GEOFF RYMAN
The King’s Last Song

or

Kraing Meas

Dedication

dedicated toTamara and da boize

Epigraph

‘Oh you who are wise, may you come more and more to consider all meritorious acts as your own.’

Sanskrit inscription on the temple of Pre Rup, translated by Kamaleswar Bhattacharya

‘As wealthy as Cambodia’

Traditional Chinese saying

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Awakening

April 1136

April 11, 2004

April 1967, April 2004

April 13, 2004

April 1142

April 13, April 14, 2004

April 1147

April 14, 2004

April 1988, April 1989, April 1990

April 1151

April 15, 2004, part one

September 1960

April 1152

April 15, 2004, part two

April 1160

April 16, 2004

April 1165

April 16, 2004, night

April 1177

April 1181

Season of Drought and Sweating

April 1191

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Awakening

You could very easily meet William.

Maybe you’ve just got off the boat from Phnom Penh and nobody from your hotel is there to meet you. It’s miles from the dock to Siem Reap.

William strides up and pretends to be the free driver to your hotel. Not only that but he organizes a second motorbike to wobble its way round the ruts with your suitcases.

Many Cambodians would try to take you to their brother’s guesthouse instead. William not only gets you to the right hotel, but just as though he really does work for it, he charges you nothing.

He also points out that you might need someone to drive you to the baray reservoir or to the monuments. When you step back out into the street after your shower, he’s waiting for you, big for a Cambodian, looking happy and friendly.

During the trip, William buys fruit and offers you some, relying on your goodness to pay him back. When you do, he looks not only pleased, but also justified. He has been right to trust you.

If you ask him what his real name is in Cambodian, he might sound urgent and threatened. He doesn’t want you to think he has not told the truth. Out comes the identity card: Ly William.

He’ll tell you the story. His family were killed during the Pol Pot era. His aunty plucked him out of his mother’s arms. He has never been told more than that. His uncle and aunt do not want to distress him. His uncle re-named him after a kindly English aid worker in a Thai camp. His personal name really is William. He almost can’t pronounce it.

William starts to ask you questions, about everything you know. Some of the questions are odd. Is Israel in Europe? Who was Henry Kissinger? What is the relationship between people in England and people in America?

Then he asks if you know what artificial aperture radar is.

‘Are you a student?’ you might ask.

William can’t go to university. His family backed the wrong faction in the civil war. The high school diplomas given by his side in their border schools are not recognized in Cambodia.

William might tell you he lived a year in Phnom Penh, just so that he could talk to students at the Royal University, to find out what they had learned, what they read. You may have an image of him in your mind, shut out, desperate to learn, sitting on the lawn.

‘My uncle want to be monk,’ he says. ‘My uncle say to me, you suffer now because you lead bad life in the past. You work now and earn better life. My uncle does not want me to be unhappy.’

This is how William lives.

He sleeps in his uncle’s house. It’s on stilts, built of spare timber. His eldest cousin goes to bed late in a hammock under the house, and the candle he carries sends rays of light fanning up through the floorboards. The floorboards don’t meet so that crumbs can be swept through them.

There is a ladder down to the ground. There are outbuildings and sheds in which even poorer relatives sleep. There is a flowerbed, out of which sprouts the spirit house, a tiny dwelling for the animistic spirit of the place.

William and two male cousins sleep on one mattress in a room that is partitioned from the others with plywood and hanging clothes.

William is always the first awake.

He lies in the dark for a few moments listening to the roosters crow. The cries cascade across the whole floodplain, all the way to the mountains, marking how densely populated the landscape is. William is himself in those moments. At every other time of the day he is working.

William looks at the moon through the open shutters. The moonlight on the mosquito net breaks apart into a silver arch. This is his favourite moment; he uses it to think of nothing at all, but just to look.

Then he rolls to his feet.

The house is a clock. Its shivering tells people who has got up and who will be next.

One of his cousins turns over. In the main room, William steps over the girls asleep in a row on the floor. He swings down the ladder into his waiting flip-flops and pads to the kitchen shed. Embers glow in moulded rings that are part of the concrete table-top. William leans over, blows on the fire, feeds it twigs, and then goes outside to the water pump.

Candles move silently through the trees, people going to check their palm-wine stills or to relieve themselves. A motorcycle putters past; William says hi. He boils water and studies by candlelight.

He has taught himself English and French and enough German to get by. Now he is teaching himself Japanese. He needs these languages to talk to people.

On the same shelf as the pans is an old ring binder. It is stuffed full with different kinds of paper, old school notebooks or napkins taken from restaurants. Each page is about someone: their name, address, email, notes about their family, their work, what they know.

William has learned in his bones that survival takes the form of other people. They must know you, and for that to happen you must know them. Speak with them, charm them, and remember them.

A neighbour turns on her cassette player. Sin Sisimuth purrs a gentle yearning pillow of a song. The working day has begun in earnest. William snaps on the kitchen’s fluorescent light, attached to a car battery.

Sometimes at this quiet hour, William is seized by a vision. A vision in which Cambodia is a top country. Like Singapore, it is a place of wealth and discipline. To be that, Cambodia will need different leaders, people who are not corrupt, and who do things well. Who remember other people.

William is possessed of a thought that is common among the poor, but seldom expressed: I know who I am. And I am as good as anyone.

He discovered that as he hung around the university students. He had one pair of shoes, but they were spotlessly white. He’d sit down with a group and smile and get their names and give them his own. What do you study? they’d ask. Politics, he’d reply. He would find out what books they had to read for their courses.

The university students talked about fashion and mobile phones and motorbikes, just like anyone else. They looked soft and grumpy and made less effort than country people. Some of them made fun of his regional accent and didn’t listen to what he said. That’s OK, I learn from you, but you won’t learn from me. He kept smiling.

There is a grunt and William’s cousin Meak stomps into the kitchen. William calls him Rock Star. He has long hair and a torn T-shirt that says WE’RE SO FULL OF HOPE, AND WE’RE SO FULL OF SHIT.

‘Hey, coz,’ Rock Star murmurs.

William makes a joke and passes him his breakfast. Breakfast is a cup of boiled water. Rock Star is always smiling. He plays air guitar at parties, but he is the one family member who truly loves being a farmer. He loves his pigs. He even looks a little like them, smiling, short and bulky.

‘I’m going out towards the Phnom for feed this morning. I could go and pay the families out that way for you.’

William’s uncle and aunt are getting too old to work in the rice fields, so he pays other families a dollar a day to help with the harvest. But he must give them their money all at the same time, or there could be jealousy.

‘Cool, cousin, thanks,’ he says.

Rock Star grins sleepily. ‘I know you can’t wait to get to your foreign friends.’

Working for the UN dig team brings in seven dollars a day during tourist season. William has a contract with them; he shows up there first to drive one of them if they need him. That money pays for many things.

Outside, as tall and handsome as William, his cousin Ran goes to wash. He is so proud of his artificial leg. It is one of the best. He goes to wash at the pump wearing only a kramar round his waist so that everyone can see that he is not angry at life and very grateful to William. He waves and smiles. William sold all his ten cows to buy the leg.

William must always prove his value to the family.

Aunty comes next. Even first thing in the morning, she does not wear traditional dress. She is a modern woman, with curled hair and lipstick. She smiles at William and takes over in the kitchen. She is as kind and loving to him as if he were her son. William goes back to learning Kanji. Outside on a bamboo pole are his clean clothes for the day, washed by his cousin. In his baseball cap, trousers with big pockets and track shoes, he will look like a teenager in any suburb of the world.

My family, William thinks with fondness and gratitude. Where would I be without my family?

You would meet Map easily as well. Or rather, you would not be able to escape him.

He would scare you at first. Map is forty-four years old and smells of war. His face is scarred, and his smile looks like a brown and broken saw.

But he is wearing a spotlessly clean brown police uniform, and he seems to be patrolling Angkor Wat in some official capacity. As if in passing and wanting nothing from you, he starts explaining the pools to you in good English. The four dry basins you see so high up in Angkor Wat symbolize the four great rivers flowing from Mount Meru.

The information is of better quality than you expected. You smile, say thanks and try to edge away, dreading another request for money.

‘You’ve missed the main bas-reliefs,’ he warns, again as if in an official capacity. ‘Come this way.’ He leads you down steps, to the bas-relief gallery. The stone is polished, the detail amazing. Map explains scenes from the Mahabarat and the Ramayana. He turns a corner and explains that the roof of this gallery is how all the galleries would have looked.

You might ask him if he is a trained tourist guide. He tells you, ‘I work for Professor Luc Andrade of the United Nations dig team. I do their website.’

That throws you for a moment. Who is this guy?

He points to carved soldiers in strange uniforms. ‘These are mercenaries. Nobody trust those guys,’ he says. ‘Like me. I used to be Khmer Rouge, but I changed sides and joined Hun Sen. They made me march in front, to step on landmines.’

Then he tells you, smiling, that he guarded a Pol Pot camp. It wasn’t a camp; it was a village, in a commune; but Map knows what Westerners expect. He knows he has you hooked.

He takes you on a tour of hell, the long bas-relief of people being tortured. Map lists them all for you.

The frying pan, for people who kill embryos.

Pot baking for trusted people who steal from gurus.

Forest of palm trees for people who cut down trees unduly …

‘We need that in Cambodia now,’ he says and smiles. ‘People cut down all our forest.’

He points to someone hammering nails into people’s bones. ‘I was that guy there,’ he says.

Howling, for those who are degraded …

Today, 11th April, Map gets up later than William does, but then he worked all night. He’s a Patrimony Policeman, protecting Angkor from art thieves. He sleeps off and on in a hammock strung across the doorway of the main building.

Then he works all day as well, anything to add to his salary of sixteen dollars a month.

This morning, he has persuaded an adventurous barang to sleep alongside him in another hammock. The foreigner, a German, is swathed in mosquito nets and smells of something chemical. He is pink and splotchy and still has on his glasses.

Map rocks him awake. ‘Come on,’ Map says in German, ‘it is time to see the sunrise.’ The man has paid him ten dollars for the privilege but like all tourists is so scared of theft that he has hidden his tiny digital camera in his underpants. Can you imagine how it smells? Map thinks to himself. I wonder if it’s taken any pictures inside there by mistake.

The German sniffs, nods.

Map chuckles. ‘You never been in a war.’ The German looks miffed; he thinks he’s a tough guy. ‘You wake up in the morning in a war, pow! Your eyes open, wide, wide, wide, and you are looking, looking, looking.’ Map laughs uproariously at the once daily prospect of being shot.

In the early morning mist, the five towers of Angkor Wat look magnified, as if the air were a lens. Map leads the German up steps, past scaffolding to the empty pools. He considerately takes hold of his elbow to lead him up onto the next level.

Here are tall staircases to the top of the temple. They taper to give the illusion of even greater height, and they are practically vertical, more like ladders than staircases.

‘People say these steps are narrow because Cambodians have small feet.’ Map grins. ‘We’re not monkeys! We don’t like pointing our bums at people. These steps make people turn sideways.’ He shows the German how to walk safely up the steps.

Then, as a joke, Map sends him up a staircase that has worn away at the top to a rounded hump of rock with no steps or handrails.

The German finds himself hugging the stone in panic. From here, the drop looks vertical. Map roars with laughter. The German looks back at him and his eyes seem to say: this wild man wouldn’t care if I fell!

He is not wrong. There is something deranged about Map. He has been shooting people since he was twelve years old.

Map chuckles affectionately, and nips around him and up and over the stone on his thick-soled policeman’s shoes. He crouches down and pulls the German up.

‘You have a lot of fun! You don’t want to go up the staircase with a handrail.’

‘Uh,’ says the German, just grateful to be alive. He turns and looks down and decides that, after all, he has just been very brave. Adventure was what he wanted. ‘Not too many old ladies do that!’

Even at this hour, the pavilion around the main towers is full of people. Other Patrimony Policemen greet Map with a nod and a rueful smile at his tourist catch. A large image of the Buddha shelters in the main tower, robed in orange cloth. Blacktoothed nuns try to sell the German incense sticks. He buys one and uses that as an excuse to get a series of shots of an old woman with the Buddha.

Map leads the tourist through a window out onto a ledge, high up over the courtyard, which is itself above ground level. It is what, a hundred, two hundred feet down to grass?

The ledge is wide – twenty people could easily sit down on it. The German grins and holds his camera out over the edge to take a picture. Over the top of the surrounding wall, trees billow like clouds, full of the sounds of birds and smelling like medicine.

‘So,’ says the German, fiddling with his automatic focus. ‘There are many bas-reliefs on Hindu themes. Did Cambodians become Buddhist later?’

‘There was a king,’ says Map. The morning is so quiet and bright he wonders if he can be bothered trying to make this foreigner understand who Jayavarman was and what he means to Cambodia.

‘When Angkor Wat City is conquered, he takes it back from the foreigners. He make many many new temples. Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm, Neak Pean, Preah Kahn, all those temples. He make Cambodia a Buddhist country. After there is Hindu revolt, but Cambodians still remember him.’

Map says the King’s name, feeling many complex things: respect, amusement, love. The German asks him to repeat it.

‘Jayavarman Seven.’ Map can feel his smile stretch with sourness.

He thinks about the five-hundred-dollar bribe he paid a few years ago to get a job removing landmines. He bribed the wrong person and didn’t get the job. He’d sold his motorbike to get the money. Originally he wanted to use it to pay for his wedding, but he thought the job would be a better investment. His fiancee left him.

He thinks of all the so-called leaders and the tangled, selfserving mess they are making of the country. ‘Now we need Jayavarman.’

The gold leaves have slept for a thousand years.

Two metres down, below the range of ploughs and metal detectors, they lie wrapped in layers of orange linen and pitch.

They were carried at night, hurriedly, jostled under a bridge and plunged down into the mud by the canal to keep them safe. They were cast in imitation of a palm-leaf manuscript, inscribed and inked. The leaves still yearn to speak, though the ink has long since soaked away.

The canal overhead simmered in the heat, then silted up. The water ceased to flow. The soil was parched and inundated by turns for centuries. Rice reached down, but never touched the leaves or their linen wrappings.

Gold does not rust. Insects and rodents do not devour it. Its only enemy is greed.

On 11th April, in a version of 2004, something fiercely invasive drives itself into the Book. A corer grinds its way down through five packets of leaves. Then it hoists part of them up and out of the ground.

For the first time in a thousand years, light shines through the soil, linen and pitch.

The Book is awake again.

Light shines on a torn circle of gold. It shines on writing. The words plainly say in Sanskrit, ‘I am Jayavarman.’

Leaf 1

My name in death will be Parama Saugatapada. In life, I bore a king’s title, Victory Shield, Jayavarman. I will be known as Jayavarman the great builder, father of the new city, the wallbuilder of Indrapattha. I am lord of the temple that is like no other, the temple that is history in stone, the great Madhyadri. I will be known as the founder of the King’s Monastery. I will be known as the son of Holy Victory City, Nagara Jayasri that rose like a flower beside the Lake of Blood. My face will greet those who come to the City for a thousand years. My son calls it my Mango Face, ripe and plump. My Mango Face looks four ways, in the cardinal directions. My face is the four Noble Truths. I am Jayavarman, the bringer of the new way that subsumes the old and surmounts it.

Leaf 2

The Gods themselves listened to the great soul (Buddha) for enlightenment. So it is that the new kingship enlightens the old. This new kingship builds walls to protect the City and builds love in the hearts of the people. Love is also a wall to protect the City. I once had the name of Prince Nia, Hereditary Slave. How a prince came to be called Slave is only one reason why I burn to do a new thing. I will turn the eyes of language away from dedications and gods. I turn my gaze towards people, just as I caused my temple the Madhyadri to honour the images of farm girls and merchants and Chinese envoys. I turn the light of my mind to ordinary days. My words will show lost people. My words will show the sunlight of great days now turned to night. My words will show parades and elephants and parasols whose march has long since passed into dust.

April 1136

The Prince was supposed to be asleep with the other children.

The adults were all in their hammocks. Only insects were awake, buzzing in the heat. To fill the silence, the Prince stomped up the wooden steps as loudly as he could.

The King’s gallery was empty. The gold-embroidered curtains breathed in and out as if they were asleep. The only other person he could see was a servant girl dusting the floor.

The girl was about four years older than the Prince. Maybe she’d want to play. He broke into a run towards her, but then lost heart. Old palace women with wrinkled faces and broken teeth would pick him up and fuss over him, but pretty young girls with work to do would be told off for it.

The Prince grew shy. ‘Play with me,’ he asked, in a soft breathy voice.

The girl bowed and then smiled as if there was nothing more delightful than to be approached by a person of his category. ‘I must work,’ she beamed, as if that were a pleasure too.

He was a sujati, a well born person. The girl was bare-chested, some category of worker. A diadem of wooden slats was tied across her forehead, and the stain across her temples was her passport into the royal enclosure. The Prince watched her clean. For a moment it was interesting to see the damp cloth push grains of food through the knotholes and gaps in the floorboards.

Then boredom returned as unrelenting as a headache. Boredom drove him. It was nearly unbearable, the silence, the sameness.

The thin floor rested high off the ground on stilts. The floorboards gave the boy the foot-beat of a giant. He lifted up his bare foot, drove it down hard, and felt the whole house quiver. He giggled and looked back at the girl and then took more high, hammering steps across the floor.

The girl paid no attention.

No one wore shoes, so dusty footprints trailed across the red gallery floors where the girl had not yet cleaned.

To the Prince they looked like the tracks of game across a forest floor.

He was a hunter in the woods. He charged forward. ‘I see you, deer! Whoosh!’ He let fly imaginary arrows. ‘I see you, wild pig! Whoosh I get you!’

He looked back at the girl. She still dusted.

Suddenly the footprints looked more like those of enemy troops. He imitated the sounds of battle music: conch shell moans and the bashing of gongs. He paraded, thumping his feet. He was a Great King. He waved the Sacred Sword over his head and charged.

He thundered back down the length of the gallery, wailing.

The girl still dusted, looking hunched.

He could be naughty, this prince. He had a formal name, but everybody nicknamed him Catch-Him-to-Call-Him, Cap-Pi-Hau.

All right, Cap-Pi-Hau thought, you want to be slow and boring, I will make you play.

He ran back and forth up and down the empty gallery until the entire floor shivered. He shouted like a warrior. He cried like egrets on the Great Lake, surprised by battle and keening up into the sky.

He stalked down the front steps and out into the thinly grassed enclosure. He pummelled his way back into the gallery. He ran in circles around the girl. He bellowed as loudly as he could and jumped boldly, no steps at all, out of the house and fell face down onto the dry ground. He billowed his way back into the gallery, trailing dust behind him.

