In the Shadow of the Banyan Page 3

“There will remain only so many of us as rest in the shadow of a banyan tree,” again Grandmother Queen murmured, and I didn’t understand why crazy people always feel the need to say the same thing twice. “The fighting will continue. The only safe place is here . . . under the banyan.”

  • • •

  The front gate creaked. I turned to look, but it was only Old Boy opening the toolshed behind the carport. He took out a large garden clipper and, for the first time, left his vigilant post under the hanging bougainvillea bush where he had waited since Papa left.

  He walked about the gardens, trimming the trees and bushes. He cut off the leaves of the torch ginger so its flame-like blossoms would have more room to grow. He clipped the stems of the roses and rearranged the hanging orchid pots so that those with flowers went in the shade and those without would be ready to receive sunlight when morning came.

  Night fell and still there was no Papa, or Om Bao. Old Boy put away his gardening tools. He picked up a broom and began to sweep the ground of thorns and broken branches. He gathered the fallen frangipani petals into a basket—white, yellow, red. A gift for Om Bao on her return. Every morning he would clip a stem of the red frangipani, whose fragrance was like vanilla—her favorite spice—and put it on her windowsill, a token of his appreciation for the sweetness she had shown him over the years, the desserts she had snuck into his room night after night when all the cooking chores were done, when she thought no one was looking or listening. He had lost most of his teeth because of her sugary concoctions. Theirs was a secret affair, one I’d witnessed—spied through the cracks in the walls and doors—in the furtive glances they’d give each other all day long, in the early morning blossoms he’d exchange for her late night desserts. But now, while waiting for her return, he’d gathered the fallen petals from the ground. He believed she was dead, and so did I. As soon as I told myself this I turned my tongue seven times . . .

  . . . and seven times more.

  • • •

  Absence is worse than death. If you suddenly disappear without a trace, it’s like you have never lived. To say Om Bao was missing, that she was suddenly absent from our life, was to deny she had ever existed. So everyone treated her “being gone” as a kind of death, a moving on into the next life. A couple of days later, a Buddhist ceremony similar to a funeral was held at a temple near the airport, the site where Om Bao might have last been alive, and because it was outside the city, where artillery shelling was most intense, only Papa and Old Boy attended. When they returned home, they brought back an urn with a lid shaped like the spired dome of a stupa.

  “The cinder remains of her most cherished belongings,” Papa said, nodding at the silver vessel Old Boy cradled in his arms.

  How disconcerting to think that this was all that was left of Om Bao, just her things, reduced to ashes. Old Boy had carried a bag with him when he left at dawn for the ceremony. I hadn’t thought then to ask what was inside the bag. I imagined spice boxes, wooden ladles and spatulas, frangipani blossoms . . .

  “The achar tossed them into a fire,” Papa explained, looking exhausted, his clothes crumpled and smeared with dirt, smelling faintly of soot. “In lieu of a corpse . . .” Then, noticing me for the first time, he said, “I should go change.”

  “Yes,” Mama was quick to agree. To Old Boy, she said, “You should change too and get some rest,” and, handing the urn to Milk Mother, “Would you put it away before you leave?”

  “Of course, my lady,” Milk Mother said, all dressed and ready to go. She was taking one day’s leave to be with her family. “I’ll find a proper place for it.”

  “Oh,” Mama told her, “enjoy your time with your family. Our regards to them.”

  “Thank you, my lady.”

  Everyone got up to leave. I followed Papa and Mama. As they climbed the stairs, he said, “She is fated to be an absent ghost.”

  I stopped in my tracks. Absent ghost? How much more absent could you be if you were already a ghost? Invisible to the world?

  “She’s here with us,” Mama said, squeezing Papa’s hand, “in spirit.”

  I was tempted to ask if the New Year’s celebration was back on. It had been canceled because Om Bao was gone. If she had returned, even if only in spirit, should we still celebrate?

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Milk Mother. She pulled me aside and said, “You must promise me you’ll behave while I’m gone.”

  “You promise you’ll be back tomorrow?”

  Mama had insisted Milk Mother go and be with her family. It was good to have a break, even if we couldn’t celebrate.

