. ‘I want to find the truth about my father.
And I want to be with Jake.
’
Jake looked her way. Churned.
‘Stubborn, Chemda,
stubborn.
’ Sonisoy sighed and put a hand on Jake’s shoulder. ‘Just
look after my niece.
Please. OK? I’m going to run that way,’ he gestured backwards, ‘making a
lot
of noise to distract them, you two will have a few seconds as they all come after me, make sure you
use those seconds –’
He clasped Jake’s shoulder tighter, and said:
‘Then, when you get to the outside, just
run,
run through the forest, it goes a long way, right to a baray, Srah Srang, no one goes there, just villagers, locals, no tourists no police – you can grab a lift for Anlong Veng.’
The nearest policeman was coming around the corner, Jake could hear the chink of rubble, as black boots slid against the clitter.
Sonisoy gazed up at the half revealed sky, his eyes worshipful and concerned, misted with sadness. ‘So, now, we split up, in three seconds two seconds . . . ready?’
‘Ready.’
Sonisoy ran noisily, left, out into a courtyard, shouting behind him.
‘Chemda! Jake! This way!’
Immediately a chorus of excited voices responded – they’d heard him. Sonisoy kept shouting, leading, decoying.
Jake grabbed Chemda’s hand and they ducked into the sun, past the lion, down the terrace, down the steps, and onto the path.
There.
The path evolved into a short tunnel, under the wall. They slid down the mud and scrambled through darkness and emerged into peaceful light which was shattered by the sound.
A terrible scream.
The awful scream was so loud and eerie it seemed to silence the rasp of the jungle; it was the near-inhuman scream of someone being viciously beaten, or worse. And now the cops were calling, barking orders at each other, continuing the hunt.
‘Sonisoy –’ Chemda’s eyes shone with the shock,
‘What did they do to Sonisoy?’
The scream echoed again: a man’s bellow of pain.
Jake was paralysed, momentarily. He saw the repetition in his life: he was leaving someone behind, a broken body covered in blood, barely breathing.
But a fierceness entered Jake’s thoughts.
‘They’ll do the same to us.’
He wrenched at her hand – she resisted, for a shred of a moment; then she shuddered, nodded and they ran fast and together deep into the jungle, hard along the path, running straight into this forest of noise and heat.
It was a humid maze of green. Birds and monkeys catcalled like derisive hecklers. Insects hissed all around, whirring and angry; huge black wasps hovered and dived at their sweating faces; the sunlight flickered crazily through the green canopy.
They ran until they could barely walk, until Jake keeled to the side, gasping, heaving. Chemda hugged his neck, her warm panting breath feathery on his skin; the two of them were hanging on each other’s shoulders, exhausted.
Then Jake looked up.
Ahead of them, beyond the last of the trees, was a waste of water, another sheetmetal expanse of
baray,
like a vast lido of mercury in the hot afternoon sun.
And maybe a village?
Seizing the opportunity, Chemda walked out onto the docile shores of the reservoir, where wooden shacks and some swimming naked children revealed human life. Jake followed, his heart still hurting from the exertions.
Chemda was barefoot. Her ankles were bleeding. She curved and slipped her flip flops on, and dropped her ruck-sack to the ground. Jake looked at the little bag; he had a similar bag on his back. All their possessions. Two pitiful rucksacks.
He picked up his kit and followed her. He felt a bleak sense of affirmation as they approached the village, Chemda ahead of him. They were certainly in this together now. She was his and he was hers. Whatever happened.
The village was so sleepy it was like someone had mortared the place with narcotic gas. Women lay on their sides on wooden platforms, dirty and barefoot, snoozing, yawning, breastfeeding babies, their
kramas
on their shoulders. Men sat with their backs against the banyans in the shadows, sleeping. Only the children and the roosters were alert.
An old man wearing a white loincloth came forward. He scrutinized Jake and Chemda; he asked her several curt questions; she replied. He looked like Mahatma Ghandi. His teeth were haphazard but his eyes were kind, and shrewd. The man watched as Chemda took dollars from her rucksack. Then he spoke.
Chemda translated his words for Jake.
‘There’s a pick-up leaving here in forty minutes, taking fruit to Thailand. Through Anlong Veng. We can hide in the back.’
They had to wait. Jake was glad to wait, his legs were still aching from the run through the jungle, his mind was still roiled by the hideous scream in the temple. What did they do to Sonisoy?
The old man led them to a clearing, and a kind of communal table for the village. More chickens and children scampered in the dust. Five lads were playing with a shuttlecock down by the waveless waters of the baray; the boys were kicking the shuttlecock in the air.
Taking a metal jug, the man poured water in plastic cups for them both. It was cold and delicious. Jake drank it hungrily:
‘Aw kohn.’
The old man smiled. His eyes had a spark of charm and friendliness, maybe even empathy for these two scruffed, muddy, sweating young people emerging with frightened faces from the jungle. He stood and retreated to the shade of a shack, then came back with a bowl of boiled eggs. He proffered them. Jake realized he had not eaten anything in almost a day. He gladly took one of the eggs.
As he cracked open the egg he instantly understood his error. Chemda was staring his way, her eyebrows subtly raised. But it was too late. He’d have to eat it now. The rich and pungent smell emanating from the warm boiled egg told him what he was holding.
Balat.
