In the Shadow of the Banyan

by Vaddey Ratner

  “Clouds, I was going to say.” He grinned. “But yes, ‘ice’ is more fitting.” Then, his brows furrowing, he added in an apparent tone of interest, “You know, I’ve never seen it. Ice, I mean. I’ve heard people talk about it, but I can’t imagine this ‘solid water.’ Made by a machine no less, is that right?”

  I nodded, thinking of the small refrigerator we had back home where we stored our supply of imported cheeses and pâtés, the little freezer up top with its metal trays for ice.

  Pok shook his head in amazement. “No wonder these Revolutionary soldiers are so fearful of machines. What power indeed to turn water solid!”

  I kept silent, letting him find his way.

  He began to undo the leather strap that held the sheath knife and several pairs of bamboo clasps I recognized were the kind used for squeezing juice from palm flowers. “I can’t say I understand what’s happening,” he went on, avoiding my stare. “What grace or misfortune has brought you here, to us—we who have nothing to give you.”

  It hit me what he was doing—he was trying to be a parent, to talk to a child as a father would. He must’ve guessed what we’d lost, for here we were, a young mother and two little girls and no father to speak of. He must’ve sensed how far we’d been flung, for there was a world that he, who’d lived through countless moons and seen just about everything, didn’t know, couldn’t possibly imagine, a world of “solid water.” I wanted to describe to him this world, my whole life there. But tightness swelled in my chest, and when I opened my mouth to speak all I could muster was a muffled choke.

  Pok stood still and observed me, as one would a bird, afraid of making a wrong move. After a moment, he said, “Let’s have some palm juice.”

  I followed him to a stout young palm a few feet away. He cut a section of its frond with his knife, ripped the pliant part from the hard spine, and, with quick, deft movements of his hands, magically whisked it into a pair of cones. He poured some juice from the bamboo flask into the cones and handed one to me.

  We strolled to the edge of the rice paddies, climbed onto the dike, and, as we stood there drinking our breakfast in companionable silence, more comfortable now without speaking, I thought maybe it wasn’t necessary to explain anything at all. Maybe it was enough that I knew I was not alone, that, at the very least, standing here beside me was this one person, who, unbeknownst to me till now, had all along been journeying this same journey with me, only from the opposite direction.

  I can’t say I understand what’s happening . . . Had I owned the words I would’ve told him what my heart intuited—that joy and sorrow often travel the same road and sometimes, whether by grace or misfortune, they meet and become each other’s companion. But again I couldn’t express what I felt. So I told him what I could—“Maybe we are pok thor koan thor.”

  Thor comes from the Sanskrit word “dharma,” but to me it meant simply loving someone you did not expect to love, and thus pok thor koan thor was a bond between a parent and child who were not related by blood. They’re not ours to keep, Pok had said, cautioning Mae against becoming too attached to us. Looking at him now, I knew we’d fallen into good hands. I knew also that like Papa, like any parent who understood the brevity of his role, the pithiness of parenthood, Pok was going to care for us as best as he could, teach us how to live like neak srae, how not only to plant the rice but to imitate it, to firmly anchor ourselves in ever-upturned ground and, at the same time, sway in the direction of the wind.

  “Maybe we were supposed to meet,” I said, sensing the possibility of my father everywhere. We are all echoes of one another, Raami.

  Pok looked at me. Silence seemed to have overtaken him again. Then his face broke open like the morning sun.

  seventeen

  So began my education, with Pok as my guide and guardian, this gentle soul who called himself neak prey—a “man of the forest”—because he’d never seen a refrigerator or known the taste of ice, but who, with quiet patience and thor, would help us to withstand the rigors of our reincarnation from city people to peasants. To begin with, that morning, after we’d finished our second helpings of palm juice, Pok directed my gaze to the rooster weathervane turning at the top of the hut. Here, he explained, our lives were ruled by the seasonal change of the monsoon’s breath, which when blowing from the southwest brought rains and rice, and from the northeast dryness and scarcity. He described in detail the layout of Stung Khae and its neighboring villages, dotting them on his palm with the tip of his finger in an S-shaped curve from north to south. Together there were twelve villages in the commune. Stung Khae, the fourth village from the north, was cradled right at the crook of a small river, the one Pok had just pointed out to me. The river, also called Stung Khae, threaded its way between ours and the third village, connecting up with Prek Chong, a large tributary of the Mekong, somewhere in the distant north.