  “It’s New Year tomorrow,” I reminded her.

  She examined me. “The tevodas will come, darling. But it’s not to celebrate New Year. It’s not possible now. They will come to mourn her as we do.”

  “But you’ll be back then, right?”

  “Yes, most likely in the evening. Until then, promise me you’ll keep yourself out of trouble?”

  I nodded but did not say what I truly felt—that I didn’t want her to go, that I feared she too would be “gone.”

  • • •

  A little while later, when everyone had retreated into the cool silence of the house, an apparition in white appeared in the courtyard. It was Old Boy. He had changed into clean clothes and now stood before the spirit house, making an offering of red frangipani blossoms. He gave me a handful of the blossoms so I could place them on the spirit house’s tiny steps.

  “Why are you dressed like that?” I asked, wondering why he was wearing funerary white when there was no funeral.

  “I’m in mourning, Princess,” he replied, his voice faltering.

  I wanted to reach up and caress his face, as Om Bao had done in those moments when they thought themselves alone. But he looked so fragile, I was afraid if I touched him he might crumble to pieces. How was it that in a matter of a couple days, his age seemed to have caught up with him? I couldn’t stop staring.

  “When you love a flower,” he said, as if wishing to explain his altered appearance, “and suddenly she is gone, everything vanishes with her. I lived because she lived. Now she is gone. Without her, I am nothing, Princess. Nothing.”

  “Oh.” To mourn then, I thought, is to feel your own nothingness.

  Tears rimmed Old Boy’s eyes, and he turned his face away from me.

  I let him be. I knew what I must do. I headed straight for the citrus garden in the back. Papa said that when he wanted to escape from something unpleasant or sad all he needed was to find a crack in the wall and pretend it was an entryway into another world, a world where all that was lost—yourself included—would again be found. Inside the bath pavilion, I found a portal much more generous than a crack—a row of tall, slender windows with the shutters swung open for air and light. I chose the middle window, as this gave me a full view of the whole grounds at the back of the estate. First, I saw the usual—ankle-high grass rippling like an emerald pond, tall bamboo vibrating with the whispers of a million tiny creatures, red and yellow birds-of-paradise frozen in flight, swooping bracts of lobster’s claw hanging like Mama’s jewel necklaces, and towering coconut trees like giant sentinels guarding an entrance. I looked harder, more carefully. Then I saw it!—this other world of which Papa spoke, where the lost was found, where a part of you always resided. It was quiet and lush, at once earthy and ethereal. There were no rockets or bombs exploding, no people crying or dying, no sadness, no tears, no mourning. There were only butterflies, fluttering their gossamer wings, each as brilliant as a dream, and there, near the trunk of a coconut tree, was Om Bao. She was in the form of a rainbow-colored moth, bulbous and bright, as she’d been when she was our cook. All along she’d been here waiting for Old Boy, while he waited for her. Should I go tell him?

  No. Not yet. He was still mourning her. He wouldn’t see what I saw. He wouldn’t believe me. When he was ready, I would show him this secret world, where all he thought he had lost was in fact only hidden—transformed. And only the
n would he discern the invisible, the magical, only then would he find among these flowers he cared for a butterfly he had once loved.

  three

  Papa came running through the gate, calling out, “The war is over, the war is over!” He jumped up and down, like a schoolboy. I’d never seen this boisterous side of him. “No more fighting! No more war! The Revolutionary Army is here!”

  “What? Who?” Tata demanded. “You mean the Khmer Rouge?”

  “Yes, and everyone is cheering for them!”

  “Are you mad?”

  “The streets are full of well-wishers,” Papa explained, unable to curb his excitement. “Even our soldiers are welcoming them. They’re waving white handkerchiefs and throwing flowers!”

  “Impossible.” Tata shook her head. “This can’t be true.”

  “You have to go out there.” Papa remained exuberant. “The smiles, the cheers, the shouts of greeting!” He picked up Radana from the teak settee and started spinning with her, singing, “It’s over, it’s over, the fighting is over!” He grabbed Mama and kissed her full on the lips in front of us, in front of Grandmother Queen. Mama pulled away, mortified. She took Radana from him.

