In the Shadow of the Banyan

by Vaddey Ratner

  But ignorance of the creatures below!

  How dare you speak of me in such a manner!

  Your Highness, I am speaking

  Only of the one who has stolen my wife—

  You ignorant fool—I am the one who stole your wife!

  Papa said he loved Mak Thoeung for its poetry. But the real reason, I suspected, he cherished the story above all others was that its performance at a theater many years before had brought him and Mama together. They’d come separately to the theater to see the lakhon, but by some chance, they were seated next to each other and, during the performance, found themselves whispering back and forth the lines the various characters spoke or sang, behaving as if they’d known each other all their lives. While Mama was there with an aunt, her chaperone didn’t discourage her from what would normally be considered highly inappropriate behavior for a young, unmarried woman. Instead the aunt pretended she didn’t see or hear what was going on, knowing that the man sitting on the other side of Mama was none other than the Tiger Prince himself. If anything, she seemed to encourage the liaison, and when a year later Mama and Papa were married, the aunt claimed she’d brought the two together. Once when I asked Papa to clarify which—the story or the aunt—brought him and Mama together, he had responded, laughing, “Ah, Raami, the whole evening conspired to bring us together!”

  Now I wondered if this night wasn’t conspiring also in some way. I felt—even as I couldn’t articulate it—this music, emerging through a husband’s grief for his dead wife, seemed intended for my parents. As if by magic, the poetry they loved had found its way to them even in this dark hour.

  I looked again across the school grounds toward the old musician. The next piece he played was so sorrowful I wanted to weep: the perfume seller and his wife are given the same punishment with the drum and, while carrying it to the faraway fields and back, they bare their souls to each other. I closed my eyes, hearing the lyrics in my head:

  A flower of fallen petals cannot bloom again

  Life once sprung forth is fated to pass away.

  My life has ended for me already . . .

  The music stopped. I opened my eyes and saw another shadow emerge in the doorway and hover over the old musician. It was his daughter. She bent down and tenderly touched her father’s shoulder, her long hair spilling over him like silk. She said something, and I imagined her urging him to rest. He nodded and allowed himself to be led back into the room. My gaze came back to Papa and Mama.

  They seemed unaware the music had stopped. They continued to sit there, holding each other’s hands, ensconced in a sphere of light cast from the fire like an aura of protection. If I were Indra, I thought, I’d build them a world and keep them swathed in their solitary love.

  Suddenly I remembered the dream I’d had before waking. Papa was a being much like that mythical Kinnara, at once human and divine, helpless and brave, who, unable to bear the pull of competing existences, impaled himself against lightning and fell to the ground. His wings severed and bleeding, he cowered in the rains, alone and unprotected. Having chosen a mortal life, he traded his immortality for a flash of hope in the darkness of night. The images circled my mind like strands of musical notes, and I knew then I hadn’t woken all on my own. The bamboo flute had called out to me, drawn me to the door. There was no doubt in my mind now that the music was intended for me. It was trying to tell me something. A story I already knew.

  A familiar refrain.

  Just then the kettle gurgled and spewed steam through its spout. Surprised, Mama pulled her hands away and lifted it from the fire. She poured some water into the lid of the thermos beside her, handed the lid to Papa like a cup, and poured the rest of the water into the thermos to keep warm for later. Papa cupped the lid with his bandaged hand, breathing in the steam, as he waited for the water to cool.

  Mama watched him and, after a moment, said, “It isn’t too late. I can’t let you believe that it is. The soldier’s notebook could’ve gotten lost. We don’t know with these soldiers—they may have not shown it to their superiors. It’s all an act. You could invent another story. Give yourself a new name, a different identity.” She tried to joke, “A perfume seller or something.”

  Papa remained silent, blowing on the water. He took a tentative sip and, looking at her, said, “You know, I am both the perfume seller and the prince.” His hand holding the water shook. He stilled it with his other hand.

  “No,” she said, her voice taut with grief. “No, to me you are more. Always, you strive to be more. They must know this.” A muffled sob. “They can’t take you from me.”