Each time he ran past her, the little girl bowed in respect, head down.

Most devilish of all, he clambered up the staircase to the forbidden apartments on the storey above. He rumbled all the way to the head of the stairs and spun around, to see if he had succeeded in making her follow him, to chastise him and pull him back down. Instead the little girl looked mournfully at her floor. Everywhere she had already cleaned there were footprints and shadow-shapes of white dust.

She dared not look at him, but her mouth swelled out with unhappiness. Abruptly she stood up and took little whisking steps towards the entrance.

Cap-Pi-Hau tumbled out of the door after her to see if he could join in.

She took nipping steps down the front steps to the ground, holding up her beautiful skirt, palace-blue with gold flowers. What was she doing?

‘Ha ha!’ he said, a harsh imitation of a laugh to show this was good, this could be fun.

She held up her mournful face. She took her cloth to the ceramic water butt and wrung it out. ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded.

‘I will dust the floor again,’ she said, and turned away from him.

He followed her up the stairs. Suddenly, his feet felt weighed down. He hauled himself back into the gallery and saw the floor patterned with his dusty footprints.

Cap-Pi-Hau only slowly realized that the weight he felt was sadness. He had wanted to make the little girl happy, he had wanted to have fun, and now he had a terrible sense of having destroyed something.

He felt his eyes swell out, as if to burst like fruit into tears. Why did everything turn out bad? Why was fun never possible? Why was it always learning, chanting, sleeping, bowing, and silence?

The girl knelt down and began to dust again. Maybe she would get a scolding or a beating.

Cap-Pi-Hau trundled towards her, softly now. ‘I have a thought,’ he said.

Her swollen, sad face still would not look at him.

He had thought of a way to make dusting fun. Gently he coaxed the cloth out of her hands. ‘I’ll show you,’ he whispered.

He laid the cloth flat on the floor. Then he stepped back, ran at it and jumped.

The floor had been smoothed by years of cleaning. It had to be free of splinters so that bare feet could walk on it.

Cap-Pi-Hau landed on the cloth, and it slid across the floor, bearing him forward, harvesting dust.

He giggled and turned back to her. ‘See? See?’ he demanded.

A butterfly of a smile fluttered briefly on her lips.

He laughed and applauded to make her smile again. Then he walked all the way back to the edge of the pavilion and ran. It seemed to him that he shook the entire house. When he jumped onto the cloth, physical inertia swept him even further across the floor.

‘I am the Great King who leads his people!’ he shouted. ‘I am the Great King who leads troops in polishing floors!’

The slave girl giggled and hid her mouth.

‘You go!’ Cap-Pi-Hau insisted. ‘It will be fine. I will say that I ordered it.’

The girl gathered up her skirt. Her ankles looked like twigs. In comparison, her feet looked big, like the heads of buffaloes. She ran and jumped and slid only a moment.

Not enough. She spun and commandeered the cloth, and stepped back and ran again. She was older than the Prince and her co-ordination was better. She pelted down the floor, leapt and was swept on. She stood erect, skirts fluttering, and she turned to him and this time her mouth was swollen with a huge, smug grin.

The next day Cap-Pi-Hau asked one of the nannies, ‘Where do slaves come from?’

The old woman waved her hands. ‘Oh! Some are the children of people taken in battle. Some are presents given to the King. Many are given to the temples, simply to get rid of them. Most are attached to the land, like cows.’

The woman had a face as hard and polished as wood furniture. Taken in battle? Given away? Do they know their families did not want them, did not love them?

The other six- and seven-year-olds were corralled together outside in the shade of the enclosure temple. There was to be a great procession soon, and they would have to learn their parts.

The royal temple of the Aerial Palace, Vimana-akasha, rose as a holy mountain in stone and stucco layers. Painted red, black and gold, the temple baked in the heat. Birds landed on the steps and hopped away back into the air, the stones were so hot. The palace children roasted inside their quilted jackets.

The Prince demanded, ‘If I wanted to find one of the slave girls, how would I do it?’

‘Oh!’ The nanny showed her false teeth, which were made of wood. ‘You are too young for that, young prince. That will come later.’ She beamed.

‘If I want to be friends with one of them now, how would I find her?’

The smile was dropped suddenly like an unleashed drapery. ‘You have your cousins to be friends with. Your destiny is to lead troops for the King. I should not grow too attached to the slaves of the royal household. You will not always live here. Your family lands are off in the east.’ She looked suddenly grumpy, and for some reason wiped the whole of her face with her hand.

The children, seated in ranks, stirred slightly with the light breeze of someone else getting into trouble.

The nanny’s face swelled. ‘You will be turned out of this house. You forget your real situation. The time has come to stop being a child.’

Before he thought anything else, the Prince said aloud, ‘Then we are all slaves.’

The nanny’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh! To say such a thing!’ She gathered her skirts and stood up. ‘It shows your foolishness, Prince Whoever-you-are. Slaves work, while you sit still in your jacket. You will be at the head of the troops so that the enemy will kill you first, and that is your destiny!’

She started to strut. The thin line of her mouth began to stretch into a smile. ‘You think you are a slave? We will call you slave, ah? Khnom! Or are you a hereditary slave, a nia? Shall we call you Prince Hereditary Slave?’ Her voice was raised. Some of the Prince’s cousins, rivals, giggled. ‘Children, children listen.’

The nanny grabbed Cap-Pi-Hau’s shoulders and pushed him in front of her, presenting him. ‘This young prince wants to be called Nia. So will we call him Nia? Ah? Yes?’

This was going to be fun. The children chorused, ‘Nee-ah!’

The Prince tried to shrug her off, but she held him in place.

‘Nia! Ni-ah-ha ha!’ chuckled the children of other royal wives, other royal uncles, other royal cousins. They had already learned they had to triumph over each other before they could triumph over anything else.

The nanny settled back down onto the ground, full and satisfied, as if she had eaten. The laughter continued.

Cap-Pi-Hau also knew: there are many princes, and I will be nothing if no other princes follow me.

He strode to her and faced her. She was sitting; their faces were level. His gaze was steady and unblinking.

Seated, the woman did a girlish twist and a shrug. What of you?

The Prince felt his face go hard. ‘I am studying your face to remember you, so that when I am older you will be in trouble.’

From a prince of any degree, that was a threat. She faltered slightly.

The Prince turned his back on her. He said to the other children. ‘This woman is a slave. This is what we do to slaves who mock us.’

Then he spun back around and kicked her arm.

‘Oh, you little demon!’ She grabbed him.

Cap-Pi-Hau sprang forward and began to rain blows about her face. Each time he struck her he called her, accurately, by the name of her own lower category. ‘Pual!’ He said it each time he struck her. ‘Pual! Pual! Know your place!’

‘Get this monkey god off me!’ she cried.

Perhaps she had also been hard on the other women, because they just chuckled. One of them said, ‘He is yours to deal with, Mulberry.’

Her legs were folded, tying her to the spot. She could hit back, but not too hard, even if this was a prince far from the line of succession.

Finally she called for help. ‘Guard!’

The bored attendant simply chuckled. ‘He’s a prince.’

‘Nia! Nia! Nia!’ the other children chanted not knowing if they were insulting him or cheering him on.

The nanny fought her way to her feet. ‘Oh! You must be disciplined.’

‘So must you.’ The young prince turned, and stomped up to the guard. ‘Your sword.’

‘Now, now, little master …’

Cap-Pi-Hau took it.

The woman called Mulberry knew then the extent of her miscalculation. She had imagined that this quiet child was meek and timid.

‘What are you going to do?’ she said, backing away.

He charged her.

She turned and ran and he slapped her on her bottom with the flat of the sword. ‘Help! Help!’ she was forced to cry.

The children squealed with laughter.

The tiny prince roared with a tiger-cub voice. ‘Stop, you pual! Talk to me or I will use the blade.’

She yelped and turned, giving him a deep and sincere dip of respect.

‘Hold still.’ he ordered. ‘Bow.’

She did, and he reached up to her face and into her mouth, and pulled out her wooden false teeth. He chopped at them with the sword, splintering them.

‘These teeth came to you from the household. For hitting a prince, you will never have teeth again.’

She dipped and bowed.

‘Now,’ said Prince Hereditary Slave. ‘I ask again. How do I find a particular slave girl I like?’

‘Simply point her out to me,’ the woman said, with a placating smile. She tinkled her little bell-like voice that she used with anyone of higher rank. ‘I will bring her to you.’

The guard was pleased. He chuckled and shook his head. ‘He’s after girls already,’ he said to his compatriot.

The next day, Cap-Pi-Hau found the girl for himself.

It was the time of sleep and dusting. He bounced towards her. ‘We can play slippers!’ he said, looking forward to fun.

She turned and lowered her head to the floor.

‘Here,’ said Cap-Pi-Hau and thrust a slipper at her. She had no idea what to do with it. It was made of royal flowered cloth, stitched with gold thread. She glanced nervously about her.

‘You do this!’ said the Prince. He flicked the slipper so it spun across the floor. ‘The winner is the one who can throw it farthest.’ He stomped forward and snatched up the shoe, and propelled it back towards her. She made to throw it underhand.

‘No, no, no!’ He ran and snatched it from her. ‘You have to slide it. It has to stay on the floor. That’s the game.’

She stared at him, panting in fear. Why was she so worried? Maybe she had heard there had been trouble.

Cap-Pi-Hau said to her in a smaller voice, ‘If you make it go round and round it goes farther.’ It was the secret of winning and he gave it to her.

She dipped her head, and glanced about her, and tossed the slipper so that it spun. It twirled, hissing across the wood, passing his. She had beaten him first go, and Cap-Pi-Hau was so delighted to have a worthy adversary that he laughed and clapped his hands. That made her smile.

His turn. He threw it hard and lost.

The second time she threw, she lost the confidence of inexperience and the shoe almost spun on the spot. The Prince experimented, shooting the slipper forward with his foot. So did she. The two of them were soon both giggling and running and jumping with excitement.

He asked her name.

‘Fishing Cat,’ she replied. Cmâ-kančus.

The name made him laugh out loud. Fishing cats were small, lean and delicate with huge round eyes. ‘You look like a fishing cat!’ Instead of laughing she hung her head. She thought he was teasing her, so he talked about something else, to please her.

‘Do you come attached to the royal house, like a cow?’ he asked. Groups of slaves were called thpal, the same word used for cattle.

‘No, Sir. I was given away, Sir.’

This interested the Prince mightily because he had been given away as well. He pushed close to her. ‘Why were you given away?’

Her voice went thin, like the sound of wind in reeds. ‘Because I was pretty.’

If she was pretty, he wanted to see. ‘I can’t see you.’

She finally looked up, and her eyelids batted to control the tears, and she tried to smile.

‘You look unhappy.’ He could not think why that would be.

‘Oh no, Prince. It is a great honour to be in the royal enclosure. To be here is to see what life in heaven must be like.’

‘Do you miss your mother?’

This seemed to cause her distress. She moved from side to side as if caught between two things. ‘I don’t know, Sir.’

‘You’re scared!’ he said, which was such an absurd thing to be that it amused him. He suddenly thought of a fishing cat on a dock taking off in fear when people approached. ‘Fishing cats are scared and they run away!’

Her eyes slid sideways and she spoke as if reciting a ritual. ‘We owe everything to the King. From his intercession, the purified waters flow from the hills. The King is our family.’

The Prince said, ‘He’s not my family.’ Fishing Cat’s head spun to see if anyone could hear them. The Prince said, ‘I miss my family. I have some brothers here, but my mother lives far away in the east.’

Cat whispered, ‘Maybe I miss my mother too.’ Very suddenly, she looked up, in something like alarm. ‘And my sisters, too. And my house by the river. We lived near the rice fields and the water. And we all slept together each night.’

Cap-Pi-Hau saw the house in his mind.

He saw the broad fields of rice moving in waves like the surface of the Great Lake, and long morning shadows, and the buffaloes in the mire, and rows of trees parasolling houses along the waterways.

He saw home.

He himself had been brought from the country, carried in a howdah with nine other distressed, hot, fearful children. He dimly remembered riding through the City, its streets full of people. Since then, he had not been allowed outside the royal enclosure.

Cap-Pi-Hau had only been able to hear people from over the walls. The calls of stall owners, the barking of dogs, the rumbling of ox-cart wheels and the constant birdlike chorus of chatter. For him, that was the sound of freedom. He kept trying to imagine what the people were like, because he heard them laugh.

Cap-Pi-Hau asked, ‘What did you like doing best?’

She considered. ‘I remember my brother taking the buffalo down to the reservoir, to keep cool. It would stay in the water all day, so we could too.’

Cap-Pi-Hau thrust himself up onto her lap, and suddenly she was like an older sister, tending the babe for her mother.

‘I want to stay in the water all day,’ he beamed. ‘I want to drive water buffaloes. Great big buffaloes!’ Something in the sound of that phrase, big and hearty, made him explode with giggles.

Finally she did too. ‘You are a buffalo.’

‘I’m a big big buffalo and I smell of poo!’ He became a bouncing ball of chuckles. Even she chuckled. Laughter made him fond. He tilted his head and his eyes were twinkly, hungry for something different. He writhed in her grasp. ‘What else did you do?’

She had to think. ‘My brother would catch frogs or snakes to eat. He was very brave.’

‘You hunted snakes and frogs?’ Cap-Pi-Hau was fascinated. He could see a boy like himself, skinnier maybe. They would hunt together in the reeds. He mimed slamming frogs. ‘Bam! Bam!’ he grinned. ‘Flat frog! Yum. I want to eat a flat frog.’

She joined in. ‘I want to eat mashed cricket.’

‘I want to eat … monkey ears!’

That joke wore out. He asked about her family. She had six brothers and sisters. They were the nias of a lord who lived far away from the perfect city. Their canal branched off from the meeting of the three rivers, far to the south. She could see all of that, but she could not remember the name of the place.

All of her brothers and sisters slept in a tidy row on mats. When one of them was sick, that child slept cradled by their mother. So they all pretended to be sick sometimes. One night, so many of them said they were sick that Mother turned away from them all. Then their mother got sick herself. With no one to work the fields, they had to do something to feed all the children, so Fishing Cat was sent away.

The Prince still wanted fun. ‘And you never went back, never, never, never.’ He rocked his head in time to the words. ‘I never went back either.’

Something seemed to come out of them both, like mingled breath.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked, because Cap-Pi-Hau was a nickname.

‘Nia!’ he said, delighted, and started to chuckle again. ‘I am Prince Slave!’

‘I will give you orders!’ she chuckled, something irrepressible bubbling up.

‘I will have to dust floors for you,’ he giggled.

‘I will say, you, Prince, come here and help me with this thing.’ She snapped her fingers.

‘You can call me Prince Nia.’

She chuckled. ‘You can call me Princess Nia!’

For some reason the laughter faded.

‘I hardly remember my home either,’ said Cap-Pi-Hau.

Until the day of his marriage, Cap-Pi-Hau called himself Prince Nia. When people expressed astonishment at the choice he would explain. ‘All princes are hereditary slaves.’

The day of the procession arrived.

The Sun King’s great new temple was to be consecrated.

Prince Nia stood high on the steps of an elephant platform. Ahead of him the next batch of hostage children crowded the platform, scowling at the sunlight, flicking their fly whisks.

The Prince had never stood so high off the ground. He was now level with the upper storey of the Aerial Palace. There were no walls and all the curtains were raised.

He saw servants scurrying, carrying, airing, beating – taking advantage of their mistresses’ absence to perfect the toilet of the rooms. Category girls ran with armloads of blackened flowers to throw them away. They beat cushions against each other. They shifted low bronze tables so that the floor could be wiped.

In the corners, musical instruments were carefully stood at attention, their wooden bellies gleaming. The lamp hooks screwed into the pillars were swirling bronze images of smoke or cloud-flowers. The rooms had handsome water butts of their own, with fired glazed patterns. The pillars on the upper floor were ornately carved, with images of celestial maidens, as if the rooms were already high in heaven.

He could see the lintels and the gables close up. Monsters called Makara spewed out fabulous beasts from their mouths. Gods abducted women. Brahma rode his giant goose; Krishna split a demon asura in two. Regularly recurring shapes of flames or lotus petals were embedded with glass pieces. And the roof! It was tiled with metal, armoured like a soldier’s breastplate. The metal was dull grey like a cloudy sky, smooth and streaked from rain. So many things had been kept from him!

An elephant lumbered towards them. It was old, and the howdah on its back wobbled on its loose skin.

It was not a good elephant. The howdah was functional, no carvings. The beast came close to them and coughed, and its breath smelled of dead mice.

Now the King’s elephant! Its tusks would be sheathed in gold, and the howdah would rest on a beautiful big carpet!

The children began to advance one at a time onto the elephant’s unsteady back.

And the King himself, is he blue, Nia wondered, like Vishnu? If he is the Sun Shield, is he blinding, like the sun?

Someone shoved Nia from behind, trying to push him aside. Nia thrust back and turned. It was an older, more important prince. ‘Get out of the way. I am higher rank than you.’ It was the son of the King’s nephew.

‘We all climb up and take our turn.’

At the top of the steps, a kamlaa-category slave herded them. ‘OK, come on, press in, as many as possible.’ He wore only a twist of cloth and was hot, bored, and studded with insect bites. He grabbed hold of the Prince’s shoulders and pulled him forward. Nia tossed his shoulders free. He wanted to board the howdah by himself. In the future, I will be a warrior, Nia thought; I will need to be able to do this like a warrior. He saw himself standing with one foot outside the howdah, firing his arrows.

The kamlaa peremptorily scooped him up and half-flung him onto the howdah. Prince Nia stumbled onto a girl’s heel; she elbowed him back. Nia’s face burned with shame. He heard older boys laugh at him.

Then the kamlaa said, ‘OK that’s enough, step back.’

The King’s nephew’s son tried to crowd in, but the kamlaa shoved him back. The higher prince fixed Nia with a glare and stuck his thumb through his fingers at him.

The elephant heaved itself forward, turning. Was the procession beginning? Prince Nia craned his neck to see. All he saw was embroidered backs. Nia prised the backs apart and squeezed his way through to the front. Two older boys rammed him in the ribs. ‘You are taller than me,’ Nia said. ‘You should let me see!’

The elephant came to rest, in no shade at all. They waited. Sweat trickled down the Prince’s back.

‘I need to pee,’ whispered a little girl.