  I tugged at Papa’s shirtsleeve and asked, “Will Milk Mother come back for sure then?” It was New Year’s Day, and she was due back from her visit to her family on the other side of the city. I had been worried about her being outside the safe enclosure of our walls, but now that the war was over, there wasn’t the risk of her not returning.

  “Yes!” He lifted me up and kissed my forehead. He looked around the courtyard, beaming. “All is well again.”

  • • •

  In expectation of Milk Mother’s return, the servant girls were granted an immediate leave for the holiday, and given that there would be no celebration, with Om Bao gone, they could have longer than usual. Once they departed, I took my copy of the Reamker, a Cambodian adaptation of the Ramayana, and went to wait for Milk Mother by the gate, even though it was still morning and she would most likely return in the evening. But just in case she returned sooner, she would see how glad I was to have her back. I chose a spot under the hanging bougainvillea where it was shady and cool and began to read once more from the beginning:

  In time immemorial there existed a kingdom called Ayuthiya. It was as perfect a place as one could find in the Middle Realm. But such a paradise was not without envy. In the Underworld, there existed a parallel kingdom called Langka, a flip-mirror image of Ayuthiya. There, darkness prevailed. Its inhabitants, known as the rakshasas, fed on violence and destruction, grew ever more powerful by the evil and suffering they inflicted. Lord of the rakshasas was Krung Reap, with fangs like elephant tusks and four arms bearing the four weapons of war—the club, the bow, the arrow, and the trident. He, among all the beings of the three realms, most coveted Ayuthiya. Banned from it, he sought to destroy this paradise, creating all sorts of havoc and disturbance, shaking the mountain on which Ayuthiya rested, sending reverberations that could be felt all the way to the Heavens above. The gods, weary of Krung Reap’s vices and villainy, beseeched Vishnu to fight the king of the rakshasas and restore balance to the cosmos. Vishnu agreed, and, assuming an earthly incarnation, descended as Preah Ream, the devaraja who would inherit Ayuthiya and bring it everlasting peace. But before this happened, the cries of battle resounded, blood was spilled, bodies of men and monkeys and deities alike littered the ground.

  I had pored over the words countless times now, and this last bit—bodies of men and monkeys and deities alike—still unsettled me. I imagined a scene of such carnage that you couldn’t tell who was who among the dead. I knew enough of the tales to know that the rest of the Reamker was like this, that ogres could often turn themselves into beautiful creatures, and that Preah Ream could transform himself into a being as scary-looking as Krung Reap, with multiple arms and fangs and weapons. One entity could manifest as another, and if you didn’t know who was who to begin with, then how were you to recognize the devas from the demons?

  I continued reading: At the time our tales begin, Ayuthiya was ruled by King Tusarot. Of the four princes born to the king, Preah Ream was noblest—

  Suddenly I heard voices shouting in the distance: Open the gate, open the gate! I put the book down and stilled my thoughts to listen. Victory! Victory to our soldiers! Welcome, brothers, welcome! The voices were getting louder, as if they were just around the corner, Open the gate! Leave! But I couldn’t be sure. There were other noises—horns, bells, sirens, and countless engines—all competing. Then the ground rumbled. Something enormous heaved and rolled toward us. The air turned unnaturally hot, laden with the odors of burnt rubber tires, heated tarmac. The reverberation became deafening, and around me the leaves and flowers trembled. A monster, I thought. A monster with rolling metal feet! Children screamed, “Look, look! More of them!”

  As they rumbled past, these monsters with diesel breath, grinding the tarmac with their feet, cheers and applause broke out high in the air—Welcome Revolutionary soldiers! Welcome to Phnom Penh! Welcome! A few carnations landed on the walls of our gate, like birds falling from the sky, followed by a chorus of voices singing, muffled and crackling through some sort of loudspeaker:

  A new day has arrived, Comrade Brothers and Sisters.

  Carry your Revolutionary flag with pride,

  Lift your face to the glorious light of the Revolution!

