In the Shadow of the Banyan

by Vaddey Ratner

  “Are you sure? Are you sure, Comrade, that you are telling us the truth?”

  Mama did not respond. I didn’t know what he was trying to get at, what he was trying to get Mama to admit that he didn’t already know. No, she wasn’t a servant, and yes, she knew how to read and write, yes, she was educated, but apparently so was he. He could read a foreign language even, or at least what was on the watch.

  “Do you know the severity of your crime?” he asked. “This deliberate cover-up you’ve engaged in to fool us all?”

  Mama didn’t answer.

  “In Democratic Kampuchea,” the Fat One edged in, “we have no room for people like you.”

  Bong Sok silenced his wife with a look, and to us, concluded, “A punishment will be decided. You may go now.”

  • • •

  Outside their two children were playing. I’d thought they were ghosts of the landowner’s children, but in fact they were little copies of Bong Sok and the Fat One. The son pretended he was a Revolutionary soldier, and his sister the captured enemy, his soon-to-be executed prisoner. He aimed a branch at her while she stood blindfolded, ramrod straight against a tree, her wrists in front of her, loosely bound with a piece of frayed rope. When the boy saw us, he put down his mock weapon, and the prisoner, sensing something was up, untied herself and removed the blindfold from her eyes. The two of them walked over to us. “Comrade Brother,” the girl asked, mimicking my movement, “why is she walking like that?”

  Beside me, Mama began to moan, her hand reaching for mine. The dress the girl was wearing was too small for her plump body. The white satin had turned yellow from dirt and sweat, most of the silk roses along the collar missing, and the butterfly-shaped bow gone.

  Mama let out a sob. I pulled her away—“It’s just a dress, Mama. Just a dress.”

  • • •

  That night a Revolutionary soldier burst into the hut. “Pack your things!” he ordered. “Not you!” He pushed Mae and Pok out of the way and pointed at Mama and me—“You two!” He forced us down the stairs. Mae let out a hysterical cry: “No, no, you can’t take them!” Outside she threw herself at his feet. “Please don’t take them!” Pok came running out with our belongings in tow. “Where are you taking our children?”

  “They’re not yours! They belong to the Organization! To us—to do with as we please!”

  “Where are you taking them?” he repeated.

  “You don’t need to know!”

  “Tell us why then? Why?”

  “You’ve grown too close. The Organization is your only family. You should’ve remembered that.”

  “At least let us say good-bye then.”

  “No! There’s no need!” He pushed us toward the oxcart parked at the entrance of the land. “Go! Get in!”

  “I am a peasant, you stupid boy!” Mae shouted, no longer afraid, Pok’s machete in her hand. “I’ve worked this land longer than you’ve been alive, and if that doesn’t mean anything to you, I’ll cut you up and throw you in the rice paddy, and you can rot, and the Organization will have to deal with me!”

  Surprised by her bold anger, the soldier let go of our arms. He pushed us back toward her. “Hurry up,” he said. “Say your good-byes.”

  She glared at him, and he backed away, giving us room.

  Mae cooed and clucked, sobbing, feeling our faces in the dark. She turned to Pok. “I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to say. Help me. Help me find the right words.”

  “We’ve always known you don’t belong to us.” Pok handed Mama Radana’s little bolster pillow. “But still we love you—” He choked on his own words.

  Mama was right. Love hides in all sorts of places, in the most sorrowful corner of your heart, in the darkest and most hopeless situation.

  “That’s enough!” ordered the soldier.

  Pok and Mae let go of us. We climbed into the oxcart. A kerosene lantern hung high on the arched wooden prow separating the two oxen. Another soldier was perched at the front of the cart, and for a split second my heart leapt, thinking it was the same boy who had brought us to Pok and Mae. But it wasn’t him. Our driver held the reins and bamboo goad aloft, ready to go.

  Pok came around and put the rest of our belongings beside us. He reached over to ruffle my hair, opened his mouth to speak, his betel-stained black teeth looking even blacker in the night. But he couldn’t say it, whatever it was he wanted to say.

