In the Shadow of the Banyan (10 page)

•  •  •

An army camion trundled into view, looking like a giant metal scrap heap, smelling of gasoline and burnt rubber. Once again the commander emerged from his post, a bullhorn held to his lips, announcing, “In a short while, you will be divided into two groups. Those of you with relatives in the surrounding areas must declare yourselves. You will be taken to your respective town or village. If your town or village is far, then you’ll go by oxcarts. If it’s close, you will walk. Those of you without any connection whatsoever will be taken by truck. You will continue your journey until further orders come from the Organization.”

We quickly ate our morning meal, packed, and readied ourselves. The other Revolutionary soldiers came around again with their guns and started dividing people into two groups, as the commander had instructed. As our family had no connection or ties to the area, we were in the group bound for the camion, which, up close, was even scarier than its silhouette had suggested. It had a mud-covered floor, dented metal benches, burnt canvas top, sides punctured by bullet holes, and missing front doors that might have been blown off by rockets or grenades. The thing looked as if it had gone through hell, and I imagined it would likely go there again, taking us with it this time.

“Don’t worry,” Papa said, lifting me up, holding me still to him. “I’m here.”

As we climbed in I looked back at the row of oxcarts we’d passed, which seemed preferable to this machine with its battle wounds and scars. Others began to board. First one family, then two, then three, and then a countless horde simultaneously. Finally, with everyone squeezed in tight, the camion trumpeted, like an ancient war elephant coming to life, and charged forth.

seven

F
lame trees in full bloom blazed our trail, like offerings of fire to the gods. The trees gave way to denser, greener growth, and eventually all we could see were forests and sky and patches of water. Sometimes we’d come upon a sapling growing in the middle of the road as if it had been months since any vehicle had driven through. Our driver and the four Revolutionary soldiers accompanying him—two in the front and two on the roof—would take turns getting out and clearing the young saplings with an ax. If a patch of growth was especially stubborn or unruly, then everyone would get out and help clear away the vines. When we passed rice fields, quite often we would have to wait for a whole herd of cows to cross the road, and always one of the animals would stop and stare stupidly, refusing to budge until the herder—usually a little boy who seemed to be the only person around, a sprite appearing out of nowhere—came along and pulled it out of the way. As we moved on, a village would appear and disappear in the blink of an eye.

In the land of rubber plantations, where the trees stood scarred and bleeding milk-white blood, we crossed small wooden bridges that looked as if they would collapse under the weight of our truck and avoided others the soldiers suspected were rigged with land mines. When one of them jokingly clapped his hands and made an explosive sound with his lips, his comrade elbowed him disapprovingly in the ribs, to which he responded in kind. They continued like this, playfully hitting each other,
as we looked on. I thought how ordinary they seemed, horsing around like that. At some point they started talking with us and we learned they were village boys who’d joined the Revolution because—as one put it—“guns were a lot lighter to lug around than plows.” They seemed in awe of the driver, who knew how to maneuver the camion. They said most of their comrades, until recently, had never seen any car or truck or motorcycle, let alone knew how to handle one. But some, like our driver, had had to learn quickly when they started capturing these vehicles from the enemies. When asked if they missed their families, they shrugged, feigning indifference, and for a long stretch after remained silent with melancholy. But then a bump in the road caused them to knock shoulders and once again they became animated, pushing each other back and forth, playing with every leap and lurch that came our way.

Mama, noticing me staring at them, gently pulled my head down to her lap. I didn’t resist, but curled up on the tight space between her and Papa, my head on her lap and my feet on his. For a long time I lay there, closing and opening my eyes, dozing in and out, the landscape rippling past me like a windblown sheet.

When the sun shone high above our heads, we stopped at a village by a small stream to eat another meal of rice and fish, brought by a group of Revolutionary soldiers who, like the others before them, seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. There wasn’t a lot of talking. We ate quickly and hurried to cool ourselves in the stream. We rolled up our pants and shirtsleeves, splashing water on our faces and bodies. Mama scooped water with her hand and wet her hair and Radana’s. Papa soaked his
kroma
and gave it to me to put on my head. He took off his shirt, soaked it as well, wrung out the water, and put it back on. Big Uncle grabbed the twins and dunked them, clothes and all. The driver sounded the horn. Dripping wet but rejuvenated, we rushed to the camion.

Once more we resumed our journey. Again and again, forests, rivers, and rice fields came into view, then rolled away as soon as they’d appeared, swallowed by the horizon. My head throbbed; I tried to sleep but couldn’t. Each time I nodded off I was jolted back to waking by my own breathlessness. It was suffocating, with all the arms and elbows around
me, the smell of sweat, the thick layer of red dust that coated my lips and tongue, my nostrils, the whorls of my ears.

Finally, when it felt like we’d traveled to the edge of the world, one of the soldiers announced that we’d reached Prey Veng, a province whose name means “endless forest.” An archway lettered with the name “Wat Rolork Meas” in fancy old-Khmer script appeared on the left side of the road. Our camion turned and trundled through the narrow passage, its sides scratching against the cacti hemming the road. Passing a series of sugarcane fields and cashew orchards, the road brought us to a small town, where a throng of wooden houses rose in the distance and a Buddhist temple gleamed nearby, like a dream in the late afternoon sun.

•  •  •

At the entrance to the temple, a statue of a Walking Buddha lay on its back as if Mara, the god of desires, tempter of man, had come along and knocked it off its stone pedestal. Two small figures rose, waking from their nap under a gigantic banyan near the entrance. They ambled sleepily in our direction, stretching and yawning, their long-barreled guns hanging from straps on their shoulders at a slight angle to keep the tips from brushing the ground. Our soldiers jumped out, slapping dust off their bodies. The two sides spoke, and confirming this was the place we ought to be, the driver nodded for us to come down.