Adults lay sprawled in the shade under the silk-cottons. Soldiers lay sleeping, wearing what they wore to battle, a twist of cloth and an amulet for protection. Cap-Pi-Hau scowled. Why didn’t they dress for the consecration? Their ears were sliced and lengthened, but they wore no earrings.

The musicians were worse. They had propped their standards up against the wall. A great gong slept on the ground. The men squatted, casting ivories as if in a games house. Did they not know that the King created glory through the Gods? That was why their house had a roof made of lead.

The afternoon baked and buzzed and there was not enough room to sit down. Finally someone shouted, ‘The King goes forth! The King goes forth!’

A Brahmin, his hair bundled up under a cloth tied with pearls, was being trotted forward in a palanquin.

The Brahmin shouted again. ‘Get ready, stand up! Stop sprawling about the place!’ He tried to look very important, which puffed out his cheeks and his beard, as if his nose was going to disappear under hair. The Prince laughed and clapped his hands. ‘He looks silly!’

Grand ladies stood up and arranged themselves in imitation of the lotus, pink, smiling and somehow cool. Category girls scurried forward with tapers to light their candles or pluck at and straighten the trains of threaded flower buds that hung down from the royal diadems.

The musicians tucked their ivories into their loincloths next to their genitals for luck. They shouldered up long sweeping poles that bore standards: flags that trailed in the shape of flames, or brass images of dancing Hanuman, the monkey king.

A gong sounded from behind the royal house. A gong somewhere in front replied. The tabla drums, the conches and the horns began to blare and wail and beat. Everything quickened into one swirling, rousing motion. The procession inflated, unfolded and caught the sunlight.

The footsoldiers began to march in rows of four, spears raised, feet crunching the ground in unison and sweeping off the first group of musicians along with them. A midget acrobat danced and somersaulted alongside the musicians and the children in the howdahs applauded.

Then, more graceful, the palace women swayed forward, nursing their candles behind cupped hands.

‘Oh hell!’ one of the boys yelped. ‘You stupid little civet, you’ve pissed all over my feet!’

Prince Nia burst into giggles at the idea of the noble prince having to shake pee-pee from his feet.

The boy was mean and snarled at the little girl. ‘You’ve defiled a holy day. The guards will come and peel off your skin. Your whole body will turn into one big scab.’

The little girl wailed.

Nia laughed again. ‘You’re just trying to scare her.’

Scaring a baby wasn’t much fun. Fun was telling a big boy that he was a liar when there wasn’t enough space to throw a punch. Nia turned to the little girl. ‘They won’t pull your skin off. We’re not important enough. He just thinks his feet are important.’

Nia laughed at his own joke and this time, some of the other children joined in. The older boy’s eyes went dark, and seemed to withdraw like snails into their shells.

Endure. That was the main task of a royal child.

Suddenly, at last, the elephant lurched forward. They were on their way! The Prince stood up higher, propping his thighs against the railing. He could see everything!

They rocked through the narrow passageway towards the main terrace. Nia finally saw close up the sandstone carvings of heavenly maidens, monsters, and smiling princes with swords.

They were going to leave the royal house. I’m going to see them, thought the Prince; I’m going to see the people outside!

They swayed out into the royal park.

There were the twelve towers of justice, tiny temples that stored the tall parasols. Miscreants were displayed on their steps, to show their missing toes.

The howdah dipped down and the Prince saw the faces of slave women beaming up at them. The women cheered and threw rice and held up their infants to see. No men, their men were all in the parade as soldiers.

Beyond them were their houses – small, firm and boiled clean in tidy rows. Planks made walkways over puddles. The air smelled of smoke, sweat, and steaming noodles. The Prince tried to peer through the doorways to see what hung from the walls or rested on the floors. Did they sleep in hammocks? What games did the children play?

‘What are you looking there for, the tower’s over there!’ said one of the boys and pointed.

Tuh. Just the Meru, the Bronze Mountain. They could see that any day. Its spire was tall, but everybody said that the King’s great new temple was taller.

The road narrowed into shade and they passed into the market. The Prince saw a stall with an awning and a wooden box full of sawdust. Ice! It came all the way from the Himalayas on boats in layers of sawdust. He saw a Chinese man press a chip of it to his forehead. He had a goatee, and was ignorant enough to wear royal flower-cloth. The Khmer stall-wife was smiling secretly at him.

The howdah slumped the other way. The Prince saw sky and branches; he steadied himself, clinging to the rail, and looked down. Beyond the stalls were ragged huts, shaggy with palm-frond panels. A woman bowed before a beehive oven of earth, blowing air into it through a bamboo pipe.

The air smelled now of rotten fruit and latrines. The Prince saw a dog chomp on the spine and head of a fish.

Splat! The little girl squealed in fear. Over-ripe rambutan had splattered over their shoulders. Overhead, boys grinned from the branches of trees and then swung down. One of the kamlaa took off after them with a stick.

Along the road, other people watched in silence.

One of them gazed back at Nia. His mouth hung open with the baffled sadness of someone mulling over the incomprehensible. How is it, he seemed to ask, that you stand on an elephant in flowered cloth, and my son stands here with no clothes to wear at all?

The man standing next to him was so lean that every strand of muscle showed in lines like combed hair. His gaze turned to follow the howdah, insolent, fierce, and angry.

These were the great people of Kambujadesa? The young prince didn’t like them at all. They were ugly, their houses were ugly, and they smelled.

This was Yashodharapura, abode of the Gods, the perfect city. The soldiers should come and take away all such people.

The procession moved on, into the precinct of the holy mountain, Yashodharaparvata.

Here in the old centre of the City, everything was better. Wives of temple workers, all of them royal tenants, waved tiny banners. Their hair was held in handsome fittings, and they wore collars of intricate bronze.

Nice people, smiling people. They dipped and bowed and held up their hands for princes, as was fitting.

Their houses stood on firm stilts and were linked by covered walkways. Airy cloth bellied outward from the rooms. The Prince glimpsed the canals beyond, full of boats. Amid fruit trees, carved stone steps led down to small reservoirs.

Prince Nia turned around and saw stone steps going all the way up the miraculous hill of Yashodharaparvata. The trees were hung with celebratory banners, and the gates to the hilltop temple had sprouted poles that supported ladders of coloured cloth. From the top of the hill, golden kites swooped and dipped. The kites reflected white sunlight that continued to dapple the inside of the Prince’s eyes long after he looked away.

The procession passed into orchards and rice fields and dust began to drift over the howdah like smoke.

Suddenly they came upon a new, raw desert. All the trees had been cleared, their fresh yellow stumps staring out of the earth. Dust blew as if out of a thousand fires, and above rose the new temple, the Vishnuloka.

The Prince was disappointed. The five towers were not that much bigger than the spire of Mount Meru. They were made of raw uncarved stone, unfinished and undecorated blocks that bore down on each other. The towers looked like the toy buildings he himself made out of clay cubes. Some banners trailed limply from the scaffolding.

Ahead of them, pickaxes rose and fell out of a great ditch. Men struggled up the banks, passing baskets of dirt to queues of women and children who swept the baskets away hand-to-hand into the distance. Boys ran back with empty baskets. To the Prince the workers looked like busy termites swarming around their nests.

More banners bobbed on poles that marked where the entrance would be. The elephant passed between them and rocked the children up onto a causeway that crossed the moat. The moat looked like a dry riverbed running due north, sweltering with a few puddles.

The elephant did a slow dance round to join a row of waiting elephants. The Prince saw the puffy faces of other children in howdahs sagging in the sun. They waited again, on a plain of churned earth.

The Prince craned his neck to the right. ‘I can’t see the rest of the parade,’ he said.

‘Aw, poor little baby,’ said the boy whose feet had been peed on.

Another elephant full of unwanted princes churned up the dust and came to rest beside them. Dust polished the Prince’s eyes every time he blinked.

Finally an elephant strode past them, shaded by two heaving parasols. The howdah was carved and balanced on a beautiful rug, and on it stood a high-born warrior. He wore a felt coat and a diadem and a bronze tiara, rising up like an open lotus. He stood holding his arrows in his hand.

That was more like it!

White horses pranced, lifting their feet high, but holding to formation. Their riders rode on their unsaddled backs, hands on hips.

Behind the horsemen came a ballistic elephant, a crossbow on its back. Its protecting infantry marched in rows alongside it.

A third elephant followed, with a solid shell of wood over its back. Resting one foot outside the ornate howdah, a real warrior prince stood in full armour with a crown and a metal breastplate tied across his chest.

Prince Nia squealed in delight, and leaned so far out of the howdah that he nearly fell.

Soldiers trooped past. These were nobles. They wore flower-cloth chemises and their topknots were held in metal tiaras in the shape of totemic beasts: eagles or tigers or deer, which showed that they were fast, or fierce.

More horses wheeled past, white like falling water. The Prince’s military heart danced. Then, oh! Their riders stood up and pulled back their bows and let loose flaming arrows. They arched up into the blue sky over the southern moat.

Nia was beside himself. He yelled and shouted and pummelled the shoulders of the bigger boys next to him. Suddenly affectionate, they laughed with him, pleased by his fervour, sharing it.

‘Steady, Little Warrior,’ one of them chuckled.

The other rocked him by the shoulders. ‘You will have your chance of battle soon enough.’

The little prince cried aloud. ‘We are the soldiers of the world! We are the warriors of the Gods!’

Some of the troops heard him, and they waved and smiled. The sun was in the sky at the same time as a pale daylight moon. Auspicious or what?

The soldiers passed and boring high-rankers followed. Women reclined in carved palanquins. Fly whisks and fans replaced swords. The elephants had a bit more glitter, but who cared? Glitter does not need skill.

One elephant, bigger than the rest, heaved its way through the fog of dust. The howdah was a bit bigger than most, too. An old man wearing a temple-tower tiara stood up in the howdah with all the usual stuff. He had a lean, pinched face like an old woman.

It was not until the man had passed with a forest of parasols and nothing further followed that Prince Hereditary Slave realized: that must have been the King. That old man had been Sun Shield, Suryavarman. The King, it seemed, was just another soldier.

The dust settled, but the thought remained.

April 11, 2004

Luc Andrade steps down a little stiffly from a white Toyota pick-up.

He feels thin-legged and pot-bellied. Too old really for beige Gap jeans and blue tennis shoes. Out in front of him stretch the plains of Cambodia.

Luc sighs. He loves the heat, the silver sky, and the wild flowers clustering in the shade. The palm trees always remind him of Don Quixote with his lance – tall, stretched thin and riding off into the blue distance. And perhaps of himself.

In the back of the pick-up truck, Map and two of his friends from the Patrimony Police are gathering up tents and rifles. Mr Yeo Narith steps out of the cab. Luc has spent a lifetime reading Cambodian smiles and Narith’s wan, tight smile is still angry.

No one is supposed to excavate anywhere in the precincts of Angkor without an APSARA representative being present. APSARA defends the interests of the artefacts and the monuments. They contend with tourist agencies, art thieves, airways passing too near the monuments, or museums in Phnom Penh – interests of all kinds. The last thing APSARA needs is to find it cannot trust its archaeological partners.

‘Allons-y,’ says Luc. Narith is of the generation who finds it easier to speak French. He nods and extends an arm for Luc to precede him down the bank.

Out in the field, the contractor is guarding his find, next to a motorcycle and William, the spare driver.

Luc skitters a little awkwardly down into the field. Underfoot, the harvested rice crackles like translucent plastic straws.

It’s April, the end of the dry season and horribly hot. Luc is Director of the United Nations archaelogical project. Most of his UN dig team have gone home, except for one Canadian excavator and Sangha, the Cambodian dig manager. Work is normally finished by the end of March, but the project might not get financing for next year. Since the JPL/NASA overhead flights four years ago gave them a radar map of the old road and canal system, their trench has uncovered one unremarkable stone yoni and nothing else.

A white sheet is spread out on the ground, and rocks and earth are lined up in order along it. Village children squat, peering at the stones. As Luc approaches, the contractor and William the driver stand up. The children chew the bottoms of their torn T-shirts. The contractor from the university hangs his head and kicks the white dust.

So, thinks Luc, he came out here with William and took a risk. The augur, a long slim white tube a bit like a hunting stick, lies abandoned. The contractor grasps two full lengths of pipe. God knows how he got the augur that deep in all this dry ground. William probably sat on the handles.

The contractor is called Sheridan. He’s a microbiologist, out here to identify where he will core in the rainy season. Like Luc, he works at the Australian National University. The UN dig has paid for only four days of his time.

Sheridan launches into his apologies. They sound heartfelt, but Luc shakes his head. ‘I still don’t understand how it happened. You know the rules.’

‘I knew this was where a bridge crossed a canal. The ground was still very wet, and I thought: why not just do a test, see if this will be wet enough in rainy season …’ His voice lowers. ‘I was trying to save you money.’

At least he hasn’t laid the gold out on the ground for the village children to see. They walk back towards the pick-up to look at the find.

At the top of the embankment, Map guards the truck. Map jokes with someone, an old farmer. The farmer has a face Luc has often seen in Cambodian men of that age. The eyes are sad and insolent all at once. The man glares at Luc over half-moon spectacles and stalks away. Map shakes his head and calls, ‘Hey, Luc!’ then surfs down the embankment on his heavy police boots.

‘Oh-ho, is that guy ever unhappy with me. He came and said this is his field and we can’t stay.’ Map strolls companionably alongside Luc. ‘I told him to go buy a mirror and practise smile. I said that you guys find something that Cambodians can’t use – knowledge.’ Map claps his hands together. ‘He used to be my CO in the Khmers Rouges, and he didn’t like me then, either.’

Map outrages people. He drives the APSARA guides crazy by stealing their business. He exasperates the Tourist Police by taking elderly foreigners to stay in country farmhouses. A single red cotton thread barricades his wrists with some kind of magic and his long fingernails are a mottled white like the inside of oyster shells. Luc once wondered if Map was an exorcist, a kru do ompoeu. Map told him that he uses the fingernails for fighting, ‘like knife’.

But he takes good photographs, speaks French, English and German and knows HTML.

Inside the cab of the pick-up, away from the village children, Sheridan reaches into his rucksack and takes out a disk about twice the size of a silver dollar, dull yellow with crinkled cookiecutter edges. Luc sees Sanskrit.

Gold. Writing. From Angkor.

‘We’ve got to excavate as soon as we can,’ Luc says to Narith. Narith then telephones. They already knew they were going to have to camp out all night to guard the find. Mr Yeo asks for more police, with guns.

Outside, the old farmer marches up and down the dyke. Wind blows dust up around him, Map, all of them, like the smoke of war.

They dig through the long afternoon.

The walls of the tent run with condensed sweat. Luc, two volunteers from the Japanese dig and Jean-Claude from Toronto are crouched inside a trench, brushing away dirt.

Slowly, rows of packets wrapped in linen are emerging.

‘Meu Deus!’ mutters Jean-Claude. For some reason he always swears in Portuguese. He gestures towards the packets. ‘There’s at least ten packets there,’ he says to Luc, in French. ‘Ten to a packet, that’s one hundred leaves.’

They’ve found a book. An Angkorean book made of gold.

Map darts from side to side taking photographs from many angles.

William, the motoboy, leans over the trench, looking forlorn. Luc can’t let him leave in case he tells anyone about the find. He’s trapped here. He knows that.

Luc pulls himself out of the trench and gets cold cokes from the chest. He passes one to William.

‘What we’re trying to do,’ Luc explains to William in Khmer, ‘is to get as much information as we can about the earth around the object. See the side of the trench? See, it’s in layers, white soil, brown soil, then black soil? That will tell us a lot about when the leaves were buried.’

William dips and bows and smiles.

Map intervenes. ‘Hey, Luc. You think we should take the book out of those packets and photograph it here?’

Luc shakes his head. ‘No. The packets will have information too. We could photograph what the augur pulled up. The disks.’

The ten torn disks are laid out on the ground. The gold is brown, thicker than paper, but not by much. A light slants sideways across their surfaces, to make the incisions clearer.

Luc can read them.

The text comes in torn snatches across the face of the ten disks. Luc’s breath feels icy as he reads.

…who conserves perpetuity…

…men seek for heaven and its deliverance…

…the ninth day of the moon …

‘We have a saka date,’ Luc announces. The Japanese volunteers stand up to hear. Luc is so skilled at this that he can do the conversion to the European calendar in his head. The text is about a consecration in 1191 AD.

‘It’s twelfth century. The time of Jayavarman Seven.’

‘One hundred leaves from the time of Jayavarman?’ Even Yeo Narith rocks back on his feet. Map looks up, his face falling.

‘Plus que ça,’ mutters Jean-Claude inside the trench. He holds out his hands as if at a Mass. He has brushed aside all the loam. Inside his trench, lined up in rumpled, pitch-coated linen, are fifteen packets of ten leaves each. ‘Plus there is one smaller packet to the side,’ he says.

One hundred and fifty leaves of gold?

Art gets stolen in Cambodia. It gets chopped up, incorporated into fakes, shipped across the world, sold by unscrupulous dealers. If it’s gold, it might get melted down.

Luc turns to Yeo Narith. ‘Who do we trust in the Army?’

William can’t go home.

It’s late at night. The tent glows in the middle of the field like a filament.

Around a campfire, William and Map face each other. Working for the same boss, they should be polite and friendly with each other, but Map won’t even look at William.

Many other people sit drinking coffee: Dik Sangha, officials from APSARA, Map’s captain from the Patrimony Police, and a friend of Teacher Andrade’s from the École Française d’Extrême Orient whose name William keeps trying to catch. Patrimony Police stand guard round the field. They’ve already stopped people with shovels and metal detectors.

Map cradles his gun. He’s been sipping beer all evening and his face is bright red. He grins and tells unsuitable stories.

William is mystified. Teacher Andrade trusts Map and gives him responsibility. Map knows about the Internet and a lot about the monuments. He could teach these things to William, but he won’t.

William thinks: when I started to work for Teacher Andrade, you were friendly. Now you won’t talk to me or even look at me. I’ve done nothing to you.

Map is talking in English. ‘So my older brother and me go to shoot the Vietnamese. They have a big ammo dump behind the Grand Hotel. And my older brother Heng is crazy man. You think I’m crazy, you should see Heng. He strap grenade launcher to his wrist. One launcher on each arm. He fires both at the same time, kapow, kapow. I hear him breaking his wrist. But he keep shooting, shooting. I say, Older Brother, you are a crazy guy. Then all that Vietnamese ammo goes up, huge big fire and I have to drag Heng home.’

Map pauses. His eyes get a wild look to them.

‘He died of Sweet Water Disease. Diabetes. Nobody give him insulin.’

