The King’s Last Song

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.