  Our driver clicked his tongue, shaking the reins, and the oxen began to move forward. He whipped them, and they cried out, Maaaw! Maaaw! In the dark, the silhouette of Mae’s cow answered, perhaps thinking its calf had come back: Maaaw! Maaaw! It ambled over to where Pok and Mae stood watching us. “Yes, I understand,” I heard Mae say as she patted the animal. “I share your loss.”

  • • •

  As our oxcart rolled onto the narrow village road, I became aware for the first time how cold and damp it was. In the short time we had been out, the dew had settled on my hair and skin as if I’d been sprayed with a fine mist. I looked back in the direction of our hut. I knew Pok and Mae were still standing there even though I could no longer see them. We had chosen them as our family over the Organization. This was our crime, and for this, we were being sent away. Our offense was as vague as the punishment awaiting us.

  We headed into a forest, the path in front of us dimly lit by the kerosene lantern. Mama handed me Radana’s pillow. I hugged it for warmth and put my head down on her lap. Sleep, baby, sleep, I sang silently to myself. It’s not morning yet . . .

  The forest enclosed us.

  twenty-three

  We emerged from the dark into an open field awash with light. A bonfire was burning, and here and there were smaller fires, like offspring of the larger one, around which people huddled in clusters of four or five, their belongings on the ground beside them. Many more gathered around the bonfire, their heads bowed in silence, mouths moving in inaudible whispers, like mourners around a mass funeral pyre, paying respects to the dead. Our driver abruptly stopped the oxcart and grunted at us, “Stay.” He jumped off his perch and went to talk with a couple of Revolutionary soldiers standing guard in the middle of a paved road large enough to be one of the national roads that ran from one province to the next. The other soldiers nodded and lifted their faces in our direction, their postures languid, indifferent. Our driver came back to us and said, “Wait with the rest.” Then, without saying anything more, he climbed into the cart again, turned it around, and slipped back into the forest.

  With our belongings, we weaved our way through the clusters of people. Some turned to look at us as we went past, but no one greeted us, no one said anything. The only sounds came from the bonfire as the branches hissed or crackled, and from the night insects humming incessantly, unseen in the surrounding brush.

  We found a space under a tree with sparse, drooping foliage. A group of people, gaunt faced and emaciated, made room for us on a patch of the slightly damp grass. They stared at us, searchingly, perhaps thinking we might be lost family members whom they couldn’t trust themselves to recognize right away. When they saw no resemblance, they lowered their faces to the ground, once again as if mourning the dead, mouths moving in a whisper, a collective chant.

  I pulled my knees up, chin resting on top of Radana’s pillow, my arms wrapped around my legs to keep warm. I missed her, the smell of her hair after she bathed, like rain-soaked grass, midnight dew on bamboo leaves. It was that time of the night when it was easy to fall back to sleep. I looked around, feeling drowsy, unsure of what I saw and what I imagined. At the far edge of the open field a deer, or maybe one of those rarely seen koh preys, was licking dew off the leaves of a bamboo. Just a few feet away, a man sat cross-legged, his upturned palms on his lap, as if reading a book. Papa? I thought. My heart quickened once more, even as my mind slowed with sleep. He looked up. No, it wasn’t him. The man tilted his head back, his palms lifted, as if making an offering to the heavens, and I realized he was surreptitiously sayin
g a prayer, perhaps imploring the gods to spare his life. Or chanting an incantation before his death.

  I averted my eyes and instead focused my gaze on images closer to me, things I saw clearly. Near us a mother was breast-feeding her infant by one of the small fires, while the father sat with a blanket wrapped around him like a tent, holding their older child between his knees. Again, I saw Papa, missed him intensely, the feel of his arms around me, the similar pose in which he’d once held me. Perhaps, I thought, I shouldn’t wish for him. I shouldn’t want him here. I would see him soon enough, he and Radana. I felt them beside me—their spirits, their ghosts. Soon I’d be dead too. Why else would they have brought us here?

  “Beyond this field lies our fate . . .”

  “Yes, our shared grave.”

  Voices echoed in my head, and at first I could not separate them from my own thoughts. They swirled around me, like the night moths beating their wings about the field, playing with the bonfire, toying with my mind. Then it became clear people were talking. I’d thought they were whispering hushed prayers for the dead when in fact they were talking about themselves and what was going to happen to us all.