Another sip of beer, a shaking of the head.

We are not tourists, William thinks. There is nothing you can get from us by telling sad stories, over and over, boasting about your wars.

‘I went to look for my parents, all that time. I look all over Cambodia. I have to go AWOL to do it. And it turned out they are dead since the Lon Nol era.’

William has noted that Map’s sad stories do not add up. He also tells a story in which his uncle tells Map when he is twelve that his parents are dead and Map goes to hide in a haystack. Both cannot be true.

There is something wrong with Map’s head.

‘Cambodian joke,’ says Map and grins. He is so ugly, thinks William. He has a big mouthful of brown teeth that push out his jaw, his nose is sunken, and his face is covered in purple lumpy spots.

Map tells a story about a truck driver who has to stay in a farmer’s house. He sleeps in the same room as the farmer’s daughter. The truck driver gets to do everything he wants to with the daughter. In the morning the farmer asks, did you sleep well? The truck driver says, yes, your daughter is very beautiful, but her hands are so cold! Ah, says the farmer and looks sad, that is because she is awaiting cremation.

Map roars with laughter and pummels his foot on the dust. He looks at Teacher Andrade’s frozen smile and laughs even louder.

William shakes his head. He says in Khmer, ‘That is not a good story to tell someone like Teacher Andrade. What will he think of us?’

‘He will think we tell funny stories.’

‘He will think we are not respectable.’

Map still won’t look at him. ‘He knows more than you do.’

William shrugs. ‘He is a great teacher and of course knows more than I do.’

‘You know nothing.’ Map lights a cigarette.

William has had some beer too and his tongue is loose. ‘Why don’t you talk respectfully to me? If I have done something wrong, you should tell me what it is, so I can correct it.’

Map sneers. ‘Monks tell you that?’ He finally looks at William.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re so peaceful,’ says Map, smiling slightly. He sits back, inhales and watches. ‘I do all the fighting, you have all the getting. I march for forty years, you go to school. You have a pretty girlfriend, I have no family.’

‘My mother and father are dead,’ says William.

Map is silenced and looks away. His face closes up like a snail going into a shell and he coughs. He says nothing for a very long time.

William believes in connection. It is how he survives, and he is good at it because he practises on people whom no one else can reach.

All right, thinks William. I promise. I promise that you will be my friend. I will have your name and history in my notes, and you will know my family. We will celebrate New Year together.

There is a rumble of trucks in the dark. All the Europeans stand up. The Patrimony Police lift up their rifles. The trucks stop, their brilliant headlights go off, and a full colonel strides down the bank towards them. His lieutenant follows.

The Colonel holds up his hand, and greets Yeo Narith as if they are old friends. William’s ears prick up; he does not know this Colonel. He must be from somewhere other than Siem Reap. The Lieutenant is Sinn Rith, a man William knows is far too rich to have earned all his money from soldiering.

Teacher Andrade trusts these people?

In Banteay Chmar, it was the Army itself that stole the bas-reliefs.

They enter the light of the fire and Tan Map grins.

‘Lieutenant-Colonel Sinn Rith! My old friend!’ Map cackles with glee.

Sinn Rith is impassive behind his sunglasses. He mutters in Khmer, thinking the Europeans won’t understand. ‘The Frenchman’s brought his dog.’

Whew! William has to expel breath. They hate Map. What’s he done? Sinn Rith fingers the handle of his pistol. Map’s captain looks alarmed, eyes flickering between them.

The Colonel’s polite smile does not falter. He ignores Map, and greets the scholars, shakes their hands, and says how privileged he feels to be asked to help protect such a treasure. Can they view the find?

Still grinning Map leaps to his feet. ‘I am the dig photographer, I do the UN dig website,’ he says, every word directed at Sinn Rith. ‘It would be an honour, Colonel, to explain the finds.’

He is so rude! The man has no shame. He is humiliating everybody, making them look small. Dik Sangha, the Cambodian dig director is smiling but he’s shaking his head. Map swaggers his way in, laughs, and claps Sinn Rith on the shoulder.

Sinn Rith flings off his hand.

Inside the tent, the Colonel has to exclaim over the packets. ‘So many!’

‘We actually think it’s written by Jayavarman himself,’ says Yeo Narith. Luc explains. The Sanskrit text uses first person. It seems to be memoir. By the King himself.

The Colonel shakes his head. ‘For such a thing to come to the nation now. It is a gift from heaven.’

The lamps baste the interior of the tent; it is roasting and airless. Back outside Map sits down and says to William, ‘Hey motoboy, go get me a beer.’

Teacher Andrade says gently to William, ‘Perhaps the officers would like one as well, William.’

It gives William something to do. He sompiahs and makes himself look lively.

Even inside the tent, getting the beers, he listens to the debate.

The Army, it seems, want the Book to stay in Siem Reap. William thinks: the generals all own hotels, they want a museum here for the tourists.

The archaeologists say the Book needs to be repaired. It should go to the National Museum in Phnom Penh.

‘Is it safe anywhere?’ the French archaeologist asks.

Map takes his beer from William without even looking at him. He smiles and says, ‘The Army want to take care of the Book to earn merit to make up for all the people they killed.’

It is too much for Sinn Rith. He turns his head with a snap. ‘Like all the people you murdered?’

Map still smiles. ‘Everybody knows not even Buddha himself can keep a Khmer Rouge out of hell.’

The next day, the Army resolves all debate. They send a helicopter to airlift the Book out of the field.

April 1967, April 2004

Luc is sixteen, loves sport, and is planning to study medicine.

He plays football and tennis even in the heat. His shoulders swell, his hips shrink. He is very handsome – long-nosed, thin-lipped but with a deeply sweet face. He plays outside so often that his brown hair is sun-streaked.

His cyclopousse driver has fallen in love with him. Arn is from somewhere in the country, near Kompong Thom. Luc finds him heartbreaking, for Arn lives in his pedal taxi with all his possessions folded under the seat. His bank is a back trouser pocket secured with a safety pin. There is a pouch for his comb and his toothbrush. He washes in public fountains, wearing his kramar around his waist, sleek, muscular and happy.

Arn is twenty-two, which to Luc is old, in another state across the border into adulthood. Doing anything which earns you a living, and which gives you independence in the city, seems exciting and glamorous. And Arn looks happy. He smiles when he talks about his sister’s troubles with a recalcitrant fiancé. He talks of his father and mother and cousins and how rich they are, relatively.

Arn’s face seems to melt slightly whenever he sees Luc. The smile goes softer, the eyes narrow and gleam, and dart back and forth between Luc’s face and the ground.

‘Monsieur. I see you and birds sing,’ he says.

‘Monsieur, I see you and I see the sky, with all the stars.’

Taken aback by Arn’s grandness of expression, Luc stumbles up onto the front seat. He is flummoxed by his own response, which is a heat around the heart. He always feels tension around Arn, sometimes unpleasant and anxious. Luc is dismayed if chance means he must take another driver’s vehicle. It is nonsense, but he feels that he has betrayed Arn. He worries if Arn’s feelings will be hurt and calculates when and how he can apologize.

And Luc is aware.

Aware that he looks back as often as he can at Arn’s thighs and calves. Aware that his own people – plump, pink, grey and precise – do not attract him. The female dancers of the Cambodian Royal Ballet are pretty and firm of flesh, but Luc is aware that they earn only his attention and admiration. He does not masturbate thinking about them.

When he masturbates, he thinks of the girdle of lean muscle that joins the stomach muscles to the slim hips of Cambodian men. His heart goes up into his mouth when he passes them washing, glossy as seals, in the public fountains. At times the full meaning of this sinks in and he becomes utterly miserable, staring at the walls of his mother’s villa, or watching the lights of the passing traffic on the ceiling, listening to faraway flowering music from the nightclubs of Phnom Penh.

Today, after the lycée, Luc descends to the courtyard with its mango tree. He wears his white tennis shirt, white shorts, and as he expected, Arn waits outside the gate.

‘Le Club, comme d’habitude, Arn,’ he says. It’s tennis day.

‘Oh, Monsieur,’ says Arn. For once he is not smiling. For once he stares moon-faced and unhappy. He sighs, glances down and pulls in his lips until they are as thin as Luc’s.

‘Arn. My friend?’ Calling Arn his friend always produces collywobbles. For it is perilously close to the truth.

‘Today is New Year. I wanted to do something with you.’

Luc knows what his mother would say: the boy only wants money; they need money; if you want to give him money, do so. But don’t get too involved. You can’t really help him, you know. Unless you turn him into one of us.

His mother has read Luc correctly as being soft-hearted. His mother is an old hand. All her Cambodian friends are rich. They have handsome sons who also go to the lycée. But they don’t break Luc’s heart by keeping their one pair of trousers folded under the seat of a pedal-driven taxi. Some of them harden Luc’s heart by boasting of their houses and cars. He does not think that these middle-class Cambodians might be trying to establish equal grounds for friendship.

Luc, perhaps, wants to pity his friends. In any case, whatever it is that has hold of his heart is far too strong. It grips like a crocodile, no argument possible, only acceptance.

‘D’accord. It will be nice to spend New Year with you.’ Luc’s tongue stumbles slightly over the words. ‘I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend it with.’

‘Pardon?’

Luc has to explain the complicated French. By the time Arn understands both of them feel awkward and hurt. Arn’s smile is not like the sun, but like the moon – wan, faded. ‘I thought we go to lake. Sit on pier. I have bought a lunch.’

The thought of Arn buying him anything causes Luc an anguish of heart. Arn can’t afford to buy anything. He has to rent the machine, he hardly eats. ‘Arn, you shouldn’t have done that, please, let me pay you for the lunch.’

What can Arn do? He accepts Luc’s money, but he looks unhappy, for this has ruined the gesture. Luc knows that he wanted to pay, wanted to pay him back. For what? He wants to make something manifest, but the act is disproportionate. What has Luc done for him? Except be friendly and open and … and well yes something more, but how could he see that?

Luc feels bad, and Arn feels bad that Luc feels bad, but above all just wants …

… wants them to be, not equals, that would be stupid; nobody is anybody else’s equal in Cambodia. Luc knows that Arn just wants them to be who they are with each other. Which is? Friends, friends at least.

More than friends, Luc.

These are the feelings that people sing about in cheap songs. They are real, those cheap feelings. They turn out not to be pretty lies after all. They are demanding realities.

Luc’s eyes feel hot. They swell as if about to burst. Dear God, I’m going to cry. I don’t like this; I should go and play tennis with that wizened old coach who I don’t even like. Arn is whispering. ‘Maybe you go to tennis.’

‘No! It is a lovely idea. To celebrate New Year. Let’s go to the Boeung Kak Lake.’

Sometimes genius comes to Luc, as if a powerful, spiny but beautiful flower thrusts itself out of the heart of his life. Luc says, ‘Let me pedal you.’

‘Luc!’

‘No! I need the exercise. Really. I will pedal.’

Arn is smiling again and laughing. Luc stretches back and squeezes the brake. Laughing aloud Arn rises out of his seat and the cyclo wobbles from side to side, tipping slightly. Luc bounds out of the seat and pulls Arn who is weak with hilarity, forward to the wide, padded bench. ‘No, no, no!’ laughs Arn.

‘You are an old grandfather,’ Luc says in Khmer. ‘I respect you. You should rest, I will pedal.’

Arn shakes his head at his overturning young French friend. He takes hold of Luc’s pink hairless biceps and holds them. He swings up onto the seat and looks over the back.

Luc pedals. Shadows of trees flicker across his face. Women saunter past, trays on their heads. And for some reason Luc starts to sing an old Françoise Hardy song, about looking on while boys and girls love. He bellows as he pedals, grinning at Arn, whose face is turned towards his as steadily as the moon.

His song mingles with one by Sin Sisimuth coming from some passing Dansette. The voice of Sin is warm, the music trills like birds. The sound mingles with the savours of roadside cooking, the gasps of bananas deep-frying on mounds of earth baked into stoves, wafts of satay on skewers dripping over charcoal, and the sticky smell of all that fruit. The song harmonizes with the singing clatter of people speaking and the horse-like clopping of the feet of Luc’s own people, strolling in shorts and white shirts, more unbuttoned than they could ever be at home.

The song flowers alongside the modern apartments painted cream, with bougainvillaea purple along the tops of the walls, and the palm trees and the sprinklers and the uniformed children and Librairies crowded with books in Khmer and French and pootling little Citroën 2CVs peeping horns as sharp and bouncy as Cambodian smiles.

I love it! I love it, thinks Luc as he cycles. I never want to leave; this will be my home. Goodbye medical school, goodbye hospital. I will become a cyclopousse driver and live under the stars.

Arn laughs and covers his face. ‘Oh! I cannot afford your fare.’

Something comes over Luc and he leans back. ‘My fare costs everything, but I do not charge money.’

My fare is you.

‘Oh, Monsieur!’ and Arn permits himself a florid khutuy gesture that would not be conceivable in Kompong Thom. ‘I fear my purse is not big enough.’

Luc doesn’t get what he means but something hot and heavy impels him. ‘Ah, but it’s not always the amount, it’s the quality that is important. Is it fine stuff?’

‘Oh, oh.’ Arn is leaning forward and shaking his shoulder. ‘It is the finest stuff. For you. Oh, everyone is looking.’

Luc only now registers Arn’s embarrassment. ‘They know we are just having fun,’ he says gently.

There is a look on Arn’s face that Luc has never seen shining out of anyone else’s. It is a kind of surrender. Very quickly, as they buzz past buses and women in stalls and lunchtime workers on their way back to the bank or telegraph office, Arn lifts himself up onto his knees, turns around over the back of the seat, and pecks a kiss on Luc’s cheek.

He plainly could not help it. Luc doesn’t blame him. Arn was overcome. But Luc does not know what to make of it. In the end, he decides to pity. His friend could not help it, he got over-excited, he is from a different culture, and you have to be aware of imposing Western meanings. It was a familial kiss …

No it wasn’t.

Luc feels the dark.

You know what this is, Luc. So does Arn; his expression is full of both love and awareness. It is kindly but not exactly innocent.

Oh God, this is what it is. I am that. That thing.

He looks at Arn, his gently burnished face, and accepts. If it means I get Arn, then yes. Yes I am. That is me. I am that thing. And right now, nobody can see, and if they can see I don’t care.

Suddenly Luc shouts like John Wayne, and drives the pedals even harder and faster, and Arn chuckles and laughs. Luc lifts his feet off the pedals and just for a moment, he is flying.

In those days Boeung Kak Lake was a park that people could stroll around. Luc and Arn arrive and Arn’s friends cluster round to laugh and joke about the spectacle of a barang pedalling a cyclopousse. The laughter is good-natured. It’s New Year, you get to do crazy things. The two men … boys … are sent on their way with good cheer by the other drivers who agree to look after Arn’s machine. Arn goes to the latrines, but not to relieve himself.

He changes into his white shirt, and his perfectly creased khaki slacks.

They head out for the park, full of prostitutes at night, but families by day. Halfway to the lake they are pelted with water balloons by a gang of kids. They are nice kids, boys and girls all about fourteen, so Arn and Luc just laugh. They walk along the pier and all the cubicles are taken. Well they would be full, wouldn’t they, it’s April 13th.

Luc sighs. ‘We can always go back and sit on the grass.’

Except that the very last little cubicle, right at the end of the walkway out over the lake, is empty. Maybe nobody persevered all the way to the end of the pier; maybe a family has just vacated it. But there it is – hammocks and a charcoal stove and a view of the little lake, with its lotus pads and dreamy girls and serious boys in canoes.

Heartbreak time. Arn has bought them lunch, bundled up his kramar. The kramar serves as his pyjamas, his modesty patch, his head-dress, and his shopping bag. He unties it carefully, gently and there is sticky rice in vine leaves, soup in perfectly tied little bags that have spilled nothing, pork in sauce with vegetables.

Luc tells him it is a wonderful lunch and they sit and talk about the usual things. And Arn becomes overwhelmed. Because his unlikely dream has come true. The huge beautiful kindly barang is his.

‘Luc, I want to study,’ he says as he eats. ‘Luc, I am so happy. I know life will be just great. Everything in Cambodia good now. We have our Prince. Your people good to us, but the politicians go home, so now we can be friends.’

Arn sways from side to side as if to music as he says, ‘We all live together and work hard, so Cambodian business, Cambodian factories, Cambodian music, all do very well now. We will become modern country. We join the world as friends.’

‘Modern country,’ says Luc and lifts his hand as if raising a toast. ‘Friends.’

It is April 1967 and rice exports have collapsed and the news says that in a place called Samlaut, somewhere near Battambang, the peasants are in revolt. The Prince blames Khieu Samphan and the communists.

For now the old French song keeps singing in Luc’s head. Lovers, the lyrics tell him, don’t fear for tomorrow.

Arn would be fifty-eight now, thinks Luc waking up in a tent in the dark, reeking of insect repellent. Where is he?

Whenever Luc visits Phnom Penh, he peers at the moto-dops and elderly motoboys. He scans bus windows, taxis and stalls in the Central Market. Most likely Arn would be using a different name now and his face would be changed. Arn could be bald, fat, or sucked-dry skinny. But most likely … well …

One out of three men died.

Leaf 35

April is when the red hibiscus announces the change of seasons like the musician blowing his conch. April is after the harvest and before the rains. April is when the ox-cart falls back, lifting its long neck to sniff the wind. The oxen sleep under the house. Inside it people sleep or dance. Season of rest, season of labour, April is when we hoe the earth to guide the waters like children to their beds, making straight canals to bear new stone. April is when we lay courtyard pavements. The people kneel and drop the stones like eggs. They hoot like birds and bellow like elephants and laugh and start to sing. April is when we bear the temple stones up the ramps and rock them to sleep like uncles. Season of war, April is when the generals make one last effort before the rain to press on with the campaign. April is when we create. April is when we destroy.

April 13, 2004

April is the Time of New Angels, just before New Year.

Old angels will be sent back to heaven. They will be replaced by new angels who take better care of mortals.

On the morning of April 13 2004, the year of his retirement, King Norodom Sihanouk himself visits Army Headquarters in Siem Reap to view the Golden Book.

He gives the Book its Cambodian name: Kraing Meas, which means something like Golden Treasure. Photographs are taken of the King standing in front of a green baize background with leaves from the Book balanced against it. He shakes the hand of General Yimsut Vutthy.

The National Museum is determined that the Kraing Meas should come to rest in Phnom Penh, but there are high politics involved. Sihanouk has a house in Siem Reap. Prime Minister Hun Sen does not. The King himself has argued that neither APSARA nor the National Museum are secure enough to display such a treasure. Perhaps the Book could be the centrepiece of the much-needed museum in Siem Reap?