It was boiled duck embryo, an egg that had been fertilized, and then left to grow for a fortnight or more: meaning there was a crunchy half-formed duck embryo inside. Jake peeled away the soft delicate shards of white shell, trying not to grimace. Sure enough, there it was, inside – the slimy bolus of egg and duck fetus: little feathers, brains, beak, claws, squidgy and grey, almost ready to be born, almost ready to fly, mixed in with the dark yellow egg pulp.
He couldn’t say no. These villagers were saving their lives. He didn’t dare risk insulting them. Closing his eyes, Jake put the egg in his mouth bit by bit, bone by bone, sensing the slimy crunch of the bird’s ribcage, and the jellylike squidge of the bird’s half formed brains between his teeth, like chewing silt. Jake shuddered, and felt a kind of guilt, the guilt of a carnivore, and yet he ate.
Because he was hungry
.
‘We’re ready –’
It was Chemda. Jake swallowed the last of the
balat.
And stood. A Toyota Hilux, unexpectedly clean and new, was backing into the clearing. Villagers were loading it with baskets of fruit: apples, mangosteens, papayas, purplish dragon fruit, and enormous durians, with their excessive green prickles.
Jake and Chemda climbed in. They lay on the bottom of the pick-up, between the racks of fruit. The fetid, sweet, bad-sewer smell of durian was quite persistent. But they were concealed between the fruit crates.
The old man threw some kind of tarpaulin over the fruit load, and over Jake and Chemda. He whispered to them as they lay there, cowering in the darkness.
Jake said thankyou. Chemda said
aw kohn.
The pick-up started. They were on their way.
The journey was long and hot and Jake spent it watching Chemda sleeping. She was lying right next to him and her eyes closed almost as soon as the car accelerated away. He sensed her exhaustion. That’s why she could sleep in this fetid cramped space, in the heat and the reek of the durians, as they rattled over the endless pot-holes of National Highway 67.
Jake was only half awake himself. His thoughts wandered. He day-dreamed. The smell of the durians was like toilets at a hot summer festival when he was a teenager. Glastonbury. The pick-up rattled through the gears. He thought of his sister running into the road as the car banged and juddered. Becky, Rebecca. Why did he feel such guilt about it all? None of it was his fault. His sister, his mother, and yet he felt guilt. Fuck the guilt.
Voices outside came and went in a second as they slammed through hamlets and jungle, and slowed over rickety wooden bridges. It was dark in here, under the tarpaulin, just a flap-ping corner of light at the end of the pick-up showed dust and road and paddy fields disappearing as they motored north.
He thought of his mother. Dying and smiling. How had she died? He didn’t want to think about it. He thought of the demon heads, the women in the frieze staring down at him as they hid at the dark centre of Preah Kahn. He thought of Sonisoy, screaming. Everyone was dying now, it was day zero year zero, they were clearing the city of his life; people were just falling in the gutter of Sisovath Boulevard. Soon they would blow up the bank.
A rattle turned his daydreams into lucidity. The tarpaulin was flung back. The driver was standing there.
‘Anlong Veng.’
The driver motioned:
climb out.
Tentatively, Jake rubbed his muscles as he walked away from the pickup. The sun was less hot now. They were in the main square of some tiny impoverished town where boys played volleyball in the middle of the dusty road.
Chemda was on maneuvers already: paying off the driver, and talking to another younger man in a faded red Klang Beer tee shirt.
Chemda turned and explained to Jake:
‘We can rest here,’ she gestured down a shady lane, that led to a kind of promontory. ‘This man is Rittisak, he will help us.’
‘But –’ Jake stared around. Some guys were drinking palm wine at a wooden shack a few metres away, looking curiously at the muddied Khmer princess and the scruffed up sweating white man. ‘Are we safe here?’
‘We are safe here. This is Anlong Veng, the Thai border is on top of those hills there, the Dangrek Escarpment, Chong Sa crossing. Ah. This is the last place the Khmer Rouge ruled, until 1998.’
‘OK.’
‘The locals hated the Khmer Rouge so much they still hate everyone, the police, the customs – if we are outlaws that makes us their friends – we are safe here, hnn, for a few hours, but then,’ she looked at Jake’s face, ‘then we move on. As you said. We have to get to Thailand.’
Their new friend, Rittisak, was beckoning, his hand turned down, flapping, requesting them to follow. The path led through a grove of shady trees, past a burned out Soviet truck, to a large concrete house.
‘In here,’ said Chemda, following Rittisak, through a door and up some steps.
The house was bizarre, it was empty and furnitureless and still hot from the day’s sun, and it was decorated with amateurish murals of Angkor Wat in an idealized jungle setting; Disney-eyed deer were feeding at overly crystalline lakes, elephants bathed in the sapphire waters, watched by monkeys so cheerful they looked like they were drugged.
But what made the house truly bizarre was the view. On three sides of the wall-less house stretched a plain of water shining red and yellow in the setting sun, with a faint reek of decay breezing off the waters. Sticking out of the water, like burned arms and charred fingers, were thousands of dead tree stumps, sometimes entire dead trees, all black, stricken and ugly. The watery graveyard of trees extended many miles, sullen and tragic, to a sudden rise of hills beyond. It looked like a First World War battlefield, like the Somme or Ypres or Passchendaele – inexplicably flooded, and set beneath a decrepit tropical sun.