  He put the thermos lid on the ground and, taking her hands in his, pressed them to his cheek. His body quaked and sobs escaped his throat. I suddenly recalled a photo on their bedside table back home in which they’d struck a similar pose: her hands in his, their foreheads touching. A wedding picture. For the longest time I had been jealous of it—the captured intimacy that, inside the glass frame, had seemed impenetrable—until one day Papa explained it was taken before I came along. When it was just the two of us, he’d said. That unsettled me even more, as I hadn’t been able to imagine a time when it was just the two of them. But now I saw it. How it must have been when they were Ayuravann and Aana, not Papa and Mama, these two people whose togetherness had brought me.

  “When they come,” Papa said, looking into her eyes, “I ask that you let me go.”

  I should have recognized it right away, the bamboo flute’s ghostly voice warning me in the dark, reminding me of the story’s ending: back at the palace, the drum is opened and the little boy inside is revealed for all to see. He recounts every word he overheard, and the entire royal audience now knows the truth. The prince, angry, demands all must be killed and rushes toward the most frightened of them all, the young wife. But before he reaches her, she plunges her long hairpin deep into her chest, taking her own life. In the mayhem, the king, fearing a popular revolt, sees that everything must end here, once and for all. He orders the immediate execution of the perfume seller, the senior minister, and the little boy. Justice, as Papa had explained the tale’s senseless conclusion to me, could be found inside that drum, but when we murder a child, we murder our own innocence.

  “I ask that you give me your blessing,” Papa sobbed.

  My parents’ love, it slowly dawned on me, this tenderness I now witnessed in the shadows, faced the threat of being stolen, and, despite my very grown-up desire to protect them, there was nothing I could do to prevent it, for outside their small sphere of light existed a greater incomprehensible darkness conspiring to tear them apart, and, like the little boy inside the drum, I would suffer their demise.

  “If not that,” Papa said, swallowing tears and sorrow, “then your forgiveness. I ask for your forgiveness.”

  Mama turned away from him, her face a full moon now, aglow and streaming tears. She saw me but did not attempt to hide her grief.

  I went back inside and waited for the sun to rise.

  • • •

  The wind gave a long, drawn-out sigh, and from the giant banyan by the temple’s entrance, a flock of birds flapped their wings, echoing the exhalation. A new day’s radiance greeted us from every direction as we made our way across the temple grounds. Water lilies and lotuses threw splashes of color—yellow, pink, purple, indigo—across the verdant landscape. Gold and silver flashed off the roof of the prayer hall and the giant dome of the stupa, turning the temple into a miniature bejeweled kingdom. Above us the sky stretched high, blooming with thick white clouds, like a wide blue sea cradling floating gardenias. I marveled at how the sky imitated the earth and the earth imitated the sky. Pockets of rain dotted the ground, and each held in its reflection the possibility of another world much like the one welcoming us now.

  We received greetings from those we passed: “Good morning, Highness! How are you? A day worth writing about, isn’t it?” Papa nodded and smiled, acknowledging everyone, and by now everyone seemed to know who he was—a
prince, a poet. How could he change his name, his story? The thought flitted through my mind, a night moth confused by the light and gaiety. I shooed it away. From the steps of the prayer hall an elderly woman remarked, “You make a handsome peasant, my young prince!” A gaggle of her toothless friends giggled coyly. Papa paused, bemused, then catching his reflection in one of the rain puddles—the rolled-up pants, the kroma around his waist, the buckets swinging on the bamboo yoke from his shoulder—threw his head back and laughed out loud. I recalled his quiet words—I am both the perfume seller and the prince— the desolation with which he’d uttered them hours earlier. Now he laughed, his happiness imitating the morning’s brightness, renewing itself, as the day always seemed to renew itself.

  We crossed the dirt road, on our way to collect drinking water from the town’s well. But first we would pay a visit to the old sweeper and thank him for the eggs he’d brought us the night before. Papa led the way, whistling as he went, the buckets swinging from the bamboo pole on his shoulder squeaking companionably as he meandered around the rain-filled ruts that the wheels of the camions had gouged into the road. I followed at a leisurely pace, circling gaping tracts of water, jumping over smaller ones, leaping onto patches of grass, pausing now and then to observe the invisible gradually becoming visible.