The Book would be repaired by none other than the royal jeweller, a man much experienced in gold and in repairing artefacts including, it must be said, stolen ones.

The Siem Reap regiment would have responsibility for transporting it. They too want the treasure to come back to the town. Most of the regiment’s many generals have invested in hotels there.

Most particularly General Yimsut Vutthy.

So on the last day of New Year Professor Luc Andrade packs a small overnight bag, pays Mrs Bou who runs the Phimeanakas Guesthouse and tips the staff.

The Phimeanakas security guard helps Luc out with his cases, including a large, empty metal case, usually used to transport film cameras. National Geographic has loaned it to Luc in return for favours. It is lined with shock-absorbent black foam.

He gets in a taxi and makes the short drive to the Regiment’s headquarters, feeling reasonably content. He has told no one about the arrangements, not Map, not William, not his Cambodian dig director. He had tried to tell the Director of APSARA, who just laughed and waved his hands. No, no, don’t tell me; I don’t want to know.

Luc will be the Book’s escort during the flight. It must be because he clearly belongs to no Cambodian faction. Which may be why he was not invited to the royal viewing this morning.

He sees the fine new Army HQ. From a distance it looks like a Californian shopping mall in the Mexican style – long, low buildings with red-tiled roofs. Closer up, Luc can see the roofs slope upwards and the tips of the gables reach out like the white necks of swans.

A chain is lowered, the taxi turns crackling into the huge gravelled forecourt. Along the mall, individual offices line up like shops each with its own door and blue-and-white sign in Khmer and English: Infirmary, Operations Office, Intelligence Office.

One of the doors is open. It does not have a sign, but Luc knows it is the General’s office. Soldiers stand crisply to either side of it, and murmuring emerges from it.

Luc walks on, carrying the metal case, accompanied by a soldier.

The General’s office runs the depth of the building and is crammed with military men. They throng around canapés and cognac laid out on tables. The seats are huge heavy wooden benches that look like thrones and make your bottom ache. The wooden floors gleam, and there is a bank of TV and DVD players on shelves.

Right on top of the General’s desk is the Book itself, spilling somewhat loosely out of its ancient linen and pitch packaging. Some of the gold leaves are out of order, resting on thumbtacks on the baize. Two days’ work, calculates Luc, just to find out where they belong.

The General greets Luc like an old friend and jokes, ‘In the old days, people would call me a Cheap Charlie for not offering cigars, but now CNN says they are bad for your health.’

Luc knows much more about Yimsut Vutthy than the man would care for. Luc knows which hotels he has invested in and who his Thai and Singapore partners are. He knows roughly what percentage he takes from the forty- to sixty-dollar fees tourists pay to enter Angkor Wat, for the General is a protégé of the establishment, someone of whom Sihanouk himself would be wary. Yimsut Vutthy is a compromise candidate.

A player, in other words.

The General introduces a number of Army officers and civil service functionaries, all of whom want to be associated with the Book

‘You see,’ one of them says, ‘we take the safety of the Book very seriously.’

Luc cannot stop himself smiling.

They crowd round to look over Luc’s shoulder as he packs away the Book, still in its sections of five leaves. The measurements were correct and the sections fit with serendipity into the slots, gripped in place by the foam padding.

Then everyone toasts the health of the King and Mr Hun Sen. Canapés have done little to absorb the alcohol. Hungry and slightly fogged from cognac, Luc glances at his watch, anxious to get going.

Later than he likes, Luc and the General walk out to a waiting Mercedes. It takes two soldiers to load the now heavy case into the boot. The General holds out an expansive arm for Luc to precede him into the car. Luc smells the soft tan leather upholstery, and runs his hands over it as he slides into place.

Two motorcycles roar ahead of them. Almost inaudibly, the Mercedes eases out behind them, with an Army jeep following. Feeling presidential, Luc settles back with relief as the cavalcade pulls out of the gates.

Conversation with General Yimsut Vutthy soon runs out, but Luc has ready that morning’s Herald Tribune. Rather gratifyingly, if well into the middle pages, the paper reports the Book’s discovery. GOLDEN BOOK HOLDS KEY TO CAMBODIAN HISTORY. An official press photograph shows the General himself displaying the leaves on a wooden table. Luc passes the newspaper to him.

Then very suddenly Luc is sure he has left behind his passport and letter of contract to the Cambodian Government.

With a lurch of panic, he reaches down for his belt pouch. He has time to feel his passport and papers securely inside.

The car swerves. In his slightly befuddled state, Luc thinks the veering has come from him.

Tyres squeal; metal slams. Inertia keeps Luc travelling forward, folding him against the front seat.

An accident. Luc struggles his way back into his seat. He sees an angry face against the window.

Luc behaves entirely automatically. There’s been an accident, someone is upset, so go and see if you can help.

He opens the car door.

The angry man seizes him, pulls him out of the Mercedes, spins him around and pushes him forward. Luc stumbles ahead in shock.

A new silver pick-up gleams by the side of the road. New, Luc thinks, and probably rented. Very suddenly, as if a tree trunk had snapped, there is a crackling of gunfire behind him. This is it, he thinks, this is really it. He’s absurdly grateful for his belt pouch. He’s thinking that it will hide his passport and money. They’ll only get the twenty dollars he keeps in his pocket.

The back of the pick-up truck is down. Someone shoves him towards it. Other hands grab him, hoist him up and then slam his head down onto the floor. He hears a ripping sound and he realizes that heavy workman’s tape is being wrapped around his head. It blacks out his eyes and covers his mouth. Something like a heavy sack is thrown against him. It groans. Luc recognizes the General’s voice. A light, rough covering is thrown over them both; Luc smells cheap plastic sacking.

Someone shouts urgently. A bony butt sits on the most fragile part of his ribcage. The engine revs and the truck jerks forward, bouncing over ruts and slamming the metal floor against his shoulders and head. The truck swings back around on to pavement and accelerates away. Luc assumes it has U-turned back towards town.

The strange things you think when you are in trouble. Luc finds he is worried about the duct tape pulling off his eyebrows and jerking out his hair. He thinks of Mr Yeo and wants to tell him, see how brave I’m being? He thinks of his mother. See Maman? I don’t feel any fear at all. This is bad, this is very bad, but I’m not panicking. He wants someone to be proud of him, to sit up and take notice.

He remembers Tintin. Tintin always remembered how many turns, left or right, and the kind of terrain, and the kind of noises.

So he pretends he is in a Tintin comic book. As they whine along the airport highway he counts to sixty five times. Then they shudder over open ground to the count of sixty times twelve. After a couple of almost vengeful crashes over humps he loses count.

They slow to a stop. He smells dust and something else, metallic and sour, which he realizes is probably blood, his own or the General’s.

The back of the truck thumps down. ‘Out, out,’ someone says, ‘let’s go!’ Luc shifts, feeling his way out of the pick-up. He is seized, hauled out, and thrust forward. Stumbling blindly over the ground he thinks: I will have to learn Braille in case I ever go blind. Why did I wear my good shoes, they’ll be all dusty.

Well, mon cher, they will look very branchée at your funeral. OUCH the stones are like teeth jabbing through the thin soles. Scrub crackles, prickling ankles.

Luc hears the pick-up rattle back onto the road behind him.

Then his feet go out from under him and he slides down a dirt slope onto rocks. A wrench and a folding-under and he knows that his ankle is twisted. Someone crouches down on top of him. He hears sirens wail past on the road above them. We’re down a ditch, he thinks. A ditch or a channel for floods in the dry season. You’d need to know it was here. These are local people.

The sack is thrown over him again. Some tiny insect nips him. Daylight mosquitoes, they carry dengue fever. He tries to slap it, and realizes that he can’t – his hands are tied. He tries experimentally to talk through the tape.

‘You say nothing!’ The voice is so close to his face that he feels breath on his nose. An insect bites him again.

He tries to count how long they wait, but then Tintin loses his nerve. Very suddenly Tintin wants to go home.

You are local people. I’ve probably seen your faces. All smiles. Well Cambodia is smiling now, isn’t it? I can see it grinning at me.

See, Cambodia is saying, you thought you could love us out of ourselves. Well here it is. This is what everyone else in Cambodia went through. Do you love it now? See how powerful love is? How long did you think you could be in Cambodia and avoid this? How long did you think you could avoid the strong men, the gangs, and the armed ex-soldiers? This is Siem Reap on Highway 6, one of the most dangerous parts of Cambodia for most of the thirty years of conflict.

Your turn, Luc, to be in a war.

April 1142

The teacher could not grow a beard.

This was a great sadness for him and probably an embarrassment for his students. The teacher was a Brahmin, originally from India, Kalinga. His people could grow beards. It was a mark of their holiness. This Brahmin wondered if he had sinned in a previous life. Or perhaps his beard refused to come because of his lack of courage. He was too lax with challenging the boys especially the one who called himself Prince Slave.

For the sake of my beard, the Brahmin promised himself, the next time Nia questions authority, I will put him in his place.

In the class they were discussing the ordering of castes, and Nia sighed and said, ‘There are no castes of people in Kambujadesa. In Kalinga, I’m sure these things hold firm, but here everyone is either a noble or some kind of slave.’

Now, the Brahmin thought, I must act now. ‘Do you deny the ordering of categories?’

The Slave Prince said with a sideways smile, ‘I am sure the categories are orderly in a country where everyone can grow a beard.’

The silence in the room was clenched.

Prince Nia continued. ‘Here everyone keeps telling us to support the ordering of categories and professions, but I can never tell if they are talking about Varna or Jakti. I don’t think they can either.’

‘Your problem, Prince,’ said the Brahmin, ‘is that you think words have no power. You use them too freely.’

‘I think truth has power. Words have power when they are pushed out of you by truth.’

‘You have no humility.’

The young prince paused. ‘Not enough, it is true.’

‘You should learn humility, Prince.’

‘That’s true too. From whom should I learn it, guru?’

‘From the King!’

‘There is no possibility of learning anything other than humility when confronted by a king. I find it more instructive to learn it from slaves.’

Like a clam, the jaw of the Brahmin slammed shut. Too, too clever, this Slave Prince. The Brahmin tried to humiliate him. ‘You speak of your little friend.’

‘She is my friend. She sweeps and scrubs and fans and whisks. But she has a loyal heart.’

Just lately, the Brahmin had noticed, the children were not laughing at Nia. The other princes hung their heads and looked sullen, hiding something. The Brahmin had a terrible thought. This Nia is recruiting them. Recruiting them to what? The Brahmin had no words, but he felt this overturning prince was an enemy of religion.

‘I think you learn pride from her,’ said the Brahmin.

The cursed boy just looked thoughtful. ‘There is pride there, for I find her an exceptional person and so I am proud that she has condescended to be my friend.’

‘Upside-down boy! She is the slave, you are the Prince.’

‘So I should learn pride, not humility?’

He was a treacherous lake that made the boats unsteady.

‘You … you take pride and turn it into humility and then turn it into pride!’ The Brahmin knew that he sounded weak and shaken.

A danger, this one. This one is a danger.

Who knows what this danger to the Gods will bring? War? Famine? Drought? Severe lack of observance always brought the wrath of gods.

Even at twelve, this overturning Slave Prince must be brought down.

Shivering with the importance of what he was about to do, the teacher visited Steu Rau, the Master of the King’s Fly Whisk.

The Master’s family had whisked kings in public for generations. Family members had also been the Guardian of the Royal Sword and the Superintendent of the Pages. They were not Brahmin but they were definitely Varna. The Fly Whisks understood loyalty and the meaning of the categories.

Steu Rau agreed. ‘Yes, yes, you are right. You have no idea how this friendship unsteadies the palace girls. They keep looking for similar favours. Why, some of them have even offered themselves to me.’

‘Shameful!’

‘In the house of the King!’

The King was supposed to sleep with them, not the officers.

‘It is the singling out that is the problem,’ the teacher said. ‘The lower categories have to understand that they lack distinction, that they are as alike as cattle. That they earn distinction slowly, life after life, through obedience.’

‘This girl shoots up like a star!’

‘Through the attention of a capsizing prince. So. I think we must remove this attention by separating them. Permanently.’

‘Yes! Yes! Kill her!’

The Brahmin admired Fly Whisk’s energy. But he also thought that perhaps the girl might have offended Fly Whisk. ‘I do not think the killing of a female nia would earn merit. It might have the reverse effect.’

‘Humph! Well. You are the expert in these matters, guru.’

‘I think the King will be making donations of land to a temple soon, and that she should be one of the gifts. She should be donated to work in the fields. No serving in the temples. In other words, the attention of this capsizing prince will have resulted in a lowering of her status. It will have taken her even farther from heaven.’

The Master enjoyed the idea. ‘Yes, yes, that would be an object lesson. And a donation will earn merit.’

‘For all who are part of it.’ The Brahmin smiled and held up his holy, bestowing hands.

Suryavarman had many names, and would have another name after his death.

He slept each night at the summit of the palace temple. At least that got him away from his wives. Attendants had strung up his hammock and lowered draperies to keep out the night air. In the old days a woman might have been left with him, for the sake of form.

But the Universal King was old now. He did not want women with him. He did not like the way they searched his face and looked at his old body. He was exhausted with the impudent stripping gaze of everyone who saw him. They searched his face for signs of glory and found only a man after all.

And yet, what he had done! He was the Sun King, who had swamped his enemies. Might not a little of that show on his face?

Nowadays, Suryavarman turned might into merit. He had built the biggest temple in the world in honour of Vishnu and all the Gods. Perhaps doubt was the burden that gods lay on kings for coming too close to them.

You sluiced water around a stone, and claimed it was holy. You did not know whether it was or not. You never saw a god, or felt a god. At times you used the Gods strategically, to frighten or threaten or shame your rivals.

Sometimes you wondered if any of it was true.

At night, lying awake and listening to the sounds of insects, you would know: you were tough and strong but sometimes that strength crushed things you wished to keep. You had a mean streak, you had a fearful streak, and you had a mind that always played chess with people’s lives. You took pleasure in all the politicking; you promised yourself that you would stop. You tried to convince yourself that you had finally won and could afford to be more forgiving. Something in you prevented it.

Bigger and bigger temples, more and more stones piled high, more exiles, more confiscations, more setting families off against each other. And at night, loneliness.

Something fluttered in the shadows of the candle. It slipped around the draperies, like a gecko.

‘I am child,’ a boy said, and flung himself down onto the stone.

I can see that, thought Suryavarman and sat up. The boy must have avoided the stairs by climbing up the sides of the temple, on the carvings. ‘Have you ruined the stucco?’ the King demanded.

‘I took care to avoid doing harm, Great King. I am small and light. I do not come for myself, King, but for another.’

The King beadled down on him. ‘Whose son are you?’

‘Yours,’ said the boy, and then hastened to add, ‘in spirit I am yours, for I have grown up in your house, but my father is Dharan Indravarman, who serves you as a small king in the northeast.’

‘I know him,’ rumbled Suryavarman. My cousin, not particularly troublesome, a man of no obvious faults and a Buddhist, so doubly harmless. ‘You can sit up, I want to see your face.’

The boy was a plump little fellow only about twelve years old, with a big round face and thick peasant lips. No matter what he said, his serious, regarding eyes had no trace of real fear.

The King asked him, ‘What makes you think you are not in a lot of trouble?’

The boy replied, ‘Because you are a Universal King. A Universal King is brave and has faced terrible danger. Such a king would have no need to frighten me.’

‘You are troubling my sleep.’ Like bad dreams.

The little fellow bowed and crawled closer. Determined, wasn’t he?

‘King. You are generously setting up new temples, and you are to give to these establishments great gifts of land and water and parasols and oil and wax and people.’

‘Yes?’ Dangerous stuff, little fellow, for these gifts are the canals of politics. Gold and silver and obligation flow down them. And blood.

‘There is a slave girl. Her name is Fishing Cat. She was honoured to be made part of our household when she was five. She is so happy to be here, she has not thought of her village since. She does not even remember its name. But I have checked the records and I see she must have come from the villages near Mount Merit. If …’ Here the child faltered, bit his lip, became a child again. ‘If that is where you are planning a temple, then perhaps if she is sent there, that would be a good thing. She could see her family again.’

‘Is that all you want?’

‘I have been very foolish,’ said the child in the tiniest possible voice. ‘I became friends with her. It was easy for me, it was fun. I had no thought of the danger for her. It is my fault, but she is the one being punished.’

The King could not help but smile. ‘You climbed up here for a slave girl?’

The boy sompiahed, yes. ‘My guru says I must learn humility.’

The King chuckled. ‘A strange way to show humility, to wake up a king with demands.’ The boy went still and looked down.

Impossible to gauge, little fellow, how much of a danger you will be. But what a heart you have. A brave heart and a good heart, to care so much for a slave girl. ‘All right. I will order it.’

The boy flung himself face-down onto the stone. Then the little imp sat up and made sure the King remembered. ‘Her name is Fishing Cat. Mount Merit.’

The King nodded. He stood up. His chest had sagged, his belly swelled, his calves had shrivelled. He shuffled into his sandals. ‘Come along, little fellow, I will get you past the guards.’

‘Don’t punish them,’ said the boy, suddenly alarmed. ‘I am very small and quiet.’

The King had to laugh. The boy’s heart is a kingdom; it could contain everyone. He cares for guards! They would kill him at a nod from me.

‘I won’t punish them,’ promised the King.

Suryavarman quickly calculated. Little Buddhist, you have ten more years before you become a danger. By then, I will be dead. With all this sudden trouble over my wife’s brother in Champa and with the Vietnamese in the north, someone somewhere will betray me soon. And so I know who you are. You are the danger to whoever is my successor. You can be my harrow.

If you love me.

‘Can I tell you who you are?’ Suryavarman said, as they walked. ‘Your father is my first cousin. Your mother was from Mahidharapura, the same pastures from which my own family came.’ His hand on the boy’s shoulder pressed down hard. ‘So I am fond of your family, that is why I asked especially for you to be here. Really.’

He nearly laughed aloud again; the boy’s eyes were so completely unfooled.

‘That is why I said you are my father,’ whispered the boy.

‘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 onto 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.’

April 13, April 14, 2004

People heard the shots and thought at first that they were fire-works.

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 pick-up 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 passers-by.

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’s 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, OK, 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. ‘OK, 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.

The road is absolutely dark and still. On the last night of New Year. No one’s travelling. They’re all scared again, scared in their souls, scared all the way back to the war. Two gunshots and they’re like birds flying in panic.

