The King’s Last Song

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.