  At the mention of the Mekong, my heart went aflutter, my mind became distracted, and I asked Pok if he could take me there, to which he replied, “Oh, child, it’s many forests and rivers away!” He admitted he’d never seen it.

  “Papa said—” I stopped.

  “Yes? Your papa said . . .”

  I couldn’t tell him. Couldn’t bear to say more. Not yet. Pok understood. The newness of my loss was apparent to him.

  “Come,” he said and led me across the vast green expanse, to where a group of farmers were busy preparing the paddies for planting. The men, each in a field with his plow and water buffalo, churned the flooded ground, turning the turbid water and earth into thick, doughy mud. Nearby, on a patch of land where two dikes met, the women hoed dirt from a termite mound into rattan baskets for children to scatter in the paddies. The dirt full of termites—dey dombok, Pok called it, teaching me the proper names of things as he went—would get ground up by the plows and become potent fertilizer for the soil. Then, after another rain or two, when the upturned soil had settled and evened out but was still soft enough to push one’s thumb through, tender rice seedlings would be brought from the village’s thnaal sanab and transplanted into the paddies. The rains would continue, nourishing the rice as well as providing sanctuaries for minnows, tadpoles, snails, crabs, and countless other tiny creatures we could collect for food, for our own nourishment.

  “What about leeches?” I wanted to know.

  “Oh, they’re everywhere!” He lowered himself on one knee, dipped his arm into a rain-flooded paddy, and pulled out a cylindrical bamboo trap—troo, he called it, which was different from angrut, the cone-shaped trap used for ensnaring larger catches, like catfish or eels. Inside the troo, a thick colony of gravel-sized snails clung to the bamboo strips, and, like a giant sentry keeping watch over these minuscule prisoners, a lone crawfish the size of my thumb scuttled from one end to the other, fearful of our presence. “It’s your lucky day, little fellow!” Pok exclaimed and, sliding open the small woven cover at one end, let the panic-stricken animal go. “Come back when you have more meat!” He returned the troo to the water, his arm lingering near a thicket of grass.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Don’t let . . . the flat surface . . . fool you,” he said, his voice straining from overreaching. “Underneath all this sameness . . . there’s a thriving universe of these creatures.” Suddenly he pulled his arm out of the water, and clinging to the underside of his wrist was a leech—black and quivering.

  I pulled back, gasping.

  Pok grinned and, grabbing a tuft of grass, scraped the leech off in one quick swipe. “If you try picking it off with your fingers, it’ll reattach itself to your hand or another part of your skin. It’s best to not touch these creatures.” He wiped away a trace of blood on his wrist where the leech must have pierced him.

  “Does . . . does it hurt?”

  “You mustn’t be afraid.” He looked at me, his gaze suddenly penetrating. “You’ll see them everywhere. Sometimes, a whole troop will surround you, blackening your sight. But it’s the ones you can’t see that yo
u must guard yourself against.” He scrutinized the water and, quickly pointing to a dark, wriggling cluster, said, “There! Needle leeches, they’re called. They’ll enter your body by whatever route possible and make you bleed from the inside.”

  I shuddered.

  Realizing his misstep—that this might have added to my fear rather than lessened it—he tried to make light of it. “But there’s one good use for these guys. Not the needle leeches, but the fat ones. Pickle them in rice wine and you’ll have a drink with so much fire as to make a coward brave!”

  I shivered with disgust. “You’d have to be brave in the first place to drink something like that!”

  Pok laughed. “Can’t say I’ve ever tried it myself!”

  We made our way to one of the farmers, who stopped his plowing when he heard Pok call out to him. They greeted each other, exchanged pleasantries about the morning, and, nodding at me, Pok introduced, “My koan thor.”