We are so easily knocked down, Jayavarman. We try and try, we work so hard. We maintain our kindnesses. We smile, and help each other, and make life possible for each other. We perform our acts of merit and still our luck doesn’t change.

Acts of merit don’t work, Jayavarman.

They didn’t work for Ta Barang, they don’t work for those guides on the stone steps. So I don’t do them, Jaya. I don’t do good actions. Good actions don’t get you anything; good actions have no power. Nothing seems to have any power.

Why doesn’t anything change? Why am I stuck on a bicycle? Why are my friends not teaching college instead of swatting flies in the dark? Why do our children give up being smart?

Map imitates the children aloud to the moon. He says in English, in a child’s voice, ‘Sir, you buy cold drink, Sir? Something to eat, Sir?’

Map wants to weep for his people and their children. They wait all day in the sun to sell the beautiful cloth that is spun on bicycle wheels by people with no legs. They get up at 4.00 a.m. to buy tins of coke and bottles of water and they carry the ice four kilometres and they are six years old. ‘If you buy cold drink later, you buy from me. Promise, Sir?’

Instead of going to school.

Jayavarman answers, in the person of the moon.

Because, the moon says in a soft voice. That is the only reason. Just because. You must work very hard now to catch up.

Yeah, everybody’s ahead of us, not just the Americans, but even the Thais. The Thais come here in air-conditioned coaches and won’t use the toilets because they are too dirty. They cannot believe we ever built this city or gave them their royal language. The Vietnamese are way ahead of us, making their own motorcycles for profit.

Moonlight reflects on the paved, smooth road as if it were water. The moon on the empty road speaks again.

So. Cycle. Cycle hard, cycle fast, cycle all the way into your old age. The world won’t notice.

Work. Work without success. Grind and sweat and cheat with no merit. You are starting from the bottom. You are the lowest in the world.

Because.

‘Because,’ repeats Map.

Excuse me, King. But I know who I am.

I am a smart guy. I am a brave guy. I am a scary guy. I have power inside me, Jayavarman Chantrea, Jayavarman Moonlight. I could be anyone. I could be Hun Sen himself. So Because is why I am cycling on this road alone? Just Because? Is that all?

The moon inclines his sympathetic head. No. You are cycling to rescue Ta Barang.

Yeah, I guess I am.

The moon says, Under all the bragging, you are a respectable man, Tan Sopheaktea. Sopheaktea is Map’s real name, cruelly inappropriate. It means Gentle Face.

‘But I killed children.’

The moon purses its lips. You killed children.

Everything in Sivutha Street is dark. Even the whorehouse bar is closed.

The gates of the Phimeanakas Guesthouse stand locked and the forecourt lights are off.

Map knows Prak, the Phimeanakas security guard. Like Map, Prak stays awake all night under mosquito nets. Like all of Mrs Bou’s staff, Prak is an honest man, meaning he doesn’t steal and tells only harmless lies. Whether he is a good man is another matter. Map has known Prak in other lives, as war followed war.

‘Prak! Prak!’ he hisses.

Map peers into the courtyard that is criss-crossed with the shadows of tall fencing and palm leaves. ‘Prak?’

Somewhere in shadow Prak says, ‘Go away, gunman.’

‘Prak, this is the policeman, Tan Map. What has happened to Teacher Luc Andrade?’

‘I don’t know, come back tomorrow.’

‘Prak, they say he was taken hostage. Do you have any news, do you know anything?’

‘What do you mean? I don’t know anything about it. Go away!’

‘What are Teacher Luc’s team doing? Prak, don’t be stupid, I’m no thief. The Frenchman is my patron, come on! What are the Army doing?’

‘Mrs Bou remembers you, she knows who you are and what you did.’

‘I remember too, everybody remembers what everybody else did. Everybody did something to stay alive. So did you.’

‘I am not coming out. I am coming nowhere near that gate.’

‘What are people saying about what happened?’

‘I am not telling the whole street!’

This is getting weird. ‘Prak, have you seen a ghost or something? I just want to know about my sponsor.’

‘I don’t know anything. The Army came and talked to the guests and left. I didn’t hear what they said; it was none of my business. Now go away!’

Something clicks, a shutter closing.

Prak was always roostershit; his pants were always full of it.

OK, Teacher Luc, I am committed to helping you so I must think very hard about what to do.

The Patrimony Police didn’t know the Book was being moved, and neither did APSARA, at least the guides didn’t know and nobody from APSARA was in the car. So the Army would have been in charge.

Map smiles to himself. No gun. He only has a knife. He giggles. Stay out of trouble, Map. Me?

Trouble is my girlfriend; I love Trouble; she comes up to me all slinky and says, you want to have a party? I don’t even need a dollar to pay her, Trouble loves me so much.

OK let’s go.

There’s no one at the gate of Army HQ.

Map’s bicycle crunches its way into the forecourt over the fine gravel. Lights blaze all along the long white veranda. One of the doors is open, full of light and talk.

Oh, my old friends will be so happy to see me. They will have a party with Trouble too. Map sticks his knife into his belt and strolls towards the room.

‘Are you all happy?’ he says, sticking his head through the door.

A flicking of safety catches and a dragging of chairs; soldiers leap up from around a desk.

One of them is Map’s old officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Sinn Rith.

‘You?’ Rith demands. ‘What are you doing here?’ He looks fatter these days. Meaner too, his face behind mirror sunglasses after midnight. Map thinks: maybe moonlight blinds you, Rith.

Map’s smile goes snake-like. ‘I hear you guys got my mentor kidnapped, so I came here to find out more about it.’

Rith makes a light, swift gesture: guns down, hold back. ‘We think you already know all about it.’

Map shakes his head. ‘No, like I said. I don’t know anything. That’s why I’m here.’

Rith looks grim but amused. ‘We were just thinking maybe you did it.’

‘That would not be clever. I kidnap my boss and lose all my money.’

Slowly, the guns creep back up. They really are still mad at me aren’t they?

‘It’s more like this, Private Tan Map. We didn’t tell anybody about the car. Nobody knew except the Army and the Frenchman. But at the right moment, on the airport road, out come two pick-ups from those unfinished houses side by side. One stops in front of us, one stops behind. They shoot some of our men. They take General Yimsut Vutthy and the Director of the UN project, who is an important man we are supposed to protect. We ask ourselves, who else would know when the car was going and what it was carrying? Who else would Grandfather Frenchman know and be stupid enough to trust?’

This is Trouble, all right. Trouble has strung up a hammock for me to stay overnight. All the safety catches are off, and they are all easing up to their feet.

‘I have another story,’ says Map. ‘You’ve got some old general over you and nobody is getting any promotion. Who is going to be so fast and good at kidnapping from the Army? Some Thai art dealers? Some farmers who only care that the Book is made of gold? How about some guys from the Army who want an old general out of the way?’

Rith is smiling and shaking his head. ‘Oh, I like that story. It’s a good story. A good theory, guys? So now we have two good theories. And we have you.’

The soldiers come towards Map slowly, like they’re digging out clay at the brick factory and their feet are stuck.

Map keeps smiling; he can’t help it. Bad as it is, this is his idea of fun. ‘All those guns, pointing at one little policeman.’

They stand around him in an arc but he’s backed into the doorway so they can’t surround him.

They really believe this shit. I’m going to get beaten up. I’ve been beaten up before. Then they’ll stick me in some hot little room until they can come up with something for a trial.

Also, they have reasons of their own for wanting to hurt me.

The soldiers start to hustle him backwards out of the doorway.

Aren’t we a dump of a country? Other places have spy satellites and missiles, we have angry little men and fists and rooms in the back. Doesn’t mean to say it doesn’t hurt.

There are certain satisfactions in life. One is not waiting until you are hit first. Another is hitting them hard out here in the motel light, where everybody can see that it’s eight to one.

Map kicks the knee of the guy closest to him. The guy sinks. Map head-butts the guy who was trying to sneak around behind him.

Then Map takes off. He runs, but to the right, not to the left towards the gate and his bicycle. He tears away, right and then around the back of the building.

My legs are my sons. He can hear their shoes on the gravel spurting off in the wrong direction and doubling back. You thought I’d go for my bike, but I’m going where there are no lights and I can make a straight run for the fence. You got razor wire round the top? That’s why I’m going for it.

Map is gleeful. It will take them a minute to find the perimeter lights. He sprints blindly in the dark for the fence. He hears shouting and whistling. Dogs. Sure they got dogs, I can outrun dogs and it’s a still night, no wind. There’s the moon, and he thinks this is fun too; he’s grinning down.

This is like the gang wars with the arrows when I was a boy. This is what I’ll do when I die. They’ll try to send me to hell, and I’ll climb up the fence to heaven anyway.

Fingers into mesh, and I hear the paws, the lovely padded paws of dogs. They’ll jump at the fence, so scamper Map, scamper like the day they told you Mom was dead and you ran away and forgot that they’d told you that. It’s vines, Map; you’re climbing vines, back to Mom, back to your brother, back to everybody.

The dogs bark, and here’s the wire.

Lightly as possible, as if vaulting on a hot skillet, Map pulls himself over the razors. They tear his hands and legs but he knows there will be leaves on the other side to wipe them clean.

I always shoot better with sliced fingers anyway.

You think I’ll stay on the roads for you? You think I’m not a local boy, so I don’t know how to keep out of sight?

The dogs are going crazy, they’re making hound music, and the big lights have snapped on and maybe you see me in pale light like a ghost, maybe you’ll shoot, so I’ll just duck behind the old TV station that’s empty now, like an empty snail’s shell.

The road.

Map starts to laugh. He imagines Lieutenant-Colonel Rith, swearing and stomping up and down. He imagines the guy whom he head-butted holding his bloody nose. Oh man, will they be after my liver for this! I’ll be sleeping rough on the moon after this! I’ll sleep under the hay! They’ll chase me everywhere; I’ll just be a ghost.

He darts across the scrub field towards the dry flood canal that roaring waters had gouged so deep.

Overhead the crazy moon laughs. Map laughs too. He’s home.

Map loves war.

Luc is on a boat.

It’s made of overlapping timbers, so water slops and gurgles against the hull with a noise like musical springs. The floor of the hull stinks of fish and is ribbed with joists that aggressively dig into buttocks, kidneys, ankles, and hips. Luc is jammed under the low deck. It’s impossible for him to sit up, let alone stand.

Tape covers Luc’s mouth and eyes; his legs and wrists are lashed with the sort of bungee cords that hold pigs and hens in place on motorcycles. He can do two things: hear and smell.

Outside, marsh birds warble, whistle or keen. Frogs make their odd beautiful sound like a cross between a gong and a flute. The boat rocks continually, and he can hear wind in reeds, so they are somewhere on the shores of the Tonlé Sap. Next to him, the General keeps groaning through the tape.

Luc smells cigarettes and fish being kebabed on the deck above. He hears the slosh of drinking water in a bottle; he hears boys making light and friendly chatter. Then one of them hisses and everything goes still.

Another boat putters towards them. The silence is long except for one whispered question. Then a calm voice calls clearly across the lake. The boys chuckle with relief and shout; feet thump onto the deck and there is hearty laughter.

A rough voice barks. ‘You should have seen it! It was a sight. They all thought the Khmers Rouges had come for them again! The whole town was running away. We shot a few extra bullets here and there to add to the party, and then all the power went, like it does every New Year, and all the women screamed.’

‘New Year, let them remember New Year!’

‘Happy New Year!’

‘Well, let’s have a look at our prizes. I want to see their eyes.’

More feet thumping, and a rough sound of wood sliding. ‘Whew! You guys stink!’

A padding of feet and a tugging at the tape over Luc’s face. Suddenly, with a ripping sound, it’s torn away, taking Luc’s eyebrows with it. Thank heavens, he thinks, that I keep my hair cut short, number one buzz cut. Torchlight blazes like sunlight into his eyes. He blinks, dazed. The torchlight becomes beautiful, like a star fallen to earth, surrounded by a corona.

‘Welcome to Siem Reap Hilton,’ someone says in accented English.

Luc squints, dazzled by the light. Don’t look at their faces! He turns his head away and sees the General’s bloodhound face – heavy and crumpled, with dark, wounded eyes.

The same barking, exuberant voice says, ‘Hey General, you must have thought everything was going the way you like it. Welcome back! Make yourself at home here in the hotel. We have everything! Food, water, a comfortable bed. Guns.’

The General stares heavily and says nothing.

They’re showing us their faces; they don’t care if we see them. That’s bad. Before he can stop himself, Luc looks up, eyes now adjusted to the light. He sees the face of an older Cambodian man. Luc’s eyes dart away, but not before he realizes that he knows the face. From where?

The older man berates him in English. ‘Barang. Welcome to the real Cambodia. Lots of mosquitoes. No air conditioning. Real Cambodian cuisine.’

Unceremoniously, a whole burnt fish, small and bony, is pushed into his mouth.

The man has a competent face, the face of an old, tough businessman. He looks like he runs a shoe factory. He’s wearing half-moon spectacles and Luc tries to remember where he has seen those before. The eyes are wide, merry, glistening, yellow splotched with red. The teeth are brown and broken, framed in a wild smile. It’s not a face I’ve seen smiling. That is why I cannot place it.

Luc feels sadness for the world. This is a world of roses, forests, rivers, and wild animals. It is a world of mothers and children and milk. How do we get so wild-eyed, so anguished, and so cruel?

Luc, you are already a dead man.

‘Chew it, barang, the fire’s burnt all the bones. They break up in your mouth. It’s more than we have to eat most nights. It’s New Year. A celebration.’

The old man switches to Khmer. ‘You too, General. Without us, you wouldn’t have a job to do. Eat!’

A head appears through the trapdoor and warns, ‘Lights!’

The smile drops and the face settles into its usual immobility. It looks numb; the mouth swells as if novocained. The staring, round eyes are encircled by flesh. Fish Face, Luc thinks.

Fish Face says, ‘Ah, make a lot of noise, wave the fish at them, wish them Happy New Year.’

With the smile gone, Luc recognizes who it is.

‘If they don’t go away, shoot them!’ Fish Face jabs a casual thumb in Luc’s direction. Then he sniffs and pushes the tape back over their mouths. Luc needs to spit out the bones and can’t. He can’t swallow either. The bones and half-chewed fish plug his mouth.

Fish Face wrenches himself round on his haunches and as if levitating shoots up and out through the trapdoor.

Luc remembers the farmer in whose fields they found the Book.

Luc tries to remember everything Map had told him about the man. He had been Map’s CO for a while.

They are in the hands of ex-Khmers Rouges.

Luc hears the chortling of an engine. Fish Face seems to be going. So what’s he done with the Book?

That damned Book. I should have left it with the Army and walked away. Even if it was stolen, melted down and lost forever, I should have made sure that it was the Army who carried the Kraing Meas.

Instead, you made sure that you did. From now on, Luc, the Book is number two. You have to be number one.

I wish I had a God that I could pray to. I wish I believed in miracles, or had enough faith to find comfort in eternity. Hell. I want my mother.

My trousers are full of shit, I need a drink of water and my mouth is taped shut. I need to wash, I need a friend nearby, I need more courage than I have.

The only thing you can do, Luc, is regard this as an opportunity.

Luc decides to listen to the birds. They flute and warble as dawn approaches.

Birds and lapping water, so many things, are beyond the reach of guns.

April 1147

Jayarajadevi read books.

This might be harmless. The girl would sit cross-legged on cushions, as perfectly poised as a long-necked samsoan marsh bird.

There was nothing idle about her reading. She clicked the palm leaves over as regularly as an artisan weaving cloth. Indeed, some people said: she reads like a man. She thinks if she reads she will grow a beard and become a Brahmin.

Jayarajadevi was beautiful and of royal stock and would beyond doubt marry a prince. She was a Rajanga, a person of the highest degree, and the name Jayarajadevi was also a noble title. For everyday use she had a Khmer name, Kansri, which meant Beautiful or Happy.

Jayarajadevi Kansri was an especial devotee of the Buddha. Her mind could flick through the arguments for Buddhism as purposively as her fingers flicked through the leaves of her book. She had the art of presenting these arguments to her teachers while showing no disrespect.

Kansri had caught the attention of the great Divakarapandita, Consecrator of Kings. His title Dhuli Jeng, Dust of the Feet, meant he was the King’s deputy, at least in religious matters.

Divakarapandita enjoyed her interrogations. She was not at all frightened of him and he enjoyed the way she listened and responded.

Jayarajadevi would sit with him beside the four pools, high in the upper storey of the Vishnuloka. In the shaded gallery, they would debate. Sometimes her even more formidable older sister would join them.

Today, thank heaven, it was just her. The two sisters together were too much even for a Consecrator of Kings.

‘It is of course permitted to be a devotee of Gautama,’ Divakarapandita granted her. ‘No doubt he passed onto us the greatest possible insight into how to escape the toils of this world. But he is not a god, and devotions to him must be balanced, no not balanced, outweighed, by actions of devotion to the Gods.’

Jayarajadevi considered this and she was like water dripping from a rock garden, steady and in relaxing rhythms. From all about them came the whisper of brooms sweeping.

‘But, Teacher, Gautama was so wise that he taught the Gods themselves how to attain Nibbana. If gods so privilege his teaching, then surely so must we? Especially if he speaks the language of a human and shows us the limits of what humans can achieve.’

Kansri made Divakarapandita smile. She is so tenacious! Kansri will always, always argue that the Great Soul is the only true Way. Divakarapandita answered, ‘His words are notable. Powerful expression is like the wind, it wears down mountains of resistance. In the end. But the Gods do not talk the language of words. They make facts. Due observance of their powers is necessary.’

‘Oh indeed.’ Jayarajadevi sat up even straighter, slightly outraged perhaps at the implication that she was saying the overlords, Siva, Vishnu and Brahma, should be neglected. ‘Though these powers seem so alien and strange that some of our devotions to them come from terror not from love.’

Divakarapandita considered, and smiled. ‘The Gods are not responsible for the quality of emotion we bring to them. If people approach the Gods with terror in their hearts, then terror will be returned to them. Gods make facts, men only speak words, even the Buddha.’

Kansri’s answer was ready. ‘But we need words to explain what is righteous. Without words, we just burn.’

Divakarapandita said, ‘Do not misinterpret this, but I think that is a certain kind of wisdom. It is the wisdom of the feminine principle. To listen and express, to take the hard fact and surround it lovingly. The male principle is the making of facts. In human beings male and female are divided. Only in the Gods are male and female conjoined.’

Jayarajadevi scowled. ‘Then why do we split the power of Siva up again, into the yoni and the lingam?’