  “These soldiers will kill us,” one man said, and another answered, “There are only two of them and at least fifty of us. We could take them.”

  “They are armed.”

  “Yes, they could wipe us out with one sweep of their guns.”

  My eyes followed the Revolutionary soldiers’ movements. They paced back and forth, their steps listless with boredom and sleep. Still, they held on to their guns, one balancing it on his shoulder, the other using his like a walking stick. They wouldn’t put them down, not even for a second, as if awaiting an order that could come at any moment. Their gazes flitted along the paved road, which, at each end, disappeared into the dark. What were they waiting for? More carts, with more victims?

  “Even if we could take them, then what? Where would we go?”

  “There’s no way out.”

  “We will not see sunrise. We will die here.”

  I blinked, desperate to stay awake. If we were going to die, I thought, I didn’t want to die in my sleep. I didn’t want to die like Radana. But how did she die? It occurred to me I’d never asked. Mama had woken me up when it was already too late, when Radana was already dead, and now I wondered if my sister had been conscious when she took her last breath. Stop it! I told myself. It doesn’t matter. She’s dead! What good would it do to bring it up again? It wouldn’t change a thing. It wouldn’t change what was going to happen to us.

  I felt a pair of eyes looking at me from across the open field. I turned in that direction and saw, some yards away, a man slowly standing up. There was something familiar about him. But I told myself, no, it couldn’t be. He rose, his shadow becoming one with the dark. He held himself still, appearing almost as tall and thin as the tree trunk behind him. In the leafy shadow, I couldn’t see his face, I couldn’t be certain if he was actually looking at me. I had felt he was, but now I wasn’t sure. He started walking, limping slightly, his every step tentative, his whole body trembling. He stopped and stared, again steadying himself, stilling his mind, perhaps making sure we weren’t ghosts, just as I was trying to convince myself he wasn’t one. He resumed walking, first slowly, then as if his life depended on it, he broke into a run, his arms stretched out, and I knew who it was.

  • • •

  Raami, Raami! Oh, Aana, where are you? It seemed a lifetime had passed before I was able to answer him—Big Uncle!

  When I finally did, time stopped, rewound itself, fear and space disappeared, and all we saw and heard was one another. “Is it really you? Is it, is it? Tell me it’s you. Oh, merciful life, it is you!” Big Uncle shook with happiness and disbelief, grabbing my face, then Mama’s, feeling us all over to make sure we were solid, real, not just shadows or air, and as if he still couldn’t be convinced, couldn’t trust his hands or his eyes, he pressed his lips to Mama’s eyes, each one in turn, and drank her tears. “It’s really you, it’s really you,” again and again he said, and again and again he pulled us both to him, pressing us so hard against his body I thought we might slip through his rib cage.

  “A miracle,” he finally declared, breathless with incredulity. Then he hugged and kissed us all over again, needing to be reassured a miracle wasn’t just a trick of the light.

  “That’s enough!” one of the soldiers suddenly ordered, pulling us apart. “Enough!” His voice brought the night back and everything reappeared.

  Solemn faces stared at us. No one spoke. Then, one by one, heads nodded, lips smiled, eyes brightened, glimmering like stars in a hopeless night. The soldier looked around, shook his head, and walked back to join his comrade at their post by the road. The other appeared impatient, pacing back and forth with vigorous steps now, as if expecting an imminent arrival, an order from up top. But I wasn’t afraid any longer. Big Uncle was with us. He was here. He was still alive. We could still live. Anything was possible now.

  I looked at him, and he looked right back at me. I felt his head, and he felt mine. He was bald, like a monk. “What happened to your hair?” I asked. He laughed, fighting back the tears brimming in his eyes, and I chastised myself, What does it matter what happened to his hair? He’s here, isn’t he? Mama glanced up at him and, noticing his baldness for the first time, buried her face in his chest, her whole body shaking. He pulled her closer to him, and despite being told that was enough, we continued to hold one another, so tight that not even air could come between us. If we died now it would be as a single entity.