  The procession of monsters and voices moved farther up the street, until the loudspeaker’s harsh bellowing softened to an unintelligible din. I heard the sounds of doors and windows being closed as people went back into their homes. Motorcycles and cars, which had stopped for the procession, seemed to be starting again, and bicycles and cyclos resumed their journeys, bells ringing incessantly. Then, after a while, all the noises faded, until our street was as completely quiet as before.

  I waited to see if there was more to come, my ear pressed to the stucco wall. But there was nothing. No one. Where was Milk Mother? Maybe she got lost in all the commotion. Maybe she was trying to get back but couldn’t make it through the dense traffic.

  Then all of a sudden I heard loud banging a few houses away. My heart skipped. The banging continued, followed by the urgent squeaks and rattles of gates being opened, along with voices talking, shouting and arguing: Who the hell are you? Get out! No, you get out! This is our house! BOOM! Something exploded. A gunshot or maybe just a car tire, I couldn’t tell. More banging, louder and nearer now, and before I had time to figure out what to do, someone was pounding on our gate, BAM BAM BAM! I jumped back a step or two, and one of the carnations that had been teetering on the wall fell to the ground near my feet. Just as I was about to pick it up, a voice commanded, “OPEN THE GATE!”

  I looked around the courtyard, but not a soul was in sight, not even Old Boy. I knew the rule—no grown-up, no open gate. At least when there had been war. But now there was no war. My heart pounded, my breath quickened.

  “OPEN!” again came the voice. “OR I’LL SHOOT IT DOWN!”

  “Wait!” I croaked. “Just wait a minute!” I looked around and spotted a footstool partially hidden under a gardenia bush a few feet away. I brought it over and, standing on top of it, pulled back the latch—

  A column of smoke burst in. He was all black—black cap, black shirt, black pants, black sandals. He stared down at me.

  “Good morning!” I greeted. “You must be Dark One!” Of course I knew he wasn’t a tevoda, but I was determined not to be afraid.

  “What?” he asked, seeming more confused than I.

  “Dark One!” I rolled my eyes, drawing him into my game. For a tevoda, fake or real, he wasn’t very polite.

  “What?”

  He wasn’t very smart either.

  “I’ve been expecting you.”

  “Look,” he growled, half exasperated, half threatening. “I don’t have time for your stupid game.” He brought his face close to mine. “Where are your parents?”

  “Where’s Milk
Mother?” To curb my fear and stall his intrusion, I pretended to look past the gate to see if she was hiding in a corner somewhere.

  “Go!” He pushed me. “Tell your parents to come out. Now!” He pushed me again and I nearly tumbled headlong into a flower bush. “Go!”

  “All right, all right.” I ran and skipped, calling out to everyone, “A tevoda is here!”

  • • •

  “He’s a Revolutionary soldier,” Papa said.

  What? He didn’t look like a soldier. Soldiers, I thought, were men who wore fancy uniforms decorated with stripes and medals and stars. This boy was wearing the plain black pajama-style shirt and pants that peasants wore for planting rice or working in the fields, and a pair of black sandals made from—of all things—a car tire! The only color in his entire ensemble was the red-and-white checkered kroma—the Cambodian traditional scarf—that belted his pistol to his waist.

  Tata came out and gasped, “Le Khmer Rouge.”

  I was even more shocked. This is a Khmer Rouge? Where was the many-named larger-than-life deity I’d expected?

  “Stay here,” Papa said to all of us. “Let me talk.” He went over to greet the boy, his manner unusually respectful.

  “Pack your things and get out,” the soldier ordered.

  Papa was taken aback, stammering, “I-I d-don’t understand.”

  “What’s not to understand? Get out of the house—get out of the city.”

  “What?” Tata demanded, forgetting Papa’s warning as she marched toward them. “Look here, young man, you can’t just burst in—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, the soldier pointed his pistol at her. Tata stopped in her tracks, her lips parted, but no sound came out.

  “Comrade,” Papa said, touching the soldier’s arm. “Please. There are just women and children here.”

  The boy looked around, his gaze moving from Papa to Mama, to Tata, then to me. I smiled. I wasn’t sure why, but I held the smile. He put down his gun.

  The air moved again, and I felt my heart beating once more. Still, for a moment there was only silence. Finally, Papa spoke. “Comrade, where are we supposed to go?”