It was such a pleasure, such a privilege, to see a fine young mind blossom like the lotus. It was a noble thing to find you could discuss the holy significance of the male and female parts with a young woman whose mind was so clear that there was no embarrassment.

‘They are split in our realm precisely because we are split, and the hard fact of godly power must take different forms when working on us. A woman seeking pregnancy will drink from the lingam. A man seeking a still heart and a calm mind will drink from the yoni.’

Jayarajadevi nodded and smiled. Something in that idea pleased her, or solved something for her.

‘What we need,’ she said, ‘is men who are also partly women.’

Divakarapandita smiled to himself. Oh no, he thought looking at her determined face. That is what you need. He thought of how very lucky or very unlucky her husband would be.

‘Two great winds blow through our souls,’ she said. ‘The winds of war, and the winds of peace. We do not conjoin them.’

Mulling it over later, Divakarapandita realized that this girl had said that what they needed was a different kind of king. And he, Kingmaker, Consecrator, at least in part agreed with her. Had not he and the Sun King long ago made Vishnu a new focus of worship for just that reason?

The princesses would gather to watch the training.

It was a piddling annoyance to the old sergeant, but there was very little kamlaa people such as himself could do about it.

If the King’s female cousin eight times removed wanted to make a fool of herself, giggling and prodding other girls and looking at handsome young princes wearing only battle dress, who was a category person to tell them no?

It was saddening to see the Lady Jayarajadevi caught up in the craze. It did not matter that she strode across the training ground with the mature elegance of a married woman. It did not matter that she was accompanied by her older sister the Lady Indradevi who was just as beautiful and accomplished as she was. They were still reviewing potential husbands, like the King looking at his elephants.

There were crazes for particular princes. The favourite now was Yashovarman, the son of the King’s nephew. He’d already been selected to succeed old Suryavarman who had no children of his own. The boy then married one of the King’s nieces and promptly got himself a son, also lined up for inheritance.

So he wasn’t as dull in the court as he was on the battlefield.

Yashovarman had the physical qualities of a bull; he was somewhat short with strength bunched up around his shoulders and springing out of his calves. He had a warlike heart but was impatient and easily distracted. The women liked him though. Many of the princesses threw flowers at him even knowing that he was married.

Other princes found favour, too, all handsome and skilled with sword and shield and bow.

Like the quiet one, the curious favourite on whom the King had also bestowed his love. Some of the girls liked him a lot, too.

He had a woman’s beautiful face.

He had a moustache.

This was the damnable thing, a hard fact that made even his enemies acknowledge he had the blessing of the Gods. All the great teachers of Kalinga had beards or moustaches. Gods like Yama had moustaches. This prince was only sixteen years old, but he already sported a thick, unmistakable and unpainted line of facial hair on his upper lip.

He was not perhaps a man’s man and certainly was not destined for kingship. He was small, slight in the shoulders, and perhaps also slightly plump.

So he was not strong, but he never made a false move. He would nip up the side of an elephant unassisted, barefoot. He strung and sprung the crossbows, not by brute force, but by knowing how to stroke things into place. He made the weapons work by loving them.

Yes, he was a good soldier.

The old sergeant saw him scamper up a balding beast, finding footholds in the creases of her skin. The old sergeant approved of this lack of wasted motion, for he had served under generals who moved by sheer force. Without this neatness, they sometimes lacked strategy. They would march you into a swamp of blood. You survived, but your comrades had been opened up to the sun, transformed into abandoned corpses that only the floods or scavengers would remove.

The old sergeant saw the Prince tuck himself into the howdah. Again, he did it almost invisibly. If you blinked you would miss him doing it. The old sergeant saw him look up, and under his black lip, his white teeth suddenly glowed. Life warmed the old sergeant’s heart, he who had seen so much death. The old sergeant followed his gaze.

Oh, ho ho, it was the Lady Jayarajadevi who had caught his eye. It was a young man’s fiery heart seeking what it needed. Oh yes, there was competition among these young hawks, these young elephants.

Still smiling at beauty, the Slave Prince turned, dipped at the knees and pulled his young training partner up into the howdah.

Responsible. That was another thing a commander needed to be. He needed to know where his men were and who they were, who needed help, who needed to be chastised and beaten. His young partner was willing but unsteady. The Slave Prince did not mock him or complain that his partner was dragging him down. His job was to make the most of his young partner, and he did. He pulled his apprentice up onto the platform and steadied him on it.

And then he glanced again at Jayarajadevi. Oh, he aimed at the stars that one.

‘’Sru, who is the short fat one?’ asked Jayarajadevi.

‘Oh, you know him,’ said Indradevi, her sister. Her Khmer name was Kansru, which meant Well-Shaped. The sisters nicknamed each other ‘Sri and ‘Sru.

‘No I don’t.’

‘You do, ‘Sri! He is a great favourite of the King. He is the one they call Slave.’

‘Oh yes. So that is him.’ Kansri did not quite like the knowing look in her elegant sister’s eyes. ‘’Sru! Careful.’

‘His father was a Buddhist,’ said Indradevi. ‘His father and his brother are now dead, so he is in name a little king. Only, he doesn’t seem to be bothered about being consecrated or taking a title.’

‘Perhaps he is showing indifference to the world.’ Jayarajadevi Kansri meant to be mildly sarcastic. Indradevi was always looking out for her.

Indradevi pretended to take her seriously. ‘I was wondering the same thing.’

The sisters held each other’s gaze and suddenly both started to laugh. ‘We all must look to our futures,’ said Indradevi Kansru with a gentle, teasing smile.

‘Look after your own! I only asked who he was. I did not recognize him because of the moustache.’

‘You only like him because of the moustache.’

Jayarajadevi saw how it looked to her sister. ‘It does give him the air of a holy man, and it is foolish of me to think that. But then I am young and foolish.’

‘At least he looks like a man who does NOT regard women as if they were elephants.’

‘Fortunately some great princes are beyond our ken.’

‘For … tune … ate … leeee,’ said Indradevi Kansru and rattled the tips of her fingers on her sister’s arm. Between themselves they called some of the highest princes in the land the Oxen. Among them, Yashovarman.

But oh, even the Oxen were beautiful young men. They wore their princely quilted jackets, all gold embroidered flowers, and were finely built and swift of movement. That gave low pleasure but also higher pleasure. If lotus flowers were a symbol of divinity for their colour, their form and their life, then surely the same could be said for beautiful young men?

Though the lotus had the advantage of not trying to be beautiful, or being arrogant about it.

Kansri had indeed heard of the Prince who called himself Nia. She wondered why this favourite of the Universal King would do himself such an injury as to be named after the lowest category of slave. He could be consecrated as a little king and take a noble title, but he still called himself Hereditary Slave.

Jayarajadevi Kansri knew why she would give herself such a name. She would do it to show that the titles of this world were meaningless, that compassion was owed to the lowly.

Was it possible that in this palace of warmongers there was a man who would give himself that name from the same motives? Possible that he would regard slaves as being worthy of attention, simply other souls trapped in samsara? How wonderful it would be to find a man with whom you could talk about such things, who would take such thoughts and man-like turn them into solid facts.

Such a possibility. A dream, like the cloud-flowers that everyone hoped to see and never did.

So this happy prince – and he does smile beautifully – helped his younger comrade up. He was neat and quick; and he explained so patiently to the little boy about the double crossbow on the beast’s back.

He pointed out the weapon’s thick arms and showed how to pull them back. He made it look easy. He guided his charge’s hands and together they pulled back the nearest bow. Then he nipped out of the howdah down into the bamboo cage that clung to the side of the beast.

Jayarajadevi Kansri heard the sergeant cluck his tongue. The old female elephant trotted forward, creased and whiskery like a granny.

The little one in the howdah was having difficulty. He wavered as he pulled back on the bow; he wobbled as he knelt on the platform; he squinted into the sun. The Slave Prince half stood, balancing on the bamboo struts of the cage and encouraging the boy.

The little boy looked cross. The elephant’s motion jostled him. The crossbow veered dangerously.

Without warning the bolt sprang forward, as long and heavy as a spear. It plunged deep into the elephant, just where the rounded dome of its head met the hunch of its neck.

The old female screamed, and broke into a charge. The Slave Prince pulled himself back into the howdah.

Some of the Oxen roared with laughter. Jayarajadevi Kansri sent tiny blades out with her eyes: oh it is so funny to see a beast in agony. Oh it is so robust to laugh when someone might be killed!

Bellowing, the old female stumbled into the high fluttering banners, scattering category people. She dropped down onto her knees and shook her head as if saying no, no, no. The sergeants ran to secure her again. The howdah jerked from side to side. The Prince grabbed the boy’s hand and turned to jump free. Just as he launched himself, the elephant shrugged and he lost hold of the boy.

The Prince was dumped heavily onto the scrub earth. His knees gave way, but he caught himself with his hands and he scuttled forwards out of the way. He jerked himself to his feet and twisted around, to see the elephant lower herself onto her side. The side basket crackled as her weight crushed it.

The boy clung to the low sides of the howdah. ‘Jump!’ the Prince called up to the boy and held out his arms to catch him. His charge hung back, weeping. The Oxen laughed.

The elephant began to roll onto her back. The little boy screamed and flung himself free, hurtling down onto the Prince, who fumbled him, held him, and staggered backwards, pulling the boy out of harm’s way.

The elephant, nearly on her back, kicked her legs and shook her head, trying to scrape the bolt out of her neck. She drove it deeper in. The balustrades of the howdah collapsed under her with a sudden thump.

The keepers edged forward with spears. Ducking and fearful, they tried to grab the harness around her body and shoulders. The bell around her neck clanked and clattered.

There was a gasp from the onlookers. The foolish Prince had run up her ribcage. He looked as though he was climbing rocks in the river, only these rocks shifted underfoot. The Prince grabbed the thick shaft of the spear in the elephant’s head. The old beast cawed like a giant crow and kicked and the Prince was swung out over the ground, still holding on. Then the shaft swung back. He found his footing, and hauled out the weapon. He jumped free from the beast and flung it away all in one motion.

The elephant kicked once more and then went still.

The keepers advanced on her with lances.

‘No, no, no!’ the Prince cried aloud, holding out his hands.

The dazed old elephant lifted up her head. She snorted out breath as if in relief. Very suddenly she kicked herself back onto her feet. She stood still and blinked at her keepers who warily approached.

‘The bolt just went into the flesh of her neck,’ the Prince said. As if treading across thorns, he slowly crept towards her. The old animal lowered her head and shuffled backwards. She associated him with pain. He backed off as well and instead turned to his young charge.

The little boy was standing at stiff attention. His face was dusty and tracked with tears, but he was not crying now. Poor thing, he thinks he will be punished, perhaps even sent back to his mother, who knows?

Jayarajadevi Kansri leaned forward, turning her head sideways to hear, aware that her sister Indradevi was looking at her and not at the Prince.

‘You were not strong enough to use the bow,’ said Prince Nia. ‘You will get stronger if you work. Will you work?’

‘Yes!’ said the little boy, nodding hard.

‘I will help you get strong,’ said the Prince and touched the boy’s arm. Then he saw the keepers approach again with spears.

‘No, no, no!’ he commanded them. ‘She will live. No! She can carry things!’

‘Well,’ said Jayarajadevi settling back. ‘He is certainly not one of the Oxen.’

As soon as people got wind of the potential attachment, they took sides.

Indradevi Kansru wound her way through the palace routines until she could sidle up to the Slave Prince. ‘You are a popular man, Prince.’

‘Am I?’ He had a nice open smile.

‘Oh indeed. You have found favour in the eyes of a certain lady. You are a lucky man to secure such favour. This is a high-born lady of the greatest beauty and accomplishment.’

He beamed in measured pleasure. ‘That is very pleasant to hear.’

‘May I tell the lady that?’

‘I cannot think which lady it may be, but if she is as you describe then only a fool would not be grateful.’

‘Hmmm. And I think you are not a fool. I will tell you, ah? Oh, this lady is special; she outshines all others. She is a friend of mine. No one knows her as well as I do, and she has such a good heart, such a fine mind. Oh! If only I were so adorned.’

‘What is her name?’

Indradevi finally whispered it in his ear, carefully gauging the warmth and tenderness of his smile. She was not unpleased.

But another girl came and said, ‘Oh Prince, everyone speaks well of you, everyone says you have a good heart. I have come to warn you. Oh! There is a certain person who gives herself airs and graces. She knows you have the attention of the King, and seeks to climb your virtues like a monkey climbs a vine. She has a bad reputation that one, for a cool head and a cold heart.’ Then, in a whisper, ‘Some say it is the King’s bed not yours she seeks.’

Nia’s loyal friends, who like him were good on the field and well behaved in the royal house, clustered around him. ‘Oh! Lucky man, the Lady Jayarajadevi is so beautiful. When are you going to have the courage to present yourself? Oh, you must be quick, such a prize as that will not go unclaimed for long.’

The Oxen caught him off guard as he washed. He was nearly naked and defenceless. Yashovarman looked scornfully down at his less bullish body. ‘You are a small slip of a thing to think that you can claim the attention of high ladies. You should know, before you get into trouble. The Lady Jayarajadevi is spoken for. She is a king’s wife, not for semi-peasant like you.’

‘Prince Nia!’ one of the Oxen laughed. ‘What title will he take, do you think. Niavarman, Slave Shield?’

They all laughed. Prince Nia stayed calm. ‘Until she marries, no one is spoken for. And I think she speaks for herself.’

‘You cannot speak for her, that is certain.’

‘Neither can you. You should know, before you get me angry, that she calls you an Ox. You are unsubtle and don’t know that women do not measure a man’s worth by the thickness of his thighs.’

‘No, but the world gives to the man who takes, and to take one must be strong.’

‘And smart. And fearless. And not easily led. Oxen are strong and bear the world’s burdens, not its prizes. Unless you want a fight now, Ox, I will finish washing myself. You should try washing some time.’

Nia had just enough love of war. The strong ox Yashovarman hesitated, and in hesitation made his ground unsteady. ‘I have warned you!’ he said, but retreated.

To his friends, the Prince sighed in disgust as they played checkers. ‘Oh! I wish everyone would cease this matchmaking. You would think the marriage had been announced.’

The friends chuckled. ‘We will not let you escape. The Lady Jayarajadevi is perfect for you. Not just her beauty. It is a matter of her character.’ And they laughed at themselves, for they were imitating old village women.

‘Uh!’ groaned the young prince. ‘Just leave it, please!’

One night the Prince woke up in his hammock, to see Divakarapandita leaning over him.

‘Teacher!’ he exclaimed in fear and alarm.

‘I was seeing how you sleep,’ said the great religious leader. ‘I wanted to see the quality of your dreams.’

The Prince scrambled to make himself decent.

‘No, no, you do not insult me sleeping innocent in your bed. You appear whole and complete with no blemish. Does your penis work, does it produce seed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hmm. I hear that you have a copious heart and mind.’

‘I can’t judge that.’

‘I can. That is why I am here. Now that you are awake, please cover yourself, and we will walk out into the night so that we can talk.’ The other soldiers in the room lay frozen with that particular listening stillness of people who pretend to be asleep.

The Prince swung out of the hammock, twisted a garment around his middle, and joined the great Consecrator of Kings.

‘What is your view of the Gods?’ the Consecrator asked.

‘Toh! It is hardly for the likes of me to have a view on the Gods.’

‘Of the relation of the King to the Gods?’

‘Even less so.’

‘Come, come, courage, you are a favourite of the King. Let us pretend for the moment that no harm can come to you for any view you express. This interview will go better for you if you do.’

Insects buzzed about them. You couldn’t see the moon, but the high silk-cottons were silver and the light along the leaves joined up as if there were tiny creeks flowing from leaf to leaf.

Nia could not think of much to say. ‘I suppose I think that the King should pay observance to the Gods. Certainly not anger them.’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps invent fewer of them. It seems unlikely to me that one’s great aunt can suddenly become one with a god under a new name.’

‘That is about the Gods and the great aunt, not the King.’

‘I sometimes wonder if it is enough to make observances.’

‘Ah! Elaborate, young prince.’

The Slave Prince looked at the old man’s ordinary face. Despite his beautiful shawl, purple and sewn with gold thread, despite his fine white beard, despite the gold parasol with its ivory handle which he used now like a walking stick, despite all of that there was nothing special about him.

His face had gone waxy like a candle, and was spotted with age. His teeth were brown and crumbled, his back bowed, his arms stiff and shrivelled, bone-thin but with hanging withered pouches of skin along the lower edge. This was an old man, whose every glance stared ahead at his own death.

The young prince felt sorrow for him, sorrow for all things that pass.

The Prince said, ‘I know it takes a lifetime to learn how to make observance. I think it is hard work to parade on an elephant and look like something that talks to gods. Harder still to look like you will become a god when you die. Hard work, but that is not enough.’

The old man blinked. ‘It isn’t?’

‘I once had a friend. She was a slave, a gift to this house. I saw that her world was as big as our own. I saw that whatever was holy in us was also holy in her. I think we try to climb towards the Gods. We get higher and higher up to the King, and then over the King, to the Gods, and when we look at the Gods, we find … what? A cycle? Back down to the flies and the fishes. There is no top. Everything is holy.’

The old man disapproved. ‘A radical notion. What do you know of the Buddha?’

‘Almost nothing.’

‘Oh, tush!’

‘He was a teacher great enough to be treated almost like a god.’

‘And what did he teach?’

‘Virtue. I am to be a soldier, and I will be a good soldier. I will serve with honour, and courage and efficacy.’ The Slave Prince clenched his fist. ‘I have no doubt of that. But what I want, if anyone should ask, would be to be a Brahmin.’

Divakarapandita chuckled and waved a hand.

‘A Brahmin who rides an elephant and fights for his King when the time comes …’

‘Oh ho-ho!’

‘And who is not ignorant.’ The words were hot, they made his eyes sting.

Divakarapandita’s mouth hung open. ‘Ignorant?’

‘I know nothing!’ Then less heated. ‘Nobody has bothered to teach me.’

‘Do you think anybody has bothered to teach the Lady Jayarajadevi!’ The Consecrator looked appalled. ‘You have to teach yourself!’

Nia hung his head. ‘I speak heatedly from shame.’ He began to see what the interview might be about. Another round of matchmaking. Who was this Lady to have the Consecrator concern himself with her marriage?

‘So you should be ashamed.’ But the old man seemed to say it from sorrow. He touched the Prince’s arm. ‘You have no ambition to be King?’

‘Toh. All these little princes, all dreaming of being King, all making tiger faces at themselves. I want to be a holy warrior.’