  The man flashed me a smile, seeming to need no further explanation as to how or from where I’d materialized, but that I was with Pok was enough to warrant his welcome and acceptance. “The soil is as black as worm castings,” he said and, scooping up a handful of the sludge, showed it to us. “See, plenty of dey labap, with just the right amount of silt and sand. We’ll have a good crop this harvest.”

  There was something familiar about him. Maybe the way he moved in the paddy, barely stirring the water, or maybe the way he wore only a kroma around his waist. But, as I looked around, all the other men plowing the paddies were similarly clad, with the bare minimum, their bodies so lissome and brown and streaked with mud, and I understood now why they were called “people of the paddies.” Their whole life seemed to take place in these muddy fields, and, like the rice stalks, they appeared at once youthful and ancient, tenuous and resilient, light-footed and permanently rooted. It wasn’t difficult now to understand why the Revolution favored them, why there was this need to turn people like Mama and me—the entire urban population, as we’d come to learn—into neak srae. Who wouldn’t want to be like them?

  The man’s water buffalo snorted, swinging its head in annoyance, impatient to get on with the work. I suddenly realized it was the same water buffalo that had grazed the morning glory earlier, and the owner was the same man who had combed the inundated strip of land with his trap! I swallowed my shyness and asked, “What did you catch?”

  He seemed surprised by the question, but then realizing I must’ve seen him from Pok’s hut, smiled broadly and tilted his head toward the trap a few feet away at a dike junction—“See for yourself.”

  I went to take a look. Inside the cone-shaped fortress wriggled a catfish as big as my forearm, in a puddle too small for its long body and whiskers. It thrashed about, perhaps sensing it was being observed, mouth open wide as if in a silent scream. Then it went still, its gills heaving, exhausted from the brief exertion.

  “I think it’s dying,” I told Pok as he came and stood beside me.

  He frowned, seeming more troubled by my concern for the catfish than by the fish itself. “Well, you know . . . ,” he started to say but couldn’t find the words to explain.

  He didn’t need to. I understood. Fish was food. I wasn’t naïve. I knew what was going to happen. I’d seen live fish killed and gutted countless times, at the market, in our very own kitchen. Yet somehow that was different from seeing one so close to its natural habitat, trapped like this when freedom was all around it. I couldn’t help thinking I was in a similar predicament—removed from all that I’d known, cordoned off in an unfamiliar place, yet probably not far from home.

  One big jump and you’ll be back in the water! Go on! Jump!

  The fish made no response to my silent urgings. It focused what breath it had left on staying alive in this tiny puddle.

  I stood up and looked around. If only I could see past the fortress of trees, catch a glimmer of the Mekong. Sometimes we, like little fishes, are swept up in these big and powerful currents . . . Papa’s words flooded my mind, and I remembered his despair as he stood beside me on the balcony of Mango Corner overlooking the river, the tightness of his voice as he spoke. If only the currents would reverse, I thought, and carry me back to him. Or him to me.

  Again, tears stung my eyes and I felt choked, this time with the realization that this was now my home, my life, that I couldn’t keep pining for all I’d lost. What breath or energy I had left I must focus on making it here, becoming not only koan thor to Pok and Mae but koan neak srae, a child of these paddies.

  • • •

  When we got back to the hut, Mama wasn’t upset or worried as I’d thought she would be. She smiled when she saw me, her arms raised to hang a sarong on the clothesline that stretched between two papaya trees near the thatched enclosure in the back. Her face was glowing, flushed with youth, with the freshness of the morning’s wash, the night’s cleansing. The rain healed everything, I thought. Or at least washed away the residues of a day’s wreckage. She pulled a shirt—mine, the one I’d worn during our journey—from a basket of freshly laundered clothes and hung it next to her flowered sarong. Anxious to give a reason for my early morning grubbiness, I told her I was out exploring with Pok, who, at the moment when I most needed him to back me up, was quickly disappearing up the trunk of the other Sweetheart palm to finish collecting the sweet juice, which he said must be gotten in the morning, as opposed to the sour juice collected in the afternoon. Mama looked at my bare feet, the clumps of mud between my toes, the pieces of dead grass stuck to my skin. In the chaos of our departure from the temple, we’d lost my shoes and sandals. But I didn’t miss them. I liked the feel of dirt against my skin, and it was easier to walk barefoot on the uneven ground.