•  •  •

Everyone kept a respectful distance from the fallen Walking Buddha statue, avoiding the ground above its head. Some of the elders, their palms in a
sampeah,
bowed and muttered a prayer. The boy soldiers leading us showed no such deference. Earlier one had spat on the trunk of the banyan tree and now the other was blowing his snot on the ground just as he passed the statue. We followed them toward the main open-air prayer hall that stood not facing the road as was common of temples but parallel to it, rising higher than all the surrounding structures. The prayer hall had a roof of painted gold and gables carved with upswept tips resembling wings or flames. A pair of glass-tiled
naga
serpents encircled the outer pillars of the hall, their heads guarding the entrance to the front steps and their tails intertwined in the back. In the middle of the
stenciled tile floor sat a large Buddha statue painted in gold, legs crossed, eyes gazing past a lotus pond to the distant marsh and forest.

I followed the statue’s gaze, noticing how green and wet the land was, the rain apparently having arrived early in this part of the country. The pond brimmed full of lotuses, the marsh rippled with water lilies and hyacinths, and the rice paddies burgeoned with knee-high stalks as supple as a baby’s hair. I’d once read about premonsoon clouds that could gather randomly in one place and burst like punctured water balloons, drenching everything under their shadows, while only a short distance away it would remain sunny and dry. I imagined little
tevoda
children floating in the bulges of clouds above us, testing the clouds for ripeness with the tips of their gold javelins before freeing the rains to warn us of the impending monsoon.

A cool breeze blew, jostling the lotus pads, sending little transparent spheres of water gliding across the green surfaces. Somewhere a frog croaked,
Ooak oak oak!
and a toad answered,
Heeng hoong, heeng hong! Ooak oak ooak! Heeng hoong, heeng hong!
Back and forth they went as if announcing to the other animals, warning unseen spirits and beings of this sudden intrusion.

I kept walking, my eyes taking in everything. I loved the way temples made me feel. Papa also loved them, so much so that he’d named me Vattaaraami, which in Sanskrit means “small temple garden.” I didn’t know if others felt as I did, but always I sensed a certain lingering familiarity upon walking into a temple, even if it was a completely strange one, as if I were returning to a place I’d known from another time, another life. I wondered about this temple, though. Why it was so quiet, so empty . . .

It looked prosperous for a provincial temple, yet it appeared abandoned, as if the inhabitants had disappeared abruptly. Evaporated. There were no children laughing on the shaded grounds, no monks reciting their dharma lessons, no townspeople chatting on the steps of the prayer hall. Instead there were echoes everywhere.

I sensed a presence. I whispered,
Anyone there?
No reply. Just echoes of the hollowness here and there, ricocheting against the emptiness.

To the right of the pond stood a white stupa, a bell-shaped dome
with a long golden spire that rose and tapered off until it blended with the sky. A stupa is built to house a relic of the Buddha, a piece of cloth, hair, tooth, or often, as Papa once told me, our wish for the eternal, for immortality. Looking at the hugeness of this stupa I thought perhaps it housed all the wishes imaginable, those of the living and the dead, whose ashes would be in the surrounding
cheddays,
smaller versions of the stupa.

To the left of the pond were four buildings, painted a mustard yellow, with wooden slatted shutters all around, just like my school in Phnom Penh. The buildings faced one another to form a square, and in the middle of the square stood a flagpole, tall and slender, with only the tattered remains of a flag at its base, and next to it, a patch of ground worn by children’s playing. My eyes fell on the charcoal outline of a hopscotch board drawn in the dirt. A rock was left in the center of the board in one of the squares to mark the place of the last person who had played it. I wondered who—who had last been here? Again, I thought I heard an echo. A ghost whispering in my ear. Or maybe my own thoughts ripping through the silence. I picked up the rock and put it in my pocket, an amulet for good luck, for protection.

We were left to ourselves to get settled. The school buildings were empty, so there were more classrooms than families. They were all open to us. We would have space to spread out and could choose any room we wanted. But why did it feel we were intruding? Why did I sense we were being observed?

Our family chose a classroom with a row of windows that opened to the rice fields, the marsh, and the expanse of forests beyond. Inside, the desks and chairs were gone. Only their outlines were left on the tiled floor. The blackboard remained, and at the top someone—maybe a teacher, a monk who was a teacher—had written,
Knowing comes from . . .,
each word a different color. The rest was erased, a rainbow of chalk dust left behind.

We put our belongings in one corner and looked around. It wasn’t much, just space, an empty room, but it was better than sleeping out in the open among the night creatures and insects. There was enough space for us to be comfortable while keeping close to one another. Big
Uncle opened a slatted wooden door and found that it led to another room, quite a bit smaller than ours. A supply room perhaps, but it had nothing in it. Tata suggested we claim it before another family did. But to be on the safe side we decided just to put our extra belongings there and sleep together in one room. The twins, having slept almost the entire afternoon in the camion, could not keep still. They ran back and forth through the open doorway, with Radana squealing after them. Big Uncle made use of their energy and put all three to work. He gave the boys a rolled-up straw mat—the one we used for eating—and told them to take it over to the smaller room. He gave Radana a pot and told her to follow the boys. She toddled after them, banging the lid against the pot.

Papa, who’d stepped outside momentarily, returned with a couple of straw brooms, some rags, and a bucket of water. Together we dusted, swept, wiped, and mopped. On the wall near our room’s entrance there were several crimson stains—paint or perhaps dried blood—in the shape of hands and fingers stretched to shadowy lengths.