The old man stopped, shuffled round to face him, took hold of both the Prince’s arms, and stared into his eyes. ‘War is never holy,’ he said. ‘War makes kings, and kings perform holy functions. But the two are separate.’

Nia felt shame again. He hung his head. ‘I feel things. But I don’t know things.’

‘Maybe there is someone who will take the time to teach you,’ said the holy man. ‘And then you might become what you want to be, a wise man.’ He drew himself up. ‘What will you do when the King dies?’

Nia felt alarm, for himself, for his whole life. ‘The King is ill?’

‘Ssh, ssh, no, but he is a man. What will you do when he dies?’

Nia thought. With his protector gone, with the Oxen fighting over kingship, there would be years of violence. He imagined Yashovarman, and found he felt disgust and alienation and fear. ‘It depends how he dies.’

‘How do you mean?’ The holy man’s eyes were narrowed.

‘If someone murders the King, then I will seek justice. If he dies in his bed, that’s different.’

The old man looked up and then back. ‘There is a war coming,’ he said. ‘In Champa and in the lands beyond. You will be sent away and may not come back. You are sixteen and it would be good if you were married. You see, Prince, you are as dear to Suryavarman as the Lady Jayarajadevi is to me. We have discussed a marriage between you and the Lady, the King and I. I have assessed you and find you as the King described.’

The Dust of the Feet drew up his robes. ‘The marriage will proceed,’ he said.

It was only the marriage of a high lady to a prince whose lack of family was made up for by his own subtleties of person.

But not only the Dhuli Jeng, but the King himself were to attend. It was to be held in a pavilion in the royal enclosure. The greatest soldier, Rajaindravarman, General of the Army of the Centre, was to be the young prince’s sponsor, as his father was dead.

And since this prince was already in line for a small throne, the Dhuli Jeng was to recognize him at the same time as a little king. He was to take his title.

The princes and the princesses all washed exuberantly around the cisterns. There were to be musicians and dancers. This was a chance for the King to express his love. A general sense of satisfaction emanated from him and was communicated to his loyal court. They were to be joyous before a time of war.

The Slave Prince was married wearing his quilted flowered coat, and carrying his shield. A crown of bronze had been wound into his hair. As always, he did without his torque, which gave immunity from harm.

Nia marched with a column of his comrades in arms. His friends looked pleased. They passed through the well-wishers and then climbed the steps to the pavilion.

Torches fluttered in the wind. Pressed around were wives of the King, high courtiers, and a few members of Jayarajadevi’s family.

The nephew-in-law of the childless King was there. Prince Nia saw in the eyes of Yashovarman something measured and measuring. He is not an Ox, that one, thought Nia. He may have been one once, but now he simply uses them. How wise he was, to marry the King’s niece. The certitude came. He will indeed be Universal King. As he advanced, Nia sompiahed particularly to him. Yashovarman blinked in surprise, and indicated a return of respect.

So that Jayarajadevi could in fact be married to a little king, the title-giving came first. Consecration was too high and holy a word for it. The Universal King would recognize the new title and the Little King be given a chance to swear loyalty.

So the Dhuli Jeng was to give out one more regal honorific. Which was to be?

The Prince smiled. He had thought long and hard about this. Once he took his title, then his bride might have to give up or amend her own if their titles clashed inauspiciously or gave obeisance to different principles. Why should she change her great name? His smile widened as he said, ‘My name is Jayavarman.’

He had taken a name to match his wife’s and not the other way around. The onlookers murmured among themselves.

It was a better title than Nia, but Jayavarman was also the honorific of many Great Kings. Did it show ambition? Suryavarman’s countenance did not flicker.

Divakarapandita’s smile widened a little further. The overturning prince had overturned again. ‘You are now Jayavarman of the City of the Eastern Buddha.’

Little King Jayavarman beamed as he swore loyalty to the Universal King.

Then he was married.

Indradevi Kansru held up an embroidered cloth so that the Little King could not see the beauty of his bride too soon and then be dazzled speechless or struck blind. Indradevi was so pleased for her sister that a whole night sky seemed to beam out of her eyes.

Divakarapandita himself scattered flowers, and poured water on the stone lingam and yoni. The embroidered cloth still stood between them.

My wife, thought Jayavarman. Behind that cloth is my wife. I shall be a husband, we will be together, we shall make love, we shall be each other’s support, and we will have children, brilliant babes.

Divakarapandita beckoned him forward and the Prince knelt and drank water, sign of everything, source of everything, as poured from the yoni. Unusually, making some obscure point, the Dust of the Feet asked him to drink from the lingam as well.

Then the cloth was lowered.

And Nia was dazzled and he was struck dumb, for there was Jayarajadevi, his wife, and her smile stretched all the way to the moon.

Her smile was pulled wide by a joy she could not express, and her eyes shone. She was sheathed in gold, jewels and signs of office, surrounded by fans and fly whisks and parasols, all borne by her friends. The paraphernalia bobbed around her beautiful face like flowers.

Jayavarman stared and could not speak. People chuckled. His mouth hung open. He had a declaration to make and could not make it.

‘Lord,’ reminded Divakarapandita.

Jayavarman restored himself and stumbled rough-voiced and awkward through the words that declared and promised and established and called upon others to witness. His wife’s eyes were on him all the time.

There was feasting and dancing. The Little King’s friends hugged him, shook him, teased him and declared that they would marry too, it would give them heart for battle, they had not known until now that wives completed warriors.

The bride’s female friends warned him, shaking fingers, that he must treat their friend well or the women would take revenge. It was both a joke and serious.

Indradevi Kansru wove her way towards them, her whole body writhing with happiness. Her eyes shone almost too brightly, and she took her sister’s hand, called the Little King ‘Brother’, and said repeatedly how happy she was. It was a good marriage, and they should both count on her always as a friend. She pulled away suddenly and Jayarajadevi started after her. And stopped.

For Yashovarman was upon them. Their other friends drew back. ‘Little King,’ he said, ‘the Universal King does you a great honour.’

‘He does, oh, he does indeed!’ said Jayavarman, still buoyed up with joy like a bobbing raft.

‘I wish you well in your marriage, and wish you good heart in the coming war.’

‘Oh! The same to you, Prince!’ Jayavarman was not exactly himself, the words were not appropriate for once, but the force behind them was good hearted.

‘We will fight many wars together,’ said Yashovarman. ‘I hope I can rely on you?’

What a dangerous question. The waters of joy receded. Swiftly Jayavarman mounted the bank, the bank of politics, princes, rivalries and himself.

Jayavarman said, ‘I try to be friends with all men and certainly loyal to all my comrades in arms.’

Yashovarman whispered, ‘What if I am more than that?’

Jayavarman did not have the heart to be anything other than direct. ‘I think you will be Universal King, Yashovarman, and I intend to serve the King. For me to be loyal to the next King, my Lord Suryavarman, who is beloved by me, must die in his bed, honoured, and his ashes kept in his temple with great remembrance. Let us have a pact, Yashovarman, to preserve our Lord so that all can see he died a natural death.’

Yashovarman went very still and silent. ‘Of course,’ he said without further ceremony or display of feeling. He very suddenly smiled, and flipped the tip of the Little King’s nose. ‘What a little puppy you are.’ It could almost pass for affection. Yashovarman strode away.

Did Suryavarman see the exchange? It seemed to Jayavarman that the King went out of his way to hold him up to the household. ‘I give you my trusted right hand, my support in old age, my young and supple Shield of Victory!’ the King cried.

There were groans and protests: no you are not old.

‘I give you my cloud-flower of virtue and respect whose name will join the web of stars overhead!’

He hugged Jayavarman’s shoulders, and leaned on him. The King’s breath smelt of wooden teeth and palm wine. The Little King smiled and thought, this could be dangerous. The King whispered to him, ‘My harrow after death.’

Finally, finally he and his wife were left alone. They walked hand in hand to the household reservoir. It creaked with frogs and crickets. So, the Prince thought, I have a wife as beautiful as the moon, as tuneful as the birds. But I don’t really know her. All our friends surround us.

And from somewhere came grief and he found he was crying.

‘Husband,’ said his new wife. ‘You weep?’

She tried to pull him around. It was not manly to weep. He tried to stop. But suddenly he found he could not stop, and that his legs were giving way under him. He slumped down to the ground. Gracefully, Jayarajadevi lowered herself next to him. ‘My Lord, be happy?’ she chuckled, her voice also unsteady.

‘I don’t know why I do this.’

He looked up at the leaves, stars, moon, and the temple, black and red and gilded, dancing with torchlight.

‘I wish my mother was here,’ he said, locating the grief. ‘I wish my father was alive. I wish I’d been with him when he died.’

‘Ah,’ she said, like wind in the trees. She sat in her gold-embroidered gown on the dry ground. She took him in her arms. ‘It is our fate to lose our families.’

‘I will not see her or my father again. My brothers are taken by the wars. My mother said she did not choose this, that she would always think of me.’

‘She was a very wise and loving mother to say that.’

‘I don’t know why I do this!’ He was so frightened of looking unmanly for his bride.

‘You are weeping because you have come home after such a long time.’ Her own words rocked as if over a bumpy road. She cradled him closer and kissed his forehead. She kissed his closed eyes, for all of their dead. ‘Your father. My father. Your mother.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘What is your name? I don’t know your real name.’

Jayavarman smiled embarrassed and shrugged. He closed his eyes and said his real name. ‘Kráy.’

Jayarajadevi’s face froze.

He said, ‘Kansri, don’t tell anyone, please. It is not a name I can live up to!’ The name in Old Khmer meant Huge, Powerful, Exceeding – Too Much.

Jayarajadevi asked, ‘Your father gave you that name?’

‘No, my mother.’ Jayavarman grinned. ‘She had a vision of me. Mothers do.’

Jayarajadevi Kansri sighed. ‘I won’t ever know your parents.’

‘That’s OK, neither do I.’ He looked smiling, accepting. ‘They were the reverse of what you expect a man and a woman to be. My mother was brave, strong and calculating, but also wilder. She saw things. My father, Dharan Indravarman, was sweet and gentle, always saying look, look at the butterflies. Look at the flowers. Maybe the flowers take wing as butterflies. He cried when animals died.’

His wife took his hand. ‘They sound like exceptional people.’ The tears came again. ‘They were. And I hardly knew them.’

She made him look at her. ‘We will make a new family,’ she promised. ‘We will people that family with children who will honour and respect you. We will build a house of our own, a great house where all our families can come home.’

‘And I will learn about the Buddha. My family were Buddhists. Did you know that?’

She smiled. ‘Everyone knows that, Nia.’ She shook her head. ‘That is why we were matched.’

The Prince bounced up and down. ‘Well. We will build a Buddhist capital! We will make a city of compassion.’ Jayavarman, Victory Shield, clenched his fist. ‘We will make a precious jewel of a kingdom and keep it safe from thieves and hold it up as a shining star to light the rest of the world!’

His wife, his queen, draped herself across him. ‘Yes, my Lord, yes,’ she said. There was a sensation as if they had mounted on the back of a swan. Their world was winging.

Then, Jayavarman went away to war.

April 14, 2004

The hatch clunks open.

Luc feels sweet air move on his cheek. He smells sun-baked wood, muddy water and reeds. Something in that smell tells him it’s early morning and he imagines open blue sky and the expanse of the Great Lake.

The boys on the deck grunt. ‘Ugh! It smells like a pigpen. You. Out here to wash.’

Wash! The only thing Luc wants to do now is wash; dust and sweat coat him like a layer of latex. Luc tries to sit up and bashes his forehead on the low ceiling. He inches his way forward on his buttocks. He hears the General being seized by his ankles and hauled backwards across the shallow hull.

No thanks. Luc rolls over onto his hands and knees, and backs his way towards the hatch. He hates not being able to see anything. The joists press into his shins.

Hands grab his arms and pull him up the hatch, peeling off skin from his elbows and ankles.

But the air is as sweet as spun sugar, and the sunlight as warm as a mother’s touch. The bungee cords around his wrists are unsprung. He can move! He hears the tape being torn away from the General’s face and then the plunge when the other man jumps off the boat. The thought of cool, cleansing water makes Luc chuckle with anticipation.

Then a boy shouts. ‘He’s gone under. There! There! There!’ Terrifyingly close to Luc’s ear, gunfire slams out towards the reeds. Feet thud on the deck and the water parts with a puff-whoosh as someone dives.

The General is trying to escape.

Luc reacts like a child. I won’t get my wash, he thinks. He wants to cry from disappointment. He imagines the General diving under the thick layer of floating plants and slipping away through the reeds. He imagines himself left alone with the kidnappers. Despair comes instantly.

Then a thumping on the deck and a streaming of water. ‘Get back up here you old roostershit! Move!’

And despite himself, Luc feels relief, a certain warmth around the heart. He will not be left alone.

Something is heaved onto the deck. The General starts to call out but two quick snaps of gunfire cut him off and he keens like a seagull.

They’ve shot him. The General yelps and squeals as he’s hauled across the deck. The boat’s tiny engine begins to throb and gurgle.

The boys shout, ‘Get in! Get in!’ The boat moves and turns. Cold wet hands grab Luc and push.

‘I’m going, I’m going!’ Luc grunts through the tape. He stumbles down through the hatch and the boys club his head with the butt of a rifle or pistol, to beat him down into the hull. He ducks and dives, slamming his forehead.

The boys clamber down after him and cram him up against the General. The General’s cold skin twitches and he makes a thin continuous wheedling sound, fighting pain. Tape is ripped around him; he howls in agony as someone lifts his legs presumably to bungee them together.

The boys leave the General tossing back and forth like a child trying to rock himself to sleep.

The hatch closes. The boat drones on for hours.

William pulls up at the Phimeanakas at 8.00 a.m. and finds the forecourt crammed with foreigners he doesn’t know.

They are climbing into the back of the dig’s pick-up truck. ‘They say the airport is open again,’ says an Australian tourist.

‘What has happened?’ William shouts to him.

‘They say one of the archaeologists who is staying here has been kidnapped.’ The man’s mouth sours into an odd mix of the fearful and the exhilarated. ‘We’re heading out.’

William tries to find the team’s Cambodian director. Prak the security guard stops him, a hand planted on his chest. William is only a motoboy and not allowed even into the forecourt of the Phimeanakas.

Normally Prak has a sweet temper, but not today. He glowers and his breath smells of beer. ‘Wait outside. If your friends are here they will come out for you.’

‘What’s happened? Who was kidnapped?’ William asks.

‘I don’t know,’ says Prak and stomps away.

If all the tourists leave, there will be no money. No money for anybody.

One of the other motoboys eyes William. William thinks of himself as a businessman. He lays claim to the patch outside the Phimeanakas. He pays a commission to Mrs Bou – and all the other Phimeanakas motoboys pay him.

This is Mons. Mons is older than William and doesn’t like paying him money or being trapped as a motoboy. He pretends to be friendly, but everything he says has hidden teeth.

‘So you have no more UN friends,’ says Mons.

‘Neither have you.’

‘Oh, I have plenty of business today. I drive people to the airport.’

‘Do you know who got kidnapped?’

‘It is a terrible thing. Grandfather Frenchman. Your mentor!’ Mons looks glum but he says it loudly, for everyone to hear. The other motoboys look sullen and confused.

‘You can drive a tourist back to the airport only once,’ William replies in a quiet voice. ‘And when all the other tourists stay away, you’ll see. This is bad for you, too.’

The other motoboys hang their heads.

William turns to the foreigners, smiles, takes off his baseball cap, dips and bows. He tries his Japanese on some Asian tourists and gets business. He’s unsure about some of the Europeans. He tries German; they turn out to be Italian, but they understand ‘Five dollars, five dollars to airport.’

‘I have suitcases,’ says a man in strange English. William organizes two motorcycles for him, ten dollars, but it’s still cheaper than a taxi. ‘I’m sorry,’ William says. ‘Today taxis will be hard to find.’

The man nods and smiles, grateful for anything. He’s from Iran. William gets his name and asks about the government. ‘Is the religion Islam?’ he asks.

He gets business for all the motoboys and pointedly leaves Mons until last.

Luc, he thinks. Of all the people they could have done this to. Those idiots! The foreigners bring money, they come here to help us! Why are they doing this? What will it do to Cambodia?

The US special quota for garments will end soon. The garment industry brings 250,000 jobs and when it goes, what will replace it? All we have is tourism!

William feels the trickle of dreams washing away. I won’t get my new bike. I won’t be able to help aunty buy her new house. The land we were hoping to sell for development – twelve thousand dollars we were told we would get for it – maybe that won’t sell. I won’t have the UN archaeologists to talk to, to find out about things.

He remembers one of Luc’s students insisting to Mrs Bou that William was a colleague, not a motoboy. He got William inside the pink marble dining room of the Phimeanakas and up the stairs into the social area. It was large enough to unfold huge photographs of Angkor taken from airplanes.

One photograph covered seven hundred square kilometres. It used a kind of radar to penetrate the ground one dot at a time, and a computer joined up the dots. The signals had bounced off a satellite in space. Luc’s student explained geosynchronous orbits to him. William’s head jerked back with shock and pleasure. What a wonderful idea.

The machine is always falling, but the ground falls away at the same pace. So it always stays above the same spot of ground. Who would do things like that for him now?

Luc had bought him a mobile phone. He simply passed it to him one day outside the guesthouse. ‘This is so we can telephone you whenever we need you.’

William had stood in silence, stroking the phone. He didn’t want to show strong emotion. He was embarrassed, and fearful of doing something unseemly like crying.

A mobile telephone made him part of the world. His friends could telephone from Japan, from Australia and say, William, we are coming, please organize a trip. William, we are at the airport, can you come and fetch us?

William was silent for so long, wary of speaking, that Luc had become worried that he’d done something wrong. ‘I’ve paid for the sim card and for fifty dollars’ worth of calls. But you’ll have to show up with your family ID card to collect them.’

Finally William had something neutral to say. ‘I know the people in the shop.’ He coughed and still did not dare look at Grandfather Luc. He was horribly aware that he had said nothing polite, not a word of thanks. The beautiful numbers were illuminated from within.

Nobody had ever done such a thing for him before. Not unasked, not something so perfect for William. Luc must have known it was perfect for him without having to be told.

William coughed again, trying to find words. Finally he’d said, still not looking up. ‘This is a very good action. This is a thing that is full of merit.’

Then he was able to look up and bow and sompiah respect and thanks. ‘Luc, I am so lucky that you are my friend. I tell my aunt about you. She says you must be a very good man. I am so unhappy whenever you go away.’

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