  On a bed of thorny weed, a spider peered from beneath her dew-glistened web, as if trying to decide whether to come out and search for food or stay in and cast her net from afar. Nearby, an unsuspecting praying mantis rocked on its hind legs on a long blade of grass, serene as a diver contemplating an early morning plunge into the cool sea. To my left, a dung beetle buzzed with the aplomb of a seaplane as it shook specks of clay and pollen off its wings. And directly beneath it, a pair of backswimmers scurried across a wide pool like circus acrobats daring each other to a magician’s feat.

  The ground was animated with these infinitesimal beings, and I remembered what Papa always said whenever we went out for a similar walk—“If you pay close enough attention, Raami, you’ll realize that a single leaf can contain myriad lives imitating our own, and you’ll know that there are always others traveling this world with you.”

  There was one now faithfully accompanying me—a dragonfly with yellow-and-black wings, the kind that came out after the rain. It flitted this way and that, sometimes leading me, sometimes trailing behind. Then as we neared the old sweeper’s hut, it flew off, having seen me safely through my journey. If you pay close enough attention, I thought, you know you’re never alone. There’s always someone or something guiding you. Tevodas, it was clear to me now, were not celestial beings at all but earthly things, beautiful things I saw every day, and what made them beautiful was precisely that they were momentary, just a glimpse here and there before vanishing again.

  I looked for the dragonfly but saw instead a butterfly with similar coloring—with black-and-yellow wings—flitting over Papa’s head. Another god, another guise. Even the tiniest creature was capable of transformation.

  • • •

  At the old sweeper’s hut only his hen greeted us, clucking in distress, scratching the dirt in a panicked search. Papa and I caught sight of the empty nest by the doorway. We looked at each other and shrugged, attempting to rid ourselves of guilt. The hen came near us, a gurgle of discontent escaping her throat, as if saying, Your Highness, I’m speaking only of the one who’s stolen my eggs! I suppressed the urge to giggle. Papa tilted his head questioningly, not quite sure what was amusing me. I thought of telling him but didn’t, afraid it would remind him of the sadness of the earlier hours. Instead I wondered aloud where our old friend had gone, and silently, apprehensively to myself, why everything was in such disarray, why the door of the sweeper’s hut was left ajar and hanging askew on one unraveled rattan knot, as if something enormous had burst through. “Maybe it was a dragon tail,” I offered, imagining that a naga serpent had risen out of the marsh during the night’s storm and scoured the land, its tail whipping the air into a funnel that earned the monsoon whirlwind its funny nickname.

  Papa made no reply. Instead he scanned the hut. The new coconut fronds he’d helped haul from the temple grounds one afternoon and put over the deteriorating thatched walls—in spite of the sweeper’s insistence he was adequately sheltered—had not kept out the night’s howling rain. Everything was drenched, a soggy mess, and there was this feeling of abrupt abandonment, as if the old sweeper had been sucked right out of bed by some force hurling through the front door.

  “Maybe he’s gone to find shelter in town,” again I offered, more to calm my own worries than Papa’s. Circling us, the hen gurgled indignantly, pulling her neck in and out, strutting with the air of one who’d been left high and dry: You don’t say, that old scoundrel ran off with my children! Still in their shells, I’ll have you know. She dipped her beak in a puddle and drank from it, throwing her head back every so often and gargling as if her throat was hoarse from having to explain her losses to a couple of two-legged carnivores.

  Papa was oblivious to the hen’s distress. His eyes lingered on the gaping doorway, then traveled slowly to the clay vat pressed against the front wall, under the lip of a bamboo trough. The vat was the only durable, solid form, while the old sweeper’s few possessions—the soaked straw mat on the bamboo bed, a pair of frayed twig brooms nestling by the door, a threadbare shirt hanging on one wall, a discolored kroma on another—seemed on the verge of evaporating as their owner apparently had.