  Mama made a small frown, but then, smiling, said instead, “It must have been fun.”

  I stared at her, surprised not only that she didn’t reproach me but that she seemed, as before, happy and playful.

  She lowered herself on one knee and, with a wet kroma from the pile in the basket, began to wipe my face. Her touch, supple and damp, made me think of a mother horse I’d once seen grooming her foal, licking the baby until it was clean. She lifted my chin and wiped underneath it. I felt a rush to hug her—to confirm her realness and solidity against my chest, her heartbeats with mine. But I stayed still, afraid I’d unravel what the rain had mended, that my tenderness would break her all over again. So instead I told her, “There are these needle leeches, and Pok said the way to not let them enter your body is to wear black when you go into the rice paddy, so that you appear like them, like this dark mass floating in the water. This afternoon he will take me to catch eels.”

  Mama nodded, running her fingers through my hair, smoothing out the tangles. Then, cupping my face with both hands, she looked me in the eyes and said, “It’s wonderful, all this exploring. But don’t get lost. Remember who you are.”

  A warning or a plea, I wasn’t sure.

  Then, seeing my confusion, she added, “You know, you would’ve also adored my father. Do you remember I told you he passed away a year before you were born? At the monastery where he’d spent the latter part of his life. But . . . but he also loved the countryside—the rice fields, the mud, the leeches, everything about it.”

  It was clear what she was trying to say—Pok reminded her of her father, and it was all right for me to venture about with him.

  She let go and, putting the used kroma aside, stood up to hang the rest of the laundered clothes, which, I noticed with a start, had become blackish blue, all the colors and patterns gone. Mae had said the Kamaphibal required that we dye our garments in indigo juice. Everything must be silenced. Black was the color of the Revolution. Mama, with her jade-colored sarong and light pink shirt yet to be dyed, resembled a lotus shooting out of the mud. The colors, or maybe her—the brightness of her presence amidst this straw dwelling and dirt—made me want to hold on tight. I flung my arms around her slender frame, the tapered waist Papa had described as

 
the narrowing of a river,

  A strait into the unknown—

  That mystery of birth and origin.

  Mama was my source, my home.

  “Doll!” came a squeal from behind me. I spun around and there was Radana on Mae’s hip, waving a cassava stem with its oversized star-shaped leaf bunched up and tied with a string so it resembled a stick figure with a ponytail. “Doll!” Radana said again, whacking my head with it.

  “I tried to convince her to play in the hut, but no, she’ll have none of it.” Mae handed Radana to Mama. “She wants you.”

  “Doll hungry.” Radana thrust the cassava stem at Mama’s chest, making a suckling sound. Mama gently pushed it away, looking somewhat embarrassed, but Radana babbled on, “Mhum mhum mhum . . .”

  Mae tickled her, nodding toward the cow tethered to a pole among the haystacks. “You sound like her!”

  I laughed. Huh, you little bovine! Radana, clueless, laughed with me.

  Mae turned to Mama. “You go and feed the little ones.” She nodded at the pot perched over a fire under the hut. “I’ll finish putting up the clothes.”

  • • •

  The smell of palm sugar renewed my hunger. Mae had stirred a small chunk into the rice porridge, now turning it a thick, golden brown. Mama spooned some into a bowl and handed it to me. I blew and stirred, blew and stirred, impatient for it to cool down, my stomach urging me on, moaning incessantly.

  Mae came to join us. She put aside the empty basket, poured herself a cup of palm juice from the bamboo flask, and drank it down in one gulp. When Mama tried to offer her some of the porridge from the pot, she shook her head. “No, no, that’s just for you and the little ones. All I need is a bit of this sweet nectar to carry me through the morning.”

  I didn’t know if this was true or if she was just saying it because she didn’t want us to feel guilty for eating their meager supply of rice. She poured another cup of palm juice and again drank it down in one go.