  Then, as if suddenly remembering, Big Uncle asked, “Radana—where is she?” He looked around for her. I felt Mama pulling away. He reached for her, but she would not let him touch her now. “Don’t,” she said, shaking. “Don’t.”

  He blinked, and the tears brimming in his eyes began to flow down his face. He was a yiak. An invincible giant who could crush you with his bare hands. Now he cried like a little boy.

  “Where’s everybody?” I asked, looking around for the others, as he had searched for Radana.

  “Come,” he said, swallowing his tears.

  Happiness surged through me. “You’ll take me to them?”

  He could only nod.

  • • •

  Them was only Grandmother Queen. Auntie India and the twins and Tata weren’t there. “They didn’t make it—,” Big Uncle started to say, and his hands began to shake, violently, uncontrollably. He tucked them under his arms to keep them still, to hide them from us. I stared at him, confused. They didn’t make it. But what did it mean? They didn’t make it on the oxcart, the truck, whatever had brought him here? Was that what he meant? A look of shocked acceptance settled on Mama’s face.

  “Mother,” Big Uncle whispered, touching Grandmother Queen on the shoulder. Grandmother Queen didn’t stir, just sat with her back against the trunk of the tree, so still I thought she might’ve died. “Mother, Raami’s here.”

  Still no movement. Maybe she would recognize my voice.

  “Grandmother Queen?” I whispered, leaning close to her ear. “Grandmother Queen, it’s me . . .”

  She opened her eyes slowly, stared, and smiling cried, “Ayuravann!” She pulled me to her, her bony hands caressing my back. “You’ve come back, my son. You’ve come back.”

  “No, I’m Raami.” I tried to free myself from her grasp. I didn’t know what shocked me more, her confusing me with Papa or hearing his name spoken. “It’s me, Raami,” I repeated.

  She stared, the look of recognition gone from her face. Closing her eyes again, she leaned against the tree trunk and murmured herself back to sleep.

  “She’s closer to them than us,” Big Uncle said. “To the spirits and ghosts. She no longer knows who we are. She doesn’t know who she is. It’s . . . it’s the only reason she’s still alive.”

  He didn’t say more but instead looked at the ground in front of his feet, avoiding Mama’s eyes now boring into him. His hands b
egan to shake again of their own accord. He tried to hold them still, one fist in another. I remembered once, back in Phnom Penh, he had reached up to the wall of his house and grabbed a gecko with his bare hand. He’d gripped it too hard, killing the animal by mistake. Once, a long time ago, Big Uncle had seemed to me like a giant who rose as high as the sky, who didn’t believe that killing a gecko was bad luck, who challenged luck by picking fights with the gods. Now, he cowered and crouched, his limbs trembling like those of the gecko. When he could not stop his hands from shaking, he quickly hid them in his pockets.

  “Your head,” Mama said, brushing his shorn temple with the tips of her fingers, feeling the large scar that rose like a ridged mountain above his right ear.

  “Yes . . .” He moaned, as if lacerated by her touch.

  Her hand hovered near his face, fluttering in tenderness, and I knew what she was thinking, that in this light, in this moonless night, he looked like his brother. You are my one single star. My sun, my moon . . . Even if I cannot touch you, I know I will see you, feel you . . . Papa’s parting words.

  “To mourn them,” Big Uncle finally managed to say. “I could not give them the proper ceremony.” He felt his shaved head. “It was all I could do.”

  Mama pulled her hand back and turned away, unable to look at him any longer.

  Big Uncle reached for me. I hugged him, touching his head, caressing it. There were more scars, I noticed now, in a few different places on his head. A plowed field of tiny ridges and crests, unmarked graves.

  “You shouldn’t play with your uncle’s head,” Mama reprimanded.

  “It’s all right,” Big Uncle said. “Once, a person’s head was sacred. Now . . . well, now it can be cracked like a coconut.” He looked at her, as if noticing her hair. “They let you keep it long?”

  “It’s not Revolutionary, I know.”

  “Neither is being bald.”

  They both tried to laugh.

  “I’ll cut it if . . .” She let the sentence hang. But I knew what she meant—she’d cut it if we lived through this night.