  “He never spent the night here,” Papa finally said as he walked over to the vat and, using his bandaged hand to lift the wooden cover, looked inside, his expression pensive as if working out some great mystery. “It’s not full. You’d think he would’ve left it open to collect the rainwater.” He turned to me. “I think our friend left before the storm came last night. Strange, though, that he went without saying good-bye to us first.”

  “Maybe when he brought the eggs, he came to say good-bye.”

  Papa attempted a smile, and as if to assuage his own worries, said, “He’s probably out and about somewhere nearby.”

  “We can come back this afternoon.”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea.”

  As we made our way along a dike toward the well, I scanned the area, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sweeper’s curved silhouette gathering twigs under a tree or collecting wild herbs along a grassy patch among the rice paddies. But there was only the tattered frame of what looked like a scarecrow from last season in the cornfield to the right of us. I blinked, willing the scarecrow to straighten up and wave. If it did, it would confirm my suspicion that the old sweeper was a spirit of some sort, a tevoda in disguise. But it didn’t move, not even when a flock of sparrows settled upon its stick arms, from which dangled strings of rusted cans. A breeze blew and the cans clattered, sending the sparrows fluttering like snippets of a lost lyric: It’s true mine is a life of poverty . . . my home a half-built thatched hut . . . Papa said that some mornings he would wake up with his head full of words and images and the only way to still them was to write them down. It’d been like this for me since waking, my head full of half-remembered lines. Its walls the winds and rains . . .

  • • •

  “Well, did you ever finish it?” I asked, looking into the opaque water below, my chin resting on the edge of the well.

  Papa didn’t hear me. His head followed the flight of a hawk circling above us, its wings straight as metal.

  “Did you finish that poem you were working on?” I asked again.

  “Hmm . . .,” he replied, still watching the hawk.

  “Is that yes or no?”

  “Do you know why I write?” he murmured, smiling to himself.

  “You can’t answer a question with a question!”

  He looked down into the well, and his blurred reflection said to mine, “I write because words give me wings.”

  “Wings?” I felt the palpitation of my heart but did not tell him about my dream.

  “Yes, wings! So I ca
n fly!” Laughing, he spread his arms and circled the well. “Be as free as that hawk!”

  “You can’t be a bird!” I shouted, my fear resurfacing. “You can’t! Stop it!”

  Papa stood still, surprised by the volume and harshness of my voice. He looked at me and then, as if coming to the same conclusion, said despondently, “Yes, you’re right, of course. I can’t be a bird.” His gaze went back to the hawk, which was now circling the golden spire of the stupa. “‘Upadana dukkha,’ the Buddha told his disciples. ‘Desire is suffering.’”

  “What’s desire?”

  “To want something so bad your heart hurts.”

  “What’s suffering?”

  “When your heart hurts.”

  “Well, my heart hurts because I desire to go home.”

  Papa laughed, pulling me to him. He wrapped his arms around me, and they felt, I thought, as safe as a pair of wings. In the sky, the hawk circled the stupa a few more times before slipping into the white expanse.

  Papa picked up a pail made from a carved-out palm trunk and dropped it into the well, holding firmly on to the long bamboo pole fastened to its handle. He flicked the pole around until the pail began to submerge, filling up with water, like the funnel of a sinking ship. Then he pulled it back up and poured the water into one of our buckets, repeating the steps until both buckets were full.

  We were ready to return to the temple. But instead of going back in the direction of the old sweeper’s hut, we took a shortcut across a series of rice paddies that bordered the dirt road. Papa balanced himself on the narrow dikes, the bamboo yoke on his shoulder now bent like a large bow from the weight of the water, his body swaying left and right, his arms stretched out to steady the buckets so the water wouldn’t spill. He looked more like a chicken trying to fly than a bird that could soar. I followed close behind, running, skipping, hopping, imagining the rice paddies a giant hopscotch board. Papa pointed out the different families of rice, reciting the names like a line from one of his poems. “Long grain short grain, fat grain sticky grain, grain that smells like the monsoon rains,” I mimicked, singing it out loud.